Kantmetoder

Kantmetoder is a Swedish term used in philosophy to describe the methodological toolkit associated with Immanuel Kant and, more broadly, with Kantian critical philosophy. In scholarly contexts, kantmetoder refers to the procedures Kant employs to investigate the nature of knowledge, experience, and the limits of reason.

The central method is the transcendental method: asking what a priori conditions make experience possible, rather than asking about the objects of experience themselves. This is paired with the critical method, which examines the faculties—sensibility, understanding, and reason—and their legitimate domain. Kant also uses the analytic of concepts and deduction to show how categories structure all possible experience, and he seeks to justify synthetic a priori knowledge as universally valid.

Key components often grouped under kantmetoder include the Transcendental Aesthetic (the forms of intuition: space and time), the Transcendental Analytic (the categories and their application), and the Transcendental Dialectic (the critique of reason's pretensions to dispense with experience). Kant's Copernican turn—the idea that objects conform to our ways of perceiving and thinking—underpins these methods.

Influence and reception: Kantmetoder have shaped modern epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics. They set the framework for debates about the limits of knowledge, the possibility of metaphysics, and the foundations of science. Critics have contested their scope and applicability, leading to subsequent developments in German Idealism and contemporary Kantian scholarship.