Revisting Kant and Husserl on the Copernican Turn

Abstract: In the following paper, I argue that none of the recent criticisms of Kant’s transcendental idealism offered on behalf of Husserl scholars such as Dominique Pradelle give us reason to think that Husserlian phenomenology moves beyond Kant’s “revolutionary” Copernican turn in the subject-object relation. I begin by first providing an interpretation of Kant’s Copernican turn and then outline three issues with Kant’s transcendental idealism that scholars like Pradelle take as reason to reject Kant’s revolution in philosophy. Specifically, Kant’s transcendental idealism makes reference to the thing-it-itself, construes the subject of the turn along psychological lines, and results in skepticism. I then provide reasons why these supposed issues with Kant’s theory, especially when we take into account the Kantian defenses that can be assembled against them, ought not motivate us to think Husserl’s phenomenology does not adhere to the Copernician turn or move beyond it. Finally, I make the case that if we take into consideration the role played by the unity of apperception in Kant’s account of object constitution, then Kant and Husserl, far from differing on the turn, are in fact, and contra thinkers like Pradelle, closer on the topic of the objects of consciousness than is typically appreciated.