My dissertation draws on Heideggers interpretation of Kant to argue that Kant overestimates the role that causality plays in structuring our experience. Heidegger suggests that Kants analysis of experience mistakenly universalizes a fraction of our experience: the experience of material things. I defend the merits of this suggestion by offering a careful reconstruction of Heideggers controversial interpretation of the imagination and applying this interpretation in detail to one of the most debated segments of the Critique of Pure Reason: the Second Analogy. In this chapter, Kant suggests that we must employ the concept of cause in order to be aware that an event (i.e. a change in states) has occurred. While Kants mechanical account of events captures our experience of material things, I argue that his analysis does not capture our experience of events initiated by humans. I suggest that we experience human events rather as components of an overarching project oriented toward some future goal; more specifically, we experience human events as a series of conditions for that goal. My argument expands on Heideggers ontology by identifying the structure of human events; further, it brings out Heideggers contribution to Kants debate with Hume over the legitimacy of causal reasoning, to ongoing debates in Heideggers time about the success of Kants arguments, and to contemporary Kant scholarship debating the Second Analogy.

Last modified

• 11/20/2019

Creator

• Morganna Lambeth

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-hbbs-0232

Subject

• Philosophy

Keyword

• Causality
• Phenomenology
• Heidegger
• Imagination
• Transcendental Philosophy
• Kant

Date created

• 2018-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright