REGULATIVE PRINCIPLE

[A179/B222] Opposed by Kant to constitutive principles. Regulative principles "seek to being the existence of appearance under rules a priori". Such principles cannot be proven "since existence cannot be constructed". Here Kant cites the Analogies of Experience and Postulates of Empirical Thought as regulative principles. [A509/B537] Later, in the Dialectic, Kant characterizes constitutive principles as those which "enable us to extend" a concept, and regulative principles as "rules, postulating what we ought to do". Here Kant discusses the regulative principles of reason, which determine the limits of reason, and denies that there are any constitutive principles of reason.