On Buchdahl's and Palter's papers

Robert E. Butts

pp. 188-199

in: Lewis White Beck (ed), Proceedings of the Third international Kant congress, Berlin, Springer, 1972

Abstract

Kant's philosophical system appears to me to have been generated in the context of an unresolved tension between two conceptual models, one inherited and deeply imbedded in Kant's thought, one created by Kant (it is perhaps the greatest of his philosophical creations) but never really developed by him in sufficient detail. The two models have to do with ways of construing concepts (and judgments, whose ingredients are concepts). The first model regards concepts as subsumers, classes that collect instances. The second model introduces the revolutionary idea that concepts are rules, which means that whatever else concepts are, they are basically invitations to do something, to perform in certain ways. Many of Kant's problems — not to speak of the problems of his commentators — are consequences of his continuing insistence upon putting his distinctions in subsumption-concept form. Sometimes he solves his problem by stressing the rule character of concepts (recall the major moves in the Dialectic, moves designed to discredit metaphysics while at the same time retaining its basic principles in regulative form); more often he fails to solve his problem, or at least throws up more confusion, by temporarily forgetting his own thought that concepts are rules.

Cited authors

Kant Immanuel