Regulative Ideals: Kant

Abstract

Kant contrasted principles used regulatively in reflection on experience with those which were constitutive of its objectivity. The latter were the Categories of the Understanding, such as Substance and Cause; they were a priori, as not derived from experience, but necessary to bring objective order into sensory representations. There are also Ideas of Reason which transcend possible experience. They may be Ideas such as God or the Soul whose existence is asserted by pure Reason alone. Kant argues that these grounds are not valid, but the Ideas of Reason can be treated pragmatically as if they existed, or entertained in faith as necessary postulates of morality. I am not concerned with the ontology of Ideas of Reason, though in the end there may be metaphysical questions which I cannot escape. My present interest is in how Kant sees the regulative use of certain concepts, used reflectively by the practical reason.