On the Necessity of Empirical Laws in Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason"

ARIAS ALBISU, MARTÍN

Halle (Saale)

Seminario; Oberseminar: "Grundprobleme der Philosophie der Neuzeit"; 2018

Universidad Martin Luther de Halle-Wittenberg

[Seminario a cargo del Prof. Heiner F. Klemme]. I will first briefly expound the three kinds of interpretations of the necessity of empirical laws in Kant´s "Critique of Pure Reason" that can be found in the recent literature. 1) Michael Friedman holds that the grounds of necessary empirical laws are the transcendental principles of the understanding. 2) According to Michael B. McNulty, the necessity of empirical laws derives from the use of certain ideas of theoretical reason that this commentator calls "elements". 3) Various commentators maintain that the systematicity of empirical laws is the source of the necessity of these laws. Second, I will try to show that the latter kind of interpretation best explains Kant´s statements about the necessity of empirical laws. In doing so, I will introduce a concept of the "regulative" necessity of empirical laws that is a reworking of the aforementioned kind of interpretation.