The Unity of Kant's Transcendental Psychology and Metaphysics

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason attempted to lay a new foundation for human knowledge and metaphysics via a critical examination of our faculty of cognition. However, in light of his strategy of pursuing a revolution in metaphysics by investigating our cognitive faculties, Kant has often been accused of psychologism. In response, a dominant camp of Kant scholars advocates eliminating the psychological elements from Kant's epistemological and metaphysical theories. Yet, another camp of Kant scholars points to Kant's reflections on cognitive psychology as being the more valuable for contemporary philosophy, though these might be retained at the cost of abandoning the core of Kant's outdated metaphysics. Although these two camps hold opposing views, both see unresolvable contradictions between Kant's psychology and metaphysics. This paper aims to resolve the contradictions and demonstrate how Kant's transcendental psychology and metaphysics can be unified by arguing that the faculty of cognition does not belong to the phenomenal or the noumenal self, but rather to an abstract entity of the transcendental subject.