Jacob Sigismund Beck’s Standpunctslehre and the Kantian Thing-in-itself Debate: The Relation Between a Representation and its Object (Studies in German Idealism Book 16)

This book examines the unique views of philosopher Jacob Sigismund Beck, a student of Immanuel Kant who devoted himself to an exploration of his teacher's doctrine and to showing that Kant’s transcendental idealism is, contra to the common view, both internally consistent and is not a form of subjective idealism. In his attempt to explain away certain apparent contradictions found in Kant's system, Beck put forward a new reading of Kant’s critical theory, a view, which came to be known as the __Standpunctslehre, the__ Doctrine of the Standpoint. Author Lior Nitzan reconstructs, step by step, the historical development of Beck’s doctrine. He shows how Beck's unique view is drastically different from that of his contemporaries and presents the relevance of Beck to contemporary debates about the proper interpretation of Kant’s notion of objectivity, the refutation of idealism and the role of the thing in itself in Kant’s transcendental idealism. In doing so, Nitzan presents a defense of Beck's radical perspective of Kant’s theory and claims that some of Kant’s negative responses to it may in fact be due more to the adversary academic environment at the time than to Kant’s true, well considered, opinion. __Jacob Sigismund Beck’s__ Standpunctslehre challenges the two dominant schools in the interpretation of Kant’s transcendental idealism—the "two world" and the "two aspect" view. It presents a new way of understanding Kant’s transcendental idealism, according to which the thing in itself plays no positive role in relation to the possibility of experience. Moreover, it claims that eliminating the thing in itself as the ultimate object of knowledge is not to admit idealism but in fact is the only way to consistently uphold realism. In addition, the book also addresses the question why, assuming that the proposed interpretation is correct, Kant had chosen not to make his true intentions clear. Front Matter....Pages i-xiii Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Introduction....Pages 3-25 Front Matter....Pages 27-28 The Subjective Conditions of Objectivity....Pages 29-59 The Seemingly Inevitable Roles of the Thing-in-Itself....Pages 61-72 Front Matter....Pages 73-73 The Development of Beck’s Thought, Leading Up to the Publication of the Einzig möglicher Standpunct ....Pages 75-90 The Problem of the Bond Between a Representation and Its Object....Pages 91-93 The Requisiteness of Resolving the Problem of the Bond Between a Representation and Its Object, for Making Intelligible the Critique ’s Main Concepts and Distinctions....Pages 95-107 The Highest Principle of Philosophy – The Postulate to Represent Originally....Pages 109-115 Original Representing and the Categories....Pages 117-133 Synthetic and Analytic Unity of Consciousness....Pages 135-139 Original Representing and Practical Philosophy....Pages 141-143 Front Matter....Pages 145-146 The Relation Between Sensibility and the Understanding....Pages 147-173 The Relation Between a Representation and Its Object....Pages 175-361 The Thing-in-Itself and Practical Philosophy....Pages 363-371 Front Matter....Pages 373-373 Epilogue....Pages 375-380 A Short Biography of J. S. Beck....Pages 381-383 Back Matter....Pages 385-398