"A Difficult Birth: The Emergence of Kant's Analytic/Synthetic Distinction"
Abstract:
One of Kant’s most famous philosophical innovations was the introduction
of a fundamental distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments.That distinction, however, has often been the
subject of interpretive controversy, and even the target of skepticism about
whether a sufficiently sharp or objective distinction of this sort can be
drawn.This talk argues for a particular
conception of the nature of Kant’s distinction by tracing the history of its emergence
in his thought.The history is puzzling
because Kant appears to work with the distinction in his own notes for years
even while his published writings make claims incompatible with it.I resolve the puzzles by distinguishing
methodological, epistemological, and logical versions of the analytic/synthetic
distinction for judgments.Once that
distinction is in place, I defend the logical version, and argue that only the
logical idea— and not the epistemological idea defended by many Kant scholars from
Adickes (1895) to Allison (2004)— can do the philosophical work assigned to the
distinction by the mature Kant.