Capacities-First Philosophy as First Philosophy

In a recent paper, ‘Transcendental Philosophy As Capacities-First Philosophy’ (Schafer 2021 ), Karl Schafer argues that Kant’s critical philosophy places capacities first in both epistemic and explanatory orders of priority. While Schafer remains neutral on the ultimate specification of the explanatory order, he describes Kant as committed to “some sort of metaphysical dependence of the form of the sensible world on the form of our cognitive faculties ” (2020: 676–677; emphasis in the original). This is his reading of such claims as that “nature itself” is “possible in general in the material sense…by means of the constitution of our sensibility”, and “in the formal sense…by means of the constitution of our understanding” [ Prolegomena 4:318].