The Pure Critique of Reason - Kant and Subjectivity

KANT AND SUBJECTIVITY The Pure Critique of Reason Kant and Subjectivity ©1999 M.R.M. Parrott (Preface ©2002) Designed ...

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KANT AND SUBJECTIVITY

The Pure Critique of Reason Kant and Subjectivity ©1999 M.R.M. Parrott (Preface ©2002) Designed by M.R.M. Parrott (2008) Cover Art: Lines (Detail) ©1999 (B&W, Digital Film Scan) M.R.M. Parrott mrmparrott.com Published by rimric press Digital Edition, South Carolina, October, 2002 Second Digital Edition, Chicago, October, 2008 The following monograph includes works of research and is neither sponsored nor endorsed by any person, organization, or owner of any product or service depicted All Rights Reserved ISBN 0-9662635-5-3 rimric® is a registered trademark of rimric corporation rimric | doing it differently™ rimric.com

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THE PURE CRITIQUE OF REASON

The

Pure Critique of Reason Kant and Subjectivity

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Contents Preface

5 The Pure Critique of Reason

Introduction

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Scope of Critique Forms of Sense Logic of the Mind Paralogical Illusion Antinomous World Reason in Ideal Toward a Method Conclusion: The Pure Critique of Reason

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12 31 47 60 77 91 102 117


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

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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.

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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 selfknowledge 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 selfknowledge 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 Gödel, 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.

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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 nonentities." 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.

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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, 63


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 64


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 65


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 66


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 67


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 68


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 70


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 72


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 83


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 84


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 85


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 86


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 87


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 88


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 89


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 91


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 92


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 93


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 94


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 thingsin-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 95


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 96


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 97


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 98


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. 99


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. 100


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 102


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 103


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 104


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 105


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 106


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 107


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 108


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 wellbeing, 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 109


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 111


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 112


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 113


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 115


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 THE PURE CRITIQUE OF REASON 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 "AngloAmerican-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 117


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 118


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 119


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, 120


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 121


though nothing had happened. Fearing a similar fate with the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant stated a few paragraphs later; cI am afraid that…my 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 123


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 qualification…for 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 and…like 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.

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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

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