Kant's Transcendental Ideal as Fiction

Abstract

The paper examines Kant's concept of the transcendental ideal from the Critique of Pure Reason. Though it is not fully developed by Kant himself, and though it is controversial and paradoxical, which seems to be the reason for the indifference towards it in the most of the literature on Kant, it is possible to think it as in fact empty form, never presented as such, for it is always already filled with content. Although the transcendental ideal is in fact nothing but fiction, it is, in a way, substratum and transcendental condition, without which nothing can be thought or represented. As fiction, as concept of reason, it is, for Kant, certainly not just illusion.