“Illusions of Imagination and Adventures of Reason in Kant’s first Critique”

In my chapter I shall examine Kant’s imagination within the context of his theory of transcendental illusion by retracing the source and origin of his metaphors. I shall contend that Kant’s use of maritime similies in the first Critique is not intended to use imagery as a conceptual proxy in the absence of clear conceptual rules of judgment. I argue that by drawing his metaphors neither from Francis Bacon, nor from his own broad geographical interests, but from specific contemporaneous scientific maritime expeditions, Kant drew an analogy: 1) between what he took as seasoned judgment and rigorous empirical control of the working scientists and explorers in securing knowledge and credible witnesses to otherwise doubtful appearances, removing all possibility of deception in disorienting situations of physical and climate difficulties; and 2) the self-discipline of reason, training the mind to govern potentiallly misleading reifications of our imagination, thus helping reason to secure its rightful metaphysical claims while dismissing all its groundless pretensions. In this way I show that imagination has both theoretical, epistemological and pragmatic, factual roles in advancing our knowledge: in the schematism of the understanding and in the schematism of ideas, it is as much part of empirical sciences as of metaphysical systematizing and orienteering.