Abstract for the Kant in Asia
International Conference
at Hong Kong Baptist
University
20-23 May 2009
Christine Lopes, “Beyond Truth and Falsehood: The Kantian
Concept of Imagination”
Kant
argued in the Critique of Pure Reason
that the mind forms the veridical concept of a spatio-temporal
thing through giving intuitions a synthetic unity, that
such an act of synthesis is an a priori condition for objectual
knowledge, and that is rule-governed by concepts that function as categories of
thought. Surprisingly, Kant also
described this act of synthesis as a function of the imagination. The paper examines Heidegger’s charge
that Kant did not realize the full significance of his own concept of
imagination in the Critique of Pure
Reason. Heidegger rightly assumes
that Kant was concerned with conditions of truthful judgement
of what is the case. But Heidegger believed, I think incorrectly, that
philosophers such as Kant, who concern themselves with propositional truth,
must necessarily fail to conceive of truth in relation to phenomena other than
those that can become the content of propositions.