The Transcendence of the Principle

An Alternative to the "Analytics" or a Refutation of "Transcendental Dialectics"?

Abstract

In this study, we present some reflections based on the reading of Kant and Criticism that emerges from some pages of Enrico Berti’s Introduction to Metaphysics, with the aim of relating them to what Berti has stated elsewhere in his vast production — often in connection with Kant. After setting forth our general interpretation of the value of progress toward a more rigorous formulation of classical metaphysics, which Berti attributes to the confrontation between this perspective and Kantian Criticism, our investigation will have two fundamental axes. First, we will address the First Analogy of Experience with thematic reference to Berti’s reading of the notion of substance, as outlined in the pages devoted to it in the Introduction to Metaphysics. Second, we will examine the natural theology in nuce elaborated by Berti, again in his Introduction, in the section simply entitled Characters of the Principle, which contains observations of no small metaphysical significance. This path may be useful in responding to the question stated in the subtitle of this essay concerning the value of Berti’s demonstration of the transcendence of the Principle, either as a genuinely positive alternative to the Transcendental Analytic or as a dialectically positive refutation of Kant’s Transcendental Dialectic.