M.R.M. Parrott-The Pure Critique of Reason - Kant and Subjectivity-Rimric Press

KANT AND SUBJECTIVITY
The Pure Critique of Reason

Kant and Subjectivity
1999 M.R.M. Parrott (Preface 2002)
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2
THE PURE CRITIQUE OF REASON
The
Pure Critique
of Reason
Kant and Subjectivity
3
Contents
Preface 5
The Pure Critique of Reason
Introduction 7
Scope of Critique 12
Forms of Sense 31
Logic of the Mind 47
Paralogical Illusion 60
Antinomous World 77
Reason in Ideal 91
Toward a Method 102
Conclusion: The Pure Critique of Reason 117
4
PREFACE
It can be no secret that Immanuel Kant has figured
prominently in my works. Any quick review of my
books would turn up the name before long. Kant's long
shadow is difficult to ignore, in fact. Some thinkers, such
as William James, even suggest one go around him rather
than deal with his theories directly. The problems Kant
raises within epistemology still throw his shadow on the
most contemporary and technical of discussions. His
theories about subjectivity are only now being
understood, and in some cases vindicated.
As a Kant scholar, I long felt a certain necessity to
tackle the first Critique head on, but only after I was quite
sure about my own interpretation. This is something
which takes time. One cannot simply sit down and read
the Critique as a college sophomore and hope to have
adequate grasp on what is happening in such an abstract
text. Indeed, many graduate students who consider
themselves Kantians cannot hope to accurately interpret
the Critique either - not at least, until they remove the
overriding influences of whomever has taught Kant to
them, and develop enough of their own interpretations of
other thinkers as well. Again, this takes time. The
situation reminds me of Delacroix's maxim: "A poet at
twenty is twenty, but a poet at forty is a poet."
My situation has been a labour of love. From the
very first encounter I had with Kant's work as a college
Freshman, I knew I had found something powerful and
5
challenging. I never pretended to fully comprehend
Kant's great work until a few years ago, as I completed
my novel To Lie Within the Moment and began reading
widely and participating in online discussions. I had
certain theories about the Critique as far back as The
Generation of "X", but still needed to do a full study at
Kant's own level, rather than reworking his text with little
explanation. What happened during the reading and
discussions was my coming into certain views and
clarifying earlier ones which made a full interpretation of
the Critique a possibility. So, I sat down to write as I
promoted my novel. The result is this pure critique of the
mind: The Pure Critique of Reason.
What follows, then is wholly my own, unless
otherwise noted, and involves no outside bibliography
aside from the Critique itself and a few of Kant's other
works. This "pure", bold, work has been my most serious
contribution to the realm of Kant Studien and also
became my way of telling the world I was ready to
graduate, if you will. Indeed, after completing this
monograph in 1999, along with the related interview
book, Synthetic A Priori, I felt a certain completeness -
something I have since learned to interpret as the
completion of my apprenticeship in Philosophy.
M.R.M. Parrott
Columbia SC, October, 2002
6
INTRODUCTION
Human reason has this peculiar fate that in
one species of its knowledge it is burdened by
questions which, as prescribed by the very
nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore,
but which, as transcending all its powers, it is
also not able to answer.(Kant, CPR, Avii)
What young Romantic, who has been filled with
an aesthetic awareness which comes from the reading of
Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and others, has
not also read these famous opening words from Kant's
first preface to The Critique of Pure Reason, and found
themselves charged with excitement and transformed in
the very core of their being? What student of
Romanticism in general could not been moved by these
thoughts of a "peculiar fate" while listening to Beethoven,
looking at a Delacroix or a Rodin? Of course, I may be
speaking for myself alone when I envelope the subject
within the bounds of its own subjectivity, for it is my own
subjectivity alone which I can report. As an
undergraduate, I was indeed leveled, upon reading Kant,
finding that his words seemed to blow down anything
which had previously passed for analysis, although it
must be admitted that I had not, at that time, been
exposed to very many philosophers before my initial
discovery of Kant.
The opening idea, that human reason, the very
7
faculty which had always been described as possessive of
an unbound intellectual power, would actually be in a
predicament from which it could not escape; that it would
be resigned to something resembling a fate; this was a
notion which had trampled upon the philosophical dogma
characterized by all of my previous studies. So, as I
found from Kant, reason is to be burdened by questions
which it can neither ignore, nor answer! What a supreme
tragedy! What a basis for a Romantic destiny!
This early view of Kant's project has influenced
me down to the present day, although my effusiveness has
been subdued. In fact, I believe it crucial to interpret
Kant in this romantic light in order to understand the full
thrust of the Critique. The phrase "necessary illusion,"
for example, which interested me later, in Graduate
school, is only marginally interesting, if taken literally,
but, taken in the light of destiny, the phrase yields the
deeper insight which Kant intended for it. It is the unique
situation of reason to construct for itself an illusion of an
outer world, to formulate its necessity, and then to never
question its truth. All of this is quite independent from
the actual existence of an outer world, apart from what
reason senses and constructs.
It has, then, all along been Kant who has drawn
me into philosophy; it has been Kant who has kept me
returning time and time again, through the vissitudes of
graduate study, through my conceptions of the
philosophical task and its expression. Kant's notions of
'escape' and 'synthetic a priori' more or less directed The
Ethos of Modernity, The Empiricism of Subjectivity, and
To Lie Within the Moment as I wrote them. Kant now
receives my full attention, in this The Pure Critique of
8
Reason, named of course for Kant's great work. I can
ignore no longer the vast ideas I have had while reading
him over the years.
But why focus our attention, one more time, upon
"crazy old Kant?", as my professor Dick Dixon would ask
in jest, why write one more book on a figure who has
received such a dearth of attention from philosophers,
why contribute both to the confusion of his thought and
the assurance that it will never be laid to rest? Because, I
answer, no philosopher is ever truly laid to rest who also
provided such fuel for discussion; I refer generally to
those philosophers who will be ever within our eyes as
true innovators of our discipline, and for good reason.
In the present work then, I will "describe" The

Critique of Pure Reason for you. I will make the nearest
attempt I can to explicate the great text in such a way
which both eludes many of the technical difficulties, and
provides a clear path toward Kant's ethical, political and
aesthetic works. My original intent was to go through all
of those, in turn, creating a much more involved book,
but I decided, somewhere in the middle of what you now
hold before you, that such an approach would be far too
grand.
How I will avoid many of the technical problems
of the great Critique is by overlooking them, not in a way
which ignores them, but in a way which, literally, "looks
over" a particular problem. The scope of the Critique is
so wide, that a small linguistic problem really has no
bearing upon the main point of view. A better way to say
9
this, is that many of these difficulties disappear
themselves, when that large scope is taken into account,
and present no threat whatsoever to the integrity of the
whole; they have only served to make a career for the
multitude of scholastic professors of our times.
How I will provide a clear path to the ethical,
political and aesthetic work of Kant, is by showing how
much of what comes after the Critique, comes out of the
Critique. Many of the same arguments and opinions on
ethics which come in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics
of Morals, actually are born in The Critique of Pure
Reason. In the face of this fact, there is little cause to
lament, as many have, that Kant's notion of "duty" is in
conflict with his epistemology. This view is certainly
ludicrous, and in fact, there is a much more lucid cause to
believe that what we assume about the word "duty" is
itself altogether wrong, and that Kant's ethical notion of
the "Kingdom of Ends" is a far better, and more accurate,
way of understanding the matter. It is even possible, and
quite insightful, to believe, as others would have it, that
the main line of argument within the Critique is based
upon a moral premise and directive, such that, in order
for us to entertain the ideal of morality, it is necessary for
us to prove the synthetic nature of reason.
So, the unity of Kant's great system is first based
upon getting straight just what he was saying in all those
pages of the Critique. Then, one must see how Kant's
epistemology provided the basis for an understanding of
morality, politics, and aesthetics, and that this basis is a
far cry from the popular American assumption, that it lies
merely within a narrow definition of duty. This
misconception, among several others, will come to
10
outline this work. My purpose is to explain The Critique
of Pure Reason, and in so doing, I believe the destruction
of many common misunderstandings of Kant will easily
follow.
11
SCOPE OF CRITIQUE
It is an interesting question to pose, from the
start, why such a large body of literature has been devoted
to The Critique of Pure Reason; why has there been so
much written work about the treatise, writings which both
praise and denounce it? The easy answer is that there are
many people in our world who are set about to write
things about other thinkers, and are seemingly rewarded
for doing so. The better, and more accurate, answer is
that there are those philosophers within the history of
ideas, who, in creating a great system of thought, have
succeeded in saying things which are so monumental in
their scope, so profound in their penetration, and so rich
in their implications, that they simply cannot be ignored.
Kant is just such an example, and the first Critique fits
just such an epitaph.
The phenomenal impact of Kant's work is, by all
accounts, centered within this first of the three critiques,
and it is within its pages, within the field of pure reason
itself, that we may find the seeds for all of Kant's
subsequent thoughts upon morals, politics, and aesthetics.
This is so because for Kant, reason begins its day with
certain principles, but these principles can only be applied
by reason's own means, and only to a possible experience.
The structures of thought and action which we are able to
build as a result of the application of principles seem to
work rather well for us, on the surface at least, since we
find ourselves able to move about in our world, to
12
consume food and perform tasks. Yet, it is in trying to go
beyond such common experiences, and within that
momentary gap, that reason successively applies its own
principles to ever more remote sets of conditions, forever
on its way toward the "unconditioned." In this
construction of ever larger and far more grand views of
its world, reason will eventually come to apply principles
to those things which cannot be known by reason itself.
Reason will endeavour, then, to construct views of
objects which make up its internal world, but objects for
which there is no empirical employment to be found
within the realm of experiences, or even possible
experiences.
Kant found that reason, therefore, "precipitates
itself into darkness and contradictions," not only because
of the application of simple principles to remote
conditions, but also because reason has, and as its
uppermost curiosity, the establishment of those objects
with which it can have no immediate relation, and which
have no basis within experience. In this, reason makes
for itself the task of furnishing its own experience with
objects which it can neither confirm nor deny, and then
relies upon these objects for more elaborate constructions.
Furthermore, reason can neither detect whether or not
these curiosities are errors in its judgement; and even if
they are errors in judgement, from where the errors
spring, if they are from within thought, or if they may
have arisen from other errors. Reason, then, in applying
its internal principles far outside the limits of its own
experience, may not be able to rely upon a reasonable test
of these principles using any known empirical methods.
This is to say that reason is, in some way, quite free to run
13
beyond the bounds of experience in an unchecked
manner.
The idea of reason's ability to run beyond its
scope connects with Kant's rather Romantic view of
subjectivity. On this interpretation, if we have defined
subjectivity as an apparatus which, through the use of its
principles, generates unconditioned objects, and is also
based upon general notions of the unique viewpoint, then
we have found in Kant's work a philosophical connection
to the wider artistic period recognizing the unique
viewpoint as something to behold. This type of
consideration will be found throughout the chapters of
this book. It will be a working proposition that, in
empowering subjectivity, Kant fueled Romanticism.
Indicated in the first preface of the critique, Kant
wrote that his time was one of maturity, and his feelings
about that time, the 1770's, were ones of uniqueness
within history; one moment inside the development of a
new kind of maturity for the faculty of judgement,
judgement within the sphere of subjectivity, or, within the
scope of reason itself. The latter part of the eighteenth
century was considered the "age of criticism," and as he
saw it, the success of this new and unique age pointed
headlong toward the very security and stability of those
sciences of mathematics and physics. It is within this
general context that Kant wanted to focus; a context of
"eternal and unalterable laws," laws which are
constructed by the processes of reason and which allow a
subjectivity to "know itself." Kant's legacy was to focus
upon this self-knowledge, or has he would have put it, the
historical task of reason to critique itself. This task is
itself the critique of pure reason from within the very
14
faculty of reason. How these notions of "mature
judgement" and "eternal laws" can be formed together
into one statement of a philosophical purpose is not at all
easy; it is a matter of leaving behind the customary uses
of reason; a matter of allowing the emergence of the
faculty of mature judgement, and a matter of allowing the
application of unalterable laws to reason's powers. This
combination forms the Kantian call toward self-
knowledge and the sciences, and it is not surprising to
find out that, in Kant's day, though it was not a part of
polite society to "map" consciousness in ways which
would rescind from customary beliefs, his ideas which
did just that were given respect. Kant's call to self-
knowledge was unique; by cutting against the dominant
religious and philosophical traditions, it also appealed to
those thinkers whose ideas were also based upon the
rapidly developing mathematical sciences. Though it
may be a popular opinion in our time, to interpret Kant as
standing against freedom, against individuality, and
against reason, nothing could actually be further from the
truth; the very propositions only serve to demonstrate the
current American tendency to misconstrue historical
figures.
Let us be this clear; Kant provided the most
clearly stated provision, and the most easily defendable
statements, for individual freedom known up to that time,
and perhaps since. Also avoided in his work are any
philosophical processes which would tend to deny
individuality. One need only read him at his word, rather
than through another thinker. Kant's philosophy was
curiously devoted to individuality, rather than being
against it; this devotion clues us in to the meaning of the
15
famous phrase, Sapere Aude, from his 1784 essay, What
is Enlightenment? The individual, Kant argues, should
have the support from the government, and the courage
from within, to utilize the innate understanding from
within, rather than allow oneself to be "yoked" to the
herding power of customs and traditions. If this could be
called the will, then from this will, he says in the
Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals, all notions of
individuality and morality spring. It is quite important to
note well this general mood, and precisely at this point,
since Kant refers to his individualism in the preface to
The Critique of Pure Reason, and also since this
necessarily colours the whole interpretation of the critical
project. Many readers also interpret Kant's use of the
word "critical" to mean that he was "critical of"
something, when it was really meant to render something
along the lines of having a "critical distance from" or a
"balance" with that which is given, and that which comes
from the individual. Kant felt this better defined critical
faculty of reason should be identified and developed, not
to lodge us within some kind of a negative monument,
but to balance with reason's acumen the sheer enthusiasm
and optimism by which our emotions operate.
In the preface to the second edition, usually
printed alongside the first, we find Kant concerning
himself, right from the very beginning, with the
placement of this "practice" of critique upon a certain and
secure path, one which offers the stability of science. The
example he used to describe this path involves the
progress, or really the lack of the same, which logic has
made since Aristotle's time. The security which logic has
enjoyed, Kant explained, has been based mostly upon the
16
absence of a need to retrace the steps made, and also, by
the absence of a corresponding need to advance in steps.
The use of the word "steps" is obviously in keeping with
the theme of a "path," and we may reason that a secure
path is, by Kant's account, just what logic found itself on,
because a secure path is one in which there are no steps as
such, or at least, none which are needed. So, for Kant,
since logic has not retreated or advanced in steps, and
since evidently none were needed, logic has been taken as
a secure and completed body of doctrine. Kant has,
however, been ridiculed in our time for proclaiming logic
to be a completed doctrine, when, so shortly after his
death, there was a flurry of logical activity never before
seen. From Peano to Gdel, and beyond, logic, as a
doctrine, has certainly not been complete, if the reader
will pardon the pun, but in an effort to quickly rush to
Kant's side on this matter, it is to the sphere of logic that
Kant seems to refer, rather than on its content; he said the
sole concern of logic is to exhaustively exposit the "rules
of thought," by means of which a formal and strict proof
may come about. So, the addition of newer methods,
techniques, rules or divisions, or even the declaration of
formal incompleteness, still would have no bearing
toward contradicting Kant's claim. These developments
and setbacks have had no effect at all upon the proper
"sphere" into which logic is bound, as far as we are
concerned, since we still appeal to it as the final measure
of proper reasoning. It would therefore be far more
accurate to say the proper sphere of logic, though not
changed in its scope in the least, has certainly been
brought into sharper and sharper resolution since Kant's
day, and if Kant was wrong in his claim, he was only
17
wrong in declaring logic to be "finished." However, my
response, in Kant's favour, to this last point can be easily
anticipated.
There is another small problem with the notion of
security which has not been answered thus far; if a secure
path seems to be something which is not a "path," or a
path down which it is not possible to go any farther, then
it seems to be a "garden path." It creates the idea of a
possible advance, while also blocking that advance. An
answer to this difficulty comes near the end of page Bix,
in the Critique, where Kant said the success of logic is
entirely due to its limitations; to its de-limitations,
understand; and that the function of logic is to form a
"vestibule," an introduction, or a "foyer" to the sciences.
This new imagery could lead us to conclude that the
description of logic advancing, even a single step, upon
its secure path, is itself inaccurate as a metaphor; we may
conclude that Kant mixed his metaphors with a bit of a
heavy hand, then. To clean them up, we could say that
logic provides one the possibility of passing through the
vestibule in one step, and onward into the various rooms
within the rest of the structure, within the sciences. The
rooms in this structure represent the various parts of the
sciences, and in the construction of these rooms we find
the possibility to advance, to move by steps. Science, on
this rather Quinean view, is a house or a building which is
forever in the process of being built; it is graced with new
additions, it is torn apart in certain places to make room
for other sections; all while the vestibule leading into it
has remained the same, and only in the sense of providing
the sphere for possible construction. By this light, then,
we may say that the vestibule of logic has been finished
18
and completed; yet even the vestibule can be adorned
with new closets, as we have seen in more recent days.
All architecture aside, Kant's view is that science
has been successful because it makes use of a method by
which one may only affirm those "internal truths."
Internal truths are those which are placed into the object,
if you will, by the act of observation from within the
subject. The scientific method which Kant wants to
achieve is based from the start upon a kind of revolution,
and one which, in its very introduction, overturns the
customary techniques of reasoning about subjects and
objects. This revolution in science and reason means that
it is not the object which sends its properties into the
perceptory subject, but we the subjects, who more
actively bring out, or derive, from the "thing" before us,
as it were, only that which is implied by those very
concepts with which we work. We know about things
beyond us, only to the extent that we already know what
is within us; we devise these concepts in an a priori
fashion, before coming to our experience; we construct a
certain figure, and only by presenting it to ourselves with
what is in accord with our own concepts of presenting it,
are we able to represent that figure as something which is
outside of us. Reason, therefore, only has "insight" into
what it alone can produce from the corpus of its own
designs, and rather than having the ability to intuit
properties from the thing-in-itself, reason actively
presents the thing-in-itself as that which generates those
properties. It by no means follows that the thing-in-itself
actually exists, as something which is separate from us, or
that it even produces the properties we attribute to it. If
this sounds, on first hearing, as if we are talking about a
19
closed system, one in which is given at birth, and never
appended, then let us state, this is not the case. It is
through these workings, through the internal generation
of synthetic a priori reasoning, that we add to our base of
knowledge and are able to learn about the world in a
constant fashion. Kant was not trying to tell us that there
are no objects in the universe, but that our notions of
objects do not come from our experiences of them. Our
experiences of them are in part a result of our method of
representing our world as an inner one and an outer one.
Science has, then, in one and the same moment,
the ability to make use of only those principles by which
any appearances, or representations, are possible, while in
the same moment, also constructing the experimental
circumstance which follows such principles and presents
the appearances. Science is therefore a metaphor for
subjective critique, and therefore allows us to interrogate
nature, a nature which is already an appearance within
our subjectivity. We interrogate nature by using a
Socratic method to generate what would be called
"knowledge" about that nature. Subjectivity first
constructs the appearance of nature, and then, through its
use of the sciences, is able to critique that appearance.
Now, for Kant, one would want the same for metaphysics,
which he describes as the "Queen" of the sciences. To
view metaphysics within the environment we described
of science, is to also recognize that it too must be a part of
questioning the appearance of nature, using the principles
of which reason forms. Metaphysics is therefore a
"speculative" science, as understood by the Latin term
speculare, or "to look at." What metaphysics speculates
upon are not objects of common experience, such as
20
chairs or trees, those are the focus of its daughter
sciences. Metaphysics looks toward those objects of
reason, such as God and the thing-in-itself, which can
have no empirical component, and thus cannot be objects
in the field of appearances. In speculating upon these
kinds of objects, metaphysics bases itself upon certain
principles, just as mathematics does, for example, but
unlike mathematics, its principles are not to be applied
directly to the objects of intuition, such as numbers are
based upon objects of experience. Metaphysical
principles are applied to no objects at all, save what the
mind itself can imagine, and so, it speculates upon those
types of objects which have no basis within experience.
Placing metaphysics upon the secure path which
all other science enjoys means that it too should benefit
from the same revolution in thought described above.
Instead of supposing that our fount of knowledge is
something which conforms to the objects outside
ourselves, we must invert our reasoning and suppose that
these objects, as we experience them, are in conformity
with our concepts, with our knowledge, with our
principles. So, the chair I sit on, as I experience it, is in
conformity with my own concepts of what a chair is
supposed to be. Likewise with a metaphysical object,
God, to the extent that I might ever experience him, is
merely in conformity with my notions of what a "God"
should be. Even by most religious interpretations, God is
not an object which can ever be part of my possible
experience, as we might be more inclined to attribute
subjectivity to him; so God truly is a product of reason
alone. Because the understanding, as a faculty, is made
up of rules which must be present within us before
21
encountering any possible objects, the rules form the
basis of our a priori knowledge. This allows us to realize
that we do indeed have knowledge of the objects of our
reason, before our experience, a priori, and we can
thereby place our metaphysical inquiry on the desired
level of a secure path, just as the sciences have enjoyed
for centuries. The famous Kopernische Wende, which
Kant described of his project, this allows us to believe
that chairs, trees, God or the thing-in-itself, are not
presented to me in a literal way, for me to simply take up
as is, but it is I who present to myself the appearance of
these objects, based upon the principles I already own.
These appearances can be known a priori and with
certainty and in no way contradict the proposed existence
of the objects in question, nor the fact of their empirical
placement within my experiences.
More importantly, this philosophical achievement
also makes it possible for reason to transcend the bounds
and limits of its experience and appearances, and to
launch itself headlong into uncharted and mysterious
regions, without which the Arts as a whole would not be
possible. The firm institution of a priori knowledge bears
not only upon the idea that our seemingly "objective"
experience is merely in full conformity with our concepts,
but also upon the possibility of going well beyond the
dull repetition of our daily life, far into the personal
realms of subjective beauty. Kant's Copernican
revolution makes the creativity of human reason a stern
necessity, rather than an afterthought, since even the most
plain representation, as it is an appearance, of a chair or a
tree, has to be generated from within the individual. So,
science, as the method applied to this generation, could
22
be represented as a continually evolving building, and a
structure which is not finalized, but also as a constantly
hypostatized corpus of representations, made up wholly
of the different perspectives and influences of the various
individuals who practice it.
It is, therefore, this focus upon creativity which
also allows us to view Kant as an individualist, as he
stands metaphysics in relation to a secure scientific path,
but also in relation to a free subjective beauty. This
means the "objects" of metaphysics would become a part
of the structure of science itself, which is not altogether
separate from artistic creativity, since science and
metaphysics would likewise be continually evolving parts
of an active construction of expression. Kant wanted us
to be able to open ourselves, for us to move away from
the dogmatism and "objectivity" of the schools and
churches, which taught people how to obey, memorize,
and learn. We should be allowed to engage in free
discussions about topics which are normally avoided by
the dogmatists and objectivity experts, and in this, Kant
supported the creation of various alternative models of
ontological objects, all to be discussed without criticism
from the state, the school, or the church. It is in this way
that a necessary fuel is provided for the Romantics who
would follow in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries. All the German Romantics read Kant, and they
understood his message quite well. Freedom is central,
and should be developed and protected at all cost. It is
unfortunate that the Anglo-American philosophers did not
read him in this way, and left an inherited tendency to
misread Kant.
The freedom which is allowed to the subject is
23
based upon an epistemology of subjectivity which rests
on this insistence: The object which is given to our senses
is an object for us in appearance only. It is not the case
that when we have a priori knowledge, we have garnered
something from the object in itself; for what we have
done is to derive a priori knowledge from the very
possibility of an object; from the base and abstract
definition of how we are going to interpret an object. We
make our knowledge with our own hands, and this kind
of knowledge makes any object we desire a "sensible"
one for us. Therefore, no a priori knowledge can be
attributed to the object, as it may exist on its own; a
priori constructs and principles can only be attributed to
the subject. This approach to epistemology has two
profound effects upon the philosophy which proceeds
from it; the first is in the employment of an essentially
negative, but certainly organizational, tribunal, bringing
adjudication to bear upon the otherwise unchecked
speculation of reason; but the second, and most important
effect, is that there is a positive employment of practical
morality and aesthetic evaluation, which would not be
possible in the least, if the modes of a priori knowledge
where to be merely taken up from the thing-in-itself.
At Bxxviii, Kant makes this clear. The subject,
when taken as an appearance, that is, as one person looks
upon another person, is bound by the natural laws. The
body needs food and rest, and the mind seems to operate
in response to external stimuli; from this viewpoint, the
subject is completely determined, and therefore not free.
But conversely, the subject as a thing-in-itself, or as we
view our own inner subjectivity, is as free as a bird, free
to roam the distant galaxies of aesthetic awareness, and
24
free to extend its inner morality outward and into
practical reason. Freedom depends upon maintaining the
view of the world as an appearance, for if what we take to
be outside us is not an appearance, then the freedom we
want to have within cannot be possible, for we would be
caught within a strict determinism, one which links us to
the object, and vice versa. With this kind of determinism
allowed, rather than being limited to a mere mode of
knowledge within the field of appearance, there would be
no morality or art, for there would be no subjective
freedom through which to generate these feelings. This
notion of freedom, introduced into the learning
environment, would leave the youth unfettered to spend
their time more profitably, engaged in the pursuit of new
ideas and opinions, rather than forcibly structured by the
dogmatism of the "established" sciences, and the fait
accompli of most religion. The normal objections to
freedom, which spring from insisting there would be a
lack of uniformity in morality and religion, will forever
be silenced by the appeal to appearances. Both of these
tasks, which hinge upon creativity, are made more
apparent noting the dialectical advantage of showing the
ignorance of the would be objectors to freedom; the
dogmatic school teachers, the strict determinists, and in
our time, the so named "objectivists," all have had a
miniscule effect upon the smallest numbers of the
population. Their influence only extends to their own
kind, if you will, and in no way deters those of us whose
natural motions of creative intellect drive and support the
free spirit.
! ! !
25
The Problem of Critique
There is a bit of a problem involved in this scope,
however. How could it be possible, and how does it
come about, that reason builds its own body of
knowledge about the world? How does this mesh with
the history of ideas? At the heart of these questions, Kant
conceded the more popular empiricist arguments from
Locke, Berkeley and Hume, at B1, stating there is no
doubt that all of our knowledge begins with our
experience; this is the very basis of the empiricist
position. On this account, our knowledge must start with
what is given to us, and by how we sensually experience
the world. Yet, in giving the rationalist positions their
due, this epistemological basis does preclude the
possibility that some of our knowledge comes from other
sources; all of our knowledge may begin with experience,
but it doesn't follow that it all arises from our experience.
Having given Locke, and others, their due, he turned also
to Descartes, Liebniz, and Wolff, owning that there are
certainly modes of a priori knowledge, which are buried
deep within our very understanding. These modes are in
place from the time of, or before, our birth into this
world, and we may not be in a position to define these
modes adequately, or without much study. We may say,
then, at least these modes are present within us and prior
to any empirical input, but there must indeed be such
empirical input. Kant's position, in fact, demands the a
priori modes of consciousness be adorned with empirical
data, which is molded and shaped according to those
modes.
26
This a priori knowledge is, therefore, that which
is completely independent of our experiences; it is
effectively a collection of processing functions which are
applied to our raw sensory experiences; our experience
would itself be impossible without these processors, and
these processors would have no calling without
experience. Indeed, this arrangement allows us to utilize
the a priori concepts we already hold and actively read
the sense data which is given us; however, this reading is
already one in which we "read into" what is sensed. It is
not that these a priori concepts allow us to see what sense
experience gives us, or that they are simply the keys to
unlock the inner potential of the world; it is not as if the
world were fully formed for us, "out there," waiting for us
to experience it. It is the complicated reality of Kant's
theory, that these concepts actively create meaning for us;
a priori knowledge generates the structure by which our
intuition can order the babble of raw sense data. There
would be no meaning within this data; no soothing touch,
no colour from a painting, or no music from the
symphony, were it not for reason's collection of powerful
modes of consciousness which are the sole providers of
such wonder.
Reason, however proud it may be of such power,
quickly tires of this level of interpretation. Even though
it exercises this freedom with regard to the sense data, it
is certainly limited to the sphere of what interpretation is
possible through the utilization of the given. Reason
therefore proceeds to apply its collection of concepts and
ideas to spheres, realms, and areas far and wide from the
given; reason looks beyond what is given to it, to apply
interpretation to that which cannot, or could not, be given
27
to it. From this transcendence of the given, comes
unavoidable questions of process and philosophy; what
comes to reason through this transcendence are those
questions of God, Freedom and Immortality. The
metaphysical movement beyond the given is such an
incredibly seductive maneuver, that barring flat-out
contradictions, and not always then, the faculty of reason
will not restrain itself from its own inventiveness. Such a
case, for example, is higher order mathematics, as well as
other abstract constructs.
By entertaining itself in this manner, reason
achieves a fabricated extension of its structures, and only
after this fabrication, does reason begin to ask itself if
these extensions were "correctly founded," or seated in
error. Reason tricks itself into the comforting belief, if
you will, that these extensions were a necessary and
indispensable part of the many empirical observations
which accompanied them, and that they provided reason
with its certainty. Thus, reason is a synthesizing faculty,
frequently stepping out of the realm provided by its
analytic judgements, creating an a priori which is rooted
in the pure speculation of future and theoretical
experiences, rather than in the cold analysis of a
posteriori data alone. Mathematics, physics and
metaphysics, are formed from this synthesis of
knowledge, from the bedrock of conceptual application to
sense data, and transcendence of this sense data by the
force of the conceptual apparatus which sustains it.
Reason therefore has the power to generate synthetic a
priori knowledge; that which reason creates, then applies
to possible experiences.
The resulting problem with this application of
28
reason, though a pure application, is the question of how
these synthetic judgements may be possible in the first
place. If critique, in general, can be carried out by
subjectivity, it must be framed by how reason is itself in a
position to raise its own structures. Structures with such
a demand cannot be raised by reason's concepts alone, nor
by the sense data it receives. This, rather metaphysical,
point of view is a natural disposition for the subject;
indeed it is the very basis of subjectivity; it is a
disposition without which individuality and knowledge
could not be possible. The critique, then, as a practice,
allows us to establish how we may come about the
scientific knowledge which we cannot doubt we already
have. To not ask about from where this knowledge arises
is tantamount to sinking straight into the "dogmatic
slumber" of many scholastic thinkers, on Kant's view.
Since reason naturally tricks itself into the error of taking
its synthetic knowledge as a part of the analytic concept,
what is needed is just this kind of critique; one which
allows reason to state for itself how it comes by this
transcendence, and how it can also be maximized for the
benefit of subjectivity.
The critique is quite a special science, based upon
inquires into the very nature of speculative knowledge. It
is an organon of a whole collection of modalities which
are brought to bear upon the analytic of experience. The
knowledge which arises regarding these modalities
should be thought of as "transcendental," serving only as
a necessary and corrective force upon the, otherwise
unrestrained, synthesis of the unconditioned. At this
point, though, it must continue to be an unanswered
question whether Kant envisioned this organon, or canon,
29
to be one which would reduce the differences between
subjects. Would the range of beliefs among individuals,
within each subjectivity, be a problematic to be solved, or
would Kant have said his theory provided the very
possibility of those differences? Would this corrective
force within reason be used to increase conformity within
thought, or merely be a "light in the forest" during one's
walk in life? To be fair, there is little direct textual
support for either conclusion, within the space of Kant's
introduction. Subjective presence is a recurring theme
throughout Kant's work, however, and we can feel
comfortable if, in the present gamble, we say Kant was
not in favour of a position which would compromise
individuality.
30
FORMS OF SENSE
Having settled some general questions relating to
the scope of critique, we can now move on to study
Kant's description of the faculty of intuition. The
Transcendental Aesthetic contains some of the most
perplexing concepts on first view, however, at the most
basic level, we only have Kant's empiricism before us.
When we come upon objects in our experience, and as we
so often stumble upon them, it is they which affect the
mind; this much we have learned from Locke and others.
Not differing widely from this outlook, Kant noted the
function of sensibility, itself buried within intuition
senses the object, and the function of receptivity forms
the intuition of that object. To simply to look out, at a
tree beyond my window, is itself only a moment for me,
yet it is already made up of a whole host of smaller
moments, we will find from Kant. Moreover, these
moments of intuition are instantaneously "clicking off"
within my mind, in order to produce the knowledge I
have about the tree.
In that moment of sensation, we have begun our
path toward knowledge with a moment of aesthetic
balance. Aisthesis, the Greek root word, to which Kant
drew our attention, is what this sensation is based upon,
and in its middle voice form, aisthanomai, it provides
both passive and active meanings to the sensation which
is already an interpretation. We have described this
relation in general, as it captures the formation of an
31
intuition. At one and the same point, I look out of my
window and see a tree before me, and within that
moment, I "make" the tree for myself; that is, I
manufacture the representation by which I have any
experience at all of it. However this does not come
before I make the intuition by which I can represent that
representation within sensation. Isn't that clear?
Allowing me some latitude to explain, let us try to
work this out. Sensibility is therefore that part where the
eye inside of my head, for example, focuses generally
upon the scene before me, but this eye, at just this stage,
cannot in any way detect a particular object distinctly
from another, since the raw content of the static scene
before me is yet unfocused. At this stage, then, the image
is only so many coloured pixels upon the retina, and is
not yet clear enough to even be properly called an image.
It has also not been transported up the optic nerve into the
brain, which is necessary for the focused image to be
recognized. This collection of pixels, if you will, needs
to be transmitted to the visual cortex, which is "plugged"
into the rest of the brain. It is the cortex, acting as a
receptor, and the part actually forming the intuition,
which provides the occasion for the experience of the tree
to take place. Even though, at this point, I may not be
able to distinguish the "tree" from another object, such as
a "house," it is no matter; for I have constructed the
system by which I may add this possible object into my
experience.
My eye merely takes in the visual possibility of
the tree, while the cortex makes it possible to see a tree,
or to see it as a tree in the first place. Even if I have
managed to give this physiological explanation a rather
32
incorrect design, it does serve as a quick example of what
Kant meant to describe by his faculty of intuition the
transcendental aesthetic. On this view, there is already a
form which is present within the intuition, present even
before we encounter the given. What is given, as much
as it is in line with sensation, is the matter of intuition;
what is given a posteriori is brought to bear upon this
matter, and is present within the mind already; what is
present, then, is the a priori form of the intuition, which
is completed by the introduction of the given. So, in the
intuition we have two parts; the form and the matter, the
former being that which is within us a priori and the
latter coming from without. Interestingly, this
combination of functions inside the intuition seems to
characterize the whole thrust of Kant's critical project, for
it is this effective combination of empiricism and
rationalism which directed his work.
Now, within the faculty of intuition, not the
intuition itself, there are two processes at work. The first
part forms the sense of an outer nature, and the other is
the inner sense of subjectivity. Making the tree a possible
sensation, intuition must form the appearance of the tree
as an outer reality; for as we know, the tree is to be finally
defined as something which is outside us. The generation
of our experience as an outer form is only possible by
means of this formation of space. Otherwise, the tree,
which, as a sensation traveling up into the brain, would
not be represented as an object separate from me. An a
priori form of intuition, the notion of space allows this
separation of self and outside world. In this separation, I
project before me that space which I am able to
understand, and as a space which exists outside of myself;
33
I likewise project the tree as an object within that space.
This already contains the contrary projection, which is
myself as that which perceives this outer nature. What I
may be, I am at this point an inner thing; a something
which is quite separate from the tree and consequently
separate from the space which "contains" the tree; alas, I
am separate from all but myself. Projected as an inner
awareness, subjectivity moves about within that field
which is projected as an outside reality. The application
of sense, as an internal awareness, provides the basis for
the inner form, time. This means the formation of simple
sensations, such ones of trees, cannot become full
intuitions without involving a double projection; one
inner and the other outer; forms which allow us to
experience time and space. As a priori forms of intuition,
these forms of our sense, as time and space, separate
within the intuition the tree as an object within space, and
subjectivity as temporal receptivity.
Curiously, this description corresponds to a way in
which we may comprehend the Greek middle voice
interpretation of aisthanomai, and in this provides us with
a basis, not for a dualistic subjectivity; this would be split
from itself. It provides an interpretation of subjectivity
which, within its manifold, contains two proprietary
forms. Kant put the potential dualism aside, by
considering space and time to be essentially one; all the
various spaces which we may represent to ourselves, or
experience as outside of ourselves, are only parts of the
one all embracing space which tops out our intuitions.
Likewise, all the temporal sections and divisions which
make up our days and weeks, memories and wishes, are
all parts of the singular notion of time which is within the
34
receptivity we have constructed as inner sense.
Moreover, the possible distinction between the
spatial and temporal is not given as a distinction of a
possible reality, but is manufactured purely within
subjectivity, so that any dualism which can be ascribed to
this position, must also grapple with the postulate that it
is the faculty of intuition which produces the very notion
of such a distinction. Intuition does not really "divide"
sense data in two, in order to then divide again, both the
"I" and the "it" within a purely subjective basis of space
and time. It represents each sensation as a spatial one,
which renders the outer form, and then represents again
this new representation of the original sensation as a
temporal unity, yielding the inner form. In this way, the
subject divides itself from the possible object which is
represented within the sensation. Through this process,
the temporal unity of the subject essentially conditions
the spatial unity of the object, so that the temporal
dimension, which is merely within subjectivity,
conditions all appearances within subjectivity. As an a
priori element within reason, this process provides us
with an overview of how temporal unity may become the
guiding theme within the Critique.
Coming back to my tree, though, it is these a
priori modes of representation which make the tree a
possibility as object in the first place. Otherwise, there
would only be a stream of meaningless data pouring into
the brain and no way to distinguish it from the internal
processing was already in effect, and this is to assume
there could be any internal processing without the form of
inner sense. Many have objected to this "rationalism" by
touting, all of this processing is not needed by the subject;
35
all one has to do, they have told me, is to simply "look at
the tree." They contend the tree is "really there," and that
any rational, honest person has to admit this in order to be
considered rational in the first place. Now, the main
problem with this rather sophomoric objection is in
forgetting this; one certainly needs a set of eyes, in order
to see a tree. If I am right about this, it means there must
be some kind of internal tool at work which, in providing
the occasion for the looking, gives to reason the image of
what is being seen. We know from studying the physics
and physiology of the eye, that there must be some kind
of processing going on within the brain, which interprets
this occasioning of the image. This processing is in place
so that the brain may interpret the otherwise raw,
pixilated signal, which travels along the optic nerve from
the retina. So, we may now say, in response to our overly
pragmatic objectors, that even if Kant was wrong in the
details, his upshot was perfectly in line with
contemporary science; that same science which would be
appealed to by these "rational" and "honest" thinkers. It
is clear, that when I see a tree before me, I do not simply
upload and carry that tree within me, as it is. In viewing
a tree, I am forced to create a mental representation of it,
and this is what has to be refuted, if the would be
objection, from above, is to hold water. On this note,
then, let us be unaffected by those who wish to claim
epistemology should be so simple a matter, that one only
has to look at something which is already there to be
seen.
This brings us to the most entertaining of
questions, of whether the tree is anywhere to be found,
since for subjectivity it is merely a representation. Is
36
there really any object "out there," what we may call a
truly separate "tree-ness" which is loaded into the faculty
of intuition, just as it is in-itself? In point of fact, there is
no such object, nor any object in the known universe;
there is no object which is genuinely separate from any
other object. The universe, as far as we can understand
and represent it, seems to be one giant ball of material,
including our representations of it. The "reality" we
experience dictates that the tree is a separate object, and
this alone is testament to the processing internally within
us. There is, then, no such object perfectly corresponding
to what we would entitle "tree," based upon our
experience. Modern quantum theory tells us this, and
Kant prefigured this theory, by positing these two forms
of intuition within subjectivity, and by insisting that the
object in-itself cannot be known. It should be noted, of
course, Kant's work does not exist in a vacuum; he had
taken cues for these ideas from those who came before
him, such as Berkeley, Liebniz, Spinoza, Locke,
Descartes, and so on, back through the illustrious history
of ideas. It took Kant, though, to put them together into
this kind of a system, which, even though difficult, could
be read by artist and scientist alike.
This theory is applied to time as well, within the
"Elucidation" section. Some thinkers posit, time is
something which really exists; that it is a "dimension,"
separate from our experience, but which also contains the
other three dimensions. Cleverly, Kant grants this
argument; time is something real, he said, for the
argument rests upon the claim that any alteration, any
change whatsoever; even if it is a change which is only
taking place within our subjectivity, and apart from the
37
things "outside" us; takes place necessarily within time.
Yet, even though all changes take place within time, it by
no means follows that this time is something beyond our
subjectivity; time cannot be verified to be beyond the
field of reason itself. Now, there is a "reality" of time, of
course, but it is for no moment something which has
existence outside the subject, and it never has an
"absolute" existence. Time is only a mode by which we
represent our intuitions as outside us; a mode by which
we condition all of our thought. Time is by itself that
"peculiar condition" of sensibility, and without this
peculiarity our subjectivity would not possibly have any
notion of time within its possession. Time, if it is to be
anything other than such a subjective peculiarity, could
only be an effect which arises from the serial
representation of appearances, which is still subjective.
The corollary to this interesting position on time,
is that space also has no absolute existence, and is also
merely a form of intuition housed within the subject.
Space, as something outside us, is only the effect of a
conditioned part of the representation of appearances.
Intuition is something which only belongs to the
appearance of the object, not to the object itself, for there
is no object to be found, or not proven from the
standpoint of subjectivity alone. In other words, the way
a tree looks to me, is wholly a product of the way I "see"
things, in the active sense being used above. I creatively
generate the way things look to me, rather than depending
upon them to "show me" how they look in themselves.
This position is rather like Berkeley's, who
proposed that our understanding of objects comes to us
by the way our minds work; that there is nothing outside
38
of us but an "infinite spirit." Berkeley took this line a bit
farther, though, by saying the infinite spirit, or God, is
always "reading" the cosmos, as a way of making the
cosmos visible for us. Though, it is perception, in
Berkeley's view, which makes something "exist." Kant's
position is also quite like Spinoza's doctrine, which
described how our bodies actively "express" the raw
matter which surrounds us; the epistemology of
subjectivity is merely an expression of the infinite
substance. Spinoza went farther with his idea of
substance, saying we are all a part of this infinite
substance, and it would remain unexpressed without our
eyes, ears and noses there to "read" it. It is evident that
Kant borrowed from both Berkeley and Spinoza in
general, except regarding Berkeley's idea of a vague
infinite spirit which mediates for us, and Spinoza's idea of
a certain type of outer substance, which is expressed.
Kant would not have gone so far on these two points, for
he claimed that nature in-itself is not part of our
subjectivity, and can never be known by us. It may be
that we express the substance of the universe by actively
perceiving it, and it may be that our collective perceptions
seem to keep certain experiences alive, but it is merely
conjecture to suppose these functions are due to a spirit or
a substance beyond us, for through this critique, we can
never establish these ideas as facts.
So, Kant wanted us to understand that time and
space are sources of knowledge, but only in that one and
same moment that they are pure forms of sensible
intuition. The knowledge which is provided by time and
space is a priori, and they are the foundation for synthetic
a priori judgements. Time and space are sources of
39
knowledge by virtue of their nature as intuitions; that is
they are representations, already organized as such, by the
mental apparatus. Further, conceiving time and space in
this manner is the only way out of the dilemma which is
posed by the adoption of "straight" empiricism, as Kant
noted. This is based upon the belief in an ideal, absolute,
reality of time and space; a reality in which there must be
what Kant called "eternal and self-subsistent non-
entities." These non-entities are considered to be "out
there," in straight empiricism, and they are believed to be
perceptible. They therefore must contain all other proper
entities: All of this while not having any existence of
which to speak. In other words, to suppose, with these
empiricists, that time and space are absolute, is to
suppose that there are two "sets" of reality, both very real,
but both outside of us, and both of which have no
perceptible "reality" of themselves; yet, they are to house
everything which has the reality they lack! What a
confusing dilemma! What a jocose suggestion!
The only way to sidestep this silly problem,
created by the belief in absolute time and space, is to
realize, not that there could be no time and no space, but
that time and space are what we create in order to read
our sense data; data which would be otherwise a
confusing babble. Our sense data can tell us in a raw
fashion that an image alters somehow, or that it has a
certain extension, but not that there is an object which
exists "inside" a separate and absolute time and space.
Objects do exist within time and space, but only through
the projection of subjectivity, and only due to the forms
of intuition. The proposed object, much like Descartes'
famous wax, is an "it" for us, but not in-itself; it does
40
indeed become altered as it melts near heat, we may say
that it changes; but time itself does not exist in such a
way which is necessary so as to "envelop" this alteration.
To rely upon this appearance is merely to rely upon the
representative power of our intuition; and that is not
evidence of what may be beyond us. The wax does
indeed have an extension, but by the same token, there is
no real space, as would be required, in order to "house"
this extended wax. These ideas are a product of the way
our minds work, and never will indicate to us how things
really are, either inside, or outside ourselves.
An added bonus for Kant's position is this: For
the straight empiricist, there can be no possibility of an a
priori mathematics, whether desired or not, for ideal
space and time can only come to us through the mediation
of the senses, and in this there can be no a priori element,
as a matter of definition. Kant wished to ensure the
possibility of such an a priori mathematics, and indeed,
he believed that the existence of such a field is already
apparent. The only way we can have a priori
mathematics, is if there exists an internal moment of
representation before experience which reads experience.
This is how an a priori mathematics can provide us with
knowledge about our sense data; by intuiting the data and
giving it the form in which it appears to us; in short, by
giving it the only form it could possibly have for us to
recognize it.
It is not, as Kant reminded us, that sensibility
gives us a merely "confused message" about the things as
they really are; his point is far stronger; it is that we do
not "apprehend them in any fashion whatsoever." The
object we experience, that is, the "represented," depends
41
upon our subjective constitution for its existence. The
tree before me does not have the smallest possibility of
existence, as such, without my subjectivity to draw it.
This again reminds us of Berkeley, who had contended
that objects only exist within perception. Yet, where
Berkeley had said that the object itself effectively
disappears when the subject is taken away, Kant will only
claim that, since we can know the object in no way
whatsoever, then we cannot be a position to say whether
it would disappear or not. It may disappear for us, but not
as a possible experience for someone else. All we will
ever know about an object, is the appearance we
experience of it, the appearance which we alone
construct! To stand from twenty yards and view the tree
before us, is only to represent to ourselves the ideas of
"tree-ness" and "distance" from "us," all through the
forms of our intuition. What is striking our eyes are only
those photons which are bounced and refracted from the
atomic systems, if you will; what we represent as a
collection of leaves, bark and air, is merely a subjectively
separated quantum field of energies. The only part of this
field which comes into our brain are those waves which
are produced within the optic nerve; produced as a
response to the photons which strike the retina. So, the
question about whether there is really a tree out there or
not, is almost a moot one, since we are never in a position
to "connect" to such an object, if it is there, and any
experience of it is generated by the various modes of
awareness.
Furthermore, the inner form of the "I," the
Cartesian cogito, which had been unquestioned until
Kant's day, had itself come under the rubric of
42
"appearance." If the cogito is a thing which can be
perceived in-itself, how can such an entity represent to
itself what it is, within itself? The subject must therefore
represent to itself the mere appearance of an "I," an "I"
which looks at a "tree," an object which is apprehended
by a subject, both already appearances. The activity of
the "self," present only within the manifold of these
intuitions, is what may possibly represent anything
whatsoever. Just as, through the manifold, the tree is
represented, subjectivity is thus constrained to do the
same in regard to the "I" which is identified as the point
of subjectivity; nowhere else is this intellectual "I" to be
found.
There has been so much discussion about the
separation of subject and object, by way of appearances,
that many commentators easily slip right past the
corollary claim at B68, that the separation of subject from
subjectivity, if you will, by way of the appearance of the
self, is also made present to the manifold of intuition. In
this way, subjectivity affects itself, and in the very sense
for which I argued above, in respect to the Greek middle
voice interpretation of aisthonomai. The basis of
subjectivity is this reflexive representation, or the
appearance of the temporal formation of the manifold of
intuition. This will later be called the "unity of
apperception." Apperception is therefore the
representation of a perception, and the process of
unifying this representation, even though the unity comes
by way of appearance, serves to bring subjectivity into
awareness of itself and objects outside of itself. In this
way, Kant provided a notion individuality which had
never before been constructed, and with this collection of
43
doctrines, the full rupture is felt between the normal way
of doing epistemology, based upon a split of subject and
object, and Kant's new schematic of representation.
Let us note, though, Kant is not saying that the
unity is only an illusion, or that the object which is taken
outside us, along with the subject within us, is only a
seeming reality; assuming the reality of objects is not a
pitfall of subjectivity. Kant makes it clear that in order to
construct any type of appearance, one must have
available an item which is actually given to the senses.
So, there really is a quantum field which allows for the
representations of "self," and trees outside our windows.
Now, if we posit that these forms of representation within
us, have in themselves an objective reality, then we
cannot prevent the notion of illusory subjects and objects.
If we attribute our appearances to the "reality" of an outer
world, as Kant noted, we then, like Berkeley, degrade
bodies to the status of mere illusions; we will also need to
suppose that space and time have an objective reality.
When assuming that time and space have an outer reality,
while themselves not substantially "existing," we
contend that they contain everything which is existent
within them; it is therefore no trouble to conclude that the
subject and object are only illusions. While it is not clear
from Kant's analysis that Berkeley actually construed
time and space in this particular way, it is also not
possible for us to know to what extent Kant was familiar
with the complexities of Berkeley's thought. As we
know, the notion of God, or an infinite spirit, saves
Berkeley from the proposition that we are only dreaming,
by having these outer bodies infinitely perceptible by God
himself. It is through God's perception that we are able to
44
perceive and maintain the bodies, in Berkely's view.
Kant, on the other hand, does not allow God to
come our ontological rescue, for even God, by Kant's
mind, is only an object of "possible experience;" an
appearance for us, and is never something which we can
know in itself. In fact, Kant goes far enough to limit the
idea of God to the same level of subjectivity above; God
could not be an object of sensible intuition, not to us, nor
even to himself, for what we take to be limitless, could
not think about itself, for thought would be an immediate
limitation to such a being, strained just as we, to represent
itself. God would be limited to the same perplexities of
subjectivity which we are attempting to describe, and that
conflicts with what God is assumed to be. Furthermore,
if we take God to be that which contains the universe,
then our supposed knowledge of such a realm, or being,
would have to come through the universe, to which we
are limited, and therefore God would have to be a
perceptible entity to us.
In his clear denial of the traditional notions of
God, Kant further provided for human freedom, released
from the resulting panopticism of an omnipotent being
which could only moralize and direct us. This incredibly
thin conception of God, which I take to be a prelude to an
outright atheism, along with the extremely powerful
conception of synthetic a priori, can therefore be in
themselves no great threat to the goal of individuality;
and neither can the famous categorical imperative, as we
shall see later. In Kant we find the most complete and
compelling case for the freedom and individuality of
subjectivity ever conceived. Our individuality, on his
view, does not depend upon God, nor does it depend upon
45
the merely a priori, nor upon any empirical input alone;
for none of these would truly support individuality. Kant
bases our individuality upon the synthetic construction of
knowledge, by which we navigate the world as an
appearance. Kant has given us the keys to the kingdom,
as it were, in a way not done by any philosopher.
It is a marked characteristic of philosophers on the
contemporary scene to confuse these points; to
misunderstand Kant; to portray his philosophy incorrectly
as the best limitation to freedom and singularity, by
limiting subjectivity to the needs of nationalism. This
kind of thought is indeed unfortunate, and could not be
further from Kant's actual words. Since philosophy
continues to struggle with the pain of erecting an ethical
support system for individuality, it is ironic the most
poignant representative this has been left within a ball of
dilettante confusion. If the rather popular and pervasive
misrepresentation of Kant within the contemporary
Anglo-American philosophical world has rested upon
anything, it has rested upon a near inversion of the
doctrines and arguments found within the Transcendental
Aesthetic.
46
LOGIC OF THE MIND
As we have learned from our reading of the
transcendental aesthetic, Kant understood there to be two
kinds of intuition, one time and the other space, which are
delivered to the confluence of the mind as one of the two
sources of knowledge. As the aesthetic described how
the empirical source comes about, though dominated by
the a priori forms of intuition, the transcendental analytic
describes how the pure a priori source is structured. It
should be noted that, though there are two sources of
knowledge within the workings of our minds, this does
not mean that there are two types of knowledge; rather,
there are two sources of input, which produce the final
product of knowledge. The aesthetic provides the
possible content of knowledge, but the analytic is first
necessary as an a priori form of knowledge; both are
necessary for us to have the first and most rudimentary
thoughts.
A set of photons striking a retina will not yield the
smallest increment of knowledge alone. Even as the
image is traced up through the optical nerve and into the
visual cortex, the a priori forms of intuition are still not
enough to produce thoughts. What is needed is a faculty
of understanding which interprets this delivered content,
and in providing a receptivity within us for our
impressions of objects, there is also a certain spontaneity
in our concepts as the knowledge is being fabricated. The
resulting union of the impression with a concept therefore
47
allows for the possibility of knowledge; indeed, it is their
union alone which provides us with our base of
knowledge. "Thoughts without content are empty,
intuitions without concepts are blind," and it is the
application of the intuition to the concept which
occasions this union.
This large and complicated second part of the
Critique, the "doctrine of the elements," has to do with
this second source of input, the concepts of the
understanding. Conceived by Kant as a "logic," or a
transcendental logic, the section as a whole goes along
with the transcendental aesthetic. The reasoning is
simple enough here; "aesthetic," as I have noted, comes
from aisthesis, which in Greek carries the sense, "by the
means of perception." "Logic" comes to us from logos,
and carries the meaning of "thought," or reason, itself.
So, logic will apply to concepts generally, and to reason
as a special case; but let us not get too caught up in these
organizational ideas, for later, we will make further
distinctions between the faculties of reason and
understanding. In the faculty of reason we will discover
the employment of the concepts, even in the face of their
necessary employment within the aesthetic. These and
other rather scholastic details are seen as weaknesses by
many commentators, while I propose that they really have
no import to the true thrust of the Critique. Let us then
focus in on what this logos is supposed to accomplish for
the larger scope of our project.
We can begin with the notion of "General logic,"
as a vast field. It is used by Kant in a pure way, as a
method of dealing with the collection of concepts within
understanding. Logic is therefore used as an canon of
48
thought, in the ancient sense of that term. Logic can also
be applied as a correction and guidance for thought, as
when we put logic into a relation with the subjective
understanding of empirical conditions. Such a case
would be illustrated by the field of psychology, in
general. When these uses of logic are turned inward,
though, and toward all of the intuitions and concepts
which can be known a priori, then logic is employed in a
transcendental manner, and it may be said to inquire into
the very possibility of any knowledge before experience.
For example, the application of the idea of space to the
general idea of objects, but not those objects which
already come to us from experience, is itself a
transcendental use of logic. Space, in this usage, is not to
be applied to the objects of sense alone, for this would be
an empirical employment; when I internally represent to
myself the idea of a "tree" as something taken along with
the space around it, I have used this transcendental mode
in an a priori manner, but when I visually look out
through my window, toward the sycamore tree outside, I
am then representing my experience of a tree by means of
the forms of intuition. I represent the sycamore as an
object which is in that space, and this action can only be
empirical.
This transcendental logic may also be divided into
analytical and dialectical uses, with the analytic
representing the a priori employment within the
understanding, the dialectic, the a priori employment
within reason. This division of employments correspond
to the basic chapters of the Critique. Those chapters
which have to do with the dialectic, including
Phenomena and Noumena, and the Amphiboly of the
49
Concepts of Reflection, will be the focus of the next
chapter of this volume. In the present chapter, though, I
will hover over the understanding and its faculty of
imagination, as presented within the transcendental
analytic.
For a light note to end this small introduction, we
find at A58, Kant presenting us with a joke; I mention this
only to ward off those who claim Kant's writing to be dry
and technical. He says it is the sagacious and insightful
thinker who knows what questions may be reasonably
asked of an interlocutor, for an absurd question tricks one
into an absurd answer; it is rather like the questioner is
milking a male goat and the answerer is attempting to use
a sieve to catch the possible milk! All attempts at humor
aside, we may say the empiricist thinker is one who asks
of truth what its criterion may be, thereby only looking
within the field of experience; it is he who attempts to
milk the male goat. The scientist of nature is holding the
sieve.
This serves as a nice transition, since it is a
general criterion of truth which both the empiricist and
the natural scientist seek, but cannot find. What is needed
is a criterion which would be valid in all cases, not
merely remaining dependent upon one case alone.
Experience would provide such a criterion, but this
criterion must itself provide for analytical logic which
would expand the rules of the understanding on basis of
form alone. Another outcome of using this general
criterion in the form of a logical system within the
understanding, also arises by how this criterion provides
us with a negative "touchstone" of truth. This means the
system would be used as a positive construct of thought,
50
but also as a guide against error. We might note, it is
logic which keeps us, in most cases, from making the
most outlandish and incredible of claims. Logic helps us
in these cases by pointing us to "modes of reasoning"
which will keep in check some of the extravagances of
our speculations, and in this, logic offers us the most
complete and consistent set of precepts, as a general
apparatus of truth. By utilizing this service, our system of
logic must be allowed to conform with its objects, or
actually, it must be allowed to have its objects conform to
itself as a system. This conformity is needed for our
criterion of truth to be met with at all in the field of our
experiences. Since logic simply cannot proceed beyond
this kind of structural employment, it thereby forms, on
this basis, the "negative condition" of truth, but it is not
that logic is used as a solely negative practice. When
properly employed, logic neither bars nor paves the road
toward frivolous and imaginary tapestries. It mainly
guards us against goofs and broken chains of reasoning,
which form the basis of understanding, and the analytic
portion of general logic.
So, given this definition of a general criterion of
truth, the analytical, logical model is used to apply its
guidance toward the dialectic portion of general logic,
which, in the next chapter, will be understood as the
faculty of reason, the analytic portion corresponding to
the faculty of understanding. Thus, the application of
analytical logic to dialectic reason is to be thought of as a
critique of dialectical illusions, which we shall describe,
and is not to be seen as a harbinger toward the production
of these illusions. The value of a critique of our reason is
to be found within such "pure understanding alone."
51
Further, the critique of reason becomes a synthetic mode
of evaluation, which, due to its balance with the
understanding, corrects potential misapplications of
analytical logic. These misapplications arise when the
understanding is thought as an organon, which gives it
too much power over its content; the understanding is
merely capable of being a canon, or an exalted guide.
Dialectical illusions, in this light, occur most pointedly
when the principles within the understanding are
mistakenly applied to what can only reside beyond the
limits of any possible experience, or as stated above,
when these principles are taken by themselves as a
perfected organon of thought.
Kant's resulting canon contained within the
understanding is made up of "concepts" and "principles,"
both of which work together to make up a systematic
whole; the a priori content of our knowledge. Generally
speaking, these principles make it possible to place the
concepts into relation with the intuitions. It is, therefore,
a principle which "schematizes," or temporalizes, the
static concept, which was only a form of thought, and
brings it into play where it serves to conceptualize the
content of the intuition through a manifold. This moment
of schematization is, for Kant, the basis of a faculty of
judgement, and its mode of application is not necessarily
the same for all of us in all respects; the discovery of
these concepts is in all of our minds the same, though.
Judgement, then, cleverly mediates the process of
knowledge formation through these temporalities, which
resulted from bringing the concept into relation with the
intuition; in this way both the schematization and the
concept itself are brought under the "unity of
52
apperception." Without this unity, our subjectivity would
not be complete, for it would have no overarching ability
to provide for itself a simple purpose within the landscape
of reason.
Now, anyone who has read these passages will
agree, I have greatly simplified this process, but how it is
to work in detail, brings us into full contact with Kant's
insufferable outline of the understanding, which would
likely take too much space to explain. A complicated
machinery which had never before, or since, been seen at
such a level in the history of philosophy, Kant's
descriptions have baffled more than a few. I do not wish
to involve myself with this machinery at such a level, for
it is certainly a maze which has ensnared so many
commentators, and I run the risk of destroying the scope
of this book, which aims to solve the riddles of the
Critique, while also remaining lucid. However, I am not
avoiding what the reader may assume is not clear to me;
this is not the impression I would like to usher; for like
most students of Kant, I have spent much, much time
with my head buried under, studying this machinery, and
as a bold young student, I went to lengths redrawing all of
the tables and diagrams Kant provided. I found in these
studies, though, there are many words which are used in
conflicting ways, and there are many ideas which are not
as clear as Kant would have had them. When studying a
philosopher, one often has to overlook more than one
would, assuming words are not sacrosanct, in order to see
the whole of the project. On this basis, then, let us
choose a measure between sparing the pain of what can
be garnered on direct reading, and discussing the
concepts in minute detail. Rather than become trapped
53
within some of these conflicts, therefore, liberty will be
taken, so that the presentation of these concepts and
principles can be made to such an extent as to make
myself a worthy commentator, while hopefully avoiding
the degrees at which I would appear to be a dilettante.
It would, therefore, be sheer idiocy to gloss over
Kant's unprecedented analysis with a mere cursory
glance, yet here, however, the relevant sections of the
Critique should, and will, be displayed, in such a way as
to render them in their proper scale with the rest of the
work. We must not forget, that the Critique contains far
more insights and concepts than what we see in the
analytic sections alone. So, to get my cows over their
buckets, I will proceed to lay all of the players of the
analytic out upon the table, in an effort to discuss them in
just the right amount of detail.
At the outset, the reader of the Critique will no
doubt note the somewhat strange, and certainly tidy,
appearance of the arrangements and various tables, which
are found throughout the analytic, as well as in other parts
of the work. Since Kant uses the four groupings over and
over and over, we should assume, beyond a certain
organizational zealotry, they must have been very
important to him, and to some extent must contribute to
the full appreciation of his enterprise. However we may
slice them up, though, it really matters very little toward
our purpose of gaining an understanding of Kant's
philosophical work in the Critique. These structures are
merely scholastic, and to dwell upon them now will only
serve to confuse, torment, or outright abandon, the reader;
obfuscating the largesse of the work. Once again, I direct
the reader to imagine the whole scope of the Critique,
54
where these various charts will be relegated to mere
sketches.
There are, then, various modes of our
understanding, made up of certain "moments," and these
moments are crafted of two parts; judgement and
category. We have before us what Kant calls logical
judgements and categorical concepts, both of which work
very much together, in such a way that the judgements
provide the forms of our thought, and the concepts, or
categories, provide the synthetic unity. Thus far, we have
a unity which applies only to the analytic of judgement,
rather than the larger unity of apperception mentioned
above. A judgement, as a form, conditions the creation of
its corresponding category, because the judgements,
described at A70/B95, are to be taken as the "complete
science of logic," and in their completeness, they are
merely a collection of the logical functions of out
thoughts.
For example, the "universal" type of judgement
provides a conceptual for the insertion of the category
"unity" as a hand; it is therefore the bare consideration of
universality which allows one to form the concept of
unity. The unity derived from this is so far a product of
the judgements and categories, and is then placed into a
relation with that manifold, which was in turn derived
from the forms of intuition. The analytic unity is brought
into conformity with the manifold of intuition, and only
that manifold which was described and given to us by the
transcendental aesthetic. Their intended marriage,
though, is not possible quite yet, for another, third
element is needed, which will order this union. The
analytic unity and the manifold of intuition, have to be
55
brought together within the faculty of imagination, by
means of the principles of understanding. What comes
of this, is a whole synthesis of all of the various
representations, and completes the grand work of the
faculty of understanding.
These principles literally influence the application
of the concepts to intuitions, and in so doing, they form
the "mother wit," or common sense, which no amount of
schooling can produce or refine, as Kant humorously
notes. In the absence of this mother wit, and in the form
of these guiding moments, we are provided with an
example of our possible stupidity, for all of us have these
concepts and judgements housed as a general logic within
our understanding, but not all of us have the modes of
their application. We all are able to number and even
universalize items within our awareness; likewise, all of
us are in possession of the intuitions, as a manifold,
within our sensibility; in short, we are all cognizant of
what we see before us, or hear within earshot, baring the
obvious exceptions. What all of us may not have, even in
the possession of the principles of understanding, is the
very imaginative power which these intuitions can
provide for us.
The wonder this faculty of imagination offers us,
firstly, is a schematization, and this individual, subjective
function, is that which generates a temporalization of our
representations. Even though the form of sense, as an
outer one, is time, which conditions our sense data, we
are in need of a more powerful faculty which can order
these conditions, and also create a system of serializing
them. Without this, we would be at great pains to
distinguish one set of perceptions from another; to hear
56
the difference between a symphony and a cacophony. For
example, I would not be able to remember a certain tree,
a sycamore seen on Thursday, has any relation
whatsoever to the tree I may see before me presently
outside this window. Imagination performs the necessary
feat of organization by synthesizing a number of modes
by which the various representations are brought under;
this is the temporalizing nature of our subjectivity.
Firstly, a series of time is established, which determines
the process order of representations. Then, this time
series is filled with the actual temporalized content it will
need, the representations. The time series is then ordered
by a set of subjective relations, which are used to provide
a scope of the time series, one for each object of our
possible experience.
So, to explain this in a more definite way, let us
return to my tree. My understanding seeks to unify a
given experience with the whole of my experience hence.
It first sets out a list of individual representations of a
certain object before the senses, which is to be catalogued
within memory. Let us call these representations
"images" of the sycamore tree. The faculty of
understanding then loads these images into the numbered
sections of the list, as so many simple entries, all which in
their train, detail the moments of representing the tree,
just as it has been experienced. The list of these images,
though is still rather long and unrelated to the rest of my
experience, so my imagination will have to relate them to
other representations by setting out certain sequences of
these representations, perhaps several of such sequences,
which are related to one another; this is determined on
basis of the manifold of intuition, or collection of
57
experience, which is provided, of course. Other series
included in this manifold would be the environmental
sounds which were audible while my eyes were taking in
the tree, or the somatic rumblings within my body coming
from an empty stomach while walking. These various
sequences may contain any content whatsoever; there
may be other views of the tree, or any manner of things at
which I may have been looking, or other things I may
have been thinking during this same time. The sequences
are then placed in a subjectively determined order, within
a larger context, such as of the tree on Thursday," or
"what I was thinking and feeling when I saw the
sycamore." This can only be determined subjectively,
since my position and exact thought composition was
shared by no one.
In this way, the faculty of imagination makes a
film, by defining that there will be frames, containing
images, organized into sequences, and further given a
title, for filing and relational purposes. Those who have
constructed films, or created digital sequences using
computers, will immediately seize upon the germane
point here; it is the imagination which is doing the
creative work of ordering our representations, so that they
can be easily indexed, and compared with each other, all
on basis of how we each uniquely remember things. For
example, what other things did I see on Thursday, or what
other days did I see trees? Which of these things I saw on
Thursday were seen just before I looked at the tree, or
which came afterward? To quickly construct these
several "scopes," or film strips, of experience, I am in
need of a little imagination to complete the task.
This is how that "Mother wit" within me sets
58
about constructing its synthetic unity, and providing me
with a sustained personal identity; by providing the unity
through which all of my representations are gathered. A
person with less than desirable imaginative power, in this
light, is one who "forgets" those detailed sequences,
almost as quickly as they are experienced, so that they
cannot be retrieved with any accuracy or speed. They are
usually at a loss to give us details about their sensory
experiences, and what "clips" are retrievable, are not done
so with any eye toward those sequences as they were
actually experienced in the subjective past. If this
strategy has been clear, we may easily understand the
thrust of our analytic of concepts and principles, for the
analogy with filmmaking is one which captures the spirit
and meaning of the imaginative power and allows for the
explication of what would otherwise be hopelessly
complicated and dry.
Moving on to the end of the transcendental
analytic, though, Kant has included an intriguing pair of
sections called Phaenomena and Noumena, and The
Amphiboly of the Concepts of Reflection, but I shall deal
with them in the next chapter. I believe this approach to
be wiser, for the content of these sections is far better
understood when taken along with the forms of dialectical
illusion, which are provided in the transcendental
dialectic. In this, I am indicating that Kant may have
better organized the Critique by including these sections,
not with the materials of the analytic of the
understanding, but with the set of paradoxes, which come
later in the dialectic, since these sections deal with similar
illusions.
59
PARALOGICAL ILLUSION
Illusions, as we should all hope, are not a part of
what constitutes our base of reliable knowledge. Put in
other words, no knowledge worth having is based upon
illusions, or tricks. However, our knowledge is based on
appearances, and with that, we must present the crucial
difference between what is illusory and what is
representational. A rendered appearance carries with it
the inherent possibility of being a faithful image of
something which is given in the body of experience.
Illusions, though, by their very definition, are not
representations of the given, and are not images of
anything which could be a possible experience. Kant's
entire doctrine and purpose rely upon the construction of
this notion of appearance as the mode de rigeuer of
subjectivity. This is not part of a plan to make a negative
point about our inner nature, or to proceed upon the path
of philosophy in a destructive manner which
characterizes all knowledge as chimerical or shadowy. It
is rather that Kant would like to provide for us a
philosophical basis for the kind of individuality we feel
we already possess, and deserve. If it is the case that the
subject constructs synthetic appearances of the empirical
objects which it encounters, then we are well on the way
toward that intended goal of individuality.
Even through this basis and use of appearances,
understanding, in regard to its use as a pure logic, never
commits errors, in its work. However, it can, by jubilant
60
instruction from the faculty of imagination, be so directed
to construct for the subject the greatest of all possible
illusions and errors when its tools are applied to
unconditioned objects. These faults are due to the
misapplication of the formidable machinery of the
transcendental analytic, a misapplication in regard to the
generation and ordering of unities within that analytic
body, to those kinds of objects which cannot be
confirmed of empirical origins. This is already depends
upon a process of ordering which constitutes a priori the
empirical determination of our self-consciousness.
The logic of the mind, so employed at this
dialectic level, becomes ensnared in the task of going
outside of its scope, in efforts to prove that there really
are objects outside of the inner nature of the subject. In
this, the mind seeks to show for itself there is indeed a
physical world full of objects, just as we claim to
experience. However, given its limited scope, the
understanding can only prove so much merely by the
legislative means of its powers, and it is limited to
proving that we experience our own ordering of
representations, and that those representations are
provided by the manifold of intuition. All which can be
described by this inquiry is the synthesis which results,
starting with the manifold of intuition, when applied to
intuition are those pure concepts of the understanding.
This is done by utilizing a process which is generated and
regulated by the faculty of imagination, based upon the
analytic of principles. In short, this logic can only prove
that there are certain impressions which are organized
according to a set of rules, all of which are housed within
subjectivity. To recall an earlier image, the logic of my
61
mind cannot prove there really was a tree out beyond me,
but nevertheless, I cannot doubt I had experienced on
Thursday. What I realize is that I had not experienced the
tree, as it really was in-itself, but as I represented it to
myself, whatever "it" may be. This does not imply, for
Kant, that there is not any basis or occasion for these
representations; he did not claim there are no trees, or no
planet for them to stand on, or a universe beyond that
planet. He was arguing that there is no subjective way for
us to connect to the inner natures of these things we
experience, even if they smack us on the face. Even in
that moment of pain, we are representing the projectile by
means of the sensibility, which is to rest upon
appearances.
Because the logic of the understanding is
complete, yet relies upon the "mother wit" of the
imagination to guide it through its application to the
manifold, in order to produce reliable knowledge, logic
would have to be accurately applied; therefore it produces
illusions when misapplied. Regrettably, it is not as if
these illusions were seldom seen; they are as much a part
of our daily life as our esteemed knowledge. However, it
is enough to note that knowledge and illusion are not the
same thing, and so it would not be accurate to say our
knowledge is based upon illusion, but that our knowledge
and our illusions have a common root in representation.
So very far our subjectivity is from connecting us
to the object outside us, through thought or sensation, that
the results of the synthetic process prove to us we never
can know the object before us as it really is. In this
respect the object is a noumenon, or a purely intelligible
entity, and therefore cannot be known. This may sound a
62
bit like a contradiction, on first glance; that something
could be "intelligible," but "unknowable," and that is one
of the faults of Kant's choice in words. He simply meant
by "intelligible" that the object is not an one which is
sensible through intuition, or alternatively, that it is an
object of what we may call "non-sensible intuition." This
means the noumenal object does not come to us through
the process of sensibility, and since it does not come
through that door, it cannot conform to our modes of
intuition, or our collection of concepts, and consequently,
cannot be captured by the mind in the same way that an
object of sensible intuition would. It does, however come
to us through representation, but what is represented is
illusory, and can never be found within experience.
We must note, at B307, an added help in
understanding why the noumenon cannot be known; it is
not possible for the noumenon to be an object of our
intelligible intuition, for we simply have no such
intelligible intuition by which to represent anything
whatsoever. This is no evasion on his part; we must
remember, there are only two sources of knowledge, what
comes from sensibility, and what is within us already. We
are creatures indebted to perception, and what a "tree"
really is, in its heart of hearts, cannot be an object of our
perception in the first place. Since the noumenal object is
not perceptible, nor an a priori concept, it cannot be
knowable in any sense. It may help to remember, on this
note, that as it relates to our inner thoughts, we frequently
chide others who do not have insight into what we are
thinking, and conversely, we have no way of knowing
what these others are thinking about us, save for what
outer clues we learn from experience. We readily accept,
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after years of experience, the fact that we cannot connect
directly to the noumenon of what another person is, and
so it is a small matter to extend this acceptance to the
inner nature of a tree.
Thus, we have no inherent faculty within us
providing a direct understanding of the "inner" nature of
any object, or other persons, or even ourselves, for that
matter. We may be said to "know" these things only in
the sense of how they appear to us in a "phenomenal"
way. Distinguished from the noumenon, a phenomenon,
is an appearance through which we represent to ourselves
the objects of our experience; they are, then, what we use
to come to know anything at all. Many have assumed
that we use the phenomenon to access the noumenon, and
through that, knowledge arises of objects outside us. This
is incorrect; what we come to know is not the noumenon
of that represented object of experience, but the union of
our manifold of intuition with our pure concepts of
understanding. If we could access the noumenal nature of
the object, by any method whatsoever, there would be
little need to mediate that connection with a phenomenal
image. The image is needed to represent the very concept
that there may be some noumenal nature to be found. On
this view, then, the noumenon is a chimerical concept of
the object which can never be confirmed in-itself, but
nevertheless is utilized as a building block of subjectivity.
In order to "know" this "it" of the object we
experience, one must be able to abstract from all of the a
priori modes of knowledge which are present to oneself,
and one must somehow bridge the chasm between
subjectivity and the concept of the "it" by jettisoning
those modes of knowledge. One must be able to cease
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existence as oneself, and literally become the object,
carrying none of the human properties of rationality along
with this transformation. One must also be able to return
to the state preceding this transformation. In the case of
coming to know another subjectivity, one must somehow
be able to abstract away from one's own modes of
rationality and link into the other person, traversing the
boundary, and, again, become that other person. We
would have to step out of our heads and into our friend's
heads, carrying none of our own reasoning, and then be
able to step back just as easily. We all know, from our
own experiences, this is not a fortuitous possibility, and
aside from certain "spiritual moments," we know it is not
possible to connect to one another in the slightest way.
Further, to have knowledge of one's own mind, as it is
present to itself, one has also to abstract from the modes
of reasoning which produce the phenomenal appearances,
and become the modes themselves; a position which
instantly produces a quandary, since it is the application
of those modes which make any knowledge possible in
the first place. Therefore, we reluctantly conclude, the
only way we come to "know" trees, or books, or any
manner of objects in our experiences, including other
people and ourselves, is through the process of
constructing the object as an appearance, as a mental
phenomenon, and it is through these modes of
synthesizing which allow even the phenomenon itself to
be a possibility for us. We are at the mercy of our own
modes of cognition.
Due to this curious condition, if we try to escape
the above conclusion by turning our rather powerful
collection of logical principles inward, and proceed to
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regard the analytic of our understanding as an object
itself, as a noumenon, we will fall headlong into these
errors relating to the above conditions. We can never
know a noumenal thing as it may be, within itself, and
curiously, our own mind is also one of these noumenal
things! It is solely due to the very supposition itself, that
we could begin to know our own minds, which causes us
to fall into this predicament, called the amphibolia of the
concepts of reflection, by Kant. The amphibolia, or
amphiboly in English, results when we first inquire about
what faculty houses our representations, about how they
are connected together, and by answering this inquiry
ourselves by representing an object's inner determinations
as having originated from one of our faculties.
Now, it does not matter whether we are inquiring
into the sensibility or the understanding, for the
determinations of the objects do not originate from either
place, yet reason is satisfied that they are. The successful
application of this error causes us to assume we could
find the same answer for the "inner" nature of our own
minds. However, any of our attempts to discover the
nature of our mind, beyond what is given in appearances,
would fall directly into error, for behind each layer of
appearance, there would only be another ready and
waiting; subjectivity is a bit like an onion in this regard.
The problem is due to our mind itself which is merely a
series of representative modes, or a complicated
collection of those modes, and the fact that a function
which is present in representing these modes, would still
be a mode of representation itself. By this light, we can
never escape the appearances by which subjectivity
produces knowledge, for we are never in possession of
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other epistemological modes through which to make such
an escape. It should be noted again at this point,
however, this doctrine of appearance does not entail the
enslavement of subjectivity to the toil of illusion, but
rather, this philosophy frees subjectivity from the
determinism which would result from the lack of such a
doctrine of appearances.
The "error" in this case, the amphiboly, does not
lie in the method of the senses, or the collection of mental
concepts. The senses do not engage in any kind of
judgement of what they represent, and represent faithfully
what is given to them. Likewise, the concepts do no
wrong by their own light, and in themselves, harbor no
errors, for they are only laws by which the representations
are ordered. An amphiboly lies in the subjective direction
which takes these laws and representations to be
something which can be known unto themselves. Since it
is not possible to know the noumenal nature of these laws
and representations, it is not possible to know them in
ways other than how they are experienced. The
understanding only supplies us with the unity of the
appearances which are taken from the manifold and the
imagination. If it is necessary to consider this corpus as
an entity alone, what is needed is some form of "guiding
light" which is able to direct this machinery into the
proper inquiries and produce an intelligible entity
qualifying as "self." The faculty of reason, as a body
separate from understanding and intuition, works toward
this goal, and operates in quite the same manner as the
imagination in producing unity. Now, unity within
understanding, a unity of appearances only, was derived
by the imagination directing its attention toward the
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understanding, by means of an analytic of principles.
Reason, as a higher faculty, owns the task of achieving
the very heights of subjective unity, or personal identity.
It must do so by means of establishing the entire manifold
of appearances as a joined unity, on the basis of a small
number of regulative ideas, which act as universal
conditions. So, reason actively conditions, as universal,
those ideas which guide it, and which guide the
establishment of the unity of the reflection upon the
manifold.
If this sounds a bit vague, or confusing, at this
point, it is due to the fact that, in my commentary, I have
summarized the transition from the analytic through the
phaenomena / noumena, through the amphiboly, then on
to the transcendental dialectic; in so doing, I have left
bare the organizational change set out at the end of the
last chapter. On the one hand, it is far clearer to count the
sections of Phaenomena and Noumena and the
Amphiboly among the dialectical illusions, but on the
other hand, it confuses the whole system Kant has set up.
Presumably, Kant put those sections within the analytic
because they are not part of what the faculty of reason
produces, but what is still somehow already a part of the
understanding. They nevertheless do not belong to what
the understanding accomplishes, but what arises from its
misapplication. Therefore, they occupy a bit of a middle
ground, between understanding and reason, and
consequently, it becomes a difficult matter to explicate
this huge transition effectively. So, let us be straight, and
state this in short phrases: The understanding commits no
errors of its own accord. However, due to the distinction
between phaenomena, or that which is experienced, and
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noumena, that which cannot be experienced, the error of
the amphiboly arises when the rules of the understanding
are applied to itself. Reason sets out, then, to produce a
"system-wide" unity, and this results in several dialectical
illusions, which nevertheless become what Kant called
"necessary illusions." Thus, with this, the transition may
be a bit less problematic.
Now that we are prepared for it, we can, in the
present and following two chapters, cover the larger
process with which reason is engaged. I will once again
take the liberty to avoid much of Kant's scholastic
machinery, in this case involving an excessive amount of
syllogistic reference, and attempt in its place to focus
upon the philosophical import of the dialectic. I do this,
again, not out of a spirit of avoidance, but out of a desire
to keep to a certain scope and length. The importance of
this part of the Critique cannot be overlooked, for it
details how subjectivity is based upon a process which
allows for three forms of illusions. The first of these
illusions, described below, is a set of paralogisms of the
soul, which arise from a syllogistic fallacy involving the
unity of the subject and its relations with itself. Second,
the antinomies of the world, in which a similar fallacy
arises from the subject's assumed relation to the manifold
of the object within the field of appearances as an object.
Third is is the ideal of pure reason, which is the relation
of the subject to all possible things in general, or to the all
which can be thought; Kant terms this the "being of all
beings," and corresponds roughly to what we may call
God.
So, it is interesting enough that our subjectivity is
based upon the development and management of
69
illusions, but far more puzzling, we find these illusions
are the very notions of "soul," "world," and "God;" these
are the problems par excellence for reason in its pure
state. As we might presume, from our discoveries hence,
reason is not in a position to establish itself as a faculty
which could find the ground for these problems. It is not
that this ground cannot be found, but that, in order for
reason to do what it does, these problems must be left
unchallenged by its powers. This occurs because, even
though reason makes legitimate use of perfectly logical
rules and faithful representations, it cannot find in its call
a certain and true "object," that is an object of experience,
which corresponds to its claims of knowledge about these
three ideas in particular. We are left to name these ideas
transcendental objects, which exist only in a virtual way.
Since no simple objective deduction can be given for
these ideas, what must be accomplished for them to exist
transcendentally is a subjective deduction, and this relates
directly to the entire point of Kant's philosophy. All of
our knowledge or cognition of anything whatsoever is
always subjective, never objective; we are never in a
position to verify an objective and also inner
determination of those objects which we can only
experience subjectively. However, it is no insult to be
found within this, predicament, because subjective
knowledge is not at all to be frowned upon; if there were
such an "objective" realm or reality which could be
subjectively verified, as extant apart from subjectivity,
there could never arise a single situation in which we
could be said to be independent, or free, from this realm,
and even if this feat were a possibility, we would instantly
cease being subjective creatures. The proof of
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subjectivity entails the corollary of an objective
impossibility within experience.
This is based on the following: By means of
rules, the ideas of reason do in fact spring from an
infallible logic of the mind, but as soon as reason
proceeds with its use of this logic, it finds more and more
of the premises on which it depends are lacking any
empirical content, and thus more and more of the
resulting syllogisms are lacking certainty within their
concepts. The result is that pure reason engages upon
chains of reasoning which are rooted well within logic,
but which nonetheless produce the greatest of all the
illusions reason encounters. Furthermore, reason is not
able to discharge this deceptive chain of reasoning, since
it is, indeed, as Kant claims at B394-98, logical. Some
will no doubt scoff at this strange proclamation,
demanding of logic that itself does not produce illusions,
claiming logic is only capable of producing truth. Then
let us note, this is precisely the mistake which had been
made by those dogmatic metaphysicians who came
before, as Kant has tried to make clear. What is
important to note here, is that we do not fall into these
quite common misconceptions without good cause. We
do not parse these chains of reasoning leading to illusion,
in order to proceed in life by means of irrationality, for
that would be absurd; we take these deceptive chains
unconsidered, and in the absence, should find them
pseudo-rational, since, as Kant reminds us, they are
neither fictitious nor fortuitous, but do come from within
the very nature of our reason itself.
It would almost be an easier task to consider this
an act of our imagination, since it captures better the
71
surprisingly romantic mood of Kant's meaning. However,
insistence upon this, would ruin the definition we have
already used for the faculty of imagination, above. I only
note the possibility at this point, to illuminate the
"imaginative" character of these illusions; they are not
silly, but ethereal. They seem to be born of the spirit and
desire to dream about things which the bare, unadorned,
and rather harsh, reality cannot deliver to us directly. So,
in this light, we quite rightly "imagine" there is a soul
within our body, that there is a world beyond our senses,
or universe to contain our world, and that there is a God
in the heavens above; all of it "out there," so very far
from our subjective sensibilities. We imagine these
things not to live a live within a dream, but only because
they come to us from the very nature of our reasoning; we
could not easily dispose of them, and we never, never,
never think them because they are given to us as objects
in-and-of themselves.
Does this mean Kant is telling us there
necessarily are no such things as the soul, the world and
God in all of existence? No, no, no, of course not; may
we add, few philosophers after Kant have bothered to get
this point right, and among them only Nietzsche,
Bergson, Deleuze, and perhaps Foucault and Derrida,
have even ventured to state it nicely. As in the case of
our sycamore, from above, we must recall, when we
considered the "quantum nature" of the reality of the tree,
and had thereby seemed to destroy the existence of the
tree in the process. Let us remember, there we
discovered it is not the case that Kant claimed there is no
tree to be found outside my window, but that I cannot
connect myself to the tree, in the way which I assume to
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be a possibility. The point to be made is that pure reason,
itself a sophistical process of inferences, is grounded only
upon the chain of logic within those inferences, and finds
itself in the same position, in relation to the soul, the
world, and God, as we described of ourselves in relation
to the tree.
So, reason has for itself absolutely no object of
experience, in regard to the soul, the world and God; the
very description of what these concepts entail demands
that they are not objects which can be included in our
possible experience. This does not imply that they do not
exist as noumena, but only that we cannot know them as
phaenomena, and since we cannot know them
phenomenally, we cannot know them at all. This is
because, independently of their possible existence, we
certainly cannot connect to them, and if they cannot be
objects of our possible experience, we cannot become
them. Therefore, we cannot show they exist, nor can we
show they do not, or could not.
The paralogisms of the soul, which we shall focus
on in these last few comments, are an example of these
problematic inferences; a paralogism is itself a syllogism
which has been given a transcendental, rather than
empirical, ground. An invalid conclusion is provided
about the proposed empirical ground, as a paralogism
starts with only transcendental premises and leads to what
reason would have to be empirical conclusions. An
example of this process is found in the Cartesian, "I
think." In this, what is taken as an object for the senses,
the "I," or the self, has not itself been given to the senses
as an object which can be experienced. What alone has
been experienced is the apperception, or the inner
73
awareness, of the very process of thinking which
produced the notion of an "I." The paralogisms of the
soul, thus constitute a rational kind of psychology, which
many thinkers have taken in the sense of a science of pure
reason, but which is based upon no empirical input
whatsoever. Instead of constituting a rational
psychology, these inferences really make up a
transcendental science. In other words, the subject
matter of such a rational psychology would be the soul;
this much is quite simple, and is gathered from the history
of ideas. The problem, though, is this subject matter is
posited, and is never actually a part of what is given. The
"soul" is not itself an object we can point toward in an
empirical way, and even if it were, we would not be able
to see "it" as it really might be. Thus, we have only to
console ourselves on the fact that we can reasonably
experience the effect of the soul, in much the same
manner as Hume described the "subjective effect." This
is such a powerful effect on us, it tricks us into believing
we have experienced the soul as it could be, in itself, as
an object of experience.
It is consciousness itself which makes our
representations into thoughts, and with that provides an
apperception, an "I," which constitutes the identity of the
subject. Identity exists only as an idea, as we might
expect, and never as a substance itself. By saying "I" to
ourselves, we always legitimately construct ourselves as a
logical unity, what we call our soul, we are never capable
knowing. The thoughts which make up this thinking
subject are, of course, very real, but cannot be known in
themselves, and so, they likewise are not to be found
present "outside" of ourselves, or beyond what is known
74
as a firing pattern of neurons in our brains. Profoundly,
then, against most philosophical traditionalists, there is no
reality to being, qua being, none which allows being to
have any real existence outside of the subjective capacity
to form the idea of it. We come upon this notion of our
"being" by referring each of our "successive
determinations" toward the apperceptive idea we have of
our personal identity, and we thereby create an inner
intuition of these processes of reason. Certainly, we do
indeed exist, certainly enough to write this book and have
it read, but we exist somewhere between the permanency
of substance and the flux of being, for we can never quite
prove either of these states with respect to a substance or
to the soul.
Due to the paralogical illusion of subjectivity, we
cannot perceive the supposed inner nature of ourselves,
nor what is external to us, but can only infer the inner
existence of a soul, due to our own inner perceptions,
which we do in fact experience. Our inclination is to take
this perception as an effect of an external object's very
real internal existence. We wish to conclude that we
perceive by phenomenon what is found inside us as a
noumenon. The resulting situation is a "Transcendental
Idealism," a theory which states these appearances are
only representations, and we are in no position to say of
what they are represent. The only "reality" for us is the
de facto perception we have, for nothing else can be real
to us.
The controversies we settle about the way things
may be, in-and-of-themselves, amounts to our filling the
gap where our real knowledge is quite lacking.
Paralogical illusions come to us when we take the reality
75
of our subjective conditions and infer them to be due to a
certain knowledge of an inner nature, or object. This is
also the result of how we interact with ourselves; we
seem to take our inner perceptions of thinking, and infer
that we "know ourselves;" that we know ourselves in a
way which is to treat our subjectivity as an object. Since
the soul is not an object, we run headlong into the
problem of the paralogisms, in our attempt to represent
the noumenal qualities of the soul.
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ANTINOMOUS WORLD
The paralogical illusion of the "self" is based
upon reason's attribution of substance to the sheer effect
of personal identity, or by attributing "objecthood" to the
person. This effect is not a frivolous one, we must
conclude, and is actually a "necessary illusion."
Similarly, a troubling problem occurs when the same
powers of reason are turned outward upon worldly and
cosmic matters. The paralogisms of the soul are errors of
reason applied to a subjective synthesis, but the
antinomies of the world arise when reason applies itself to
an objective synthesis. Or to be clearer, when the
empirical synthesis of the manifold is itself taken to be an
objective entity, the antinomies arise. The objective
entity is merely an empirical datum taken as a unity,
which in no way implies that this entity could be derived
from outside subjectivity. This error is based upon the
objective synthesis taken as an object itself, as a "world
out there," but another error occurs when reason views
this synthesis as a larger totality, and it is lead into a
further dialectical illusion, the ideal of pure reason. We
shall deal with the ideal in the next chapter, but it is
mentioned here to show its simple relation to the
antinomy; both arise from the application of reason's
powers to the objective synthesis, which is determined
within subjectivity on basis of the empirical manifold.
What reason is doing in these instances is to "free"
a given concept of its choosing, such as "unity," a concept
77
which is properly buried within the faculty of
understanding, and then applies this bare concept to the
empirical content of the manifold. By freeing the concept
in this way, reason allows that concept to be applied
outside the scope of the understanding and beyond the
possible field of its experience, which gives rise to the
illusions, or images, if you will. The application qualifies
as beyond experience because the concept, as applied,
does not come from within the empirical datum, nor
should it be directed to the empirical synthesis in this
way. Let us try to be clear; the ideas of the soul and the
world do not come to us through the conformity of
objects to our concepts by means of intuition and
understanding; those are processes which only produce
the objects of experience, such as the sycamore tree; these
images are projected by reason, and done so by
borrowing the necessary concepts from the
understanding. To apply the concept in this manner, is
not to sidestep the legitimate employment understanding,
but to reapply its resources in an overlaid manner. The
process is very similar to the way we order the
representations of a tree, but by taking the entire
empirical manifold and calling it "the world," reason
guides the understanding to take its representations of the
tree, the ground, the air, and everything which has ever
been experienced as representative of an "outer" reality,
and is so unifies all of this under the idea of world.
As a way of demonstrating, let us recall our
discoveries about time and space. We tend to think of
time as a "something," which clicks its way along,
elapsing up into the present moment. However, through
transcendental idealism, time is merely a subjective idea;
78
or really, a condition for ideas and series. Therefore,
Kant believed that there is no time which is "out there,"
nor space either, but that time and space only exist as
conditions for experiences, that these are conditions
which we use to order the representations within our
head. They are formal conditions through which all of
our empirical data is forced. In this way, these formal
conditions have something in common with the ideas of
reason; just as the understanding creates a synthetic unity
using time and space, reason creates a regulative principle
using the sum of all appearances derived as "outer"
intuitions. To this sum, reason attributes the term
"world," which only exists subjectively for us. It, which
is only an "it" by the light of subjectivity, is something
which has existence in name only, and could not exist
otherwise for us, for we are not able to find this object in
our experience.
However, far from being useless, it is in our best
interest to create the idea of a world, and through it,
extend our reason beyond the bounds of possible
experiences. By using these kinds of ideas, reason is able
to create the individual from within. It is a necessary
consequence of the desire to advance our reasoning
through empirical syntheses, whereby we are lead to take
a totality as being unconditioned, when experience tells
us it must be conditioned, like other possible objects.
This means that due to our desire to inquire into the
nature of the universe, to ask "what is out there?," we take
the universe as an object, as something already given to
us. However, even if it truly exists as an object, we never
experience "it" in terms of that totality; we only perceive
the appearances of small bits of it. So, to attribute totality
79
to our experience, is to borrow a concept from our modes
of understanding and apply it directly to the collection of
all our representations. Kant's position was not to say
there is no universe, but to state, because of the way we
represent the universe, it does not follow its "inner"
nature is necessarily equivalent to our representation of
those small parts of it. It is a useful illusion, though, we
must insist, for it allows reason to project to ourselves our
souls, and the world around us, and these projections give
us the occasion for the great wonder of our subjectivity,
and the huge questions about the unknown.
To help define his position, Kant pits the
dogmatist and empiricist against each other, at
A466/B494. First off, the dogmatist produces these ideas;
the world has a beginning, the self is a simple and free
substance above the "compulsion of nature," and the
order in this world comes from a supreme being which
gives it its purpose. This viewpoint allows one to look,
not only at what is conditioned within a synthesis, but
toward the unconditioned as well, and the resulting mood
is supported by popular and religious opinion; for we all
wish to know, for certain, that the world makes some kind
of sense, rather than fear the opposite possibility that our
lives may be hopeless and meaningless. This drive to
avoid absurdity supports the dogmatic assumptions. The
pure empiricist, conversely, challenges these assertions.
Since the world does not have a beginning in time, the
self is not a free substance separated, or above nature, and
there is no supreme being which directs the universe, it
follows the moral ideas and principles we have offer no
validity for us. There is for the empiricist no freedom,
and any claims to a free spirit are baseless and irrational.
80
The payoff for the empiricist, by this light, is that reason
is always standing on a proper ground and footing,
forever supported by only that which can come from
possible experiences. The empiricist does not allow
reason to leave this immediate relation, nor to speculate
upon things about which it cannot possibly have
knowledge. The avoidance of extravagance, then, drives
the empiricist view.
Both of these popular positions push too far, Kant
notes, and they, of course, work in opposite directions.
The dogmatist assumes too much, and so doing, projects
too far. The empiricist hopes for too little, and in so
doing, projects nothing at all. Since both of these
positions base themselves upon ideas, and in that, ideas
for which no objects can be given in experience, we must
focus upon the very basis of the ideas by which both of
the positions operate. The problems with this approach
are that both the dogmatist and empiricist positions
demand some kind of proof, and both implicitly depend
upon certain assumptions; the empiricist leans upon a
vague notion of "fact," the dogmatist, upon a similarly
vague notion of faith. Kant replied to both of them at
B509-10, saying;
it is beyond the power of our reason to
determine whether the world exists from
eternity or has a beginning: whether cosmic
space is filled with beings to infinitude, or is
closed within certain limits; whether anything
in the world is simple, or everything such as to
be infinitely divisible; whether there is
generation and production through freedom,
81
or whether everything depends on the chain of
events in the natural order; and finally
whether there exists any being completely
unconditioned and necessary in itself, or
whether everything is conditioned in its
existence and therefore dependent on external
things and itself contingent.
All of these questions, Kant added, refer to
objects which are not anywhere for us, except within the
wonder of our own thoughts. The cause of the failure of
both the dogmatist's and empiricist's positions, are to be
found merely in the application of their assumptions to
the unconditioned synthesis within their thoughts. Even
if the entirety of the universe where to be completely
revealed and given to us through our senses, we could
never come to know a single object in a concrete manner,
for we would still by definition need to represent this
universe to ourselves.
The whole, wide problem of the "antinomous
world," as I have called it, is with the very assumption of
a universe as an object beyond us, an assumption which
rests upon a dialectical inference. This inference
demands that if a conditioned synthesis is given to us,
then the entirety of what conditions that synthesis is also
given to us. In effect, reason assumes that a tree, for
example, is given, and further, the whole of what caused
the tree to exist must have been given as well; this leads
to a chain of causation which yields the conclusion that
the ultimate cause can be determined. However, the
primary problem is this entire chain stands or falls upon
the use of the term "given." The means by which reason
82
tells us the objects of our senses are given to us, is based
upon the assumption the objects are just as they are
conditioned; that they exist beyond us just as they appear
to us. Reason is not satisfied with the tree as a mere
object of experience, an object in name only, rendered to
subjectivity by means of representations; it steps further,
to apply its powers to the whole of the series of
representations, to conclude the tree is a part of a world
which lies beyond the subject. The secondary cause of
the illusion of worldhood is due to a shift in the meaning
of "conditioned," is at one point taken transcendentally, at
the next moment taken empirically. In one instance the
tree is taken as it is in-itself, and next as something which
is given completely to pure understanding.
The antinomies disappear when we realize the
mistake was contained in taking what resides only in our
representations, to be what directly occasions those
appearances, and that the appearances are caused by what
is within the objects of those representations themselves.
The antinomous world is, therefore, not a baseless
deception, but an assumption about the way an object
would be in itself, or about what a world would be like,
based upon what we do know about our representations.
We can say nothing about the world, the firmament, or
the universe as a whole, given the supposed magnitude
these terms carry for us, for we do not experience these
objects as they might really be, but only as they seem to
be. We cannot even claim there necessarily is, or is not,
an infinite regress of conditions which generate and
support the universe, for we are in the dark on this matter.
Now, we should not let all of this allow us to infer
Kant's wishes were to have us believe there is no universe
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at all, that the earth is just an illusion, or that our lives are
meaningless. If there is a single point to make clear, this
is it. Kant's ultimate aim with these insights, I firmly
believe, was to imply we should be quite happy to reside
within ourselves; to take notice of the obvious limits of
our reason; to avoid the general amphiboly which arises
from taking as given an object which could never be
given. Kant's transcendental idealism allows us to
believe there could very well be objects which exist
outside of us, just as real as we would imagine them to
be; that there could very well be a supreme being
somewhere; that there really is an inner self viewing it all.
This is a point most commentators seem to miss; Kant
was not saying there is no such thing as a soul, a universe,
or a supreme being. He was saying we can never find
them through our machinery of subjectivity, that is, given
our modes of perception and conceptualization, we can
never get around the simple fact that we are creatures of
perception. We are not able to "connect" directly to
whatever the soul, universe, or creator could be, since due
to their noumenal nature, we cannot make the mistake of
supposing our description of those objects is accurate
apart from the way we experience them. In this, Kant
also called into question the very usefulness of appealing
to these externalities for any source of "meaning in life"
beyond their status as necessary subjective illusions. The
richness of life, on this view, is to be found within
subjectivity, rather than outside it.
Yet, ignored until now, we must note this problem
of the antinomy seems to rest upon the notion of freedom,
or upon the distinction between freedom and its absence.
This brings us into the rather infamous debate freewill
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versus determinism, which has has been a problem since
many eighteenth century thinkers considered the
implications of Newton's physical system, and also
Hume's philosophy. By noting their development of an
intricate set of premises regarding the movement of
bodies, and adding the compelling principles of
empiricism, Kant was lead to conclude the empiricists
had developed a doctrine of a physical world in which
there is no spontaneity; there was thus no basis for
individual freedom, other than simple assertions. The
scare which this attitude had created has been with us
ever since, as quite a popular topic for debate in many
circles. Rather than solve the dilemma, most of those
who comment on this problem usually throw their hands
in the air, convinced there must be either a determined
universe, with an elimination of freedom, or a freewill,
thus conflicting with the findings of science.
Kant explains, in the philosophically rich solution
to the antinomy, A533/B561, there really are two "kinds"
of causality; it was the notion of causality and its
theoretical development, which began this eighteenth
century debate. The first kind, or use of causality, is the
most popular and the one on which everyone agrees.
Here, one event causes another; the first event is a cause
and the second an effect, both of which are rather distinct,
on this view. The cause can be traced backward, even if
only theoretically, which leads most thinkers to this idea;
everything which happens, has a cause. It is usually
inferred that all causes can be traced back to a single
cause. The second, and far less popular, use of causality
is in the conception of cause and effect as a mere idea, an
idea which is wholly a part of human reason. Hume had
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said as much, but his pure empiricism was in Kant's main
interests. The Kantian development of causation as mere
idea takes it a step further, by allowing that reason is able
to begin a certain desired state at will. In other words,
reason has the capacity to generate its own causes and
effects, which may not be so distinct now. This idealism
provides for what "freedom" must be, and this use of
causality must be rigorously defended, in order for the
whole grand theory of transcendental idealism to work.
With our distinction in hand, now, we can return to the
possibility of freedom.
For Kant, freedom is another pure transcendental
idea, again which has no possible object within
experience, but which is nevertheless an indispensable
idea to us. Thus, the amphiboly, paralogism, and
antinomy can be seen in a similar light, alongside this
idea of freedom, and this assemblage has been realized by
few commentators. The idea of freedom, as a reflection
of the representation of the self and world, is quite a
necessary concept, since it is made a necessary by the
thinking and willing subject; it would not be necessary
otherwise. Kant makes this clear, from A535/B563, this
is the whole point of the transcendental philosophy, a
point which has been obscured by a history of analytic
thinking after Kant. If the appearances, which come from
our representation of the possible objects of experience
within our intuition, really are the things in themselves,
as the empiricists would have it, then the very
consideration of human freedom cannot be a possibility;
less still would it be possible to have the first free thought
or action. Based upon the epistemology of the Kantian
system, in order for us to have the smallest notion of
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freedom, those "moments of thought," which we are in
the habit of calling "objects," simply must be nothing
more than appearances for us. This is to say nothing
about their true existence in themselves, but only of their
experienced existence, in relation to us, as Kant makes
clear at A537/B565.
So, without the crucial distinction between
appearances and things-in-themselves, what makes up the
basis of subjectivity would itself be subject to the same
laws which determine the ordering of physical space. If
the laws which determine physical objects are intuited
empirically, and can be applied to our subjectivity, then
our freedom will vanish, relegated as a completely
determined reality. Since in the field of objects, we must
provide that there exists a natural series of causes and
effects, but we are only able to affirm this in relation to
the proposition we generate the appearances of these
objects. We are separate from these same natural series
because we have the ability to originate certain series and
acts from within our volition. This also allows for the
fact that each of us seem to represent the objects of
intuition in quite differing ways, at times vastly different;
this implies, even as the appearances of objects of
intuition, they do differ in their representation. For
example, someone who is color-blind, will represent
coloured objects in a quite a different way than others.
Reason does not follow the way that things are
represented to it to create an appearance, but indeed;
frames for itself with perfect spontaneity an
order of its own according to ideas, to which it
adapts the empirical conditions, and
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according to which it declares actions to be
necessary, even although they have never
taken place, and perhaps never will take
place.
Reason therefore supposes there must be a
necessary causality guiding these empirical actions and
effects; this much we can recall from Hume; but Kant
could not have been clearer to the contrary in the above
point. Thus, the will of each of us is based upon an
empirically based character which places the effects of
the causality of reason within the field of appearances.
Reason projects its notions of causality and determination
onto the representations generated within intuition. This
projection is an expression of the rules of the
understanding, displayed as the appearances of the things.
In this way, Kant could get down to a deeper level of the
problem of freewill, because within this empirically based
character, which is founded upon a priori machinery,
there is not a single human action to be found which can
be truly unpredictable. However, even though our reason
completely determines the appearances by which it
represents nature, and even though nature is itself
completely determined in respect of the physical laws
which steer it, there remains a great deal of "wiggle
room" through which freedom can emerge. The
possibility arises due to the same faculty of reason which
determines the laws and order of appearances; reason also
makes the choices about those laws and the order of
appearances. Freedom is itself the determining case,
within subjectivity, by which the rule of causality is used
in determining the order of appearances. This is the seat
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of our human freedom; the keystone of what I would like
to think is Kant's "romantic philosophy," as it provided a
theoretical framework to support a romantic sensibility
and spirit in Art.
As a short sidebar, I should like to point out the
connection of this seat of freedom with the field of
morality. In a note on A551/B579, Kant added, the real
morality of an action must be entirely hidden from us, for
the morality of which we may legitimately speak resides
in the very volition of our will itself. This theme was, of
course, treated in detail in Kant's Groundwork of the
Metaphysics of Morals, written after the first Critique. I
have highlighted this connection to note the justification
of a moral sphere is correctly based in this seat of
freedom. One can find the connection in the solution to
the antinomy, which acts as a differential between "pure"
and "practical" reason. I also bring this up in response to
those who question Kant's basis for his later comments on
ethics, most specifically the development of the
"categorical imperative," which should be interpreted in
light of the ideals of reason.
Returning to the Critique, "Man" is an
appearance, Kant added. "Reason is the abiding
condition of all those actions of the will under the guise
of which man appears." This comment at B580-81
suggests to us, through the workings of reason, that we
have a faculty which is not itself a part of the temporal
sequence of empirical conditions, and therefore lies
outside of that string of conditions. Reason is not an
appearance, but it makes use of rules in order to will the
construction of all appearances, including the
appearances of itself and "man." In this, reason acts
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freely, but creates and determines a causal chain of
representations; a set of temporal sequences which
govern the field of representations determined by reason.
What Kant has shown, is not that freedom exists
as a substance in-itself, but that the very possibility of
freedom, through the function of a determining will, is
not an incompatible function taken with the determinism
of nature. Thus, the regulation which reason provides
allows us to limit our stray from the empirical conditions
toward the transcendent and unknowable, while also
limiting the laws of nature from trampling on the faculty
which creates freedom and intelligibility. So, through the
antinomy, we learn there is no real contradiction between
freewill and determinism, and they may both be true and
fully compatible with each other.
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REASON IN IDEAL
Many commentators and scholars, in keeping
with a purpose of contradicting Kant, cover in their works
and studies only small portions of the Critique, usually
focusing in on the notion of time and space, or the
deduction of the categories, or upon any manner of
various parts of the analytic and dialectic. Others, usually
telling the larger historical story in an effort to explain a
grander purpose, stop far short of the ending Kant clearly
provided. In the present volume, though, and in
conformity with the plan set out at the start to cover the
whole book, let us tie the system together in the next two
chapters by describing, rather than ignoring, how the
ideal of reason and the doctrine of method relate to the
transcendental philosophy.
As it happens, these two extremes may be
understandable, since Kant had come to a bit of a bang in
the solution to the antinomies; a bang which appears to be
an ending. It seems, then, we may have come to a
conclusion, and more contemporary readers are certainly
trained to look for the gist of things; however, there is a
great deal of material left in the Critique; roughly 180
pages; most of which is usually left out of the classrooms,
and by scholars. Strange, given Kant actually wrote
much of this little studied material first, only after many
revisions did he get headlong into the detailed parts of the
analytic which seem to receive so much attention.
The deepest aim of reason is to create a systematic
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unity, which serves in reason's endeavour to approximate
what is taken as the empirical unity of the world;
however, the desire for this is never quite quenched. As
we have seen, the reason for this is because the ideas of
reason are removed from our experience, or what we take
to be the outer reality. If we may think of this in a spatial
manner, the ideas of reason sit farther back, as it were,
away from the senses, than do the categories and
principles themselves. The ideas are generated by the
very will of reason on basis of what those categories and
principles provide, given their relation with the manifold
of intuition. The ideal of pure reason, which generates
this approximation, sits one more step back from the
ideas of reason themselves. The ideal thereby acts as the
goal by which reason generates, not only the systematic
unity of appearance, but the whole of our actions, both
moral and aesthetic. Through these actions alone are we
able to interact with others. The moral and aesthetic
virtue we normally attribute to an "outer" source, is itself
only an idea within this chain of reason's ideas.
Kant's system, then, seems to be continually based
upon some type of idealization. We find that subjectivity
acts a bit like a set of Russian dolls, starting with the
forms of intuition, which act as ideals for the sense data.
The analytic of principles serve as ideals within
imagination for the analytic of concepts, or the categories
and judgements, which take up the content of the
manifold of intuition, while the amphiboly serves as the
nemesis of this ideal. Within the faculty of reason itself,
we have come upon the dialectical illusions, the
paralogisms and the antinomies, which, if the pattern
holds, must be directed by another level of mention. That
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level is the ideal of pure reason, which not only directs
these transcendental ideas, but continues this steering
power back down through the levels of the mind, to meet
with the given in sense data. The ideal completes the
circuit, if you will, and allows us to find that last Russian
doll, within which it is not possible to insert another.
Reason therefore aims to completely determine
the field of appearances based upon the a priori forms of
intuition, the rules of understanding, and the
transcendental ideas of reason. In so doing, it conceives
of a certain ideal which epitomizes this active
determination. This epitome is the prototypon
transcendentale, or the transcendental prototype, which
Kant, somewhat reluctantly, called God, or the supreme
being. His reluctance in this regard was based upon a
certain notion of political correctness during his time,
which would have it that no one openly engaged in the
denial of God. We must not forget that, even during the
enlightenment, the specter of the inquisition still loomed
large over the literati, as I have noted elsewhere, in The
Ethos of Modernity. So, Kant was left to indicate this
prototype would be something grand, but he really didn't
believe God was a possible object of our experience.
This ambiguity allowed him to give an account of how
reason constructs the appearance of God, without actually
coming forth with the statement "there is no God."
The prototypon is really "the sum total of all
possibility," which we should take to be the universe
itself, and the complete collection of all possible
predicates relating to it. It is not limited to God in the
first place, since the prototype of reason contains all
possible objects, those of experience, and those of a
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transcendental nature as well. This sum total is the
Kantian definition of God; or at least, we may say this
was the closest Kant had come to laying down in straight
terms what God could be within his philosophy. It seems
the reason for this is quite simple: God can only be an
idea for us, because, given our experiences, there is no
object which can be given to the senses, which can be met
with the intuition, or categorized by the understanding,
and which also corresponds to God. The idea we have of
God is then a necessary exclusion of a whole classes of
predicates, and thus the idea of God can only be an a
priori determination of representation; it is, then, a
representation which comes about through synthesis, and
can therefore be entitled an ideal of pure reason.
We can see these same structures at work relating
to the historical treatment of non-being, an ancient idea
which has been a part of the philosophical discourse
certainly since Parmenides crafted his intriguing poem.
What we find within this discourse, is how we take what
is a merely logical quality, a quality of negation, itself a
concept which can find a relation only to another concept,
and we assume this concept refers to an object of our
possible experience. Upon reflection, we must realize
there is no "negation," nor is there a "non" floating
around out there, which can ever become an object of our
intuition. The result of this being we find ourselves with
yet another type of ideal, the idea of non-being, which of
course, corresponds to the idea of being. Now, it so
happens for Kant, "being" itself is only a concept, which
is the affirmation of a synthesis, or what would be a
whole class of syntheses, and when taken in this way,
equates to the ideal of reason. Since this ideal is not
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based upon any object of experience, its negation, and
therefore the concept of non-being which comes from this
application, can only be derivatives of the same
affirmation, none of which can ever be verified of things-
in-themselves for us. Negation therefore operates as the
limitation of the otherwise unlimited and unchecked
concept of "All," and in no way can be attributable to the
objects of our experience.
Therefore, what we call the prime mover, the
higher power, the supreme being, or God, can only be an
object for us so much as we have constructed it using the
process detailed above. We cannot know the existence of
such a being, apart from knowing our own idea of such a
possible being. Since a natural consequence of our
various series of syntheses is the collection of these
syntheses taken as a unified whole, they are therefore
taken as a single "thing," in this respect, which produces
straightaway the notion or idea of an inconceivable,
infinite, and supreme power, or creator; large concepts
themselves, which easily support the belief in such a
being. It is an easy matter, then, to see how this power,
when taken as the supreme cause and prime direction of
the universe, becomes a necessary cause for us. It is only
necessary because we find it necessary to believe so, and
therefore, there is precious little proof of the existence of
God as an object, and little support comes from the mere
fact that reason requires there to be such a supreme being.
That sense of awe and wonder we feel when
gazing at the starry firmament above; that mood of
spirituality we experience when our thoughts are
"heightened;" these are merely the result of our internal
processes of reason, and not to be found outside of
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ourselves. These thoughts and feelings are, of course,
quite real for us, and certainly not to be doubted, but of
their supposed connection to the reality of a higher being,
there can be absolutely no hope of confirmation. Being is
therefore merely the grand copula of our thoughts, and is
never a predicate which can be truly said of a thing itself.
The affirmation of the synthesis involves an acute
problem with the proposition of the concept "being" in
relation to an object of our experience. The problem is
we can only legitimately claim the possibility of an object
beyond our representations; our idea of God is the sum
total of all possibility; it is the prime example of the
problem, as the unity of this possibility. We cannot allow
ourselves to say something necessarily exists, simply on
the basis that we find it a mere possibility, and this also
applies to the unity of all possibility. Even if we could
claim this necessity, we would merely be able to assert a
subjectively verified tautology, never finding ourselves in
the position to add or confirm predicates of the object
referred to in this tautology. This is due to the
unfortunate, and quite boring, truth about analytic
judgements: Their predicates add nothing whatsoever to
their subjects, and since this is the case, our attempts to
add predicates to a subjective statement come in vain. If,
however, we retrace our steps, and say the necessity of a
supreme being, which is still only based upon a
judgement , is now based upon a synthetic one, then the
judgement can be contradicted along with other synthetic
judgements. This means our judgement of a supreme
being can be inducted into the hallowed hall of ideals,
and provide us with a basis for proposing its necessity
without cause for alarm. In the passages surrounding the
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selection below, near A619/B647, Kant could not have
been clearer.
As follows from these considerations, the ideal of
the supreme being is nothing but a regulative principle of
reason, which directs us to look upon all connection in
the world as if it originated from an all-sufficient
necessary cause. As a corollary, there is no grounding for
the rather commonplace view that Kant believed in God.
By studying this section of the Critique, we would have
to resolutely state that such a belief on his part would
have been based upon a mere sham of the understanding.
It is far nearer the mark to believe Kant was highly
interested in defining the ideal of reason as something
which, even though an illusion, is nevertheless a very
necessary one, because reason generates the necessity of
the concept from within, not deriving it from intuition.
While the association we have with the word "illusion" is
persistent, and in this case, unfortunate, we must note, as
in the aesthetic, it is not meant to refer to mere trickery, or
as to so many smoke and mirror effects from a side-show
clown. In fact, Kant indicated he may have been far more
troubled by these conclusions of his system than we may
estimate, working only from his dry prose. I find a very
beautiful passage at A622/B650, where Kant wrote, what
our sensibility presents to us is;
so immeasurable a stage of variety, order,
purposiveness, and beauty, as displayed alike
in its infinite extent and in the unlimited
divisibility of its parts, that even with such
knowledge as our weak understanding can
acquire of it, we are brought face to face with
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so many marvels immeasurably great, that all
speech loses its force, all numbers their power
to measure, our thoughts themselves all
definiteness, and that our judgement of the
whole resolves itself into an amazement which
is speechless, and only the more eloquent on
that account.
Is it not appropriate, then, to read in these words
a basis for a romantic view in philosophy? Can we not
hear Kant intimating in these and other words from the
Critique what Beethoven, Delacroix and Baudelaire,
among many others, were to make famous so many years
later? This much I hear as a basis for romanticism in
Kant: It is due to the "peculiar fate" of reason, that it is
saddled with a collection of problems which it simply
cannot ignore, yet, given the tremendous resources on call
for their solution, it cannot in any way resolve. The fate
of reason in this impossible position of ideality is
therefore quite like the mythical Sisyphus pushing his
great stone up the mountain.
In raising our sights, we present to ourselves these
marvels of our wondrous speculation as causes and
effects which come from the body of nature itself. We
project our ideals as the ends and means of an outer
world, but which, as a morality, are found only within the
order of our intellect. While this kind of view may be
used by Camusean existentialists as a theory about a
meaningless and absurd life, Kant used it as a basis for
subjective beauty, for aesthetic delight, and wonder from
within. For Kant, a belief in God is just a belief, and a
belief it will always be. God is an ideal without flaw, a
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crown for the head of human knowledge and speculation
taken as a whole. The objective reality of God can
neither be proved nor disproved, and the seat of such
proof is quite beyond the bounds and powers of reason.
Does this mean that Kant was an Atheist? To
those who would still ask this question, only "Yes" can be
given as an answer. In the technical sense, this must be
painfully clear from what has been laid out above. If
Kant had come straight out with such an announcement, it
would not have been a welcome statement during his
time, yet, he was a profoundly spiritual and aesthetic
person, and firmly believed these ideals of reason are
quite necessary to maintain our healthy existence. For
Kant's purposes, it really did not seem to matter whether
or not there is a God in heaven above, for through the
subjective act of spiritual wonder, which is a product of
reason, we are able to lift our thoughts to "wondrous"
qualities beyond our internal existence.
Thus, the transcendental ideas of the soul, world
and god, are as natural to our humanity as the idea of
wetness is to the representation of a drop of water. It
does not mean these ideas are useless, but since they have
no sure and solid foundation in the field of possible
experience, they are baseless. Reason, as we have seen,
never relates itself directly to an object, but only to a
representation of a possible experience of the object,
through the intuition and the understanding. These ideas,
without the base of an object of possible experience,
therefore have no application to that object, and have no
constituitive employment. What the transcendental ideas
of reason do offer, though, is a powerful and necessary
regulative employment in the unity of appearances.
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The image Kant draws at A645/B673 offers an
interesting demonstration of reason's position within
subjectivity. In this image, the ideas of reason collect all
the routes which the analytic rules of understanding
create. With this, reason points its collected rules into an
intersection of the routes, much like several lines leading
to a single point which is parallel to the surface of the
collection. This single point is the focus imaginarius, or
the imaginary point of focus, beyond the realm of
experience. The image can be used as a description of
how reason generates a unity of the rules, projecting them
to the cross-hairs of this imaginary point of focus. It is
truly an illusion, whereby these lines of understanding
lead reason to an "object" lying well outside the field of
experience, much like the image which results when
something viewed within a mirror appears to be behind
the plane of the reflective glass; that image is nothing
more than an effect of optical and reflective laws.
However, it cannot be stressed enough, this illusion is
quite necessary for reason to complete its syntheses,
which allows the person in question to go about living in
the world. To live by reason, then, is not only to be
cognizant of those objects which lie before the mirror, but
also to be in awe of those which lie behind it. It is
important to our subjectivity that we focus our gaze upon
these imaginary objects, such as the soul, the world and
God, in order to complete the acts of our humanity.
The business of reason, then, is reason itself. In
this, it is preoccupied with its own unity. It provides a
direction and focus to its own material, by regulating
itself toward the goal of the unity of all appearances,
though the use of a system which supports that regulation.
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So, it is not a system, or unity, which extends outward
beyond the bounds of subjectivity to meet the objects
which may be beyond us. Some philosophers and
commentators would have us believe this about Kant. It
is rather a system and unity which have an impact and
application only inside, within the subjective manifold,
and only in relation to those modes of possible experience
which allow for the objects within that experience.
Pure reason therefore promises it can extend
knowledge beyond the bounds of experience, but it can
only deliver knowledge of its own processes. The
attempts to apply systematic unity, which comes from
reason's study of itself, to what is beyond subjectivity,
gives rise to many a "dazzling and deceptive illusion,"
and leads to the contradictions and "eternal disputes"
which have characterized metaphysics to date. All of our
knowledge, therefore, starts with intuitions, is tempered
by concepts using principles, and meets with the
transcendental ideas; yet it is these transcendental ideas
which guide reason in the application of concepts to the
intuitions. In a complete regulatory circuit within
subjectivity, the representation of possible experience
allows reason to create those concepts without which its
identity and unity could not arise.
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TOWARD A METHOD
As we have seen, the method by which reason
synthesizes knowledge can be called into question
through the critique of its pure functions, as demonstrated
by this book and others like it. The way reason subjects
its inner workings to such criticism is by means of
freedom itself. To actively critique pure reason, is to
apply freedom in such a way which steps away from the
native and problematic approaches to "objecthood." To
contradict something which reason is actively holding
under thought, even when it is taken as necessary, is only
to contradict an appearance or a representation, and is not
in the end a true contradiction. Since every individual's
viewpoint is a subjective and unique one based upon the
appearances which are represented within that
individual's brain, each one is rather equal, but not
identical, to any other we may consider.
Discipline
Why is it we are enticed by the illusion of
certainty with respect to the objects beyond us? It is,
perhaps, due to the conclusions we reach in regard to
these objects, conclusions which, as they are present
before us, play directly into that which constitutes our
nature. For example, by asserting there is a soul within
us, we ensure there is a certain spirit within our
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behaviour. By asserting a world beyond the scope of our
subjectivity, we are generating a unity to what would
otherwise be chaos, and by asserting the existence of a
supreme being, we are illuminating an ideal by which we
can chart our existence. This "disingenuousness" of
reason gives us the effect of goodness, because it leads us
away from the "savage rudeness" around us, toward what
we take to be The Good. Through these ideals of soul,
world and God, we construct the path down which we
may travel toward happiness.
The resulting critique of pure reason avoids the
state of nature, adequately described by Hobbes. What
could be influenced only through bloody wars, without
critique, can be settled in a more legalistic and juridical
manner through the legislation of reason. To avoid the
injustice and violence within a state of nature, we need
only to submit ourselves to a bit of restraint and
discipline, thus restricting only those excessive freedoms
which would be a fence to others. This does not imply
we should embrace discipline for its own sake, and never
at the hand of a tyrannical ruler, but that we should
restrain the excessive pretensions of reason, through
which the state of nature can be sustained.
The practice of critique also shows how the
proponents of two sides of an issue, both the dogmatist
and the skeptic, "beat the air, and wrestle with their own
shadows," since they each attempt to go beyond the limits
of reason. Such a dispute is contained in the proposed
existence and non-existence of God. Kant found humor
in reading works by those whom, in their profession to
have solved the riddle and mystery of this being, proved
neither the existence nor impossibility of God. Kant
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believes this is because human reason can never settle
this issue, or the others like it. To pound an answer in
either direction, is to succumb to the lure of dogmatism,
while to avoid the possible knowledge of where the
arguments could lead, is to fall into skepticism.
The only way to avoid the difficulties of these
blind assertions and the empty retorts of disbelief which
garner for themselves the rejoinder of more assertions, is
to survey those powers which are uniquely available to
reason in the first place. By noting the scope of reason,
we can delimit its pretensions. But, Kant asks, can we
not invent theories, and can we not have opinions on
things? Can we not allow ourselves to hypothesize and
wonder? We can, Kant answers, invent theories, but we
can call it hypothesis only when it is grounded in
something which is given; or when it has a connection
with something certain within experience. It is not
possible to invent new powers for reason to utilize, and it
is not possible to invent a new "communion of
substances," such as the communion of time and space,
which we do not already find within our experience. In
short, we cannot possibly form conceptions of things
which are completely independent of any conditions of
experience, for this would indeed be to think that which
cannot be thought.
Since the ideas of reason, the soul, world and
God, are not possible as objects of our experience, these
and other hypotheses cannot be used to build theories, but
can only be used to defend one's own basis of belief
through argumentation. Through this internal awareness,
we can realize the opposition to a theory we may hold can
already be found within ourselves, and if we have the
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mettle to seek out, by hypothesis, what attack could be
leveled against us, we can then have, after the resulting
resolution, what Kant called an eternal peace. Even if
someone bombards us with the same attack over and
over, we can relax, believing our theory to be sound,
because we are able to use reason's powers to seek out
that possible attack, and perhaps even others, and
internally answer them. In this way, Kant notes, we can
meet the objection "halfway." For example, a critic who
is to attack Kant, might stand on the following basis: By
narrowing human knowledge to the knowledge of
representations, there is little room left for belief in God,
or the spiritual world. Kant's answer is to meet this attack
halfway with this hypothesis; our real nature is itself
spiritual, and after this worldly life, we have cause to
believe we will continue our process of communion with
such a spirit world. Notice, this shows the objector that
"belief" is itself surely possible, but does not offer that
certain knowledge could be based upon it. Thus, Kant's
resulting position on life is strengthened, since it has been
galvanized by the retention of belief.
Reason also makes use of technical proofs, doing
so by proceeding from the objects of experience, toward
the possibility of arriving at synthetic a priori knowledge
of something which lies outside the thing in question. In
this, reason does not succeed in proving the existence of
such an object, but proves the knowledge of it, as
synthetically produced, could not be possible without the
connection of concepts used. As an example, we may
consider what we take to be the very simplicity of the
soul itself. It seems quite plausible to us that our soul is a
simple substance, yet any well intentioned attempt to
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prove this by pointing to the unity of apperception, rests
itself upon the idea of simplicity, and as an idea alone, it
has no object within our perception. This leaves us
standing with the problem of a consciousness which
cannot "prove" the existence of something, but which
itself is contained by thought, even though this
consciousness can represent its thought as an object. The
paralogism which this is based upon, a paralogism which
makes it possible for us to arrive at the notion of "simple"
by abstraction, even though there is no object for this
notion, can itself be met with a synthetic proposition.
The proposition allows us to prove for ourselves things
which do not come from experience, but this proof does
not extend outward, toward the objects beyond our
experience, for proof of this sort still lies well within the
realm of ideas. This synthetic method allows us to
proceed from some of our ideas to other ideas, and never
get caught up in the problems which result by forcing this
application to apply to the objects of experience.
Once again, we must note, that this does not mean
Kant believes the rather silly notion that there are no
objects beyond experience, for this would simply be an
unreasonable assumption for an objector to make. It is
that reason cannot form knowledge about the supposition
of those objects, in-themselves. Reason can only form
knowledge about the representations and ideas used to
order the appearances of such objects, and in this
capacity, reason does have certain and secure knowledge
of its "object" with perfect soundness.
Kant's rules for the application of reason are as
follows: First, we must avoid making the assumption that
the principles of a proof are being taken from any other
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source than the understanding or reason, for from these
sources, no bridge to the object in-itself can be
constructed. Second, we should not criticize these proofs
from any other grounds than those upon which they tend
to rest, such as causality, simplicity, and so on. The
grounds alone provide the basis for any criticism of
reason. Third, we must keep in mind, the proof of an idea
should be taken along with those conditions which make
that idea possible. The transcendental task of pure reason
is therefore always carried on within the field of
subjective illusions, and must proceed in such a way that
reason forces on itself ideas which are to be taken as
objective, never assumed to truly be objective. For
example, we can never prove we "know" a supreme being
in-itself, however, we also cannot deny the possibility of
a supreme being's existence; it is only a possibility for us,
since we are not able to bridge the gap between our
subjective nature and any another noumenal subjectivity.
Canon
Toward its own humiliation, reason really
achieves nothing in its quest to go beyond its experience,
but it has a profound and necessary success in checking
its own "extravagances." The pretension of its
speculative employment is met with the negative, but
saving, limitation of critique. Yet there is a ready
application of the positive modes of reasoning which
provides the needed guidance in the form of a canon.
The attempt of reason to meet with the external world by
means of speculation ends in despair, but when it makes a
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similar leap by means of practical employment, it finds a
moral ideal in waiting. This wider use of reason as a
canon of thought allows the practical ideal to be used as
only an ideal, and not as a speculative object leading to
the errors we have described.
The ultimate aim of reason is therefore the
solution of problems relating to freewill, the immortality
of the soul, and the existence of God. Kant has resolutely
shown there to be no hope of an achievement of these
aims merely within the speculative employment of
reason, so the tasks are left to the application of the only
other means available, the practical employment. This
saves the day for the ideals of reason by allowing a valid
application of the idea of freedom to the inner workings
of reason. Since reason cannot establish the freedom of
actions outside itself, those for which causes must be
accounted, it is in danger of being bound internally by the
same immutable laws of nature, which govern all other
appearances. By establishing a basis for the freedom of
inward actions, or thoughts, reason can therefore boast it
has obtained freewill, immortality, and communion with a
supreme being. Now, even with this insight into the basis
for the soul, we still are not able to distinguish whether
such a soul is present in a worldly life alone, or
maintained in a future spiritual life beyond the body; and
even if we could prove the existence of God through a
decision on immortality, we still would not be able to
derive a definite purpose and order in the actions of such
a being, left only with the bare assertion of such a
purpose.
By utilizing this canon of the practical
employment of reason, Kant meant to allow subjectivity
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that class of actions which are only possible through
freedom. These actions achieve their force by focusing
the various ends and desires of a person into a larger goal;
much like the focus imaginarius we discovered in respect
to the ideal of reason. Happiness and well-being are only
possible though such a focal point, for reason is otherwise
left with a series of unities and only the technical
apparatus of personal identity used to assert the cogito.
By orchestrating this application of pragmatic laws of
freedom, as products of reason, synthetic unity is put
toward a larger goal which is a priori, and thus provides
the canon. The added layer of subjective structure allows
us to act upon the basis of what we feel we should do in a
particular situation, as if there were a free spirit within us
which has immortality, and is presided by a supreme
cause in the universe. Reason is ideally directed toward
this moral purpose, and is never quite suited for a merely
empirical employment.
Since the resulting will acts in a free manner,
reason overcomes the merely passive receptivity to which
intuition would be limited, if the senses alone were to be
left with the upperhand. Reason has the power to
generate representations which it deems suitable, used to
actively describe what is useful or harmful to the way it
constructs its canon. It has an over-arching ability to
characterize desirable and undesirable states of well-
being, or to determine what is good, all based within the
faculty reason itself. Generating desires and transforming
them into imperatives, taken to be laws, reason is able to
construct what amounts to the "objective laws of
freedom." These synthetic laws tell us what should
happen in a given situation, and as such, this practical
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employment leads directly to the larger categorical
imperative, which Kant described in the Groundwork of
the Metaphysics of Morals.
The question of whether or not this employment
of reason is based upon laws of nature, and not the least
bit free, is merely a speculative one. The question itself
has no bearing upon the use of such practical laws,
because by using reason in a practical way, one is only
concerned with what should or should not be done, rather
than a search for underlying conditions or possible
physical causes of such actions. As such, freedom is a
regulative concept and acts as the "causality of reason,"
since determines the will. As a result, we have restated
the famous problem of causality in a more "internal" way,
however, the premise of causal desire within action
requires the problem to be overlooked in this light. This
is possible on the one hand, because there is no relevance
of causality versus freewill when concerning volition, and
on the other hand, because a focus upon such a problem
prevents reason from viewing its practical ideal, focused
beyond its synthetic unity. While not excusing this barb,
the idea of freedom, contrary to the laws of nature, cannot
be shown as an object of experience by reason, and will
thus remain a problem so long as we dwell upon it with
questioning eyes. It is enough to concede that a will
stands within a chain of causality, but as this chain
establishes the notion of freewill, it also ushers from
reason. Reason is therefore left with only one application
of the canon, to a practical ideal, toward the questions of
God's existence, and the soul's immortality. As a short
aside, this discovery provides us with another
interpretation of the antinomy, which we have described
110
in earlier chapters, one which is based upon establishing
the solution to the antinomy as a similar practical ideal.
We find Kant's three famous questions in this
section; "what can I know?," "what ought I to do?," and
for "what my I hope?" When we ask the first question,
we are wholly within the realm of the speculative
employment of reason, but in asking the second, we
move into the practical employment, and, thus, into the
moral sphere of action. In asking the third question, we
direct our answer to the second question toward our
answer to the first question, and this is done through this
third answer by means of the goal of our happiness. Thus
the internal moral law, the desire for happiness, directs us
to speculate upon the external laws, generating any
conclusion we may hope to achieve, and this is done
completely a priori, and so does not depend upon
experience. In short, this law of happiness, as we may
call it, directs the will to make certain decisions about the
external world, in order to provide for a hope, which
characterizes each moment of subjective life. Hoping for
a God, world, and freedom, even though these ideas are
"invisible" to us transcendentally as objects, provides us
with the spring of our purpose and actions. It is through
these actions we live our lives, and could not do so
without such ideas established as ideals.
Happiness by itself, even morality by itself as the
union of a certain "worthiness to be happy," is not the
final goal of this moral theory. What makes a complete
good, for Kant, is one's hope to "participate" in one's own
happiness. Furthermore, even though reason, as a faculty
of truth, is itself cut off from all which surrounds it, one
must engage reason as a faculty of morality to help bring
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happiness to others. We are under a certain obligation,
for Kant, to place ourselves into this relation with others,
for it is through this relation that we complete our virtue,
and participate in both our humanity and the humanity of
others. Kant added, the most perfect expression of this is
the vague but deep belief in a supreme being, which, in
this light, is to be thought of as a systematic union of ends
within this practical, moral ideal of reason. By utilizing
this ideal of a higher power, we can attribute a unity of all
ends to our world, and we can construct a purpose within
life which would not otherwise be possible, given the
conclusions of the critique of speculative reason. While
this topic remained a rather controversial one for Kant,
still under the specter of the Inquisition in his day, we
may still conclude Kant did not believe in God. He
believed that God was a mere ideal, and because we had
such an ideal, we were capable of focusing all of our
desires and ends into a "higher" purpose within the goal
of a universal humanity among us.
What makes such a theory useful, is its
applicability to all of reason, and not just the reason of a
particular person. By communicating with others through
these ideals, we come to an understanding on many fronts
which would otherwise have persuaded our own
conceptions; it allows us to push our ideas into the
"objective" realm of conviction, rather than leave them as
merely subjective passions. We can therefore have this
conviction on the levels of our opinions, beliefs, and
within our knowledge. The last of these levels, though, is
reserved for only those empirically verifiable objects of
our possible experience, and only where there is also the
possibility of subjective support, and a common
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agreement. Therefore, no one can
boast that he knows that there is a God, and a
future life; if he knows this, he is the very man
for whom I have long [and vainly] sought.
Such conviction, pushed into the objective realms
of ideals, could not be a logically obtained one, but only a
practical, moral claim. Inversely, though, to live without
even a hint of a moral compass, is to ultimately face the
possibility that one may fear the existence of God and a
future life lived out in a hell. Correspondingly, the person
in question is in no better position to assert such an
outcome, stuck with an equal reliance upon reason alone.
Kant wanted us to avoid the attempts to prove there is a
God or a future world, and in this, wanted to deter us
from an "outbreak of evil sentiments."
Architectonic
The art of directing this conviction is what Kant
called the "architectonic" of pure reason. Instead of
allowing any "mere rhapsody," reason uses its powers to
legislate modes of knowledge into a system. This system
of thought, or knowledge, serves the ends of the ideals
reason holds in awe by providing a synthetic unity of the
individual subjectivity, paired with the practical unity of
how one's subjectivity meets with a world full of other
subjective creatures. We make use of a schematic, or a
certain order of our manifold of knowledge, and then
advance toward the goal of our intellectual enterprise by
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outlining divisions and constructing principles, all with
eyes toward the unity of the system as a whole. This is
how science, in attempting to appeal to the widest of
audiences, benefits them all by adding to its arsenal the
insights of many scientists and disciplines. By utilizing
each instance of the architectonic at work within the mind
of the scientist, integrity is preserved. Philosophy is the
system which arises from the confluence of ideas about
these sciences, and even though it amounts to a
speculation which does not exist outside of our thoughts,
it nevertheless is a useful activity. It is a pity our current
educational system treats philosophy more like a subject
matter to memorize, rather than an activity which must be
mastered, for Kant noted, one does not learn philosophy,
but learns to philosophize. Thus the philosopher is not a
showman, or a performer, as we might see Socrates, but is
one who legislates his own reason, through the
conformity to laws. This ideal was prevalent in the
ancient Greek system of ethics, which made use of the
ideal of an aesthetic existence, a beautiful life, allowing
each person to develop an individual method of living, by
an ethos, which included philosophical activity. So, in
the form of metaphysics, both of nature and of morals,
philosophy is the supreme achievement of reason, and it
is through this basis within philosophy that our ideals will
lead us to beatitude. Philosophy is therefore the highest
goal of each individual, which has as its supreme end the
happiness of humanity as a whole.
! ! !
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History
The historical progress with respect to this effort
within philosophy, has lead us to a flow of ideas which
connects us again to the bedrock of our humanity. In this,
we are taken back to the genesis of our history, to a more
"primitive" age, when we had only begun to wonder
about things beyond our immediate awareness. In that
age, we began with a view of the world and supreme
power which was based upon hope for the future, and
upon living as good a life as was possible under difficult
circumstances. Slowly, due to a natural progression,
reason began to be employed in more and more laborious
ways, made to justify these faiths, and other speculative
thoughts, and so metaphysics was born as a science which
would be called upon to critique the basis of these faiths.
In this way, it has been the fate of the history of
philosophy to proceed with analysis, sometimes for
centuries on end, based merely upon procedural
sequences of principles and maxims, only later to come to
views which undercut that analysis. It is in these returns
that we are to find the value of doing philosophy. To
focus closer to Kant's time, he notes that the studies of
"modern" thinkers, those following Plato and Aristotle
through the Renaissance and into the Enlightenment, have
been saddled with the implementation of this "eulogized"
method. Metaphysicians have therefore succeeded in
getting things rather "mixed up," in regard to what
generates happiness within individual ideals. However,
by refocusing metaphysics, using reason as a critical
faculty, we may reverse the process of speculation and
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put ourselves back on track again, toward the attainment
of our original goal, which we must assume was
sufficient in-itself. So, in the hope of securing a certain
satisfaction in what human reason endeavours, we may
proceed along the critical path, which in the future, may
allow us to historically recreate the wonder and awe
which has been lost in the wake of these centuries of
scientific enterprise and discovery. With this larger scope
left in view, Kant ended the Critique of Pure Reason.
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CONCLUSION
In this volume, a number of points have been
made, and a great many misunderstandings have
hopefully been cleared away through a faithful reading of
Kant's great Critique. The reason this project has been
dear to me, is due to the fact, as I noted in the first
chapter, that Kant simply cannot be ignored. In the
history of ideas, or particularly in theories of modernity,
no single thinker has provided such a vast fuel for
discussion and growth. Every philosopher who has come
along after Kant can be distinguished by the extent to
which they have understood and honoured Kant, even if
disagreeing with his philosophy. Those who have
succeeded in ignoring him, in misreading him, and
presenting views which obviously contradict his
intentions, have secured their own undoing by displaying
their biases.
In this light, Kant's work does not fit into the more
popular molds which have been applied to him in my
native America over the years, mostly by "Anglo-
American-Analytic" thinkers and academics, nor was his
philosophy an easy one to understand in the first place, to
be fair to those writers. Kant took years to develop the
views in the first Critique fully, and in his explication, the
language he chose to use is sometimes not conducive to
the desirable complicity with his wishes. In the current
volume, though, I have given my level best to show Kant
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as a provider of those tools which were needed, in a
philosophical sense, to begin the project of modernity,
and to complete the project of standard metaphysics. To
my mind, Kant provided for a completion to the scientific
fervour and also a foundation of the modern dressing of
this problem, which signals the general reason for why I
wrote the current work.
Perhaps, I still have not given an adequate account
of why Kant is so important to the history of ideas in
modernity. It is not due a belief of my own that Kant said
it all, said it best, or that no philosopher since has said
anything better than Kant. It is rather that no other
philosopher in Kant's age had secured such a grounding
for the definition of subjectivity, and with that, could
have laid such a solid foundation for the many findings of
the modernist philosophers who later developed the ideas
further. Without Kant's firm statements about
representation, we would not have been blessed with the
long line of continentalists and pragmatists which came in
his train. Understanding Kant is, therefore, quite pivotal
to our full understanding of the discourse of modernity.
But many object to Kant's findings, not because
they object to his theory of representation; they do not
focus upon that; but because they object to his moral
theory. They throw the whole critical system out the
window since they opine Kant's moral theory was based
upon some distasteful notion of "duty." Since they
incorrectly attribute Kant with a definition of duty which
he did not share with us, they assume his moral theory
prescribes for us to follow the needs of the state,
neglecting our individual desires. Some of these
objectors connect their assumptions about duty to the
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horror of the Jewish holocaust in Germany, something
which happened one and a half centuries after Kant's
work appeared. It is his philosophy, they argue, which
"justifies" that horror, and so, to their minds, Kant is not
to be trusted. This unfortunate view has been propagated
by many Anglo-American thinkers, popular essayists, and
academics, but no more so than by the novelist Ayn Rand
and her followers. Such a view is as far away from
Kant's own heart and words as it could be, and as such
would be completely ignored, if it were not spreading like
a wildfire across many young minds who study
philosophy.
Let us be secure that the summary given in this
book is quite faithful to Kant's intentions, and in no place
with the Critique does Kant describe the above views. I
mention this as an aside, and only to provide a subtle
backdrop for the present work, at a time when there are
few works sympathetic to Kant's true intentions. Yet, I
also must confess, I mention it because it relates directly
to my main point in this concluding chapter, that Kant
defined the underlying direction of the discourse of
modernity, and in order to get this lined up correctly, we
must sweep away the baseless theories of mere cult
figures, as well as the skewed opinions of analytic
thinkers.
Due to many comments on his part, we could
quite well suppose Kant wished for himself an important
place within the history of ideas, one which was bound by
a dogmatic past before his time, and by a promising
future lying ahead of it. The examination of the
multitude of insights and interjections Kant had made in
his work would certainly occupy many scholars for some
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time, but his vision demanded far more. Kant knew he
had said something rich, and had constructed something
unique, which would secure him the treasured place he
now enjoys in that history. I shall limit my short study in
this concluding chapter to a few comments from works
written between 1781, when Critique of Pure Reason first
appeared, and 1787, when it was published again in a
revised edition, since the works written during this period
all seem linked by a thread of argumentation.
The point on which Kant wished to pivot in the
Critique was the fate of metaphysics, which, in its
application to the problems of God, freedom and
immortality, was to become the crucial area for such
future development. Because Kant had to strip away
what had been said before about this subject, and, using
Hume's insight, rebuild anew an edifice for metaphysics
to be considered a mere possibility, that place within
philosophy was destined to involve a rupture with the
past which would redirect the future. This rupture in the
progression of thought was so radical in Kant's time that
most readers could not make sense of his work, a reaction
which continues to this day, and will likely endure.
Because many theories which are so difficult are
rarely grasped at a glance, we must carry ourselves
through the various parts of this garden to avoid the
sensory overload which would result by untrained eyes
across the vista. So described, Kant's theories have been
vastly misread as referring to ideas he never had or wrote,
to notions he quite well refuted, and to tenets he would
likely have laughed off over a glass of wine during his
dinner conversations. It is still commonly assumed by
some readers that Kant wished to destroy metaphysics,
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and to the extent that this could be a true statement, it is
only so by Kant's "making way" for a dawn of a new kind
of metaphysics, or a new definition of the subject, or a
new mode of thinking which would make progress in this
"Queen of the sciences" much more lively. Kant's
purpose was not to destroy metaphysics, then, but to
reinvent it, as he stated in the introduction of the
Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics which may come
forth as a Science, written in 1783;
...since the demand for metaphysics can never
disappear because the interests of universal
human reason are so intimately bound up with
it, the thoughtful reader will confess that a
complete reform, or rather a new birth, is
inevitable according to a plan hitherto quite
unknown....
But Kant's best efforts have fallen on few
sympathetic ears, due to no other reason than the one he
described of Hume, again from the introduction of the
Prolegomena;
One cannot see, without feeling a certain
regret, how completely his opponents.missed
the point of his task; for they took for granted
precisely that which Hume doubted and then
they proved heatedly and mostly quite
immodestly what it had never entered his head
to question. As a result, they so completely
misunderstood his hint at improvement that
everything remained in the same state as
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though nothing had happened.
Fearing a similar fate with the Critique of Pure
Reason, Kant stated a few paragraphs later;
cI am afraid thatmy effort will be
mistakenly judged because it is not
understood; it will not be understood because
people, through they may care to turn over the
leaves of my book, will not care to think it
through; and they will be unwilling to take this
trouble with it because the work is dry,
obscure, and, besides being diffuse, contrary to
all accustomed conceptions.
So, we may be secured in the belief that Kant
wished to create a rupture in the history of ideas, and in
his hope to be remembered for it, also provided a great
deal of work for those who would come after him. It is
corollary to my contentions that this work did, in fact,
follow Kant's great contribution, work which we have
become accustomed to calling "contemporary
philosophy." It is not just the so-called "neo-Kantians"
who are to be included here, but the totality of modern
philosophy after Kant, most certainly to include all
philosophers who have read and understood Kant even in
the most remote ways. The post-Kantian development of
ideas in epistemology, religion, science, politics and
morality owe a huge debt to Kant's cheerful willingness
to reinvent metaphysics, setting it off of its previously
wobbling pedestal, and onto a firm foundation within a
transcendental idealism. This work would not have been
122
created in the same manner without Kant's suggestions.
But is there any sense within this that Kant
initiated our modernity? Such a question cannot be given
an affirmative answer en toto, since there are many
strains of modernity which come from Descartes,
Hobbes, More, and others, but in regard to the
transcendental realm, we cannot avoid saying yes. By
instituting his Copernican revolution in the field of
epistemology, Kant ensured his contribution would
change the directions of philosophy, psychology, and
science in general. For Kant, the Critique is;
cquite a new science of which no one had
previously had the smallest conception, of
which even the idea was unknown, and with
reference to which all hitherto received
knowledge was unavailable, with the
exception of the hint afforded by Hume's
doubt. But Hume never dreamt of a possible
formal science of this nature, and in order to
land his ship in safety, he ran it aground on the
shore of skepticism where it might lie and rot.
Instead of doing this, it is my purpose to
furnish a pilot who, according to certain
principles of seamanship derived from a
knowledge of the globe, and supplied with a
complete map and compass, may steer the ship
with safety wherever it seems good to him.
Let no naysayer, after reading this passage from
the Prolegomena, lodge the objection at this point to
Kant's dedication to making a mark upon the history of
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ideas. His purpose, as stated, was to "sketch out a plan"
and leave its completion to others, meaning it would be
left to later thinkers to expand the notions of metaphysics
into subjects to which Kant had only vaguely referred.
To be sure, Kant invited later thinkers to either accept his
solution or "utterly refute" it, noting it was not possible
for them to evade it; for the rupture had been completed,
and there was now no returning to either dogmatism or
skepticism. The last two centuries has proved Kant right.
For passages more specific to the question of
modernity, though, we may first look to the Idea for a
Universal History with Cosmopolitan Intent written in
1784. In the "eighth principle" of this work he is
speaking of a hidden plan of nature which would slowly
bring about a perfect civil constitution. In the course of
realizing this plan, philosophy itself will experience a
millennium, but it will be one where philosophical ideas
are only helpful to us from afar. This rather cryptic
notion can be made clearer by noticing Kant's definition
of enlightenment in this part of the essay. Here he notes,
the gradual increase in personal freedoms, the removal of
harsh dictators, and the generally uplifting spirit of the
people, all will result from the enlightenment of the age.
So, Kant indicated philosophers will experience a
time in which the more abstract concerns, of ontology for
example, will be superseded by political ones. Kant did
not wish to imply, as he notes near the end of the "ninth
principle," that empirical history would be left aside, in
favour of a universal history which operates upon an a
priori principle, thus negating human freedom. He only
meant to suggest to us another possible viewpoint on
history; a philosophical, historical perspective on history
124
itself. Part of my thesis is, this perspective was the kernel
of what we could now call modernity, because of the
inherently self-reflexive nature of such a perspective.
"Modernity thought" can be distinguished in this regard,
as a philosophy and art applied to history itself, creating a
bit of a "hyper-history."
In the same year Idea for a Universal History was
written, there appeared in the Berlinische Monatsschrift
an open question, "What is Enlightenment?" Both Kant
and Moses Mendelssohn responded to the question and
were published in the same newspaper. I have studied
these responses in more detail than I should like to
entertain here, in my book, The Ethos of Modernity, so it
will be enough here to note Kant's general intention.
If I had merely sketched my interpretation onto
the essay on Universal History, then in What is
Enlightenment?, there is little need for the effort, since
there we find a concentrated burst of thinking about the
historical role of freedom. Kant even envisioned a motto
for the enlightenment, Sapere Aude!, which is Latin for
"dare to know," or "have the courage to use your own
understanding." Enlightenment is what happens to us
when we have the spirit to leave our immaturity behind
and dare to use our own intelligence to exercise our
freedom. Kant saw his contemporary humanity as
occupant of a place within history which was quite
unique, in that humanity would, through political change,
have the opportunity to secure freedom for itself, and no
longer be bound to the elders and guardians. Kant
detested those who simply did what others told them to
do, or thought what others told them to think. Writing in
the second paragraph, he called them "minors," adding on
125
their behalf:
If I have a book which provides meaning for
me, a pastor who has conscience for me, a
doctor who will judge my diet for me and so
on, then I do not need to exert myself. I do not
have any need to think; if I can pay, others
will take over the tedious job for me.
Kant thought of these kinds of persons as little
more than dumb livestock grazing in an open field; a field
already provided and maintained by the closed notions of
guardians. What Kant called for in this famous
enlightenment essay was a decrease in the power of these
guardians through political upheaval, with a
corresponding increase in the personal freedom of every
citizen through the resulting loss of guardian power.
People must be encouraged to use their own initiative to
achieve happiness, and toward this end, they should be
allowed to speak their minds in public forums, even when
private forums remained rightfully constrained. Free
public speech is crucial to Kant's enlightenment, since it
fosters the notion of freedom in general, and with
freedom, a people can utilize their own humanity and
dignity. Since there was so much to be done, Kant felt he
did not live in an enlightened age, but in an age of
enlightenment, in the active sense. Therefore, Kant
envisioned a moral purpose for the people and
governments of his time, a purpose which was based
upon a larger perspective on history than had been
considered.
Naturally, though, this idea of a more widespread
126
freedom for the people leads one to another question; are
all individuals going to behave rationally and morally
simply because they are free? Kant must have anticipated
this type of question when in the opening of The
Foundation of the Metaphysics of Morals, written in
1785, he said;
Moderation in the affections and passions,
self-control and calm deliberation are not only
good in many respects, but even seem to
constitute part of the intrinsic worth of a
person; but they are far from deserving to be
called good without qualificationfor without
the principles of a good will, these qualities
may become extremely bad A good will is
good not because of what it performs or
effects, nor by its aptness for attaining some
proposed end, but simply by virtue of the
volition; that is, it is good in itself andlike a
jewel,would shine by its own light as a thing
having its whole value in itself.
Kant's notion of enlightenment, then, lead to a
definition of the good within the person, based upon the
act of willing itself. We are moral, for Kant, because we
choose to be moral, because we use our own reason,
apply it to practical matters, and attain our happiness, self
worth, and goodness, simply for the effort of willing
freedom. Through this we understand our own humanity
is linked to such volitions, and by recognizing this same
right of humanity within others, we can achieve the
heights of civilization through a "Kingdom of Ends."
127
This kingdom is not based upon any notions of political
muscle, but upon the universal moral nature of humanity
within each of us.
Now, if in this short study, we are pointed toward
Kant's own unique view of his place within the history of
ideas, the role of philosophy within history, and the role
of history upon subjectivity, then I have succeeded in
describing how Kant's ideas constituted a "modernistic"
way of thinking. Kant did not do this exclusively, but he
alone provided the much needed bridge between a "pure,"
metaphysical concern, and a practical, moral one.
If Kant turned our attention toward the ways
political stricture dictates the way we conceive our
relations to each other, then he showed us how we lived
in a uniquely "modern" age in need of new sets of
relations. If he defined the ways metaphysical freedom
leads to a deeper humanity, then Kant lead us to the
consideration of our modernity itself as a focus of such
freedom. The fact of our modernity, for Kant, needed to
be looked on as an indication of our very nature, of our
modes of knowing, and of our behaviour. By providing
us with a pure critique of reason, a study of the
metaphysical basis of knowledge, Kant also showed us
how the faculty of reason is be employed toward the
preservation of our freedom. In a stronger way than any
thinker since, Kant developed the notion of subjectivity
into a tapestry of machinery, but more importantly, into a
power of volition. The rich language which can be
employed in describing the seat of subjectivity also
directly establishes the corpus of modernity.
128
M.R.M. Parrott's books include the novel trilogy
Timeless, a novella, To Lie Within the Moment, travelogue
Driving Home, Philosophy and Science series Dynamism,
monographs in Philosophy and chapbooks of poems and
short stories.
mrmparrott.com
129

M.R.M. Parrott-The Pure Critique of Reason - Kant and Subjectivity-Rimric Press

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KANT AND SUBJECTIVITY

The Pure Critique of Reason

In the present work then, I will "describe" The

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