Die Trendelenburgsche Lücke in Kants Transzendentaler Ästhetik (German Edition)

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The particular qualitative nature of phenomenal reality colors, sounds, heat, etc. The quality positively represents a sort of tertium comparationis between reality and its respective negation. The Arguments of the Philosophers, For Kant, such a world is certainly imaginable hence not contradictory , but could not be subjected to scientific knowledge, that is, to measurement. As noted above, the principles, which include the Anticipations of Perception, are conditions of possibility of objective knowledge and thus refer to the object of such knowledge as well.

In contrast to what occurs in pure understanding between a concept and its opposite, the full and the empty in intuition are only distinguished by their quantity and can be more or less full or more or less empty the same time: Quantity in respect to noumenal reality involves comparing limited creatural being with supreme infinite being. Here, perhaps for the first time, the inextricable connection between realitas and perfectio77 in traditional Metaphysics is broken.

Traditional metaphysics identifies reality and positivity with perfection perfectio est gradus realitatis positivae , and being with goodness omne ens est perfectum et bonum trascendentaliter. Descartes approaches realitas and perfectio in the Secundae Responsiones of the Meditationes. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery Paris: Vrin, — , Vol.

Spinoza also explicitly affirms that: Carl Immanuel Gerhardt Heidelberg,: See also Totaro, Giuseppina. Antonio Lamarra and Lidia Procesi, 71— Oxford University Press, , 9. On the relation between Kant and this tradition of thought, see Sala, Giovanni B.

Kant und die Frage nach Gott. Gottesbeweise und Gottesbeweiskritik in den Schriften Kants Berlin: Gruyter, , —.

From this point of view, different noumenal realities can be considered more or less perfect that is, containing a greater or lesser gradus realitatis when compared to the being that contains all the perfections and that represents the unity of all positivities. In relation to this being, finite things are distinguished by the fact that they possess some predicates while they are denied others: Lectures on Philosophical Theology. Wood and Gertrude M. Cornell University Press, , Lectures on Philosophical Theology, One cannot simply say that stillness is not a movement.

Rather, it represents an infinitely slow movement. Historisch-kritische Interpretation der Hauptschriften, Intension was often understood as degree of perfection: This conception, however, was already criticized by the so-called Calculatores, who regarded qualitative variation as a purely relative distinction between great and small: The theory of the Calculatores was later attacked in turn by those who, like Pietro Pomponazzi, still made constant use of the scheme of God as the measure of all things in the metaphysical hierarchy of being as they approach toward him or recede from him as a pole measuring the various degrees of perfection.

See also Thorndike, Lynn. The modern era never really abandoned this last conception. In his correspondence with De Volder, even Leibniz seems to confuse these two concepts of degree when he writes: However, Leibniz himself later proceeds to clearly distinguish the two concepts of degree, using the same language that Kant resorts to. The concept of maximum velocity is illegitimate and meaningless, while a maximum degree of perfection is admissible: A fairly sure test for being a perfection is that forms or natures that are not capable of a highest degree are not perfections, as for example, the nature of number or figure.

For the greatest of all numbers or even the number of all numbers , as well as the greatest of all figures, imply a contradiction, but the greatest knowledge and omnipotence do not involve any impossibility. English translation from Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Therefore, knowledge of degree in phenomena is legitimate because, among the degrees that are given in experience, one can always choose a certain arbitrary degree to serve as a point of indifference in relation to which one can evaluate that which is greater or lesser than the point.

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant explains the connection between the principles of the Axioms of Intuition and the Anticipations of Perception and mathematics: The … two principles, which I named the mathematical ones, in consideration of the fact that they justified applying mathematics to appearances … and taught how both their intuition and the real in their perception could be generated in accordance with rules of a mathematical synthesis, hence how in both cases numerical magnitudes and, with them, the determination of the appearance as magnitude, could be used B The first refer to differences in extension; the second to differences in degree.

In the same way, even for the qualitatively determined content diffused in space and time, the pairs of opposite terms e. Through this mathematics acquires objective reality. Rather, the two magnitudes are distinguished by their differing systematic positions. Sensation is the merely subjective manifestation of the efficacy of such effects: Here, it is above all important to emphasize that phenomenal reality that is, reality that fills space and time is characterized by the capacity to exert a greater or lesser degree of influence on the senses: A reflection from the end of the s states: The first contains the form, the second the matter of phenomena.

The form of external intuition is space; that of apperception, and thus of every intuition in general, time. Space and time are conditions g of principles of all a priori knowledge of nature. Force as the ground [Grund] of spatial relations is moving force g or, that which is the same [welches einerley ist], the force that resists all movement the external cause of sensation.

These are the ground [Grund] of all phenomena space, time, and force AA Sensible qualities are thus revealed only as an accidental difference of the effect that a movement produces by acting on sensory organs: Sounds and colors are wave-like movements pulsus of air and ether; heat is a motus tremulus of ether: These act in a chemical manner or, as in the case of taste, in a mechanical manner.

See also Abicht, Johann Heinrich. Haug, , 1: Kants Theorie der Materie Leipzig: Hirzel, , In another fragment that was written between February and September , Kant writes: The form of intuition of objects in space and time is not empirical, but rather is given a priori. As simple extensive magnitudes, objects are merely mathematical objects. These become physical bodies only in as much as I attribute certain determinations to them through which they can exercise a greater or lesser influence on something else.

The translation of the subjective and fluctuating aspect of sensation into objective relations between phenomenal realities is that which permits the connection of perceptions in a unitary and coherent experience, making scientific knowledge of nature possible: On the relation between force and sensation, see Falkenstein, Lorne. University of Toronto Press, Cassirer, —11 , 2: B The awareness of the presence of an objective element that is beyond sensation, implicit in the definition of sensible perception as sensation of which we have consciousness, can be further clarified as the possibility of passing from the purely subjective aspect of sensation to the objective dimension, according to which sensation can be part of the whole of experience.

Nearly all the natural philosophers, since they perceive a great difference in the quantity of matter of different sorts in the same volumes partly through the moment of gravity, or weight, partly through the moment of resistance against other, moved matter unanimously infer from this that this volume extensive magnitude of the appearance must be empty in all matter, although to be sure in different amounts. From this perspective, matter is composed of corpuscles of equal density that fill the same space in a greater or lesser number depending on the empty intervals that separate them from one another, and the processes of rarefaction and condensation are explained as a reduction or an increase in the number of corpuscles and a corresponding variation in the extension of the empty space between them: Rather than a variation in the number of particles in respect to the empty extension in which they are distributed, one can think of a decrease in the degree by which matter fills space: For a detailed commentary, see Pollok, Konstantin.

Ein kritischer Kommentar Hamburg: Meiner, , —; with specific references to Anticipations of Perception on —, , , —2, and —6. According to their ideas the presence of something real in space must already, through its concept, and thus in accordance with the principle of noncontradiction, imply this resistance …. What is perceivable; that is, what can exercise an influence on the senses; is precisely this repulsive force or tendency to expand: Ein kritischer Kommentar, —. English translation slightly modified by the author.

Bonn, , Kant auf Anrathen derselben Riga, Germany: Hartknoch, , 3: While repulsive force, through its tendency to expand, is responsible for the density of matter; attractive force, through which the parts of matter attract one another by resisting tensile stress, makes the cohesion of matter possible. First, the real in space otherwise called the solid , in the filling of space through repulsive force; second, that which in relation to the first, as the proper object of our outer perception, is negative, namely, attractive force … third, the limitation of the first force by the second, and the determination of the degree of filling of a space that rests on this.

Hence, the quality of matter, under the headings of reality, negation, and limitation, has been treated completely, so far as pertains to a metaphysical dynamics AA 4: This interpretation is put forth by both Schelling see below and Hegel: Instead of explaining the phenomena of compression and rarefaction, atomism merely rescues its explanation by ultimately resorting to something that cannot be compressed or rarefied.

However, an inconsistency is revealed in this explanation when the corpuscles themselves are considered, which must admit a sudden transition from absolute emptiness to absolute density. The theory argues that absolutely indivisible particles connected through hooks and fasteners are at the root of the cohesion of matter. Such solutions only defer the explanation, attributing to atoms absolutely that which bodies only possess relatively. In fact, the hooks and fasteners that should make matter cohere presuppose the firmness that they are meant to explain.

The dynamic conception of matter thus allows all the qualitative differences between matter to be reduced to mere differences in the degree of the filling of space due to various reciprocal relations between attractive and repulsive force. For now, I will merely take the opportunity to focus on what should be considered the fundamental advantage of Kantian dynamism: As I have shown, movement is that which can exercise the action on our senses that is the cause of sensation: The understanding traces back all other predicates of matter belonging to its nature to this, and so natural science, therefore, is either a pure or applied doctrine of motion.

Heerbrandt, , 5. The meaning of this concession and its philosophical implications cannot be understood without considering the central function that the evolution of Kantian thought assigned to the distinction between two forms of opposition: This opposition [Entgegensetzung] is twofold: The second form of opposition, real opposition, is characterized by the opposition of two determinations i.

The motive force [Bewegkraft] of a body in one direction and an equal tendency [Bestrebung] of the same body in the opposite direction do not contradict each other; as predicates, they are simultaneously possible in one body. However, one of these magnitudes cancels an amount which is equal to that which is posited by the other, and the consequence is zero AA 2: It is rather the case that falling is just as positive as rising.

Now, my contention is this: Hain, , 62— Kant normally uses the term Richtung to indicate both direction and sense. He recognizes that this could be confusing, however. In the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, he observes: Of these two poles, the one repels the like-named pole in another such body, and attracts the other. However, the celebrated Professor Aepinus showed in his treatise on the similarity between electrical and magnetic energy that electrified bodies, when treated in a certain way, likewise display two poles, of which he called one the positive pole and the other the negative.

Two different electricities, such as vitreous electricity opposed to resinous electricity, are not involved, but only one varying distribution of the quantity of electricity, a different degree of concentration of them. Further below, I will address the extraordinary influence of this conception on Romantic Naturphilosophie.

Here, it is important to emphasis that the dualism between logical opposition and real opposition is reaffirmed in the Critique of Pure Reason itself. If reality is represented only through the pure understanding realitas noumenon , then no opposition between realities can be thought … Realties in appearance [das Reale in der Erscheinung], on the contrary, can certainly be in opposition with each other B— Wissenschaftshistorischer Bericht zu Schellings naturphilosophischen Schriften — , 4: For more about Aepinus in general, see: Mosebach, ; Parkinson, George Henry R.

Ingeborg Heidemann and Wolfgang Ritzel, — It annihilates all content of thought. Contradiction [Wiederspruch] is the connection of two opposed predicates in a contradictory manner [contradictorie], that is to say, logically opposed [logice] in a subject. Contradiction results in a nihil negativum: One element removes [aufhebt] the consequence of the other, and the result, which is not a nihil negativum.

The latter, which can be thought through pure understanding, do not admit any opposition since logical opposition equals annihilation of the thought itself and of its contents: While the first case involves an opposition between concepts, here the conflict is constituted on the model of an opposition between forces: Otherwise it would not be a relationship between forces AA In physical reality, the agreement between realities is not based on non-contradiction the possibility of placing two concepts together without their contradicting each other , but on the model of equilibrium the possibility of placing two forces together without one prevailing over the other: In all that of which one is conscious, one distinguishes something real and something negative.

Negation is opposed to reality. An opposite is either logical or real. When someone denies something, then this is a logical opposite. Reality and negation cannot be posited in one and the very same thing. Real opposition consists in the connection of two real grounds, of which one ground cancels the consequence of the other.

Among realities there can be an opposition. A reality is opposed not only to negation, but rather also to another reality that cancels the consequence of the other. Two concepts in which one is the negation of the other cannot coexist. No entity, as such, can admit any negation without annihilating its own possibility based on non-contradiction. Philosophical Papers and Letters. University of Chicago Press, , 2: But for this purpose he would assuredly have had to assume mutually opposing directions, which can be represented only in intuition and not in mere concepts. The allusion to problems related with theodicy, which cannot be exhaustively treated here, highlights the novelty of Kantian philosophy in respect to a long tradition that dates back to Augustine25 at least and that stretches to Leibniz.

Dynamique et Metaphysique Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, , n. In fact, Leibniz is far from wanting to reduce the principle of sufficient reason to that of identity, a position that should be attributed to Christian Wolff and his successors instead. The Confessions of Saint Augustine, tr. Coillier and Son Company, , Mursia, , Thus, one can accurately say that, for 22 2. Schelling simply adopts and radicalizes this fundamental achievement of Kant, criticizing the Leibnizian idea see SW 6: For Kant, and the idealist tradition indebted to him, the conflict between opposed forces that establish an equilibrium, and are thus both real, is the adequate model for representing the agreement between phenomenal realities in contrast to simple non-contradictoriness, which excludes every conflict and opposition.

Opposites do not simply exclude each other, avoiding any reciprocal contamination that would introduce contradiction in them and threaten their very being. Rather, opposites can cohabit, like two weights that, despite moving the arms of a balance in opposite directions, create an equilibrium at the same point. Post-Kantian philosophy, as I will show in more detail, insistently resorts to precisely this metaphor of equilibrium, and to the lever in particular, to indicate the unity of opposed elements that cohabit, reciprocally limiting each other.

Garland, , For more details on this point, see Heinekamp, Albert. Steiner, , — Press, , If realities are distinguished as A and not-A, thinking of something that is both A and not-A is impossible. The sharp alternative, A or not-A, is valid for noumena. Either something is possible, that is, free of contradiction and negativity; or it is impossible, contradictory, negative: SUNY, , —6. In contrast, reality and negation given in intuition limit each other reciprocally, which is only possible because negation is only distinguished from reality by degree: Consequently, logical opposition is qualitate whereas real opposition is simply quantitate: Negation in phenomena, far from contradicting the concept of reality, should only be thought as a reality that disappears, as the limit of a process of diminution: Distinguished through quantity alone, the opposites conserve their reciprocal affinity as opposed within a greater qualitative unity that contains both of them: In contrast to the absolute opposition of contradictory concepts in which they have nothing to do with each other, real opposition always presupposes a tertium comparationis, something that associates the opposites and in respect to which they can be compared in terms of more or less: Two different things are not necessarily opposed, but two things are opposed if they make a unity out of that which makes them different.

A body launched upwards that is moving at a uniformly slow rate, upon reaching the vertex of its course, will move at a uniformly fast rate, and vice versa. The two motions are identical a typical example of a reversible phenomenon , that is, they are described according to the same law.

Only a point of inversion separates the two opposites, the point where an ascending motion passes into its opposite. One of the fundamental problems in post-Kantian philosophy is precisely how to grasp the ambiguous nature of this intermediate point in respect to which the opposites are defined as such while also removing each other, the one passing into the other. The latter problem is not only one of the most persistent questions in the history of Western thought, but also one of the central problems of critical philosophy, perhaps even the most fundamental.

The simple logical connection between concepts merely confirms their identity or ratifies their irreducible difference: The transition from rest to movement cannot be comprehended by through the logic of pure understanding. Trying to establish the instant in which a process undergoes a qualitative transformation, such as the transition from rest to movement, leads to an insurmountable difficulty.

The last moment in which a body is still at rest is also the first moment that it is already moving, forcing one to regard the body as at rest and in motion at the same time and thus to attribute contradictory determinations to it. Holding to a firm logical opposition between being and not-being, reality and negation, does not allow a third where both opposites can exist together and where the one can pass into the other principium exclusi medii inter duo contradictoria.

One must not at all times believe that one comprehends what one understands; for comprehending is: The possibility of becoming is incomprehensible to the understanding, which cannot master its intrinsic contradictoriness, is unable to think two opposed states together in the moment of transition. However, time is merely the expression of separation, that an object was first in one state and then was taken over by an opposite state. However, if the two opposed states did not meet, remaining separate for a period of time no matter how small, no alteration could be verified, but only a succession of states that have nothing to do with each other.

For this acquaintance with actual forces is required, which can only be given empirically, e. On the one hand, one affirms that becoming is possible only if the two states, the point of departure and the point of arrival of the process, remain separate no matter how much they approximate each other because only in this manner can the logical contradiction of the concept be avoided. Or, the process could be interrupted at some point and the latter could acquire a res nullius, lacking a guarantee for the upholding of the terms of the contract, if one maintains that the object is first the property of one contractor and then that of the counterparty.

The Metaphysics of Morals, tr. The second period of its existence would be completely alien to the first and it could not be distinguished from an entirely new object in respect to which it could be very similar, but not identical. However, if the temporal distance that separates them were removed, then being and non-being, no longer separated by any period of time, would contradictorily coincide in the same instant.

The possibility of change therefore requires the possibility of a form of opposition in which two opposites can coexist without creating a contradiction, and in which reality and negation limit each other in a point of indifference. Such an opposition is not logical, but real: The transition from one opposite to another occurs at a point in which the two opposites coexist: There is no progress from a given state to a real opposite one according to a rule if not per intermediate determinations, that which is equivalent to a siphon, i.

Thus, real opposition eliminates the contradictoriness of becoming by admitting a point where the two states can coexist. In phenomena, however, reality and negation can coexist in the point of indifference, which is neither positive nor negative: The quantitative and logical opposition that characterizes noumenal realities is substituted with a real and quantitative opposition. In order for alteration to be possible, a quantitative consideration of variation must occur. The alteration must be understood as the transition in time from a greater to a lesser degree, the first representing positive reality and the second its extreme opposite.

If a substance passes out of a state a into another state b, then the point in time of the latter is different from the point in time of the first state and follows it. Likewise the second state as a reality in the appearance is also distinguished from the first, in which it did not yet exist, as b is distinguished from zero; i.

What is essential is not the absolute values of a and b, but only their relative difference to which their opposition should be reduced. However, the problem does not seem to be resolved in this manner at all, but simply deferred: No matter how small the difference in degree that separates two opposed states and the difference in duration that separates two instants, the states and instants remain separated.

Kant seems to note this difficulty in the proof of the Anticipations of Perception. An apparently cogent consequence can be drawn from the above considerations: Consequently, a smaller difference can be thought in any difference in degree without implying that the variation in degree is continuous, that it passes from one degree to another through all of the infinite intermediate degrees.

However, Kant does not seem to remain faithful to this simply negative definition of continuity. In reality, it is false to maintain that, just because it is possible to subdivide alteration into ever-smaller portions, this should pass de facto through all of its infinite degrees, in the same way that a totality is not constituted of infinite parts just because it is infinitely divisible.

However, the transformation contains no privileged point in which the alteration can be verified. All appearance has as intuition its extensive magnitude and as sensation its degree. For as far as the latter is concerned every sensation arises from non-being, since it is a modification. The point where the two opposed states should pass into one another is, at the same time, the point where their difference vanishes, and thus that which defines them as opposites as well. In other words, precisely where change should take over the rigid immobility of being, in a moment without duration, no difference in degree can be admitted, and thus no change can occur.

Presses universitaires de France, , 1: If the result is always alike, that which comes first will be smaller, and that which comes after will be bigger. This is clear from what was stated before. Reprint, Hannover, , 35 I 12, n Sonda, , 24— Kant himself actually cleared the way for this type of solution, for instance in this Note: The possibility of proceeding in this direction should not be understood as an abstract theoretical alternative. The writings of Salomon Maimon — provide an historical example of the possibility of following this line of thought.

To resolve [heben] this contradiction, and thus make experience possible, these [the opposed determinations] should be unified in the object such that they conflict with each other as little as possible [am wenigsten Abbruch thun]; that is to say, their opposition [Gegensetzung] should be a minimum. Translation slightly altered by the author. In contrast, becoming should be able to unfold in the variation of states of the same substance: These determinations are also at the same time positive because the opposition that is noticed [die darin bemerkte Gegensetzung] that is necessary for experience is the smallest possible.

And this is the so-called law of continuity MGW 2: If these were completely different, … only a simple manifold would be possible. If, on the contrary, they were completely identical, there would not be any manifold; that is, there would no longer be two states, but one and the same state. The transition of a determination into an opposite one e.

However, the vanishing of the quantitative difference should not compromise the unitary meaning of the process. If one affirms that dx: There are non Synthetic a priori Judgements in Physics. Rather, the meaning is the following: Alongside this strictly mathematical sense of the infinitely small, another sense can be found that is loaded with philosophical implications. For example, the extensive magnitudes of the sides of a triangle can be thought as vanishing completely in respect to their extensions while, nevertheless, conserving their reciprocal relations: In contrast, the relation between the sides always remains the same MGW 2: Kant and Maimon on Space and Time.

Rational Dogmatist, Empirical Skeptic: Kluwer Academic, , —; Atlas, Samuel H. Nijhoff, , —23; Bergman, Samuel Hugo. The Philosophy of Solomon Maimon, tr. Magnes Press, Hebrew University, , —3. Only from this point of view is change comprehensible. Bendavid was not only, together with Herz and Maimon, one of the Jewish philosophers who helped spread Kantian philosophy at the end of the eighteenth century,62 but he also had a good knowledge of mathematics his earliest published work was on a geometrical subject.

Versuch einer logischen Auseinandersetzung des mathematischen Unendlichen Berlin: Karl Rosenkranz and Friedrich Wilhelm Schubert. Voss, , According to Rosenkranz see Rosenkranz. Culture et Civilisation, Versuch einer logischen Auseinandersetzung des mathematischen Unendlichen, The relation between the tangent and the circle remains perfectly determined nevertheless. Such a relation thus has no magnitude. It pertains to a completely different domain: Bendavid … [the real reason is] because different types of magnitude cannot be added.

One can say that a dx cannot be added to a, just as a pound cannot be added to a cubit [Elle]. This gives Maimon the occasion to further clarify his conception of the relations between quantity and quality. For this reason too, Maimon resorts to the idea of the differential as something with a zero for extension, but not for intension. However, Maimon also seems to emphasize that the transition from quantity to quality should be understood as a transition from magnitude to the relation between magnitudes: However, the duration of the movement and the space that is traveled does not belong to the essence of velocity.

The latter should be thought as abstracted from these; that is, it should be reduced to an infinitely small space and an infinitely small time, which are no less real as a result MGW 2: The degree of velocity can be expressed by a relation between finite extensive magnitudes if the velocity remains constant in time.

If it changes from instant to instant, such a relation must also be represented as variable and should ultimately be defined as a relation between infinitely small differences: Both seem to refer to a common Kantian framework and attempt to solve the problems that Kantian philosophy raised by means of similar conceptual tools. This is a conception that, as I will show in the next chapters, continually reappears in different forms in post-Kantian debate.

Moreover, and particularly significant for the present work, Maimon explicitly relates this proposal to the Anticipations of Perception see. The possibility of determining the quality of magnitude through infinitesimal calculus allows mediation between these two points of views, between sensible qualities and intelligible qualities.

Here, Maimon seems to offer a solution to the fundamental problem that critical philosophy had left unresolved: Rather, the above section aims to highlight several important results for the present investigation. Up to this point, I have attempted to demonstrate that the meaning of the Anticipations of Perception ultimately consists in the idea that the opposition between reality and negation in phenomena is not logical and qualitative, but should be thought as real and quantitative instead.

Becoming is the irruption of the absolutely unexpected, of that which confronts the subject as something entirely strange in respect to the knowledge it possesses. In every change, the new state opposes the preceding one as something that cannot be taken apart analytically. The concept of change reveals, in the most intuitive form, the fundamental problem of critical philosophy: Kant solves this problem, as is well-known, through the concept of synthetic unity and a priori synthesis.

Overcoming mere analytic identity between concepts, he shows how the possibility of knowledge is not based on the homogeneity of the identical, but on the necessary connection of the different. If the concept B that should be connected with A cannot be considered immediately or mediately as identical to A, this signifies that it is not-A, that it is radically opposed to A as its contradictory opposite.

B is certainly different from A and is not contained in A, but B is not simply the logical negation of A i. The Anticipations of Perception seem to provide the basis for such a solution to the problem. The theoretical import of the principle is its establishing a priori that the opposition between reality and negation in phenomena only involves quantity. Only by moving beyond Kant can one appreciate the 68 2 From Real Opposition to the Problem of Change fruitfulness of this specific form of opposition between reality and negation that Kant indicates as characteristic of realitas phaenomenon.

The logical opposition between reality and negation, being and non-being, seems somehow to bring with it all the others. This impasse can only be overcome by thinking these oppositions in such a way that the two opposites are from the beginning thought within a common horizon, being distinguished only in terms of more and less. Logical opposition between concepts must be substituted with real opposition: English translation from Fichte, Johann Gottlieb. Peter Lauchlan Heath and John Lachs. Harris and Walter Cerf Albany: State University of New York Press, , In as much as post-Kantian philosophy, up to neo-Kantianism, has attempted to overcome this conflict, it has necessarily resorted to such a conceptual tool.

Only by admitting another form of opposition, not logical but real, can one think something intermediate between knowledge and ignorance. Only the intermediate route between the two extremes is accessible and only by means of it can one resolve the problem. An English Translation of G. SUNY Press, , I certainly do not intend to give an exhaustive account of one of the most extraordinarily creative periods in the entire history of Western thought.

The very possibility of recognizing the identity of a problem in the variety of its different formulations, without dissolving it in the series of particular forms in which it is presented, is what permits its philosophical meaning to emerge. The classic Kroner, Richard. Among more recent literature see Ameriks, Karl.

According to Fichte only one possible solution exists: Daniel Breazeale Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, , xiv. Early Philosophical Writings, xiv. See Seidel, George Joseph. Purdue University Press, , In this way, the tripartite schema reality-negation-limitation becomes the supporting structure of the Science of Knowledge. Reality and negation do not simply exclude each other, but rather reciprocally limit each other, being distinguished only in terms of more or less: Sein Standort zwischen Kant und Hegel Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, , Vrin, , Sein Standort zwischen Kant und Hegel, Darkness is simply a very minute amount of light.

The limit that should permit reality and negation to exist together is simultaneously the suppression of both. If one attempts to determine the transition from negation to reality, or vice versa, one is once more confronted with the ineludible difficulty of fixing the point of transition where the second begins and the first ends and where they paradoxically seem to need to exist together: On this point, see Grant, Iain Hamilton.

Philosophies of Nature after Schelling London: Continuum, , 87—. What is there at Z? Not light, for that is at instant A, and Z is not identical with A; and not darkness either, for that is at instant B. So it is neither of the two. Fichte, in contrast to Maimon who is known to have influenced Fichte tremendously , does not explicitly employ conceptual baggage from mathematics.

English translation from Fichte. How are synthetic judgments a priori possible? A and B are opposed, and if the one is posited, the other cannot be: But they can be thought of together in no sort of fashion, and under no possible predicate, save merely insofar as they mutually destroy each other.

We are not to think of A, and not to think of B; but the clash — the incursion [Eingreifen] of each upon the other is what we are to think of, and this alone is the point of union between them. If they were opposed like two contradictory concepts, no point of union between the two could be found. Bouvier, , 85—. Therefore, on the basis of what I will show to be a locus communis in post-Kantian thought, Fichte substitutes the model of non-contradiction between concepts with an equilibrium of opposed forces, now completely liberated from all physical meaning: It must not posit either one of them alone, but must posit them both and must posit them in conflict, that is, in opposed but perfectly balanced activity.

But perfectly balanced opposing activities cancel each other out and nothing remains. In his writings on negative magnitude, Kant seems to have glimpsed this fundamental difficulty: Faith and Knowledge Albany: This task cannot be grasped from a theoretical point of view. It is something that the I finds in itself Empfindung [sensation] is equal to Insichfindung [finding-within-oneself]; see: Both, in general, are determinates.

But apart from this common characteristic, what is their ground of distinction? What each sensible quality is cannot be explained in any way, but only accepted as a simple given fact: Die Auseinandersetzung zwischen und Such a determination is manifestly something purely subjective … Anything sweet or sour, or red or yellow, is absolutely incapable of being described, and can only be felt, nor can it be communicated by any description to someone else … All that can be said is that the sensation of bitter, sweet, etc.

However, as soon as the I recognizes itself as limited, it necessarily goes beyond the limit. Hence, in a certain respect, it must also be cognate to the I; it must be capable of ascription thereto. For the I, to affirm its essence, must be able to recognize itself as limited and, in becoming aware of its being limited, go beyond the limit and affirm itself as independent of the limit. To look beyond the limit means recognizing that such a limit is only the vanishing of a difference in quantity. In the same way that going beyond a line, that is, the limit of a surface, leads to a new surface, that which is located beyond the I should be again regarded as identical to it.

Translation was slightly changed by the author. Philosophies of Nature after Schelling, Quantity means determination, reality or negativity posited. Fichte takes essentially the same meaning for the word quantity in the context of his discussion of the relative activity of self and non-self. Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel Hildesheim: Rodopi, , Only in this manner can that which is beyond the limit, that which presents itself as a negation in respect to reality, be admitted. This proof will go as follows: Comparing Kant and Fichte, Lauth writes: Hamburg, , , emphasis mine. Die transzendentale Naturlehre Fichtes nach den Prinzipien der Wissenschaftslehre, 52; emphasis mine.

Not coincidentally, Philonenko wonders whether the principle of the Anticipations of Perception is the point in which, for Kant as well, the transition from intuition to intellectual intuition occurs, the point in which the object itself is seen as continuously emerging from negation; see Philonenko. For Fichte, in contrast, this unity assumes a constitutive63 meaning. Yet what is felt [empfunden] is called quality. Thus, only in that it starts from the generality of the concept does the object first acquire quality, and cease to be mere quantity. Sensation is what permits the transition from that which characterizes objects in general to that which distinguishes a particular object.

But what the original real [Reale] in the object is, what corresponds to the passivity in myself, is a contingent accident in regard to this sphere. So we attempt in vain to derive it a priori, or to reduce it to concepts. For the real itself exists only insofar as I am affected. Klostermann, , Frommann-Holzboog, , 98— For it has reality only at the moment of its effect upon myself. We feel merely the more or less of elasticity, heat, brightness and so on, not elasticity, heat, etc.

Force is simply that which affects us [was uns afficiert]. What affects us we call real [real], and what is real exists only in sensation; force is therefore that which alone corresponds to our concept of quality. The difference between what appear to be distinct qualities is actually only a difference in quantity: But quality is valid as such only in respect of sensation. All these elements, which are intended to explain the corresponding phenomena, are nothing more than the result of hypothesizing certain sensible qualities in substantially independent entities. Doing so does not in any way solve the problem, but rather makes it even more obscure and incomprehensible: This observation is added in the second edition of the Ideen which has not yet appeared in the Academia edition.

If one can affirm that every difference between qualities in general is reducible to a relation between fundamental forces, the task of determining this particular relation of magnitude only concerns experience. Philosophy cannot explain the specific quality of our sensation. Instead, it claims that this particularity should be reduced to a quantitative relation between fundamental forces. This demand to reduce differences in quality to mere differences in degree is central to the post-Kantian debate.

German Idealism and the Problem of Knowledge: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel

Critique of the Power of Judgment, A determinate finite product is constituted only in the equilibrium of these two opposite tendencies: On the basis of the relations that exist between positive and negative magnitudes, a point of indifference must necessarily be crossed: Dissertation, , Heerbrandt, , 8. Differenz der Konzeption einer dynamischen Naturphilosophie bei Schelling und Eschenmayer, Obviously, this was one of the motives for discrediting Naturphilosophie in the second half of the s, within the scientific community as much as in philosophical debates.

Though Schelling later accuses Eschenmayer of being too simplistic, at this point, Schelling agrees with him at least on the fundamental postulate of the dynamic conception of matter. For quality exists only in relation to sensation. But only what has a degree can be sensed: Now in matter no degree is conceivable save that of the forces, and even of these only in their relation to one another.

If qualitative differences can be referred back to quantitative relations between fundamental forces, the identity of the quality is reduced to the uniform distribution of such relations. Principia quaedam disciplinae naturali, inprimis Chemiae, ex Metaphysica naturae substernenda, The tension that this difference produces determines the chemical process, which is none other than the tendency to annul such a difference and to return to a state of equilibrium: In this way, starting from the initial difference, two forces in opposite directions are created, a tendency of the degree of concentration to augment and a tendency for it to diminish: Heerbrandt, , 74 and They do not have an absolute significance, but rather appear as such only to sensation, which is nothing but the merely subjective manifestation of a conflict that unfolds in the phenomenal world.

Schelling, through the example of chemical phenomena, seems effectively to incorporate and develop in all its consequences the essential nucleus of the Anticipations of Perception: The connection between the characters Ottilie and Charlotte, the captain and Eduard, is based on the idea that kindred natures are those that possess qualities that are not simply different, but opposed, such as those seen in magnetism, in positive and negative electricity, and in chemical reactions. See, for example, Adler, Jeremy. Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften und die Chemie seiner Zeit Munich: On this topic, see Carrier, Martin.

See also Carrier, Martin. Oxford University Press, The Weltseele clarifies the relation between the concept of degree and the difference in level that this implies with the idea of opposition between positive and negative magnitudes. We affirm that matter itself is only a product of opposed forces. Thus, that which philosophy maintains a priori, that matter is the product of opposed forces, is intuitive in every chemical process.

The same fundamental schema exemplified by chemical phenomena can also be observed in thermal phenomena. Only relative differences in temperature can be determined. Relying on this understanding of the problem, Schelling seeks to explain the process of combustion as well. Thus, phlogiston is nothing more and nothing less than the negative of oxygen. Positing the existence of absolutely different qualities opposed to one another is not in the least necessary. The fundamental opposition itself … disappears in this idea. Every natural force of nature calls forth [weckt] its opposite.

The latter does not exist in itself, but only in this conflict, which momentarily gives it a distinct existence. Electrical phenomena possibly provide the best example of this conception. Two conductors, such as two spheres of differing magnitude, can have the same quantity of electrical charge while having a differing respective potential; larger for the smaller sphere, and smaller for the larger sphere: Qualitative distinctions between two types of positive and negative electricity, thought as two distinct fluids, are thus replaced with a merely relative distinction between opposite signs according to the model of real opposition: The bottle of Leida the prototype of a condenser , invented by the celebrated Dutch physicist Pieter van Musschenbroeck, offers insight into this characteristic of electrical phenomena.

Eschenmayer compares this equilibrium to a lever in which the length of the arms or the velocities are in an opposed relation to the masses; an indicative example as I will show. If the pole of the first magnet is run alongside the other magnet, one observes that the attraction gradually diminishes and, after passing through an intermediate in which no force is manifested, transforms into repulsion. The two poles are distributed such that one extremity exhibits attraction, the other repulsion, and there is equilibrium in the center where the forces are equal and opposed, creating the equilibrium: Craz, , The complete decomposition of metals, for example, leads to the claim that these are composed of carbon and nitrogen, which according to Steffens should not be thought as elements, but as forces: The qualitative differences between metals are configured as a continuous series of different degrees of coherence and density that spans from mercury lack of all coherence and strong density to steel maximum of coherence and decreasing density.

From this fact [dass dies so ist], we should look for the fundamental cause by which an inexhaustible source of positive force entertains movement interruptedly and initiates it ever again. The book is also useful for its rich bibliography. The doctrine of nature presupposes as a basic principle a general duplicity and, in order to conceive this, a general identity of matter. Neither the principle of absolute difference nor that of absolute identity is the true principle.

Philosophy of nature merely restates the problem of locating the transition from the infinite to the finite, from the indeterminate to the determinate, from the unlimited to the limited and vice versa, of locating the point in which these contradictory and irreducible elements can transform into one another: The expression appears in the first edition of the work.

As is well known, Plato systematically treats the concepts of unlimited and limited, in the Philebus. This continuous increasing and decreasing is the necessary form of every sensation such that if the infinite is not found in their continuous increasing and decreasing, … the sensation itself could not be present either.

On this subject, also see Distaso, Leonardo V. The Paradox of Existence. Philosophy and Aesthetics in the Young Schelling Dordrecht: Kluwer, , 37—.

John Cooper Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. For this reason, there is no middle, no intermediate degree, because every chosen point is divisible again into smaller parts since each intensive magnitude is continuous and thus another point is always thinkable between two points. There is no end because each degree that is taken as the last is further divisible since there is an infinity of possible degrees of sensation between reality and zero.

Therefore, the Anticipations of Perception is the place where Kant reintroduces the eternal problem of overcoming the opposition between finite and infinite. The original Greek is: Benjamin Jowett translates Plato in the following manner: I speak of the modes of representation which have been put into philosophic heads by Kant, and which may be mainly reduced to this: Since only quantitative relations are determinable a priori, the entire variety of matter on our earth should be thought as being capable of being easily derived from that concept of matter in general that is determined a priori.

Keiper, , See also Bach, Thomas. Anmerkungen zu seiner Rezeption in deutschen Idealismus. Thomas Bach and Olaf Breidbach, — Frommann-Holzboog, , — First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature. State University of New York Press, , n first edition. The difference between me and Mr. E[schenmayer] does not lie in these propositions [the reduction of matter to a relation between forces], but rather in the fact that he, in the relation of opposed forces, retained the possibility of a mere quantitative difference, determinable through the relative more or less of the one or the other force … and that he, through these different quantitative forces and the formulas that these express, believed he had deduced the entire specific difference of matter.

The preceding citations are explanatory notes from Schelling regarding his model in the First Outline Erster Entwurf. First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature, The difference between opposed qualities hot and cold, oxygen and phlogiston, positive and negative electricity, etc. Zur Auseinandersetzung mit der Naturphilosophie des jungen Schelling. FrommannHolzboog, , 39— First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature, — Not only are the contraries of a pair indissolubly connected to each other, but also, in their more intimate logical existence, are conditioned by their opposition; without their opposite pole, they would lose their very sense.

Schelling seems to delineate the general meaning of the concept of quality through this unity that transcends the opposites and that is only manifested in their reciprocal conflict. They are unthinkable outside of such a tendency. As discussed above, electricity only occurs where there is a difference in potential and the concept itself of electricity has no determinate meaning outside of this difference: Nothing else but quality. But all quality is simply electricity, a proposition that is demonstrated in natural philosophy.

System of Transcendental Idealism , tr. Peter Lauchlan Heath Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, , Absolutely no subsistence [Bestehen] of a product is thinkable without a continual process of being reproduced. The product must be thought as annihilated at every step, and at every step reproduced anew. On this theme, see: Vita e Pensiero, , Also see Moiso, Francesco. Mursia, , — The universal restoration of duality, and its recanceling at every step, can appear only as a nisus toward a third factor.

Nevertheless, Schelling apparently does not intend to develop a true and proper philosophy of mathematics as I will show Hegel does. The originally infinite series, of which every individual series in mathematics is an imitation, does not arise through aggregation [Zusammensetzung], but through evolution, through evolution of a magnitude already infinite in its point of origination which runs through the entire series.

The whole infinity is originally concentrated in this one magnitude. The succession in the series signifies only, as it were, the individual inhibitions [Hemmungen] which continually set bounds to the expansion of that magnitude into an infinite series …, and which moreover happens with an infinite velocity and would permit no real intuition.

Claudio Ciancio and Federico Vercellone, — However, it does not manifest itself without duality and difference: But every quality is a determinate one, whereas productivity is originally indeterminate. On this point, see Rudolphi. The oppositions in which the unique and identical infinite productivity is manifested as inhibited and limited are nothing other than the tendency to return to indifference, but if difference did not exist, the tendency to suppress it could not even be manifested: Reinterpretation, Texts, and Commentary New York: University of Chicago Press, University of Nebraska Press, Indiana University Press, Oxford University Press, Harris, in Giovanni G.

Between Kant and Hegel: Texts in the Development of German Idealism Albany: There is thus an unsurpassable circle in this process, a circle which German idealism brings to the surface and profoundly scrutinizes. Therefore, the task is to reflectively account for the historical horizons in which cognition arises being ultimately thereupon dependent , instead of searching for an ultimate Archimedean point for its deduction. Rather than searching for inexplicably transcendental concepts, this argument points to their determination from within a given Lebenswelt.

It does not renounce but rather redefines objectivity, by seeing the subject as a coming-to-know-itself totality. Habermas, Wahrheit und Rechtfertigung. Suhrkamp, , p. Princeton University Press, , p. Habermas, Wahrheit und Rechtfertigung, p. This is not to say that philosophical consideration of cognition has been made impossible, or that philosophy becomes solely and exclusively social theory.

It must rest on the categorical presuppositions that are revealed by reflection, and form the basis of cognition. At the same time, the presuppositions the categorical background are determined by what they determine the given Life-world , so that the movement of knowledge is reciprocal: It is the former part of this movement that is so emphatically underlined by Hegel in his critique of Kant, and so thoughtlessly neglected in subsequent Hegelian scholarship. It is not my goal in this book to propose a radically different view on the above issue, and I am uncertain whether two centuries of philosophizing after Hegel were able to produce a substantially different paradigm that surpasses his all-encompassing grasp.

On the essential aspect, the dialectic of rationality, I argue with Hegel. The development of German idealism has shown that the pursuit of unqualified cognitive certainty leads to metaphysics. Cognitive claims must rest on some rules, which either have to be scrutinized and put in the context of their historical development and relativized, or remain unexamined and postulated as metaphysical principles. This book follows the first path. It makes no demand for unconditional knowledge or any metaphysical or ontological claims.

Whether knowledge is knowledge of external reality, God, metaphysical principles, or any other final piece of truth makes no difference for my discussion, for the claim of a final piece of truth would revive the traditional philosophical pursuit. In other words, I argue that the epistemological cognitive is neither neutral nor ahistorical along with Hegel nor oriented toward ultimate answers a la philosophie traditionnelle contra Hegel. Such is the way in which the metaphysical will be distinguished from the epistemological cognitive in the present work. Admitting the dead-end of traditional epistemology, philosophy then reorients itself toward thinking from within its given historical horizon.

For my goal is to scrutinize the presuppositions of engagement in these considerations from a historical angle. Although Hegel is known for emphatically and innovatively reconsidering the path of philosophy by relating the absolute to its otherness respectively, God to the world, infinity to finitude, etc , he does not reconsider the traditional goal of philosophy, the pursuit of some final piece of truth. The panlogistic Hegel criticizes the method utilized by Schelling, but not the project itself. Is it a social theory? Is it a mere cultural assessment? Yet, this response is not meant to descend into the relativism that, for instance, Rorty seems to suggest.

Philosophy interprets praxis and history, and can do so rigorously and effectively. Such understanding makes philosophical investigation relevant to any other field of human inquiry, be it social or natural science. The task of philosophy is reflection or meta-reflection on the findings of science, yet the meta-reflective and the metaphysical are not necessarily one and the same. Thus, philosophy in the current treatise will be viewed as a metalogical withdrawal, a generalization of the historical moment which generalization is relativistic with respect to the endeavors of traditional First Philosophy, and still certain in its findings from within the historical context.

The notion of phenomenology as it is advanced, for instance, by Husserl does not account for the internal unity of knowledge and the manifold. Neither does this approach account for the internally dialectical nature of knowledge, its historical horizon, or, most importantly, its contradictions. Hegel has made these issues the center of his philosophy. At the same time, it must be noted that there is a great difference between being as it historically unfolds, and being as it is in-itself.

Hegel is not interested in this difference. As it will be argued in this book, Hegel is able to overcome the Kantian emphasis on this issue solely on the basis of identification of being and thought. Metaphysical philosophy is of a bygone dimension. It is the alliance with science that makes the claims of philosophy valid, yet this validity does not and cannot take on an ultimate, supra-historical authority.

Having set my presuppositions, I will now sketch the structure of this book. Philosophical discourse has a dialogical nature, common roots, and common origins, and therefore can be traced as an interrelated synthesis of the evolution of the human spirit, in its onto- and phylogenesis. This is how the evolution of German idealism will be examined in the proposed investigation. Such treatment does not exclude but includes the independence of each particular project. Philosophical discussion is richer than what later reconstructions show by not taking into consideration the particular concerns and projects of each of the individual thinkers involved.

However, the stress of difference over unity is one-sided. If there was dialogue, commonly shared problems, and discussion Horstmann admits all that , there must be some rationally perceived logical sequence in the development of the discourse that can be reconstructed. Not accidentally, in this article Horstmann has no other way to proceed than to discuss Fichte and Schelling in direct relationship to Kant.

Horstmann, Die Grenzen der Vernunft. In the first chapter, I examine a number of Kantian dichotomies which in a very definite sense predestine the unfolding of the discourse in German idealism. First of all, Kant is an epistemological optimist and simultaneously an ontologicalmetaphysical skeptic.

He decisively holds both positions, without realizing that unqualified epistemic and logical claims must eventually account for their metaphysical background, the boundary of their justification. When it comes to such an account, Kant simply arrays the transcendental self and the categories, yet is unable to offer an explanation of their derivation, of the correspondence between the categories and intuitions, as well as of the logic of his transcendental deduction.

And from there, the initial dichotomy between epistemological optimism and metaphysical skepticism reappears as a series of further dichotomies, which are discussed in the chapter: The second chapter examines the radical transformation of Kantian philosophy by Fichte and Schelling. When Fichte enters the discussion, Kant is already being torn apart by Jacobi and the skeptics.

Though Fichte is a convinced Kantian and inherits the dilemmas of dualism, he finds a way to advance the claim of certainty by diminishing the role of the thing-in-itself and by deriving all knowledge from a single principle. By the same token, Fichte opens the way to modern dialectic. The second part of the second chapter is devoted to Schelling. The influence of the Romantics, Jacobi, Spinoza, and even Plato as the latest research suggests is decisive.

On the other hand, dialectical exposition is also a construction. However, in the subsequent discussion Schelling will first realize that epistemological claims cannot be upheld unconditionally unless they rest on metaphysical premises. To the contrary, it spreads the dialectic into the objective realm and universalizes it. To be sure, this claim is hinted at rather than actually articulated by the philosopher himself.

These questions will be only partially dealt with in the present study. The great dialectician is the object of the third and fourth chapters of this book. First, it must be noted that Fichte, at least until the early s, is not interested in the absolute but in absolute i. In my view, it is only Hegel who will see the absolute as the culmination of the system. The contrast with Kant is striking.

At the same time, Hegel claims to have brought an end to transcendentalism. While demonstrating the specificity of the rational, Hegel surrenders the real. He is not looking for the rationality of the real, but the reality of the rational; and when the rational is found in the real and the historical , it is thus not enough to satisfy his objectives. These objectives are metaphysical and crucial for his phenomenological strategy.

Hegel argues for absolute knowing absolutes Wissen even when he presents it as necessarily connected to, and expressed exclusively through, relative knowing. The Hegelian theory of knowledge is primarily, although not exclusively, a categorical theory. Anchor Books, , pp. Walter de Gruyter, , part I. Rather, in fact, any possible integration of knowledge of reality in a totality amounts to its formulation from within the given historical moment and within the given rationality, by no means speaking of any final description. The real then must be seen not as being in its ultimate structure, but the object of scientific knowledge as it is logically portrayed in thought.

Historicism, praxis, circularity, and systematicity are some of the conditions of the dialectical narrative, which results in the portrayal of an inwardly articulated totality. First, the totality which Hegel champions must be seen as existing in an evolutionary trajectory. Second, totality can be properly portrayed only in its maturity and only after thought has reached its own maturity for such a portrayal. Once such a level is reached, the logical categorical portrayal of the scientific object can unveil contradiction as an essential characteristic of that object.

The argument here is certainly not unilaterally against formal logic, but is drives home the idea that was carried along in the development of German idealism: Rather than separating the copula as identity and as predication, separating form and content, being and becoming, the Hegelian argument aims at uniting them in a meta-consideration that is carried out by the faculty of reason and its device, the dialectic or dialectical logic. Reason focuses on the inner source of movement and the development of its object, which reason portrays as being in an evolutionary trajectory.

The international bibliography on German idealism is vast, especially if one includes the works on each particular author. It seems impossible even to write a commentary on the commentaries. Hahn, Contradiction in Motion: Cornell University Press, Cambridge University Press, , esp. As this book had been simmering for several years, I am indebted to numerous people for the scholarly influence either through the direct debates we had at various meetings and conferences or through indirect but permanent debates I had with them through their writings.

It is impossible to list them all here. I am also grateful to numerous people for their help in carrying the project out: Above all, I am indebted to Tom Rockmore for his overall intellectual encouragement, for believing in me even at times when I stopped believing in myself. Tom is not only a profound scholar and an astonishing erudite, he is also as helpful and supportive as one can be.

In all spheres of human inquiry, few fields are more admired and at the same time more challenged than philosophy. From the time of its inception, this so-called love of wisdom has sought the ultimate answers in any sphere of knowledge, from the key principles of the universe to the innermost secrets of the human soul.

The ambitious endeavors of philosophy connote a certain arrogance, which has been revealed at an ever-increasing degree along with the evolution of history and the differentiation of human knowledge. This emancipation then created an analogously increasing mistrust toward philosophy, and the feeling that — not only is each particular field of knowledge self-sufficient — but that philosophy itself is characterized by vanity, futility, and worthlessness.

From being the quintessence of human knowledge, philosophy gradually became a phantasmagoria, a pale and unconvincing enterprise contrasting sharply with the precision and apodictic nature of other sciences. According to this view, even if the human spirit is characterized by wonder and an urge for the unreachable, and if this urge is expressed in the philosophical gaze toward the unconditioned, philosophy which has survived the increasing attacks against it needs to be separated from other fields of knowledge.

Unlike philosophy, these other fields can be traced rigorously and efficiently. However, philosophers would hardly accept such a charge against them. Hence, dating back to Francis Bacon, Descartes, and many others, there were numerous attempts to make philosophy scientific, and philosophical systems to an ever-increasing degree started imitating the procedural characteristics of modern science.

Kant was not to avoid this discourse. Of course, Kant was neither the first nor the last to attempt this restoration. Such an ambition is characteristic of much of contemporary philosophical discourse. Kant begins his first Critique with the acknowledgment that philosophy which, he traditionally identifies with metaphysics is under serious challenge for not being able to ground its claims effectively. This is no longer the case, and the doubt about the effectiveness and rigorousness of philosophical claims is not without grounds.

Its claims were imposed rather than critically examined and properly substantiated. If metaphysics could enter such a path, it would again become the queen of human inquiries. It is, therefore, philosophical self criticism that can restore the credibility of philosophy in a way that is indeed superior to that of other sciences. He wants to examine whether the sought substantiation of philosophical claims is achievable, and to offer an answer to the question as to whether something like metaphysics is possible at all PFM, A4, A32, A38; TP2, 53, 69, In sum, along with accepting the aforesaid criticism against philosophy, Kant positions himself optimistically.

In undertaking another attempt to restore philosophy to its throne, Kant is passionately convinced of his certitude. Comparing science to metaphysics, he constantly reiterates his diagnosis: He wants a science that stems from philosophy, scientific philosophy, not a philosophy that is opposed to science. How then can metaphysics be possible? Ontologically, Kant shifts philosophy in the direction of the subject, and attempts to unveil the a priori content of human reason.

Reliance on experience is always limited and does not suffice to satisfy the quest of metaphysics, for this quest has to do with the infinite and the beyond. What one needs is to shift the way of investigation. There remains the methodological question, which is equally important for my discussion. Although the typical methodological procedure e. Philosophy has to become science in all its constitutive aspects. Indicative of such an attitude is also the fact that the 1 J.

Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. Beacon Press, , p. From the outset it must be mentioned that this imitation concerns the method rather than the tasks. The propositions of these sciences are synthetic rather than analytic; they are known a priori and they demonstrate the existence of an a priori structure of intuition.

The question is how to demonstrate such structure in philosophy and thus to elevate philosophy to the rank of strict and apodictic science. Once this is accomplished, then a properly understood metaphysics will remunerate physics and mathematics by construing their foundations. In the language of the first Critique, philosophy will be able to explain how pure mathematics is possible and how pure natural science is possible. However, the above does not answer the question of the chasm between the objectives of metaphysics and those of other sciences.

Although Kant acknowledges this disparity, his assertive tone leads to the emergence of a fundamentally important ambiguity. On the one hand, he wants to be scientific, apodictic, and raise philosophy to the stature of other sciences. On the other hand, his critique is still oriented toward solving metaphysical questions.

The possibility of any kind of scientific treatment of these questions especially God and immortality seems highly problematic. Kant himself lets them open to thought, but not to knowledge. At 2 See also J. Furthermore, not only does Kant deny the possibility of the old, now moribund, metaphysics — thus reducing metaphysics to the logical investigation of concepts it a priori involves in that sense, Hegel will later note that it is Kant who first reduced metaphysics to logic — he also reintroduces a new understanding of philosophy as metaphysics.

In the last pages of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant even proposes a plan for a rebirth of metaphysics4 that is made up of four quite traditional parts: Yale University Press, , p. Beck, , part IV. As I have already stated, I treat their difference as one of degree, not of kind. The use of these terms is different in various authors and schools.

The bibliography on German idealism is not unambiguous either. Kroner Von Kant bis Hegel, 1. Mohr, , p. Dove, , pp. There is, however, the other side of the coin. One may call the Kantian analysis of the transcendental nature of our cognitive abilities a metaphysical one: He rejects the possibility of unconditioned knowledge of the object, the thing-in-itself.

In that sense, the Kantian system represents an appealing philosophical modesty. For not only does he sanction and offer unconditioned knowledge of the subject, he also assumes his investigation to be completed in a positive, epistemologically solid, and conclusive way.

Kant does not question the need for an ahistorical 7 This aspect is especially stressed in K. Ameriks, Kant and the Fate of Autonomy Cambridge: Philosophy as Critical Interpretation Oxford: Clarendon Press, , p. The possibility of scientific metaphysics gradually becomes actualized, and metaphysics becomes a science with the same Kantian epistemological insistence. They became overshadowed in a specific way, that of philosophical idealism.

The flow of the post-Kantian discourse indexes to another twofoldness in Kantian philosophy. My intention is not to argue against the notion of the transcendental per se. The matter of contention rather is the fact that Kant centers his discussion on the transcendental at the expense of the immanent. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics and Praxis Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, , p. Meiner, , pp. While theoretically upholding the twofold nature of cognition, in practice Kant sets aside the role of the manifold.

Even time and space, two elements that have always been associated with the world as such, are now set aside by Kant, reduced to the role of mere conditions of cognition. As we know, Kant answers this question in the positive. In addition to the a priori forms of intuition, he aims at demonstrating the existence of a priori concepts, the categories of the understanding. Kant does not focus on the object and its particularities, or the need to describe it as accurately as possible, but proposes the opposite route: Allison, etc , despite claiming to be closer to the latter. The philosopher explicitly underlines the transcendental nature of his enterprise.

On the one hand, concepts that Kant argues for are intended to be concepts of possible experience only: On the other hand, Kant is clear about their independence from experience. Only in passim does he deal with their origin. A number of questions are recorded here. Are transcendental concepts first established and only then applied to experience? Subsequently, how are those concepts established? How does a human individual or humanity as a whole come to acquire the ability of idealization, the formation of those ideal transcendental concepts that mediate the approach to experience, and generate knowledge by themselves?

Why do objects conform to our representations or vice versa? He assumes that there is a certain harmony between the two which is equally underscored in both the first and third Critiques. However, such harmony is only postulated. Kant has surprisingly very little to say about it. This peculiarity of our understanding, that it can produce a priori unity of apperception solely by means of the categories, and only by such and so many, is as little capable of further explanation as why we have just these and no other functions of judgment, or why space and time are the only form of our intuition CPR, B Just a few centuries ago, the situation was quite different.

Not only was science unable to explain the cultural and historical origins of thought, it was content to rely on an available, readymade response, namely that the human mind is the result of divine involvement and creationism. Such a response satisfied various schools of thought throughout the history of philosophy. The founder of German idealism did not exactly follow such a path although he famously tried to limit reason in order to make room for faith.

Nevertheless, it is quite conceivable that he was satisfied with the mere statement that knowledge begins with experience. Columbia University Press, , p. Historicity, circularity, and relativism would be plausible ways of responding to the problem. Quite the reverse happens within his system, in which a priori structures seem innate and unchangeable. To be sure, this will be a major point of assault against Kant in the development of German idealism. Moreover, the historically defined level of knowledge inevitably shapes the capabilities of reflection, and its particularities are unconsciously dragged into the philosophical inquiry.

One might, for instance, side with Spinoza and Schelling: Nature develops the ability to think, and thinking is nature thinking itself. Rolf, , p. The lack of gravity, or the condition of weightlessness, was already known to 17th century thought. But the understanding of matter as res extensa was then still dominant e. Thus, Kant could not but reproduce in his own system the historical limitations of his times. As it has already been mentioned, the ambiguity of Kantian philosophy, the tension between transcendentalism and realism, preconditions the development of German philosophy toward Idealism.

From the very beginning, Kant sets a transcendental task: It is on this notion that metaphysics stands or falls. Penn State University Press, Greenberg claims that Kant is not concerned with the relationship between concept and intuition, but with the mere possibility of the transcendental concept concept about the possibility of experience. Such focus sets a second meta-condition for the development of the subsequent discourse, excluding any other way of advancement.

In that sense, thought is a posteriori, and its a posteriori origins are buried in the history of human evolution. But thought is also not simply and entirely empirical for it effectively transcends the immediately given, expands beyond it, penetrates in the working mechanism of the given by revealing its invariable features, and generates anticipatory knowledge. This move is what makes pure theory possible. This is not to unconditionally advocate transcendentalism.

But neither Schelling nor Hegel rejects the transcendental aspect of mind. These two aspects that seem contradictory by means of formal logic need to be held simultaneously in order to make sense of the nature of human cognition. Kant poses the problem.

For him, the transcendental nature of our intelligence is intended for permanent application to experience from which it also begins. However, the philosopher never elaborated the proposed twofold mechanism. In his view, the need for empirical application of thought does not amount to the empirical origin of thought, and empirical content is not the conditioning but the conditioned under the auspices of the transcendental form.

Once again, I will underline that my argument is not to refute the transcendental side of cognition per se, but rather to stress its twofold nature, the movement from the manifold to the concept and vice versa. Yet this distinction does not so much aim at bridging the gap between concept and intuition, but rather at emphasizing the difference between the two.

That is, the schemata that are meant to mediate between the manifold and pure understanding are in fact only indirectly related to the manifold. Findlay, Kant and the Transcendental Object. A Hermeneutic Study Oxford: Clarendon Press, ; N. Sellars, Science and Metaphysics. Variations on Kantian Themes New York: Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, p. Even the division of ordinary and transcendental logic stresses the sharp distinction between representation and the object of representation: In other words, any particular object is made into a perception by the understanding. Fichte, for example, will point exactly to these lines when under attack for subjectivism and will claim that he elaborates precisely the Kantian argument.

The patriarch of German idealism was careful enough not to let this ambiguity evolve into one-sided metaphysical idealism. The road to speculation, the claim of supremacy and primacy of the ideal over the real is open. Sellars, Science and Metaphysics, pp. This emphasis is key to my criticism of Hegel in the present work Ch. Walter de Gruyter, , pp. What we know about the world is what we know about it, and what we already know preconditions any future knowledge.

Not accidentally, Hegel writes in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy that the subject-object identity is a contribution of Kantian philosophy. Transcendentalism has already established the spiritual principle although, according to Hegel, it is to be necessarily found only a posteriori. What Hegel will not be satisfied with is the way these principles are demonstrated. The Transcendental Self and the Thing-in-itself In the two preceding sections, I argued mostly against Kant contesting, on the one hand, the weakness of his differentiation between science and metaphysics and, on the other hand, his failure to provide substantial argument for the unity between the transcendental and the immanent.

Before deducing the proclaimed transcendental knowledge, Kant maintains that any cognition must be seen as an act of cognition of the transcendental subject. The representations of the manifold cannot be unified by experience itself, they can only be unified and synthesized by our rational faculty, the understanding. For it is an act of spontaneity of the faculty of representation; and since this faculty, to distinguish it from sensibility, must be entitled understanding, all combination.

Thus, it is the rational ability of the subject that makes the synthesis possible. Knowledge is not impersonal, but it is knowledge of the subject, the transcendental I, be that a particular individual, as Kant seems to imply and early Fichte emphasizes , be that human spirit in general as Schelling and Hegel suggest , the self stands at the beginning of any cognitive step.

The I is looking for the truth of the world. Such truth in quite an abundance of versions had been traditionally proposed by pre-Kantian philosophy. In Kant, the truth is now determined from within the subject. But this representation is an act of spontaneity, that is, it cannot be regarded as belonging to sensibility. I call it pure apperception, to distinguish it from empirical apperception, or again, original apperception. The unity of self-consciousness I likewise entitle the transcendental unity of self-consciousness CPR, B The unity of apperception is by definition synthetic for it does not simply generalize the empirical material, which by itself is never universal, but imposes universality on the empirical material.

For a more detailed discussion, see P. Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, , p. Rationality is built in such a way that it models the manifold through the categories. The transcendental synthesis can take place through the combination of three capacities. First, the synthesis involves the understanding. It is imagination that thematizes and schematizes the manifold. Third, the synthesis is provided by the faculty of judgment.

This latter capacity proves to be the decisive arbiter. Longuenesse, Kant and the Capacity to Judge Princeton: Longuenesse, Kant and the Capacity to Judge. These two, when viewed from such angle, are more sophisticated than critics argue, and less susceptible to attack. In other words, it is a purely logical unity. The transcendental unity of apperception is the presupposition behind the connections we produce in making judgments. These must be universally valid and common to all subjects.

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This point is of particular interest. He insists that cognition is meant to take place in space and time, and in that sense his philosophy can be interpreted as offering the conceptual background to cognitive psychology. Longuenesse, Kant and the Capacity to Judge, p. The difficulty that cognitive psychological interpretation faces pertains to the nature of the purely logical as different from psychological.

Starting from the empirical individual, cognitive psychology ends up in philosophical dualism. For the nature of the ideal cannot be explained on the basis of the extrapolation of data obtained from empirical observation. I shall discuss in detail this issue in Chapter 3 in relation to genetic epistemology. Thus, it remains a mysterious modus operandi of the individual subject for which such knowledge is intended. The problem emerges more sharply in the third Critique, when one has to distinguish between determinative and reflective judgments.

Kant implicitly points to the dependence of the self on history, tradition, and culture. The impression is that on the issue of reflective judgments, Kant attempts to remedy transcendentalism from the danger of collapsing into empiricism,29 for empiricism would necessarily lead back to dualism as it fails to explain intersubjectivity, the activity of mind, and the purity of its ideal constructions.

Nevertheless, 28 See the discussion in K. Palgrave Macmillan, , pp. Strawson, The Bounds of Sense. On the one hand, Kant wants to do exactly that, deduce knowledge in its purity. On the other hand, not satisfied with dualism, he wants to relate knowledge to the real subject. As a matter of fact, knowledge cannot be objectively justified as knowledge if it is confined within the isolated individual subject.

Kant implies but does not advance the grounding of rationality on historical experience. To the contrary, his notion of transcendental subjectivity is, as he frequently suggests, a static concept,30 and equally static and ahistorical is his deduced matrix of a priori principles. Kant has then no other choice but to rely thoroughly on the principles of formal logic. Paul Guyer, for example, charges Kant with the failure to offer any defense of his argument, and asserts that the transcendental deduction cannot stand up to 30 K. Harvard University Press, , p.

The alleged failure of the deduction is the result of the missing proof of the unity of apperception. In my opinion, the charge is justified. Therefore, they cannot be purely logically deduced. As a matter of fact, knowledge has to be grounded elsewhere, on real historical experience. See also Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, p.

Stanford University Press, But full transparency is either circularly defensible38 or it leads to dualism. There is a sober explanation of the above dilemma. On the basis of the relativity of the human condition, the transcendental unity 37 Cf. Presses Universitaires de France, Meyer advances a Heideggerian criticism of Kant that is entirely reliant on the issue of whether logos can be epistemologically recollected as logos after it has been scattered into reality.

Harvard University Press, , pp. See also my discussion in the following chapters. An Interpretation and Defense New Haven: Thought without a subject is either nonsensical or grounded on the ontological independence of thought, that is, on metaphysical dualism. This is why Kant rejected transcendental realism. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, esp. Kant is simply accepting a fact, the negation of which, as already argued by Descartes, would involve a self-contradiction.

The fact is that without the existence of the self, any cognitive claim would be impossible: The purpose of my argument is not to identify Kant with Descartes. Unlike Descartes, Kant follows what in modern jargon would be called phenomenological procedure, fulfilling the space between subject and object, not reconstructing the object itself. However, the Kantian cognizing subject, just like the Cartesian, stands at the beginning of knowledge.

The unity of consciousness is an inescapable condition of all possible knowledge, be that the ordinary conception of the world, its epistemological scrutiny or scientific thought. As I shall argue in the next chapter, Fichte, too, concedes the impossibility of overcoming the Cartesian cogito; and even Hegel, who arguably undertakes a different attempt in the Phenomenology, cannot but presuppose the self.

In the above-described sense which is existentially modest and deliberately less transparent , charges against Kant fail to take into account the all-permeating role that the distinction between phenomena and the thing-in-itself plays in Kantian philosophy, as well as his corresponding redefinition of metaphysics. What Kant 41 P. Ameriks, Kant and the Historical Turn, p. It is only its interpretation that comes a priori.

Humans simply find themselves in such a state. The transcendental unity of the self is the unearthed condition of the self. This moment will be conspicuously elaborated by Fichte. Ontologically, transcendentalism evolves either into thorough idealism or into dogmatism materialism. Epistemologically, transcendentalism evolves either into thorough rationalism or into empiricism.

The transcendental philosopher intentionally remains in the middle. Had Kant attempted to overcome Descartes, he would have had to follow the path of the old metaphysics that he tried to abolish; yet, had Kant suggested an empirical interpretation of knowledge, he would have had to succumb to epistemological skepticism. Kant thoroughly acknowledges the limitations that experience imposes on cognition — no universality can be found therein.

However, there is some universality which is credible, it is the universality that human rationality attaches to the object, by being equipped to judge according to certain initial principles. This ability offers the certainty that the professed truths have universal validity, not only for the subject, but also for the object, insofar as the object is preconditioned by human cognitive abilities.

The task, therefore, consists in the logical investigation of those initial principles. Kant reduces metaphysics to logic, or conversely, he expands logic into realms which traditionally were considered the realms of metaphysics. It is to the extent to which Kant wants to pursue pure and unconditional thus, foundationalist epistemology that his philosophy is susceptible to ontological-metaphysical interpretation.

Philosophy that is oriented toward the transcendent I include the thing-in-itself therein is doomed to such a dilemma. Heidegger puts the question pointedly, but in ontological terms: What is the meaning of the term generalis in the characterization of ontology as metaphysica generalis? The problem of the schematism of the pure concepts of the understanding is a question concerning the inmost essence of ontological knowledge. Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Indiana University Press, , p. Imagination is perhaps itself understanding and reason!

The identification with reason will not be always thematized by Kant, but will constitute the destiny of German idealism, notably through Schelling. He distinguishes the figurative synthesis of the imagination from the conceptual synthesis of the understanding, and the ontologically ideal from the epistemologically ideal. He wants to engage in pure epistemology although without realizing that it can be stretched toward ontology , but not deliberate ontology. Heidegger himself comes to acknowledge that this is the case: Kant brought the possibility of metaphysics before this abyss.

He saw the unknown; he had to draw back.

Not only did the imagination fill him with alarm, but in the meantime [between the first and the second editions] he has also come more and more under the influence of pure reason as such. Once Kant arrives at an ontologically clear stance, the real struggle he faces is the reconciliation between the transcendental and the immanent which I have discussed above. Let me now proceed to examine another problem. Having argued with Kant for the modest nature of the transcendental self, I shall attempt now to combine it with the role of the thing-in-itself. The perception of any object becomes meaningful only via the concept that the I attaches to it.

All possible intuitions and their relatedness through the categories take place in time and space, with the latter two not existing by themselves, but rather being attached to the manifold by the self. In addition, the presumed unity of an object presupposes some unified space to which the 47 M. One represents the object as possible in space CPR, B Respectively, things are represented as following one another in time.

Whereas each time event is separated from another, rationality organizes experience in time sequence. Moreover, it organizes time-events not only as following one another, but also as being related to one another by the so-called causality chains, as causing one another. This is the category of causality: Now this synthetic unity, as a condition a priori under which I combine the manifold of an intuition in general, is — if I abstract from the constant form of my inner intuition, namely, time — the category of cause, by means of which, when I apply it to my sensibility, I determine everything that happens in accordance with the relation which it prescribes, and I do so in time in general.

Thus my apprehension of such an event, and therefore the event itself, considered as a possible perception, is subject to the concept of the relation of effects and causes, and so in all other cases CPR, B Since experience is never full, it is, therefore, never reliable. A cardinal difference between the two thinkers needs to be emphasized at this point. It is obvious that Kant does not address the same question as Hume does. At best, it could be claimed that he does so in the epistemological sense.

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But there is an inseparable ontological aspect that cannot be neglected. In the ontological sense, not only does Kant not reject Hume, but he does not even intend to do so,50 except for 49 As a rule, the ontological facet is omitted when the commonness between Kant and Hume is stressed. See for example L. Yale University Press, , pp. Watkins, Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality, Cambridge: This is how intelligence and experience are related.

Hume is pursuing a rather different issue, namely, the existence of causality independently of its subjective perception. Beyond that, there is the thing-in-itself. Unlike in Hume, philosophy in Kant adopts a radically different orientation. For Kant, the question is no more how the world is, but how the subject perceives the world. Whereas Hume talks about the possibility of the object, Kant essentially argues about the possibility of cognition of the object. Therefore, metaphysics can resolve its issues not because the object itself really corresponds to the way it is being understood, but because rationality understands the object in such a way.

Rationality sets the form, the frame, through which all knowledge of the object is filtered. The German philosopher offers no explanation as to whether the thing-in-itself is causal or not. This issue was raised already by the very first reactions to the Critique of Pure Reason, not only from a theological angle e. Kant does not and cannot essentially refute Hume.

He solves the dispute between empiricism and rationalism mostly in favor of the latter. He knows that the questions that Hume asks e. If it were to derive all from experience, then it would be impossible to uphold universality, just as Hume argues. However, arguing epistemologically against Hume, Kant agrees with the Scottish thinker on the essential ontological question and never abandons Humean skepticism as an ontological position.

The notion of the thing-in-itself simply forbids such a move. In order to save the latter, he divides the world into two sharply distinguished realms, the realm of phenomena 52 G. SUNY, , p. The division results in a strictly defined triadic cognitive structure: One can move from the first to the second and from the second to the first, with the first conditioning the perception of the second. But the thing-in-itself is also the personification of Kantian philosophical humility.

It designates the rejection of ultimate ontological answers, the understanding of humans as miniscule fractions in a huge, unknown, and tremendously complex universe — an understanding which is as ordinary in the age of Freud and Einstein as pioneering it was in the mid-eighteenth century. Thus, Kant is pertinent to modern philosophy for the most simple and prima facie reasons: However, his conception of the thing-in-itself denotes modesty that tempers his epistemological foundationalism.

Given the emphasis on the contrast between the two tasks of philosophy, the epistemological and the metaphysical, I interpret the thing-in-itself as deserving greater importance than most Kantians usually allow. I also maintain that the thing-in-itself has innermost ontological importance, and this is significant for my critical review of the projects of his successors in the following chapters of this book.

The thing-in-itself has more than a nominal function in Kantian philosophy. The emphasis on the insignificance of the thing-in-itself has been a critical issue for the defense of Kant in the works of Neokantians, such as Natorp, Cohen, Cassirer, and many others. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. See also my discussion in the introduction. Therefore, one needs not seek actuality of matter as hidden beyond our spatial representations. The question is not simply rhetorical, as Cassirer implies.

Die Kritische Philosophie, pp. In most cases, Kant employs the latter term because the former is just the negative side of appearance, and not a distinct metaphysical entity. Kant is not interested in the latter, but in the former, in the appearance. He therefore proposes a two-step scale of knowledge in which the affection or intuition is just a singular case that is subsumed under the a priori schema. Prauss admits that in several passages Kant has in mind indeed the thing-in-itself and not only the thing-in-itself considered. In an era of scientific optimism, it is comprehensible that Neokantianism tends to interpret Kant in a realistic way and spare him from accusations of impracticality, cognitive pessimism, and relativism.

He was very much interested in science and his transcendental philosophy was always meant as a philosophical interpretation of the exact sciences. Prauss, Kant und das Problem der Dinge an sich, 2. Allison in his influential study of Kant. However, the development of German idealism has shown that unqualified epistemic claims cannot be thoroughly upheld without collapsing into ontological claims.

The ontological significance of the thing-in-itself is a conditio sine qua non if one wants to avoid such quandary. Harvard University Press, However, there is no point in turning the thing-in-itself into a mere subjective device. If the thing-in-itself had only nominal importance, then it would not be needed at all. Kant could have denoted only the transcendental mediation of knowledge and stopped forcing the notion of the thing-in-itself throughout his writings.

But his insistence on that notion is not accidental. For Kant, the thing-in-itself is not a mere projection of the subject, but also an independent entity which appears in order to become the object of experience. The thing-in-itself has objective existence by the mere fact that besides the acknowledgement of its existence, there is no role of intelligence therein. The thing-in-itself is a philosophical obscuration for the knowledge we lack, and its function is not only to secure the transcendental conditions of cognition, but also to delineate the limits of it.

For thought is not only of transcendental origins and not simply the condition of perceiving reality, but also the outcome of interaction with reality, the result of history and praxis. Moreover, not only the categories but also ideal constructions in general as constitutive parts of rationality set up a framework in which things are perceived, understood and judged.

That is, thought is not simply and unequivocally transcendental. Such comments are reminiscent of the way in which an opponent of Berkeley had kicked a stone in order to prove that matter exists. Beyond such ironic remarks, the background for the Hegelian and Marxist objections has to do with issues that Kant had brought up but failed to elaborate upon, namely the practical and teleological aspect of consciousness, the relationship between the transcendental and the empirical, as well as the relationship between the rational and the historical.

As far as those aspects of the Kantian system go, the Hegelian and Marxism criticism is warranted. However, the epistemological and the metaphysical tasks of philosophy need to be differentiated. Hegel intentionally unites them, and Engels also keeps them together when he correlates the reproduction of a natural process to the conquering of the thing-in-itself: It might be worth noticing that even the animals, which go after things, grab, maul, and consume them, are not so stupid as these metaphysicians. International Publishers, , pp. Kant is clear about the fact that phenomena are neither representations of the subject of cognition which otherwise offers a lot in the process nor mere illusions.

Phenomena represent the way the thing-in-itself appears. The thing-in-itself demarcates the negative boundaries of cognition. Above all, such a prospect would give rise to normative problems. An objection to my argument would be that it rests on the assumption of the infinity of cognition. But such an assumption would have only a negative value. It does not maintain the finitude or infinity of cognition but rather its unfathomable prospect. Therefore, one has to accept the possibility of future modification or even denial of what is now considered known.

Another objection would be that the mere assertion of the existence of the thing-in-itself already denotes knowledge of it. Yet, this would 66 Ibid. However, does this increase of knowledge amount to a proof of the overcoming of the thing-in-itself? See, for example, R. Naukova Dumka, , p. It is therefore reasonable to maintain that the Kantian thing-in-itself is ontologically, and even normatively, unsurpassable.

The human subject stands in front of an unknown universe, and the only weapon the subject possesses, the rational ability, is not applicable to the thing-in-itself. The universal is thinkable, but this does not necessarily mean that the universal exists. The infinite is thinkable, but this does not mean that the infinite exists.

God is thinkable, but this does not mean that God exists. Of course, the intriguing aspect here is that, except for the notion of God, man can use these concepts in a practical and efficient way. The infinite, for instance, is a concept employed in mathematical equations. In this way, reason can make use of its findings, expand its cognitions, establish laws, etc. The difference, according to Kant, is that in these fields, reason deals solely with the phenomena. With regard to the outside nature, knowledge is mediated by the categories of the understanding, the ability to cognize objects of possible experience CPR, B If it were possible to separately characterize this faculty temporarily abstracting from the fact that human rationality forms as a unified stream of understanding and reason , its knowledge would be unreflective, meaningless, and, in a sense, thoughtless.

As the supreme rational ability, reason is the faculty that offers principles CPR, A and specifies the concepts used by the lower faculty CPR, Bff. The understanding is oriented toward the phenomena, and reason regulates the orientation itself. Understanding may be regarded as a faculty which secures the unity of appearances by means of rules, and reason as being the faculty which secures the unity of rules of understanding under principles.

Reason is the crowning of the edifice of knowledge, aiming at securing systematic unity of thought. Both reason and understanding are of transcendental nature and, although they have different functions, understanding is oriented toward experience while reason is oriented toward understanding, thus the harmony of cognition is maintained.

Philosophical cognition also aspires to explain how the world is in its intimate features. Reason is aimed at not only the transcendental but also the transcendent. Thus, the fundamental questions of metaphysics, according to Kant and pre-Kantian philosophy are the questions of God, freedom, and immortality. It is for the investigation of these unfathomable but also momentous and vital issues that Kant invokes the faculty of reason, devotes to them the Transcendental Dialectic. His inquiry is accordingly structured in the form of a critique of rational psychology paralogisms , cosmology antinomies , and theology ideal of reason.

This part seems to be of the major relevance for the purpose of tracing the evolution of the epistemological stance of German idealism. It refers to the objective side of knowledge, the relation of reason to reality and not to metaphysical principles. This is what Kant calls Weltbegriffe and kosmologische Ideen. Although reason is supposed to secure the unity of the subjective conditions of cognition, a completely different situation arises when reason is applied to the objective synthesis of appearances.

The famous Kantian antinomies are four in number: For each antinomy, Kant sets forth a thesis and an antithesis. The other three antinomies follow a similar procedure; the procedural differences, namely, that the first two antinomies are solved in the negative and the latter two in the positive are unimportant for the present discussion. The thesis of the first antinomy reads: Kant goes on to offer the proof of that thesis. That is, Kant does not prove exactly the thesis itself but the impossibility of the opposite, and indirectly, the validity of the thesis. Thus, if one supposes that the world does not have a beginning in time, then no successive synthesis of our understanding of things is possible.

Therefore, the world has to have a beginning in time. Similarly, the world has to have space limits, otherwise it is impossible to perceive its synthesis as a whole.

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