This book develops a textually grounded reconstruction of Kant's argument in the Metaphysical Deduction. The argument proceeds in three steps, developing, first, a concept of judgment on which to base the table of logical functions, next a concept of synthesis of intuition that explains the content of the categories, and finally a concept of the understanding on which the categories belong a priori to the same faculty through which we judge.
The investigation presented here is an argumentative reconstruction of Kant's text. The text in question is the "Guiding Thread to the Discovery of all Pure Concepts of the Understanding" in both the 1781 (A) and 1787 (B) editions of the Critique of Pure Reason (A64-83/B89-113). To illuminate Kant's reflections in this chapter, the reconstruction also draws on passages from elsewhere in the Critique, from Kant's writings after the Critique, as well as notes from his Nachlass and student transcriptions of lectures he held subsequent to writing the Critique. Four passages, in particular, are of central importance: (i) the retrospective description of the task of the Metaphysical Deduction at B159, (ii) the retrospective description of the procedure of the "Guiding Thread" at A299/B355f., (iii) the section "On the A Priori Grounds for the Possibility of Experience" in the A-edition Transcendental Deduction of the Categories (A95-110), and (iv) 15-21 in the B-edition Transcendental Deduction (B128-148).
The present interpretation of the Metaphysical Deduction thus emerges from a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the "Guiding Thread" that draws on related passages from the indicated portion of Kant's corpus and, especially, on the aforementioned four passages from the Critique. Viewing these texts together and in a specific relation to one another suggests a reading which leaves little room for doubt. This sort of textually sensitive but charitable reconstruction helps to bring out the enduring force and interest of Kant's philosophical position.
Till Hoeppner, Universität Potsdam.
"A fourth major monograph can now be added to this list [of the classic monographs on the Metaphysical Deduction as such: Reich 1932, Brandt 1991 and Wolff 1995, besides the masterful Longuenesse 1998]: Till Hoeppner's Urteil und Anschauung. Kants metaphysische Deduktion der Kategorien. Crucially, unlike those aforementioned three books, but like Longuenesse, Hoeppner includes an extensive, separate account of the all-important third section of the Metaphysical Deduction, that is, the section leading up to the table of categories ( 10, A76-80/B102-6). [...] [T]he interpretative support, internal and external to the actual text of the Metaphysical Deduction, that Hoeppner does muster in support of his reading is impressive. His analysis of Kant's arguments for the central claim that the elements that make up the conditions of thought are exactly congruent to the functions of judgment, as well as his intriguing and, at first pass, persuasive account of the categories as having the threefold act of synthesis as their representational content (330 et passim) are rigorously argued, exceedingly detailed and frequently illuminating. [...] Much more of course can be said about Hoeppner's excellent book, and I am certain many scholars of Kant will benefit from its extensive and detailed analyses of an often still largely misunderstood chapter in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason."
-Dennis Schulting, Kantian Review 28 (4): 640-644.
