Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy

Volume 16, 2008

Modern Philosophy

How are Synthetic Judgments Possible A Priori?
From Kant to Fichte

Kant’s analytic-synthetic distinction is often construed in terms of the question of whether or not the predicate is contained in or can be derived from the concept of the subject. Few have observed that Kant has another formulation of the distinction, a formulation that is based on the determinate-indeterminate distinction. In fact, it is this formulation that will shape the development of one of the main tasks of post-Kantian German idealism. It is my aim to explain how Kant, Maimon, and Fichte each define and address the problem of the synthetic a priori in terms of the determinate-indeterminate distinction.