I have opted to split the post on Kant into two parts. This first part is solely an introduction to Kant and his philosophy. The next part shall place that philosophy in the context of the Pantheism controversy and discuss the impact of Kantian thought on Germany. My sincerest apologies for the delay.
‘The day Kant died was clear and cloudless, and we do not have many such days. Only a small thin cloudlet floated in the zenith of the azure blue sky. It is said that a soldier on the Schmiede Bridge drew the onlookers’ attention to it with the words: “Look, it’s Kant’s soul flying up to heaven!”’
C. F Reusch, Kant and his Table Companions
“It is much easier to point out the faults and errors in the work of a great mind than to give a clear and complete exposition of its value. For the faults are something particular and finite, which can therefore be taken in fully at a glance. On the other hand, the very stamp that genius impresses on its work is that their excellence is unfathomable and inexhaustible, and therefore they do not become obsolete, but are the instructors of many succeeding centuries. The perfected masterpiece of a truly great mind will always have a profound and vigorous effect on the whole human race, so much so that it is impossible to calculate to what distant centuries and countries its enlightening influence may reach. This is always the case, since, however accomplished and rich the age might be in which the masterpiece itself arose, genius always rises like a palm-tree above the soil in which it is rooted.”
Schopenhauer, World as Will and Representation Vol I
The Azure Sky
A truly great philosopher is never satisfied being a mere companion to some other dogma. The great philosopher aspires to be a prophet; to cast his cold gaze back across the entire history of human thought and declare, “I am first”. Plato, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche are all examples of this type, and there is a certain joy in reading them that can be found nowhere else. When you embark with this caliber of thinker, you feel as if you are stepping into an entirely new world. Even if in the end you eventually part ways with them, your perception of reality is never the same afterwards. These are philosophies that one can truly live and breathe, which extend their prying hands into the very heart of the tragic churning sea of phenomena which surrounds each and every man, driven by the titanic hope of grasping the inner riddle of existence. To drink deeply of such an original spirit’s thoughts, to walk beside them while they engage in the most ambitious of projects; this is truly a unique delight. And Kant belongs at the forefront of these ranks.
When I was a teenager, engrossed in classical history and enthralled by Nietzsche, I dismissed Kant as merely that ‘chinaman of Konigsberg’, the nebbish scholar-sperg with an autistic ethical system. It wasn’t until much later that I actually made an attempt to understand Kant, and once I did I could not look away till I had thoroughly made a friend of him. Kantian Idealism is, in my opinion, the most sophisticated and self-contained philosophical system to have emerged in European philosophy since Platonism. Kant breathed in the spirit and conflict of his times, and opened an entirely new chapter in European thought, reaching similar insights to Plato and the Eleatics, but through an entirely novel philosophical method. Kant is a world unto himself.
To give a full exposition of Kant’s philosophy in a single essay is an unattainable goal. He offered his insight on practically every philosophical subject worthy of attention, and did so within the context of his architectonic love of systems, so that we are faced with a web of texts, ideas, and canons which extends across decades and thousands of pages. What I would instead aspire to impart is the spirit of his philosophy, the key insights which form the kernel from which his entire system grows. And I will do so in particular through the interpretation of Schopenhauer, Kant’s greatest heir who more than any other understood what made the autistic Prussian so special.
The Chinaman of Konigsberg
“Herr Kant, der alleszermalmer [the all-crushing]…”
-Mendelssohn on Kant, Lectures on the existence of God
“This approach, which is exclusively Kant’s own, can be described as the most alienated gaze that has ever been cast upon the world and as the highest degree of objectivity. To follow it affords an intellectual pleasure unequalled by any other. For it is of a higher order than the one which poets grant, who of course are accessible to everyone, whereas the pleasure here described must be preceded by effort and exertion.”
Schopenhauer, Parerga
Kant was born in Konigsberg in 1724 and died there in 1804, and spent his entire life there excepting a 6 year stint as a tutor following his father’s death. Unlike the later Idealists who would migrate with the changing winds and times to Jena, Berlin, or wherever else attention and patronage was to be found, Kant stubbornly remained in his relatively parochial corner of Germany even after he became without a doubt the most influential German philosopher of his era. His example is a great corrective for that melancholic sense of lost time which looks longingly towards Alexander, Napoleon, and Augustus, all of whom had permanently changed the world before they turned 30. For while Kant was an important philosopher in his own right by his 40s, it was with the publication of the first Critique at age 56 that he began a period of intense philosophical activity which would permanently etch his name into the corridors of history.
Much of Kant’s life and thought is characterized by a certain stubbornness, an autistic will to abide by habits and obligations. It is said that his neighbors set their clocks to his walks. Raised in a pietist household, self-control and moderation would have been inculcated in the boy from a young age. This was further augmented by his later associations. One of his close friends was a protestant merchant who believed deeply in setting imperatives which one lived according to absolutely. When they had arranged to meet at a pre-determined time, if Kant failed to arrive at the exact minute he had agreed to this merchant would ride off, even if Kant could be seen turning the corner. That said, I would be hesitant to ascribe Kant’s character completely to these contingent aspects of his life. His lifelong celibate commitment to the pursuit of truth, indifferent to the flights of politics or profit, although perhaps particularly exaggerated in his own being is something characteristic of that prophetic type of Genius. That Schopenhauer and not any of the Idealists is Kant’s true heir can be seen in how he exhibits this same solitary stubbornness.
By the time Kant published the Critique he had embarked on his own philosophical path. That said, to best understand him requires situating him within the philosophical system he spent much of his life in various states of acceptance. The dominant philosophical school prior to the Pantheism controversy was the Leibnizian-Wolffian school. This Rationalist doctrine held that we live in the best of all possible worlds, the creation of an omnibenevolent, omniscient God who maintains a harmony between spirits and bodies. Kant would subject Leibniz to thorough criticism in his own philosophical phase, yet he did remain in many ways the same philosopher as during his Leibnizian days. He was at heart an enlightenment intellectual concerned with establishing grounds for belief in God, the immortality of the soul, and morality. What changed was that he realized the traditional method of philosophy was in error. It ambitiously strove to comprehend the greatest of all questions without a critical examination of the tools available for such a task, and thus it frequently fell flat on its face. Kant decided to break with this tradition, and to find safer pastures for Reason.
Dogmatic Slumber
“Since ‘tis reasonable to doubt most things, we should most of all doubt that reason of ours which would demonstrate all things.”
Alexander Pope
“I freely confess: it was the objection of David Hume which first, many years ago, interrupted my dogmatic slumber and gave a completely different direction to my researches in the field of speculative philosophy”
Kant, Prolegomena
Kant was not a local event like some Jacobi, but a European one, and his roots likewise extend beyond the Rhine. It was the Scottish philosopher David Hume whom Kant famously credited with awakening him from his ‘dogmatic slumber’, in other words, from his uncritical acceptance of Rationalist metaphysics and methodology. The period from which Kant emerged is often divided between Rationalism and Empiricism, the former being associated with France and Germany, the latter with England and Scotland.
Rationalism begins with Descartes’ break with Scholasticism, which is taken up by Spinoza and then Leibniz. Rationalism considers man’s essence reason: the capacity for the clear and distinct discernment of truth, such that one can begin from established concepts and simply reason out everything that follows from them. Rationalists believe philosophy can aspire to the certainty and order of mathematics. This is most evident in Spinoza who explicitly models his philosophical methodology on Euclid. To the Rationalist knowledge is not something gained through sense-perception, but something innate to the mind which is merely refined. Leibniz offers the analogy of a statue being chiseled from a block of marble. The baroque vision of the world as governed by intelligible measure and order, the ambitious belief in the solubility of all problems through logic and conceptual analysis; this is Rationalism.
Empiricism by contrast is associated with British figures such as Locke and Hume who were critical of reason’s purported ability to meaningfully expand our knowledge through the mere application of concepts. For the empiricist, all original knowledge must eventually find its origin in experience. Everything whose content is not immediately contained in experience is simply a derivative product of our reflection upon experience, from which nothing truly original can be generated. Empiricists were skeptical of the metaphysical ambitions of Rationalists who confidently believed they could prove the existence of God or the immortality of the soul independently from empirical experience through mere reasoning. Hume in particular rejected most of the cardinal rationalist positions, and claimed causality, upon which much of human knowledge rests, is but a habit formed from experience which cannot be demonstrated to be valid.
Kant fell on the Rationalist side of the fence, having being influenced by the Wolffian descendants of Leibniz throughout his life. But following his engagement with Empiricism, and in particular Hume, he came to increasingly believe philosophy had somewhere gone astray. Everywhere insuperable conflicts between radically opposed positions seemed to rage unabated without solution. Metaphysics, which was supposed to be the Queen of the sciences, was instead everywhere dishonored. The ambitions of natural philosophy, which sought to deduce the principles of nature and demonstrate the existence of God, were increasingly undermined by the discoveries of natural science. When in 1643 Evangelista Torricelli, a pupil of Galileo Galilei, produced the first artificial vacuum, this was something upon which many natural philosophers had penned long arguments confidently concluding its impossibility. No event however better illustrates this divide between rationalist philosophy and empirical science than the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence. This correspondence was a debate between Leibniz and Newton (via Clarke) over the nature of space and time (Leibniz thought they were relations between concepts, Newton thought they were actual existing things), each producing arguments meant to conclusively refute the other.
In the wake of these great conflicts and the seemingly precarious position of metaphysics Kant decided, in a similar vein to Descartes, to let go of the contemporary wisdom and dogmas of his time and subject them to an acidic criticism; to test whether they were Gold or mere Pyrite. He wanted to critically engage with the very possibility of philosophy in order to provide a surer foundation for morality and faith. And so he began the first Critique with a question: how is metaphysics even possible? This question would eventually lead him to the realization that we are not the passive recipients of knowledge which both Rationalism and Empiricism take us to be. He would instead determine that the subject play’s an active role in constructing the world which it experiences.
Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Representation Vol I concludes with an entire section in which he summarizes and critiques Kant, which I would highly recommend as a companion to reading Kant. Within this section he offers a genealogy of Kant’s thought which places him as a successor to Locke. One of Locke’s great insights was that some of the properties of bodies are subjective rather than objective; put two people, one of whom is colorblind, in the same room before the same object and they will experience it differently. Locke separated these secondary qualities such as color, sound, and taste, from the qualities which actually resembled the object itself, such as size, shape, and motion. Kant extended this insight by realizing that Locke’s putative primary qualities were also subjectively conditioned, and did not resemble the object-in-itself, which now belonged to an entirely different order than that of objects. To explain how Kant reached this insight, it will best for us to trace the general course of the first Critique.
Synthetic a priori Judgements
In the introduction to the Critique Kant advances the claim that both Rationalists and Empiricists have fundamentally misunderstood the kinds of judgements we can make. A judgement is a propositional statement of the form “Subject is Predicate”. Now despite their disagreements, Hume and Leibniz would have both agreed that there are two kinds of judgements: a priori and a posteriori. a priori is Latin for “what is before” and a posteriori for “what is after”, with both referring usually to experience, where the priority/posteriority has the connotation of dependence. So something is a priori not simply in the sense that is temporally before experience, but more specifically that it is totally independent from experience.
An a priori judgement is a necessary judgement, i.e. it holds true universally independent of experience. For example, the judgement “All bachelors are unmarried” is a priori. An a posteriori judgement is a contingent judgement, i.e. its truth is dependent on experience. For example, “Most apples are red” is a posteriori. How this becomes relevant to metaphysics is that if the only judgements which hold true independent of empirical observation, which all metaphysical judgements must, are just relations of ideas whose truth is entirely a matter of the laws of identity and non-contradiction, then no metaphysics which actually expands our knowledge is possible. Metaphysics needs more than Bachelor=Unmarried tautologies.
Kant asserts that there is actually a further division to these judgements. He accepts the distinction between the a priori and a posteriori, but claims judgements can also be divided based on whether they are analytic or synthetic. An analytic judgement is one where the predicate is already thought in the concept of the subject. The bachelors example is analytic, <unmarried> is something which is already thought in the concept <bachelor>. A synthetic judgement is one where the predicate is not contained within the concept of the subject, but rather connected via some third thing. In the case of our apples judgement, the predicate <red> does not necessarily follow from the concept <apple>, such that it must be a contingent judgement where subject and predicate are connected by experience.
Consequently, Kant claims all judgements of conceptual containment are analytic a priori and all empirical judgements are synthetic a posteriori. So far nothing too interesting, but here Kant makes a major claim; there is a third kind of judgement which follows from these divisions, the synthetic a priori. He further argues that metaphysics “consists, at least in terms of its purpose, of nothing but synthetic a priori propositions.” Kant believes the main questions of Metaphysics are the existence and nature of God, the existence and nature of the soul, and the existence and nature of freedom. All three of these subjects by necessity involve judgements which are both universal and aim to expand our knowledge; in other words, synthetic a priori judgements.
However Kant does not merely offer the example of synthetic a priori judgements that we want to be capable of, but also the ones that he believes we already are. He believes that the judgements of mathematics are synthetic a priori. For example, “A circle touches a tangent at only one point” is a necessary judgement, yet Kant would assert that the predicate <touches a tangent at only one point> is not something already thought in the concept <circle>. Rather we are able to expand our knowledge of mathematics because we immediately intuit the truth of these necessary judgements despite them being based neither on experience nor mere conceptual analysis. And so the focus of the Critique shifts to how the synthetic a priori judgements of mathematics are possible. It is important to remember that Rationalists had already set mathematics as the paradigm of a priori knowledge to which philosophy should aspire. However they believed that mathematics was analytic, that we come to recognize the truth of 2 + 2 = 4 through analyzing the concept <4> guided by the law of identity and non-contradiction. Kant denies this, and in so doing makes the claim that we already do possess synthetic a priori knowledge, opening the door to the possibility of metaphysics. And so the question “is metaphysics possible?” becomes “how are synthetic a priori judgements possible?”.
The Components of Cognition
To answer this question Kant introduces another new division, this time to cognition (knowledge of objects basically). He asserts that all cognition consist of two parts; concepts and intuitions. These two ‘representations’ (the genus of all objects of a subject) are united whenever we cognize an object. Concepts should be the more intuitive (no pun intended) of the two terms for a laymen. A concept is a representation which relates to objects mediately via marks. For example, I have the concept <ant> which includes such marks as <living>, <insect>, <arthropod>, <possessing antennae>, and etc. I can relate this one concept to an infinite number of objects based on its marks. An intuition is the immediate sensible content of cognition. When you cognize an ant, you immediately intuit a sensible representation of a black insectoid thing, and then mediately identify this intuition with the concept <ant>.
"The genus is representation (representatio) in general. Under it stand representations with consciousness (perceptio). A perception [Wahrnehmung], that relates solely to a subject as a modification of its state, is sensation (sensatio). An objective perception is cognition (cognitio). This is either intuition or concept (intuitus vel conceptus). The first relates immediately to the object and is singular; the second is mediate, conveyed by a mark, which can be common to many things. A concept is either an empirical or a pure concept, and the pure concept, insofar as it has its origin solely in the understanding (not in a pure image of sensibility), is called notio. A concept made up of notions, which goes beyond the possibility of experience, is an idea or a concept of reason. (A320/B376–7).
Now this relates to our prior issue of synthetic a priori judgements and mathematics in the following way. Kant believes that what unites subject and predicate in a synthetic judgement must be an intuition. In empirical judgements, this is an a posteriori intuition. You judge that “Most apples are red” because you intuit via sense perception most apples being red. But for mathematics the mediating intuition must be an a priori intuition. And so the Critique transitions from the Introduction to the Transcendental Aesthetic, and investigates sensibility, the capacity for intuitions, to determine what a priori intuition it is that underlies mathematical judgments. It is here that Kant turns to Space and Time.
Kant argues that our sensibility can be divided into two different domains; inner sense and outer sense. Outer sense is the means through which we sense things as exterior to our mind, and inner sense is the means through we sense things as interior to our mind. Your perception of a tree swaying in the wind is a representation in outer sense. Your thought of an anime girl with a large rack is a representation in inner sense. Kant notes that all of our outer representations must occur in space and time, and all of our inner ones in time alone. From this he concludes that space and time are the conditions of all experience. The question then is; are space and time concepts, or intuitions? He argues that in both cases they are intuitions.
This is because we represent them as singular, immediate, and infinite in given magnitude. If space were a concept, it would be something we mediately relate based on marks to various intuitions we identify as spaces. We would compositely form the concept <Space> from the various spaces we encountered. But Kant argues space is something we represent as infinite not in potential application (like my concept <Ant>), but in its actual magnitude. You don’t cognize individual separate spaces, but the one singular space which you then subdivide, though you only cognize a subdivision as a space insofar as it is bounded by more infinite space with which it is one. So space cannot be a composite concept since spaces presume space itself, which must be represented immediately as infinite. He then makes a very similar argument that time likewise can’t be a concept.
The next thing which Kant argues is that space and time are the a priori intuitions that underlie mathematics. The intuition of space is the basis of geometry and the intuition of time is the basis of arithmetic. The a priori nature of these intuitions is also why they are universally the conditions of all experience. It follows from this that anything which has an existence independent of our representing it, i.e. the true world, cannot be spatio-temporal. And so reality is divided between the phenomenal world of spatio-temporal appearances/representations/objects, and the noumenal ‘world’ of things-in-themselves. This is the inner kernel of the Kantian philosophy.
Transcendental Idealism
“Time is not a condition of things but instead a mere way of thinking”
Spinoza, metaphysical thoughts
“Time is the moved image of eternity.”
Plotinus, Enneads
“Thus there are between Kant and the Eleatics, Schopenhauer and Empedocles, Aeschylus and Richard Wagner such approximations and affinities that one is reminded almost palpably of the very relative nature of all concepts of time: it almost seems as though many things belong together and time is only a cloud which makes it hard for our eyes to perceive the fact.”
Nietzsche, Richard Wagner in Bayreuth
“In truth however the constant arising of new beings and the coming to nothing of existing beings is to be regarded as an illusion, brought about by the apparatus of two polished lenses (brain functions), through which alone we can see anything; they are called space and time, and in their interpenetration, causality. For everything we perceived under these conditions is mere appearance, but we do not know things as they may be in themselves, i.e. independant of our perception. This is actually the core of Kantian philosophy,”
Schopenhauer, Parerga
In the preface to the Critique, Kant claims that he has discovered the solution to the problems which have plagued metaphysics, which he dubs a ‘Copernican Revolution’. This analogy refers to Kant’s inversion of a standard assumption of almost all philosophers; that objects make our representations possible (i.e I have a representation of a chair because there is a chair) rather than representations making objects possible (i.e. the chair, and all other objects, are only objects because I represent them under the subjective a priori conditions of experience).
Up to now it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to the objects; but all attempts to find out something about them a priori through concepts that would extend our cognition have, on this presupposition, come to nothing. Hence let us once try whether we do not get farther with the problems of metaphysics by assuming that the objects must conform to our cognition, which would agree better with the requested possibility of an a priori cognition of them, which is to establish something about objects before they are given to us. This would be just like the first thoughts of Copernicus, who, when he did not make good progress in the explanation of the celestial motions if he assumed that the entire celestial host revolves around the observer, tried to see if he might not have greater success if he made the observer revolve and left the stars at rest.
Kant labeled the doctrine which springs from this insight Transcendental Idealism. Transcendental Idealism is the doctrine that everything spatio-temporal is only a representation, and consequently does not have a real existence independent from the subject who represents it. This does not entail solipsism; the things you interact with including other people are the appearance of the real to you and thus refer to it in some way, but the true existence of said things will be independent of space and time. Space and time are simply the subjective conditions of experience, they are veils cast over the inner essence of things which is atemporal and non-spatial.
I understand by the transcendental idealism of all appearances [Erscheinungen] the doctrine that they are all together to be regarded as mere representations and not as things in themselves [nicht als Dinge an sich selbst ansehen], and accordingly that space and time are only sensible forms of our intuition, but not determinations given for themselves or conditions of objects as things in themselves [als Dinge an sich selbst]
The corollary of this insight is that we know practically nothing about the world as it actually is. The conflicts of metaphysics are a result of philosophers’ belief that they were cognizing the true world and thus could dogmatically reason about it, without recognizing that their experience and knowledge is restricted to mere phenomena. Even the cogito of Descartes is illusion, for we do not know ourselves as we truly are, but merely appear to ourselves in time. To truly grasp this doctrine in your core is to gain new eyes. The world no longer appears to you as what it presents itself as, but as that mask which Melville has Ahab rail against.
Hark ye yet again—the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!
Moby Dick
And so Kant saved metaphysics from Skepticism and Spinozism only at a great cost. Philosophy would now have to satisfy itself not with insight into the true world, but merely with knowledge of the conditions of empirical reality. But this is somewhat of a false presentation of Kant’s philosophy. He is often sold as merely Kant the Destroyer, the crusher of idols, which is certainly a major part of his activity, but Kant’s original goal, like Spinoza’s, always remained ethical. Philosophy was the key to truth, and truth was the key to proper living. His goal was not to cast humanity into skepticism, but to tear down the tower of Babylon it had constructed in favor of a more secure foundation. Kant had begun his journey from an important understanding of metaphysics; it wasn’t just some hobby for autistic men, but an activity man engages with by necessity because he needs answers to three questions. Is there a God? What happens when I die? Am I free? Kant will critically tear down the prior philosophical method which purported to provide answers to these questions, before creating his own positive project that aims to provide a critical foundation for Man’s metaphysical needs.
The Necessary Concepts of Experience
“Dividing the world into a ‘real’ one and an ‘apparent’ one, whether in the manner of Christianity, or of Kant (a crafty Christian, when all’s said and done) is but a suggestion of decadence,”
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
But before we move to Kant’s positive project, it is necessary that we complete our journey through the first Critique. We have so far discussed how Kant moves from the Preface and Introduction into the Transcendental Aesthetic, but a brief overview of the entire structure of the Kritique is necessary for us to continue. The Kritique is divided primarily into the Doctrine of Elements and Doctrine of Method. The former is his exposition of the a priori elements of cognition, and is divided into the Aesthetic, which is his account of Sensibility and establishes space and time as the sensible conditions of experience, and the Transcendental Logic, which is further divided into the Transcendental Analytic and the Transcendental Dialectic. I think you are probably beginning to understand what I meant by an architectonic love of systems by now. The Analytic follows the Aesthetic and is his account of the Understanding (the faculty of concepts) and the conceptual conditions of experience. The Dialectic is his account of Reason and transcendental illusion (basically all the errors philosophy is naturally led into by the nature of Reason). The Doctrine of Method concerns how we ought to use the cognitive tools which the Doctrine of Elements has catalogued, and contains prescriptive guidelines for a critical philosophy.
The Analytic is notoriously difficult, in particular the Transcendental Deduction. Schopenhauer, who lauds the insights and presentation of the Aesthetic as one of the greatest achievements in human history, is much more critical of the latter half of the Doctrine of Elements. I would be lying to you if I said I fully understood how the Deduction works, but for our purposes that level of analysis is unnecessary. The overarching thesis of the Analytic is that in addition to Space and Time there are also certain a priori concepts which are necessary conditions of experience, which Kant labels the Categories, borrowing Aristotle’s term. He is somewhat harsh on old Aristotle, claiming that he essentially pulled the categories out of his ass, which is funny since immediately afterward Kant proceeds to complete one of the most confusing maneuvers of the whole Kritique. He derives his own list of Categories from the table of judgement.
Why he believes he is entitled to do this is a complicated story; Schopenhauer scathingly rebukes him for doing so and shortens this list of 12 categories to just one, causality, a simplification I much prefer. The result of the deduction is that we now have 12 concepts which Kant considers a priori elements of our cognition; in-built ways through which we think objects just as space and time are the conditions through which we sense them. The challenge for Kant which makes the Analytic so much more complicated than the Aesthetic is that the spatio-temporal character of experience is given, whereas to claim that concepts are necessary for experience requires that he justify the concepts and demonstrate their necessity. So he cannot just pull the categories from the table of judgement (Metaphysical Deduction), but must also show that they are necessary to experience (Transcendental Deduction).
I cannot offer an explanation of the deduction which would fit in what is intended as an accessible introduction. A short and somewhat inaccurate summary is that Kant argues that self-consciousness is a necessary condition of judgement which is a necessary condition of all experience, and that this process requires the categories. After having derived the categories and demonstrated their necessity, Kant then shows in the Schematism how the conceptual Categories are linked to the sensible content of intuitions via the shared medium of time. The Analytic also includes some criticism of rival idealists Berkley and Leibniz. The Transcendental Logic then transitions into the Dialectic.
The All-Crushing Kant
“Kant demonstrated that the problems of metaphysics which agitate everyone, more or less, are not capable of a direct, or of any adequate solution at all. But this is based, in the final analysis, on the fact that they have their origin in the forms of our intellect, time, space, and causality, while this intellect has merely the task of physically presenting the individual will with its motives,”
-Schopenhauer, Parerga
The Dialectic is Kant at his most destructive. In it he introduces the third faculty of the mind; reason. While sensibility is the faculty of intuitions, and the understanding the faculty of concepts which works on the content of sensiblity, reason is the final segment of this chain and the faculty of inference, which works on the content of the understanding to form ideas, concepts to which no possible object of experience could be given. For example, while it is possible to experience an object corresponding to the concept <apple>, since the concept <God> necessarily entails something supersensible, it cannot be instantiated by a conditioned object of experience. Kant makes an overarching argument in the Dialectic that the recurring errors of philosophy are due to transcendental illusion; essentially, reason naturally forms certain ideas, outsteps its bounds, and believes it can use the categories to cognize the unknowable objects of these ideas. He divides this argument into three sections; The Paralogisms of Reason (the idea of the soul and illusion in Rationalist psychology), The Antinomies (the idea of the world illusion in Rationalist cosmology), and The Ideal of Pure Reason (the idea of God and illusion in Rationalist theology)
The paralogisms argue that rationalism’s account of the soul depends on confusing the subjective conditions of thought for the conditions of the subject-in-itself. A paralogism is an invalid syllogism, it is false due to its form. Kant assigns this title to the illusion of rational psychology because it rests on invalid inferences from its “sole text”, the cogito (“I think”). Kant examines four arguments he assigns to rational psychologists, and in each case concludes they fallaciously confuse the way we must think of ourselves for how we truly are. The <I> as representation is taken as the I-in-itself. The takeaway from the paralogisms is that we cannot simply infer from how we appear to ourselves to how we actually are. The principle issue of rational psychology dissipate within Kant’s view since a sort of immortality is already established; if time is not a condition of things-in-themselves, and there must be a subject-in-itself to which things appear, then ‘I’ must be the appearance of a subject which knows nothing of coming-to-be or ceasing-to-be.
In the next section, the antinomies, Kant deals with the idea of the world and the cosmological debates between Rationalism and Empiricism. He sets up a series of contradicting arguments between Rationalists and Empiricists concerning the finitude of space and time, the existence of simple bodies, the determinacy of the world, and the existence of a necessary being. In each case the arguments begin from the assumption that the world is given as an absolute totality (i.e. we can reason about it as a whole), and then demonstrate the falsity of the opposing side through a reductio ad absurdum. Kant resolves the antinomies by declaring that the apparent contradictions only arose because of the shared assumption of both sides (the world exists in space and time and is given as a whole), and claims the contradictions dissipate once you accept transcendental idealism (the world is not in-itself spatio-temporal and is not given as a whole, but as an infinitely extendible series of conditioned appearances).
The four antinomies are divided into two categories; the mathematical and dynamic antinomies. The mathematical antinomies are so called because they solely concern the world of appearances. But the dynamical antinomies, concerning causality and the existence of a necessary being, not only make claims about appearances but the world in itself. Kant’s answer to the two categories differs; the mathematical antinomies are both wrong because of their shared assumption (i.e. space is not given as infinite or finite, but merely infinitely extendible), but the dynamical antinomies are actually both compatible once you see through the assumption. This is incredibly important in how Kant will answer the challenge of Spinozism; he will argue that empirical determinism (i.e. all things appear in accordance with the category of causality) is compatible with intelligible freedom (each person’s ‘determined’ appearance is actually the free expression of their true character).
In the final section of the Dialectic, Kant takes on the arguments for God. He asserts arguments for the existence of God take on three forms; the ontological argument (God exists necessarily), the cosmological argument (There must exist a necessary being), and the physico-theologico argument (The order of the world implies a creator). He begins by arguing that like the soul and the world, God is also an idea which Reason is led to by its nature. It infers from the finite conceptions it encounters an infinite conception lacking no predicates, which it then reasons must exist necessarily. Kant comes up with a famous argument against the ontological argument which asserts that existence is not a real predicate, but is contained within the copula ‘is’ in judgements. To judge that something exists is not to predicate existence of it, but to assert that there is something which possesses all its predicates. For this reason, the ontological argument cannot establish the existence of God. He then argues that the cosmological argument and physico-theologico argument both depend on the ontological argument, as a necessary being or creator is not necessarily the highest being, God. From this Kant concludes that no argument can provide dogmatic proof for the existence of God.
And so the Doctrine of Elements concludes. Kant has made the extraordinary claims that all appearances are mere representations, that space and time are subjective conditions, that experience of objects requires certain in-built concepts, and that dogmatic knowledge of the soul, free will, and God is impossible. To what extent the dialectic is successful is dubitable. Whether he is not often straw manning his opponents is a real worry. Kant wanted the antinomies to be a sort of negative proof of transcendental idealism; if you don’t accept the ideality of space and time then you will inevitably be committed to contradictions. But regardless of the degree of his success, it is certain Kant dealt a major blow to the confidence of rationalism and its method of philosophy, and opened a new, critical chapter in philosophical history. For many erstwhile students of Kant, this is where it ends; with knowledge of God and the foundations of morality lying vanquished in the dust. But for Kant this is only the beginning of his project.
Beyond Doubt
In the Doctrine of Method, Kant begins describing how philosophy ought to be. He uses the analogy of the tower of Babylon to describe pre-critical philosophy, which strove to reach heaven through dogmatic reasoning. But now that we have critically examined the materials available, we must settle for a cozier domicile, though still one that might be sufficient for our purposes.
If I regard the sum total of all cognition of pure and speculative reason as an edifice for which we have in ourselves at least the idea, then I can say that in the Transcendental Doctrine of Elements we have made an estimate of the building materials and determine for what sort of edifice, with what height and strength, they would suffice. It turned out, of course, that although we had in mind a tower that would reach the heavens, the supply of materials sufficed only for a dwelling that was just roomy enough for our business on the plane of experience and high enough to survey it; however, that bold undertaking had to fail from lack of material, not to mention the confusion of languages that unavoidably divided the workers over the plan and dispersed them throughout the world, leaving each to build on his own according to his own design. Now we are concerned not so much with the materials as with the plan, and, having been warned not to venture some arbitrary and blind project that might entirely exceed our entire capacity, yet not being able to abstain from the erection of a sturdy dwelling, we have to aim at an edifice in relation to the supplies given to us that is at the same time suited to our needs.
Although Kant’s critique of our cognitive capacities has established that dogmatic proof for the existence of freedom, God, and the immortal soul is no longer possible, he has also demonstrated that proof of their non-existence is impossible; we are restricted to the realm of appearance in our dogmatic claims. Transcendental idealism itself however provides some potential insight into these subjects. While we cannot demonstrate the immortality of the soul, if time is merely appearance, then whatever truly exists cannot come-to-be or perish. While we cannot prove that we have freedom, the binding necessity of causality is once again only a condition of appearances, and entirely consistent with our existence and world being the free expression of what Kant calls our intelligible character (us as a thing-in-itself). And while we cannot prove the existence of God, Kant argues that is rational to believe as a regulative principle that the world was fashioned by an intelligent creator who has also arranged our cognitive faculties such that we can come to understand it.
I am not, to be sure, of the opinion that excellent and thoughtful men (e.g, Sulzer), aware of the weakness of previous proofs, have so often expressed, that one can still hope to find self-evident demonstrations of the two cardinal propositions of pure reason: there is a God, and there is a future life. Rather, I am certain that this will never happen. For whence will reason derive the grounds for such synthetic assertions, which are not related to objects of experience and their inner possibility? But it is also apodictically certain that no human being will ever step forward who could assert the opposite with the least plausibility, let alone assert it dogmatically.
Kant goes even further. In the Doctrine of Method , and in the second Critique (of Practical Reason), Kant argues that although we cannot attain dogmatic proof and hence objective certainty of our freedom, immortality, and God’s existence, we can obtain subjective certainty. Theoretical cognition is cognition of objects as they are; this is the subject of the first Critique. However Kant believes we also have practical cognition; cognition of how objects ought to be. And just as there are a priori elements of objective cognition, there is an a priori element of practical cognition; the categorical imperative. Kant believes the categorical imperative is the foundation of all morality and is not a contingent a posteriori product of thought, but an a priori formula native to reason itself. Kant believes we are immediately aware of our being bound to the categorical imperative and the duty it imposes on us, and calls this awareness “the fact of reason”.
Consciousness of this fundamental law may be called a fact of reason because one cannot reason it out from antecedent data of reason, for example, from consciousness of freedom (since this is not antecedently given to us) and because it instead forces itself upon us of itself as a synthetic a priori proposition that is not based on any intuition, either pure or empirical, although it would be analytic if the freedom of the will were presupposed; but for this, as a positive concept, an intellectual intuition would be required, which certainly cannot be assumed.
And since the categorical imperative and the duty it imposes are only intelligible insofar as they presuppose our freedom, Kant believes that inseparably intertwined with our immediate awareness of the categorical imperative is an immediate awareness of our transcendental freedom.
Among all the ideas of speculative reason freedom is the only one the possibility of which we know a priori, though without having insight into it, because it is the condition of the moral law, which we do know.
So just through our awareness of the categorical imperative Kant believes we have cognition of our freedom! But it does not end here.
Now, the concept of freedom, insofar as its reality is proved by an apodictic law of practical reason, constitutes the keystone of the whole structure of a system of pure reason, even of speculative; and all other concepts (those of God and immortality ), which as mere ideas remain without support in the latter, now attach themselves to this concept and with it and by means of it get stability and objective reality, that is, their possibility is proved by this: that freedom is real, for this idea reveals itself through the moral law.
Kant believes that we are not only aware of our being bound to the moral law and hence being free, but that reason sets as its end the highest good, which is the state of maximal happiness and virtue and the end of all our moral duties. Since we are bound to the moral law, we must set as our end the highest good. Kant believes we are rationally required to believe in the possibility of our ends, and hence, we are rationally required to believe that the highest good is possible. From this, he argues that the highest good requires that those who have perished will be returned to receive the happiness commensurate to their virtue, and that a benevolent God would be required to ensure the highest good is eventually reached. And since we are rationally required to believe in the possibility of our ends and all that they require, just from our awareness of the moral law and its end we have rational subjective grounds for belief in freedom, God, and the immortality of the soul.
Kant believes that he has not only banished Spinozism and other dogmatic philosophy from threatening morality and faith, but that he has provided rational, transcendental grounds for moral living. We cannot theoretically know God exists, but our faith in him is rational.
Conclusion
“All of a sudden to one’s astonishment, one exists after not having been for countless millennia, and after a brief period, one must not be again for the same length of time. -This can never be right, says the heart; and even a crude mind has to have an inkling of the ideality of time from considerations of this kind. But this, along with the ideality of space, is the key to all true metaphysics, because through it room is made for an entirely different order of things than nature. This is why Kant is so great.”
Schopenhauer, Parerga
Kant’s ambitions are immense, and even where we might not be sure he has lived up to them, the colossal footprints of his mighty steps stretch out imposingly before us, for none has filled them yet. To see with his eyes is to have the scales lifted from yours; the debates about the true character of reality which seem to spin men around like tops now appear foolish and ill-founded. The inner nature of the world escapes in flight to a realm beyond mortal eyes, and reclines in a suspended twilight alongside schrodinger’s cat.
I hope this admittedly dense and yet still lacking summary is sufficient. In the next part, the history of how this philosophy came to dominate Germany, and then eventually came to be devoured by its children, will be revealed. For more in-depth knowledge of Kant, I highly recommended working your way through the first Critique, and using the Routledge guidebook as a companion secondary source to help you through the more difficult and dense sections.