Friday, December 15, 2017

Method and Transcendentalism

Kant's attempt to combine Rationalist and Empiricist methods results in an innovative method--Transcendentalism.  Transcendentalism is traditionally Rationalist, because since its contents are ideas, concepts, etc., and it is traditionally Empricist, since it limits the scope of those formations to Sense-Experience.  This Transcendentalism also inherits the inattention to Method of its progenitors.  Now, Kant does devote a section of the Critique of Pure Reason to Method.  But, not merely is the topic an afterthought in the volume, its title exposes its misdirectedness.  For, "Transcendental Doctrine of Method", which he attributes to Pure Reason, misses that Transcendentalism is itself a Method, just as Descartes, Locke, etc. miss that their Rationalism and Empiricism are Methods.

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