ABSTRACT
If we recall the philosophical task set in the Preface, it is clear that, for all that Kant has achieved by the end of the Dialectic, the problem of metaphysics remains in a crucial respect unsolved. The original problem was that despite the fact that the severity of philosophical disagreement renders any claim to metaphysical knowledge hollow (dogmatism is unacceptable), metaphysical knowledge is at once a deep need of human reason (indifference is unacceptable), and presupposed by morality and the rationality of cognition (skepticism is unacceptable). Kant has shown one kind of metaphysical knowledge to be possible, which is enough to save the conception of cognition as a rational phenomenon, and of ourselves, correlatively, as rational beings, against Hume’s contention that this conception must be surrendered in the light of the limits of our knowledge. But Kant has yet to solve the remaining conflict between the impossibility of knowledge of a supersensible reality proven in the Dialectic, and the need for transcendent metaphysics 308which is imposed by both our natural disposition to metaphysics (‘our inextinguishable desire to find firm footing somewhere beyond the limits of experience’, A795/B823), and the requirements of morality. As said in Chapter 1 (pp. 16–18, 22), it is Kant’s view of morality as standing in need of metaphysics that makes Hume’s abandonment of metaphysics and reason in favour of Nature ultimately unacceptable to him. Since the motivation for Kant’s philosophy was at the very outset bound up in this way with the fate of morality, transcendental philosophy is not secure until it has settled the conflict of morality – and religion – with the scientific world-view.
