ABSTRACT

The previous chapter has shown that Kant imposes two kinds of limits on knowledge: a) At the empirical level he argues, in the Critique of Judgement, that man cannot know the structural unity of living organisms (and thus the formative, vital forces through which this unity is realized). b) At the theoretical level he argues that reason cannot discover the true ground of either the world (with its experiential ground in sensibility) or human thought and that the ‘I think’ omnipresent in human experience is thus not a substance (i.e. ontologically basic). These limits are the two natural consequences of restricting our knowledge claims to the sphere of the understanding, and Hegel attempts to overcome them both.