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What a Boundary Does: Parergon and the Unity of Kant’s Critical System — O que faz um limite: Parergon e a unidade do sistema crítico de Kant

Zeynep Münteha Kot1, Abdullah Demir2
1Istanbul University, Türkiye
2Igdır University, Türkiye
DOI: https://doi.org/10.70517/revcc2624130
Published: 30/09/2026
: Zeynep Münteha Kot, Abdullah Demir. What a Boundary Does: Parergon and the Unity of Kant’s Critical System — O que faz um limite: Parergon e a unidade do sistema crítico de Kant. Revista Cultura Científica, 2026 Issue 24. pg. 1585-1597.

Abstract

Kant’s critical system establishes distinct domains of authority through the distinctions between Erscheinung/Noumenon, Sinnlichkeit/Verstand, konstitutiv/regulativ, and the theoretischer/praktischer Gebrauch der Vernunft. Yet the fact that freedom, excluded from theoretical cognition, acquires a necessary status in practical reason, that the concept of the Noumenon marks the limits of phenomenal cognition without itself becoming an object of cognition, and that the Ideen der Vernunft retain their regulative function without acquiring constitutive validity shows that the critical boundary cannot be understood as a simple distinction between inside and outside. Rather than reassessing the relation between the Kritik der reinen Vernunft and the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft within the binary of continuity and rupture, this study therefore turns to a question that precedes this debate: How does the critical boundary operate? The central thesis of the article is that, in Kant, the boundary is not a negative line separating already constituted domains, but a relational structure that determines their Gebrauch, Gültigkeit, and authority. This structure is examined by reading the concept of parergon in §14 of the Kritik der Urteilskraft alongside theories of representation concerned with the transformation of parergon into ergon in the pictorial genre of still life. This reading shows that the status of an element is not intrinsic to it; it can change according to the relational order within which it operates. When the same model is applied to the critical system, limitation is understood not as exclusion but as a distribution of authority: what changes is not the concept itself, but the function and validity accorded to it within a particular Gebrauch der Vernunft. The systematic unity of the Critiques is thus grounded not in overcoming their distinctions, but in ordering the different uses of the same Vernunft without reducing one to another. In this study, parergon is therefore proposed not as a metaphor for Kant’s system, but as a structural model for interpreting the critical boundary—one that preserves distinction while making relation possible.

Keywords: Kant, parergon, critical boundary, theoretical and practical reason, systematic unity

Abstract

Kant’s critical system establishes distinct domains of authority through the distinctions between Erscheinung/Noumenon, Sinnlichkeit/Verstand, konstitutiv/regulativ, and the theoretischer/praktischer Gebrauch der Vernunft. Yet the fact that freedom, excluded from theoretical cognition, acquires a necessary status in practical reason, that the concept of the Noumenon marks the limits of phenomenal cognition without itself becoming an object of cognition, and that the Ideen der Vernunft retain their regulative function without acquiring constitutive validity shows that the critical boundary cannot be understood as a simple distinction between inside and outside. Rather than reassessing the relation between the Kritik der reinen Vernunft and the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft within the binary of continuity and rupture, this study therefore turns to a question that precedes this debate: How does the critical boundary operate? The central thesis of the article is that, in Kant, the boundary is not a negative line separating already constituted domains, but a relational structure that determines their Gebrauch, Gültigkeit, and authority. This structure is examined by reading the concept of parergon in §14 of the Kritik der Urteilskraft alongside theories of representation concerned with the transformation of parergon into ergon in the pictorial genre of still life. This reading shows that the status of an element is not intrinsic to it; it can change according to the relational order within which it operates. When the same model is applied to the critical system, limitation is understood not as exclusion but as a distribution of authority: what changes is not the concept itself, but the function and validity accorded to it within a particular Gebrauch der Vernunft. The systematic unity of the Critiques is thus grounded not in overcoming their distinctions, but in ordering the different uses of the same Vernunft without reducing one to another. In this study, parergon is therefore proposed not as a metaphor for Kant’s system, but as a structural model for interpreting the critical boundary—one that preserves distinction while making relation possible.

Keywords: Kant, parergon, critical boundary, theoretical and practical reason, systematic unity

References

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  18. Henrich, Dieter. “The Concept of Moral Insight and Kant’s Doctrine of the Fact of Reason.” The Unity of Reason: Essays on Kant’s Philosophy, edited by Richard L. Velkley, Harvard University Press, 1994, pp. 55–87.

  19. Stoichita, Victor I. The Self-Aware Image: An Insight into Early Modern Meta-Painting. Translated by Anne-Marie Glasheen, Cambridge University Press, 1997.

  20. Alpers, Svetlana. The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century. University of Chicago Press, 1983.

  21. Bryson, Norman. Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting. Harvard University Press, 1990.

Zeynep Münteha Kot
Istanbul University, Türkiye
zeynep.kottan@istanbul.edu.tr
Abdullah Demir
Igdır University, Türkiye

How to cite:

Zeynep Münteha Kot, Abdullah Demir. What a Boundary Does: Parergon and the Unity of Kant’s Critical System — O que faz um limite: Parergon e a unidade do sistema crítico de Kant. Revista Cultura Científica, 2026 Issue 24. pg. 1585-1597.

Publication History

  • Received: 21/06/2026
  • Accepted: 09/09/2026
  • Published: 30/09/2026
Copyright © 2026, Zeynep Münteha Kot, Abdullah Demir. Published by Revista Cultura Científica. This article is published as open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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