Regulative Principles and Kinds of the Unconditioned

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>In his <jats:italic>Kant on Laws</jats:italic>, Eric Watkins presents an account of reason on which the principles of specification and continuity are regulative instructions to search for different kinds of the unconditioned. I suggest that we correct Watkins’ account in two ways. First, we need to complete Watkins’ claim to the plurality of the unconditioned: reason aims for three kinds of the unconditioned, associated with the <jats:italic>lowest</jats:italic>, <jats:italic>next</jats:italic> and <jats:italic>highest</jats:italic> concepts. Second, we need to look beyond reason’s search for the unconditioned in order to properly understand the nature of the aim of reason. I argue that we construe reason’s aim as the systematic unity of cognition considered as a whole or, in Kant’s teleological terms, as the realization of an ‘idea’, or a ‘purposive unity’.</jats:p>