The Systematic Unity of Reason and Empirical Truth in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason

Abstract

Abstract This paper attempts a reconstruction of reason’s contribution to empirical truth in connection with Kant’s definition of truth as the agreement of cognition with its object. I argue that Kant’s treatment of truth in the Transcendental Analytic is completed in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic with an often neglected but compelling argument (what I shall call the Variety Argument). This argument postulates such a variety among appearances as to undermine any attempt to formulate empirical truths. Crucially, I argue that this variety does not depict an extreme scenario, but rather our own epistemic situation in the absence of reason. Reason completes Kant’s theory of truth by allowing the understanding (i) to form empirical concepts and (ii) to approximate empirical truth.