Abstract

This, the first of four chapters on the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories, asks what it is. Interpreters who emphasize Kant’s distinction between a _quid juris_ and a _quid facti_ take it to show that the Deduction is anti-psychological and normative in character. But this places far too much weight on an inconclusive introductory text and far too little on all of the psychology that transpires in the Deduction itself. The chapter then focuses on two texts in which Kant described what he was actually doing: the distinction between subjective and objective transcendental deductions in the A edition Preface of the _Critique of Pure Reason_ and the lengthy footnote in the Preface to the _Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science._ Their analysis shows that the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories is not only an exercise in a priori psychology, but the single most psychological component of Kant’s philosophy.