Transcendental Dialectic

1. Transcendental Dialectic
The project of the whole transcendental dialectic is well–known. Kant's primary aim here is that of
warning us against the danger involved in the misunderstanding and subsequent hypostatization of
the concepts of reason.4 However, this section of the Critique of Pure Reason does not play a purely
negative role; instead, it furthers a positive enquiry of what Reason is and what his contents are.
Furthermore, it also provides an explanation of the epistemic role played by these elements, the ideas
of pure reason or transcendental ideas5, defined as being those concepts which contain the
'unconditioned'.6 In other words, these concepts are related to the transcendental premises of any
possible experience, that is, to infinite and unconditioned 'transcendent objects' unattainable through
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On the one hand, ideas must be purely a priori since they can never become part of any synthesis;
hence, they are not obtained by being perceived in experience, nor for that matter are shaped by it
through a causal relationship.14 Nonetheless, on the other hand we find that, as Kant explains in
the introduction to the Critique, a priori knowledge arises in the occasion of experience;15 more
precisely, ideas are 'awakened' by inference in the occasion of experience.16 I am aware that at first
this might be seen as an argument against my line of reasoning: in fact, if an inference is conceived
as being a process of elaboration, we might then think of ideas and their conjunction to natural
objects as a result that 'comes after' experience. However, by what I have discussed above, if to
obtain conditioned experience transcendental unconditioned conditions are required, then all these
must be wholly present in the first instantiation of experience itself.17 Hence, by inferring we are
simply articulating the shape of something already
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