Solving the Regress Puzzle: J. F. Fries’s Psychological Reconstruction of Kant's Transcendental Methodology

Abstract

Many commentators have noted that Kant's transcendental methodology seems to be in danger of infinite regress. This paper discusses an early and much-neglected attempt to resolve this Regress Puzzle. Jakob Friedrich Fries, one of the most prominent Kantians during the first decades of the nineteenth century, argued that in order to avoid the Regress Puzzle, Kant's transcendental methodology had to be reconstructed on empirical-psychological premises. As part of this argument, Fries developed a subtle and original account of the importance of psychology for pure philosophy, and of the proper relationship between the two disciplines, that remains of interest.