Kant and the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR)

James Kreines, Claremont McKenna

 

Work in progress, further developing an old idea of mine. The basic idea is that Kant's "principle of reason" is a version of the principle of sufficient reason (PSR), and that this is the principle that supports both sides in Kant's Antinomy arguments, key to this justification of transcendental idealism and the limitation of our knowledge. I argue that it is central to Kant's project--to the very idea of a critique of reason--to take a stance on his PSR that is in some respects even more of a positive endorsement than we tend to recognize, and yet to combine this with what is in some respects an even more critical and negative stance than we tend to recognize.

The most fully developed version of the idea is currently in my Reason in the World, Introduction and Chapter 4 (Oxford: 2015). I apply the idea to discussion of Allais on things in themselves in "Things in Themselves and Metaphysical Grounding", (EJP, 2016). But if you want to cite me, I would appreciate inclusion of reference to the earliest published version of the idea (2008):

 Metaphysical rationalism is of great importance in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Kant argues that the faculty of reason always demands that we seek underlying conditions, and ultimately that we seek a complete series of conditions, or an unconditioned ground ... reason's principle must be restricted to a special status: it is legitimate only as 'regulative' or guiding principle for our theoretical inquiry. But Kant argues that we are naturally tempted to instead accept it as an objective principle guaranteeing that, for anything conditioned, there must really be some complete series of conditions, or some unconditioned ground. Our temptation to accept this principle, and conclusions drawn from it, is supposed to explain the appeal of rationalist metaphysics. For example, this principle is the ground on which the 'the entire antinomy of pure reason rests': 'If the conditioned is given, then the whole series of all conditions for it is also given' (A497/B525). And this tempting principle is a version of the principle of sufficient reason: for anything that is not a sufficient reason for itself, or for anything conditioned, there must be a complete series of conditions that provides for it a sufficient reason. Kant can explain in these terms, for example, why we are naturally tempted by rationalist arguments from the existence of anything conditioned to the existence of God as an ultimate ground or an original being. But he can also argue that such rationalist arguments must be rejected: to assert knowledge of the principle grounding such arguments, or of such conclusions, is to violate our epistemic limits - for these limits prevent all knowledge of anything unconditioned. (p. 49, Kreines, 2008 "Metaphysics without Pre-Critical Monism", Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain 57/58 2008 pp. 48-70. [Press link] [Final Draft])