Abstract

Introduction

Kant develops a positive though regulative role for reason toward the end of the Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason, particularly in the Appendix to the Dialectic. In the opening section, “The Regulative Employment of the Ideas of Pure Reason”, he provides us with an account of how these ideas can unify the understanding in its employment, although only regulatively. Part of this account includes a discussion of the hypothetical use of reason, in which one inspects a group of particulars to see whether they fit a given universal and then generalizes over other future particulars that the universal will apply to them as well.