Conditions of Possibility. Kant's Critical Theory of Objectivity

The contribution seeks to elucidate the multiform and complex relation that links the a priori and the a posteriori in Kant's transcendental philosophy. The contribution proceeds in six sections that address as many essential aspects of the relation in question. Each section opens with a key quotation from Kant (two such quotations in the case of section 6), followed in each case by concatenated systematic reflections based on the text of the Critique of Pure Reason. The thesis of the contribution can be conveyed by the grammatical ambiguity in its key concept, enabling experience (Erfahrungsermoglichung), which oscillates between experience being the grammatical object and the grammatical subject of the enabling in question. For Kant, only an experience that is itself enabled by something other than experience, viz., the non-empirical, can enable something other than experience, viz., the non-empirical.