Abstract

Kant discovers the categories by assigning terms to the syllogistically relevant formal elements of thinking. He proves their objective validity in the transcendental deduction by showing that we project them onto the real in a conservative projection that only posits what already exists independently of the positing. From Hegel’s point of view, it seems as if a categorial structure is thereby only “presupposedµ (i.e. posited as not posited, but as being the case independently) and as if the positing qua external reflection could not reach the real. But by showing that this positing is a conservative projection, Kant succeeds in proving that it is not an external, but, as Hegel would call it, a determining reflection.