How to do things with “the Fact of Reason”: A new interpretation of a well-known concept in Kant’s philosophy

Abstract

There have been numerous studies on Kant’s concept of the ‘Fact of Reason’, drawing on various intellectual resources, ranging from metaphysics to psychology, from Aristotle to Mencius, from analytic philosophy to phenomenology, and beyond. How should we evaluate these studies? Is it possible that these studies can contribute both to an understanding of Kantian philosophy and to an understanding of Western philosophy as a whole, as well as shed light on the development of philosophy after Kant and on the philosophical questions of our own era? In order to at least partially clarify the above questions, this article will draw on the work of philosohers such as Karl-Otto Apel, Jürgen Habermas, C.I. Lewis, Jin Yuelin and Feng Qi, and discuss how certain presuppositions of communicative action can be both regulative and constitutive, how the same propositions can be both empirical and a priori, how the same concepts can both describe reality and regulate it, and how the ‘Fact of Reason’ can be understood as the ‘Fact of Learning’, in order to offer a new interpretation of Kant’s concept of the ‘Fact of Reason’.