THE TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC: THE PARALOGISMS OF PURE REASON - KANT

The analytic has set out the territory of pure understanding. That is an island of truth. But it is ‘surrounded by a wide and stormy ocean, the native home of illusion, where many a fog bank and many a swiftly melting iceberg give the deceptive appearance of farther shores, deluding the adventurous seafarer ever anew with empty hopes, and engaging him in enterprises which he can never abandon and yet is unable to carry to completion'.  So, with this rare piece of romantic rhetoric, Kant begins his task of setting out the logic of illusion in the transcendental dialectic. He is not interested in contingent and accidental errors, like optical illusions or logical fallacies: his targets are much grander, namely a priori psychology, cosmology, and theology. All of these attempt to employ the mind in exploring a world beyond the bounds of experience, an enterprise of which illusion is the natural and inevitable result.