Imagination and Depth in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

Book excerpt: This book shows Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" as undergirded by an everpresent imagination-driven depth, even where least expected (i.e. the Aesthetic, the B Deduction). Imagination as dark faculty of synthesis and as image-maker is disclosed as the seat of logic as well as of aesthetic. Logic and aesthetic are disclosed as abstractions from an originary synthesis which has always already occurred. This originary synthesis, which contains dark, unconscious elements as well as clearer ones, is the focus of the book. The analysis concentrates primarily on the first half of the "Critique," exhibiting the ever-present depth belonging to all human knowing, and reason's conflict with itself when this depth is forgotten.