Dennis Schulting
M.A. Classical Theology,
Ph.D. Philosophy
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Independent philosopher and specialist in the study of Kant & German Idealism. Former Assistant Professor of Metaphysics & the History of Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam
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THE BOUNDS OF TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC
Palgrave Macmillan 2022
"In this book, Dennis Schulting provides robust responses to his critics and sheds important critical light upon recent developments in Kant scholarship, in particular on issues concerning his idealism and transcendental logic. Writing with his usual combination of precision and elegance, his views often involve positioning himself between opposing factions, in the spirit of Kant’s own critical stance. He also exorcises a number of concerns that regularly resurface in Kant scholarship. This book thus goes a long way in assuaging the uneasiness that phenomenalism instils among many, and the worry that there is still a gap in the Transcendental Deduction that needs to be bridged."
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―Christian Onof, Reader, Imperial College London, and Honorary Fellow in Philosophy, Birkbeck College, London.
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ADVANCE PRAISE
“In this volume Dennis Schulting goes beyond his earlier close studies of Kant's Transcendental Deduction by explaining in detail how Kant's critical conception of self-consciousness plays a central and positive role in the philosophies of Reinhold, Fichte, and Hegel. A distinctive feature of the work is its extensive attention to recent secondary literature on this topic, as well as its nuanced articulation and defense of a systematic position on German Idealism that develops many related themes emphasized by scholars such as Robert Pippin.”
—Karl Ameriks, McMahon-Hank Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, University of Notre Dame, USA
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APPERCEPTION AND SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS IN KANT AND GERMAN IDEALISM
Bloomsbury (2020; paperback 2022)
In Apperception and Self-Consciousness in Kant and German Idealism, Dennis Schulting examines the themes of reflexivity, self-consciousness, representation and apperception in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and German Idealism more widely. Central to Schulting's argument is the claim that all human experience is inherently self-referential and that this is part of a self-reflexivity of thought, or what is called transcendental apperception, a Kantian insight that was first apparent in the work of Christian Wolff and came to inform all of German Idealism.
In this rigorous text, Schulting establishes the historical roots of Kant's thought and traces it through to his immediate successors, Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. He specifically examines the cognitive role of self-consciousness and its relation to idealism and situates it in a clear and coherent history of rationalist philosophy.
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ADVANCE PRAISE
“This highly engaging study provides a subtle and intelligent interpretation of Kant's concept of transcendental apperception. It sheds welcome light on Kant's significant debt to Leibniz and Wolff and highlights Kant's profound influence on his successors, Reinhold, Fichte and Hegel. This is an eminently readable and thought-provoking study.”
—Stephen Houlgate, Professor of Philosophy, University of Warwick, UK
NOW IN CHEAP PAPERBACK
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NOW IN CHEAP PAPERBACK
KANT'S DEDUCTION FROM APPERCEPTION.
AN ESSAY ON THE TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES
De Gruyter (2018; paperback 2020)
Thoroughly revised and expanded with extensive preface to second edition, expanded chapter 10, and additional chapter on the 'second step' of the B-Deduction
In focusing on the systematic deduction of the categories from a principle, Schulting takes up anew the controversial project of the eminent German Kant scholar Klaus Reich, whose monograph The Completeness of Kant's Table of Judgments made the case that the logical functions of judgement can all be derived from the objective unity of apperception and can be shown to link up with one another systematically.
Common opinion among Kantians today has it that Kant did not mean to derive the functions of judgement, and accordingly the categories, from the principle of apperception. Schulting challenges this standard view and aims to resuscitate the main motivation behind Reich’s project. He argues, in agreement with Reich’s main thesis about the derivability of the functions of judgement, that Kant indeed does mean to derive, in full a priori fashion, the categories from the principle of apperception.
Schulting also shows that, given the general assumptions of the Critical philosophy, Kant's derivation is successful and that absent an account of the derivation of the categories from apperception, the B-Deduction cannot really be understood.
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PRAISE FOR THE PREVIOUS EDITION
"[A] very impressive achievement ... [It] calls to mind Klaus Reich's famous attempt to find ... a derivation [of the categories from the principle of apperception]. ...Reich's book, despite its brilliance, failed to convince most readers that his proposed very complex derivation actually corresponded to Kant's intentions. In this respect, Schulting is more convincing. Most of the steps he presents in his reconstruction of Kant's deduction are possible to follow and not unreasonably far from the text. ... Such is the force of the book that it alters one’s expectations of what the deduction should be taken to be about."
—Marcel Quarfood (Umeå Universitet, Sweden)
in Studi Kantiani 2014
Kant’s Deduction From Apperception "provides a rich and nuanced discussion of topics that lie at the heart of Kant’s project in the First Critique .... Schulting’s position is original and the discussion throughout is informed by an impressive command of both primary texts and secondary literature. ... [T]he Reich-inspired project he undertakes is one that deserves more attention than this approach has traditionally received, at least in Anglophone Kant commentary. Anyone interested in the categories, the Transcendental Deduction, or the doctrine of apperception will benefit from reading this book."
—Thomas Land (University of Victoria, Canada)
in Kantian Review 2018
KANT'S RADICAL SUBJECTIVISM.
PERSPECTIVES ON THE TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION
Palgrave Macmillan (2017)
Dennis Schulting presents a staunch defence of Kant’s radical subjectivism about the possibility of knowledge. Radical subjectivism about the possibility of knowledge is to be understood as the thesis that the possibility of knowledge of objects essentially and wholly depends on subjective functions of thought or the capacity to judge by virtue of transcendental apperception, given sensory input. Subjectivism thus defined is not about merely the necessary conditions of knowledge, but nor is it claimed that it grounds the very existence of things. The defence of Kantian subjectivism will be mounted by means of a comprehensive analysis of what is arguably the centrepiece of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, namely, the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories, in both its A- and B-versions.
Novel interpretations are provided of such central themes as the objective unity of apperception, the threefold synthesis, spontaneity in judgement, judgement and objective validity, figurative synthesis and spatial unity, nonconceptual content, idealism and the thing in itself, as well as material synthesis. One chapter is dedicated to the interpretation of the Deduction by Kant’s most prominent successor: G.W.F. Hegel, and throughout Schulting critically engages with the work of contemporary readers of Kant such as Lucy Allais, Robert Hanna, John McDowell, Robert Pippin, and James Van Cleve. The book complements Schulting’s previous monograph on the Deduction, Kant’s Deduction and Apperception. Explaining the Categories (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
REVIEWS
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Schulting’s book is a welcome challenge to realist, metaphysical readings of the first Critique that neglect the role of self-consciousness and of the subject in Kant’s project of showing how synthetic a priori cognition is possible ... Th[e] acknowledgment of Kant’s ‘Copernican’ turn, which has been downplayed in recent metaphysical readings of Kant, has made an impressive comeback with Schulting’s book.
—Alexandra Newton (University of Illinois-Urbana) in Kantian Review
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In his new book, Kant’s Radical Subjectivism, Schulting provides a rigorous and persuasive account of the core themes of the Transcendental Deduction
... he handles the relationship between the categories and apperception ... with an impressive subtlety.
—Sacha Golob (King's College London) in Critique
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[T]he nine essays of Kant’s Radical Subjectivism ... provide the reader with a clear, consistent picture of Schulting’s account for the subjective sources of objectivity in Kant’s transcendental deduction(s). The book does not only provide detailed analyses of Kant’s texts, but it also presents original interpretations and very often engages in dialogue with several different approaches coming from Kantian scholarship worldwide.
—Luigi Filieri (Università di Pisa)
in Studi kantiani
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Dennis Schulting's Kant’s Radical Subjectivism: Perspectives on the Transcendental Deduction is full of big ideas ... Why ascribe radical subjectivism to Kant? To my mind, the big payoff is the one that Schulting discusses in Chapter 4 of KRS. It helps us to explain why there isn’t a serious logical gap in the Deduction.
—Robert Watt (Cambridge University) in Critique
Kant’s Radical Subjectivism is a rich book. It is difficult to criticise Schulting's reading of Kant, for it is well thought-out and argued-for. The main theme is the Transcendental Deduction and I recommend it to anyone who is concerned with this difficult topic. The book provides an original and systematic account of the Transcendental Deduction and I learned much from it.
—Hein van den Berg (University of Amsterdam) in
Tijdschrift voor Filosofie
Kant’s Radical Subjectivism presents a collection of essays shedding some fresh light on the Critique of Pure Reason’s notoriously obscure Transcendental Deduction of the categories. ... Each chapter is rife with insightful analysis of important passages, and the book will be invaluable to anyone working on issues pertaining to the problems of the Deduction.
... Schulting offers persuasive defenses of his subjectivism, phenomenalism, conceptualism (not to mention his accounts of objective validity, figurative synthesis, and apperception, ...). The book deserves a place on the shelf of anyone seriously engaged with Kant’s project in the first Critique.
—Tim Jankowiak (Towson University) in
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I largely agree with Dennis Schulting’s book, Kant’s Radical Subjectivism, so I will not be challenging any of his main claims. ... [it is] a book that as it stands makes a rich and detailed contribution to the study of Kant’s ‘theoretical’ philosophy.
—Andrew Brook (Carleton University) in
Kantian Review
Chapter 4 of Dennis Schulting’s interesting and stimulating book Kant’s Radical Subjectivism takes as its target those Anglophone commentators who take there to be a gap in Kant’s transcendental deduction of the categories... There is much to learn from Schulting’s discussion here... It seems to me that both Schulting and his opponents recognize that transcendental idealism is the key to any move from (S) to (O). The question is what form such idealism takes, and how it enables Kant to bridge that gap. Schulting’s chapter, and his book as a whole, contain a stimulating answer to that question. It is on this territory, rather than on the question of whether a gap exists in the deduction, that competing accounts will be assessed.
—Anil Gomes (Oxford University) in
Kantian Review
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KANTIAN NONCONCEPTUALISM
​editor: Dennis Schulting
Palgrave Macmillan (2016)
This is a collection of essential essays on the topical debate on Kantian nonconceptualism, written by researchers at the cutting edge of Kant scholarship, most of whom have themselves been centrally involved in the debate, including Robert Hanna and Lucy Allais who, in the mid- to late noughties, spearheaded the debate on nonconceptual content in Kant. All the essays in the volume are original work and have never before been published. In this collection, the contributors engage with each other, and with the broader literature in the field, discussing all the important aspects of the debate on nonconceptualism in relation to Kant, but also more generally to topics in philosophy of mind, philosophy of mathematics, theory of perception, epistemology, logic, and metaphysics. The volume will be mandatory reading for all Kant scholars and philosophers working in these areas and who are interested in the debate on nonconceptualism.
Contributors are: Lucy Allais, Sacha Golob, Anil Gomes & Andrew Stephenson, Stefanie Grüne, Robert Hanna, Dietmar Heidemann, Thomas Land, Colin McLear, Christian Onof, Dennis Schulting, and Clinton Tolley.
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REVIEWS
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—Alexandra Newton (University of Illinois-Urbana) in Kantian Review
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—Jessica Williams (University of South Florida) in Critique
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—Lorenzo Sala (Università di Pisa) in Studi Kantiani
"The volume is such a well organized whole that, were it not for the different views expressed by the contributors, one could almost get the impression that the book was conceived and written by a single author. Indeed, although there are important differences in the positions contained in the various contributions, none of the fundamental points and interpretative options of this extremely rich and sophisticated debate is left out, and all of them are covered in a great deal of conceptual detail. [...]
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"All in all, the volume is an extremely well informed and original contribution to an already rich debate. Moreover, given how, in discussing the issue of nonconceptualism, the articles end up touching some of the most important points of Kant’s understanding of cognition, I would highly recommend the book to anyone working on Kant’s theoretical philosophy."
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—James O'Shea (University College Dublin) writes in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews:
"This is an outstanding collection of eleven newly commissioned articles by leading figures in the recent debates on nonconceptualist and conceptualist interpretations of Kant's theory of cognition, with applications also to his accounts of agency and aesthetics. [...]
"A useful feature of this volume is that each contributor displays detailed knowledge of, and is sensitive to, the various challenges raised by all of the others. [...]
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The detailed interpretive arguments contained in this fine volume [...] make it one of the best resources currently available for anyone wanting to pursue that particular task."
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REVIEWS
"[A] very impressive achievement ... [It] calls to mind Klaus Reich's famous attempt to find ... a derivation [of the categories from the principle of apperception]. ...Reich's book, despite its brilliance, failed to convince most readers that his proposed very complex derivation actually corresponded to Kant's intentions. In this respect, Schulting is more convincing. Most of the steps he presents in his reconstruction of Kant's deduction are possible to follow and not unreasonably far from the text. ... Such is the force of the book that it alters one’s expectations of what the deduction should be taken to be about."
—Marcel Quarfood (Stockholm University)
in Studi Kantiani 2014
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in
"Kant’s Deduction and Apperception provides a rich and nuanced discussion of topics that lie at the heart of Kant’s project in the First Critique .... Schulting’s position is original and the discussion throughout is informed by an impressive command of both primary texts and secondary literature. ... [T]he Reich-inspired project he undertakes is one that deserves more attention than this approach has traditionally received, at least in Anglophone Kant commentary. Anyone interested in the categories, the Transcendental Deduction, or the doctrine of apperception will benefit from reading this book."
—Thomas Land (Ryerson University)
in Kantian Review 2018
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Deze monografie biedt een grondige analyse van Kants transcendentale deductie van de zuivere verstandsbegrippen of categorieën, met name een argumentatieve reconstructie van §§15-19 in de B-versie van de Kritik der reinen Vernunft...een zeer aanbevelingswaardige monografie, niet alleen voortreffelijk gedocumenteerd, maar ook rijk aan verrassende en uitdagende inzichten. De auteur is duidelijk een connaisseur op het gebied.... Moge dit boek spoedig zijn weg vinden binnen het Kant-onderzoek!
—Jacco Verburgt (Tilburg University)
in Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 2014
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KANT'S DEDUCTION AND APPERCEPTION: EXPLAINING THE CATEGORIES
Palgrave Macmillan (2012)
From the back cover:
Dennis Schulting offers a thoroughgoing, analytic account of the first half of the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories in the B-edition of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason that is different from existing interpretations in at least one important aspect: its central claim is that each of the 12 categories is wholly derivable from the principle of apperception, which goes against the current view that the Deduction is not a proof in a strict philosophical sense and the standard reading that in the Deduction Kant only gives an account of the global applicability of the categories to experience. This novel approach enables a reappraisal of Kant's controversial claim that transcendental self-consciousness is not only a necessary condition of objective experience but also sufficient for it. The book provides an extensive analysis of Kant's theory of transcendental apperception and also explains why the argument of the Transcendental Deduction is both a regressive and a progressive argument.
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A book symposium dedicated to KANT'S DEDUCTION AND APPERCEPTION took place in the pages of Studi kantiani volume XXVII (2014), with Corey Dyck, Marcel Quarfood and Andrew Stephenson as discussants. For a pre-print of Dyck's review see here and for Stephenson's here. For my reply to the three critics, see here.
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OUT OF PRINT
(replaced by Kant's Deduction From Apperception,
de Gruyter 2018)
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With Kant's Deduction and Apperception: Explaining the Categories... Dennis Schulting has produced an erudite and ambitious study of the first step of the B-edition Transcendental Deduction. ...The bulk of Schulting's book is devoted to the task of elaborating Kant's derivation of the categories from the 'I think'. In spite of this narrow focus, Schulting manages to draw a number of conclusions of broader significance for the interpretation of the aim and method of the Transcendental Deduction....readers interested in the detailed minutiae of the deduction as well as those interested in general issues confronting its interpretation will find something of interest in Schulting's well-researched yet accessible volume.
—Corey Dyck (University of Western Ontario) in
Studi Kantiani 2014
Dennis Schulting has written a highly original book on that most scrutinized and controversial of philosophical arguments, Immanuel Kant's Transcendental Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding. The book is tightly focused, tightly argued, and although it is often difficult it is also admirably clear.
—Andrew Stephenson (University of Southampton) in
Studi Kantiani 2014
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KANT'S IDEALISM. NEW INTERPRETATIONS OF A CONTROVERSIAL DOCTRINE
editors: Dennis Schulting & Jacco Verburgt
Springer Science (2011)
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This key collection of essays sheds new light on long-debated controversies surrounding Kant’s doctrine of idealism and is the first book in the English language that is exclusively dedicated to the subject. Well-known Kantians Karl Ameriks and Manfred Baum present their considered views on this most topical aspect of Kant's thought. Several essays by acclaimed Kant scholars broach a vastly neglected problem in discussions of Kant's idealism, namely the relation between his conception of logic and idealism: The standard view that Kant's logic and idealism are wholly separable comes under scrutiny in these essays. A further set of articles addresses multiple facets of the notorious notion of the thing in itself, which continues to hold the attention of Kant scholars. The volume also contains an extensive discussion of the often overlooked chapter in the Critique of Pure Reason on the Transcendental Ideal. Together, the essays provide a whole new outlook on Kantian idealism. No one with a serious interest in Kant's idealism can afford to ignore this important book.
Contributors are: Lucy Allais, Karl Ameriks, Gary Banham, Manfred Baum, Steven M. Bayne, Dietmar Heidemann, Ido Geiger, Christian Onof, Marcel Quarfood, Dennis Schulting, and Jacco Verburgt