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This book offers a comprehensive critique of the Kantian principle that ‘objects conform to our cognition’ from the perspective of a Copernican world–view which stands diametrically opposed to Kant’s because founded on the principle that our cognition conforms to objects. Concerning both Kant’s ontological denial in respect of space and time and his equivalence thesis in respect of ‘experience’ and ‘objectivity’, Ryall argues that Kant’s transcendental idealism signally fails to account for the one thing that is essential for Copernicusand the only thing that would validate a comparison between his and Kant’s critical philosophy, namely the subject as ‘revolving object’. It is only by presupposing – in a transcendentally realistic sense – that human beings exist as physical things in themselves, therefore, that the ‘observer motion’ of Copernican theory is vindicated and the distorted nature of our empirical observations explained. In broadly accessible prose and by directly challenging the arguments of many stalwart defenders of Kant including Norman Kemp Smith, Henry E. Allison and Michael Friedman, Ryall’s book will be of interest to both scholars and students of Kant’s philosophy alike.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-56771-6

Full citation:

Introduction

Ryall J T W

1-13

Reversing perspectives

Ryall J T W

15-40

Experience and the human object

Ryall J T W

41-64

Experience and physical reality

Ryall J T W

65-103

Kant's "applied metaphysics"

Ryall J T W

105-129

Transcending experience

Ryall J T W

131-167

The world-mind relation

Ryall J T W

169-224

Making room for faith

Ryall J T W

225-243

Experience and enlightenment

Ryall J T W

245-256