The Critique of Judgment and the Unity of Kant's Critical System 1009336851, 9781009336857

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THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT AND THE UNITY OF KANT’S CRITICAL SYSTEM

In this book, Lara Ostaric argues that Kant’s seminal Critique of Judgment is properly understood as completing his Critical system. The two seemingly disparate halves of the text are unified under this larger project insofar as both aesthetic and teleological judgment indirectly exhibit the final end of reason, the Ideas of the highest good and the postulates, as if obtaining in nature. She relates Kant’s discussion of aesthetic and teleological judgment to important yet under-explored concepts in his philosophy, and helps the reader to recognize the relevance of his aesthetics and teleology for our understanding of fine arts and genius, the possibility of pure judgments of ugliness, Kant’s philosophy of history, his philosophy of religion, and his conception of autonomy. Ostaric’s novel and thoroughly integrative presentation of Kant’s system will be of interest not only to Kant scholars but also to those working in religious studies, art history, political theory, and intellectual history. L a r a Osta r ic  is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Temple University. She is the editor of Interpreting Schelling: Critical Essays (Cambridge, 2014).

T H E C R I T IQU E OF JUDGMENT A ND THE U N I T Y OF K A N T ’ S C R I T IC A L S Y S T E M L A R A OS TA R IC Temple University, Philadelphia

Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8EA, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467 Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a department of the University of Cambridge. We share the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781009336857 DOI: 10.1017/9781009336833 © Lara Ostaric 2023 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment. First published 2023 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. A Cataloging-in-Publication data record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-1-009-33685-7 Hardback Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT AND THE UNITY OF KANT’S CRITICAL SYSTEM

In this book, Lara Ostaric argues that Kant’s seminal Critique of Judgment is properly understood as completing his Critical system. The two seemingly disparate halves of the text are unified under this larger project insofar as both aesthetic and teleological judgment indirectly exhibit the final end of reason, the Ideas of the highest good and the postulates, as if obtaining in nature. She relates Kant’s discussion of aesthetic and teleological judgment to important yet under-explored concepts in his philosophy, and helps the reader to recognize the relevance of his aesthetics and teleology for our understanding of fine arts and genius, the possibility of pure judgments of ugliness, Kant’s philosophy of history, his philosophy of religion, and his conception of autonomy. Ostaric’s novel and thoroughly integrative presentation of Kant’s system will be of interest not only to Kant scholars but also to those working in religious studies, art history, political theory, and intellectual history. L a r a Osta r ic  is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Temple University. She is the editor of Interpreting Schelling: Critical Essays (Cambridge, 2014).

T H E C R I T IQU E OF JUDGMENT A ND THE U N I T Y OF K A N T ’ S C R I T IC A L S Y S T E M L A R A OS TA R IC Temple University, Philadelphia

Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8EA, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467 Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a department of the University of Cambridge. We share the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781009336857 DOI: 10.1017/9781009336833 © Lara Ostaric 2023 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment. First published 2023 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. A Cataloging-in-Publication data record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-1-009-33685-7 Hardback Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT AND THE UNITY OF KANT’S CRITICAL SYSTEM

In this book, Lara Ostaric argues that Kant’s seminal Critique of Judgment is properly understood as completing his Critical system. The two seemingly disparate halves of the text are unified under this larger project insofar as both aesthetic and teleological judgment indirectly exhibit the final end of reason, the Ideas of the highest good and the postulates, as if obtaining in nature. She relates Kant’s discussion of aesthetic and teleological judgment to important yet under-explored concepts in his philosophy, and helps the reader to recognize the relevance of his aesthetics and teleology for our understanding of fine arts and genius, the possibility of pure judgments of ugliness, Kant’s philosophy of history, his philosophy of religion, and his conception of autonomy. Ostaric’s novel and thoroughly integrative presentation of Kant’s system will be of interest not only to Kant scholars but also to those working in religious studies, art history, political theory, and intellectual history. L a r a Osta r ic  is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Temple University. She is the editor of Interpreting Schelling: Critical Essays (Cambridge, 2014).

T H E C R I T IQU E OF JUDGMENT A ND THE U N I T Y OF K A N T ’ S C R I T IC A L S Y S T E M L A R A OS TA R IC Temple University, Philadelphia

Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8EA, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467 Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a department of the University of Cambridge. We share the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781009336857 DOI: 10.1017/9781009336833 © Lara Ostaric 2023 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment. First published 2023 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. A Cataloging-in-Publication data record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-1-009-33685-7 Hardback Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

Acknowledgments Note on Sources Kant’s Writings by Abbreviations Used for German Titles with Corresponding Translations

page viii ix

Introduction Pa r t I 1

The Highest Good a nd the Postul ates 19

The Highest Good and the Realism of Moral Glaube

47

2.1

2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5

3

1

Kant’s Justification of the “Fact of Reason” and the Objective Reality of Freedom from a “Practical Point of View”

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6

2

x

Why There Cannot Be a Deduction of the Categorical Imperative Practical Cognition of the Form of the Moral Law Practical Cognition of the Matter of the Moral Law Practical Cognition of the Objective Reality of the Moral Law Kant’s Proof of the Objective Reality of Freedom Conclusion and Evaluation

The Highest Good as the Unconditioned Object of Pure Practical Reason The Postulates and the Primacy of Practical Reason The Anti-Realist Arguments of Kant’s Moral Glaube The Realist Argument of Kant’s Moral Glaube: Practical Cognition and Moral Glaube Conclusion and Evaluation

Reflective Judgment and the Realism of the “Moral Image”

3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5

The Human Being as the “Ultimate” and the “Final End of Nature” The Highest Good as the Object of a Collective Striving Kant’s Moral Proof of God’s Existence Reflective Judgment and Moral Glaube in the Third Critique Conclusion and Evaluation

v

24 29 32 34 41 43

49 53 59 62 68

72

74 76 81 91 97

vi

Contents

Pa r t I I

A esthetic Judgment a nd the “Mor a l I m age”

4 Beauty as a “Symbol of Morality”: The “Moral Image” of the “Supersensible Without” 4.1 The Formal Aspects of Symbolic Presentation 4.2 The Material Aspects of Symbolic Presentation: Beauty as a Symbol of Morality 4.3 Works of Genius as a Symbol of Morality 4.4 The Cognitive Aspect of Aesthetic Experience: Beauty as a “Kind of Cognition” 4.5 Conclusion and Evaluation

5

The Free Harmony of the Faculties and the Primacy of Imagination in Kant’s Aesthetic Judgment: The “Moral Image” of the “Supersensible Within”

5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5

Reflection and Schematization in Aesthetic Judgment Imagination in the A-Deduction Freedom of Imagination in Aesthetic Reflection Aesthetic Reflection and the “Feeling of Life” Conclusion and Evaluation

6 Genius, Ugliness, and Nonsense: Kant on the Purity of the Ugly and the Failure of the Artist’s Power of Judgment 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5

Kant’s Notion of Ugliness as “Negative Beauty” Kant’s Early Views on Ugliness Ugliness in the Third Critique Genius’s “Original Nonsense” Conclusion and Evaluation

Pa r t I I I

8

102

110 113 118 121

123 126 132 136 143 147

150

153 155 163 171 173

Teleologic a l Judgment a nd the “Mor a l I m age”

7 Kant’s Account of Nature’s Systematicity and the Unity of Theoretical and Practical Reason 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4

101

Nature’s Systematicity in the Transcendental Ideal Nature’s Systematicity in the Appendix to the Dialectic Nature’s Systematicity in the Critique of Judgment Conclusion and Evaluation

Organisms as “Natural Ends” and Reflective Judgment’s “Image” of Externalized Freedom

8.1 Contingency in Our Representations of Organic Formations 8.2 Organisms as “Natural Ends” and the “Image” of Absolute Freedom

179

181 190 199 203

206 210 217

Contents 8.3 Organisms as “Natural Ends” and the Unity of Nature and Freedom 8.4 Conclusion and Evaluation

9 Kant’s Teleological Philosophy of History 9.1

9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6

Kant’s Philosophy of History and the “Aim of Nature”: The Epistemic Justification The “Unsociable Sociability” as Nature’s Means toward Culture Kant’s Philosophy of History and the “Aim of Nature”: The Moral Justification History of the Human Species and the Problem of Reason’s Development Kant’s Philosophy of History and the Hegelian Problem Conclusion and Evaluation

Concluding Remarks Bibliography Index

vii 224 233

235 236 242 245 251 256 260

263 267 277

Acknowledgments

The writing of this book was supported by Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. I thank Andrea Kern for serving as my host and for providing an intellectually stimulating environment during my research stay at the University of Leipzig. I also benefited from the research leave granted by my home institution, Temple University, during the academic year 2015–2016. In the final stages of the manuscript revisions, I benefited greatly from the very helpful comments of the anonymous reviewers of Cambridge University Press and the comments of Jason Cutmore who carefully copyedited the manuscript. If there are any typos or stylistic mistakes remaining, they must be my own doing. Finally, I owe my gratitude to my husband, our daughter, and my parents for their love and support. I could not have completed this project without them. I thankfully acknowledge permission from the publishers to use materials from the following earlier publications. For Chapter 2: “Practical Cognition, Reflective Judgment, and the Realism of Kant’s Moral Glaube.” In Moral Realism or Antirealism in Kant’s Moral Philosophy, Kant-Studien Ergänzungshefte, eds. Robinson dos Santos and Elke Elisabeth Schmidt. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017, 89–115. For Chapter 4: “Works of Genius as Sensible Exhibitions of the Idea of the Highest Good.” Kant-Studien 101.1, 2010: 22–39. For Chapter 5: “The Free Harmony of the Faculties and the Primacy of Imagination in Kant’s Aesthetic Judgment.” European Journal of Philosophy 25.4, 2017: 1376–410. For Chapter 7: “Kant’s Account of Nature’s Systematicity and the Unity of Theoretical and Practical Reason.” Inquiry 52.2, 2009: 155–78.

viii

Note on Sources

Apart from the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason), all references to Kant’s writings are to the appropriate volume and page number of Kants gesammelte Schriften (AA), edited by the Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (formerly Königlich-Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften), 29 vols. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1900–). References to the Kritik der reinen Vernunft are to the standard A and B pagination of the first and the second editions (1781 and 1787, respectively). Citations to Reflexionen are made by reference to the reflection number, followed by the relevant volume and page number in AA. Citations to student notes from Kant’s lectures are made by reference to the common title for the set of notes, followed by the relevant volume and page number in AA. For translations, I mostly rely on the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant but have occasionally introduced changes and corrections.

ix

Kant’s Writings by Abbreviations Used for German Titles with Corresponding Translations

BDG

Br BGSE

EEKU

FM

Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseins Gottes. 1763. (AA 2) [“The only possible argument in support of a demonstration of the existence of God.” In Immanuel Kant Theoretical Philosophy 1755–1770, trans. and ed. David Walford, in collaboration with Ralf Meerbote, 107–202. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.] Briefwechsel. (AA 10–13) [Immanuel Kant Correspondence, trans. and ed. Arnulf Zweig. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.] Bemerkungen zu den Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen. 1764–1765. (AA 20) [Remarks in the Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, trans. and eds. Patrick Frierson and Paul Guyer, 65–205. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.] Erste Einleitung in die Kritik der Urteilskraft. Nachlass. (AA 20) [First Introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgment. In Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews, ed. Paul Guyer, 3–51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.] Welches sind die wirklichen Fortschritte, die die Metaphysik seit Leibnitzens und Wolf’s Zeiten in Deutschland gemacht hat? 1793/1804 (AA 20) [“What real progress has metaphysics made in Germany since the time of Leibniz and Wolff?” In Immanuel Kant Theoretical Philosophy After 1781, trans. Peter Heath, eds. Henry Allison and x

Kant’s Writings by Abbreviations Used for German Titles

GMS

GSE

IaG

KpV

KrV

KU

MAN

xi

Peter Heath, 349–84. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.] Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. 1st edn. 1785; 2nd edn.1786. (AA 4) [“Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals.” In Immanuel Kant Practical Philosophy, ed. and trans. Mary J. Gregor, 42–108. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.] Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen. 1764. (AA 2) [Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, trans. Patrick Frierson and Paul Guyer, 11–65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.] Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht. 1784. (AA 8) [“Idea for a universal history with a cosmopolitan aim.” In Immanuel Kant Anthropology, History, and Education, trans. Allen W. Wood, eds. Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden, 108–20. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.] Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. 1788. (AA 5) [“Critique of practical reason.” In Immanuel Kant Practical Philosophy, ed. and trans. Mary J. Gregor, 138–271. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.] Kritik der reinen Vernunft. 1st edn. [A] 1781 (AA 4); 2nd edn. [B] 1787 (AA 3). [Critique of Pure Reason, eds. and trans. Allen W. Wood and Paul Guyer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.] Kritik der Urteilskraft. 1st edn., 1790; 2nd edn. 1793; 3rd edn. 1799. (AA 5) [Critique of the Power of Judgment, ed. Paul Guyer, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.] Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft. 1st edn. 1786, 2nd edn. 1787, 3rd edn. 1800. (AA 4) [“Metaphysical foundations of natural science.” In Immanuel Kant Theoretical Philosophy After 1781, trans. Michael Friedman, eds. Henry Allison and

xii

MAM

MS

NG

NTH

Prol

Kant’s Writings by Abbreviations Used for German Titles Peter Heath, 171–244. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.] Muthmaßlicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte. 1786. (AA 8) [“Conjectural beginning of human history.” In Immanuel Kant Anthropology, History, and Education, trans. Allen W. Wood, eds. Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden, 163–75. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.] Die Metaphysik der Sitten. 1st edn. 1797; 2nd edn. 1798. (AA 6) [“The metaphysics of morals.” In Immanuel Kant Practical Philosophy, ed. and trans. Mary J. Gregor, 363–603. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.] Versuch den Begriff der negativen Größen in die Weltweisheit einzuführen. 1763. (AA 2) [“Attempt to introduce the concept of negative magnitudes into philosophy.” In Immanuel Kant Theoretical Philosophy 1755–1770, trans. and ed. David Walford, in collaboration with Ralf Meerbote, 203–41. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.] Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels, oder Versuch von der Verfassung und dem mechanischen Ursprunge des ganzen Weltgebäudes nach Newtonischen Grundsätzen Abgehandelt. 1755. (AA 1) [“Universal natural history and theory of the heavens or essay on the constitution and mechanical origin of the whole universe according to Newtonian principles.” In Immanuel Kant Natural Science, trans. Olaf Reinhardt, ed. Eric Watkins, 182–308. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.] Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik, die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können. 1783. (AA 4) [“Prolegomena to any future metaphysics that will be able to come forward as Science.” In Immanuel Kant Theoretical Philosophy After 1781, trans. Gary Hatfield, eds. Henry Allison and Peter Heath, 29–169. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.]

Kant’s Writings by Abbreviations Used for German Titles RezHerder

RGV

Refl

SF

TG

TP

UD

xiii

Recensionen von J.G. Herders Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1785) (AA 8) [“Reviews of J.G. Herder’s Ideas for the philosophy of the history of humanity.” In Immanuel Kant Anthropology, History, and Education, trans. Allen W. Wood, eds. Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden, 124–42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.] Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft. 1st edn. 1793; 2nd edn. 1794. (AA 6) [“Religion within the boundaries of mere reason.” In Immanuel Kant Religion and Rational Theology, eds. and trans. Allen W. Wood and George di Giovanni, 39–215. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.] Reflexionen (AA 14-19) [Immanuel Kant Notes and Fragments, trans. Paul Guyer, Curtis Bowman, and Fred Rauscher, ed. Paul Guyer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.] Der Streit der Fakultäten. 1798. (AA 7) [“The conflict of the faculties.” In Immanuel Kant Religion and Rational Theology, eds. and trans. Allen W. Wood and George di Giovanni, 239–309. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.] Träume eines Geistersehers, erläutert durch Träume der Metaphysik. 1766. (AA 2) [“Dreams of a spirit-seer elucidated by dreams of metaphysics.” In Immanuel Kant Theoretical Philosophy 1755–1770, trans. and ed. David Walford, in collaboration with Ralf Meerbote, 301–59. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.] Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis. 1793. (AA 8) [“On the common saying: That may be correct in theory, but it is of no use in practice.” In Immanuel Kant Practical Philosophy, ed. and trans. Mary J. Gregor, 278–309. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.] Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der

xiv

Kant’s Writings by Abbreviations Used for German Titles

ÜGTP

V-Anth/Fried

V-Anth/Mensch

V-Anth/Mron

Moral. Zur Beantwortung der Frage, welche die Königliche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin auf das Jahr 1763 aufgegeben hat. 1764. (AA 2) [“Inquiry Concerning the distinctness of the principles of natural theology and morality, being an answer to the question proposed for consideration by the Berlin Royal Academy for the year 1763.” (Also known as the “Prize Essay.”) In Immanuel Kant Theoretical Philosophy 1755–1770, trans. and ed. David Walford, in collaboration with Ralf Meerbote, 243–75. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.] Über den Gebrauch teleologischer Principien in der Philosophie. 1788. (AA 8) [“On the use of teleological principles in philosophy.” In Immanuel Kant Anthropology, History, and Education, eds. and trans. Robert B. Louden and Günter Zöller, 192–218. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.] Vorlesungen über Anthropologie, Wintersemester 1775/1776, Anthropologie Friedländer (AA 25) [Immanuel Kant Lectures on Anthropology, trans. Robert B. Louden, Allen W. Wood, Robert R. Clewis, G. Felicitas Munzel, eds. Robert B. Louden and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.] Vorlesungen über Anthropologie, Wintersemester 1781/1782, Anthropologie Menschenkunde, Petersburg (AA 25) [Immanuel Kant Lectures on Anthropology, trans. Robert B. Louden, Allen W. Wood, Robert R. Clewis, G. Felicitas Munzel, eds. Robert B. Louden and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.] Vorlesungen über Anthropologie, Wintersemester 1784/1785, Anthropologie Mrongovius (AA 25) [Immanuel Kant Lectures on Anthropology, trans. Robert B. Louden, Allen W. Wood, Robert R. Clewis, G. Felicitas Munzel, eds. Robert B. Louden and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.]

Kant’s Writings by Abbreviations Used for German Titles V-Anth/Pillau

V-Lo/Jäsche

V-Lo/Wiener

V-Lo/Philippi V-Met-L1/Pölitz

V-Met-L2/Pölitz

V-Met-K3/Arnoldt

V-Met/Dohna

V-Met/Mron

xv

Vorlesungen über Anthropologie, Wintersemester 1777/1778, Anthropologie Pillau [Immanuel Kant Lectures on Anthropology, trans. Robert B. Louden, Allen W. Wood, Robert R. Clewis, G. Felicitas Munzel, eds. Robert B. Louden and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.] Vorlesungen über Logik, Jäsche Logik (1800) (AA 9) [Immanuel Kant Lectures on Logic, trans. and ed. J. Michael Young. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.] Vorlesungen über Logik, Wiener Logik (1780ff) (AA 24) [Immanuel Kant Lectures on Logic, trans. and ed. J. Michael Young. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.] Vorlesungen über Logik, Logik Philippi (approx. 1772) (AA 24) Vorlesungen über Metaphysik, Metaphysik Pölitz (1770s) (AA 28) [Immanuel Kant Lectures on Metaphysics, trans. and eds. Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.] Vorlesungen über Metaphysik, Metaphysik Pölitz Original, 1790/1791? (AA 28) [Immanuel Kant Lectures on Metaphysics, trans. and eds. Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.] Vorlesungen über Metaphysik, Wintersemester 1794/1795 Metaphysik K3 (Arnoldt/Schlapp) (AA28) [Immanuel Kant Lectures on Metaphysics, trans. and eds. Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.] Vorlesungen über Metaphysik, Wintersemester 1792/1793 Metaphysik Dohna (AA 28) [Immanuel Kant Lectures on Metaphysics, trans. and eds. Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.] Vorlesungen über Metaphysik, Wintersemester 1782/1783, Metaphysik Mrongovius (AA 29)

xvi

Kant’s Writings by Abbreviations Used for German Titles

V-Phil-Th/Pölitz

VT

VZeF

WA

WDO

ZeF

ZEKU

[Immanuel Kant Lectures on Metaphysics, trans. and eds. Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.] Pölitz Vorlesungen Wintersemester 1783/1784 Philosophische Religionslehre nach Pölitz (AA 28) [Lectures on the Philosophical Doctrine of Religion, trans. and eds. Allen W. Wood and George di Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.] Von einem neuerdings erhobenen vornehmen Ton in der Philosophie. 1796. (AA 8) [“On a recently prominent tone of superiority in philosophy.” In Immanuel Kant Theoretical Philosophy After 1781, eds. and trans. Henry Allison and Peter Heath, 431–45. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.] Verkündigung des nahen Abschlusses eines Traktats zum ewigen Frieden in der Philosophie. 1796. (AA 8) [“Announcement of the near conclusion of a treaty for eternal peace in philosophy.” In Fenves 1993.] Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? 1784 (AA 8) [“An answer to the question: What is enlightenment?” In Immanuel Kant Practical Philosophy, ed. and trans. Mary J. Gregor, 16–22. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.] Was heißt: Sich im Denken orientieren? 1786 (AA 8) [“What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking?” In Immanuel Kant Religion and Rational Theology, eds. and trans. Allen W. Wood and George di Giovanni, 7–18. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.] Zum ewigen Frieden. 1795. (AA 8) [“Toward perpetual peace.” In Immanuel Kant Practical Philosophy, ed. and trans. Mary J. Gregor, 317–51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.] Zweite Einleitung in die Kritik der Urteilskraft. [Second Introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgment. In Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews, ed. Paul Guyer, 59–83. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.]

Introduction

I

Reflective Judgment and the Problem of Reason’s Unity

In Kant scholarship, the Critique of Judgment1 is traditionally approached as a disunified work that contains two essentially unrelated parts: the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment and the Critique of Teleological Judgment. According to this view, analyzing the book’s two parts as two separate projects is helpful for understanding better Kant’s major contributions to aesthetics and to the philosophy of biology, respectively.2 The literature that promotes the approach that stresses the unity of the work remains sparse. Among those who raise the question of the unitary structure of the work are some who see it as an artificially imposed theory which ultimately stunts its potential.3 However, others consider the “systematic approach” promising primarily for answering the question of the possibility of empirical cognition. According to this view, the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment and the Critique of Teleological Judgment do not stand in a contingent relation to each other because aesthetic and teleological judgments share a common principle: namely, the principle of taste is in fact the logical principle of nature’s 1

2

3

Translating the original German title, Kritik der Urteilskraft, as Critique of the Power of Judgment, would be more accurate. For the sake of simplicity, however, throughout the book I will be translating the full title of Kant’s third Critique as Critique of Judgment. For the view that analyzing Critique of Aesthetic Judgment independently of Critique of Teleological Judgment is a productive approach to the Critique of Judgment see Schaper 1992, 367–68. Paul Guyer argues that the only principle of taste which Kant ever actually states or defends has no essential connection to the principle of systematicity which is the guiding principle of teleological judgment. This is why he remains convinced that the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment and the Critique of Teleological Judgment are not essentially related. See Guyer 1979, 64–65. Jens Kulenkampff argues that classifying both aesthetic judgments and teleological judgments under the category of reflective judgments detracts from Kant’s theory of taste. See Kulenkampff 1978, 32 ff. John Zammito is a proponent of a genetic approach and gives an account of the work’s emergence through different times and phases of Kant’s interest and development which is also supposed to explain the different tensions and inconsistencies in the work. See Zammito 1992. The views of Kulenkampff and Zammito are also discussed in Nuzzo 2005, 62–63.

1

1::79

.6 680

3 91/. 6 3 /

8 .0/

/89 :

8/99

2

Introduction

purposiveness.4 For the proponents of this position, this assimilation is justified by Kant’s account of reflective judgment, the primary function of which is empirical conceptualization. This interpretation of reflective judgment has motivated a number of recent publications on the relation between aesthetics and empirical cognition of nature in Kant’s Critical philosophy.5 Unlike these recent “systematic approaches,” that of the present monograph takes as its anchor point Kant’s claim that the Critique of Judgment “bring[s] [his] entire critical enterprise to an end” (ZEKU, 5: 170). Kant’s Critical system does not culminate in empirical cognition of the natural world but, rather, in reason’s “highest” or “final end” (KrV, A840/B868), or what Kant calls “the entire vocation of human beings” (KrV, A840/ B868), namely, morality.6 This entails the realization of our moral ends in the world. According to Kant, we are beings of both freedom and nature. Thus, even though we are self-determining, that is, capable of determining our will in accordance with the moral law, we are also creatures of nature and sensibility. As creatures of both freedom and sensibility, we know what ought to be done but it is not always the case that we formulate proper moral intentions. Moreover, our moral ends are to be realized in this world, which is governed by mechanical laws and principles unlike our own rational principles. Hence, the natural world is not necessarily cooperative with our rational ends. Although, there is an “incalculable gulf” (unübersehbare Kluft) (ZEKU, 5: 176) between the domains of nature and freedom, “the latter should have an influence on the former, namely the concept of freedom should make the end that is imposed by its laws real in the sensible world” (ZEKU, 5: 176). Some discussions have already been advanced on the issue of the relation between the third Critique and morality, which interpret the problem of the “gulf” that needs to be bridged as “not that between the noumenal and phenomenal causality but between feeling and freedom – that is, between the arbitrary realm of sensation and the law-governed autonomy of reason.”7 According to this view, given the changes in Kant’s moral 4 5 6

7

This is the view held by Hannah Ginsborg. See Ginsborg 1990a. See Kukla 2006, Longuenesse 2006, Hughes 2007, Zuckert 2007. Kant’s claim that the Critique of Judgment completes his Critical system is not unknown in the secondary literature. The claim, for example, is acknowledged by Rachel Zuckert. And yet, she contends that Kant’s Critical philosophy culminates in empirical cognition. (See, for example, Zuckert 2007, 1.) Given that Kant writes that “all interest [of reason – LO] is ultimately practical and even that of speculative reason is only conditional and is complete in practical use alone” (KpV, 5: 121), Zuckert’s interpretation is, as she herself acknowledges, a strong revision, a controversial reconstruction (Zuckert 2007, 17), of Kant’s Critical project and the aims of the third Critique. Guyer 1993, 33.

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psychology and epistemology, the central focus of his later writings (starting with the third Critique but extending itself to his Religion and the Metaphysics of Morals) becomes the striving for the harmony between the human being as the natural being and the human being as the rational being, between inclinations and the moral demands of rationality. On this interpretation of the “gulf,” the connection between nature and freedom, between theoretical and practical reason respectively, is grounded primarily on human psychology.8 According to this psychological argument for the unity of the disparate realms of theory and practice, the first moment of the Analytic of the Beautiful, where Kant discusses the quality of the feeling in a pure judgment of taste, matters the most. Unlike the pleasure for both the agreeable and the good, aesthetic pleasure is “disinterested and free” (KU, §5, 5: 210) because it is not “imposed upon us” (KU, §5, 5: 210) by any factors external to aesthetic contemplation itself. Proponents of the psychological argument draw an analogy between the “disinterested and free” (KU, §5, 5: 210) pleasure in the beautiful and the state of an individual with a virtuous disposition. The state of the latter is analogous to the former because it is a state not necessitated by any factors external to the will itself. I call this approach “psychological” because it relies on the introspection of one’s inner states, whether those that pertain to the quality of the pleasure in the beautiful or those that pertain to a virtuous individual and her relation to her inclinations. While one can find textual support in Kant’s third Critique for such an interpretation, I contend that it is not central to it.9 The approach to the “gulf” between theoretical and practical reason summarized above focuses on what Kant calls in the third Critique the “ultimate end of nature” (der letzte Zweck der Natur) (KU, §83, 5: 429). By the latter Kant understands the development of culture, more specifically, the “culture of discipline” (Zucht) (KU, §83, 5: 432), meaning the development of arts and sciences that leads to a cultivation of human sensibility that is amenable to the demands of morality. But nature does not have an ultimate end and, thus, it does not constitute a teleological system until human beings give it one 8

9

The leading defender of this interpretation is Paul Guyer. For the connection between the teleology of nature and morality, see chs. 11, 12 in Guyer 2005a. For the connection between aesthetics and morality, see chs. 1, 6, and 7 in Guyer 1996 and chs. 7, 8, and 9 in Guyer 2005b. For the more specific arguments about the analogy between the disinterested pleasure of aesthetic judgment and the state of a character with the virtuous disposition, see Guyer 1996, 33–35 and Guyer 1997, 317–21. Similar versions of this argument can be found earlier in Crawford 1974, 142–59 and Coleman 1974. Both Crawford and Coleman focus exclusively on Kant’s aesthetic judgment. More recently, in Germany, the argument has been advanced by Birgit Recki in Recki 2006, 2001. See for example KU, §59, 5: 354, KU, §60, 5: 356, and KU, §83, 5: 433–34.

4

Introduction

by setting the “final end” (Endzweck) (KU, §83, 5: 431), the unconditioned end of reason, which is the highest good. I shall argue that Kant’s conception of the highest good and moral Glaube10 is key to understanding Kant’s solution to the problem of the causal efficacy of reason in the third Critique, the problem of the infinite separation between moral agency and the world in which its actions take place. Reason in its practical domain, just as in its theoretical domain, requires the absolute totality of conditions for a given conditioned. Thus, we do not merely strive toward a realization of different, unrelated conceptions of the good. Instead, we strive for a realization of the highest good as the final or unconditioned end of reason, a world where happiness would be distributed in proportion with one’s worthiness of being happy. Because of the disparate realms of freedom and nature, the connection between happiness and morality is contingent: there is no guarantee that even if one acts morally one will be justly rewarded for one’s moral deeds and there is no guarantee even that one will be able to persist in one’s moral disposition due to one’s constant temptations to choose nonmoral maxims. But because reason commands us to strive toward the realization of the highest good in the world and it is a basic supposition of rational willing to will those ends for which we have reason to believe that their realization is possible, we are justified in assuming both the existence of the supreme being that would assist us in our realization of the highest good and the immortal soul that would make possible the endless progress toward this end. Thus, although from the theoretical perspective it is impossible for reason to cognize that which is necessary for it to think and even posit, namely the unconditioned,11 this becomes possible from the “practical perspective” (KpV, 5: 105), the truth of the moral law and the necessary ends of practical reason. This is only possible because theoretical reason can recognize the ends of practical reason as its own. That is to say that although the legislation of human reason has two objects with two separate systems, namely, nature and freedom, these two parts are ultimately united in one single system grounded in one final end, morality. This is what I call the problem of reason’s unity.12 10

11 12

Kant’s notion of “Glaube” is technical, denoting a form of rational assent with specific criteria of what constitutes its proper justification. Thus, I leave the term in the original German because neither “faith,” nor “belief ” would be an entirely adequate translation into English. See, for example, KrV, Bxx, A307/B364–A308/B365. The problem of the unity of reason is rarely discussed among Kant scholars. Susan Nieman’s book (see Nieman 1994) is an exception. In her book, Nieman emphasizes the regulative role of reason,

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Moreover, the unity of reason, which makes possible the determination of the unconditioned from a “practical perspective” (KpV, 5: 105), reveals reason’s genuinely cognitive, constitutive, and not merely regulative function regarding the unconditioned, as is commonly argued in the literature. Therefore, this book shall approach the question of whether we are free not as a mere belief that regulatively guides our actions, “as if ” we were free, nor shall this book approach the representations of moral Glaube as necessary illusions aimed at directing our will in a desired way, or as responses to our psychological need to feel that our actions have bearing on moral outcomes. Instead, this book will point to Kant’s argument for the “objective reality” (KpV, 5: 3) of the Idea of absolute freedom, that is, that freedom “is real” (KpV, 5: 4) and is “a fact” (KpV, 5: 6), as well as the objective reality of the Ideas of God and the soul, albeit, “from a practical point of view” (FM, 20: 305). This book shall emphasize that although reason’s determination is the one of a real and given object, this determination, given the limitation of our discursive understanding, is not theoretical and, hence, cannot result in theoretical cognition of this object. Instead, it constitutes “a pure cognition practically” (KpV, 5: 134). The claims of reason’s “practical cognition” have universality and necessity like the claims of its theoretical cognition. the conception of reason that concerns “the rationality of our behavior” rather than any “fact about the world” (Nieman 1994, 66). For Nieman, reason is, in a Rawlsian spirit, social and procedural and her aim is to show how the same formal and procedural rational norms apply to the realm of science, ethics, and religion. She therefore underestimates the importance of the highest good and the postulates for Kant’s notion of reason’s unity which, as I shall argue, show that Kant’s conception of reason is not merely regulative but constitutive and cognitive. Moreover, she completely ignores the importance of the third Critique and reflective judgment for the problem of reason’s unity in Kant. Angelica Nuzzo’s book Kant and the Unity of Reason (see Nuzzo 2005), unlike Nieman’s, places Kant’s third Critique at the center of the problem of reason’s unity. Her book is conceived as a textual commentary to the third Critique with a special emphasis on the second Introduction, which, in her view, is central for understanding the project of the third Critique. She rightly acknowledges that the problem of the third Critique is the problem of the efficacy of reason in nature. But, surprisingly, the discussion of the highest good remains marginal to her project and limited only to the context of The Methodology of the Critique of Teleological Judgment. Richard Velkley edited a volume of four translated essays by Dieter Henrich under the title The Unity of Reason: Essays on Kant’s Philosophy. (See Henrich 1994.) The problem of the unity of reason in this collection of essays is considered more broadly to include the problem of the unity of subjectivity (1st essay), the problem of the “fact of reason” (2nd essay), the problem of the development of idealistic ethics (3rd essay), and the problem of the transcendental deduction (4th essay). The topic of Kristi Sweet’s book (see Sweet 2013) is congruent to the one explored in this book insofar as it addresses the problem of reason’s unity in relation to reason’s need for the unconditioned. Sweet, however, focuses on giving a unifying account of Kant’s practical reason and not on the unity of theoretical and practical reason. In her 2010, however, she suggests that the aim of the third Critique is to bridge the gap between nature and freedom by compensating for the mere ideality of Kant’s postulates in the second Critique.

6

Introduction

The problematic of the highest good and the postulates (briefly described above) serve only as a background to the central issue of the third Critique. The aim of this book is to show how the third Critique advances Kant’s argument for the postulates and moral Glaube that he develops in the first and the second Critique. While in the first and the second Critique the possibility of our progress toward the highest good and the objective reality of the Ideas of the postulates are what we intellectually “conceive” (KU, §88, 5: 455) on moral grounds, in the third Critique, they are what we must be able to perceive by means of reflective judgment (both in its aesthetic and teleological applications). For Kant, “perception” is a sensation of which we are conscious and in The Postulates of Empirical Thinking in General, he relates perception to the actuality (Wirklichkeit) of things.13 When I claim that for Kant it is not sufficient that we intellectually conceive but that we must be able to perceive our progress toward the final end of reason, I am clearly using Kant’s conception of perception in a modified sense. My intention is not to claim that either the final end of reason or the objects of the Ideas of the postulates are entities given as appearances for us to perceive. The point of contrast between “intellectually conceiving” vs. “perceiving” is to emphasize that Kant’s aim in the third Critique is to argue that these Ideas of reason receive a reality even though this reality is merely the one “sufficient for the reflecting power of judgment” (KU, General Remark on the Teleology, 5: 479). In other words, although on moral grounds we can intellectually cognize that we are free and are justified in conceiving of the world as cooperative with our moral ends, in the third Critique, by means of reflective judgment, we represent nature as if rational and as if furthering the highest good. Because by the time of the third Critique Kant emphasizes even more strongly human finitude – that is, the fact that we are not merely intellectual beings but also sentient and receptive beings to whom things are given – for the Kant of the third Critique it is not sufficient that the object of the Idea of the highest good (together with its necessary conditions) is something that is normatively necessary for us to conceive intellectually. In the third Critique, the object of the Idea of the highest good as the final end of nature is something that must be given to us in sensibility. I shall argue in this book that reflective judgment (both aesthetic and teleological) creates a schema-analogue14 of the Ideas of the postulates and 13 14

See KrV, A225/B272; cf. KrV, A374f. See KrV, A665/B693 where Kant refers to the Idea of reason as “an analogue of a schema” for the thoroughgoing systematic unity of all concepts of the understanding. Regarding nature as if created by the highest intelligence functions a schema-analogue for the principle of nature’s systematicity.

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the highest good, an “image” that indirectly or analogically exhibits these Ideas as if obtaining in nature. In the first Critique, Kant defines a “schema” as a rule of synthesis of the transcendental imagination in accordance with a concept of the understanding so that in this synthesis the imagination renders the rule of this concept sensible in a form of time determination.15 In the third Critique, Kant refers to “schemata” as “direct […] presentations of the concept” in sensible intuition (KU, §59, 5: 352). Because reason’s Ideas of the highest good and the postulates cannot have their objects given in empirical reality, I shall contend that objects of beauty, the feeling of pleasure in the free harmony of the faculties, our representations of organisms as “natural ends” and of nature as a system of ends, and even Kant’s teleological conception of human history, all serve as their indirect exhibitions, that is, their schema-analogues.16 These schema-analogues are the products of reason’s poiesis, its creation or production, which is a hallmark of its finitude. To call representations and the feeling made possible by reflective judgment (in its teleological and aesthetic reflection, respectively) an image or a schema of the Ideas of reason does not amount to the claim that they are illusions, or mere “fictions”17 of reason. Reflective judgments (whether aesthetic or teleological) are our responses to concrete features in empirical reality and they entail, as universally valid judgments, a certain form of cognition: among the concepts pertaining to cognition [Erkenntniß ]18 of nature […] we still find one having the special feature, that by means of it we can grasp, not what is in the object, but rather what we can make intelligible to ourselves by the mere fact of imputing it to the object; which is therefore actually no constituent of cognition of the object, but still a means or ground of cognition given by reason, and this of theoretical, but yet not to that extent 15

16

17 18

For example, a transcendental schema, or a “pure image” (KrV, A142/B182) of the category of reality is “a being in time” (KrV, A143/B182), of the category of substance is “the persistence of the real in time” (KrV, A144/B184), of the category of causality is “the succession of the manifold in time” (KrV, A144/B184), etc. It is well known that Kant refers to beauty as a “symbol of morality” (KU, §59, 5: 352). He defines “symbol” as an “indirect presentation [Darstellung] of a concept” (KU, §59, 5: 352). The term “symbol” can be used in reference to a specific object of a sensible intuition, whether an object of beauty or an organism as a “natural end.” Because reflective judgment’s representation of the whole of nature as a system of ends and the feeling of pleasure in pure aesthetic judgments do not refer to a concrete individual object of a sensible intuition I will refer to them simply as schema-analogues and not as symbols. Allison 2004, 430. I have altered the Cambridge translation which translates “Erkenntniß ” as “knowledge.” The latter for Kant is “Wissen.”

8

Introduction dogmatic cognition. And this is the concept of a purposiveness of nature, which can also be an object of experience, and is thus, not a transcendent, but an immanent concept” (FM, 20: 293).

For Kant, the a priori principle of nature’s purposiveness19 is a means of theoretical cognition of nature even though this cognition could never amount to cognition of the objects of nature (i.e., it is not “dogmatic” or pertaining to “dogmata,” a body of synthetic a priori propositions derived from concepts). Although Kant (in his efforts to distinguish his aesthetic theory from those of the rationalists) refers to aesthetic judgments as aconceptual, they presuppose, like other judgments, a subsumption of a particular under a universal. Thus, insofar as aesthetic judgments are universally valid and entail some agreement with the object (i.e., “this x is beautiful” is either true or false of the object), by means of them we determine the object in some sense and hence aesthetic judgments are in service of a narrow notion of cognition.20 The same could be said of teleological judgments. There are some objects in the empirical world that we, given the kind of beings we are, make intelligible to ourselves by representing them as a cause and effect of themselves, that is, as “natural ends.” This also leaves open the possibility that another type of intellect could cognize those objects differently, namely, purely mechanically. But teleological judgments are universally valid and objective because they determine the object in some way, that is, by representing organisms as “natural ends” we are able to investigate properties and functions of organic formations. Finally, reflective judgment’s representation of nature as a systematic whole does not determine nature as it is in itself. And yet, the representation of nature as a systematic whole is in some sense objective insofar as it is a condition of finding a unity among different particular empirical laws, a condition for a discovery of empirical laws, and a condition for a generation of empirical concepts, all of which is necessary for a scientific progress. My aim in this book, however, is to show that reflective judgments do not merely satisfy reason’s minimal ends, that is, they do not merely make 19

20

My view therefore entails that the principle of taste and the objective principle of nature’s purposiveness are specific applications of a more general principle of nature’s purposiveness. (This has already been suggested in Düsing 1968, 81–85 and in Allison 2001, 63–64. But while the former treats only the Critique of Teleological Judgment, the latter focuses only on the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment.) I shall show that teleological judgment reinforces reason’s unity primarily at the level of our cognition of nature and life (natural organisms as “natural ends”). Although aesthetic judgment presupposes a cognitive component, it reinforces reason’s unity primarily at the level of our sensibility, or the “feeling of life” (Lebensgefühl) (KU, §1, 5: 204). See Ameriks 2003, 285–306, 324–43. For a denial that for Kant the subjective ground of taste amounts to standard objective judgments, see Ginsborg 1990a and Ginsborg 2015, ch. 1.

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possible the determination of some forms and objects in nature, but they also serve reason’s final ends. On a meta-aesthetic and a meta-teleological level, they generate schema-analogues of the Idea of the highest good together with the conditions of its realization and thereby they facilitate “practical cognition” (KU, General Remark on the Teleology, 5: 475). Put differently, our assent in moral Glaube is rationally necessitated by the truth of the moral law and it presupposes a genuine commitment to truth. With reflective judgment, the objects practical reason demands that we conceive as real are represented as if obtaining in nature. Because representations of reflective judgments are normatively necessary in the epistemic sense and also serve as a schema for the Ideas whose objects are normatively necessary in the practical sense, I refer to the role Kant assigns to reflective judgment in his moral teleology as “moral image realism” (MIR).21 Last but not least, Kant’s conception of reason’s unity is the one in which the theoretical and practical representations of nature “must cohere” (müssen zusammenhängen) (KU, §78, 5: 412). Kant never brings into question the infinite separation between nature and freedom but instead shows the possibility of the structural interdependence of theoretical and practical arguments for the unconditioned so that the theoretical exploration of reason cannot proceed without having as its horizon reason’s own practical interest, that is, its basic orientation toward the good. Thus, even though my approach to the third Critique may be helpful for explaining why this work strongly influenced Kant’s immediate successors,22 Kant’s project of reason’s unity in the third Critique should be distinguished sharply from the ambitious project of reason’s unity sought by them, that is, the unity based on theoretical knowledge of some third unifying principle. It is, therefore, useful to reiterate that for Kant reflective judgment’s principle of nature’s purposiveness remains always subjectively necessary given our limited cognitive capacities and it is this principle that grounds a merely contingent agreement of nature with the ends of reason. This contingent agreement of nature and freedom contributes to the view of the world in 21 22

I borrow the term “moral image” from Henrich 1992. In his late Munich lectures on the history of modern philosophy, Schelling refers to the third Critique as “Kant’s deepest work, which, if he could have begun with it, as he finished with it, would have probably given his whole philosophy another direction” (Schelling 1994, 173). In his Encyclopaedia Logic, Hegel praises the third Critique for being genuinely speculative and for expressing the Absolute: “The outstanding merit of the Critique of Judgment is that Kant has expressed in it the notion and even the thought of the Idea. The notion of an intuitive understanding, of inner purposiveness, etc., is the universal concurrently thought of as concrete in itself. It is only in these notions that Kant’s philosophy shows itself to be speculative” (Hegel 1991, §55, 102). For the influence of Kant’s third Critique on German Idealism see Zöller 2006 and Gardner 2016.

10

Introduction

which the noumenal realm, the realm of freedom, is seen as harmoniously coexisting and cohering with the phenomenal realm, the realm of nature which can further only strengthen moral Glaube and our hope in progress toward the highest good.23

II Overview Each chapter that follows can be read separately from the rest of the volume because each aims to contribute to the current debate on that chapter’s particular issue. However, the chapters at the same time clearly advance the narrative organized around three main parts of the book. I The Highest Good and the Postulates Because I take the problem of the highest good to be central to the systematic concerns of the third Critique, this book must address what Kant has accomplished with respect to this issue prior to his third Critique in order to make clear how the third Critique advances the problematic of the highest good and reason’s unity. Kant famously refers to freedom as “the keystone of the whole structure of a system of pure reason” (KpV, 5: 3–4) to which “all other concepts (those of God and immortality) […] attach themselves […] and by means of it get stability and objective reality” (KpV, 5: 4). The book thus opens with my discussion in Chapter 1 of Kant’s postulate of the objective reality of freedom via his controversial notion of the moral law as a “fact of reason.” 23

One may question why this book does not discuss the role of the sublime in connecting the sensible and the supersensible or the realm of nature and the realm of freedom. The focus of my discussion, and what I take to be central to the third Critique, is the problem of the highest good and our progress toward this unconditioned end of reason in the world. Thus, of central concern for this project is reflective judgment’s principle of nature’s purposiveness by means of which the highest good is, not merely conceived as possible, but also perceived in nature. For Kant’s discussion of the sublime, making palpable our own purposiveness, and not that of nature, is central. That for this reason, the experience of the sublime, although important and interesting in many ways, remains “parergonal” (Allison 2001, 303) to the main systematic concerns of the work, Kant summarizes in the following paragraph: “[T]he concept of the sublime in nature is far from being as important and rich in consequences as that of its beauty, and […] in general it indicates nothing purposive in nature itself, but only in the possible use of its intuitions to make palpable in ourselves a purposiveness that is entirely independent of nature. For the beautiful in nature we must seek a ground outside ourselves, but for the sublime merely one in ourselves and in the way of thinking that introduces sublimity into the representation of the former – a very necessary introductory remark, which entirely separates the ideas of the sublime from that of a purposiveness of nature, and makes of the theory of the sublime a mere appendix to the aesthetic judging of the purposiveness of nature, since by this means no particular form is represented in the latter, but only a purposive use that the imagination makes of its representation is developed” (KU, §23, 5: 246).

II Overview

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I argue that Kant does not offer a theoretical proof (Beweis) of the normative primacy of the moral law and, hence, sees no place for a deduction of its validity. Instead, his efforts are aimed at “showing” (dartun) (KpV, 5: 3, 42), that is, pointing to a concrete example in our experience, that the moral law is binding for us. However, this “showing” cannot stand on its own insofar as it presupposes an interpretive theoretical framework which consists in drawing an analogy between theoretical and practical reason and which relies on the truth of transcendental idealism. I refer to this special strategy of Kant’s justification as his justification from a “practical point of view” (in praktischer Absicht) (FM, 20: 305). From this follows our cognition of the objective reality of freedom which should not be understood as a theoretical inference from one piece of theoretical knowledge to another of some existent empirical thing. Instead, the objective reality of freedom should be understood as a form of practical cognition. Once the objective reality of freedom is established in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 clarifies the content of Kant’s Idea of the highest good in order to show how Kant’s attempt to conform our desire for happiness to the demands of pure practical reason leads to moral Glaube and the other two postulates, namely, of God’s existence and the soul’s immortality. I will show that Kant’s conception of moral Glaube can be approached from both an anti-realist and a realist perspective. According to the former, moral Glaube is speculative reason’s “presupposition” (Voraussetzung) (KpV, 5: 122) of the objects of these Ideas, in order to either avoid its own inner contradictions or to help one maintain one’s moral disposition. It is anti-realist in spirit because the assumptions that reason makes may have nothing to do with how things are in reality. However, I contend that if we pay closer attention to Kant’s neglected notion of “practical cognition” additional evidence becomes available for supporting an understanding of Kant as a realist with respect to moral Glaube and for explaining why the anti-realist interpretations do not adequately capture Kant’s view. Chapter 3 turns to Kant’s conception of the highest good in the third Critique which takes the form of an ethical community that is to be realized in the world. Although Kant’s conception of the highest good in the third Critique becomes immanent, I show that it remains transcendent in part. But the novelty in Kant’s conception of the highest good in the third Critique is not limited to its form, namely, that of an ethical community in the world. In the third Critique, Kant refers to the conception of the highest good that he presented in the second Critique as having a “subjectively practical reality” (KU, §88, 5: 453), a reality the highest good has insofar as it is a necessary object for us. However, the highest good must also have

12

Introduction

an “objective theoretical reality” (KU, §88, 5: 453), namely, the final end must be the end of nature, the world. I argue in this chapter that it is the role of reflective judgment to represent nature as analogous to reason, that is, as aiming toward the realization of the final end of reason, the highest good in the world, so that it is no longer sufficient that we intellectually “conceive” (KU, §88, 5: 455) its possibility but that we are able to perceive it as furthered by nature. In this way, the highest good and the Idea of God as the object of moral Glaube receive a special kind of realism, which I will refer to as “moral image realism” (MIR). II Aesthetic Judgment and the “Moral Image” While the aim of Part I is to situate the project of the third Critique more generally, that is, within the context of the problem of the unity of reason and the Idea of the highest good, in Part II I show how for Kant aesthetic experience more specifically serves the function of representing the highest good as the final end of nature. In the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, Kant refers to the supersensible as that in which “the theoretical faculty is combined with the practical, in a mutual and unknown way, to form a unity” and which is “related to something in the subject and outside of it” (KU, §59, 5: 353). Thus, with respect to the problem of reason’s unity, Kant distinguishes between, what I will call, the “supersensible within” and the “supersensible without.”24 The aim of Chapter 4 is to show how aesthetic judgment for Kant tells us something about the world, namely, how objects of beauty (whether exceptional works of art or the beauty of nature) in the world indirectly exhibit (darstellen) the supersensible “without,” that is, the Idea of the highest good. This I take is the meaning of Kant’s claim in §59 of the Critique of Judgment that beauty is a “symbol of morality” (KU, §59, 5: 351). The fact that the experience of beauty serves as a sign, a nod from nature, that the world may be hospitable for the realization of the highest good can have a merely psychological significance: with time and continuous experience of hindrances to the ends of practical reason the binding force of the moral law will lose its strength, whereas the experience of beauty can help maintain the existent moral disposition. But the aim of this chapter is to show that the significance of this sign can move beyond its merely psychological effects: it helps reinforce the view that the highest good must have an “objective theoretical reality” (KU, §88, 5: 453) and not merely a 24

See this terminology also employed by Henry Allison in Allison 2001, 263.

II Overview

13

“subjectively practical reality” (KU, §88, 5: 453). Put differently, the experience of beauty reinforces the view that the final end must be the end of nature, of the world. The experience of beauty aids in forming, what I call in Chapter 3, “moral image realism” (MIR), which adds the cognitive dimension to aesthetic experience that is best explained in proximity to Kant’s notion of practical cognition. While Chapter 4 focuses on the role of the aesthetic object for providing an indirect exhibition of the supersensible, Chapter 5 focuses on the experiencing subject, that is, on the feeling of pure aesthetic pleasure and its logical ground, the free harmony of the faculties, in their role of relating the sensible to the supersensible (EEKU, 20: 244). Contrary to the existing Kant literature, I show that in order to understand the logic of the free harmony of the faculties we must pay closer attention to Kant’s formulation of reflection in aesthetic judgment as “an action of the power of imagination” (V-Met/Dohna, 28: 675–76) and not as “the logical actus of the understanding” (V-Lo/Jäsche, 9: 94). I shall argue that the imagination, following its own law, provides, as it were, a schema of a universal that goes over and above the formal conditions of the possibility of empirical cognition while still being consistent with the latter. The free harmony of the faculties in which neither faculty is determining nor determined by the other, that is, in which both faculties stand in reciprocal causal relation, gives us license for an indirect or analogical exhibition of the “supersensible substrate” (KU, §59, 5: 353) of freedom, or what I call is the supersensible “within,” that is, the soul. Pure aesthetic pleasure, therefore, helps us close the gap between our phenomenal and our supersensible nature insofar as it intimates a unifying supersensible ground of our phenomenal nature, of our different inclinations and their anticipated satisfactions. Chapter 6 explores the possibility of a pure aesthetic judgment of ugliness in Kant’s aesthetics. This issue is important for Kant’s moral teleology because if for Kant, the beauty of both nature and art can tell us something about the world, namely, that it may be hospitable for the realization of our highest ends, that is, morality, then the occurrences of ugliness in nature and art suggest the contrary. I argue that Kant’s conception of aesthetic judgment in the third Critique, a conception according to which aesthetic judgment has its own a priori principle, left open the possibility for a pure aesthetic judgment of ugliness. This judgment however could not arise in response to a quality in the object of nature, but instead could only be limited to works of art. More specifically, the origin of ugliness as a pure aesthetic category for Kant is epistemic, that is, in the failure of the artist’s power of judgment, a failure of the artist to find the appropriate form or

14

Introduction

concept for the manifold content of her imagination. In the third Critique, Kant calls these works of art “original nonsense” (KU, §46, 5: 308). Once the possibility of pure judgments of ugliness is limited to works of art and the artist’s failure of judgment, then they cannot represent a threat to Kant’s more general project of moral teleology in the third Critique. III Teleological Judgment and the “Moral Image” While in Part II I demonstrate how aesthetic judgment connects freedom and nature at the level of our sensibility, by means of the “feeling of life [Lebensgefühl]” (KU, §1, 5: 204), in Part III, I show how teleological judgment for Kant connects freedom and nature at the level of our cognition of nature and life (natural organisms as “natural ends”). Although Kant’s view according to which our theoretical representation of nature “coheres” with our representation of nature from the perspective of our practical needs culminates with the third Critique and his notion of reflective judgment’s principle of nature’s purposiveness, Chapter 7 shows that the origins of this view can already be discerned in Kant’s discussion of nature’s systematicity in the first Critique, namely, in his discussion of the rationalist notion of the Transcendental Ideal and his account of nature as a unified system of laws in the Appendix to the Dialectic. For some Kant commentators the Analytic of the first Critique with its Appendix is sufficient to account for the unity of nature and empirical knowledge. For these authors, reason’s need for the unconditioned has been viewed exclusively as a reflection of its practical need. For other Kant commentators, the unconditioned has a transcendental status (is necessary, and not optional, for the possibility of experiencing nature as a unified system) but the function of this concept is merely normative and does not entail a real object. In response to the former view, I show in this chapter that that the notion of the metaphysical ground of the unity of nature is in fact an indispensable and a necessary notion for reason in both its theoretical and practical functions, but this need of reason to presuppose such a notion can only find its satisfaction in the latter. In response to the latter view, I contend that if one is to do justice to reason’s unity in Kant, then when occupying a theoretical “standpoint” one should not be severing oneself from the practical “standpoint” and vice versa. Instead, one must acknowledge that reason’s practical ends are presupposed in every theoretical investigation of nature. In Chapter 8, I demonstrate that with reflective judgment’s Idea of an organism as a “natural end” the realm of the theoretical (nature) and the

II Overview

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realm of the practical (freedom) are represented as harmoniously cohering with each other thereby giving us a special reassurance of reason’s causal efficacy in nature. Reflective judgment accomplishes this in two distinct ways that should be distinguished from each other. First, in order to make organic formations intelligible, we must represent the rule of their organization as reciprocal causality, a rule according to which organisms are “the cause and effect of their form” (KU, §65, 5: 373). I contend that this rule of reciprocal causality serves as a schema-analogue of reason’s Idea of absolute freedom. Second, I show that the antinomial conflict of teleological judgment is a conflict between two perspectives on nature: theoretical (scientific) in the thesis and practical in the antithesis. Therefore, the solution to the antinomy in the Idea of an intuitive understanding which unites that which for us remains forever separate, namely mechanism and teleology, does not merely offer a justification for the explanatory compatibility of mechanical and teleological explanation in our representation of a single organic formation but also leads to a view of the world according to which the theoretical and the practical representations of nature “must cohere” (müssen zusammenhängen) (KU, §78, 5: 412). Chapter 9 approaches Kant’s short writings on history from the perspective of what I take to be the main problematic of the third Critique, namely, the problem of reason’s unity. In this chapter I demonstrate that, as with his discussion of our representation of organisms as “natural ends” in the third Critique, in his writings on our philosophical representations of human history Kant offers both epistemic and moral justification for the use of teleological principles. Following his epistemic justification, in order to make human history intelligible to ourselves we must represent the individual events in human history under the Idea of “nature’s aim.” By the latter Kant understands the formation of civil society to be based on the principle of right within which the “ultimate end of nature” (der letzte Zweck der Natur), the formation of culture and the cultivation of human sensibility that is amenable to the demands of morality, would be possible. Kant’s moral justification for the use of teleological principles in our representation of human history is comprised of two parts: (1) a moralpsychological argument for strengthening moral Glaube and (2) the argument that emphasizes the objective reality of reflective judgment’s representations (albeit from a “practical point of view”). According to the former argument, our existent moral disposition is reinforced because by representing human history as progressing we see the world as a place where our moral efforts can have an effect and where our vocation, the realization of the highest good, is possible. According to the

16

Introduction

latter argument, reflective judgment’s representation of human historical progress serves as a schema-analogue of the Idea of God’s providence, the Idea that is not merely optional or useful given some pragmatic ends but that which is absolutely necessary from the “practical point of view” given our duty to further the highest good in nature. I have referred to such imaginative representations of reflective judgment that are normatively necessary in the epistemic sense and which serve as schema-analogues of the Ideas that are normatively necessary in the practical sense as “moral image realism” (MIR).

Part I

The Highest Good and the Postulates

chapter 1

Kant’s Justification of the “Fact of Reason” and the Objective Reality of Freedom from a “Practical Point of View” In the Preface to the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant states that freedom is central to his Critical system as a whole, that is, it “constitutes the keystone [Schlußstein] of the whole structure of a system of pure reason” (KpV, 5: 3–4). By “freedom” here Kant understands transcendental freedom so that if will is “a kind of causality of living beings insofar as they are rational,” then “freedom would be that property of such causality that it can be efficient independently of alien causes determining it” (GMS, 4: 446). This is also the notion of freedom to which Kant refers as freedom in the “absolute sense,” or the “unconditioned [das Unbedingte] in the series of causal connections” (KpV, 5: 4).1 In the B-edition of the Preface of the Critique of Pure Reason,2 Kant summarizes the significance of the results of the first Critique for the question of freedom. The results of the first Critique are not merely “negative” (KrV, Bxxv), that is, aimed at establishing the limits of the speculative use of reason, but also “positive” (KrV, Bxxv) insofar as, given the truth of transcendental idealism, we can think freedom without contradiction. Put differently, although we are causally determined as appearance and, therefore, not free, we can think of ourselves as free as a thing in itself. Following the first Critique, the task remained for Kant to establish the real possibility of freedom, or its objective reality: “[T]he only point at issue was whether this can 1

2

This is the reason why Kant’s conception of transcendental freedom should not be confused with a mere independence from sensual impulses. In the first Critique, he calls the latter “[f]reedom in the practical sense,” which he defines as “the independence of the power of choice from necessitation by impulses of sensibility” (KrV, A534/B562). In his metaphysics lectures, Kant calls the latter also “arbitrium liberum insofar as it is psychologically or practically defined,” that is, freedom consists in one’s awareness that one’s actions are not necessitated by one’s inclinations, that one can resist them. The will that is “necessitated or forced by no stimuli but through the motives determined by the understanding is called intellectual or transcendental liberum arbitrium” (V-Met-L1/Pölitz, 28: 255) and, hence, is a metaphysical conception of freedom as an uncaused cause and not a psychological conception of freedom. For the claim that it is plausible for us to think that the arguments of the second Critique were on Kant’s mind in the process of writing the second edition of the first Critique, see Klemme 2010, 13.

19

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Kant’s Justification of the “Fact of Reason”

be changed to is, that is, whether one could show in an actual case, as it were by a fact, that certain actions presuppose such a causality (intellectual, sensibly unconditioned causality), whether such actions are actual or only commanded, that is, objectively practically necessary” (KpV, 5: 104).3 In the Groundwork, Kant attempted an ambitious theoretical proof for the objective reality of the Idea of freedom and from which the possibility (GMS, 4: 444) and “validity” (GMS, 4: 449) of the moral law, the ground of its obligatory character, was to be deduced.4 In the second Critique, he abandons this strategy.5 In the Critique of Practical Reason, he appeals to the “fact of reason,” the giveness of the moral law as apodictically certain and by means of which he is to offer a proof of freedom’s objective reality: “now practical reason of itself, without any collusion with speculative reason, furnishes reality to a supersensible object of the category of causality, namely to freedom […], and hence establishes by means of a fact [durch ein Faktum bestätigt] what could there only be thought” (KpV, 5: 6).6 Kant’s 3

4

5

6

I am keen to emphasize that Kant’s aim in the second Critique is nothing short of providing an objective reality of freedom. In the third Critique, Kant contends that freedom “is the only one among all the ideas of pure reason whose object is a fact and which must be counted among the scibilia” (KU, §91, 5: 468). My view is to be contrasted with the predominant position in AngloAmerican Kant scholarship according to which Kant’s objective is to establish a reasonable “belief ” in freedom, a “standpoint” in which we take ourselves “as if ” we were free (Kleingeld 2010, 71–72; Allison 2012, 120–23), something “we must believe […] in order to obey the categorical imperative (Korsgaard 1996, 175–76). Henry Allison, in Allison 1989, holds the view that the “Faktum text” shows that we can have a belief that we are capable of actions necessitated by the moral law and also then that we can have at most the belief that we are free. In Allison 1990, he acknowledges that Kant’s aim is to prove the objective reality of freedom (and not a mere belief) but it is not clear that this can be achieved on Allison’s interpretation of us “taking interest” in the moral law (see Allison 1990, 248) rather than a recognition that our actions are necessitated by it. Kant refers to the question of how the moral law can be binding as the question of its “validity” (GMS, 4: 449) and at other places in the text as a question of its “reality and objective necessity” (GMS, 4: 449). Given the limited scope of this chapter, I will not discuss Kant’s argument in Section III of the Groundwork. Instead, I note that, while there is a general consensus that Kant’s attempt in the Groundwork to provide a theoretical proof of freedom (and from freedom the possibility and necessity [GMS, 4: 444] of morality) was not successful, there is a disagreement among commentators regarding how to interpret Kant’s aims in the second Critique. On one hand, there are those who argue that the argument of the second Critique is consistent with the argument of the Groundwork. They either argue that the argument in the Groundwork anticipates the argument in the second Critique by not attempting to offer a deduction in the strict sense (Henrich 1994a) or that the argument in the second Critique continues the strict theoretical deduction started in the Groundwork (Beck 1960), or that Kant’s “position in the second Critique is essentially the same [as the one in the Groundwork], except that it is significantly weaker argumentatively” (Wood 2008, 135). On the other, there are those who argue that in the second Critique Kant entirely abandons his attempts in the Groundwork (Prauss 1983; Rawls 1989; Allison 1990; Ameriks 2003; Timmermann 2010). I side with the latter group. It is somewhat ambiguous whether Kant is consistent in his claims that transcendental as opposed to mere practical freedom is required for morality. At places, he seems to suggest the latter (see for

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doctrine of the “fact of reason” and his abandonment of the aim to provide a theoretical proof of the validity of the moral law has been criticized by both his immediate successors and contemporary Kant commentators as a disappointing regress into dogmatism.7 My aim in this chapter is to give a more charitable interpretation of Kant’s doctrine of the “fact of reason” and his proof of freedom’s real possibility. My efforts are in concert with some recent interpretations according to which Kant’s “fact” is a “fact of reason.” I would divide those existing interpretations into two principal groups: (1) the interpretation according to which Kant’s doctrine of the “fact of reason” is his attempt to present the moral law as a “deed” or a product of reason itself,8 that is, the normative force of the moral law can after all be deduced from some general features of what it means to be a rational agent (hereafter “Rational Agent Interpretation” or RAI) and (2) the interpretation according to which the “fact of reason” should be understood as an activity of reason, similar to Fichte’s notion of Tathandlung in the Wissenschaftslehre, an “active taking up of the pertinent standpoint;”9 (hereafter “Activity of Reason Interpretation” or ARI). The former interpretation overemphasizes the role of theoretical reason in grounding our moral commitments and in trying to prove that the moral law is the product of our finite human agency it does not do justice to Kant’s claim that “the morally good as an object is something supersensible” (KpV, 5: 68), namely, that the morally

7

8 9

example KrV, A803/B831). But, on the other hand, Kant is adamant that compatibilism is unacceptable, a position that amounts to nothing more than a freedom of a “turnspit’” (KrV, Bxxvii, KpV, 5: 97). However, as Ameriks has already argued, for a long period of time, prior to 1787, Kant believed that the proof of absolute freedom was readily available to him. This will change with Kant’s increased consistency on the claims of noumenal ignorance. Thus, Kant’s occasional remarks that practical, that is, “psychological and comparative freedom” (KpV, 5: 97) is sufficient for morality should be understood in this context. See Ameriks 2003, 164 and Ameriks 2000a, 193–94. Hegel refers to Kant’s doctrine of the “fact of reason” as “cold duty, the final undigested lump left within the stomach, the revelation given to reason” (Hegel 1955, 461; cited also in Henrich 1994a). Schopenhauer refers to it as a “hyperphysical fact” and a “Delphic temple in the human soul. From its dark sanctuary oracular sentences infallibly proclaim, alas! not what will, but what ought to happen” (Schopenhauer 1965, 79, cited also in Henrich 1994a). Among the more recent commentators, Prauss, quoting Kant, claims that Kant let himself be content with the “conception of the practical philosophy that must set the moral law as an a priori fact in a ‘strange’ and ‘paradoxical’ manner” (Prauss 1983, 70; my translation). Ameriks concludes that “Only some technical peculiarities of his system prevent the labeling of his [Kant’s – LO] position as fundamentally intuitionistic” (Ameriks 2003, 184). Paul Guyer calls Kant’s doctrine of the “fact of reason” “footstamping” (Guyer 2007, 462, cited also in Kleingeld 2010, 61) while Allen Wood refers to it as “moralistic bluster” (Wood 2008, 135, cited also in Kleingeld 2010, 61). For the most recent versions of this position see Kleingeld 2010 and Sussman 2008. Earlier examples are Rawls 1989 and O’Neill 2002. See Fichte 1971 and Franks 2005, 263. For a similar view see also Willaschek 1991, 1992, and Ware 2014.

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good as the object of our will must be unconditioned. The latter interpretation, while it may be able to acknowledge the supersensible aspect of the moral good, completely severs the normative claims of the moral law from theoretical reason and, therefore, proves too little. The view I will defend in this chapter treads, in a good Kantian fashion, a middle path. I argue that Kant does not offer a theoretical proof (Beweis) of the normative primacy of the moral law and, hence, sees no place for a deduction of its validity. Instead, his efforts are aimed at “showing” (dartun) (KpV, 5: 3, 42) that the moral law is binding for us. In other words, Kant aims to point to a concrete example in our experience that the moral law is binding for us in lieu of offering a theoretical explanation of how it is possible for it to be binding for us. However, this “showing” cannot stand on its own insofar as it presupposes an interpretive framework, which consists in drawing an analogy between theoretical and practical reason and which relies on the truth of transcendental idealism. I refer to this special strategy of Kant’s justification as his justification from a “practical point of view” (in praktischer Absicht) (FM, 20: 305). I shall argue that the starting point of this unique form of justification is not a morally neutral perspective but it is not a dogmatic assumption of the categorical imperative’s normative primacy either. The latter would make any form of justification redundant. In his theoretical philosophy, Kant’s starting point is a commonsense experience of the world that is followed by a regressive demonstration of the conditions necessary for this experience to amount to a cognition of the world, that is, judgments that can be universally and necessarily true or false of the world. Similarly, in his practical philosophy, his starting point is a common experience of some moral constraints, that is, the experience that it is wrong for one’s actions to be always exclusively motivated by concerns for one’s own happiness.10 The fact that Kant’s starting point is a common sense experience, however, need not entail that his aim in the second Critique is merely to provide a philosophical articulation of a common sense moral consciousness that appears to be widespread, that is, to identify a principle that underlies commonly acknowledged moral constraints.11 His philosophical project in the second Critique should not be understood merely as a 10

11

We do not hesitate to repudiate such a person as “self-serving” regardless whether such repudiation is grounded in a Humean sentiment or a Kantian notion of the universal and necessary moral law, or moral sense of Hutcheson and Shaftesbury. This is the view suggested to me by Stephen Engstrom and James Conant. I thank them, Andrea Kern, and the audience at the University of Leipzig’s 2018 Philosophy Colloquium for their helpful comments and questions on the earlier version of this chapter.

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23

project of identification but, rather, the one of validation or justification of an ethical theory grounded in the metaphysical doctrine of transcendental idealism. According to Kant, common understanding is open to a “natural dialectic” (GMS, 4: 405), a propensity to rationalize against what it experiences is good in order to favor its concern for self-interest, and “can easily confuse its judgment by a mass of considerations foreign and irrelevant to the matter and deflect it from the straight course” (GMS, 4: 404). Common understanding needs philosophy and science to show that its common sense experience of some moral constraints (i.e., “the moral cognition of common human reason” [GMS, 4: 403]) is in fact grounded on a rational principle and is a universal and necessary practical cognition.12 Just as in his theoretical philosophy Kant’s aim was to demonstrate that, given certain a priori conditions, our common experience of the world is an empirical cognition, so also in his practical philosophy his aim is to “show” that, given certain a priori conditions, our common experience of moral constraints is a cognition, namely, practical cognition. Practical cognition is analogous to theoretical and while the latter stands for the cognition of the laws of phenomenal nature, the former stands for the cognition of the laws of supersensible nature.13 Kant identifies three aspects of practical cognition: (1) cognition of the principle of moral actions, (2) cognition of the object of practical reason, that is, the cognition of the good, and (3) the agent’s self-cognition insofar as doing what is morally good is true of who we are essentially, of our noumenal nature. The fact that practical cognition culminates in the agent’s self-cognition indicates that Kant’s project of justification from a “practical point of view” (FM, 20: 305) presupposes an act of reconstitution, that is, this unique process of justification facilitates a mode of self-understanding that the commonsense perspective could not offer. In light of this, I will argue that Kant’s justification from a “practical point of view” is indeed accomplished by proving the validity of the moral law “by what it [pure reason] does [durch die Tat]” (KpV, 5: 3), or by “showing” the objective reality of morality in one’s actual experience. However, this mode of self-understanding neither merely presupposes the normative primacy of the moral law, nor it relies 12

13

I concur here with Timmermann that in the Groundwork the role of common understanding “was used to support the deduction,” or to “confirm” it (Timmermann 2010, 82). I disagree with him, however, that in the second Critique the role of common understanding is “meant to stand on its own to justify – as far as is possible – the principle of morality just by itself ” (Timmermann 2010, 82). As I will proceed to show, common understanding is the starting point of Kant’s justification but his argument is more complex and does not simply consist in pointing to common experience. See KpV, 5: 43.

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Kant’s Justification of the “Fact of Reason”

too much (RAI), nor too little (ARI), on the role of theoretical reason in justifying morality. On the view I wish to defend, Kant’s justification from a “practical point of view” as a form of self-understanding presupposes an interpretative framework that draws an analogy between theoretical and practical reason and relies on the previously defended truths of transcendental idealism. Kant relies for the possibility of drawing the analogy between theoretical and practical cognitions on his notion of the unity of theoretical and practical reason and his claim in the Introduction of the second Critique that “it is still pure reason whose cognition here lies at the basis of its practical use” (KpV, 5: 16). The chapter is structured as follows: In Section 1.1, I summarize Kant’s reasons for why a standard deduction of the moral law is not possible and why, according to Kant, an asymmetry between theoretical and practical cognitions should be used to establish the threefold aspect of practical cognition and, following that, the structure of Kant’s justification from a “practical point of view.” Section 1.2 outlines the first aspect of practical cognition that pertains to the content of the categorical imperative and which Kant develops in analogy with the metaphysical exposition of pure forms of intuition. Section 1.3 discusses the second aspect of practical cognition, namely, the one that pertains to the object of practical reason, the good, and which Kant develops in analogy to the role of pure concepts of the understanding in theoretical cognition. In Section 1.4, I discuss the feeling of respect as the final stage of practical cognition that pertains to the normative aspect of the categorical imperative, the “ought,” or its binding force on our will. This is, therefore, the aspect of practical cognition that addresses the categorical imperative’s objective reality and which is also instrumental in the practical agent’s self-cognition. Section 1.5 discusses Kant’s deduction of the objective reality of freedom from the certainty of the moral law. Finally, Section 1.6 concludes the chapter with a brief evaluation of my position.

1.1 Why There Cannot Be a Deduction of the Categorical Imperative In the section On the Deduction of the Principles of Pure Practical Reason in the second Critique, Kant states clearly that a deduction of the moral law is not possible: With the deduction, that is, the justification of its objective and universal validity and the discernment of the possibility of such a synthetic proposition a priori, one cannot hope to get on so well as was the case with

1.1 Why There Cannot Be a Deduction of the Categorical Imperative 25 the principles of the pure theoretical understanding. For, these referred to objects of possible experience, namely appearances, and it could be proved [beweisen] that these appearances could be cognized [erkannt] as objects of experience [Gegenstände der Erfahrung] only by being brought under the categories in accordance with these laws and consequently that all possible experience must conform to these laws. But I cannot take such a course in the deduction of the moral law. For, the moral law is not concerned with cognition of the constitution of objects that may be given to reason from elsewhere but rather with a cognition insofar as it can itself become the ground of the existence of objects and insofar as reason, by this cognition, has causality in a rational being, that is, pure reason, which can be regarded as a faculty immediately determining the will […] Hence the objective reality of the moral law cannot be proved by any deduction, by any efforts of theoretical reason […]. (KpV, 5: 46–47)

In the domain of theoretical cognition, Kant’s use of the concept “deduction” can be traced back to legal practices in the eighteenth century of proving the legitimacy of someone’s claim on a piece of property or land. The “deduction” of the pure categories of the understanding was a demonstration of their legitimate claim on our objects of experience, that is, the representation of mere appearances once brought under the categories and the corresponding laws of the understanding constitute cognition of objects of experience. The deduction of the categories (and other a priori conditions of the possibility of experience) entails “the explanation of the possibility of such a cognition a priori” (KpV, 5: 93, my emphasis – LO), a regressive demonstration of the necessary conditions for the body of knowledge in question.14 Practical cognition, on the other hand, is not a cognition of objects given to reason but, instead, of the rational principle that determines the will to action and of the ground of objects produced by reason. It is not possible for us to ask for an “explanation” of its possibility, or how a law can be of itself and immediately a determining ground of the will, because that would amount to having knowledge of our transcendental freedom that we cannot have. For Kant, the process of a “deduction” in the theoretical domain cannot be applied to the practical domain. If it were to be applied to the practical domain, then a deduction of the moral 14

The view that the transcendental deduction is a regressive argument is not univocally accepted. There are also those who argue for a “progressive interpretation” of Kant’s deduction according to which Kant’s argument is a deductive demonstration from mere having of conscious representations to experience – synthetic a priori knowledge of things – as its conclusion. I here follow Ameriks’ “regressive” method of the form A (synthetic a priori) only if B (a priori intuitions and concepts), B. See Ameriks 2003, 51–67. For the reason why what Kant calls the regressive approach of the Prolegomena should not be confused with Ameriks’ characterization of Kant’s transcendental argumentation as “regressive” see Ameriks 2003, 8–9.

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law would presuppose a proof of the following kind: the moral law of itself is the determining ground of the will (it is objectively real and binding for us) only if we are free in the absolute sense. We are free in the absolute sense and, therefore, the moral law is objectively real and binding for us. The impossibility of a deduction notwithstanding, Kant does not hold the view that no justification of the moral law is possible. Instead, the objective of this justification will not be to answer how the moral law is possible, which would presuppose the knowledge of absolute freedom, but rather to “show” (KpV, 5: 42) that it is possible. Put differently, this justification will take the form of pointing to the reality of our moral experience as universally and apodictically certain. The challenge of the “Faktum text,” therefore, is to “show” that moral experience is universal and apodictically certain so that this “showing” does not amount to a mere dogmatic assertion or “just many layers of illuminating description,”15 but, rather, a form of justification even if from a “practical point of view” (FM, 20: 305). Kant’s emphasis on showing that pure reason is practical and that the moral law of itself determines the will instead of explaining how it and of itself determines the will has recently inspired proto-Fichtean interpretations of the moral law as the “fact of reason” (ARI). Kant’s claim that “pure reason can be practical – that is, can of itself, independently of anything empirical, determine the will – and it does so by a fact [durch ein Faktum] in which pure reason in us proves itself actually practical [worin sich reine Vernunft in der Tat praktisch beweiset]” (KpV, 5: 42) was understood as a claim that reason proves itself in a deed practically (sich praktisch in der Tat beweiset) as opposed to proves itself in a deed as practical.16 Put differently, Kant’s Faktum der Vernunft is not Tatsache but rather what Fichte calls Tathandlung, not a fact but an activity of reason. On this interpretation, the moral law proves itself either in the feeling of respect for the moral law, our actions, or judgments of common sense because each expresses the activity of reason’s unconditional will determination.17 The examples Kant uses in the Analytic (the gallows example [KpV, 5: 30]) “play a crucial role”18 because they “confirm the reality of moral consciousness.”19 But it is very unlikely that examples Kant consistently uses as “illustrations and 15 16 17

18 19

See Ameriks 2012, 181. See Willaschek 1991, 458. Franks emphasizes the importance of the feeling of respect (Franks 2005, 286–89), Willaschek the importance of moral actions (Willaschek 1991, 464), and Ware the significance of the judgments of common reason (Ware 2014, 10). See Franks 2005, 281, my emphasis – LO. See Ware 2014, 10.

1.1 Why There Cannot Be a Deduction of the Categorical Imperative 27 confirmation” (Prol, 4: 284), or occasions for the practice and cultivation of judgment, are intended to carry the weight of a proof, that is, as the sole ground for showing that pure reason is practical, namely, that it can determine the will. Putting too strong an emphasis on the role of moral feeling, moral actions, or examples of commonsense judgments, at the expense of clarifying Kant’s more complex argument for the possibility of practical cognition, is a “short argument”20 to Kant’s justification of the moral law and the objective reality of freedom. While maintaining that Kant’s emphasis on “showing that” the moral law determines the will – that is, pointing to its reality as opposed to explaining its possibility – directs us to a first person or agent perspective, that is, our consciousness of this law as deliberating and practical agents, I contend that for Kant the process of justification of the moral law from a “practical point of view” presupposes establishing an interpretive framework for this first person moral experience that presupposes an analogy between practical and theoretical cognitions. In other words, unlike in a typical deduction in the theoretical domain, Kant will not be identifying the necessary conditions for the body of knowledge (synthetic a priori propositions) from a third person perspective, that is, for theoretical cognition that must be true of the world. Instead, he will be identifying the conditions for achieving practical cognition in oneself as a practical and deliberating agent, or from a first person perspective. The process of identifying these conditions will not be random, but will be a method that relies on an analogy between theoretical and practical reason. In the Analytic, Kant contends that there is an asymmetry between theoretical and practical cognitions. “[N]ature,” argues Kant, “in the most general sense is the existence of things under laws” (KpV, 5: 43). He distinguishes our sensible nature which pertains to our “existence under empirically conditioned laws” and is, with respect to reason’s will determination, heteronomy (KpV, 5: 43). Our supersensible nature, on the other hand, is our “existence in accordance with laws that are independent of any empirical condition and thus belong to the autonomy of pure reason” (KpV, 5: 43). In heteronomous will determination, “objects must be the causes of representations that determine the will” while in the autonomous will determination “the will is to be the cause of the objects” insofar as it produces the moral good because it is determined by pure reason alone (KpV, 5: 44). From here, there follows an asymmetry between the roles of 20

I am borrowing the expression from Karl Ameriks and the way he characterizes German Idealists’ and some contemporary interpretations of Kant’s transcendental idealism. See Ameriks 2000b, 163.

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theoretical and practical reason with respect to the issue of will determination. For the will to be determined by objects, they have to be objects of theoretical cognition for us. And for reason to be an “immediate determining ground of the will” so that the will can be the cause of the objects in the world, these objects must be possible in virtue of practical cognition. Given this asymmetry, the Analytic of the Critique of Practical Reason should proceed in a reverse order to that of theoretical reason. While that of the latter “had to begin with the senses and end with principles” (KpV, 5: 16), the former begins with “principles and proceeds to concepts, and only then, where possible, from them to the senses” (KpV, 5: 16).21 The demonstration that our common experience of the world is a universal and necessary cognition of it began with the manifold as that which is given to our sensibility and the Transcendental Aesthetic with its argument that space and time are our a priori intuitions that give this matter of reality its form. It continued to the concepts or the pure categories, and it ended with the principles of the understanding. On the other hand, Kant’s demonstration that our common experience of moral constraints is a cognition, albeit not theoretical but practical, that is equally universal and necessary, must start from the principle or the moral law, continue to the concepts of good and evil, and finally end with sensibility, the feeling of respect for the moral law, as the objective realization of the formal principle. And this gives us a clue to the structure of, what I argue, is Kant’s special justification “from a practical point of view” that our common experience of moral constraints is a practical cognition. Kant distinguishes three aspects of practical cognition: “Practical cognition is a cognition 1. With respect to the means, 2. With respect to the ends, and [3. With respect to – LO] the motivating force [Triebfeder]” (Refl 2796, 16: 517).22 In the second Critique, these three aspects of practical cognition remain recognizable: (1) we are conscious of the “principle of morality” by means of which “reason determines the will to deeds” (KpV, 5: 42); (2) we have practical cognition of the objects of practical reason, good and evil, which is practical cognition of the ends of the will; and finally, (3) the moral feeling or feeling of respect which is practical cognition with respect to the motivating force. If we look back to Theorem III 21 22

See also KpV, 5: 46, 90. Dated according to Adickes approximately 1769–1776. My translation. In his notes, Kant offers his own version of Georg Friedrich Meier’s classification of practical cognition. Kant used Meier’s An Excerpt from the Doctrine of Reason (Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre) (1752) as a textbook for his logic lectures. For a very helpful summary of Kant’s notion of practical cognition and his various mentions of it, see Bacin 2016, 560f.

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of the Analytic of the Critique of Practical Reason where Kant distinguishes between the “matter” and the “form” of the moral law (KpV, 5: 27), then the first aspect of practical cognition would respond merely to the form, that is, the categorical imperative, or one’s own maxims for determining one’s action so that “they are fit for a giving of a universal law” (KpV, 5: 27). The second aspect of practical cognition corresponds to the “matter” of the moral law, or the objects of the will so that the latter are not considered the determining ground of the will because in that case the will would be empirically, and not a priori, determined. Finally, in the feeling of respect for the moral law we have a unity of both its form and matter, that is, a culminating aspect of practical cognition that entails the actual determination of the will in accordance with the moral law.

1.2

Practical Cognition of the Form of the Moral Law

Because the structure of Kant’s justification of the moral law, as I already noted, must proceed in reverse to his regressive move in theoretical philosophy, when he writes “[t]he exposition of the supreme principle of practical reason is now finished” (KpV, 5: 46), we have good reasons to consider that by “exposition” of the categorical imperative Kant has in mind a procedure that is analogous to the metaphysical exposition of space and time in the Transcendental Aesthetic. Just as the metaphysical exposition of space in the Transcendental Aesthetic presents the content of the concept of space, Kant’s exposition of the categorical imperative is aimed at presenting the content of the concept of the categorical imperative.23 One can identify three different aspects of the content that pertain to the analogy between the “exposition” of the categorical imperative on the one hand and the “metaphysical exposition” of space and time, on the other: (1) the categorical imperative as the form of a pure will, (2) the categorical imperative as a priori given, and (3) the categorical imperative as distinctively human (and not divine) principle. (I will keep the analogy restricted to the metaphysical exposition of space and will leave out the exposition of time.) With respect to the first feature of the analogy, just as space and time are the forms of our intuition (i.e., that with respect to which all our empirical intuitions are ordered), the categorical imperative is the “form of a pure will” (KpV, 5: 65–66) and also the “mere form of a law” (KpV, 5: 31), that is, 23

In the first Critique, Kant defines “exposition” as a mode of providing a “philosophical definition[s]” (KrV, A730/B758) of a concept. It is a form of an “explanation” (Erklärung) (KrV, A730/B758) of what is contained or thought in the concept.

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Kant’s Justification of the “Fact of Reason”

a law that does not prescribe a certain set of ends that are to be willed but instead it prescribes the principle according to which all ends of our will must be ordered. Just as the metaphysical exposition of space shows that our representations of space have a content that requires an a priori origin, so also Kant shows that there is a content to our intentions that cannot be grounded on “matter” (i.e., any perception of the value of some ends of the will that would be sufficient to determine it) but instead requires a principle of reason. For Kant, we should not will the ends but the form of the pure will itself. It is, however, the second aspect, Kant’s consideration of the categorical imperative’s a priori giveness, that brings us to his first formulation of the well-known doctrine of the “fact of reason.” Although our a priori intuitions are not given as objects of intuition, they are still given insofar as determinations of space presuppose a “pure manifold,” a preconceptual order that constrains this very conceptualization of space. Thus every determination of space (e.g., drawing of a line or a triangle), or determination of any objects of experience, presupposes a region of an unbounded space that is given as the horizon of this determination.24 Just as space and time, as our a priori forms of intuition, hence, as the elements of our receptivity, are “given” insofar as they present us with data that are independent of the conceptual activity of the understanding, the categorical imperative presents us with data that cannot be inferred from some higher principles, and in that sense it is also independent of the basic activity of reasoning, that is, the activity of making inference: Consciousness of this fundamental law may be called a fact of reason [Faktum der Vernunft] because one cannot reason it out from antecedent data of reason, for example, from consciousness of freedom (since this is not antecedently given to us) and because it instead forces itself upon us of itself as a synthetic a priori proposition that is not based on any intuition, either pure or empirical […] However, in order to avoid misinterpretation in regarding this law as given, it must be noted carefully that it is not an empirical fact but the sole fact of pure reason, which, by it, announces itself as originally lawgiving (sic volo, sic jubeo). (KpV, 5: 31)

From the passage above, it follows that the “fact” (Faktum) in Kant’s notion of the “fact of reason” refers to the fact that the content of the categorical imperative, that which the categorical imperative demands of me to do, cannot be “reasoned out” (herausvernünfteln) from other apodictically 24

See KrV, A26/B42. For a more detailed discussion of the “giveness” of our a priori intuitions, see for example Allison 2004, 112–16.

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certain propositions, some other true premises, whether the one that establishes the reality of freedom (as this was the line of argument Kant pursued in the Groundwork), or some other true premises about the nature of our rationality. This also explains why Kant refers to the moral law as pure practical reason’s “data” (Data) (KrV, Bxxi, Bxxviii) and, moreover, as its “first data” (KpV, 5: 91).25 The categorical imperative’s “giveness” is also the reason why the earlier mentioned Rational Agent Interpretation (RAI) is not an adequate way to capture Kant’s notion of “Faktum.” On RAI, Kant’s claim that the moral law is not given as an “empirical fact” (KpV, 5: 31), that is, as some social norm, but as a fact of reason is interpreted as his contention that there is a route to morality from a nonmoral premise, namely, the capacity to reason as such. On this view, the categorical imperative is primarily a “fundamental law of pure practical reason” (KpV, 5: 31), that is, a principle to which Kant refers in nonmoral terms. Put differently, the categorical imperative is the most fundamental rational principle of action the agent reaches as she deliberates on the maxims, possible rules for action. When she deliberates on her actions, she does not merely ask herself whether certain course of action would be instrumental in achieving a certain end but she raises the question of why certain ends are worth pursuing, showing that her actions are under a normative constraint inherent to our capacity to reason as such. This procedure that determines or constructs the content of the moral law also makes it binding on us.26 Finally, regarding the third aspect of the analogy between the metaphysical exposition of space and the “exposition” of the categorical imperative, Kant emphasizes that, just as space and time are specific to our human sensibility, it is also a characteristic of specifically human beings as finite that 25

26

Kant’s analogy between the “giveness” of the moral law and the “giveness” of our a priori forms of intuition should also help to steer us away from understanding of the moral law either as a form of substantive naturalist or as a form of substantive nonnaturalist realism. An example of the former would be explaining the normative claim of the moral law on us by an appeal to the facts about the sort of creatures we are, namely, rational. An example of the latter would be explaining the normative claims of the moral law on us by an appeal to an intellectual intuition of some preexisting supersensible object. I am in agreement here with Deligiorgi who having claimed that consciousness of the moral law is a cognition but not a cognition of a preexisting object raises the following question: “But how can we have cognition without an object? To understand this we need to consider seriously the idea of pure reason in its practical employment […] in its practical employment, pure reason is productive, it makes real its own objects […]” (Deligiorgi 2012, 58). See Kleingeld 2010, 66. This more recent version of RAI is preceded by Rawls’ interpretation of, what he claims is, Kant’s “constructivist” authentication of the moral law, a procedure by which we come to endorse our reasons for acting (Rawls 1989, 109). A version of this can also be found in Korsgaard who argues that “there are answers to moral questions because there are correct procedures for arriving at them” (Korsgaard 1996, 36).

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the moral law for them takes the form of an imperative. Although the will of other rational beings is also determined by the moral law, the moral law to them is not an imperative as it is to us. The moral law is the law for God, the being with a perfect will. But we and any other finite rational beings will experience the law as duty because unlike the being with a perfect will, we can form nonmoral maxims and hence the choice remains for us to act according to the principles of self-love and one’s personal happiness.27

1.3

Practical Cognition of the Matter of the Moral Law

In the section above, I have discussed the aspect of Kant’s notion of practical cognition that pertains to the means, that is, the principle by means of which reason determines the will to deeds. In the section on good and evil, Kant addresses the aspect of practical cognition that pertains to the “ends” or objects of the will. His method in this regard is the same as the method he employed in his discussion of the categorical imperative, namely, just as we must ask ourselves what must be the principle that determines the will so that this principle can be a condition of a possibility of universally valid and necessary practical cognition of what is the right thing to do, so also we must ask ourselves what must be our conception of good and evil, the conception of the ends of our will, so that these concepts can be conditions of universal and necessary practical cognition that puts our common sense experience within a rational framework, that is, grounds it in a law of reason. To determine good and evil prior to the form of the pure will itself would be to determine these concepts with respect to our faculty of desire and the feeling of pleasure and displeasure. The role of reason in that case would be reduced to either evaluating the place of this object that causes us pleasure or displeasure in our overall conception of happiness and wellbeing or to its pragmatic role of determining the means to obtaining the objects that are the cause of pleasure or avoiding those that are the cause of displeasure.28 In both cases, however, the principles or rules of action would be based in experience and “the possibility of a priori practical laws would be at once excluded” (KpV, 5: 64) and we would “assume as already decided the foremost question to be decided” (KpV, 5: 64), namely, the question of whether pure reason is practical and can determine the will a priori. This would be the case regardless of whether the object of pleasure 27 28

See KpV, 5: 32. See KpV, 5: 63.

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was conceived in hedonistic terms (happiness as a physical feeling of wellbeing and pleasure) or moral feeling of moral sense theorists, or in rationalist categories of perfection and the will of God.29 Kant’s “paradox of method” (KpV, 5: 62) is not to assume that the will is determined empirically but to “analytically investigate,” or, to analyze what is thought in the concept of good and evil that are determined “in reference to the will insofar as it is determined by the law of reason to make something its object” (KpV, 5: 60). Thus, his aim is to analyze the content of the concepts of good and evil that refer to “the way of acting, the maxim of the will” (KpV, 5: 60). And this brings us to Kant’s further analogy between practical and theoretical cognition. If the categorical imperative is analogous to the pure forms of intuition, the concepts of good and evil are analogous to the pure categories of the understanding. However, unlike the categories that a priori determine the manifold of intuition in one’s consciousness that make possible the object of experience in general, the concepts of good and evil presuppose the object of theoretical cognition as given and instead are “modi of a single category” (KpV, 5: 65), namely, the causality of pure practical reason, or the categorical imperative. These, what Kant calls “categories of freedom” (KpV, 5: 65), are different modes of pure determinations of practical reason that can only take place “conformably” (KpV, 5: 65) to the categories of the understanding. Although our actions, argues Kant, belong to the “law of freedom” and not the “law of nature” (KpV, 5: 65), the realizations of those actions belong to the realm of appearances. This is why the determinations of practical reason can take place “only with reference to” (KpV, 5: 65) the realm of appearances and the laws of nature. Kant draws an analogy between a theoretical use of the understanding in bringing a priori the manifold of sensible intuition under one consciousness and the pure determinations of practical reason in bringing “the manifold of desires to the unity of consciousness of a practical reason commanding in the moral law, or of a pure will” (KpV, 5: 65). Given the analogy between the unity of apperception, or the “I think,” and, what we can call the unity of conscience, or the “I will,” the table of the “categories of freedom” must follow the table of the pure categories of the 29

See KpV, 5: 65. It is less obvious how for Kant the rationalists’ conception of perfection or the will of God could ultimately amount to an empirical will determination. Kant contends, however, that these rationalists’ concepts “can become motives of the will only by means of the happiness we expect from them” (KpV, 5: 41).

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understanding.30 While the “I will” does not presuppose the manifold of empirical intuition, it does presuppose the faculty of desire, our empirical will, that is guided by our individual conception of happiness. What follows is a division of possible a priori practical principles that make normative claims on our empirical will. They are divided in a familiar way according to “Quality,” “Quantity,” “Relation,” and “Modality.”31 And just as in theoretical cognition nothing could count as a thought that at the same time does not have a reference to the “I think,” or the unity of apperception, so also in practical cognition we cannot undertake an action irrespective of its reference to the “I will” which presupposes the universal conception of the good, that is, the one that is the result of the normative claims practical reason makes on our will.

1.4

Practical Cognition of the Objective Reality of the Moral Law

To summarize what I have argued thus far: Kant’s method has been transcendental regressive, that is, starting from the commonsense experience of some moral constraints and then proceeding to show the necessary a priori conditions for this experience to count as a universally valid and necessary practical cognition. It has also included an analysis of these necessary conditions: “supposing that a will is free” (KpV, 5: 29), what is understood by the concept of the principle that determines the will independently of any empirical considerations, and also, what is understood by the concepts of good and evil that are not conceived prior to and independent of the categorical imperative, or the pure form of the will itself. In analogy to theoretical cognition, he discussed the categorical imperative as analogous to the pure forms of intuition and the concepts of good and evil as analogous to the categories of the understanding. Each of these represent distinct aspects of practical cognition, the “form” (subject-directed because, even though it presupposes universal validity and necessity, it is a principle for determination of one’s actions) and “matter” (object-directed because, even though the concepts of good and evil are different modifications of the categorical imperative, they represent the end of the will, that which is brought about by action), respectively. 30

31

Thus, Kant’s aim here is not, as some have argued (Pieper 2002, 115), to differentiate the methods of theoretical from those of practical reason, but, on the contrary, to draw a strong analogy between them. Annemarie Pieper offers illuminating examples for each instance of the determination of the will in accordance with the table of the “categories of freedom,” which is, contrary to Kant’s claim, far from “intelligible enough in itself ” (KpV, 5: 67). See Pieper 2002, 121–23.

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What remains to be addressed is the culminating aspect of practical cognition that presupposes the unity of form and matter. Kant argues that all these particular conceptions of the good, or all the “categories of freedom,” which trace back their origin to each of the practical precepts “at once become cognitions and do not have to wait for intuitions to receive meaning; and this happens for the noteworthy reason that they themselves produce the reality of that to which they refer (the disposition of the will)” (KpV, 5: 66). In other words, the objective validity of these categories is not in question as this was the case for the categories of the understanding. This is because the object to which they refer is not outside of reason, that is, the good as that which ought to be willed is generated by reason itself in the disposition of the will. However, their objective reality still needs to be shown. Because the “categories of freedom” are particular instances of the categorical imperative we can say that objective validity of the categorical imperative (whether it applies to its object) is not in question but, instead, its objective reality is. Because the culminating and final aspect of practical cognition presupposes the objective reality of the moral law, Kant must direct us to the first person or agent perspective of practical cognition and the problem of the incentive (Triebfeder) of the will that recognizes the moral law as binding. This final stage of practical cognition refers to the incentive of practical reason, which I take is the realization of practical cognition in our sensibility. The English translation of Kant’s Triebfeder is here misleading because by this term Kant does not understand some external object that incites one to moral action. This is the reason why Kant emphasizes that “by incentive (elater animi) is understood the subjective determining ground of the will of a being whose reason does not by its nature necessarily conform with the objective law” (KpV, 5: 72). But the moral law, which is the “objective determining ground of action,” must always be also “the subjectively sufficient determining ground of action” (KpV, 5: 72). Thus, the incentive of the will is the moral law considered from the perspective of the subject. This means that the moral law considered objectively is a representation of how one ought to act, while the moral law considered subjectively is the realization of this objective principle in the disposition of one’s will.32 I take the 32

I concur here with Engstrom who criticizes conative interpretations according to which Kant’s notion of Triebfeder is a special force of the moral law and, hence, not the moral law itself. See Engstrom 2010, 92–93. A criticism of Kant’s notion of Triebfeder as a conative attitude can be found in Deligiorgi who rightly argues that in an autonomous agent the representation of something as the right thing to do (i.e., representational content of normative reasons) coincides with what the agent takes as her reasons for doing it (i.e., representational content of motivational reasons). In other words, for an autonomous agent “what persuades us and what animates us is the right thing to do” (Deligiorgi 2012, 103) or the moral law.

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incentive of the will to take the moral law as binding to be the moral law’s realization because the moral law is nothing for us unless we become aware of it as determining our will or as being normative for us and we do so in the feeling of respect: “The consciousness [das Bewußtsein] of a free submission of the will to the law, yet as combined with an unavoidable constraint put on all inclinations though only by one’s own reason, is respect for the law” (KpV, 5: 80, my emphasis – LO).33 Thus, as Kant already emphasized at the beginning of the Analytic, unlike theoretical cognition that begins with sensibility and culminates in principles of the understanding, practical cognition proceeds in reverse order: it begins with principles and culminates in sensibility. In other words, while the previous two instances of practical cognition, the formal, of the categorical imperative and the material, of the concepts of good and evil, represent the structure and the content of the good, they still do not represent its reality. And the latter is achieved in the feeling of respect, the good is actualized in our approval. Kant’s analogy between a priori intuitions and the moral law is here again helpful: The distinction between empirically-conditioned and pure, yet still practical, reason is foundational for the critique of practical reason, which asks if there is such a thing as the latter. Its possibility cannot be comprehended a priori, because it concerns the relation of a real ground to its consequent. Something must therefore be given, which can stem only from it; and its possibility can be inferred from this reality. Moral laws are of this nature, and these must be proven in the manner in which we prove that the representations of space and time are a priori, with the difference being that the latter are intuitions and the former mere concepts of reason. (Refl 7201, 19: 275–76)34

In the Transcendental Aesthetic, Kant distinguishes the metaphysical from the transcendental exposition of space and time. While the former explains what is thought in the concept of space and time as a priori intuition, the latter shows that the concepts of space and time as presented in the 33

34

Some commentators argue that the moral law would not be able to have this particular effect were it not for the fact that we already recognize it as binding for the will. (See Ameriks 2012, 173 and Allison 1990, 237.) I wish to suggest instead that it would be helpful here to draw an analogy between, on the one hand, the will’s determination by the moral law and the corresponding feeling of respect and, on the other, pure aesthetic judgment and its corresponding aesthetic pleasure. Both aesthetic pleasure and the feeling of respect for the moral law have a priori origins and are not pathological feelings. As in pure aesthetic judgments the free harmony of the faculties manifests itself to the judging subject as a feeling of pleasure (is not the cause but the logical ground of the feeling of pleasure), so also a subsumption of my particular will under the universal, the moral law, manifests itself to the practical agent as a feeling of respect for the law. The passage is cited in full in Allison 1990, 233–35.

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Metaphysical Exposition refer to something real, that is, something that actually exists, and thereby it establishes the legitimacy of these concepts. Transcendental Exposition of Space shows that the concept of space as an a priori intuition really exists because only under the condition that space is a priori and an intuition is the science of geometry as a body of synthetic a priori knowledge possible. Similarly, what is given in the practical context is the feeling of respect for the moral law as the practical cognition of its normative force. Only under the condition that the moral law is an a priori principle, a form of a pure will that cannot be reasoned out of other apodictically certain propositions, and that the notion of the good is understood in relation to this a priori principle is practical cognition in the feeling of respect possible. 1.4.1

The Feeling of Respect

Because we are beings not only of rational or noumenal nature but also of sensible and phenomenal nature, we are beings of inclinations. All inclinations considered together constitute “regard for oneself [Selbstsucht] (solipsismus)” (KpV, 5: 73), or selfishness. Their satisfaction, as a realization of the pathologically affected and sensible self, constitutes happiness. Therefore, the latter Kant understands in purely hedonistic terms. He distinguishes two forms of self-regard: “self-love” (Eigenliebe, Selbstliebe, Philautia) and “self-conceit” (Eigendünkel, Arrogantia). Both forms of self-regard are “striving[s]” on the part of “our pathologically determinable self […] to make its claims primary and originally valid, just as if it constituted our entire self” (KpV, 5: 74). Put differently, these forms of self-regard are not equivalent to sensible desires of irrational animals and instead they constitute the pathological or sensible affection of our will, that is, of practical reason. Thus, it is practical reason affected by self-regard that explains why these forms of self-regard presuppose claims to their own validity. In Religion, Kant refers to self-love as “benevolenti[a]” or “love of good will ” and to “incorporate [this self-love] into one’s maxims is natural (for who would not want that things always go well for him)” (RGV, 6: 45n). But this wanting that things always go well for oneself presupposes claims that happiness constitutes one’s own good. The claims, on the part of practical reason, of the goodness of keeping our inclinations satisfied account for Kant describing self-love as “propensity [Hang] to make oneself as having subjective determining grounds of choice into the objective determining ground of the will in general” (KpV, 5: 74). In other words, self-love is a potentiality of our sensible nature to affect practical reason in such a

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way that desire for one’s own happiness is validated as if happiness should constitute our complete good, irrespective of the claims of the rational, or noumenal, self, that is, morality. Self-conceit, on the other hand, is not related to benevolence toward oneself but “esteem for oneself” from which arises “satisfaction with oneself (Arrogantia)” (KpV, 5: 73). This is to say that self-conceit is concerned with making claims with respect to the worth of one’s own person. This it does by claiming that the pathologically affected self is essential to who we are. This explains why self-conceit directly challenges the demands of the moral law on the will by making itself “law-giving and the unconditional practical principle” (KpV, 5: 74). Self-conceit is a form of self-love that aims to set itself in the place of the demands of the moral law, that is, it is a propensity to legislate the ends of one’s own self-love as that which ought to count as ends for every rational being. Therefore, the claims of self-conceit, unlike those of self-love, do not merely ignore the demands of morality but instead they presuppose that the sensible aspect of our nature is true of who we are and is, therefore, concerned, just like morality, with understanding one’s own ultimate worth as a person, an appreciation of oneself that presupposes an affirmation in the eyes of others.35 With this interpretation of the two forms of self-regard in place, we can understand better Kant’s account of the subsumption of our particular will under the universal, the moral law: Pure practical reason merely infringes upon self-love, inasmuch as it only restricts it, as natural and active in us even prior to the moral law, to the condition of agreement with this law, and then it is called rational self-love. But it strikes down self-conceit altogether, since all claims to esteem for oneself that precede accord with the moral law are null and quite unwarranted because certainty of a disposition in accord with this law is the first condition of any worth of a person […] and any presumption prior to this is false and opposed to the law. (KpV, 5: 73)

Recognizing the moral law as binding merely “restricts” self-love insofar as the pursuit of the ends of self-love must be made consistent with those of morality. This is done if we give to a “maxim of self-love objective validity of a law” so that there arises “a concept of obligation to extend the maxim of my self-love to happiness of others as well” (KpV, 5: 34–35). Thus, the claim of self-love, which is “natural and active in us even prior to the moral 35

Kant takes over this division of self-love into one that is concerned with the satisfaction of our basic needs and the one that presupposes understanding of our self-worth and comparison with others from Rousseau’s Emile.

1.4 Practical Cognition of the Objective Reality of the Moral Law

39

law” (KpV, 5: 73), is not denied with our awareness of the moral law but is “deprived of its influence” (KpV, 5: 75) insofar as the claim of the noumenal and moral self is no longer ignored but acknowledged as preponderant in the form of an obligation to further the happiness of others. It, however, “strikes down” self-conceit insofar as the claims of self-conceit become “unwarranted” when faced with the claims of the moral law which shows the pretenses of self-conceit to be “illusory” (KpV, 5: 75). Put differently, the consciousness of the moral law shows that the claims of our sensible nature, pathologically affected self, are not true of who we are, or that our worth as a person does not consist in the pretenses of our sensible nature. Because the moral law demonstrates superiority over selfconceit, it “humiliates it” (KpV, 5: 73) and it becomes an object of “the greatest respect” (KpV, 5: 73), a feeling that has an entirely a priori origin because it is produced by an activity of reason. Thus, unlike the rationalist tradition, Kant recognizes the importance of the will’s incentive in our moral actions but also unlike the moral sense theorists this feeling is free from any sensible conditions insofar as it is not antecedent to our conceptions of good and evil. 1.4.2

The Feeling of Respect and Self-Cognition

It is remarkable that for Kant, as someone who is often criticized for being a rationalist and a paradigmatic formalist, practical cognition culminates in a feeling. For anyone interested in defending Kant from these common objections, the observation that for him practical cognition culminates in a feeling is much more significant than trying to show that feelings for Kant play a role in our moral life. There is a dual structure of the feeling of respect for the moral law Kant identifies in his metaphysics lectures: “What is a feeling? That is hard to determine. We feel ourselves” (V-Met-L1/Pölitz, 28: 168).36 It is a feeling of respect for the moral law. But also insofar as this is the feeling for the moral law, it is also a feeling through which we become aware of the nature of our being as being capable of empirical and rational determination. Moreover, we become aware of self-conceit’s false pretenses to legislation and insofar as 36

Martin Heidegger was already aware of this aspect of Kant’s practical philosophy: “It pertains in general to the essential nature of feeling not only that it is feeling for something but also that this feeling for something at the same time makes feelable the feeler himself and his state, his being in the broadest sense. Conceived in formally universal terms, feeling expresses for Kant a peculiar mode of revelation of the ego. In having a feeling for something there is always present at the same time a self-feeling, and in this self-feeling a mode of becoming revealed to oneself” (Heidegger 1982, 132–33).

40

Kant’s Justification of the “Fact of Reason”

this aspect of self-conception is shown to be illusory, we feel humiliation. At the same time we recognize rational determination as true of who we are, and through a feeling of respect become conscious of who we are essentially. Therefore, in the feeling of respect, practical cognition is not just a cognition of the moral law as binding for us, but it is also ultimately a cognition of the self and what is true of the self. Here, we have to recall again the reverse direction of theoretical and practical cognition: while theoretical cognition tells us what is true of the world, practical cognition tells us what is true of the self. Some of the most sympathetic Kant interpreters37 object that while his doctrine of the fact of reason may succeed in showing that our moral requirements have a rational nature and, hence, that we have a reason to obey them, it does not succeed in showing why our moral requirements have a special rational appeal that makes them override other interests and values. In light of what I have argued in this chapter, Kant’s answer is that the moral law is not a reason for action, nor even a very high standard for action, because on that account choosing maxims that satisfy our other interests and values are just as rational, but that choosing maxims that accord with the moral law are not only rational but they are also true of who we are essentially. As Dieter Henrich rightly argues, the feeling of respect for the moral law “is a form of self-understanding […] without which the good is nothing, is the expression of the good’s obligatory character for the existence of the self. When I know in moral insight what is good, I also know that I understand myself in relation to it, or that I must understand myself in relation to it in order to become a self.”38 Put differently, Kant’s justification of the moral law from a “practical point of view” (in prakitscher Absicht) presupposes an act of reconstitution.39 What we previously, from a common-sense perspective, merely felt was the right thing to do we now know, in practical cognition, is that which ought to be done in all its purity and absolute necessity. And not doing what we know ought to be done is revealed to us as a failure of not living up to who we are essentially.40 37 38 39

40

See Allison 1990, 238–39. See Henrich 1994a, 63. A similar claim can be found in Deligiorgi who contends that taking up the perspective of the moral law that moves us beyond the “I” to a “we” (the ethical community of all rational deliberators) affords discoveries that are not merely “a piece of information about ourselves which we were previously missing. Rather they describe a process of self-discovery that is also one of transformation” (Deligiorgi 2012, 141). Thus, the culminating stage of Kant’s justification “from a practical point of view” of the moral law’s validity corresponds to some extent to the final step of his deduction in Groundwork III. In

1.5 Kant’s Proof of the Objective Reality of Freedom

1.5

41

Kant’s Proof of the Objective Reality of Freedom

With our understanding of practical cognition and the objective reality of the moral law, we can turn now to our initial question of Kant’s proof of the reality of transcendental freedom. In the first chapter of the Analytic, Kant introduced the Reciprocity Thesis,41 namely, the thesis that freedom and the moral law “reciprocally imply each other” (KpV, 5: 29). In the Groundwork, Kant argues that “[w]ill is a kind of causality” (GMS, 4: 446), namely, the one specific to rational beings. Because causality must be governed by a law, “so freedom, although it is not a property of the will in accordance with natural laws, is not for that reason lawless but must instead be a causality in accordance with immutable laws but of a special kind; for otherwise a free will would be an absurdity” (GMS, 4: 446). In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant repeats the same claim and writes that “a free will must find a determining ground in the law” (KpV, 5: 29). Here again, Kant draws the analogy between theoretical and practical reason. Just as for theoretical reason, the category of causality presupposes the universal and necessary lawfulness of the understanding, so also the causality of practical reason presupposes a form of lawfulness. Indeed, because we are rational agents, we do not merely act on our inclinations but we “determine [our] causality by the representation of rules” (KpV, 5: 32). In other words, we formulate principles or maxims. Given that the will is free (transcendentally), it cannot be determined by the “matter of the law” (KpV, 5: 29), to wit, the matter of a practical principle which is the object of the will because in that case the will would be determined by the empirical conditions. Thus, merely subjective principles of actions will not do. Instead, it must be determined by its own principle, the “lawgiving form” (KpV, 5: 29), a universally valid unconditioned practical principle. In Corollary to §7, Kant identifies this universal law of practical reason with the moral law because this is the law that the will recognizes and is

41

Groundwork III, Kant claims that a human being is conscious of himself as “intelligence” and as a member of the world of understanding and, thus, as a thing in itself. His will qua “intelligence” is the “authentic self ” (eigentliches selbst) while “as a human being he is only the appearance of himself ” (GMS, 4: 457). Sussman also gestures toward “a kind of ontological argument for the final authority of the moral law” (Sussman 2008, 77). Presumably, on his “naturalistic metaphysics” (Sussman 2008, 67), ontological primacy is ascribed to the self’s capacity to reason. However, acting on prudential maxims and not taking the moral law to have a strict normative priority can be just as rational as acting on moral maxims. That there is an ontological argument for the normative primacy of the moral law in the feeling of respect is also acknowledged by Engstrom who argues that in the feeling of respect we recognize that our rational self is “more fundamental to our selfconception than is self-conceit” (Engstrom 2010, 117). I take over this expression from Allison. See Allison 1990, 201.

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Kant’s Justification of the “Fact of Reason”

normative or binding for it. The moral law, argues Kant, is “not limited to human beings only but applies to all finite beings that have reason and will and even includes the infinite being as the supreme intelligence” (KpV, 5: 32). Only for us as beings who have the will affected by sensible nature does this moral law take the form of an imperative or an obligation which means that the will is necessitated by the moral law. Therefore, when Kant writes that freedom and the moral law (for us, the categorical imperative) imply each other, he means that if we are transcendentally free, then we are bound by the moral law (i.e., free in a positive sense or autonomous) and also vice versa, that is, if we are bound by the moral law (autonomous), then we are transcendentally free. But in a well-known footnote in the Preface of the second Critique, Kant claims that this circle is not vicious: Lest anyone suppose that he finds an inconsistency when I now call freedom the condition of the moral law and afterwards, in the treaties, maintain that the moral law is the condition under which we can first become aware of freedom, I want only to remark that whereas freedom is indeed the ratio essendi of the moral law, the moral law is the ratio cognoscendi of freedom. (KpV, 5: 4n)

Thus, freedom is the cause or ground for the existence of the moral law, and the moral law is the ground for cognizing that we are free. As demonstrated earlier, the solution to the Reciprocity Thesis cannot start from proving metaphysically that we are free and from there concluding that the moral law is real and we are bound by it. We must start from showing that the moral law is real. As argued above, Kant demonstrates the reality of the moral law by starting from a commonsense perspective, our commonsense experience of some moral constraints, and moving regressively to show, in analogy to theoretical reason, the a priori conditions necessary for this experience to count as practical cognition that is universal and necessary. To be sure, the reality of practical cognition, unlike the one of theoretical, cannot be demonstrated in the truths of mathematical and natural science. Instead, the culminating aspect of practical cognition, presupposes taking the first person perspective, and pointing to the actualization of the pure will in one’s own experience of the feeling of respect for the moral law. The feeling of respect for the moral law is reconstitutive insofar as in feeling the respect for the moral law we also become aware that the moral law is true of who we are. How should we then understand Kant’s claim that through practical cognition of the objective reality of the moral law as universal and

1.6 Conclusion and Evaluation

43

necessary we cognize that we are free? In Kant’s example of the man confronted with the choice between giving a false testimony against an honest man and facing the threat of the gallows he “judges [urteilt], therefore, that he can do something because he is aware that he ought to do it and cognizes freedom within him [erkennt in sich die Freiheit], which without the moral law, would have remained unknown to him” (KpV, 5: 30). How should we understand “cognition” of freedom that results from practical cognition of the moral law and its objective reality? In light of what I have argued above, Kant’s “ought implies can” should not be understood as a theoretical inference from one piece of theoretical knowledge to another of some existent empirical thing. Instead, by gaining cognition of the moral demand on myself and recognizing this moral demand as essential to who I am (I would not be the self without it) I also cognize myself as adequate to the demand, that is, as Dieter Henrich rightly puts it, my cognition of myself as transcendentally free is “the self-explication of moral insight,”42 a part of the practical cognition of the noumenal self that is essential to who I am. Thus, freedom for Kant is a postulate, an assent to the truth of the proposition “I am free.” But instead of providing a theoretical warrant for this assent, one can only give a practical one, namely, the truth of the moral law as binding. This does not mean that this type of assent is epistemically inferior to either theoretical knowledge or theoretical cognition. It is Fürwahrhalten, or holding something to be true, albeit on moral and not theoretical grounds. And this is why Kant refers to freedom’s objective reality as a “fact” (KU, §91, 5: 468) and why we should resist the view that it is a mere belief, taking ourselves as if free, by means of which the Idea of freedom receives “content that is more determinate than would have been the case had it rested on purely theoretical grounds.”43

1.6

Conclusion and Evaluation

It may be objected to me that my own view is not much different from the proto-Fichtean interpretation (ARI) I mentioned earlier. That is to say that, on the view I presented, the proof of the validity of the moral law, the fact that it is normative for us, consists in the first-person perspective, 42 43

Henrich 1994a, 83. Willaschek 2017, 115. Kant’s later reference to freedom as a “fact” could also be explained by the fact that its objective reality is not merely deducible from the objective reality of the moral law but that it is also exhibited in our choosing to act from duty. This double sense of Kant’s proof of the objective reality of freedom is emphasized by Ameriks (see Ameriks 2003, 257).

44

Kant’s Justification of the “Fact of Reason”

the perspective of the practical agent and her active taking of her practical standpoint. Moreover, one could object that in the absence of a genuine (metaphysical) deduction, claims of morality are not well founded and amount to a mere “standpoint.”44 But for the proponents of the protoFichtean view of the moral law that proves itself in the activity of reason itself, the feeling of respect, and Kant’s examples, are supposed to do all the justificatory work.45 But on the view I am presenting here, the practical agent travels the path prepared for it by theoretical reason. We start from the point of the commonsense experience of some moral constraints on our actions but travelling the path prepared for us by the transcendental philosopher and, therefore, by theoretical reason, we can raise those commonsense convictions to the level of universal and necessary practical cognitions. That is to say that while on Kant’s view the deduction he employed in the theoretical domain cannot work for the practical (because it would require the theoretical knowledge of absolute freedom that we cannot have), this does not entail that no justification of the moral law’s normative force on us is possible. This special form of justification “from a practical point of view” must proceed in reverse order to the one in the theoretical domain. While in the theoretical domain the deduction starts with intuitions and ends with principles, the justification in the practical domain must start with principles and end with intuitions. It starts with the practical cognition of the form of the moral law that ensues from comparing the content of the categorical imperative as an a priori principle to the metaphysical exposition of pure a priori intuition. It proceeds to the practical cognition of the matter of the moral law that results from comparing the concept of the good to the role of pure concepts of the understanding in theoretical cognition. Finally, it culminates in the feeling of respect for the moral law that should be understood as the practical cognition of its normative force, the actualization of the moral law in our sensibility, and which is possible only if the other two forms of practical cognition are present. 44 45

See Ameriks 2003, 262. Franks here is an exception insofar as he claims that “we should not conclude that immediacy of consciousness of the moral law is supposed to do all the justificatory work” (Franks 2005, 282). The feeling of respect for the moral law is preceded by the process of justification of our actions that stops at the categorical imperative as its ultimate point because any practically free self could choose it as a reason. For Franks, the moral law ought to be our ultimate reason “on pain of irrationality” (Franks 2005, 265). In addition to the fact that this view conflates transcendental and practical freedom or freedom of choice (“to choose for a reason irreducible to any cause just is to enact an uncaused, spontaneous choice” [Franks 2005, 266]), it also grounds the normative force of the moral law on the general features of our rationality (RAI).

1.6 Conclusion and Evaluation

45

One could, however, still argue that the analogy I develop between Kant’s transcendental regressive method of justification of morality and his deduction of our a priori concepts of the understanding has an obvious limit. While neither of these justifications has for its goal the ambition to answer the skeptical challenge (i.e., the fact that we can neither be certain of the existence of morality nor of the external world or the truths of mathematics), the starting premises of these justifications do not represent the same level of challenge for a skeptic. The starting premise “there is moral experience” represents an easier challenge for a skeptic than the starting premise “there is experience of the world.” But the transcendental regressive process of justification from a practical point of view, having reached the culminating stage in the experience of respect for the moral law, goes the other way around: once raised to the level of practical cognition, theoretical reason, the understanding, prepares the terrain for the application of abstract practical cognition to concrete actions. And this is the role played by The Typic of Pure Practical Judgment. “[A] practical rule of pure reason first, as practical, concerns the existence of an object” (KpV, 5: 68). Thus, practical cognition although cognition of the supersensible (cognition of the moral law and via the moral law of my noumenal self) never loses the sight of the phenomenal world in which our actions are to take place. Although practical cognition actualizes itself in a feeling, its actualization is not complete until it is used as a rule in our moral deliberations, as a criterion in answering the question “What am I to do?”. And here our practical cognition is being “appraised” (beurteilt) (KpV, 5: 70), or put to the test, by means of our practical judgment. In other words, because the “morally good as an object is something supersensible” (KpV, 5: 68), an aspect of the morally good that is entirely lost on RAI mentioned earlier, it requires a quasi-schema, a concrete representation of the rule to which I can compare the maxims of my actions. And this is the universal law of nature that captures the universal lawfulness of the moral law and, therefore, serves as its type. Our practical cognition constantly undergoes a series of tests so that it is clear that it has the status of a rational principle that does not fall into either empiricism (the notion of the good determined by happiness and self-love) or mysticism.46 Finally, given that Kant’s justification from a “practical point of view” relies on the unity of theoretical and practical reason, one may argue, like 46

Thus, the method of universalization for Kant is not a part of a progressive proof of the moral law’s normative force (the proof that deduces the validity of the moral law from one’s general capacity to reason) as argued by some proponents of RAI. Instead, it is a part of practical judgment.

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Kant’s Justification of the “Fact of Reason”

Gerold Prauss, that Kant did not have a ready proof structure for the unity of theoretical and practical reason in place, and that this unity is something that he is merely assuming.47 Prauss’ objection, however, presupposes that we can step outside of our rational practices and look for a common grounding of both theoretical and practical reason. Put differently, Prauss assumes that Kant should have some previously established conception of human reason that would explain the integration of both of its forms, namely, theoretical and practical. This is the ambitious project German Idealists vigorously pursued as a response to Kant’s mature practical philosophy. They looked for a single unifying principle which is either practical and from which the truth of theoretical reason should be deduced (Fichte) or theoretical (cognition of the spirit’s dialectical path) from which the truths of practical reason should be deduced (Hegel). Kant’s aims, however, are more modest, to wit, the domains of theoretical and practical reason always remain in coherent relation to each other while the principle that may be the unifying ground of both is beyond our knowledge: “It is too bad that it is first possible for us to glimpse the idea in a clearer light and to outline a whole architectonically, in accordance with the ends of reason, only after we have long collected relevant cognitions haphazardly like building materials and worked through them technically with only a hint from an idea lying hidden within us” (KrV, A834–35/B862–63). 47

See Prauss 1983, 70.

chapter 2

The Highest Good and the Realism of Moral Glaube

In the previous chapter, I discussed Kant’s argument for the objective reality of reason’s Idea of transcendental freedom, that is, reason’s Idea of the unconditioned causality, via the objective reality of the moral law. The topic of the present chapter is Kant’s argument for the objective reality of the Ideas of God and the soul’s immortality, namely, the postulates for God’s existence and the soul’s immortality.1 My preliminary aim in this chapter is to clarify the content of Kant’s Idea of the highest good in order to show how Kant’s attempt to conform our desire for happiness to the demands of pure practical reason leads to moral Glaube, that is, a rational assent to the existence of objects of the Ideas of God and the soul’s immortality. Furthermore, I will show that Kant’s conception of moral Glaube can be approached from both an anti-realist and a realist perspective. According to the former, moral Glaube is speculative reason’s “presupposition” (Voraussetzung) (KpV, 5: 122) of the objects of these Ideas, in order to either avoid its own inner contradictions or to help one maintain one’s moral disposition. It is anti-realist in spirit because the assumptions that reason makes may have nothing to do with how things are in reality. I will identify two forms of anti-realism regarding Kant’s notion of moral Glaube. One form of anti-realism is pragmatic in nature because it takes the representations of moral Glaube as necessary illusions aimed at directing our will in a 1

In the second Critique, Kant refers to the claim of the objective reality of the Idea of freedom – to wit, freedom “considered positively (as the causality of a being insofar as it belongs to the intelligible world)” – as a postulate. See KpV, 5: 132. This is because postulates in general for Kant are “presuppositions” of the objective reality of speculative Ideas (God, freedom, immortality) with a “necessarily practical reference” (KpV, 5: 132), that is, having its justification in the truth of the moral law. However, the “reference” of the postulate of freedom to the moral law differs from the “reference” of the postulates of God and the soul’s immortality. The former, as we saw in the previous chapter, is more “immediately” connected to the truth of the moral law while the latter is “indirectly” inferred from the moral agent’s reflection on the necessary conditions for realizing the moral good in the world.

47

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The Highest Good and the Realism of Moral Glaube

way that would be conducive to preserving the unity of reason. The other form of anti-realism is psychological because it approaches the representations of moral Glaube as necessary for answering the subject’s psychological needs required for maintaining its own will directed toward the good, for example, the need to feel that our actions have bearing on moral outcomes. According to the realist conception of Kant’s moral Glaube, moral Glaube is an assent that takes for its ground reason’s determination of a real and given object. This determination, given the limitation of our discursive understanding, is not theoretical and, hence, cannot result in theoretical cognition of this object. Instead, it constitutes “a pure cognition practically” (KpV, 5: 134). While the anti-realist conception of moral Glaube is more widely discussed in the Kant literature, the realist conception, to my knowledge, has received little attention thus far.2 The matter is more complicated because Kant’s writings seem to offer textual support for both views. My primary aim in this chapter, however, is to argue that if we pay closer attention to Kant’s neglected notion of “practical cognition” additional evidence becomes available for supporting an understanding of Kant as a realist with respect to moral Glaube and for explaining why the anti-realist interpretations do not adequately capture Kant’s view. While in the previous chapter I claimed that, for Kant, the notion of “practical cognition” was instrumental for giving our commonsense experience of moral constraints a rational framework and for showing the objective reality of the Idea of transcendental freedom, in this chapter we will see that another aspect of Kant’s notion of practical cognition can be instrumental in arguing for a realist interpretation of moral Glaube. I will be referring to this realism as “rational necessitation realism” (RNR) because it is grounded on moral Glaube’s rational necessity of a normative and not merely prudential sort, and its knowledge-like quality. The present chapter is structured as follows. Section 2.1 discusses the content of Kant’s Idea of the highest good. Section 2.2 briefly summarizes Kant’s arguments for the postulates of pure practical reason and shows that Kant’s assumed unity of theoretical and practical reason explains, what Kant calls, the “priority of the practical,” which is the condition for the assent of moral Glaube. In Section 2.3, I present the anti-realist interpretations of moral Glaube. Section 2.4 discusses Kant’s notion of practical cognition and the additional support it offers in favor of a realist interpretation of moral Glaube. In Section 2.5, I offer some concluding remarks and a brief evaluation of my own position. 2

The exceptions here are Karl Ameriks and Allen Wood. See ch. 11 in Ameriks 2012 and Wood 1970.

2.1 The Highest Good as the Unconditioned Object

2.1

49

The Highest Good as the Unconditioned Object of Pure Practical Reason

It was not always the case that for Kant the Idea of the highest good was the object of practical reason. In the Canon of the first Critique, Kant attempted to solve the problem of the moral subject’s incentive for the execution of moral principles by looking for an a priori connection between moral principles and that which the execution of these principles entails as its consequence, namely, the promise of happiness. Already in the Canon, Kant conceived of the highest good as consisting of two heterogenous parts: morality as worthiness to be happy, and happiness that is to be proportionately distributed to one’s worthiness. According to Kant, the highest good conceived as a world where happiness would be distributed in proportion with one’s worthiness of being happy could be created by us if everyone were to do “what he should, i.e., that all actions of rational beings occur as if they arose from a highest will that comprehends all private choice in or under itself” (KrV, A809/B838). In other words, we could be the creators of such a world if every man acted in accordance with the moral law, contributing not only toward his own happiness but also toward the happiness of others. Given that not everyone does what one ought to, the connection between morality (as worthiness of being happy) and happiness is contingent. Therefore, according to Kant, the hope of obtaining the necessary connection between happiness and worthiness to be happy is possible only in the intelligible world, under the assumption of the existence of an intelligence with a morally perfect will that could guarantee this necessary connection and supplement the imperfections of the human will. However, Kant’s initial treatment of the highest good as a solution to the problem of the incentive for the execution of the moral law is circular.3 On the one hand, the assumption of the existence of God and immortality gives force to the moral law, for without these we would have to “regard the moral laws as empty figments of the brain [Hirngespinste], since without that presupposition their necessary success, which the same reason connects with them, would have to disappear […] Thus without a God and the world that is now not visible to us but is hoped for, the majestic ideas of morality are, to be sure, objects of approbation and admiration but not incentives [Triebfedern] for resolve and realization” (KrV, A811–813/ 3

Kant’s treatment of the highest good in the Canon is his initial treatment of this topic because in the first Critique the issues in ethics were not Kant’s first priority.

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The Highest Good and the Realism of Moral Glaube

B839–841). On the other hand, this assumption, if it is to be justified, must be a consequence of the already existing moral conviction: “For it was these laws alone whose inner practical necessity led us to the presupposition of a self-sufficient cause or a wise world-regent” (KrV, A818/B846). It is then not surprising that in the Dialectic of the second Critique, as if attempting to clearly distance himself from the view held in 1781, Kant writes as follows: The moral law is the sole determining ground of the pure will. But since this is merely formal (that is to say, it requires that the form of a maxim be universally law giving), it abstracts as determining ground from all matter and so from every object of volition. Hence, though the highest good may be the whole object of pure practical reason, that is, of a pure will, it is not on that account to be taken as its determining ground, and the moral law alone must be viewed as the ground for making the highest good and its realization or promotion the object. (KpV, 5: 109)

While in the first Critique, the highest good served as an incentive for recognizing the moral law as binding, in the second Critique the role of the incentive is assigned to the feeling of respect for the moral law. Furthermore, Kant conceived of the will as a kind of causality and, although he did not justify or explain, he further claimed that a lawless causality would be a contradiction. Presumably, because causality is a category of the understanding, it must be governed by some law or a rational principle. In addition to being governed by a rational principle, the will must also have an end.4 Thus, as finite rational practical agents that act in the world we do not only act according to some principle of action, a maxim, but we are also “concerned in every action with its result” (RGV, 6: 8n).5 Thus, when Kant writes in the above cited passage that the highest good is not the “determining ground” of the will but the moral law is the ground of making the promotion and realization of the highest good the object of the will, he claims that the highest good is “not merely object” (KpV, 5: 109), to wit, it is not an object of a will but it is an object of the pure will. Put differently, the highest good does not provide an incentive that orients my will so that the role of reason would consist in supplying merely hypothetical imperatives in order for the will to obtain its object. 4 5

See RGV, 6: 8n. For the point that defining will as a kind of causality does not necessarily entail that this causality be directed toward an end see Watkins 2010, 157. Instead, we should think of it as a “defining feature of our practical standpoint” (Watkins 2010, 157) as finite rational practical agents in the same way in which we think of experiencing the world in spatiotemporal terms as a defining characteristic of us as finite rational theoretical agents.

2.1 The Highest Good as the Unconditioned Object

51

It is the object of the pure will determined by the moral law and naturally concerned with the realization of the moral good in the world as opposed to the good of one’s self-love. Furthermore, not only is the highest good “not merely object” insofar as it is not an object of a will but an object of the pure will, it is also “not merely object” insofar as it is not just an object of the pure will but it is the “unconditioned totality of the object of pure practical reason” (KpV, 5: 108). In the opening lines of the Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason, Kant claims that reason in its practical domain, just as in its theoretical domain, “requires the absolute totality of conditions for a given conditioned, and this can be found only in things in themselves” (KpV, 5: 107).6 Although one could conceive of a rational agency that is concerned with the realization of the multiplicity of disconnected conceptions of the good,7 according to Kant’s conception of rationality, however, our ends are ordered into condition-conditioned relation that explains the systematic organization of all ends into a system of ends with the highest good as the final or unconditioned end. Of the two elements of the highest good virtue is the “supreme good” because it has no other good as its own condition. For Kant, virtue is a disposition of the human will to act in accordance with the moral law and bring about the moral good in the face of the claims of self-love.8 It is, thus, not surprising that the unconditioned end of practical reason should be maximization of virtue. But virtue is not a “complete good” (KpV, 5: 110–11). For a “complete good” happiness is also required, albeit as the good that presupposes virtue as its own condition. In the first Critique, Kant conceived of happiness of the highest good as a form of intellectual happiness, that is, a state of blessedness or beatitude in the intelligible world achieved by one’s own free moral efforts and by God who supplemented the imperfections of our will. Once the highest good becomes in the second Critique the object of our pure will that we have a duty to further in this world, the earlier conception of intellectual happiness as a form beatitude9 in the intelligible realm must undergo a transformation. It becomes an empirical conception of happiness, or happiness understood as one’s own well-being. Thus, what in the first Critique 6 7 8 9

For Kant’s discussion of reason’s principle that guides reason’s search in the theoretical domain from the conditioned to the unconditioned see KrV, A307/B364-A308/B365. See KU, §87, 5: 450. See MS, 6: 405. At places in the second Critique Kant continues to refer to happiness as a form of beatitude in the intelligible world although it is not clear how it fits his new conception of the highest good as the object of pure practical reason we ought to further in this world. Consider for example KpV, 5: 128–29.

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were two merely separate elements of the highest good, in the second Critique become two “extremely heterogenous concepts, that of happiness and that of virtue” (KpV, 5: 111). Happiness conceived empirically belongs to the realm of nature, the phenomenal realm, while virtue belongs to the realm of freedom, the noumenal realm.10 However, we need to determine more closely, the meaning of Kant’s empirical notion of happiness in the second Critique. It was already pointed out in the previous chapter that, for Kant, the empirical notion of happiness is not just an idea of the satisfaction of a bundle of inclinations but the end of reason, albeit the one that originates in our pathologically affected will. We saw that for Kant, given our both sentient and rational nature, it is “natural” (RGV, 6: 45n) to incorporate self-love into one’s maxims because “[t]o be happy is necessarily the demand of every rational but finite being and therefore an unavoidable determining ground of the faculty of desire” (KpV, 5: 25). Because happiness is the end of reason, to wit, that which reason recognizes as the good, Kant refers to happiness as not merely a satisfaction of all inclinations but their satisfaction insofar as they “can be brought into a tolerable system” (KpV, 5: 73). This is Kant’s first step in conforming the human natural desire for happiness to the demands of reason insofar as happiness defined as the end of reason is the condition of the unity of action.11 If happiness is the end of reason, then reason must be able to represent those inclinations as systematically ordered, mutually consistent, and unified, so that this representation can constitute the content of the concept of one’s “wellbeing,” or “complete satisfaction with one’s condition” (MS, 6: 480). But if happiness is to be a constitutive part of the highest good, the unconditioned object of pure practical reason, then an additional step of conforming the desire for happiness to the demands of reason is necessary, that is, the content of happiness cannot vary among individuals given that each of us has a different conception of their own well-being. Instead, happiness that is a constitutive part of the highest good must be a universal notion of happiness. The universality of happiness is achieved so that one thinks of happiness as conditioned by one’s virtuous disposition: “Happiness is the state of a rational being in the world in the whole of whose existence everything goes according to his wish and will, and rests, 10

11

Because the highest good is a relation between two heterogenous elements the necessary connection between morality and happiness must be synthetic and not analytic, that is, their connection must be causal. This leads to the Antinomy which will not be discussed here. For a detailed reconstruction of the Antinomy see Watkins 2010. See Henrich 1994, 77–78.

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therefore, on the harmony of nature with his whole end as well as with the essential determining ground of his will” (KpV, 5: 124). For Kant, happiness that is constitutive of the highest good consists in the harmony of nature with the ends, whether those that are within the reach (will) or those outside the reach (wish), of an individual with the pure will.12

2.2

The Postulates and the Primacy of Practical Reason

In the second Critique, Kant contends that “pure practical reason […] must necessarily represent it [the highest good – LO] as possible since it commands us to contribute everything possible to its production” (KpV, 5: 119). Thus, according to Kant, it is a basic supposition of rational willing to will those ends for which we have reason to believe that their realization is possible. For the highest good to be possible, nature must be harmonious with the ends of our pure will. This nature, furthermore, can be both within and outside of the acting agent. That is to say that our inner nature must be cooperative with the determinations of the will by the moral law, that is, the claims of self-love must be restricted so that they are made consistent with the moral law. External nature however must also be cooperative with our aims to bring about the good in the world. Because the law of nature, mechanism, is radically different from the law of freedom, or the moral law, there is nothing in nature that would suggest its amenability to the ends of reason. Therefore, there is a need for us to assume the causality that would assist us in these two aspects that pertain to our moral actions. First, it must assist us in maintaining our moral disposition. Although the claims of self-love in a virtuous individual are restricted by the claims of the moral law, one may not have the strength to maintain one’s moral disposition. Therefore, one must assume “a supreme cause of nature having a causality in keeping with the moral disposition” (KpV, 5: 125). In other words, we must assume a supreme cause of nature that would assist that our sensible nature adapts more readily to the demands of our rational nature, or that we overcome the inevitable temptation to choose nonmoral maxims over moral ones and transgress the moral law. Second, we must assume a supreme cause to assist us in the realization of our ends, 12

In Reflexion 7199, Kant contends similarly that happiness of the highest good is not the end of “empirical self-love” but “rational self-love” (Refl 7199, 19: 272–73). I take him here to mean that happiness of the highest good does not have to be exclusively limited to the satisfaction of one’s moral ends and that the satisfaction of one’s nonmoral ends and personal well-being is included insofar as the general disposition of that will is virtue. Hence the ends of self-love of a virtuous individual are limited by the moral law.

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that is, in bringing about the end of a virtuous individual in the world. Therefore, while in the Canon of the first Critique the Idea of the highest good was entirely transcendent because there Kant conceived of happiness as a reward in the intelligible world in proportion to one’s morality, in the Dialectic of the second Critique the Idea of the highest good remains partially transcendent. Because of the assistance by the assumed supreme cause and the removal of the empirical obstacles it is supposed to perform (either in our sensible nature or the external nature) we are assured that “progress toward it [the perfection of virtue and ever greater realization of the good – LO] is already possible and necessary in this life” (KpV, 5: 129). Although the highest good is the object of our will, which we have a duty to further, the complete conformity of our will with the moral law is not possible for the finite rational beings that we are. Because moral perfection as the constitutive part of the highest good is the necessary object of pure practical reason, we can only approximate to it in the “endless progress toward that complete conformity” (KpV, 5: 122). For this endless progress to be possible we must assume “the existence and personality of the same rational being continuing endlessly (which is called the immortality of the soul)” (KpV, 5: 122). Thus, the real possibility of the Idea of the highest good entails not only the postulate for God’s existence but also the postulate for the soul’s immortality.13 For Kant, a postulate of pure practical reason is a “theoretical proposition, though one not demonstrable as such, insofar as it is attached inseparably to an a priori unconditionally valid practical law” (KpV, 5: 122). The question then remains, how are we justified in assenting to the truth of a theoretical proposition (that God exists and the soul is immortal) from a practical point of view while the same assent is not possible for us from a theoretical perspective? In other words, how can theoretical reason make claims that are informed by practical reason while it is incapable of making those claims when not informed by the truth of practical reason, the truth of the moral law? 13

Guyer objects that in the postulate for the soul’s immortality Kant’s “assumption that virtue requires holiness” is unnecessary and without it “the argument for immortality collapses” (Guyer 2000, 352). Kant’s argument, however, is not that moral perfection is a requirement of virtue but that moral perfection is constitutive of the highest good and, hence, the necessary object of pure practical reason. In other words, if maximization of virtue is constitutive of the highest good, then moral perfection is its condition. This does not entail giving up the distinction between the finite human will and the perfect holy will. Instead, it entails moral self-perfection as the necessary object of pure practical reason. Put differently, according to Kant, we have a duty of moral improvement even though moral perfection can never be achieved by us and instead can only remain an object of infinite striving.

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The answer to this question Kant offers with his notion of the “primacy of practical reason.”14 “By primacy among two or more things connected by reason,” writes Kant, “I understand the prerogative of one to be the first determining ground of the connection with all the rest” (KpV, 5: 119). “In the narrower practical sense,” continues Kant, “it signifies the prerogative of the interest of one insofar as the interest of the others is subordinated to it” (KpV, 5: 119). By an “interest” of a faculty, Kant understands “a principle that contains the condition under which alone its [faculty’s] exercise is promoted” (KpV, 5: 119). The interest of reason’s speculative use “consists in the cognition of the object up to the highest a priori principles” and that of its practical use “consists in the determination of the will with respect to the final and complete end” (KpV, 5: 120). Thus, the “interest” of reason is the interest in that which fulfills its “need” (KpV, 5: 142): for speculative reason, the cognition of the unconditioned principle or object and, for practical reason, the determination of the will to action with respect to the promotion of the highest good. This is also why Kant characterizes the “interest” of reason as the “extension” of reason to that which is not immediately given in empirical reality, that is, from the conditioned in empirical reality to the Idea of the unconditioned (speculative) and from the moral good realizable in the world to the Idea of the highest good (practical), from the minimal to the final ends of reason in both its speculative (cognitive) and practical (action) functions. But “the restriction of speculative mischief” (KpV, 5: 121) also constitutes the interest of speculative reason. In other words, the interest of speculative reason is to cognize the unconditioned, but in such a way that reason avoids its transcendental fallacies. Thus, it is in the interest of speculative reason not to assent to the truth of the propositions “God exists” and “the soul is immortal,” while it is in the very interest of practical reason that it assents to the very same. With this we have the potential conflict between the interests of reason in its speculative and practical uses. Kant’s argument for the primacy of practical reason is his response on how to resolve this potential conflict. The argument can be reconstructed as a complex disjunctive syllogism in the following way.15 Either we reject the postulates, in which case speculative reason has primacy (A), or we accept the postulates (non-A). If we accept the postulates (non-A), then the “question is which interest is supreme” (KpV, 5: 120). In other words, if “non-A,” then either practical reason has primacy (B) and “speculative reason, which knows nothing 14 15

The discussion of the primacy of practical reason that follows can also be found in my 2020. Here, in general, I follow Marcus Willaschek’s helpful reconstruction of the argument that he offers in Willaschek 2010.

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about all that which practical reason offers for its acceptance, must accept these propositions and, although they are transcendent for it, try to unite them, as a foreign possession handed over to it, with its own concepts” (KpV, 5: 120), or “non-B.” And by “non-B,” Kant understands the proposition that no side would have primacy, that is, that practical reason would pursue its own interest in determining the will with the view that God’s existence and the soul’s immortality are rationally required and speculative reason would pursue its own interest, that is, “reject[ing] as empty subtle reasoning everything that cannot accredit its objective reality by manifest examples to be shown in experience, however much it might be interwoven with the interest of the practical (pure) use of reason” (KpV, 5: 120). In other words, speculative and practical reason would be, as Kant states in the fourth paragraph, “merely juxtaposed (coordinate)” (KpV, 5: 121). From here Kant rejects “non-B,” “[f]or without this subordination a conflict of reason with itself would arise” (KpV, 5: 121). That is to say that speculative reason would from the practical perspective accept the truth of the propositions that it would reject when the same are considered from its theoretical perspective. And “non-A,” that is, speculative reason cannot have primacy because “all interest is ultimately practical and even that of speculative reason is only conditional and is complete in practical use alone” (KpV, 5: 121). Therefore, “B,” that is, practical reason has primacy. Even if Kant’s argument can be presented as a valid disjunctive syllogism, the truth of the last two premises, “not non-B” and “non-A,” is presupposed and not justified by Kant. Let us start with the latter premise. Why could it not be the case that speculative reason has primacy so that it rejects the postulates when these are demanded by practical reason? This rejection cannot amount to the claim that the propositions “God exists” and “the soul is immortal” are false because theoretical reason, when left to its own resources, can affirm neither the truth nor the falsity of these claims. The primacy of speculative reason would, therefore, not ensue in a contradiction of reason, to wit, reason’s claim that “P” and “not-P.” Instead, speculative reason would deny the knowledge of that which must be known so that practical reason can pursue its own interest, namely, the promotion of the highest good in the world. As a solution to this problem, it would suffice to assume the truth of the postulates as a hypothesis for the purpose of directing the will in a certain way.16 Kant, however, denies 16

Sebastian Gardner (see Gardner 2006, 266) rightly argues that this problem would amount to a mere “frustration” of the interest of practical reason. On Gardner’s view, to solve this problem it is sufficient to hope that the propositions “God exists” and “the soul is immortal” are true.

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that this is an acceptable solution17 and the justification of this position is found in the opening pages of the Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason, where Kant claims that the highest good as the ideal of reason is its necessary object. Hence, although its pursuit is free, that is, the pursuit of this object is the result of will’s own self-determination, it is normatively nonoptional.18 Therefore, one must hold-as-true (Fürwahrhalten) the propositions “God exists” and “the soul is immortal” because merely hoping or assuming hypothetically that they are true would not do justice to the necessity that is attached to practical reason’s pursuit of its own ideal. But if speculative reason had primacy, it would remain indifferent to the fact that practical reason is not capable of pursuing its interests. This possibility Kant rejects by claiming that “all interest is ultimately practical and even that of speculative reason is only conditional and is complete in practical use alone” (KpV, 5: 121). Thus, speculative reason must ultimately recognize the interest of practical reason as its own. If we recall, the interest of speculative reason consists in the “cognition of the object up to the highest a priori principle” (KpV, 5: 119). In other words, it is in the interest of speculative reason, or its need, to posit the unconditioned, which therefore presupposes the interest in its “cognition.” Because the interest of speculative reason is also to “restrict its speculative mischief” (KpV, 5: 121) in its positing of the unconditioned, its need can only be satisfied legitimately, that is, in a non-sophistical way, by the fulfillment of the need of practical reason. It is in this sense that the interest of speculative reason “is only conditional” and “is complete in practical use alone.”19 However, we still must reconstruct Kant’s argument for his rejection of the premise “non-B,” that is, his rejection of the premise that neither theoretical nor practical reason has primacy and that they are merely 17 18 19

See VZeF, 8: 419, also cited in Gardner 2006, 266. On this, see Ameriks 2012, 253. In spite of Willaschek’s and Gardner’s illuminating reconstruction of Kant’s argument for the primacy of practical reason, their respective solutions cannot be accepted as they stand. Willaschek interprets Kant’s use of the phrase “only conditional” in the citation above to refer to the need of theoretical reason for the unconditioned to be optional in some sense (Willaschek 2010, 184–85), while the need of practical reason for the unconditioned is not. But it would be odd for Kant to use the word “need” for something that is merely optional: “But even here we could not allege a need of reason if we had not before our eyes a problematic but yet unavoidable concept of reason, namely that of an absolutely necessary being. This concept now wants to be determined” (KpV, 5: 143n, my emphasis – LO). It is according to Kant’s conception of reason and what it means to be rational that the quest for the unconditioned is necessary in both the theoretical and practical sense. Gardner on the other hand contends that even theoretical employment of reason is ultimately practical insofar as it presupposes spontaneity of thought. See Gardner 2006, 267. As demonstrated already in the previous chapter, a mere awareness that in my thought I am not externally determined does not amount to freedom in the absolute sense.

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“juxtaposed (coordinate).” The question to be answered is why we must reject the view according to which theoretical reason would accept the postulates when judging from the perspective of practical reason and refuse to assent to the same when judging from the perspective of speculative reason. This is the situation Kant describes in the fourth paragraph as a “conflict of reason with itself” (KpV, 5: 121). Kant rejects this possibility by arguing that the union of speculative and practical reason “is not contingent and discretionary but based a priori on reason itself and therefore necessary” (KpV, 5: 121). In other words, practical reason is not unified with theoretical only on the occasions of its own needs, that is, when it determines the will to action with the view of the ideal of the highest good. The relation between theoretical and practical reason is necessary because “it is still one and the same reason which, whether from a theoretical or a practical perspective, judges according to a priori principles” (KpV, 5: 121). But Kant must offer some account of how theoretical reason can integrate that which it identifies as completely “foreign,” “not grown on its own land,” into its own unified system of knowledge. This he does in the Architectonic of Pure Reason in the first Critique. In the Architectonic of Pure Reason, Kant distinguishes between a systematic unity and a unity that is a mere aggregate. Only cognitions that are unified into a systematic whole can qualify as science. By a system, writes Kant, I understand […] the unity of the manifold cognitions under one idea. This is the rational concept of the form of a whole, insofar as through this the domain of the manifold as well as the position of the parts with respect to each other is determined a priori […] The unity of the end, to which all parts are related and in the idea of which they are also related to each other, allows the absence of any part to be noticed in our knowledge of the rest, and there can be no contingent addition or underdetermined magnitude of perfection that does not have its boundaries determined a priori. The whole is therefore articulated (articulatio) and not heaped together (coacervatio); it can, to be sure, grow internally (per intus susceptionem) but not externally (per appositionem), like an animal body, whose growth does not add a limb but rather makes each limb stronger and fitter for its end without any alteration of proportion (KrV, A832-3/B860-1).

Reason’s cognition is a system based on the Idea of a whole, its end, which determines a priori the relation of its parts. This end of reason, the Idea that grounds it metaphysically and to which Kant also refers as the “highest” or the “final end” (KrV, A840/B868), is what Kant calls “the entire vocation of human beings” (KrV, A840/B868), namely, morality, “and the philosophy of it is called moral philosophy” (KrV, A840/B868). And although

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the legislation of human reason has two objects with two separate systems, namely, nature and freedom, these two parts are ultimately united in one single system grounded in one final end. And it is this teleological unity of reason grounded in one final end that explains why theoretical reason cannot remain indifferent to the needs of practical reason and why it must “accept” the propositions the truth of which it cannot confirm when left to its own resources.20 This also explains why theoretical reason can then unite these propositions with its own concepts and “compare and connect them with everything that it has within its power as speculative reason” (KpV, 5: 121). By this metaphor of integration, Kant suggests that the theoretical exploration of reason cannot proceed without having as its horizon its own practical interest, that is, its basic orientation toward the good. But while the question of the primacy of practical reason addresses the issue of the possibility of theoretical reason’s assent in order to satisfy the need of practical reason, we still need to assess Kant’s arguments for the necessity of this assent. It is to this issue that we must turn now.

2.3 The Anti-Realist Arguments of Kant’s Moral Glaube Because the connection between happiness and virtue in the Idea of the highest good is an a priori synthesis, Kant must provide a transcendental deduction for it, that is, a proof of its objective reality. After the Canon of the first Critique, one can identify two distinct arguments for the objective reality of the Idea of the highest good. The first argument is, what I shall call, the “argument from the truth of the moral law” (TML) and the second argument is, what I shall call, the “argument from human psychology” (AHP). Both arguments could be understood from an anti-realist perspective: the former in a pragmatic and the latter in a psychological sense. Below I address each in turn. 2.3.1

An Anti-realist Reading of Kant’s Argument for the Highest Good “From the Truth of the Moral Law” (TML)

Kant’s “argument from the truth of the moral law” (TML) runs as follows: [S]ince the promotion of the highest good […] is an a priori necessary object of our will and inseparably bound up with the moral law, the impossibility of the first must also prove the falsity of the second. If, therefore, the highest 20

For the claim that the unifying telos of reason would make integration of cognition into one unified system possible see also Gardner 2006, 268.

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The Highest Good and the Realism of Moral Glaube good is impossible in accordance with practical rules, then the moral law, which commands us to promote it, must be fantastic and directed to empty imaginary ends and must therefore in itself be false. (KpV, 5: 114).21

According to Kant, we do not have a moral duty to realize the highest good. We only have a duty to fulfill the moral law. Thus, the highest good is not the immediate object of our will. The immediate object of our will is the fulfillment of the moral law, or the realization of the moral good in the world. But “the promotion of the highest good […] is an a priori necessary object of our will and inseparably bound up with the moral law” (KpV, 5: 114; my emphasis – L.O.). Thus, although we do not have an obligation to realize the ideal of the highest good, we have an obligation to strive toward this ideal the best way we can.22 Let us look more closely into the meaning of the claim that the highest good is an indirect and not a direct object of the pure will. Kant’s notion of moral Glaube, or a “pure practical rational belief” (KpV, 5: 144) is a “taking-to-be-true” (Fürwahrhalten) (KpV, 5: 142), or an assent to the postulates from a “need of pure reason” (KpV, 5: 142). Kant uses the word “need” (Bedürfniß ) in this context to distinguish the rational necessitation presupposed by moral Glaube from the one that is presupposed by moral duty: “It is well to note here that this moral necessity is subjective, that is, a need, and not objective, that is, itself a duty; for there can be no duty to assume the existence of anything (since this concerns only the theoretical use of reason)” (KpV, 5: 125). The rational necessitation presupposed by moral Glaube is not “objective” because the assumption of God’s existence and the soul’s immortality is not commanded by the moral law, that is, it is not the case that these postulates are categorical imperatives of some sort. But on the anti-realist reading, the “subjective” aspect of rational necessitation is understood pragmatically. That is to say 21 22

For a similar version of Kant’s argument for the highest good see also KpV, 5: 125. Traces of TML survive also in the third Critique. See KU, §87, 5: 450, 471n. Adams is critical of TML. He contends that if the premise of Kant’s moral argument is that we ought to promote the realization of the highest good, then the assumption of God’s existence and the soul’s immortality is not justified. This is because “in any reasonable morality we will be obligated to promote only the best attainable approximation of the highest good” (Adams 1979, 123; my emphasis – LO). In Ostaric 2010, 25, I endorsed Adams. Upon further consideration, however, “approximating” even that which is the “best attainable” version of the highest good entails the idea of a progress to which the empirical obstacles also pertain. Furthermore, Adams’ objection could also mean that any reasonable morality should have as its object the good that can be realized in the world. This, however, would bring into question Kant’s conception of the highest good as the unconditioned or absolute good. One may wonder, however, to what extent it would be fair to call morality that does not confine its conception of the good within the limits of empirical human nature “unreasonable.”

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that the taking-to-be-true (Fürwahrhalten) of Glaube is understood as a subject entertaining a representation of the objective reality of God and the soul, as if these representations were real, and for the sake of directing one’s will in a certain way.23 This interpretation of Kant’s moral Glaube is anti-realist in spirit because the justification of moral Glaube is a product (i.e., construct) of reason as a solution to its own inner problems and contradictions, that is, on the one hand the command of practical reason to promote the highest good and on other, the realization of speculative reason when relying on its own resources that this command is impossible to fulfill because the claims of speculative reason are limited to empirical knowledge of things, that is, knowledge of appearances. 2.3.2

Kant’s “Argument for the Highest Good from Human Psychology” (AHP)

Parallel to TML, Kant introduces another argument for objective reality of the highest good, the argument that is grounded on human psychology. Kant’s second argument for the highest good, the one he offers in the third Critique and which relies on human psychology (AHP), is the following: In addition, there is the fact that we feel ourselves forced by the moral law to strive for a universal highest end, but at the same time feel ourselves and all of nature to be incapable of attaining it; there is the fact that it is only insofar as we strive for this that we feel that we can judge ourselves to be in accord with the final end of an intelligent world-cause (if there is one); and there is thus a pure moral ground of practical reason for assuming this cause (since this can be done without contradiction), even if for nothing more than avoiding the danger of seeing that effort as entirely futile in its effects and thereby flagging in it. (KU, §86, Remark, 5: 446)24

According to this argument, if we do what is in our power to promote the good but, due to some unpredictable circumstances, are never able to bring about the good, we will begin to believe that right actions and good intentions have no bearing upon moral outcomes. The moral agent will thus regard the moral law as no longer having force in its demands. Hence, unlike the 23

24

Gardner 2011 identifies this interpretation in Kant’s early critic Friedrich Karl Forberg (1770–1848) and also later in Hans Vaihinger (1852–1933). Gardner comments that these interpretations are “reconstructive” because “the theological postulates are intended by Kant to ground hope, not merely to express it” (Gardner 2011, 193). I take him to mean by this that for Kant hypothetically entertaining God’s existence and the soul’s immortality in hope that this may in fact be true is not sufficient for moral Glaube. Instead, moral Glaube requires an assent that these representations are true in order to ground hope in moral progress toward the highest good. This, for example, is Paul Guyer’s take on Kant’s postulates. See Guyer 2000, 335–36.

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first argument (TML) where denying the possibility of promoting the highest good implied an inner contradiction of reason and subsequently the falsity of the moral law, in this argument (AHP) the moral law is not falsified by this denial and is, in principle, taken still as binding. However, with time and continuous experience of hindrances to ends of practical reason the binding force of the moral law will lose its strength. Thus, it is necessary for us to assume God’s existence and the real possibility of the highest good in order to maintain the proper moral attitude. It is only with respect to its function of maintaining (as opposed to grounding) the proper moral attitude that the highest good in this argument relates to the issue of moral motivation. While on the anti-realist reading of the TML argument for the highest good and its corresponding notion of moral Glaube, God and the soul were mere representations of speculative reason that were “subjectively necessary” with respect to their pragmatic functions of avoiding reason’s inner contradictions, on the AHP argument, Kant appears to be an antirealist because God and the soul are representations of speculative reason that are “subjectively necessary” only relative to a certain human psychological need for maintaining the proper moral disposition. However, Kant grants the representations of Glaube the status of a genuine objective cognition which is inconsistent with the anti-realist interpretations of moral Glaube. In what proceeds, I again turn to Kant’s notion of “practical cognition” in order to explore whether Kant’s notion of “practical cognition” helps tilt the debate in favor of a realist interpretation of moral Glaube.

2.4

The Realist Argument of Kant’s Moral Glaube: Practical Cognition and Moral Glaube

In his logic lectures, Kant writes as follows: When a proposition is a proposition that commands, an imperativus, and says that something ought to happen, then it is a practical proposition[;] it says which free actions would be good for a certain purpose. […] All practical propositions, if they are opposed to theoretical ones, are imperativi. […] E.g. in geometry when I say, To measure a straight line take …, etc. [T]heoretical propositions, on the other hand, do not say how it ought to happen, but rather how the thing is. E.g. A straight line is the shortest path, etc. (V-Lo/Wiener, 24: 900 f.)25 25

The same distinction can be found in the first Critique. There Kant defines theoretical cognition as “that through which I cognize a priori (as necessary) that something is” and practical cognition as “that through which it is cognized a priori what ought to happen” (KrV, A633/B661).

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But practical can be derived from some theoretical propositions and this requires a further distinction, namely, the one between practical and speculative propositions: For although they do not say what ought to happen, because they are theoretical, practical propositions can nevertheless be derived from them, and they are to this extent opposed to speculative propositions. E.g. That there is God is a theoretical proposition, but it is practical in potentia[;] you must just act as if there is a highest legislator for your actions. […] Speculative propositions are all those from which no rules or imperativi for our actions flow[;] in natural theology, propositions are merely speculative. E.g., whether God’s omnipresence occupies space or consists merely in an influence on his creatures. (V-Lo/Wiener, 24: 901)26

Beginning with Kant’s second Critique, the categorical imperative represents moral cognition with respect to the first type of practical propositions, that is, imperatives which say that something ought to happen. His practical postulates of freedom, God, and soul’s immortality represent practical cognition with respect to the second type of practical propositions, that is, theoretical propositions that are “grounds for possible imperatives” and are, thus, “practical in potentia” (V-Lo/Wiener, 24: 901). Given the focus of this chapter, practical cognition of the latter kind is of concern to us. Because practical cognition of the objects of Glaube, when compared to the practical cognition that has freedom and the moral law for its objects, is indirect (i.e., it requires a further reflection on our part on the conditions that are required for realizing our moral ends in the world) one may think that it is epistemically inferior for Kant. This view may be suggested by Kant’s discussion of Glaube in the Canon. In the Canon, Kant distinguishes three degrees, or “stages” (Stufen) (KrV, A822/B850), of conviction: (1) opinion (Meinung), (2) Glaube, and (3) knowledge (Wissen). Unlike persuasion, all three degrees of conviction presuppose a process of legitimate rational justification based on which proposition “acquires a connection with truth” (KrV, A822/B850). “Opinion” is an assent that is “subjectively as well as objectively insufficient” (KrV, A822/B850). An example of an opinion is the type of assent held by a scientist who considers a hypothesis in order to conduct experiments that would either confirm or deny the truth of a hypothesis.27 The scientist acknowledges that she lacks objective grounds, evidence, that 26 27

On the distinction between practical, theoretical, and speculative cognitions see also the Appendix in Jäsche Logik (V-Lo/ Jäsche, 9: 86 f.). See KU, §91, 5: 467.

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would confirm the hypothesis. She is also not convinced by false evidence and, hence, the assent lacks subjective sufficiency as well. But the opinion, that is, the hypothesis of the scientist, has some connection to truth because it is not an “arbitrary invention” (willkürliche Erdichtung) (KrV, A822/B850), but rather a carefully chosen hypothesis based on consideration of concrete empirical evidence. Knowledge presupposes the highest degree of conviction because it is an assent to a proposition that has both grounds that are objectively and subjectively sufficient. In other words, a subject’s assent to a proposition counts as knowledge if the ground she cites for her assent (subjective sufficiency) is the ground sufficient for a proposition to be true (objective sufficiency).28 In the Canon of the first Critique, Glaube is placed between opinion and knowledge with respect to its degree of conviction and, hence, the degree of its “connection to truth”: “[i]f taking something to be true is only subjectively sufficient and is at the same time held to be objectively insufficient, then it is called believing” (KrV, A822/B850). Glaube is an assent that is possible only within the context of one’s “practical relations” (KrV, A823/ B851), that is, in relation to the ends that one sets for oneself. Those ends can be “arbitrary and contingent” or “absolutely necessary” (KrV, A823/ B851). The practical ends of the former type are those of “skill” and of the latter those of “morality” (KrV, A823/B851). The types of Glaube related to the former ends are “pragmatic” (pragmatische[r]) (KrV, A824/B853) and “doctrinal” (doktrinale[r]) (KrV, A825/B853) Glaube and the type of Glaube related to the latter ends is “moral Glaube.” As an example of “pragmatic Glaube” Kant offers a case of a doctor who sets as her end to cure her patient, but does not know the illness the patient suffers from (has no sufficient objective grounds) and makes a diagnosis (subjectively sufficient assent) in order to achieve the end she has set for herself, that is, the end of curing her patient. Her diagnosis is not a mere hypothesis, an opinion of a scientist, because she must hold her diagnosis as true and not merely entertain a possibility of it being true, in order to proceed with her actions, that is, prescribe a treatment. In order for her to proceed with her actions her assent requires subjective sufficiency. The end is contingent because it depends on a set of circumstances, a person becoming ill. As with the antirealist interpretation of TML above, her Glaube is the holding-to-be-true of a representation in order to direct her will in a certain way, that is, toward the end she considers desirable to achieve.29 Kant also refers to “pragmatic 28 29

See Chignell 2007, 330, 332f. for a detailed discussion of Kant’s notion of opinion and knowledge. See KrV, A824/B853.

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Glaube” as a “contingent Glaube” (KrV, A825/B852) and not because of its contingently chosen end, but because someone else, for example, another doctor, may have or eventually may gain the actual knowledge of the illness the doctor in our example does not have. In contrast to the contingent belief of “pragmatic Glaube,” “doctrinal Glaube” is a type of “necessary Glaube” (KrV, A825/B852) because the person assenting to a proposition could never have knowledge that the proposition is true. One of Kant’s examples of “doctrinal Glaube” is one’s assent to the existence of God from the observation of purposive unity in nature. The practice of a biologist who sets herself a goal to discover new laws about organisms presupposes the notion of purposive or teleological unity of biological systems. For this it is necessary for her to assent to the theoretical proposition that the world is intentionally designed by an intelligent author of the world. Given the limitations of our discursive cognitive capacities, no one in principle could ever have knowledge of the truth of the proposition.30 Thus, although objectively not sufficient, it was considered by Kant subjectively sufficient to make possible the “investigation of nature” (KrV, A826/B854) and “the advancement of my actions of reason” (KrV, A827/B855). Whether I wish to investigate nature is not a necessary but an arbitrarily chosen end (I may not be interested in investigating nature). This is why, as with “pragmatic Glaube,” the end of “doctrinal Glaube” is ultimately arbitrary and contingent. While for Kant the necessity of assent in “pragmatic” and “doctrinal Glaube” is of an instrumental sort, that is, necessity relative to the end that must be achieved, the assent of moral Glaube is absolutely necessary, “[f]or it is absolutely necessary that something must happen, namely, that I fulfill the moral law in all points. The end here is inescapably fixed, and according to all my insight there is possible only a single condition under which this end is consistent with all ends together and thereby has practical validity, namely, that there be a God and a future world” (KrV, A828/B856). Thus, the practical end in moral Glaube, that is, the fulfillment of the moral ought, is absolutely necessary and is not dependent on empirical circumstances, as is the case in “doctrinal” and “pragmatic” Glaube. However, this “absolute necessity” of moral Glaube does not entail that the degree of “moral certainty” (moralische Gewißheit) (KrV, A829/ B857), or certainty from a “practical point of view” (in praktischer Absicht) (KrV, A828/B856), is the same as the “logical certainty” (KrV, A829/B857) 30

For a more detailed discussion of Kant’s neglected notion of “doctrinal belief” see Chignell 2007, 345–54.

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presupposed in knowledge. In the Canon, the kind of certainty that is achieved on “subjective grounds (of moral disposition)” (KrV, A829/B857) is lesser in degree in comparison to the certainty of knowledge (Wissen) achieved on “objective grounds,” that is, grounds based on evidence given either in empirical or pure intuition. In §90 and §91 of the third Critique, Glaube is no longer discussed as being clearly subordinated to knowledge and presupposing a lesser degree of conviction, that is, as if it were connected to truth to a lesser degree. Rather, Kant focuses on Glaube offering a special kind of conviction, that is, “moral conviction” (KU, §90, 5: 463). And in §91, On the Kind of Affirmation (Fürwahrhalten) Produced by Means of Practical Faith, Kant distinguishes three modes of cognition relative to three different kinds of “cognizable things” (erkennbare Dinge) (KU, §91, 5: 467): (1) matters of opinion, (2) facts (Tatsachen), and (3) matters of faith (Glaube). In the third Critique, Kant’s discussion of “matters of opinion” does not change much from his discussion of this topic in the Canon. But given that Kant’s focus in this paragraph is on types of cognizable objects or things, he distinguishes these objects according to the modal categories. Objects of opinion must be “objects of an at least intrinsically possible experiential cognition (objects of the sensible world)” (KU, §91, 5: 467, my emphasis – LO). Facts, are objects of cognition that presuppose an actual intuition for a concept. This intuition can be empirical, and then we speak of one’s own experience or the experience of others (i.e., testimony). Or this intuition can be pure and either “theoretical,” such as the one in geometry, or “practical.” By the latter, Kant has in mind his doctrine of the “fact of reason” in the second Critique, which was not available to him in the first Critique. Finally, “objects that must be conceived [gedacht werden müssen] a priori in relation to the use of pure practical reason in accordance with duty (whether as consequences or as grounds) but which are excessive for its theoretical use are mere matters of faith” (Glaubensachen) (KU, §91, 5: 469). The highest good together with the conditions of its possibility (the existence of God and the immortality of the soul) are objects of this kind that, Kant implies, are necessary from a “practical point of view.” Thus, in the third Critique, the connection to truth that these three types of conviction establish is no longer a matter of degree. Rather, we find that (1) opinion is a conviction that is possibly true, (2) facts are convictions that are actually true, and (3) moral Glaube is a conviction that is necessarily true from a “purely practical point of view” (in reiner praktischer Absicht) (KU, §90, 5: 463). It is clear that in the third Critique both our awareness of the moral law (now the “fact of reason”) and moral Glaube

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gain objectivity they did not have earlier in the Canon. This however does not mean that for Kant moral Glaube and the “fact of reason” are the same as knowledge (Wissen): “[a]ll affirmation must ultimately be grounded in fact if it is not to be fully groundless; and the only difference among proofs is thus whether affirmation of the consequence drawn from this fact can be grounded on it as knowledge, for theoretical cognition, or mere faith [Glaube], for practical cognition” (KU, General Remark on the Teleology, 5: 475). Clearly, knowledge (Wissen) is reserved only for theoretical cognition. However, moral Glaube and the “fact of reason” are no longer epistemically inferior to knowledge. Instead, they enjoy an objectivity that is genuinely cognitive. Therefore, Kant grants them a knowledge-like status and the status of a cognition that is not theoretical but “practical.”31 The notion of Glaube presupposes representations that are true, but cognized in an indirect or “inferred” way. And because the representations of Glaube are not “less true” than the matters of fact, regarding the relation Glaube establishes to its objects Kant uses the same term he uses with respect to the relation “matters of fact” establish with their objects, namely, “cognition.” Therefore, theoretical propositions that are the “grounds for possible imperatives” and are, thus, “practical in potentia” (V-Lo/Wiener, 24: 901), and further, that give objective reality to the Idea of freedom, also serve to give objective reality to the Ideas of God and the soul. Here we should add a qualification. In this context, we should not take “grounds for imperatives” to mean that representations of moral Glaube, that is, the holding-to be-true of the propositions “God exists” and “the soul is immortal,” are incentives for moral actions. According to Kant’s Critical philosophy, the sole incentive for moral action is the moral law. The Canon of the first 31

Kant already uses the terms “practical cognition” (KrV, Bxxi) and “practical sources of cognition” (praktische Erkenntnisquellen) (KrV, Bxxvin) in the first Critique. However, in the first Critique Kant still hesitates to grant theoretical and practical cognition the same epistemic status. We can assume that Kant’s view of the relation between Glaube and cognition in the Canon is the one that we find described in Jäsche Logik as follows: “Only I myself can be certain of the validity and unalterability of my practical belief, and my belief in the truth of a proposition or the actuality of a thing is what takes place of a cognition only in relation to me without itself being cognition” (nur die Stelle eines Erkenntnisses vertritt, ohne selbst eine Erkenntniß zu sein) (V-Lo/ Jäsche, 9: 70). Given that in the Canon the status of an “object” was reserved for a thing given in pure or empirical intuition, the “subjective ground” of Glaube was epistemically inferior to the objective ground of knowledge. Although Jäsche Logik is dated to 1800, Kant asked his student Gottlob Benjamin Jäsche to prepare this edition in reference to his notes on George Friedrich Meier’s Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre, which Kant used in his logic lectures between 1765 and the 1790s. Thus, the content of the Jäsche Logik reflects Kant’s views prior to the publication of his third Critique. It remains questionable whether Jäsche himself was able to attend any of Kant’s logic lectures. The relation of Jäsche’s edition to lecture notes of Kant’s students also remains questionable. See Brandt & Stark, 1987, 126–29.

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Critique, as shown above, is an exception here because in the Canon the Idea of the highest good still serves as an “incentive” (Triebfeder) (KrV, A813/B841) for acknowledging the moral law as binding for us. Therefore, Kant’s claims in the logic lectures that date back to the 1780s may reflect Kant’s position in the Canon. However, Kant’s claim that practical cognition relative to moral Glaube presupposes theoretical propositions that are “practical in potentia” could also accommodate Kant’s position after the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason insofar as “practical” is understood here in a broader sense – not narrowly as either a condition of a possibility of the categorical imperative (absolute freedom as an uncaused causality) or as an incentive for action (moral motivation). Instead, it is “practical” with respect to “[t]he principle of the self-preservation of reason [das Princip der selbsterhaltung der Vernunft],” which “is the basis of rational Glaube, in which assent has the same degree as knowledge, but is of another kind that comes not from the cognition of grounds in the object, but rather from the true needs of the subject in respect to theoretical as well as practical applications” (Refl 2446, 16: 371 f.).32 Thus, it is “practical” insofar as it provides us with a coherent conception of the relation between our theoretical and practical reason: it provides us with a conception of the world in which it is possible to make progress in realizing the practical demands of our reason.

2.5

Conclusion and Evaluation

In light of the preceding discussion, is it fair to confront Kant with the following options? “[E]ither practical cognition by means of the postulates enjoys truth, reference, and correspondence to an object in the same sense as is enjoyed by objectively valid empirical judgments and is aspired to by speculative claims about the supersensible; or it does not, and must instead merit the title of cognition on some other count, pertaining to the rational necessity of the manner in which it facilitates accordance of the will with principles of object-production, i.e., creates possibilities of action.”33 In other words, the alternatives Gardner presents to Kant are the following: either the objects of Glaube are the same kinds of objects as those of theoretical cognition and practical cognition is the same as theoretical cognition, or the content of practical cognition is reduced to the instrumental 32 33

This Reflexion is dated by Adickes approximately to 1764–1770. Given Adickes’ dating, it is surprising to see how it anticipates Kant’s view he argued later, in 1790. Gardner 2011, 190.

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necessity of a hypothetical imperative, to wit, the necessity of assuming the truth of certain representations in order to direct our will toward the production of the moral good, which is commanded by the moral law. Kant clearly rejects the former by contending that the objects of moral Glaube are not given to us in either pure or empirical intuition and are, therefore, not the objects of theoretical knowledge. But does he have to commit himself to the latter alternative? We saw in the section above that in the third Critique the practical cognition of moral Glaube gains knowledge-like quality comparable to theoretical cognition. Furthermore, the “subjective” aspect of moral Glaube is consistent with its absolute necessity. That is to say that, in practical cognition associated with moral Glaube, theoretical reason does take the postulates “with full cognitive seriousness.”34 Moral Glaube is unlike an opinion according to which one entertains a hypothesis with a reservation that it may not at all be true. It is also unlike pragmatic Glaube according to which one’s assent to a representation expresses a hope of its truth relative to some end that must be achieved. But an anti-realist can further insist that the absolute necessity of moral Glaube could be of an instrumentalist sort if the end to be achieved is not contingent, as in pragmatic Glaube, but necessary in some existential sense. On this view, the representations of moral Glaube are considered as “necessary illusions” that can never have the objectivity required of proper realism. They have the “absolute” necessity that arises from the “principle of self-preservation of reason.” Hence, this necessity is the instrumentality and necessity of the anti-realist pragmatic reading of TML discussed in Section 2.3. The anti-realist could argue that considering the representations of Glaube as “necessary illusions” can explain why Kant refers to the content of moral Glaube as “practical cognition.” It is a representation of reason and the object is provided by the practical need of reason to preserve its self-coherency.35 Although Kant emphasizes the subjective aspect of moral Glaube insofar as the postulates are not equivalent to moral 34 35

See Gardner 2006, 272. Although Gardner never mentions Nietzsche in this context, the anti-realist position according to which the objects of Glaube are necessary illusions brings to mind Nietzsche’s conception of Apolline “visions” in his Birth of Tragedy (1872, 1st ed.). As with an anti-realist reading of Kant’s moral Glaube, for Nietzsche, Apolline “visions” are necessary illusions. But in contrast to an antirealist reading of Kant’s moral Glaube according to which the necessity of illusion is dictated by the “principle of reason’s self-preservation,” for Nietzsche, the necessity of Apolline “visions” is dictated by the metaphysical principle of the Will, which has its own need for self-preservation, namely, keeping itself in existence. Thus, the beauty of Apolline “visions” directs the will toward action by “seducing it,” or motivating it, to remain in existence in the face of the Dyonisiac ecstatic revelations of how things really are in themselves.

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imperatives, this subjective aspect of Glaube does not entail the necessity of a pragmatic sort, to wit, doing what it takes to keep reason in “business” (MAM, 8: 115).36 Instead, although postulates themselves are not imperatives, they are “related” to the moral law. Hence, necessity must be of the absolute normative sort of the “ought” of the moral law that commands that we strive toward the realization of the highest good. Finally, the alternatives presented above by the anti-realist – that is, either practical cognition is genuinely cognitive and, thus, must be of the objects given in empirical or pure intuition, or it is not and, therefore, it is a form of a “necessary illusion” for the sake of reason’s “self-preservation” – presuppose the primacy of theoretical reason according to which theoretical knowledge and, hence, determinative judgment, is the norm for any judgment that should count as genuinely cognitive. Put differently, theoretical reason has primacy “[i]f practical reason may not assume and think as given anything further than what speculative reason of itself could offer it from its insight” (KpV, 5: 120), and to claim that practical cognition can be genuinely cognitive only if it is of objects given in empirical or pure intuition is to assume that the objects of practical reason must be those of speculative and, hence, is to give primacy to theoretical as opposed to practical reason. Thus, in light of the above, we can see how by moral Glaube Kant can understand claims that are absolutely necessary in a normative and not merely instrumental sense and that are real, genuinely cognitive, and knowledge-like even though they are indirectly “inferred” through rational necessitation from the needs of practical reason. I call this form of realism “rational necessitation realism” [RNR].37 Advocates of “rational 36 37

In the Conjectural Beginning, Kant refers to the early stages of his philosophy of history as the period when “reason began its business” (MAM, 8: 115). This is what I take Ameriks to mean when he writes that “even the nonimmediate [practical cognitions] can be understood as much more objective and ‘knowledge-like’ than Kant’s language often suggests” (Ameriks 2012, 250). The cognitive dimension of moral Glaube is not emphasized by Allen Wood but he could be included among those who endorse RNR. He argues that Kant’s TML should not be understood as his description of reason’s theoretical inconsistency. Wood draws our attention to a passage in Kant’s Lectures on Rational Theology, where Kant contends that the denial of the existence of God and a future life will lead to “absurdum practicum” and not “absurdum logicum” (V-Phil-Th/Pölitz, 28: 160; Wood 1970, 29). Put differently, the denial of a God and a future life does not lead to a logical inconsistency, to wit, a contradiction between two assertions. Instead, it leads to a conclusion that one would not wish to endorse as a practical agent. This is because by denying the existence of God and a future life, I cannot conceive the highest good to be possible of attainment and thereby I presuppose that I will not pursue the highest good. But if I do not pursue the highest good, then I have committed myself not to obey the moral law. And the latter, the conclusion that I am a villain (Bösewicht), is not the one I wish to accept as a practical agent. Thus, for Wood the assent to the existence of a God and a future life is necessary from the perspective of one being a moral agent. The realism of moral Glaube is also emphasized by Chignell. He identifies it as a necessary condition of, what he calls, “rational hope” in Kant. See Chignell 2014.

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necessitation realism” [RNR] can find most of the textual support for their interpretation in the second Critique, in the conception of the object of moral Glaube that is necessitated by the truth of the moral law. The question remains, what is added, if anything, to the realist interpretation of moral Glaube and freedom by the third Critique? In other words, what does Kant’s notion of reflective judgment, which was not available to him in the second Critique, add to the realism of Kant’s postulates? It is to this issue that we must turn now.

chapter 3

Reflective Judgment and the Realism of the “Moral Image”

In Chapter 2, I have shown that Kant’s conception of the highest good in the second Critique leads to the conception of moral Glaube that is realist in kind, that is, that takes as the justification for its assent reason’s determination of a real and given object. This determination is not theoretical and cannot result in a theoretical cognition of the object. Instead, it is practical, that is, reached by the truth of the moral law. Thus, the assent of moral Glaube has a necessity, which is not merely prudential, and a knowledge-like quality. I have also shown that in the third Critique, moral Glaube produces a conviction that is not inferior in degree from conviction produced by facts and that it gains objectivity it did not have earlier in the Canon of the first Critique. While moral Glaube remains always distinct from knowledge (Wissen) and empirical cognition (Erkenntnis), which are both reserved only for theoretical cognition, it is no longer epistemically inferior to them. Instead, it enjoys objectivity that is genuinely cognitive. In this chapter, I will argue that Kant’s conception of the highest good in the third Critique takes yet another form, namely, that of an ethical community that is to be realized in the world. While this has inspired some commentators to argue that Kant’s conception of the highest good in the third Critique becomes immanent, I will show that it remains transcendent in part. I shall contend that, just as this was the case in the second Critique, Kant’s conception of the highest good in the third Critique requires a justified assent to God’s existence as a being that makes nature cooperative with the final ends of reason. But the novelty in Kant’s conception of the highest good in the third Critique is not limited to its form, namely, that of an ethical community in the world. In the third Critique, Kant refers to the conception of the highest good he presented in the second Critique as having a “subjectively practical reality” (KU, §88, 5: 453), a reality the highest good has insofar as it is a necessary object for us. However, the highest good must also have an “objective theoretical reality” (KU, §88, 5: 453), namely, the final end must 72

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be the end of nature, the world. Thus, in the third Critique, it is no longer sufficient that we intellectually “conceive” (KU, §88, 5: 455) the possibility of the highest good based on the truth of the moral law. We also must be able to represent nature (whether our internal or external) as aiming toward the realization of the highest good. I will show in this chapter that it is the role of reflective judgment to give a representation of nature as analogous to reason, that is, as aiming toward the realization of the final end of reason, the highest good in the world.1 By representing nature as analogous to reason, reflective judgment achieves coherency between the aims of theoretical and those of practical reason. In this way, the Ideas of the postulates receive a special kind of realism, to which I will refer as “moral image realism” (MIR). This is because that which practical reason demands that we intellectually conceive as possible (the progress toward the realization of the highest good) receives its object from reflective judgment, that is, its representation of nature as rational. To be sure, this representation is not the representation of the world as it is in itself; instead, it is the product of the reflective judgment and the power of imagination relative to the needs of reason. And yet, this representation of nature as if rational has a necessity, and objective reality, a mere “image” could never have. This chapter is organized as follows. In Section 3.1, I lay out Kant’s argument for his claim that the human being is the ultimate and the final end of nature. Section 3.2 shows that although Kant conceives of the highest good in the third Critique as an ethical community in the world, this conception of the highest good remains in its general outline consistent with his conception of the highest good in the second Critique. Given the partially transcendent nature of the highest good in the third Critique (and after), Section 3.3 outlines Kant’s moral proof of God’s existence and shows how 1

The germ of Kant’s idea of the highest good as the end of nature can already be found in his 1785 Groundwork: “Teleology considers nature as a kingdom of ends, morals consider a possible kingdom of ends as a kingdom of nature. In the former the kingdom of ends is a theoretical idea for explaining what exists. In the latter it is a practical idea for the sake of bringing about, in conformity with this very idea, that which does not exist but can become real by means of our conduct” (GMS, 4: 437n). For Kant in 1785, we can think of the teleological representation of nature only with respect to the aims of theoretical reason, namely, reason “prepar[ing] the field for the understanding” (KrV, A657/ B685) by means of regulative use of transcendental ideas and the understanding’s more efficient use in giving explanations of natural phenomena. But at that time Kant saw no means of establishing the connection between theoretical reason’s teleological representation of nature on the one hand and practical reason’s demand that the moral good be realized in nature. In other words, in 1785, he had no resources to show how the condition that is necessary for our theoretical representation of nature is the same condition that is necessary for our representation of nature from a practical point of view. This becomes possible for Kant only with the third Critique and his conception of reflective judgment and its a priori principle of purposiveness.

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it is intended to supplement the physico-teleological proof. Building on the conclusion of Section 3.3, namely, the fact that Kant argues for a special complementary relation between the moral and physico-teleological proof, that is, a special coherency between the aims of theoretical and practical reason, I argue in Section 3.4 for a realist account of moral Glaube. Section 3.5 offers a conclusion and a brief evaluation.

3.1 The Human Being as the “Ultimate” and the “Final End of Nature” Kant distinguishes between “internal purposiveness” (KU, §63, 5: 367) and “external” (KU, §67, 5: 377) or merely “relative purposiveness” (KU, §63, 5: 367). The former is necessary for the possibility of representing organic formations, not in a constitutive way but regulative for our reflecting power of judgment, relative to the limitations of our cognitive faculties. The latter, “external” or “relative” purposiveness, refers to the use or advantageousness an object of nature may have for another natural object. In our observing that “rivers promote the communications among peoples in inland countries, and mountains contain the sources of rivers and stores of snow for their maintenance in times of draught, while the slope of the land carries these waters down and allows the land to drain” (KU, §67, 5: 377–78) we are not justified in claiming that this perceived usefulness of natural formations are the ends of nature, or that nature, in this perceived usefulness, demonstrates causality in accordance with ends. For, “there is nothing in it [nature – LO] the possibility of which would require the assumption of a causality in accordance with ends” (KU, §67, 5: 378). Given that nature is governed by mechanical laws, there is no justification for positing rational causality in accordance with ends and denying that this observed usefulness of natural products may in fact be entirely contingent.2 However, we have the concept of organic formations as “natural ends.” For there are special products in nature which, in virtue of their form, remain undetermined from the perspective of our cognitive capacities when limited to mechanical, parts-to-whole explanation, products which require reflective judgment’s subsumption under the reason’s concept of an end, or purpose.3 For Kant, the concept of a “natural 2

3

Kant may have in mind here Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion where in Part 8 Philo, a skeptic, challenges Cleanthes who argues that we can infer from usefulness of natural formations to the intelligent design of nature. It is possible, counters Philo, that the observed order is the product of the properties and motion of matter alone. See Hume 2007, 59. I will discuss Kant’s conception of organism as a “natural end” later in Chapter 7.

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end” “necessarily leads to the idea of the whole of nature as a system in accordance with the rules of ends, to which idea all of the mechanism of nature in accordance with principles of reason must now be subordinated” (KU, §67, 5: 379). Organisms are natural forms we could not represent and therefore cognize for what they are unless we employ reflective judgment and its objective principle of purposiveness. The same cannot be said for our representation of nature as a whole. We can represent the latter without employing teleological principles. However, once the objective principle of purposiveness is introduced for our explanation of organic formations, reason cannot consider them in isolation from the rest of nature. Because organisms are a part of nature as a whole, we must use the same explanatory principle for the nature as a whole.4 It is because of reflective judgment’s representation of nature as a unified system that we are justified in asking “Why a thing exists.” We can regard every object in nature as a means to some other end (e.g., plants for herbivorous animals and the latter for carnivores, etc. [KU, §82, 5: 426]). This chain of explanatory causes ends with the human being as the “ultimate end of nature” (der letzte Zweck der Natur) (KU, §83, 5: 429) “because he is the only being on earth who forms a concept of ends for himself and who by means of his reason can make a system of ends out of an aggregate of purposively formed things” (KU, §82, 5: 426–27). Thus, the representation of nature that is analogous to a product of a rational agency, an organized system, must culminate in a natural thing that is itself rational and capable of setting voluntary ends for himself. This means that a human being can be the culminating or end point of nature as a teleological system, a “titular lord of nature […] only conditionally, that is, subject to the condition that he has the understanding and the will to give to nature and to himself a relation to an end that can be sufficient for itself independently of nature, which can thus be a final end [Endzweck], which, however, must not be sought in nature at all” (KU, §83, 5: 431). While by the “ultimate end” Kant understands the end in virtue of which it is possible to think of nature teleologically as a systematic unity, by the “final end” Kant understands the unconditioned, or “that end which needs no other as the condition of its possibility” (KU, §84, 5: 434). In other words, nature in itself does not have an ultimate end and, thus, it does not constitute a teleological system until human beings give it one by setting the final end, which is the highest good. 4

For the view that the idea of the whole of nature as a system of ends in this sense is not optional see also Guyer 2005a, 328. For the contrary view that our representation of the whole of nature as a system is heuristic and optional see McFarland 1970, 114.

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Therefore, both the ultimate end and the final end are located in the human being. But the former “we must seek out [in] that which nature is capable of doing in order to prepare him for what he must himself do in order to be the final end” (KU, §83, 5: 431). The ultimate end of nature must be sought in human phenomenal nature, our sensibility, which nature can make amenable to the demands of morality. This is why Kant refers to the “ultimate end” as the end that is “to be promoted […] through human being’s connection with nature” (KU, §83, 5: 429), that is, in the activity of the will from the perspective of it being affected by our sentient or phenomenal nature.5 On the other hand, the final end as the unconditioned must be sought beyond nature.6 The final end should be sought in the human being considered as the noumenon and freedom as his “supersensible faculty” (KU, §84, 5: 435). Having explained Kant’s distinction between the “ultimate end” and the “final end of nature,” we need to inquire now into the question of what, according to Kant, constitutes the content of the final end of nature or the Idea of the highest good in the third Critique.

3.2

The Highest Good as the Object of a Collective Striving

In the third Critique, just as in his earlier writings, the highest good as the unconditioned end of reason, presupposes a necessary connection of its unconditioned part (i.e., morality) and its conditioned part (i.e., happiness). For Kant, “it is not well-being, not enjoyment (whether corporeal or spiritual), in a word it is not happiness by means of which we estimate that absolute value” (KU, §86, 5: 442). The highest good is neither in the feeling of pleasure, nor in the cognitive faculty. Instead, “it is only in the faculty of desire,” and more precisely “not that which makes him dependent on nature (through sensible impulses)” but, rather, “in the freedom 5 6

This is what Kant understands by “culture” which will be discussed in Chapter 9 of this volume. Otfried Höffe rightly argues that Kant’s anthropocentrism is not biological but ontological. That is to say that the ultimate and the final end of nature is not a human being as a member of a biological species but a being with understanding embodied in phenomenal nature and endowed with reason. Thus, if there were to exist another being with an understanding embodied in phenomenal nature and endowed with reason, this being would also be the ultimate and the final end of nature. Höffe’s remark is intended as a response to the environmental criticism generated by Kant’s claim that the human being is “the titular lord of nature” (KU, §83, 5: 431). Because a human being is the final end of nature insofar as he is a moral being, his comportment toward nature (i.e., his conscious setting of ends) is neither merely technical (aimed at arbitrary ends) nor pragmatic (aimed at the pursuit of one’s own well-being). He is not a despotic owner of nature. Instead, his actions are determined by the moral law and aimed toward the realization of the highest good. See Höffe 2008, esp. 296–97 and 306.

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of his faculty of desire; i.e., a good will is that alone by means of which his existence can have an absolute value and in relation to which the existence of the world can have a final end” (KU, §86, 5: 443) and whereby everything in the world acquires its value. We can represent nature as necessarily agreeing with human happiness only if human happiness is a constitutive part of the highest good: “He [human being] must already be presupposed to be the final end of creation in order for there to be a rational ground why nature, if it is considered as an absolute whole in accordance with principles of ends, must agree with his happiness” (KU, §86, 5: 443). Thus, only when happiness is subordinated to morality, or when the pursuit of happiness is conditioned by one’s worthiness of it, we are justified in representing nature as striving for the realization of human happiness. It is still, however, puzzling, what in the third Critique Kant thinks is the content of this conception of happiness that is a constitutive part of the highest good. 3.2.1

Kant’s Notion of the “Universal Happiness” in the Third Critique

Just as in the second Critique, in the third Critique, the highest good for Kant consists of two aspects: the unconditioned part (morality) and the conditioned part (happiness). In the third Critique, however, Kant’s conception of the highest good presupposes a community’s collective effort: “We are determined a priori by reason to promote with all of our powers what is best in the world, which consists in the combination of the greatest good for rational beings in the world with the highest condition of the good for them, i.e., the combination of universal happiness with the most lawful morality” (KU, §88, 5: 453).7 The passage is best interpreted within the context of Kant’s discussion of ends that are also duties in the Metaphysics of Morals (1797), namely, the duty to promote one’s own perfection and the happiness of others. Our duty to promote the highest good consists in our duty to promote one’s own moral perfection, “a duty to carry the cultivation of his will up to the purest virtuous disposition, in which the law becomes also the incentive to his actions that conform with duty and he obeys the law from duty” (MS, 6: 387). In other words, we have a duty to improve our virtuous disposition and approximate, albeit infinitely, to the state in which we would act from duty and out of good will alone. While the unconditioned aspect of the highest good consists in the promotion 7

My emphasis – LO. The communal aspect of the highest good is also emphasized in the essay On the Common Saying: That May be Correct in Theory, but It is of No Use in Practice (1793) and in Religion (1793). See TP, 8: 280n and RGV, 6: 97–98, respectively.

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of one’s own moral perfection, the conditioned aspect of the highest good consists in our duty to promote the “greatest good for rational beings in the world,” namely, the “universal happiness” (KU, §88, 5: 453). Still, one might wonder how Kant’s conception of happiness as a “physical good” (KU, §87, 5: 450), which is associated with the claims of one’s self-love, can amount to a “universal happiness” as constitutive of the highest good. The answer to this question is found in the Metaphysics of Morals, where Kant contends that we have a duty to promote “the happiness of other human beings, whose (permitted) end I thus make my own end as well” (MS, 6: 388). Thus, we have a duty to further the happiness of other human beings as long as their ends, directed toward the achievement of happiness, are morally permissible. The duty of beneficence is derived from subjecting one’s own self-love to the moral law: The reason that it is a duty to be beneficent is this: since our self-love cannot be separated from our need to be loved (helped in case of need) by others as well, we therefore make ourselves an end for others; and the only way this maxim can be binding is through its qualification as a universal law, hence through our will to make others our ends as well. The happiness of others is therefore an end that is also a duty. (MS, 6: 393)8

The duty to promote the happiness of others leads to “universal happiness” because it presupposes a community of virtuous individuals that always have the other person’s happiness as their own end. Thus, happiness can become “universal happiness” and constitutive of the highest good if it is an end of pure practical reason. This it can become if it is an object of “an unselfish will extending itself beyond observance of the formal law to production of an object (the highest good)” (TP, 8: 280n). This conception of the highest good is consistent with Kant’s conception of the highest good in the second Critique, namely, the highest good as the realization of the ends of virtuous individuals. This is because a community of individuals possessing wills that are selfless and directed toward happiness of others and not the ends of one’s self-love will ensure that the ends of virtuous individuals be realized. The only difference is that in the third Critique the realization of the ends of virtuous individuals is an object of a collective effort. 3.2.2 The Highest Good and the Ethical Community The fact that in the third Critique Kant departs from his earlier conception of the highest good and, instead, argues that the highest good must be the 8

This point is also made by Stephen Engstrom. See Engstrom 1992, 760–61.

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object of a collective striving is also evident from his claim that the Idea of the highest good presupposes “the human being [as such] under moral laws” (KU, §86, 5: 445, §87, 5: 449n). By “human being” (der Mensch) Kant does not understand an individual human being but “each rational being in the world” (KU, §87, 5: 448), or humankind as a whole. Kant’s conception of the highest good as an ethical community, that is, as a “universal republic based on the laws of virtue” (RGV, 6: 98) is particularly evident in Religion (1793). In Religion, Kant argues that we have a specific duty to further the highest good as a good common to all: “Here we have a duty sui generis, not of human beings toward human beings but of the human race towards itself. For every species of rational beings is objectively – in the idea of reason – destined to a common end, namely the promotion of the highest good as a good common to all” (RGV, 6: 97).9 Kant’s conception of the highest good as an “ethical community” is motivated by his position that the progress toward the highest good cannot be achieved as the effort of an individual moral agent but only as a communal effort: “This highest moral good will not be brought about solely through the striving of one individual person for his own moral perfection but requires rather a union of such persons into a whole toward that very end” (RGV, 6: 97). In Religion, Kant claims that the original setting of evil is social: “Human beings (as we have remarked above) mutually corrupt one another’s moral predisposition, and even with the good will of each individual, because of a lack of a principle which unites them, they deviate through their dissensions from the common goal of goodness, as if they were instruments of evil, and expose one another to the danger of falling once again under its dominion” (RGV, 6: 97). Hence, the struggle against evil can be effective only as a communal effort to reverse this original corrupting setting.10 However, even mutual effort can never be sufficient to reach the ethical community that will be in complete conformity to the moral law: “The distance between the goodness which we ought to effect in ourselves and the evil from which we start is, however, infinite, and, so far as the deed is concerned – i.e., the conformity of the conduct of one’s life to the holiness of the law – it is not exhaustible in any time” (RGV, 6: 66). Thus, just as he had in the second Critique, in Religion Kant conceives of our pursuit of the highest good as an infinite progress (RGV, 6: 67). In order to think of progress as possible for us “we must assume a higher moral being through whose universal organization the forces of single individuals, insufficient 9 10

Cf. Förster 1998, 349–50. Cf. Wood 1999, 313–17. Both passages are also cited in Wood 1999, 314.

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on their own, are united for a common effect” (RGV, 6: 98). The assumption of the existence of God assures the promise of “moral happiness” (RGV, 6: 68). By the latter Kant understands the “assurance of the reality and constancy of a disposition that always advances in goodness (and never falters from it)” (RGV, 6: 67). In other words, “moral happiness” is the happiness that consists in the realization of the moral good in the world (i.e., the cooperation of external nature, including other members of the community, with the will of an individual with a virtuous disposition) and the constancy of one’s moral disposition (i.e., the cooperation of one’s internal nature with the good will or the moral law). With the assurance of “moral happiness,” or the formal aspect of happiness, we are also assured of “physical happiness” (RGV, 6: 67–68), or its material aspect: “If one were absolutely assured of the unchangeableness of such a disposition, the constant ‘seeking after the Kingdom of God’ would be equivalent to knowing oneself already in possession of this kingdom, inasmuch as a human being thus disposed would from himself derive the confidence that ‘all things else (i.e., what relates to physical happiness) will be added to him’” (RGV, 6: 68). In other words, in a world where everyone does what they ought to, namely, act in accordance with the moral law and out of a selfless will, personal happiness (“freedom from evils and enjoyment of ever mounting pleasures” [RGV, 6: 67]) would also be achieved. My emphasis on the (partially) transcendent nature of Kant’s conceptions of the highest good can be contrasted with an interpretation according to which Kant at least opens the possibility for thinking of the connection between morality and happiness in a way that is immanent as opposed to transcendent.11 The advocates of this interpretation find support in Kant’s formulation of “moral happiness” as an awareness of constancy of disposition that always advances in goodness and, therefore, as a state of the subject that is in principle achievable by the subject itself.12 But Kant never says that “moral happiness” consists in our awareness of the constancy of our moral disposition but in our “assurance” (Versicherung) (RGV, 6: 67; my emphasis – LO) of such constancy. This assurance can come only with the assumption of the existence of a perfectly moral being that assists our ethical community and our own individual efforts to maintain this constancy.13 Furthermore, the proponents of the interpretation 11 12 13

See Förster 1998, 353. Ibid., 354. In his essay “What Real Progress Has Metaphysics Made in Germany Since the Time of Leibniz And Wolf?” (hereafter Progress), written approximately three years after the publication of the third Critique, Kant states this claim explicitly. See FM, 20: 294.

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of Kant’s conception of the highest good as immanent suggest that Kant’s second Critique already anticipates the immanent status of the highest good in Religion: the highest good that becomes the object of the will in the second Critique is something that must be realized in this world and something that is “possible in the world” (WDO, 8: 139).14 But for Kant, the highest good clearly remains the “best world” (KpV, 5: 125), and however much we can approximate it in this world, its full realization presupposes “uninterrupted continuance of this progress […] even beyond this life” (KpV, 5: 123). This distinction between the perfect divine will and the finite human will collapses in German Idealism. However, it is inaccurate to argue that Kant’s mature Critical period already anticipates this collapse. Thus, I conclude that Kant’s conception of the highest good remains from the Canon of the first Critique (1781) all the way through Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793) transcendent in part, despite the various forms Kant’s conception of the highest good takes.

3.3

Kant’s Moral Proof of God’s Existence

Given the partially transcendent nature of the highest good in the third Critique (and after), Kant’s moral proof for God’s existence in the third Critique is straightforward and identical to the one he provides in the second Critique: [G]iven all of the capacities of our reason, it is impossible for us to represent these two requirements of the final end that is set for us by the moral law as both connected by merely natural causes and adequate to the idea of the final end as so conceived. Thus the concept of the practical necessity of such an end, by means of the application of our own powers, is not congruent with the theoretical concept of the physical possibility of producing it if we do not connect our freedom with any other causality (as a means) than that of nature. Consequently, we must assume a moral cause of the world (an author of the world) in order to set before ourselves a final end, in accordance with the moral law; and insofar as this final end is necessary, to that extent (i.e., in the same degree and for the same reason) is it also necessary to assume the former, namely, that there is God. (KU, §87, 5: 450)

Thus, just as in the second Critique, Kant reminds us that given the two heterogenous elements of the highest good, morality and happiness, nature considered as mechanism cannot account for their necessary connection. Regardless of whether we conceive of happiness as “moral 14

Cited in Förster 1998, 347.

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happiness” (i.e., the success in realization of the moral ends and the constancy of our moral disposition) or as “physical happiness” (i.e., one’s well-being proportionally distributed with one’s worthiness of it), there will always remain a gap for us between, on the one hand, the “practical necessity” of striving after the final end and, on the other, the empirical obstacles that we have as practical agents in the world. The fact is that this practical necessity, as Kant states in the passage above, “is not congruent with the theoretical concept of the physical possibility of producing” the highest good in the world. Therefore, we are justified, in light of the truth of the moral law, in assuming God’s existence as a being that would make our external and internal nature cooperative with the final ends of our reason. One must ask then, what does the third Critique offer that is new and an improvement of the moral proof Kant already provided in the second Critique.15 He claims that the idea of the highest good “in the use of freedom in accordance with moral laws […] has subjectively practical reality” (KU, §88, 5: 453). But “[f]or the objective theoretical reality of the concept of the final end of rational beings in the world it is thus requisite not merely that we have a final end that is set before us a priori, but also that the existence of creation, i.e., the world itself, has a final end – which, if it could be proven a priori, would add objective reality to the subjective reality of the final end” (KU, §88, 5: 453). What should one make of Kant’s contrast between the highest good’s “subjective practical” as opposed to its “objective theoretical reality”? By the former Kant understands that the highest good is the necessary object for us, the necessary object of practical reason. By the latter, that the highest good is the final end of nature, the world. But aren’t we rationally justified in inferring the latter from the former? Isn’t the moral proof of God’s existence our way of inferring that the world must have a final end? “Now in virtue of the moral law, which imposes this final end upon us, we have a basis for assuming, from a practical point of view, that is, in order to apply our powers to realize it, its possibility, its realizability, hence also a nature of things corresponding to 15

Ameriks argues that “KU’s entire appendix can be read primarily as an attack on the whole tradition of natural theology insofar as this discipline purports to be both truly about God and able to succeed independently of moral theology” (Ameriks 2012, 240). Kant’s aim, however, is not only to criticize natural theology and reaffirm the conclusions of the second Critique, the view that only via practical reason we can have knowledge of God’s existence (as Ameriks seems to argue). Instead, Kant’s argument, as I will show below, is that natural and moral theology can have a complementary and mutually reinforcing relation once the former is set upon the proper Critical path. That in the third Critique Kant relaxes the strict distinction between physical and moral teleology has also been suggested by Sarah Gibbons. See Gibbons 1994, 162 ff.

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that end […]. Thus we have a moral ground for also conceiving of a final end of creation for a world” (KU, §88, 5: 455).16 In the previous chapter, I argued that the moral ground for the postulate of God’s existence entails realism because it presupposes necessity of a normative and not merely prudential, hypothetical sort relative to some contingent ends. We could also say that positing that the world must have a final end on moral grounds is sufficient to free the concept of the highest good from the fetters of subjectivism because our claim that the world has a final end must be true. However, it is necessarily true on moral grounds, “from a practical point of view.” For Kant, however, it does not seem to be sufficient to “conceive” (KU, §88, 5: 455) intellectually of the final end of creation on moral grounds. We also need to be able to perceive the final end of creation.17 In other words, “if the cognition of those ends [physical ends – LO] is connected with that of the moral end, then the former [physical ends – LO], because of the maxim of pure reason to seek unity of principles as far as is possible, is of great significance for assisting the practical reality of that idea [God as the moral author of the world – LO] by means of the reality that it already has for the power of judgment from a theoretical point of view” (KU, §88, 5: 456). This claim appears problematic on two grounds: (1) it seems that the moral proof of God’s existence by itself does not offer sufficient certainty after all and (2) the need for assistance from the power of judgment from a “theoretical point of view” may be suggestive of some need for a dogmatic theoretical proof of God’s existence. However, in what follows we will see that neither of the above stated concerns are legitimate worries for Kant’s view. But in order to show this and to answer the question of why and to what extent the assistance from theoretical reason is necessary for the needs 16 17

Kant’s notion of the “final end of creation” originates in the eighteenth-century metaphysical teleology. More specifically, it has its origin in Baumgarten’s Metaphysica (see Baumgarten 1757, §948). For Kant, “[t]he first thing that is given to us is appearance, which, if it is combined in consciousness, is called perception” (KrV, A120). In The Postulates of Empirical Thinking in General, Kant relates perception as a sensation of which we are conscious to the actuality (Wirklichkeit) of things: “The postulate for cognizing the actuality [Wirklichkeit] of things requires perception, thus sensation of which one is conscious” (KrV, A225/B272; cf. KrV, A374f: “[P]erception is the representation of a reality [Wirklichkeit]”; “what is given in it [space – LO], i.e., represented through perception, is also real [wirklich] in it.”) When I contend above that for Kant it is not sufficient that we intellectually conceive but that we must be able to perceive the final end of creation, I am clearly using Kant’s conception of perception in a modified sense. My intention is not to claim that either the final end of creation or God are entities given as appearances for us to be perceived. The point of contrast between “intellectually conceiving” vs. “perceiving,” as I continue to show below, is to emphasize that Kant’s aim is to argue that these Ideas receive reality even though this reality is merely the one “sufficient for the reflecting power of judgment” (KU, General Remark on the Teleology, 5: 479).

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of practical reason we need to look into the relation between physical and moral teleology in the third Critique. 3.3.1

Kant’s Ambivalent View of the Physico-Theological Proof of God’s Existence

Already in his pre-Critical writings, Kant expressed his positive views of the physico-theological proof. In The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (1763), Kant compares the ontological proof for God’s existence to the physico-theological proof and argues that, while the ontological proof is the only valid proof for God’s existence given its “logical precision and completeness,” the physico-theological proof should be praised for its “accessibility for the understanding, liveliness of expression, beauty and capacity to move the moral motivation of human nature” (BDG, 2: 161). In the first Critique, he contends that “[t]his proof always deserves to be named with respect. It is the oldest, clearest and the most appropriate to common human reason. It enlivens the study of nature, just as it gets its existence through this study and through it receives ever renewed force. It brings in ends and aims where they would not have been discovered by our observation itself and extends our information about nature through a guiding thread of a particular unity whose principle is outside of nature” (KrV, A623/B651). Thus, according to Kant, the physico-theological proof is valuable for both morality and the empirical science of nature.18 In spite of the benefits of the argument from design for both morality and the theoretical exploration of nature, Kant rejects its validity. In the first Critique, Kant refutes the validity of the ontological proof by arguing that existence is not a real predicate that could add to the concept of a thing and that every existential proposition is synthetic, so that in the proposition “God is omnipotent” “is” is not a predicate but that which posits the relation between the predicate and the subject. He refutes the validity of both the cosmological and the physico-theological proof arguing that they ultimately depend on the validity of the ontological proof. More precisely, for Kant, the physico-theological proof is an inference to God’s existence from “a determinate experience, that of the things in the present world, their constitution and order” (KrV, A620/B649). The physico-theological proof argues from the constitution of the objects of 18

See his sympathetic views toward the physico-theological proof expressed in Part One, Section Three of his lectures on philosophical theology (Wood 1978, 107).

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nature given in experience, their beauty and purposive organization, to the existence of a rational and a wise designer of this natural order. Thus, Kant’s first objection to the physico-theological proof is its inference from the conditioned to the unconditioned: For how can any experience be given that is adequate to an idea? For what is special about an idea is that no experience can ever be congruent to it. The transcendental idea of a necessary all-sufficient original being is so overwhelmingly great, so sublimely high above everything empirical, which is at all times conditioned, that partly one can never even procure enough material in experience to fill such a concept, and partly if one searches for the unconditioned among conditioned things, then one will seek forever and always in vain, since no law of any empirical synthesis will ever give an example of such a thing, or even the least guidance in looking for it. (KrV, A621/B649)

Kant contends that the supremely real (necessary all-sufficient and original) being (ens realissimum) is an Idea of reason and no experience can be adequate to it. This is the reason why the inference of a physical theologist leaves God’s nature indeterminate and why the physico-theological proof is not sufficient for theology. The natural theologist abandons the empirical grounds and helps himself with the cosmological proof arguing from the contingency of natural order to the Idea of an absolutely necessary being which, as the most real being (ens realissimum), must also exist. Thus, the natural theologist “must always leave it up to the ontological proof (to which it serves only as an introduction) in order to supplement [ergänzen] this lack” (KrV, A625/B653).19 With exposure to Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779), which were not available to him in 1781, Kant refines his objections to the physico-theological argument in the third Critique.20 He contends that attributing any form of perfection to the world-author from the observation of the empirical nature that is imperfect and limited assumes our own omniscience.21 This is because the view presupposes that 19

20

21

I modified here the Cambridge translation and also in my citations from the Appendix to the Methodology of the Teleological Power of Judgment that follow below. The Cambridge translation uses the phrase “makes good” for both ersetzen and ergänzen which blurs the distinction between on the one hand “completing” or “supplementing” and on the other “replacing” the physico-theological proof. Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion did not appear in German until 1781, the year of the publication of the first Critique. Kant, therefore, could not have had the advantage of Hume’s Dialogues while arguing in the first Critique that we cannot use empirical argument to infer the perfect intelligence of the cause of nature. See KU, General Remark, 5: 480–81. This is the objection Demea advances to Cleanthes in Part 2 of the Dialogues. See Hume 2007, 26.

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God’s perfect and immaterial nature is the object of our knowledge in the same way as the objects of experience are. Without being able to infer a more determinate concept of a deity, we are also not justified in inferring a single intelligent being.22 Because physical theology cannot determine anything about God’s existence and the nature of God’s being, Kant contends in the third Critique that physico-theology is a “misunderstood physical teleology” (KU, §85, 5: 442). In other words, it can “certainly justify the concept of an intelligent world-cause, as a merely subjectively appropriate concept for the constitution of our cognitive faculty of the possibility of the things that we make intelligible to ourselves in accordance with ends” (KU, §85, 5: 437) because we introduce this concept for the purposes of our reflection on nature relative to the needs of our limited cognitive capacities. But it will always remain a natural (physical) teleology, not a theology, “because the relation to ends in it always can and must be considered only as conditioned within nature” (KU, §85, 5: 437). Put differently, natural theology will always remain natural teleology because it does not have the resources to answer the question of the final end of creation. The latter can only be answered by pure reason a priori with respect to that which is “absolutely good,” or an unconditioned object of pure practical reason, which justifies the assumption of not only a perfect intelligence (i.e., a designer) but also a perfect moral being that created the world with the final ends of reason in mind. Only via the moral law and the Idea of the highest good as the unconditioned end of pure practical reason can we determine the Idea of God and ascribe to Him the traditional attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence and justice (i.e., wisdom), eternity, omnipresence. The role that the ontological argument played in the first Critique with respect to physical theology, or the argument from design, is in the third Critique played by moral teleology. That is to say, only with moral teleology can we have a complete determination of the divine being and therefore a theology: “In this way moral teleology supplements [ergänzt] the defect of physical teleology, and first establishes a theology” (KU, §86, 5: 444). To be sure, in the third Critique, Kant contends that even were nature to give “no clear trace of organization but reveal[s] only effects of mere mechanism of raw matter” we “would still find in the concept of freedom and 22

See KU, General Remark, 5: 480–81 and Hume’s Dialogues, Part 5 where Philo objects to Cleanthes that the inference from empirical effects to a cause does not exclude the possibility of more than one designer. Hume 2007, 43–44.

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the moral ideas that are grounded upon that a practically sufficient ground for postulating the concept of an original being in accordance with these, i.e., as the concept of a divinity, and for postulating nature (even our own existence) as a final end in accordance with that concept and its laws, and of course with respect to the indispensable command of practical reason” (KU, Remark, 5: 478–79). The sufficiency of the moral proof and the illegitimate inferences of the physico-theological proof explain Kant’s remark that the moral proof “does not properly merely supplement [ergänzt] the physico-teleological proof, thereby making it into a complete proof; rather it is a special proof that replaces [ersetzt] the lack of conviction in the latter” (KU, Remark, 5: 478). The question one must raise is therefore the following: if moral teleology is clearly sufficient for a theology, why is there a need to reintroduce physical teleology in the third Critique and suggest at places that the former merely “supplements” (ergänzt) the latter? 3.3.2 The Complementary Relation of Physical and Moral Teleology One can rightfully criticize Kant for wavering between, on the one hand, the merely supplementary role of moral teleology in relation to physical teleology and, on the other, its role of replacing physical teleology all together.23 One can, however, provide a more charitable reading according to which this inconsistency is merely apparent. I will argue that at places Kant is inclined to take a less radical position and claim that moral teleology merely “supplements” physical teleology because of Kant’s continued view that physical teleology is valuable to the interests of both (1) theoretical and (2) practical reason. The importance of physical teleology for theoretical reason, namely, for our cognition of nature consists in the fact that we can only represent organic formations with the complementary use of mechanical and teleological causes which further requires an assumption of a divine intelligence from which both principles “flow” (KU, §78, 5: 412) and which, unlike our discursive intellect, does not recognize the distinction between the two. This further justifies our representation of the whole of nature as an organized system where “everything in the world is good for something, that nothing in it is in vain” (KU, §67, 5: 379). The representation of the world as an organized system has an encouraging effect on our theoretical exploration of nature and “by means of it we have been able to discover many laws of nature which, given the limitation of our insights into the inner 23

See this criticism advanced by Ina Goy in Goy 2017, 279.

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mechanism of nature, would otherwise remain hidden from us” (KU, §75, 5: 398). Put differently, physical teleology leads us to expect the unity in nature and is further helping us discover lawfulness (unity) that would otherwise go unnoticed by us. As I already argued in Section 3.2, although physical teleology is necessary for our exploration and cognition of nature, it is not sufficient. Because physical teleology cannot answer the question of the final end of nature, our representation of nature cannot form a single system: What help is it, one may rightly complain, to ground all these arrangements on a great and for us immeasurable intelligence, and have it arrange this world in accordance with its intentions, if nature does not nor ever can tell us anything about the final aim, without which, however, we can form no common reference point for all these natural ends, no teleological principle sufficient for cognizing all the ends together in a single system. (KU, §85, 5: 440)

Thus, on Kant’s view, moral teleology merely “supplements” physical teleology insofar as only with the idea of the final end of creation and the conception of God as intelligent and moral being can we have a proper science of nature. Physical teleology is not merely necessary (albeit not sufficient) with respect to the needs of our theoretical reason, it also assists the ends of practical reason. Kant contends that physical teleology is a “preparation (propaedeutic) for theology” (KU, §85, 5: 442). Here I would like to distinguish two ways in which physical teleology serves as a preparation for theology: (1) in its effect on the judging subject and (2) in its effect on our representation of the object of the Idea of God. I will refer to the former as a moral-psychological way in which physical teleology serves as a preparation for theology and to the latter as that which emphasizes the coherence and unity between theoretical and practical reason. I will proceed to address each one in turn. Physical teleology, writes Kant, can […] make us attentive to this [the idea of a supreme cause of nature – LO] and thus more receptive to the moral proof. For that which is requisite for the latter concept is so essentially different from everything that concepts of nature can contain and teach that it needs a basis for proof and a proof that are entirely independent of the former [the physico-teleological proof – LO] in order to state the concept of an original being adequately for a theology and to infer to its existence. (KU, Remark, 5: 478)

The moral proof is grounded on the principle of freedom that belongs to the noumenal realm, the unconditioned, that is ontologically distinct from

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the phenomenal realm as the conditioned nature. Physical teleology, at least on the psychological level, helps us to perceive the gap as less significant, preparing us for the assent in the moral proof. To put it metaphorically, physical teleology or the appearance of nature as organized, sets us on a path to search for a question, the question of the final end of nature, to which moral teleology and the moral proof can serve as the only answer. [A] physical (properly physico-teleological) theology can at least serve as a propaedeutic to theology proper, since by means of the consideration of natural ends, for which it provides us with rich material, it gives rise to the idea of a final end [zur Idee eines Endzweckes … Anlaß giebt], which nature cannot display [aufstellen]; hence it certainly makes palpable the need for a theology that can adequately determine the concept of God for the highest practical use of reason. (KU, Remark, 5: 485)24

The observation of a special purposive arrangement of organisms leads us to represent nature in its entirety as a system of ends (KU, §67, 5: 378–79). This is what “nature [considered as mechanism – LO] cannot display” (KU, Remark, 5: 485). Nature as a system of ends further suggests the Idea of there being a final end, a human being in its noumenal sense. And in order to account for the final end, a human being as a moral and free being, we must transition from the thought of a mere intelligent designer to the Idea of God as a creator and a moral author of the world. In this way, the appearance of nature’s order has a favorable psychological effect insofar it makes us more receptive and more likely to assent to the truths of our practical cognition. There is a further support the moral proof receives from physical teleology and which pertains to our representation of the object of the Idea of God. For Kant, the physico-teleological conception of God “serves as the desired confirmation of the moral argument, insofar as nature is thus capable of displaying something analogous to the (moral) ideas of reason. For the concept of a supreme cause that has understanding acquires reality sufficient for the reflecting power of judgment” (KU, Remark, 5: 479, my emphasis – LO). To be sure, as we saw above, Kant is careful to emphasize that objective reality given to the Idea of God via physical teleology does not undermine the sufficiency and power of the moral proof. It is in this context that Kant emphasizes that physical teleology “is not necessary to ground the moral proof” (KU, Remark, 5: 479) and, furthermore, nor does the latter [the moral proof – LO] serve to supplement the former [the physico-teleological proof – LO], which by itself does not refer to morality at all, in order to make it into a proof by means of an inference 24

Cambridge translation slightly modified.

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Reflective Judgment and the Realism continued in accordance with a single principle. Two such dissimilar principles as nature and freedom can only yield two different kinds of proof, since the attempt to derive from the former what is to be proved will be found to be inadequate. (KU, Remark, 5: 479)

The physico-teleological proof and the moral proof are radically dissimilar since the former starts from the conditioned (i.e., the realm of nature) and the latter from the unconditioned (i.e., the realm of freedom) and only the latter can prove the existence of God and thereby the possibility of our progress toward the realization of the highest good in the world. Physical teleology, however, assists the moral proof from the perspective of reason’s demand for its own unity. Just as practical reason must cohere with the demands of theoretical reason so that the ends of practical reason serve as the necessary horizon for the successful exploration of nature (i.e., only under the condition of the final end can there be a complete system of nature), so also the representation of theoretical reason must cohere with the ends of practical reason. In representing nature as a purposive system reflective judgment creates a representation of the world as if it were a product of a rational design and therefore receptive to our rational ends. It is in this respect that Kant refers to physical teleology as “displaying something analogous to the (moral) ideas of reason” (KU, Remark, 5: 479). Kant’s choice of the word “displaying” (aufstellen) suggests that the physico-teleological representation of nature as an organized system serves as an “analogue of […] a schema” (KrV, A665/B693)25 for the moral Ideas of reason insofar as physical teleology represents nature as amenable to the realization of the highest good. To be sure, this theoretical representation of nature is not constitutive but merely regulative and, therefore, the “reality sufficient for the reflecting power of judgment” (KU, Remark, 5: 479) and not for the way nature is in itself. In what follows, I will continue to explore how this dual role of physical teleology serving as a preparation for theology, that is, its moralpsychological role, and its role of providing a unity of theoretical and practical reason, reflects on Kant’s conception of moral Glaube in the third Critique. 25

“Schema” for Kant is a rule of synthesis of the imagination in accordance with a concept that has objective reality. See KrV, A137/B176-A147/B187. In KU, Kant refers to “schemata” as “direct […] presentations of the concept” in sensible intuition. See KU 5: 352. In Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic of the first Critique, Kant refers to reason’s principle of the systematic unity of nature as a schema analogue, an indirect and not a direct exhibition of the Idea of God, “as if the sum total of all appearances (the world of sense itself) had a single supreme and all-sufficient ground outside its range, namely an independent, original, and creative reason […]” (KrV, A672/B700). My contention is that in the third Critique, the role of providing an indirect, analogical exhibition of the Idea of God is assigned to reflective judgment.

3.4 Reflective Judgment and Moral Glaube

3.4

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Reflective Judgment and Moral Glaube in the Third Critique

In the Critique of Judgment there are two types of possible relations that reflective judgment can have to Glaube: (1) the one of maintaining and (2) the one of grounding Glaube. Each type of relation corresponds to the above-discussed “moral-psychological” and “unity of reason” relation of physical to moral teleology respectively. Below I address each in turn. 3.4.1

The Role of Reflective Judgment in Maintaining Moral Glaube

The ideal of the highest good – which, according to Kant, belongs to “matters of faith [Glaubenssachen]” (KU, §91, 5: 469) is “freely approved by reason [von der Vernunft frei gebilligt]” (KU, §91, 472n). That is to say that although reason cannot have theoretical certainty about whether conditions for the highest good exist, it can assent to the real possibility of the highest good voluntarily as a result of rational deliberation on the conditions that are necessary for fulfilling the moral law that commands us to strive toward the realization of the highest good.26 However, it is due to the voluntary character of Glaube that Kant claims it “can waver even in the well-disposed” (KpV, 5: 146). Therefore, given the partially transcendent character of the highest good and given the inconstancy of our Glaube, we need some confirmation from experience as a sign that what we take to be possible on moral grounds may in fact be so: “because of the natural need of all human beings to demand for even the highest concepts and grounds of reason something that the senses can hold on to, some confirmation from experience or the like […] some historical ecclesiastical faith or other, usually already at hand, must be used” (RGV, 6: 109). In this passage Kant has in mind concrete religious practices that, he claims, serve the purpose of maintaining, as opposed to grounding, Glaube. But in the third Critique, as I will show this in the chapters that follow, the same role is played by the beauty of nature, exceptional works of art, as well as the natural ends and the overall purposiveness of nature as a system. The fact that the parts of organisms and more broadly the relations of natural entities within nature as a whole could have been arranged in many different ways, and yet their organization appears as 26

The voluntary character of Glaube is also emphasized by Adams 1979, 130. It can also be discerned at KpV, 5: 143 and KpV, 5: 144 f.

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if purposively arranged with our cognitive ends in mind, serves as a sign that nature may also be cooperative with the final ends of our rationality. This further gives us hope that our justified assumption of an intelligent world-cause may in fact be true and, therefore, gives additional strength to the existent moral Glaube.27 However, there is textual evidence in the third Critique that suggests the role of reflective judgment in contributing to the realism of moral Glaube. 3.4.2 Reflective Judgment and the Realism of Moral Glaube In §90 titled “On the Kind of Holding to Be True Involved In a Teleological Proof of the Existence of God,”28 Kant contends that a proof requires that “it does not persuade but rather convinces, or at least acts towards conviction” (KU, §90, 5: 461). These opening lines of §90 and Kant’s distinction between “persuasion” (Überredung) and “conviction” (Überzeugung) return the reader to his discussion of these terms in the Canon of the first Critique. “Persuasion,” writes Kant, “is a mere semblance, since the ground of the judgment, which lies solely in the subject, is held to be objective. Hence, such a judgment only has private validity, and this taking something to be true cannot be communicated” (KrV, A821/B848). Thus, persuasion is an assent to a proposition according to which a subject takes herself to be holding objective grounds for an assent (hence, it is subjectively sufficient) while either not even attempting to rationally justify her assent by citing some information about the constitution of the object that should serve as a ground for her assent, or if attempting to rationally justify her assent, then her process of justification involves an illegitimate inference. By contrast, “conviction” is an assent for which the judging subject takes herself to be holding objective grounds for her assent while also “hav[ing] reason” (KrV, A820/B848) for what she holds, that is, while also engaging in the process of legitimate rational justification, the process of citing some information about the constitution of 27

28

This argument should not be mistaken for the anti-realist “argument from human psychology” (AHP) discussed in the previous chapter. The latter relies on human psychology to ground moral Glaube but the argument in question relies on human psychology to reinforce the already existent moral Glaube. The Cambridge translation of the third Critique puts “moral” instead of “teleological,” which gives the wrong impression that the main topic of §90 is Kant’s moral proof of God’s existence rather than his criticism of theoretical teleological proofs. Also, the Cambridge edition translates Fürwahrhalten as “affirmation” which hides the reference to “truth” in this concept, suggesting an attitude that may not involve a rational justification and may be entirely speculative in nature. See Ameriks 2012, 238.

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the object that should serve as a ground for her assent. Unlike persuasion, conviction is inter-subjectively valid and communicable. In §90 of the third Critique, Kant claims that reflective judgment provides a “proof” for Glaube. Given that reflective judgment in physical teleology can only produce a proof that leads to persuasion, the puzzle remains whether there is a special form of reflective judgment that offers a legitimate proof that leads to conviction. A proof, however, that aims at conviction can be in turn of two different kinds, either one that would determine what the object is in itself or else one that would determine what it is for us (human beings in general) according to the necessary rational principles for our judging (a proof κατ’ ’αληθειαν or κατ’ ’ανθρωπον, taking the latter word in the broadest sense to stand for human beings in general). In the first case it is grounded on sufficient principle for the determining power of judgment, in the second merely on sufficient principles for the reflecting power of judgment. In the latter case, if it rests on merely theoretical principles, it can never produce conviction; but if it is based on a practical principle of reason [legt er aber ein praktisches Vernunftprincip zum Grunde] (which is thus universally and necessarily valid), then it can make a sufficient claim of conviction from a purely practical point of view, i.e., moral conviction. (KU, §90, 462-463)

The proof that would determine the object “in itself” would rely on the use of determinative judgment and would treat the object of the Idea of God as given in empirical intuition.29 The proof that determines an object with respect to what the object would be “for us” is based on the reflecting power of judgment that, governed by reason’s principle of purposiveness, reflects on given sensible particulars which, from the perspective of our limited human understanding, would remain underdetermined.30 By the reflecting power of judgment that rests on “merely theoretical principles” and that cannot produce conviction Kant has in mind physical or natural theology. At the beginning of §90, he notes that that this type of proof is a “pseudo-proof” (Scheinbeweis) (KU, §90, 5: 461) that can only produce persuasion and not conviction. But if the reflective judgment is based on 29

30

These are the syllogistic, analogical, hypothetical proofs on which Kant elaborates in §90. Given the limited scope of this chapter, I will not discuss them in detail here. It suffices to note that the problem these proofs share is the impossibility of making theoretical determinations about the being that transcends the phenomenal realm. In Progress, Kant writes as follows: “The moral argument would thus be describable as an argumentum κατ’ ’ανθρωπον, valid for rational creatures generally, and not merely for the contingently adopted thought-habit of this man or that; and would have to be distinguished from the theoreticodogmatic κατ’ ’αληθειoν, which claims more to be certain than man can possibly know” (FM, 20: 306). While in the third Critique the proof “according to a human being” is assigned to reflective judgment, in Progress it is indistinguishable from the moral proof.

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a “practical principle of reason,” then it produces “moral conviction.” In other words, natural theology argues for God’s existence on “merely subjective (aesthetic) determining ground for assent,” namely, on the appearance of nature’s order, by taking advantage of reason’s theoretical need to seek unity in variety, or to “conceive of one principle instead of many as long as it can do so without contradiction” (KU, §90, 461). This reflection ends in theoretical determination of nature as purposive and the illegitimate inference to the existence of an intelligent world-cause, God, who is the author of this purposiveness. Reflective judgment that is based on reason’s practical principle would still be using “subjective” determining grounds insofar as the representation of nature according to reflective judgment is relative to the limitations of our human understanding and the principle applied is heautonomous and does not determine nature as it is in itself. But if the reflective judgment is based on a “practical principle,” the proof would be “objectively valid and a logical ground for cognition” (KU, §90, 5: 461). Kant’s division of reflective judgment into those that are grounded on “merely theoretical principles” and those that are grounded on “practical principles” is puzzling. Now, we know that reflective judgment for Kant is not based on any “practical principle” as he claims in the above-cited passage and we should consider this as a careless formulation on Kant’s part. Instead, reflective judgment is based, if aesthetic, on the a priori principle of purposiveness without a purpose; if teleological, on the concept of the objective purposiveness of nature, which is the principle of reason for the reflecting power of judgment; and if logical, on reason’s logical principle of nature’s purposiveness. To refer to reason’s principle of purposiveness in reflective judgment’s regulative employment as “practical” indicates the perspective of a transcendental philosopher who, just like natural theologian, starts from nature’s appearance of order but, unlike the natural theologian, understands this order as reflective judgment’s representation of nature relative to the needs of our cognitive faculties. The transcendental philosopher sees the work of reflective judgment as the condition of nature’s appearance of order and understands its order as contingently purposive for our minimal cognitive aims (our representation of natural ends and nature’s entirety as an organized system that further aids our exploration of nature and its scientific laws). Given the ends of practical reason, striving toward the realization of the highest good in the world, the thought of nature’s contingent purposiveness with our cognitive aims of reason also suggests that nature may be cooperative with the final ends of reason as well. It is in this sense that we should understand Kant’s comment that reflective judgment is based on a “practical principle,” namely,

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insofar as reflective judgment’s regulative principle of purposiveness refers to reason’s both theoretical and practical needs. This, we can say, is the reason why Kant argues that physical teleology, insofar as it is properly understood by the transcendental philosopher, can serve as a “preparation (propadeutic) for theology” (KU, §85, 5: 442). It is still puzzling why Kant would consider reflective judgment and its heautonomous employment of reason’s a priori principle of purposiveness as a “proof” for the existence of God, albeit the one that is “according to the human being” and one that, unlike the proof of natural theology, can produce conviction, namely, a “moral” one. What could Kant possibly mean by this? One way to answer this question is to argue that the justification of assent in moral Glaube refers to the object supplied by reflective judgment and not merely to the object supplied by rational necessitation from the need of practical reason, as with the rational necessitation realism (RNR) discussed in the previous chapter. The work of reflective teleological judgment is required because something real is given in the manifold that is excessive for determinative judgment, namely, a living being. Kant leaves as a possibility the mechanical generation of living things and, hence, an understanding, unlike our own, that could explain the constitution of living things entirely in mechanical terms, from the properties and motions of matter (KU, §77, 5: 408). But, given our human perspective, the concrete experience of nature (more specifically life) suggests the Idea of an intelligent world-cause. Put differently, the view of nature that is demanded by the needs of practical reason is presented from the perspective of theoretical reason and its needs, namely, reflective judgment’s representation of nature as purposive given our concrete experience of life in nature. Thus, the fact that Kant refers to the work of reflective judgment from the perspective of a transcendental philosopher as a “proof of God’s existence according to a human being” should be understood from the perspective of the unity of theoretical and practical reason. That is to say, that a transcendental philosopher does not merely intellectually “conceive” that there is God from the perspective of the truth of the moral law but also, given the work of reflective judgment and the limitations of our cognitive faculties, she is able to see it “displayed” in nature and is thus able to “perceive” it in nature. That which practical reason demands that we intellectually conceive as possible (the progress toward the realization of the final end of creation, the highest good) receives its object from reflective judgment in response to the needs of theoretical reason. In this respect, the objective reality of the Idea of the highest good accomplished by reflective judgment is not the same as the objective reality

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of the Idea of the highest good reached by rational necessitation from the need of practical reason (RNR). We can call the objective reality of the Idea of the highest good accomplished by reflective judgment “moral image realism” (MIR). On the surface it may seem contradictory to call “realism” a view according to which the world is an “image.”31 However, “image” refers neither to some arbitrary creation of reason nor to a mere illusion of an instrumental sort, that is, the one that reason generates given its practical needs. Instead, it refers to reason’s principle of purposiveness, a rule reflective judgment heautonomously prescribes to itself and not to nature. In other words, it prescribes how it ought to proceed in its reflection on certain natural formations relative to the needs of our limited human cognitive capacities. To be sure, by means of reflective judgment we cannot offer an “explanation” (Erklärung) (KU, §78, 5: 412) of the constitution of organic beings. That is to say, we cannot give an account of their origin and lawfulness by the use of determinative principles so that this account would be true of them. We have to limit ourselves to offering an “elucidation” (Erörterung) (KU, §78, 5: 412), to wit, to making the regularity and functioning of organisms “intelligible” (KU, §78, 5: 413) to ourselves. Even so, reflective judgment’s representation of organisms and nature as a systematically organized whole assists in our exploration of nature and discovery of new empirical laws. However, the condition that is necessary for our theoretical representation of nature, reflective judgment’s principle of purposiveness, is the same condition that is necessary for our representation of nature from a practical point of view. In other words, by representing nature as an organized system with the human being as its final end, reflective judgment creates an image of the world that serves as a schema-analogue of the Idea of the highest good, that is, it represents the world not only as a scene of 31

In the section On the Schematism of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding, Kant uses the term “image” to define a schema: “Now this representation of a general procedure of the imagination for providing a concept with its image [Bild] is what I call the schema of this concept” (KrV, A140/B179). “Image” is thus a presentation (Darstellung) in sensible intuition of the rule contained in the concept. Schema of a pure concept of the understanding is a “pure image” (KrV, A142/B182), a product of the transcendental power of imagination which in its synthesis, in accordance with the concept of the understanding, determines time. Thus, the “schema of substance is the persistence of the real in time […] The schema of the cause and of the causality of a thing in general […] consists in the succession of the manifold […] The schema of community (reciprocity) […] is the simultaneity of the determinations of the one with those of the other” (KrV, A144/B183), etc. I use the term “image” in “moral image realism” because reflective judgment’s representation of nature as a unified system of ends serves a schema-analogue of reason’s Idea of God. This Idea, as reason’s Idea of the unconditioned, cannot have the rule contained in it presented in sensibility directly but only indirectly or analogically. The analogical procedure of reflective judgment will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 4. Although the focus of Chapter 4 is symbolic presentation in aesthetic judgment, the formal aspects of analogical or symbolic presentation are shared by both aesthetic and teleological judgments.

3.5 Conclusion and Evaluation

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theoretical exploration but also as a scene of action – the representation of the world as amenable to the realization of our moral ends.

3.5

Conclusion and Evaluation

In this chapter, I have argued that Kant’s argument for the highest good and the proof of God’s existence in the third Critique is consistent with his argument in the second Critique. The novelty of the third Critique that is often emphasized in the secondary literature, namely, that the highest good in the third Critique becomes an effort of the community that is realizable in this world does not, as I argued above, undermine its partially transcendent character. Although the highest good in the third Critique is not the human condition Kant reserves for the afterlife (as he did in the first Critique) but the condition to be realized in the world, our efforts do not suffice to ensure that nature cooperates with our moral ends or that happiness is distributed in proportion to our worthiness of it. For this we need “assurance” (RGV, 6: 67). That is to say, we are justified by the truth of the moral law that commands us to further the highest good to the best of our abilities to postulate God’s existence as a being that would make nature cooperative with the final ends of reason. Although it is not new for Kant to identify the final end with the human being,32 the third Critique introduces a novelty to Kant’s Critical system insofar as it connects the human being as the final end of reason with nature. I argued in this chapter that the novelty of the third Critique is not so much that the highest good it to be realized in nature (as opposed to the intelligible world) as is usually argued in the secondary literature, but rather in the fact that the human being as the final end becomes the end of nature. The highest good on this view is not merely the object, the final end of reason, we human beings ought to further as much as we can. It becomes the final end furthered by nature. Our representation of nature as having human beings and the highest good as the final end is the product of reflective judgment and is, therefore, a representation that is relative to the needs of our cognitive faculties and cannot be known to be true of nature in the way that representations of determinative judgments are. This representation of nature as if rational, or a product of a mind more powerful than ours, is not merely in service of theoretical reason (makes organisms intelligible and is useful in discovery of particular empirical 32

In the Architectonic section of the first Critique Kant identifies morality as “the entire vocation of human beings” and the “final end” (Endzweck) of reason (KrV, A840/B868).

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laws) but also in service of practical reason. In other words, it is not sufficient for us to conceive intellectually the “practical reality” of the Ideas of God and the final end of creation given the truth of the moral law, as Kant argued this in the second Critique. Instead, we also must be able to perceive the highest good as the final end of nature. This is to say that the object of the Idea of the highest good as the final end of nature must also be given to us in sensibility. It is given in sensibility by reflective judgment’s representation of nature as a purposively organized whole that serves as its schema-analogue. I have referred to this additional support the realism of moral Glaube receives in the third Critique “moral image realism” (MIR). It is an “image” because the objects of the Ideas of God and the highest good are not directly exhibited in intuition but only indirectly by representations of reflective judgment serving as their schema-analogues. It is “realism” because representations of reflective judgments are normatively necessary in the epistemic sense and also serve as schema-analogues for the Ideas whose objects are normatively necessary in the practical sense. One could advance an objection to my view by arguing that “moral image realism” (MIR) in the third Critique must inevitably bring into question the validity and self-sufficiency of the moral proof Kant developed in the second Critique. But my claim that for Kant in the third Critique it is no longer sufficient to conceive intellectually the possibility of our progress toward the highest good but that we must be able to perceive it in nature by representing it teleologically as a unified system of ends is intended to emphasize Kant’s growing concern with the human finitude. In other words, by the time of the third Critique Kant is showing an increasing awareness that the problem of the unity of theoretical and practical reason must take into account that the human being is a finite being (not merely intellectual but also sentient) to whom things must be given in sensibility. While the preceding chapter discussed the role of reflective judgment for “displaying” (aufstellen) (KU, Remark, 5: 479) the object of the Idea of God as if obtaining in nature, the chapters that follow will show how reflective judgment (both aesthetic and teleological) “display” the objects of the other Ideas of the Postulates (the soul and freedom) as well as the object of the Idea of the highest good. The proceeding chapters will thus demonstrate the role of both aesthetic and teleological judgment in shaping “moral image realism” (MIR), revealing MIR to be instrumental for building coherence between the domains of theoretical and practical reason.

Part II

Aesthetic Judgment and the “Moral Image”

chapter 4

Beauty as a “Symbol of Morality”

The “Moral Image” of the “Supersensible Without”

In the previous chapter, I argued that for Kant reflective teleological judgment helps us to see the object of the Idea of God “displayed” in nature and, therefore, it helps us to represent nature as if aiming toward the realization of the highest good. In this chapter, my aim is to show that reflective aesthetic judgment for Kant tells us something about the world, namely, it helps us represent the world as hospitable to our moral ends and our moral vocation insofar as it serves as a sensible exhibition (Darstellung) of the Idea of the highest good. This I take is the meaning of Kant’s claim in §59 of the Critique of Judgment that beauty is a “symbol of morality” (KU, §59, 5: 351). Moreover, I will contend that the work of art as the work of genius also serves as a symbol of morality and, therefore, that the beauty of art does not have an inferior status to the beauty of nature with respect to Kant’s moral teleology. Thus, in this chapter I will show that aesthetic experience, of both works of art and nature, affords a connection to the “supersensible without.” Because the Idea of the highest good is partially transcendent and given the inconstancy of our moral Glaube, the experience of beauty serves as a sign that what we take to be possible on moral grounds may in fact be so. Put differently, although the highest good is the necessary object of practical reason from which we indirectly infer that the conditions of its realization (God and the immortal soul) must be possible, the experience of beauty serves as a sign, a nod from nature, that this in fact may be so. This sign can have a merely psychological significance: with time and continuous experience of hindrances to the ends of practical reason the binding force of the moral law will lose its strength, whereas the experience of beauty can help maintain the existent moral disposition. But the significance of this sign can move beyond the merely psychological effects: it helps reinforce the view that the highest good must have an “objective theoretical reality” (KU, §88, 5: 453) and not merely a “subjectively practical reality” (KU, §88, 5: 453), namely, the experience of beauty reinforces the view that the final end must be the end of nature, of the world. The experience of beauty aids 101

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in forming, what I called in the previous chapter, “moral image realism” (MIR), which adds the cognitive dimension to aesthetic experience that is best explained in proximity to Kant’s notion of practical cognition. In this chapter, I will proceed as follows. Section 4.1 analyzes the formal requirements for analogical or symbolic exhibition in Kant. Section 4.2 explains the material aspects of symbolic presentation, that is, the content of symbolic presentation in aesthetic experience. In Section 4.3, I argue that works of art as works of genius can also serve as a symbol of morality and, therefore, that Kant does not privilege the beauty of nature over the beauty of art in his moral teleology. Because aesthetic experience provides an indirect schema of the Idea of reason, the Idea of the highest good, I argue in Section 4.4 that aesthetic experience is a form of cognition. Since, on my view, fine art in Kant serves as a sensible presentation of an undetermined conceptual content, or the Idea of the highest good, the fourth part of the chapter addresses the vexed question of whether Kant’s account of fine art already anticipates the cognitive role later attributed to it by the German Idealists. The last section, Section 4.5, concludes the chapter and offers a brief evaluation of the argument.

4.1

The Formal Aspects of Symbolic Presentation

In paragraph 59 of the Critique of Judgment, titled “On Beauty as a Symbol of Morality,” Kant argues that “to demonstrate the reality of our concepts, intuitions are always required” (KU, §59, 5: 351). According to Kant, there are three ways in which a concept can be provided with a corresponding intuition (be rendered in terms of sense [Versinnlichung]), or three kinds of “hypotyposis” (Hypotypose) (KU, §59, 5: 351): (1) examples, (2) schemata, and (3) symbols. These correspond to three kinds of concepts: (1) empirical concepts, (2) pure concepts of the understanding, and (3) concepts of reason, or Ideas. Empirical concepts are rendered sensible by means of examples in empirical reality; pure concepts of the understanding by means of schemata (e.g., for the concept of causation there is a schema of temporal succession); and for an Idea of reason one furnishes a symbol – an intuition, which is an indirect “presentation” (Darstellung) of the Idea of reason by means of analogy.1 In order to clarify Kant’s conception of symbolic presentation we need, therefore, to understand better Kant’s conception of analogy. 1

In Progress (1793), Kant repeats the same point. In this essay, however, he contrasts more sharply the direct presentation of sensible concepts to the indirect or symbolic presentation of the supersensible

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4.1.1 Kant’s Conception of Analogy Kant distinguishes between a qualitative and a quantitative analogy: In philosophy analogies signify something very different from what they represent in mathematics. In the latter they are formulas that assert the identity of two relations of magnitude, and are always constitutive, so that if two members of the proportion are given the third is also thereby given, i.e., can be constructed. In philosophy, however, analogy is not the identity of two quantitative but of two qualitative relations, where from three given members I can cognize and give a priori only the relation to a fourth member but not this fourth member itself, although I have a rule for seeking it in experience and a mark for discovering it there. (KrV, A179/B222)

Thus, an example of a quantitative (mathematical) analogy could be formulated as follows: a : b :: b : x, where a and b are given and x is a missing item. In a qualitative (philosophical) analogy, based on our knowledge of one qualitative relation, and when given a third term, we can construct by analogy to the first relation a second relation, namely, the one between the third and some unknown fourth term. Thus, an example of a qualitative analogy could be formulated as follows: a : b :: c : x. While by means of mathematical analogies we can a priori cognize the characteristic features of the missing term, by means of philosophical analogies the unknown term and its features cannot be cognized. Instead, we can merely refer to the rule by means of which the unknown member can be thought.2 In what follows, I shall explain Kant’s notion of qualitative analogy in more detail. In a footnote in §90 of KU, Kant defines qualitative analogy as follows: An analogy (in a qualitative sense) is the identity of relation between grounds and consequences (causes and effects), insofar as that identity obtains in spite of the specific difference between the things or those of their properties that contain in themselves the ground for similar consequences (i.e., their difference outside of this relation). Thus, in comparing the artistic actions

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concepts: “If objective reality is accorded to the concept directly (directe) through the intuition that corresponds to it, i.e., if the concept is immediately presented [dargestellt], this act is called schematism; but if it cannot be presented immediately, but only in its consequences (indirecte), it may be called the symbolization of the concept. The first occurs with concepts of the sensible, the second is an expedient for concepts of the super-sensible which are therefore not truly presented, and can be given in no possible experience […]” (FM, 20: 279–80). It is puzzling why Kant formulates quantitative analogies as being concerned with three members and not, as qualitative analogies, with four members. It is possible that this type of formulation puts stronger emphasis on the construction of the missing member itself and not, as in qualitative analogies, on the identity of relation notwithstanding the differences among members. The citation that follows below confirms this hypothesis.

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Beauty as a “Symbol of Morality” of animals with those of human beings, we conceive of the ground of the former, which we do not know, through the ground of similar effects in humans (reason), which we do know, and thus as an analogue of reason, and by that we also mean to indicate that the ground of the artistic capacity in animals designated as instinct, is in fact specifically different from reason, but yet has a similar relation to the effect (comparing, say, construction by beavers with that by humans). (KU, §90, 5: 464n)

The rule of the relation in qualitative analogy is the one of cause and effect. This is not surprising given that causality is a category of relation. From the passage above, we can see that there are four elements in an analogical relation and three out of those four elements are known while one is unknown. The qualitative analogy, in contrast to the quantitative analogy stated above, can be expressed as follows: Cause 1: Effect 1 = Cause 2: Effect 2. Thus, regardless of the fact that the entities compared, beavers and humans in the example above, have different properties, the rational causality in humans and its effects (i.e., artifacts) has an identical relation as the one between causality in beavers (i.e., their construction) and its effects (i.e., beaver dams).3 The formation of the analogical relation begins with the observation of the similarities of effects. In the example given above, the observed similarity is between the functionality of beaver dams and the functionality of human artifacts. The analogy then moves from the observed effects (i.e., beaver dams in beavers and artifacts in human beings), to the known cause of human rational agency, to finally the unknown nature of the causality in beavers. From here, we cannot infer that the nature of the causality in beavers (the unknown cause) is that of a rational agency but we can think of their causality as an “analogue of reason.” Why does Kant contend that by means of analogy we can think or represent the causality in animals as rational yet we cannot infer that they are rational? With respect to the example above, the following type of inference would be possible: Yet from the comparison of the similar mode of operation in the animals (the ground for which we cannot immediately perceive) to that of humans (of which we are immediately aware) we can quite properly infer in accordance with the analogy that the animals also act in accordance with 3

In the passage cited above Kant refers to the qualitative relation in an analogy as “identical” in one sentence and as “similar” in another. Sebastian Maly has argued that by “similar relation” Kant understands an “identical relation.” In the Prolegomena Kant refers to the relation between compared entities in an analogy as a “perfect similarity” (vollkommene Ähnlichkeit) which is to be contrasted to “imperfect similarity” (unvollkommene Ähnlichkeit). Thus, when Kant writes “similar relation” he has in mind “perfectly similar relation,” which is the same as an “identical relation.” See Maly 2012, 47–50.

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representations (and are not as Descartes would have it, machines), and that in spite of their specific difference, they are still of the same genus as human beings (as living beings). The principle that authorizes such an inference lies in the fact that we have the same ground for counting animals, with respect to the determination in question, as members of the same genus, insofar as we compare them with one another externally, on the basis of their actions. There is par ratio. (KU, §90, 5: 464n)

The principle of “equal reason” (par ratio) authorizes us to infer that animals act in accordance with representations. Put differently, we are authorized to make this inference because we have the same “ground,” or reason, for counting human beings and animals to belong to the same genus, namely, the genus of living beings. We can conclude that they belong to the same genus based on their externally observed properties, that is, their actions. Because animals, just like human beings, belong to the same genus of living beings, they must act in accordance with representations just as human beings do. This, however, does not allow us to infer that the type of action in accordance with representation is the same as the one in humans, namely, rational. The principle for making this inference is missing, that is, we do not have the principle of equal reason to claim that beavers belong to the same species as human beings, or that beavers are humans. Although we cannot infer that the causality of animals is rational, based on analogy, we can think of their causality, or represent it, as if it were rational. A similar analogical relation applies between human rational causality and that of the “supreme world-cause” (KU, §90, 5: 464n): Likewise, in the comparison of the purposive products of the causality of the supreme world-cause in the world with the artworks of human beings, I can conceive of the former in an analogy to an understanding, but I cannot infer to this property in the world-cause by means of the analogy; because here the principle of the possibility of such an inference is precisely what is missing, namely the paritas rationis for counting the highest being as part of one and the same species along with human beings (with regard to their respective causalities). The causality of the being in the world, which is always sensibly conditioned (even its causality through understanding) cannot be transferred to a being that has no generic concept in common with the former except that of a thing in general. (KU, §90, 5: 464n)

Thus, the principle of the “equality of reason” (paritas rationis) does not exist in the example above. In other words, we do not have the same ground or reason for counting human beings and the divine being as belonging to either the same genus or the same species. The only generic concept they share in common is that they are both beings. Therefore, it is illegitimate

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to infer that the divine being has the same type of causality as the human being, namely, rational causality that is sensibly conditioned and therefore discursive. However, the effect of human rational causality, namely, artifacts, are similar in their purposive arrangement as organisms and broader relations in nature. We can, therefore, think of the “supreme world-cause” in analogy to human rational causality. 4.1.2

The Double Function of Reflective Judgment

Kant contends that “[a]ll intuitions that are ascribed [unterlegt] to concepts a priori are thus either schemata or symbols, the first of which contain direct, the second indirect presentations [Darstellungen] of a concept” (KU, §59, 5: 352). Thus, symbols are intuitions, and although it is not stated explicitly in the citation, we can claim that it is our faculty of the power of judgment that “ascribes” symbols to a concept. This is because Kant defines the faculty of judgment as “the faculty of subsuming [subsumieren] under rules”4 (KrV, A132/B171). Because concepts are rules, our faculty of judgment subsumes symbols as intuitions under concepts as rules.5 An additional reason for claiming that it is the power of judgment that brings symbols as intuitions under concepts is the fact that Kant emphasizes that this process of subsumption proceeds in an a priori manner. In other words, the process of subsumption does not follow an empirically given rule, for example that of association so that we always, by the power of habit, associate some given intuitions with some concepts. Instead, by claiming that intuitions are ascribed to concepts in an a priori manner, Kant appeals to a capacity: Now if it [general logic – LO] wanted to show generally how one ought to subsume under these rules, i.e., distinguish whether something stands under them or not, this could not happen except once again through a rule. But just because this is a rule, it would demand another instruction for the power of judgment, and so it becomes clear that although the understanding is certainly capable of being instructed and equipped through rules, the power of judgment is a special talent that cannot be taught but only practiced. (KrV, A133/B172)

In the case of schemata, the judgment subsumes the intuition under the concept directly. As Kant has shown this in the first Critique, a schema – the 4 5

The Cambridge edition translates “unterlegen” as “to ascribe.” A more precise translation would be “to lay under” which is synonymous to “to subsume.” In his lectures on logic, Kant states explicitly that induction and analogy are the two modes of inferences of the power of judgment. See V-Lo/ Jäsche, §84, 9: 132–33. I will be discussing these two modes of inferences of the power of judgment later in Chapter 7.

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product of the transcendental synthesis of the imagination in accordance with the concepts of the understanding – is subsumed under the relevant concept. For example, the schema of causality, which is a temporal succession of the manifold, is subsumed under the concept of causality. In the case of symbols, the subsumption of intuition under the concept is performed indirectly. That is to say that the process of subsumption requires the mediation of analogy. The meaning of the notion of indirect subsumption and its mediation by analogy is captured by Kant’s notion of the judgment’s “double task” in a concept’s symbolic presentation. In an analogical or symbolic presentation of a concept, writes Kant, “the power of judgment performs a double task, first applying the concept to the object of sensible intuition, and then, second, applying the mere rule of reflection on that intuition to an entirely different object, of which the first is only the symbol” (KU, §59, 5: 352). This double function of reflective judgment in an analogical presentation of a concept Kant illustrates with the following examples: Thus a monarchical state is represented by a body with a soul if it is ruled in accordance with laws internal to the people, but by a mere machine (like a handmill) if it is ruled by a single absolute will, but in both cases it is represented only symbolically. For between a despotic state and a handmill there is, of course, no similarity, but there is one between the rule for reflecting on both and their causality. (KU, §59, 5: 352)

I will focus on the second example first, namely the handmill as the symbol for a despotic state. The first function of judgment (F1) is the following: the empirical concept, namely, the concept of a specific causality that pertains to a handmill, is applied to the object of sensible intuition, that is, the handmill. The second function of judgment (F2) is the following: the mere rule of reflection on the intuition of the handmill (the rule of causality that is specific to a handmill) is applied to an entirely different object, the despotic state, so that the former object (the handmill) serves as a symbol of the latter (the despotic state). This double function of judgment presupposes the mediation of analogy as follows. The choice of the symbol “handmill” is not arbitrary but, rather, the rule for reflecting on the concept “handmill” and the concept “despotic state” is similar. The rule of causality specific to the handmill and its constitutive parts is similar to the rule of causality specific to a despotic state and its constituents – both imply an application of an external force and, thus, a mechanical causality. This can be contrasted with Kant’s example of a monarchical state governed by the laws that aim toward the common good and is symbolized

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by a “body with a soul,” a body that is directed toward ends or purposes, as an organism.6 The rule of causality specific to organisms is “reciprocal” (KU, §65, 5: 373), that is, an organism is “an organized and self-organizing being” because it presupposes a complementary use of both mechanical and teleological causes in order to account for its unique functioning and regularity. In an organism, which shows the unique properties of reproduction, self-reparation, and nutrition, “each part is conceived as if it exists only through other, thus as if existing for the sake of the others and on account of the whole” (KU, §65, 5: 373–74). A similar type of causality is specific to a monarchy governed by the laws that aim toward the common good.7 The constituents (parts) do not conceive of their existence in terms of their individual will and personal ends. Instead, they are a part of the whole so that the common good is the end of their individual wills and the whole (the laws governing the monarchy) exists for the benefit of each of its parts. Because the rule or causality specific to an organism is similar to the rule or causality specific to a monarchical state governed by the common good, an organism serves as a symbol for a state governed by the common good. In both examples, the judgment’s process of subsumption is mediated by analogy insofar as the judgment moves from (1) the observation of the similar effects in the two phenomena (visible pressure and constraint in Kant’s second example and reciprocity in the first) to (2) the known cause (mechanical external causality in the second example and reciprocal in the first) to (3) thinking or representing the unknown cause in terms of the known cause (thinking of the causality in a despotic state as mechanical and of the causality in the monarchical state governed by the common good as reciprocal). An additional problem must be addressed, namely, if providing a symbol for an Idea is an act of judgment, is it an act of determining or reflective judgment? It is helpful here to remind ourselves of the distinction between the determining and the reflecting power of judgment as Kant presents it in the First and Second Introduction to the third Critique. The power of judgment in general is the faculty for thinking of the particular as contained under the universal. If the universal (the rule, the principle, the law) is given, then the power of judgment, which subsumes the 6

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I do not wish to suggest that Kant was an advocate of vitalism. His conception of organisms as “natural ends,” that is, as structures that are self-directed (purposive) while at the same time being a part of nature requires our employment of reflective judgment. Kant’s conception of an organism will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 8. Kant’s emphasis in this illustration is on “laws internal to the people,” a form of self-legislation that is characteristic of a republican constitution. A republican constitution for Kant may be consistent with an autocracy.

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particular under it […], is determining. If, however, only the particular is given, for which the universal is to be found, then the power of judgment is merely reflecting. (KU, 5: 179)

Although symbolization begins from a known causal relation (e.g., mechanical in the case of a handmill), this is a specific causality unique to that particular object. One can say that in order for a handmill to be a general object of experience we have to think of it as falling under the causality as the category of the understanding. But the causal relation that is relevant for a symbolic or indirect presentation of an Idea is the rule reached by the judgment’s reflection on the relations of parts to the whole in a particular empirical object (the handmill). The relation of parts to the whole in a handmill can best be subsumed under the rule of causality specific to mechanisms.8 Furthermore, in the First Introduction to the third Critique, Kant defines reflection in general as follows: “To reflect (to consider), however, is to compare and to hold together given representations either with others or with one’s faculty of cognition, in relation to a concept thereby made possible” (EEKU, 20: 211). In the example of symbolic or indirect presentation of a concept, the judgment compares the representations of two different objects. One of the objects is given in empirical intuition (handmill) and the other object is the object of an Idea that is not given in empirical intuition (despotic state).9 The judgment compares the representation of the given particular object (handmill) and the representation of the object that is not given in empirical reality (despotic state). It subsumes the connection of the parts to the whole in the given empirical object under the rule of mechanical causality (handmill). In the comparison of two representations, the concept of commonality is generated between the effect of the known rule of mechanical causality and the effect of the unknown cause in the despotic state. Given this commonality, we can think or represent the unknown causality as if it were the known causality (in our example mechanical causality) and the judgment then subsumes the 8 9

I discuss in more detail the meaning of Kant’s notion of “mechanical causation” in Chapter 8. For Kant, symbolic or indirect (i.e., analogical) presentation is required for concepts that do not have a corresponding object in empirical reality, namely, Ideas of reason. It is not obvious that Kant’s examples of a despotic state and a monarchy governed by the common good are Ideas of reason. History offers examples of tyrannical governments and (perhaps less often) good kings. We can, however, think of Kant’s examples as consistent with his requirement that symbolization be only of Ideas of reason if by the examples Kant understands an Idea of an unjust ruler who governs by the principle of his own self-love and an Idea of a perfectly just ruler who governs by the principle of justice and common good, respectively. Each example stands for a standard, or ideal type, and therefore an Idea of reason.

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given empirical object as a symbol of the Idea that does not have a corresponding intuition in empirical reality.10

4.2

The Material Aspects of Symbolic Presentation: Beauty as a Symbol of Morality

While the preceding discussion aimed at clarifying the formal aspects of symbolic presentation, the content of symbolic presentation in beauty still remains to be determined. In contemporary Kant scholarship most interpretations focus on either the structural similarities between aesthetic and moral judgments or the similarities between our reflections on aesthetic Ideas and our reflections on the morally good.11 These interpretations, however, ignore the structural elements of Kant’s notion of analogical presentation and fail to explain how beauty can serve (albeit indirectly) as an intuition of an Idea that cannot have a corresponding object in empirical reality.12 Instead, I want to argue that it is possible to interpret Kant’s claim 10

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In Progress, Kant contends that the relation between the concept and its corresponding symbol is reduced to a rule contained in a pure concept of the understanding, that is, the concept of causality: “[F]or example if I conceive of certain products of Nature, such as organized things, animals or plants, in a relation to their cause like that of a clock to man, as its maker, viz., in a relationship of causality as such, qua category, which is the same in both cases […]” (FM, 20: 280). Kant argues the same in the essay “What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?” (1786) (WDO, 8: 136). The fact that the relation between a symbol and an Idea consists in a rule contained in a concept of the understanding, the category of causality, may appear inconsistent with my view that the rule that establishes the relation between the symbol and the Idea is a specific causality that relates to the connection of parts to whole. (This inconsistency is also noted by Maly in Maly 2012, 197.) The inconsistency is, however, only an apparent one. The casual connections of the particular parts and/or empirical laws of nature presuppose our representation of objects of nature according to the transcendental laws of the understanding, including the law according to the category of causality. (See my more detailed discussion of Kant’s notion of “mechanism” in Chapter 8.) Paul Guyer, for example, contends that “there are structural similarities between aesthetic and moral judgments” (Guyer 1997, 334). The focus of this structural similarity for Guyer is the concluding part of §59 where Kant discusses the analogy between the pleasure in the beautiful and the satisfaction in the determination of the will by the moral law. This is also the reason why Guyer concludes that, for Kant, beauty symbolizes “the capacity for morality itself, the capacity for a moral rather than sensuous determination of the will” (Guyer 1997, 337). Allison argues that for Kant beauty is a symbol of morality because there exists an “isomorphism” between our reflection on aesthetic Ideas and our reflection on the morally good (Allison 2001, 260). For Allison, if we take the meaning of the “morally good [Sittlich-Gute]” to be the highest good, then our reflection on such an object starts with something sensible (i.e., a concrete moral good to be achieved in the world), and it proceeds to the supersensible conditions of its realization (i.e., the Ideas of God, freedom and immortality). In a similar way, our reflection on the beautiful starts with something sensible (i.e., aesthetic attributes in a particular work of art) and proceeds to the supersensible (i.e., rational Ideas that are sensibly exhibited in aesthetic Ideas). To be sure, Guyer notes that in the text Kant makes a connection between beauty’s symbolic function and the supersensible but dismisses it quickly as the aspect of Kant’s argument that gives us “reasons for caution” (Guyer 1997, 341). In his other writings, Guyer seems to acknowledge more

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that beauty symbolizes morality in a way that (1) takes a full account of the necessary formal elements that constitute analogical presentation for Kant so that (2) beauty indirectly presents (i.e., provides an intuition for) a specific undetermined conceptual content.13 And finally I contend that (3) this account of analogical presentation preserves the specificities of aesthetic judgment, namely, disinterestedness and subjective purposiveness, which are of special importance for distinguishing aesthetic from moral judgment. I will argue below that by “morally good” Kant understands the highest good and that beauty analogically presents the Idea of the highest good. In order to take a full account of the formal elements of Kant’s notion of analogical presentation, we must first identify the similarity between the effect of the objects we find beautiful and the effect of the Idea of the highest good. We saw in Chapter 3 that by the notion of the highest good in the third Critique Kant understands a community of virtuous individuals that have always the other person’s happiness as their own end. The community of individuals with the will that is selfless and directed toward the happiness of others and not the ends of one’s self-love will ensure that the ends of virtuous individuals be realized. Thus, the effect one associates

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readily that beauty must be, on Kant’s view, a symbol of a supersensible content. He contends that we should understand the “morally good” in Kant’s qualitative analogy as freedom, or the transcendental ground of morality, because “the experience of beauty is felt to be an experience of freedom. Beauty is here the symbol of the morally good because the freedom of the imagination that is characteristic of the response to the former may be taken as a symbolic representation of the freedom of the will that is essential for the latter” (Guyer 1996, 252). This is because imagination in its freedom from the determination of the concepts of the understanding is analogous to the will that is free from inclinations, as it is bound by the moral law of reason. In contrast to Guyer, however, it can be argued that freedom understood as the independence of our will from inclinations (Kant’s notion of “practical freedom” or “psychological freedom”) is different from freedom understood as the capacity of our will to give the law to itself. For Kant, the latter rather than the former is a transcendent Idea which does not have a correspondent object in empirical reality and which is in need of an indirect analogical exhibition. Birgit Recki (see Recki 2001), similar to Guyer, argues that symbolic relation between beauty and morality consists in the similarity between aesthetic and moral judgments. For Recki, however, this analogy points to Kant’s Idea of transcendental or unconditioned freedom and not his notion of practical freedom, or freedom understood as the independence from sensuous determination. While unlike Guyer who underplays the relevance of Kant’s appeal to the supersensible Recki gives the concept its deserved attention, she, however, ignores Kant’s claim that the “intelligible, towards which, […] taste looks […] is neither nature nor freedom, but [that] which is connected with the ground of the latter” (KU, §59, 5: 353). And that which “is connected” to the “ground of freedom” in this context, as I will show below, refers to the Idea of the highest good and the supersensible conditions of its realization. Allison’s “purely formal” and “minimalist” (Allison 2001, 261) interpretation of Kant’s claim that beauty symbolizes morality leaves the referent of “morality” in the qualitative analogy relatively unspecified. For example, an instance of the moral good in the world can evoke a variety of transcendent Ideas, such as virtue, moral law, or moral character. In other words, it is not clear how on Allison’s view an instance of a moral good in the world necessarily evokes the Idea of the highest good and the supersensible conditions of its realization.

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with the Idea of the highest good is of the will that has its objects realized in the world. Our contemplation of beauty, whether of nature or art, evokes a free harmony of our cognitive faculties and the feeling of pleasure that follows from it. In the free harmony of the faculties, which is the logical ground of pure aesthetic judgment, imagination in its synthesis anticipates and therefore contingently meets the lawfulness of the understanding. Thus, the effect our contemplation of beauty has on the understanding is similar to the effect of the highest good on the will, namely, the ends of the understanding are met in the synthesis of the imagination. In both cases, whether it is the one of a rationally determined will that acts in nature or of the understanding that determines the given manifold, nature is so radically different from our human theoretical and practical agency that one cannot expect its special amenability for meeting our minimal (theoretical) or final (practical) rational ends. Next, we must identify the law of causality that pertains to our reflection on the given beautiful object. Kant contends that “since the freedom of the imagination consists precisely in the fact that it schematizes without a concept, the judgment of taste must rest on a mere sensation of the reciprocally animating imagination in its freedom and the understanding with its lawfulness” (KU, §35, 5: 287). Thus, the rule of reflection on the given beautiful object presupposes a reciprocal causality, or a reciprocal causal relation between the imagination and the understanding. This is because, on one hand, in the free harmony of the faculties, the understanding animates the imagination insofar as the harmony is free and not a product of any specific determinate concept of the understanding. On the other hand, the imagination animates the understanding insofar as the imagination in its synthesis anticipates and therefore contingently meets the lawfulness of the understanding. Finally, because of the rule of causal reciprocity in our reflection on the given beautiful object, we are licensed to use this rule of causal reciprocity to represent or think the unknown causality of the Idea of the highest good that cannot have its corresponding object in the empirical reality. The beautiful object stands as a symbol of reciprocal causal relation in the community of virtuous individuals that further each other’s ends.14 14

In Ostaric 2010, I argued that beauty symbolized the Idea of the highest good but my emphasis was mistakenly put on the postulate for God’s existence as the necessary condition of the realization of the highest good. The analogy was built on the connection between the Idea of an intelligent causality that makes nature especially cooperative with the demands of the understanding in aesthetic experience and the Idea of an intelligent causality that makes nature cooperative with the ends of the will in the highest good. As shown above, however, the analogy for Kant can only be built from the known to the Idea of the unknown causality and not from the unknown causality aesthetic experience inspires us to think to the unknown causality presupposed by the Idea of the highest good.

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Furthermore, if we distinguish between the aesthetic and meta-aesthetic level of Kant’s argument, we will be able to see that Kant does not have to give up the special features of aesthetic judgment in order to argue that there must exist a necessary connection between our experience of beauty and morality. Kant never claims that we consider something beautiful because of its necessary connection with morality. Although reason must have an interest in finding the signs in nature that our moral ends are realizable, this does not mean that aesthetic judgment is based on such a moral interest. Kant clearly states that aesthetic judgment has no interest “for its determining ground,” but this does not exclude the fact that aesthetic judgments have a feature that “qualifies” (qualificirt) (KU, §42, 5: 302) them for an association with a moral interest. In other words, the fact that through aesthetic experience we experience nature as purposive for the minimal demands of our rationality evokes in us the idea that nature may be purposive also for the end of our rationality, that is, morality.

4.3

Works of Genius as a Symbol of Morality

The final advantage of my view is its consistency with Kant’s claim that all beauty, whether natural or artistic, symbolizes morality.15 I proceed to defend this claim below by showing that beauty, of both nature and artworks (insofar as they are the works of genius) exhibit nature’s purposiveness. 4.3.1

Recent Discussions in the Kant Literature

Paul Guyer’s interpretation, for example, clearly favors natural beauty as the paradigmatic example of beauty as a symbol of morality. Kant’s examples, claims Guyer, “make it clear that he is concerned with the use of the fine arts to gratify human inclinations” such as self-aggrandizement.16 On Guyer’s view, the fact that works of art are subject to an empirical interest in the beautiful is an impediment to the experience of beauty as a free harmony of imagination and understanding and, thus, of its function as a symbol of morality. “Fine art,” contends Guyer, “must be used with caution, both because it all too easily works on our inclinations rather than on our autonomous will, which must be governed by principles, and also because its characteristic structure of intentions seems to disqualify it 15 16

See on this point KU, §59, 5: 353. Guyer 1996, 255.

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from the representation of our autonomy.”17 Guyer is aware that Kant’s discussion of the works of genius differs from his discussion of art in §42 of KU (“On the Intellectual Interest in the Beautiful”) insofar as in the later paragraphs on genius Kant emphasizes that works of genius have a special normative claim on us and they also challenge the strict boundary between nature and art Kant presupposed in other parts of KU. However, he still insists that for Kant the works of genius cannot have the same moral significance as the beauties of nature: “[A] genius—that is, a producer of fine art—even though he has an artistic aim, has practical objectives as well, so his creative activity is not disinterested. Even more importantly, perhaps, the genius cannot achieve his artistic aim unless nature helps him get beyond concepts and techniques, so he is at the mercy of nature and can hardly symbolize its rule by human freedom.”18 Henry Allison’s position has an advantage over Guyer’s because it is consistent with Kant’s claim that beauty in general, and not only natural or artistic beauty, is a symbol of morality.19 Allison’s position, however, is not without a disadvantage. Although Kant claims that beauty in general, thus both natural and artistic beauty, is a symbol of morality, Allison argues that Kant clearly privileges natural beauty from a moral point of view without completely denying the moral significance of artistic beauty. According to Allison, since beauty symbolizing morality “involves the idea of nature’s moral purposiveness, natural beauty may be said to bring about a transition to the supersensible without as well as within, while an engagement with artistic beauty promotes primarily a transition to the supersensible within.”20 Allison’s claim here should be understood against the background of his argument that natural beauty “provides hints or traces” of nature’s moral purposiveness. That is to say that in experiencing the beauty of nature, nature in its purposiveness appears to favor us, which further gives us hope that nature is a hospitable environment to our moral ends. This is the sense in which natural beauty brings the transition to the supersensible “without.” Natural beauty, however, brings the transition to the supersensible “within,” as well as “without,” because it occasions the experience of the free harmony of the faculties in the subject. In the free harmony of the faculties the subject experiences a freedom from inclinations that is analogous to the will that acts in accordance to the moral law 17 18 19 20

Ibid., 230. Ibid., 265. While Guyer one-sidedly privileges natural over artistic beauty, Munzel for example one-sidedly privileges artistic over natural beauty. See Munzel 1995. Allison 2001, 263.

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regardless of one’s natural desires. Thus, in experiencing beauty we think of our sensible nature as amenable to the requirements of our noumenal nature, that is, the supersensible “within,” or morality. According to Allison, the beauty of art does not occasion the principle of nature’s purposiveness and thus cannot provide a sign that external nature is amenable to our moral vocation.21 Instead, by occasioning the free harmony of the faculties in the observer, the beauty of art has the capacity to prompt the thought of the purposiveness of nature. By evoking the free harmony of the faculties in the observer, the beauty of art, just as the beauty of nature, promotes the mind’s receptivity to moral feeling and serves as a sign that human sensible nature is amenable to our moral vocation. On Allison’s view, it is only in this latter sense that the beauty of art can serve as a symbol of morality. In what follows, my aim is to amend Allison’s account of the practical significance of the work of genius. I will argue below that, on Kant’s view, fine art as a work of genius brings the transition both to the supersensible “within” and to the supersensible “without” because it does not just somehow prompt the thought of nature’s purposiveness but, rather, exhibits the form of nature’s purposiveness. Therefore, I will argue that for Kant art understood as the art of genius has at least as much moral significance as the beauty of nature. Because works of genius exhibit the form of nature’s purposiveness, I will argue against Guyer that the intentions of the geniusartist surpass those of self-aggrandizement and, hence, can be the object of disinterested pleasure. 4.3.2

Works of Genius as the Symbol of the Highest Good

Kant’s Reflexionen zur Anthropologie indicate that the general connection between nature and works of fine art, and the specific connection between nature and the talent of genius, were the subject of Kant’s philosophical speculations already in the late 70s:22 Nature and art. [Art and contingency.] The intended object is opposed to the contingent object. Gout baroc. Contingency and intention, the game of nature. Nature connects art and contingency. Art: nature and contingency. Contingency: free movement of the powers of the soul. There is indeed a method in it; the pleasure indeed consists in the contradiction or the change 21 22

Ibid., 214. My claim can be contrasted to Guyer’s, according to which Kant introduces the connection between nature and the talent of genius for the first time in the Critique of Judgment. See Guyer, 2005b, 159.

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The passage suggests that, on the one hand, works of art are designed and, hence, are produced in accordance with a determinant concept. On the other hand, works of art are, nevertheless, suggestive of “contingency” insofar as they are a cause of aesthetic experience and the free harmony of the faculties in the observing subject. The fact that genius is a gift of nature resolves the problem of how works of art as the products of a determinate end nevertheless exhibit the form of purposiveness without a purpose.24 Moreover, Kant explains already in the late 70s the relation between the purposive form of the beauty of nature and the purposive form of the beauty of fine art in terms of a genius’s spirit (Geist) and its connection to nature: “Spirit is the secret source of life. It is not subordinated to the whim but its movements come from nature” (Refl 831, 15:371).25 The passage in the Pillau lectures on anthropology illuminates further the connection between the “movements” of the genius’s spirit and nature: Spirit is not a special faculty but that which gives the unity to all the faculties. Understanding and sensibility—or even better, imagination—are human faculties. It is, therefore, the general unity of the human soul, or, put differently, the harmony of the faculties. Spirit is also the enlivening of the faculties by the Idea. (V-Anth/Pillau, 25: 782)26

The above passage suggests that the “movement” of the genius’s spirit is the special purposive harmony of the genius’s cognitive faculties. The passage also suggests that a special Idea is responsible for setting the genius’s cognitive faculties in a state of free purposive harmony.27 The remaining part of the passage reveals the meaning of this “Idea”: The Idea does not have a meaning of a concept. One can have concepts independent of an Idea. The development of a whole science belongs to 23 24

25 26 27

Dated according to Adickes approximately 1776–1778. All passages from the Reflexionen zur Anthropologie are translated by me, unless otherwise noted. This is the sole significance Allison attributes to Kant’s conception of genius in the third Critique. See Allison 2001, 272ff. Although I do acknowledge that Kant’s conception of genius is important for resolving the formal connection between the beauty of nature and the beauty of art, I believe that Kant’s discussion of genius goes beyond this particular systematic function. Dated according to Adickes approximately 1776–1778. The lectures were delivered in the Winter Semester 1777–1778. This portion of the passage is also cited in Guyer 2005b, ch. 10 (“Exemplary Originality”), 151. Guyer, for example, suggests that the meaning of the term “Idea” in the above passage is Kant’s “abstract characterization” of what, in the third Critique, become rational and moral Ideas in the work of art. But Guyer ignores the remaining part of the passage, the part that suggests the alternative interpretation that I continue to advance below.

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an Idea. The Idea is the business of the understanding but not through abstraction because these are then concepts. [Idea] is the principle of the rules. There is a double unity: a distributive and a collective unity. The Idea concerns always the unity of the manifold as a whole. The Idea contains the principle of the manifold as a whole. (V-Anth/Pillau, 25: 782)

The concepts of the understanding unify the manifold given in experience by serving as a condition of the possibility of the objects of experience. Unlike the unity that is provided by the concepts of the understanding, or what Kant in the above passage calls a “distributive” unity, the Ideas of reason are conditions of the possibility for thinking nature as a “whole.” They are in function of what Kant in the above passage calls a “collective,” or systematic unity (V-Anth/Pillau, 25: 782). Thus, when Kant later in the Critique of Judgment defines genius as the “inborn predisposition of the mind (ingenium) through which nature gives the rule to art” (KU, §46, 5: 307), the term “nature” denotes the Idea of nature as a “whole,” or nature understood in its systematic unity. Because the Idea of nature as a whole, or what Kant in the Appendix of the Critique of Pure Reason calls the Idea of the “world-whole” (eines Weltganzen) (KrV, A677/B705), is not an Idea of an empirical reality that is engendered discursively, the possibility of the “world-whole” can be explained only if reason posits an unlimited understanding that is analogous to ours in its empirical use. Therefore, the Idea of nature as a “world-whole” necessarily implies nature’s supersensible substrate.28 Because works of genius presuppose the rule that exhibits the Idea of nature’s supersensible substrate, works of genius, as with the beautiful in nature, exhibit nature’s moral purposiveness. The aesthetic experience of the work of genius prompts the reflective judgment to represent the work of genius as being contingently in accord with our minimal rational requirements. That is to say that the work of genius has the capacity to put our cognitive capacities into the state of free harmony, and harmony of the faculties is a condition of any cognition in general.29 But the principle of 28

29

Kant’s move from the Idea of a “world-whole” to the Idea of the “highest intelligence” issues from the “proper principle of reason in general [Principium der reinen Vernunft]” (KrV, A307/B364), that is, the principle to find the unconditioned for everything conditioned: “For if the greatest possible empirical use of my reason is grounded on an idea […] which in itself can never be presented adequately in experience, even though it is unavoidably necessary for approximating to the highest possible degree of empirical unity, then I am not only warranted but even compelled to realize this idea, i.e., to posit for it an actual object […] as a ground of that systematic unity” (KrV, A677/B705; my emphasis – LO). The Idea of the “world-whole” relates to the Idea of the “highest intelligence” as conditioned to something that is unconditioned. This is because if it were to exist as an object and not just as an Idea of our reason, it would require intelligence other than ours for its existence, which, in turn, would not depend on anything else as a condition of its possibility. See, for example, KU, 5: 217f., 238, 281, 290.

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nature’s purposiveness exhibited in the work of genius, like the principle of nature’s purposiveness exhibited in the beauty of nature, suggests also that nature may be in accord with the maximal demands of our rationality, that is, with the ends of our rationality, or morality. Because the works of genius elicit the free harmony of the faculties, they facilitate the transition to the supersensible “within.”30 However, since works of genius exhibit nature’s purposiveness, they indirectly, or symbolically, like the beauty of nature, exhibit the Idea of the highest good and, therefore, provide the transition to the supersensible “without.” Thus, aesthetic experience of a work of genius, just as aesthetic experience of the beauty of nature, serves as a sign that what we hope may in fact be realizable, and it is in this capacity that works of genius and beauty of nature serve as a source of moral motivation. That is not to say, however, that the moral significance of works of art and natural beauty is incompatible with Kant’s notion of autonomy. The Kantian moral agent need not rely on works of genius and natural beauty in order to have an incentive to be moral. Works of genius reinforce only our feeling that nature is cooperative with our moral ends and, therefore, that our moral efforts will not be in vain. Thus, in contrast to Allison, I conclude that works of genius, like the beauty of nature, enable a transition both to the supersensible “without” and the supersensible “within.”31

4.4

The Cognitive Aspect of Aesthetic Experience: Beauty as a “Kind of Cognition”

Acknowledging that beauty serves as an indirect schematization of a specific, although undetermined, conceptual content helps to explain why Kant refers to the presentations of the work of fine art as “kinds 30

31

As already mentioned earlier, the role of human psychology and the analogy between the disinterestedness of aesthetic pleasure and moral feeling is not to be gainsaid. This is the aspect of the connection between aesthetic experience and morality emphasized in Paul Guyer’s writings. However, this psychological connection is marginal to the project of the third Critique insofar as it sidesteps the deeper systematic significance of this work and the role of reflective judgment in providing a quasi-objective reality or indirect exhibition of the transcendent Ideas of reason. The fact that the free harmony of the faculties per se (i.e., without taking into account the aesthetic object in the world as its cause) indirectly schematizes the transcendent Idea of reason will be the topic of the next chapter. My argument here also serves as the answer to Anne Margaret Baxley who, along Allison’s lines, argues thusly: “Kant holds, further, that there is a close kinship between the harmony of nature with our cognitive aims made manifest in nature’s presentation of beautiful forms and an analogous harmony of nature with our moral aims (which we take to be suggested by any manifestations of nature’s aesthetic purposiveness). As moral agents striving to pursue our moral ends in the world, these ‘hints’ or ‘traces’ of nature’s moral purposiveness undoubtedly interest us and give us pleasure, because they give us reason to suppose that our moral efforts are not completely in vain. But

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of cognition” (Erkenntnisarten) (KU, §44, 5: 305).32 This claim is puzzling when compared to Kant’s persistent contrary claims that aesthetic judgments, as non-determinative judgments, do not use the concepts of the understanding for the purpose of determining the intuition, and, hence, cannot yield cognition of the object. But the tension between Kant’s insistence on the autonomy of aesthetic judgment (its nondeterminative and, hence, noncognitive aspect) and his claim that aesthetic experience nevertheless has a cognitive dimension is resolved when Kant’s qualification of the latter as “kinds of cognition” is taken seriously (KU, §44, 5: 305, my emphasis – LO). The literature in Kant’s aesthetics most commonly emphasizes a negative significance of the structural parallel between the Ideas of reason and aesthetic Ideas, that is, the fact that neither of them can yield knowledge in the proper Kantian sense. However, if we emphasize the positive significance of this structural parallel – that is, the fact that aesthetic Ideas serve as a sensuous counterpart of the Ideas of reason, or more precisely, the Idea of the highest good – then we can understand Kant’s claim that presentations of works of fine art and beauty in general are “kinds of cognition.” For cognition, it is not sufficient to have concepts, rather, those concepts require a corresponding intuition. The Ideas of reason cannot have a corresponding intuition in empirical reality. However, the experience of beauty and aesthetic Ideas evoked by the beauty of nature and art indirectly or analogically exhibit the Idea of the highest good. Thus, although beauty can never provide a direct intuition for the Idea of the highest good, it affords a “kind of cognition” insofar as it serves as an indirect or symbolic presentation of this Idea. Furthermore, beauty (of both nature and art) serves as a sign, a nod from nature, that what we postulate must be possible on moral grounds may in fact be so. This sign can have a merely psychological significance (i.e., with time and continuous experience of hindrances to ends of practical reason beauty can help maintain the existent moral disposition). But the

32

since objects of art are, after all, products of art, not nature, by definition they could provide no such indications of nature’s moral purposiveness” (Baxley 2005, 40). In the footnote to this passage Baxley admits that “Kant’s theory of genius complicates matters for him on this point,” but she herself never ventures to explain how. (See Baxley 2005, 45, 29n.) It should not go unacknowledged that in this comment Kant is also paying a tribute to Baumgarten and his view that aesthetic experience is a form of cognition. For Baumgarten, cognition afforded by aesthetic experience is a “confused” and not a “distinct” cognition. The former type of cognition is reached by means of our sensibility and the latter by means of concepts. Although Kant may be alluding to Baumgarten, the cognitive aspect of aesthetic experience for Kant, as I will show, is consistent with his own theory of knowledge and his own Critical system.

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significance of this sign can move beyond the merely psychological effects: it helps reinforce the view that the highest good must have an “objective theoretical reality” (KU, §88, 5: 453) and not merely a “subjectively practical reality” (KU, §88, 5: 453), to wit, the experience of beauty reinforces the view that the final end must be the end of nature. That is to say that in aesthetic reflection on beautiful objects of nature and works of genius we receive signs of the real possibility of the highest good and, thus, we represent nature and the world as having the final end of creation (the highest good) as its own end. Thus, another aspect of the cognitive element of aesthetic experience in Kant can be related to the practical cognition that pertains to moral Glaube insofar as the Idea of the highest good together with the necessary conditions of its realization, that is, the object of moral Glaube, is not merely intellectually “conceived” (KU, §88, 5: 455) as possible but is now by means of reflective judgment indirectly or symbolically “perceived” in the beauty of nature and the products of artistic geniuses. My contention that we should interpret the meaning of Kant’s characterization of aesthetic presentations as “kinds of cognition” in relation to the indirect or symbolic presentation of the Idea of the highest good, and to Kant’s notion of “practical cognition” in moral Glaube, should be compared to other accounts of cognitive aspects of Kant’s aesthetics in the current literature. I distinguish two such interpretations. In the first, an aesthetic judgment is noncognitive insofar as it is not a determinative judgment. However, it is cognitive insofar as it is a judgment at all as opposed to a sensation, and, hence, it pronounces an object beautiful in such a way that this will be universally true of the object. According to this view, Kant’s notion of aesthetic experience is both subjective and objective. It is subjective because it is an outcome of the way in which the cognitive powers of the subject are affected. It is objective because it has the capacity to tell us something about the object such that this claim has universal validity. This cognitive aspect of aesthetic judgment involves a “narrow notion of cognition.”33 In the second interpretation, Kant’s claim that representations of fine art are modes of cognition is a desperate attempt on his part to reconnect aesthetics to truth from which it was divorced. On this view, Kant in the third Critique already anticipates Hegel’s argument according to which aesthetic experience instantiates the unity of concept and intuition and “in which form as condition is not separated from what it informs.”34 On this interpretation, art affords the cognition of the dialectical path of the “spirit” (Geist). 33 34

See Ameriks 2003, 288. See Bernstein 1992, 59.

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I take my interpretation of the cognitive dimension of aesthetic judgment to occupy a middle position between the two above-summarized views. The first view, although consistent with my position, focuses on the cognitive element in aesthetic experience on a purely aesthetic level, while I believe that Kant’s own assertions with regard to the cognitive element of aesthetic experience are also made on a meta-aesthetic level, that is, with respect to the necessary connection between beauty and morality. I take the second view to bring Kant too close to Hegel. In this section, I argued that the cognitive aspect of aesthetic experience, or the possibility of the supersensible being accessible to our knowledge in aesthetic experience, is at best possible in relation to Kant’s notion of “practical cognition.”

4.5

Conclusion and Evaluation

In this chapter, I have argued that for Kant the experience of beauty indirectly or symbolically presents the Idea of the highest good. Because the experience of beauty symbolically presents the Idea of the highest good, it serves as a sign that what practical reason postulates ought to be the case in virtue of the truth of the moral law may in fact be real. This has a psychological effect on a moral agent insofar as it strengthens her motivation to persist in the pursuit of the realization of the highest good in the face of obstacles she may encounter in the empirical world. However, by indirectly exhibiting he Idea of the highest good and thereby reinforcing the realism of moral Glaube, the experience of beauty receives a cognitive element that is best interpreted in connection to practical cognition. In this chapter, I have also argued that Kant’s aesthetics allows for a special status for fine art as the art of genius in Kant’s moral teleology. In other words, I have argued that – if we take the meaning of “nature” in Kant’s definition of genius as nature in its noumenal sense – Kant does not privilege the moral significance of the beauty of nature over the moral significance of the beauty of fine art understood as works of genius. Works of genius exhibit nature’s moral purposiveness to the same extent as the beauty of nature exhibits nature’s moral purposiveness. But this demonstration appears to leave us with a disappointing conclusion. According to Kant, then, works of genius do not satisfy any special need of human beings that cannot already be satisfied with the beauty of nature. It seems that, after all, Kant’s discussion of fine art remains, as already noted by some commentators, “parergonal to Kant’s theory of taste.”35 35

Allison 2001, 272.

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Yet, in Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History (1786) Kant presents us with a picture of the “history of freedom beginning with evil” (MAM, 8: 115) but at the same time a “progression from worse to better” for the species as a whole (MAM, 8: 115). Mankind, according to Kant, begins in the state of nature as a state of innocence and, due to its rational nature, it engages in the exercise of free choice. The latter represents a “fall” (ein Fall) and a human temptation to commit evil as man struggles to choose between the ends demanded by his noumenal nature and the ends demanded by his phenomenal nature (MAM, 8: 115). But, at the same time, it marks the beginning of man’s path toward the fulfillment of his “moral destiny as species” (MAM, 8: 116). Kant envisions this teleological progression of human history as a constant struggle between man’s culture and nature. By the former, Kant means the realm of humanity’s free and rational production. By the latter, he means internal nature understood as human instincts and external nature where a human being realizes his or her culture. This struggle ends when “art, when it reaches perfection, once more becomes nature—and this is the ultimate goal of man’s moral destiny” (MAM, 8: 117–18). Put differently, the struggle ends with the achievement of the highest good, where there is no obstacle to either our internal or external nature, or to the realization of our human moral vocation. That said, we should note that in the Critique of Judgment Kant reveals that in the course of making progress toward the end of our moral destiny our “later age […] will always be further from nature” (KU, §60, 5: 356).36 By moving away from nature it will also move further away from the examples of its moral purposiveness that serve as a reminder of the course human culture should take in order to ensure the development toward fulfillment of our moral destiny. Although it is never explicitly stated by Kant, the discussion in this chapter has given sufficient reasons for suggesting that works of genius – as works that exist within the realm of human culture while at the same time representing nature’s moral purposiveness – will continue to serve, as we move increasingly further away from nature, as culture’s reminders of our moral destiny. Although on Kant’s view we can never have an insight into the course of human history, we can have reasonable hope, based on some hints and traces, including the occurrences of genius in human history, that the development of human history follows some higher wisdom toward the fulfillment of the end of human rationality. 36

Gregg Horowitz’s essay (Horowitz 2006) brought my attention to this passage.

chapter 5

The Free Harmony of the Faculties and the Primacy of Imagination in Kant’s Aesthetic Judgment The “Moral Image” of the “Supersensible Within”

In both the First and Second Introduction to the Critique of Judgment, Kant claims that aesthetic judgment is essential to the project of the critique. This is because in comparison to other forms of reflective judgment, aesthetic judgment contains its principle “entirely a priori” (ZEKU, 5: 193).1 Judgment in its aesthetic, unlike in its teleological reflection, does not borrow an already available principle from another faculty, that is, reason. Thus, “critique of taste […] discloses, when treated from a transcendental point of view, by the way in which it fills in a gap in the system of our cognitive faculties, a striking and […] very promising prospect for a complete system of all the powers of the mind, insofar as they are related in their vocation not only to the sensible but also to the supersensible” (EEKU, 20: 244). Most Kant commentators focus on the epistemological import of Kant’s claim and, hence, argue that the question of what it means for aesthetic judgment to have its own a priori principle can best be answered by exploring the connection between aesthetic judgment and cognition.2 Very few commentators emphasize the part of Kant’s claim that aesthetic judgment completes the system of the powers of the mind in its “vocation” (Bestimmung) of relating the sensible to the supersensible. In other words, very few commentators emphasize that epistemological aspects of aesthetic experience and the logical structure of aesthetic judgment cannot be considered in isolation from what Kant understood to be human beings’ ultimate vocation, that is, morality, together with the supersensible conditions of its realization.3 1 2

3

See also EEKU, 20: 244. For example, consider Budd 2001, Ginsborg 1990a, 1990b, 1997, 2015, Guyer 1997, Henrich 1992, Hughes 2007, Kern 2000, Kukla 2006, Longuenesse 2003a, 2003b, 2006, and 1998, 164, Makkreel 1990, Rush 2001, Seel 1988, Zuckert 2007. I do not wish to suggest that all of these authors exclusively focus on exploring the connection between aesthetic judgment and cognition (consider for example Hughes 2007, ch. 8) but this is their predominant concern. Some authors even go so far as to contend that epistemological aspects of Kant’s reflective judgment can and should be considered in isolation from Kant’s practical concerns. See Zuckert 2007, 18–19.

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I shall argue that in order to explain Kant’s claim that aesthetic judgment contains its principle “entirely a priori,” or that aesthetic judgment is in possession of its own a priori principle,4 we need to look into Kant’s notion of the free harmony of the faculties. But contrary to the existing Kant literature, I will show that in order to understand the logic of the free harmony of the faculties we should pay closer attention to Kant’s formulation of reflection in aesthetic judgment as “an action of the power of imagination” (V-Met/Dohna, 28: 675–76) and not as “the logical actus of the understanding” (V-Lo/Jäsche, 9: 94). I contend that the process of schematization

4

To be sure, a good number of interpreters argue that for Kant aesthetic experience is an expression of morality, or that beauty for Kant, in some general way, is important for morality. Some authors emphasize a contingent fit between our cognitive faculties and nature in aesthetic experience as a sign that our moral ends can be realized in the world; others focus on the analogy between the disinterested nature of aesthetic pleasure and moral feeling. But I am interested only in those interpretations that take as their main point of reference (explicitly or implicitly) the above-cited passage from the First Introduction. In other words, I am interested in those who contend that (a) at the core of aesthetic judgment’s connection to morality is relating the sensible to the supersensible, and that (b) the connection of aesthetic experience to the supersensible should be sought in the logical structure of aesthetic judgment, that is, the free harmony of the faculties and the universal that is schematized in this free harmony. While the emphasis on the fit between nature and our cognitive faculties in aesthetic experience illuminates the unifying role of aesthetic judgment between theoretical and practical reason with respect to the supersensible outside of us that grounds the objects, the connection to morality emphasized in this chapter can illuminate the unifying role of aesthetic judgment with respect to the “supersensible in us” (KU, §57, 5: 341). And this approach has not received sufficient attention in Kant scholarship. There are those who do (a) but do not do (b). For example, Paul Guyer later revises his earlier position, the one he defends in Guyer 1979, and claims that “[t]he meaning of the aesthetic cannot be fully plumbed as long as this realm of human experience is entirely isolated from the moral dimensions” (Guyer 1996, 3–4). But even in his revised view Guyer does not seek the connection between aesthetics and morality in the logical structures of aesthetic judgment, but in Kant’s theory of disinterested pleasure and, hence, in Kant’s psychology. See Guyer 1996, 4, and ch. 1 and 2. See also Guyer 1997, ch. 11, 321–31. Recki 2001 similarly argues that epistemological issues in Kant’s aesthetic theory cannot be considered in isolation from Kant’s practical philosophy (see esp. ch. 2, 3, and 6). But her primary emphasis is on the practical significance of the feeling of pleasure in aesthetic judgment and, thus, as for Guyer, on Kant’s psychology. Consequently, the logical structure of aesthetic judgment that is the transcendental ground of this pleasure is not her central focus. There are also those who do (b) but do not do (a). Allison 2001 (esp. ch. 9) and Longuenesse 2006 search for connections to Kant’s practical philosophy in the logical structure of Kant’s aesthetic judgment. However, they still conceive reflection in aesthetic judgment primarily as the logical act of the understanding and not imagination and, therefore, miss the genuine connection aesthetic judgment provides to the supersensible. I engage their works in more detail in the discussion that follows. Kant already reports the discovery of a new a priori principle that now completes the system of our cognitive faculties in his letter to Reinhold of December 28 and 31, 1787 (Br, 10: 513–16). But, as Förster points out well, the discovery of reflective judgment as an autonomous faculty must have occurred when Kant was preparing the second edition of KrV. This can be discerned from the revised footnote at B35–36 and by the fact that the catalogue for the Leipzig book fair of Easter 1787 already announced a Groundwork for a Critique of Taste by Kant (see Förster 2000, 178, 10n). Guyer argues that Kant’s lectures on anthropology indicate that Kant recognized some sense in which judgments of taste are a priori as early as 1772–1773. With the letter to Reinhold and his beginning of the project of the Critique of Judgment Kant only understood better the role of aesthetic judgment within his Critical system. See Guyer 2005b.

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and the rule that governs and orders the manifold in aesthetic judgment is the imagination’s own achievement, the achievement of the productive synthesis of the “fictive faculty” (Dichtungsvermögen), entirely independent of the understanding, considered either as a form of a concept in general,5 or as a multiplicity of determinate concepts.6 This, however, does not entail that the faculty of understanding is not necessary in aesthetic reflection and that, for Kant, aesthetic experience is not grounded in judgment. In other words, the claim does not entail that in aesthetic reflection we cannot distinguish between the particular (i.e., the manifold of the imagination) and the universal (i.e., the rule under which the manifold is to be subsumed) because in aesthetic reflection the manifold has met all the conditions for normal cognition except for the subsumption of the manifold under a determinate concept of the understanding.7 Nor does it entail the view that in aesthetic reflection we cannot distinguish between the particular and the universal, contingency and necessity, which is characteristic of the discursive and limited human understanding, because this distinction has somehow been overcome.8 The view that aesthetic reflection in Kant is “an action of the power of imagination” entails the view that the imagination, following its own law, provides, as it were, a schema of a universal that goes over and above the formal conditions of the possibility of empirical cognition while still being consistent with the latter.9 In schematizing independently of the 5 6

7

8

9

See Allison 2001, 171 and also Kern 2000, 60. This is the view that Paul Guyer calls “multicognitive” in Guyer 2005b, 81 and Andrea Kern calls “hermeneutical” in Kern 2000, 55. The proponents of this interpretation consider the free play as a multiplicity of possible conceptual determinations evoked by the beautiful object without settling on any single one. Some proponents of this view, and the list is not intended to be exhaustive, are Budd 2001, Rush 2001, and Allison 2001. This is the view that Paul Guyer calls “precognitive” (see Guyer 2005b, 81) and Andrea Kern calls “material” (see Kern 2000, 51). Some proponents of this view, and the list, again, is not intended to be exhaustive, are Crawford 1974, Ginsborg 1990a, 1990b, 1997, and 2015, Henrich 1992, Longuenesse 1998, 2003a, 2003b, 2006, Meerbote 1982. This is the view held by Hegel in Hegel 1986, 33–36 [339–41]. Among contemporary commentators of Kant, Eckart Förster defends this view in Förster 2000 and 2003. I call this interpretation “protoHegelian” because it takes Kant’s account of aesthetic reflection to be a precursor of Hegel’s Idea. My view then could be called, what Guyer identifies to be his own approach to the free harmony, “metacognitive” (see Guyer 2005b, 98). On this view, the free harmony of the faculties meets the discursive demands of the understanding “in a way that goes beyond anything required for or dictated by satisfaction of the determinate concept or concepts on which mere identification of the object depends” (Guyer 2005b, 98–99). But Guyer neither emphasizes the work of imagination in aesthetic reflection, nor elaborates much on what this “going beyond” mere satisfaction of determinate concepts would consist in. Ameriks argues that the free harmony of the faculties in aesthetic judgment presupposes a “special proportion” of the cognitive faculties that “goes beyond the general harmony needed for cognition” (Ameriks 2003, 318) although it is consistent with the discursive demands of the understanding, that is, “is compatible with the harmony of the faculties required for cognition” (Ameriks 2003, 318). Hence, Ameriks could also be included in this category.

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understanding while at the same time contingently harmonizing with its discursive demands, the imagination intimates the supersensible “ground” (Grund) of freedom (KU, §59, 5: 353) that manifests itself as the “feeling of life” (Lebensgefühl), or the feeling of the “power [Vermögen] of a substance to determine itself” (MAN, 4: 544).10 Thus, while the previous chapter argued that aesthetic experience, with reference to the aesthetic object in the world that occasions this experience, affords a connection to the “supersensible without,” in this chapter, I will show that aesthetic experience, with reference to the experiencing subject, affords a connection to the “supersensible within.” I proceed by discussing in Section 5.1 reflection and schematization in aesthetic judgment with the view of emphasizing that aesthetic reflection is “an action of the power of imagination” (V-Met/Dohna, 28: 675–76) and not, as on the “multicognitivist” interpretation, the “logical actus of the understanding” (V-Lo/Jäsche, 9: 94). In Section 5.2, I contend that Kant’s conception of imagination in the A Deduction of the first Critique is the first place where to look for Kant’s view of imagination as a faculty capable of following its own law. In Section 5.3, I claim that Kant, in his discussion of the free play of the faculties, reaffirms the imagination’s freedom that he asserts for the first time in the A Deduction and now in the form of the productive synthesis of the fictive power of imagination. In Section 5.4, I show how imagination’s fictive power in its schematizing process sensibly intimates the supersensible ground of freedom, that is, the soul. And, finally, in Section 5.5, I offer some concluding remarks, including an evaluation of my own position.

5.1 Reflection and Schematization in Aesthetic Judgment In Kant scholarship, reflection and schematization in aesthetic judgment has been discussed primarily in reference to Kant’s notion of logical reflection that he describes as “the logical actus of the understanding” 10

In Kant scholarship, the distinction between Kant’s notion of the “supersensible ground of freedom” and his notion of “transcendental freedom” is often overlooked. But these concepts are very different. In §59 of KU, Kant distinguishes between “freedom,” and that which is its “ground,” and the “supersensible” that is “connected” with this “ground” (KU, §59, 5: 353). He also writes in the paragraph before he introduces the concept of freedom’s “ground” that by the notion “ground” it is often meant “support, basis” (Stütze, Basis) (KU, §59, 5: 352). Thus, on the one hand we should distinguish transcendental freedom understood as a spontaneous causation, that is, a cause that is not determined by a preceding cause, and on the other hand that which “supports” this spontaneous causality in the noumenal realm and which, I contend, refers to, what in the philosophical tradition that Kant to some extent inherits, was known as the “soul” moved by the “principle of life.”

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(V-Lo/Jäsche, 9: 94).11 Proponents of this approach take their position to be consistent with Kant’s claim that in aesthetic judgment, imagination “schematizes without a concept” (KU, §35, 5: 287) insofar as it does not schematize a determinate concept of the understanding, but, rather, “a concept in general” (EEKU, 20: 223). Consequently, on this view, the role of imagination in aesthetic reflection has received short shrift because it is still conceived to be in the service of the understanding that has, if not the determinate, now “the indeterminate norm-setting role.”12 This view, however, is contrary to Kant’s own assertion that in aesthetic judgment “the understanding is in the service of the imagination and not vice versa” (KU, §22, 5: 242). In the First Introduction, Kant defines reflection in general as follows: “To reflect (to consider) is to compare and to hold together given representations either with others or with one’s faculty of cognition, in relation to a concept thereby made possible” (EEKU, 20: 211). The definition of reflection in the above passage includes both – what Kant in the first Critique calls – “logical” and “transcendental” reflection (KrV, A261–62/B317–18). By “logical reflection” Kant understands the comparison of representations with one another in “complete abstraction from the cognitive power to which the given representations belong” (KrV, A263/B319). Put differently, logical reflection is a determination of common content irrespective of whether the content of representations is pure or empirical and, instead, it is aimed at the generation of a representation’s universal form. Transcendental reflection, on the other hand, refers to the comparison of given representations with one’s faculty of cognition. It is, as Kant formulates this in the Amphiboly chapter of the first Critique, “the action through which I make the comparison of representations in general with the cognitive power in which they are situated, and through which I distinguish whether they are to be compared to one another as belonging to the pure understanding or to pure intuition” (KrV, A261/B317). Thus, “transcendental reflection” is a comparison of representations that is sensitive to the origin of their content, that is, whether the content is pure or empirical or whether it belongs to understanding or sensibility. 11 12

Henry Allison even goes so far as to claim that on the “act of (logical) reflection […] the entire architecture of the third Critique is ultimately based” (Allison 2001, 20). Zuckert 2007, 288. Henry Allison also contends that the role of imagination in aesthetic reflection is not much different from its role in cognitive judgments, that is, its role is secondary and subordinate to the role of the understanding. See Allison 2001, 51.

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Kant’s discussion of logical reflection in his lectures on logic is focused primarily on the comparison of sensible representations that gives rise to the formation of empirical concepts: To make concepts out of representations one must thus be able to compare, to reflect, and to abstract, for these three logical operations of the understanding are the essential and universal conditions for generation of every concept whatsoever. I see, e.g., a spruce, a willow, and a linden. By first comparing these objects with one another I note that they are different from one another in regard to the trunk, the branches, the leaves, etc.; but next I reflect on that which they have in common among themselves, trunk, branches, and leaves themselves, and I abstract from the quantity, the figure, etc., of these; thus I acquire a concept of a tree. (V-Lo/ Jäsche, 9: 94–95)

It has already been discussed in the secondary literature that the above described logical operations of comparison, reflection and abstraction should not be understood chronologically, but as different aspects of one single activity. In other words, the act of comparison of the differences of representations depends on reflection of the similarities in representations and abstraction from their dissimilarities.13 Furthermore, the account of concept formation described in the passage above seems circular, that is, we are supposed to arrive at the concept of a tree by reflecting on those features of the object in virtue of which we recognize it to be a tree.14 But comparison, reflection and abstraction, Longuenesse argues, should be seen as activities performed on schemata rather than on impressions or images. Thus, one compares “what is universal in the rule of our apprehension”15 of the material given in sensible intuition, that is, schemata, in order to find common features elevated through abstraction into the marks of concepts applied in judgments. Although Kant is never explicit with respect to the question of how the activity of comparison/reflection/ abstraction in the lectures on logic relates to his discussion of reflection in the Amphiboly chapter, Longuenesse suggests that the concepts of comparison in the Amphiboly chapter are also the concepts that guide comparison/reflection/abstraction in the generation of empirical concepts.16 The schemata on which the operation of comparison/reflection/abstraction is performed are generated by the very same concepts of reflection that guide 13 14 15 16

See Longuenesse 1998, 116 and also Allison 2001, 22. This problem of circularity is formulated by Ginsborg and Allison. See Ginsborg 1997, 53 and Allison 2001, 22 respectively. Refl 2880, 16: 557; cited also in Longuenesse 1998, 16. The difference is that “in the latter case the issue is concept formation for which forms of judgment serve as guides, whereas in the former case, already formed concepts are compared in order to be combined in judgments” (Longuenesse 1998, 127).

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the comparison of schemata toward the generation of empirical concepts. Therefore, the solution to the circularity implicit in Kant’s account of empirical concept formation presupposes, at least on Longuenesse’s view, that the logical operations of judgment, or our “capacity to judge,” are implicit in our experience from the ground up. Kant describes reflection specifically in aesthetic judgment as follows: But since in the mere reflection on a perception it is not a matter of a determinate concept, but in general only of reflecting on the rule concerning a perception on behalf of the understanding, as a faculty of concepts, it can readily be seen that in a merely reflecting judgment imagination and understanding are considered in the relation to each other in which they must stand in the power of judgment in general, as compared with the relation in which they actually stand in the case of a given perception. (EEKU, 20: 220)

When reflection, as described above, is compared with Kant’s general definition of reflection in the First Introduction cited earlier, we see that the reflection of aesthetic judgments (1) is to be understood as reflection on given representations; (2) unlike logical reflection it is not a reflection that includes comparison of representations with one another; rather, (3) like transcendental reflection, it compares the given representation with our faculty of cognition, that is, understanding. Furthermore, (4) unlike logical reflection it is not a comparison of representations directed toward generation and isolation of common marks and, hence, formation of concepts. But (5) like logical reflection it is an activity performed on schemata, that is, “on the rule concerning a perception” (EEKU, 20: 220–21).17 To claim that there is a rule in perception is to claim a universality that is implicit in the organization of the sensible manifold that can potentially be discursively represented in a concept. Thus, in the above passage Kant suggests that the normative relation between imagination and understanding, the relation in which they “must stand” if a judgment is to be a cognitive judgment (i.e., the fact that imagination must exhibit a determinate concept of the understanding), is compared to the actual relation between imagination and understanding in aesthetic perception of the object. In the following passage Kant describes further the relation between imagination and understanding in aesthetic reflection: If, then, the form of a given object in empirical intuition is so constituted that the apprehension [Auffassung] of its manifold in the imagination agrees [übereinkommt] with the presentation [Darstellung] of a concept of the understanding (though which concept be undetermined), then in the mere 17

Cf. Allison 2001, 45–46.

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The Free Harmony of the Faculties reflection understanding and imagination mutually agree for the advancement of their business, and the object will be perceived as purposive merely for the power of judgment, hence, purposiveness itself will be considered as merely subjective; for which further no determinate concept of the object at all is required nor is one thereby generated, and the judgment itself is not a cognitive judgment. —Such a judgment is called an aesthetic judgment of reflection. (EEKU, 20: 221)

Henry Allison, by contending that some form of logical reflection is also at the core of aesthetic reflection, understands the “mutual agreement” (Zusammenstimmung) (EEKU, 20: 221) of imagination and understanding in aesthetic judgment to consist in the fact that the imagination, or the organization of the manifold, schematizes not a specific concept of the understanding but the “form of a concept in general.”18 This agreement of imagination and understanding, their harmony, is the normative ground of aesthetic judgment in virtue of which we can demand that others ought to agree with us in our aesthetic assessment. I do not wish to dispute the claim that the agreement of imagination and understanding constitutes the normative ground of aesthetic judgment. This is how we judge that the object is subjectively purposive for our cognitive faculties and is the logical ground of the feeling of pleasure in our judgment of beauty. But what remains questionable in this claim is that, in its agreement with the understanding, the imagination schematizes a “form of a concept in general” by which Allison understands a “pattern of order (form), which suggests an indeterminate number of possible schematizations (or conceptualizations), none of which is fully adequate, thereby occasioning further reflection and engagement with the object.”19 Although Kant’s text in many ways supports such “multicognitive” interpretations of the free harmony,20 18

19

20

Allison 2001, 171. Consider also Allison’s following claim: “the imagination, under the general direction of the understanding, provides an apprehended content that presents itself as containing ‘something universal in itself’” (Allison 2001, 50; my emphasis – LO). To be sure, this view is not advanced without some textual support. In the First Introduction, Kant refers to the relation of the faculties in aesthetic judgment as affording “the presentation of a concept in general” (KU, EE, 20: 223). However, as I show below, we can make sense of Kant’s claim without linking closely aesthetic reflection to logical reflection and thereby undermining contingency and the unique role of imagination in aesthetic judgment. Ibid., 51. Paul Guyer is right to remark that the meaning of “the form of a concept in general” in Allison’s account is not entirely clear. (See Guyer 2005b, 85.) One possibility, as Guyer suggests, is to think of this form of a concept in general as a spatio-temporal synthesis required by every concept irrespective of its particular content. I have in mind here Kant’s notion of “aesthetic ideas” as “that representation of the imagination that occasions much thinking though without it being possible for any determinate thought, i.e., concept, to be adequate to it, which consequently, no language fully attains or can make intelligible” (KU, §49, 5: 314).

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to claim that imagination “schematizes the form of a concept in general” undermines the element of contingency in the agreement between understanding and imagination, which is, at the core of the principle of purposiveness. This is because the rule exhibited in the manifold must be understood as the rule of the understanding, that is, if not the rule of its single determinate concept, then as a rule of the concept of the object in its “general form.” Furthermore, on this view, schematization in aesthetic judgment is the function of our discursive capacities, just as this is the case in the empirical concept formation described in Jäsche Logik, or at least on Longuenesse’s interpretation that Allison closely follows. The sole difference between the two processes of schematization is that the latter results in empirical concept formation and the former in an “as yet undetermined concept” without a specific content. Yet, we are not supposed to think of this schema as being the result of a discursive synthesis of the understanding. This is not to deny aesthetic judgment’s use of empirical concepts. On the contrary, every aesthetic judgment is a judgment about a specific object (whether a specific object of nature or a work of art) and it presupposes our use of many different determinate concepts, which allow us to talk meaningfully about the aesthetic object. But the schematization in aesthetic judgment should not be immediately identified with the schematization of the understanding. This would be equivalent to saying that imagination “serves” the understanding. But the fact that in the free harmony imagination is a sensible exhibition of the faculty of the understanding is rather a fortunate byproduct of the fact that imagination schematizes entirely independently of the discursive synthesis of the understanding. And the content of the manifold is neither identical to any specific concept of the understanding nor to understanding as a whole. In his lectures on metaphysics, Kant describes the free harmony of the faculties in aesthetic judgment as follows: Aesthetic power of judgment is the faculty for making oneself conscious through a representation of the agreement of sensibility with the understanding. Everything beautiful rests upon this agreement. Power of judgment in general: subsumption of an intuition under a given concept of the understanding. This is an action of the determining power of judgment […] If we subsume merely under our faculty of concepts—then this is reflection—an action of the power of imagination, the merely reflecting power of judgment […] For the power of imagination is still in its freedom […]—schematizing. (V-Met/Dohna, 28: 675–76; my emphasis – LO)21 21

The passage is taken from the lecture notes of Kant’s student Graf Heinrich Ludwig Adolph zu Dohna-Wundlacken. The notes originated in 1792–1793.

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In the passage above, just as in §35 of the third Critique, Kant contrasts subsumption “under our faculty of concepts” in aesthetic judgments to subsumption of an intuition “under a given concept” in determinative judgments. But what is peculiar in this citation is Kant’s characterization of reflection in aesthetic judgment as “an action of the power of imagination” and of schematization as an act of imagination “in its freedom,” that is, freedom from the understanding. The passage above strongly suggests that, contrary to Henry Allison’s view, reflection in aesthetic judgments should be sharply divorced from reflection in Jäsche Logik, which Kant describes as “[t]he logical actus of the understanding” (V-Lo/Jäsche, 9: 94). In order to understand how imagination can apprehend a manifold so that it generates a schema and do so even while fully independent of the discursive functions of the understanding, we need to turn briefly to Kant’s discussion of imagination in the first Critique.

5.2

Imagination in the A-Deduction22

In the A-Deduction of the first Critique, Kant defines imagination as a faculty of “synthesis in general” (KrV, A78/B104), a faculty that unifies individual representations. The synthesis of imagination – which “brings unity to the mere synthesis of different representations in an intuition,” and thereby “brings transcendental content into its representations,” or put differently, the synthesis that transforms intuitions into representations of objects with their concrete spatio-temporal relations – is guided by pure concepts of the understanding (KrV, A79/B105).23 For Kant’s account of the function of imagination that is independent of the understanding, 22

23

I will be focusing on Kant’s discussion of imagination in the A Deduction because in the B Deduction imagination is clearly subordinated to the function of the understanding. While many commentators will argue that in the B Deduction Kant changed his mind for the right reasons and that imagination for him does not play an independent role in the formation of empirical judgments, I maintain that Kant’s B-Deduction is his change of focus rather than his change of mind. In the B Deduction, Kant downplays the role of imagination because he is more interested in emphasizing the achievements of the understanding. I am in agreement here with Rolf-Peter Horstmann and Sarah Gibbons. See Horstmann 2018, 48–49 and Gibbons 1994, ch. 1. My view is further strengthened by the fact that Kant continues to assert the freedom of imagination’s synthesis from the understanding in both his lectures on metaphysics as well as in his lectures on anthropology, which date after the second edition of the first Critique, that is, after 1787. In the A edition of KrV this synthesis is called “the synthesis of recognition in the concept” (KrV, A103) and in KU Kant refers to this synthesis as “comprehension, i.e., the synthetic unity of the consciousness of this manifold in the concept of an object (apperceptio comprehensiva)” (EEKU, 20: 220).

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one must focus on the synthesis of apprehension. The latter provides the unity of intuition “as contained in one representation” (KrV, A99) and thereby sets up the conditions in the manifold that “the spontaneity of our thought requires” (KrV, A77/B103). Put differently, it prepares the manifold that would be fit for the synthesizing activity of the understanding. However, this unity of intuition is not achieved by a constitution of objects by the concepts of the understanding. Instead, in the synthesis of apprehension “it is necessary first to run through and then to take together this manifoldness” (KrV, A99). This process of “running through and taking together” is linked for Kant to an ordering of the manifold of intuition in inner sense, that is, time, which further results in transforming “dispersed and separate” perceptions of the manifold into a unified “image” (Bild). Let us now see how exactly. This process of transforming different perceptions into unified intuitions, which is the task of imagination’s synthesis of apprehension, Kant illustrates through the following example: If cinnabar were now red, now black, now light, now heavy, if a human being were now changed into this animal shape, now into that one, if on the longest day the land were covered now with fruits, now with ice and snow […] without the governance of a certain rule to which the appearances are already subjected in themselves, then no empirical synthesis of reproduction could take place. (KrV, A100–A101)

Kant is here referring to the dependence of the synthesis of reproduction on the synthesis of apprehension. The former is based on empirical laws of association and Kant also refers to it as “reproductive imagination” (KrV, B152). The latter is based on a priori laws and Kant refers to it as “productive imagination” (KrV, A123/B152). But what is of interest to us in the above passage is Kant’s description of what a manifold would look like if it were not ordered by the synthesis of apprehension. In other words, when our sensibility is affected, we are faced with a “mere play of our representations” (KrV, A101). That is to say that when in a situation of standing in front of a cinnabar, I experience many other things simultaneously. There may be chirping of birds, intense heat, bright sunlight, along with patches of red color, sense of hardness, etc. The task of the imagination in its synthesis of apprehension is “to run through” (KrV, A99) all these given perceptions and pick out those (e.g., hardness, redness) that will generate a unified image of what later will be recognized, following the conceptual determination of the understanding, as cinnabar. It is only once this condition is met – that is, the formation of an

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image built initially in the synthesis of apprehension out of disorderly perceptions in the mind – that imagination in its synthesis of reproduction can call to mind those perceptions that may not be present in a given intuition, for example, when confronted with redness, the calling to mind the perception of hardness associated with redness that will serve to complete the image of a cinnabar. This unity of intuition accomplished by the synthesis of apprehension must be in accordance with the form of inner sense, that is, it must be temporally ordered: Every intuition contains a manifold in itself, which however would not be represented as such if the mind did not distinguish the time in the succession of impressions on one another; for as contained in one moment no representation can ever be anything other than absolute unity. (KrV, A99)

If the manifold were not temporally ordered, the synthesis of apprehension would not be able to differentiate and pick out those perceptions that could form an image that could be differentiated from other images, an image of an object that is having an impact on the observer now as opposed to an image of an object that had an impact on the observer earlier. For Kant, space and time are not just the forms of empirical intuition, but also intuitions with their own manifold. Hence, Kant claims that the unity of this manifold and therewith our representations of space and time are made possible by the synthesis of apprehension: Now this synthesis of apprehension must also be exercised a priori, i.e., in regard to representations that are not empirical. For without it we could have a priori neither the representations of space nor of time, since these can be generated only through the synthesis of the manifold that sensibility in its original receptivity provides. We therefore have a pure synthesis of apprehension. (KrV, A99)

Thus, a pure synthesis of apprehension would be the one that has pure forms of intuition, and not empirical intuitions, for its objects. In his lectures on metaphysics, Kant refers to the faculty of apprehension as a “faculty of illustration” (Vermögen der Abbildung) and relates it to our representations of time as present. This is because it is a faculty of forming an image of an item that makes at present an impression on me.24 24

See also KrV, B160–61. Heidegger goes even so far as to distinguish three forms of pure synthesis, each defined as a condition of the possibility of time representation: pure synthesis of apprehension, pure synthesis of reproduction, and pure synthesis of recognition in concepts. The first represents present, the second past, and the third future. See Heidegger 1991, 176–88. Heidegger finds the

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While on the one hand synthesis of apprehension should be in accordance with the form of inner sense, it also must be in accordance with the unity of apperception, which Kant calls “an objective ground” (KrV, A122). In other words, imagination in its synthesis must pick out those perceptions in the manifold and unify them into an image so that this collection of perceptions does not conflict with the possibility of a unified and identical subject: [I]t is only because I can combine a manifold of given representations in one consciousness that it is possible for me to represent the identity of the consciousness in these representations itself […] and although it is not yet the consciousness of the synthesis of the representations, it still presupposes the possibility of the latter […] for otherwise I would have as multicolored, diverse a self as I have representations of which I am conscious. (KrV, B134)

Although the unity of intuition accomplished by the synthesis of apprehension is still not “the consciousness of the synthesis of the representations” in a judgment, the synthesis must be performed in a manner that makes the manifold suitable for judgment of a unified and conscious self.25 Kant calls this suitability of appearances for judgment of a single unified self their “affinity” (Affinität) (KrV, A122). In other words, in the synthesis of apprehension the imagination combines the perceptions that fit together into images that will later be subsumed in judgment under suitable concepts. Although the imagination is not entirely free in its synthesis given that, on the one hand, it must conform to the demands of the form of inner sense, and on the other, to the demands of the unity of apperception, the unity of intuition achieved by the synthesis of apprehension is not the accomplishment of the understanding and its categories.26 The imagination forms the unity of intuition that makes it suitable for the discursive

25

26

textual support for his interpretation in V-Met-L1/Pölitz, 28: 235, dated approximately between the winter semester 1775–1776 and the winter semester 1779–1780. While one may conclude that the fact that the imagination is restricted by the unity of apperception is an indication that the imagination observes the rules of the understanding, Horstmann rightly argues that observing the rules of the unity of apperception is not identical with observing the rules of the understanding. To observe the demands of unity connected to the possibility of a unified and identical self is not the same as observing the rules of unity related to the demand for the unity of an object based on the category “unity” in the table of categories. See KrV, B131, Horstmann 2018, 41–41, and Gibbons 1994, 48. Gibbons also aims to distinguish the synthesis of imagination from the rules of the understanding, or concepts. She argues that “the recognition of unity in a concept is distinguishable from the order involved in the synthesis of imagination” (Gibbons 1994, 26) and also that not all the features of the unity of apperception are conceptual (Gibbons 1994, 45–46). This kind of freedom of the imagination Horstmann calls “relative” freedom of the imagination in contrast to the “absolute” freedom of the imagination in its role of transforming physiological states into perceptions. See Horstmann 2018, 42.

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functions of the understanding. Reserving relative autonomy for the faculty of imagination prompts Kant in the A edition of the first Critique to present imagination as a connecting faculty between our sensibility (i.e., receptivity) and understanding (i.e., our spontaneity): “We therefore have a pure imagination, as a fundamental faculty of the human soul, that grounds all cognition a priori. By its means we bring into combination the manifold of intuition on the one side and the condition of the necessary unity of apperception on the other” (KrV, A124). It is this relative freedom of the imagination in the A-Deduction that is again even more strongly reaffirmed by Kant in his account of aesthetic reflection in the third Critique.

5.3

Freedom of Imagination in Aesthetic Reflection

Before we consider the work of imagination in aesthetic reflection in the third Critique, it is useful to turn our attention briefly to Kant’s classification of imagination in his lectures on anthropology. This power of imagination is twofold, a productive and reproductive. The reproductive power is the power to recall images of things that were formerly present to the senses. This power is the foundation of all imitation [Nachahmung] and all memory, where our imagination [Einbildung] only imitates [nachbildet]. The productive power is creative and produces things that were not so present to our senses. […] This productive power is divided into voluntary [willkührliche] and involuntary [unwillkührliche] imagination. The voluntary consists in the fact that a human being exercises the work of his imagination at will. He can represent images and let them disappear at will. The involuntary is called phantasy [Phantasie]. […] The voluntary imagination is creative and fantasy, in contrast, raves [schwärmt], which refers to an involuntary running of images that do not appear to us according to our choosing or resolve, that cannot be guided and ruled at will but, rather, emerge in our nature [Gemüthe] by an accidental occasion. But then it takes its course in the soul according to rules [Gesetzen] so that it is not possible for us to think it clearly. (V-Anth/ Mensch, 25: 945–46)27 27

My translation. These lectures originate from the Winter Semester 1781/1782. They were originally edited by F. C. Starke and published in 1831. Kant discusses these categories of imagination throughout his lectures on anthropology. But only once he starts thinking of aesthetic experience more directly in relation to the understanding and, hence, approaching what in the third Critique he will identify as aesthetic judgment, do we see this exact classification of the imagination into the productive and the reproductive, and the former into Phantasie and willkührliche Einbildungskraft (that he also calls Dichtungsvermögen). The division is repeated almost verbatim in Anthropologie Dohna, based on the lectures delivered 1791/1792.

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I will focus on the productive imagination and in particular the one that can be ruled and to which Kant refers as the “fictive faculty” (Dichtungsvermögen) (V-Anth/Mensch, 25: 945 ff.). He is not always consistent and calls it sometimes simply “fantasy [Phantasie] where […] regularity rules” (V-Anth/Dohna, ch. “On Imagination”).28 This type of imagination is fundamental to any artistic creation, but Kant’s favorite example is poetry or Dichtkunst. In the lectures on anthropology, where Kant discusses the art of poetry in order to emphasize its unique features, he contrasts it with the art of rhetoric (Beredsamkeit). While the latter for Kant is “the art of enlivening the ideas of the understanding by means of sensibility,” the former is “the art of giving to the play of sensibility a unity by means of the understanding” (V-Anth/Pillau, 25: 760). For the art of rhetoric, “the main goal […] is the understanding insofar as it is formed [gebildet] by means of sensibility” (V-Anth/Pillau, 25: 760). For the art of poetry, “sensibility sets the goal and the understanding must only give it unity” (V-Anth/Pillau, 25: 760).29 Thus, both poetry and rhetoric engage the understanding, but they do so in two very different ways. The aims of rhetoric are defined by the understanding, and the imagination, to use the phrase Kant employs in the third Critique, “is in service of the understanding” (KU, §22, 5: 242)30 insofar as it enlivens the concepts of the understanding so that it can emotionally move the audience and have a stronger power of conviction. In poetry, the understanding is in service of the imagination insofar as the imagination connects and synthesizes images in such a way that they can engage the understanding, unlike the unruly Phantasie that connects the manifold, as Kant writes in the Menschenkunde passage cited above, in a manner “so it is not possible for us to think it clearly” (V-Anth/Mensch, 25: 946). By this phrase I take him to mean that the unruly Phantasie connects the manifold in a manner that is not harmonious with the lawfulness of the understanding so that the determinate concepts of the latter cannot find their application in the sensible manifold presented by the former, or if they do, those determinate thoughts could 28

29

30

Kant takes over the concept of the “fictive faculty” or facultas fingendi, which he uses in his lectures on metaphysics and his lectures on anthropology, from Baumgarten’s Metaphysica. The latter describes it as a faculty of “representation of variety as unity” (representatio plurium, ut unius). See for example Baumgarten 2011, §589. My translation. The transcript is based on the lecture notes that originate in the Winter Semester 1777/1778, but the same contrast between the art of poetry and the art of rhetoric can be found in Anthropologie Dohna, dated 1791/1792. For a similar comparison of rhetoric and poetry consider KU, §51, 5: 321. Allison’s formulation of the free harmony as imagination schematizing the faculty of the understanding as a whole would come close to Kant’s notion of rhetoric, that is, imaginative enlivening of determinate concepts of the understanding.

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never constitute a coherent interpretation of the aesthetic object. But this is something that the fictive faculty can accomplish. Let us focus now more closely on the type of connection of the manifold achieved by the fictive faculty (Dichtungsvermögen). The synthesis of this type of imagination cannot be governed by psychological laws, whether the “law of association of related ideas ” according to which we recall representations in intuition that were previously experienced, as in the faculty of imagination that is “reproductive ,” or the “law of expectation of similar outcomes ” according to which, based on our multiple experiences of event e1 being followed by e2, we can anticipate that whenever e1 occurs e2 will also follow, as in the faculty of imagination that is “anticipating .”31 The productive imagination is governed by the “law of compatibles ,” according to which “one must make sense of what fits together” (V-Met/Mron, 29: 883).32 Just like in the “affinity” of representations in the synthesis of apprehension in the A-Deduction, there must also be “affinity” (Verwandschaft) (Anth, 7: 177) of representations, some sense of them fitting together, in the synthesis of imagination in aesthetic reflection. While in the A-Deduction the imagination “makes sense of what fits together” or, put differently, interprets the content of sensibility with the view of its suitability for the judging activity of the unified self, in aesthetic reflection the imagination’s interpretive activity, while consistent with the discursive demands of the understanding, moves well beyond those demands.33 Below I explain how. The products of the imagination’s “law of compatibles” in aesthetic reflection are, I claim, aesthetic Ideas.34 An aesthetic Idea, writes Kant, is a 31

32

33 34

It is possible that by the law of imagination that allows us to anticipate similar outcomes Kant has in mind the objective rather than subjective relation of events. In that case, imagination would be following the causal law of the understanding and the fact that Kant refers to the “fictive faculty” as “productive” would still mean that the law is a priori, but greater emphasis would be placed on the fact that this law is internal to imagination itself (as opposed to external, i.e., dependent on either psychology or the understanding). This passage originates from the lecture notes taken by Kant’s student Christoph Coelestin Mrongovious and their approximate dating is 1782–1783. Consider a similar passage at V-Met-L2/ Pölitz, 28: 585, a set of lecture notes written by Kant’s student whose identity is not known. They were first published and edited by Karl Heinrich Ludwig Pölitz and some evidence date the lecture notes, although not conclusively, to 1790–1791. For the view of the imagination’s schema as an interpretive process rather than a “third thing” located between our receptivity and our spontaneity, see La Rocca 1997, 9–11, 13–14. Although Kant’s discussion of aesthetic Ideas occurs within the context of his discussion of art, he claims that beauty in general, that of art and of the natural world, presupposes aesthetic Ideas. See KU, §51, 5: 320.

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“representation of the imagination that occasions much thinking though without it being possible for any determinate thought, i.e., [determinate] concept, to be adequate to it, which, consequently, no language fully attains or can make intelligible” (KU, §49, 5: 314).35 Thus, an aesthetic Idea is a presentation of intuition that meets the discursive demands of the understanding, that is, remains purposive for the understanding, and yet in an indeterminate manner. In order to understand better how the fictive power connects images so that these presentations of the imagination remain purposive for the understanding, we must briefly explicate Kant’s notion of “aesthetic attributes” (KU, §49, 5: 315) that express an aesthetic Idea. Logical attributes serve the purpose of a logical presentation (Darstellung) of a concept, that is, the purpose of determining a concept, or specifying it, by adding attributes to it that are not analytically contained in it. The outcome of this determination is the acquisition of more specific concepts from more general ones. Thus, for example, essential marks of a concept are those that constitute its essence, but attributes are contingent marks. One example that Kant gives is the following: “Reason is necessary in the case of man. Learnedness is contingent” (V-Lo/Wiener, 24: 838).36 Therefore, to add to our concept of a human being that she is “learned” is to further specify or determine a concept of a human being. Aesthetic attributes are “those forms which do not constitute the presentation of a given concept itself, but, as supplementary representations of the imagination, express only the implications connected with it and its affinity with others” (KU, §49, 5: 315). In Kant’s example of “Jupiter’s eagle, with the lightning in its claws” and “the peacock of the splendid queen of heaven [Juno]” that metaphorically represents “the sublimity and majesty of creation” (KU, §49, 5: 315)37 we are not prompted to specify logically further the concept of creation, but rather the imagination connects many other representations with this image, many other aesthetic attributes such as fear, 35

36 37

One should note that Kant claims that the content of aesthetic Ideas cannot be completely grasped in language and not that it cannot at all be grasped in language. Thus, aesthetic Ideas are not entirely beyond concepts and we can discuss them. The Vienna Logic is based on the lectures Kant delivered in the early 1780s. In Paradise Lost, which Kant deemed to be “one of the most magnificent poems” (V-Anth/Mensch, 25.2: 991), Milton uses the simile of Jupiter and Juno in Book IV and Jove’s eagle and Juno’s peacock in Book XI. Kant’s reception of Milton was influenced by Georg Friedrich Meier’s discussion of Milton’s poetry in his Anfangsgründe aller schönen Wissenschaften published in 1754. Unlike Milton who in Book XI of Paradise Lost calls the eagle “Jove’s,” Kant, following Meier, calls the eagle “Jupiter’s” rather than “Jove’s.” On this and the analogy between Kant’s aesthetic Ideas and Meier’s notion of “energetic concepts” see Budick 2010, ch. 6.

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awe, respect, humility, etc. As with logical attributes, aesthetic attributes “enlarge[s] the concept itself” – in this example the concept of creation – “in an unbounded way” (KU, §49, 5: 315). However, unlike logical attributes, they do not specify further the content of the concept “creation.” In case of aesthetic attributes, the “unbounded enlargement” of the concept “creation” amounts to association of the concept “creation” with many different concepts so that the entire aesthetic experience of the image in the poem can never be adequately put into words, that is, expressed in terms of determinate concepts. The aesthetic object retains its purposive form if the aesthetic attributes of its images do not associate just any random representations with their particular images. Under these conditions the image may receive a number of plausible interpretations: but this purposive form is also free because none of these interpretations individually, nor all of them collectively, can exhaust the meaning of this image.38 Although I wish to emphasize that the law of sensibility and the connections of the manifold of the imagination aspire to present that which lies beyond the understanding, this interpretation is unlike the proto-Hegelian interpretation of the free harmony. This is because, on this interpretation, the act of judgment as an act of subsuming the particular under the universal is still necessary in aesthetic reflection. For Hegel and contemporary proto-Hegelian interpretations, the fact that imagination exhibits lawfulness in the manifold that is independent of the understanding would serve as the ground for the claim that in aesthetic reflection receptivity and spontaneity are one, that is, Hegel’s “Idea.” But for Kant, unlike for Hegel, the proper universality in aesthetic experience can only be found in judgment. This is because although the interpretive power of imagination shows some elements of spontaneity, its products are still presentations of sensibility, to wit, combinations of perceptions into images (synthesis of apprehension), and combinations of images (synthesis of the fictive faculty). In aesthetic reflection, as shown in Section 5.1, we do not subsume “an intuition under a given concept of the understanding,” as this would imply that the lawfulness exhibited in the manifold of imagination is given by the concepts of the understanding. Instead, we subsume under our “faculty of concepts” (V-Met/Dohna, 28: 675–76; KU, §35, 5: 287), or under the “lawfulness of the understanding in general” (KU, §22, 5: 241). In light of the preceding discussion, we should not take this to mean, as I argued against Allison in Section 5.1, that the connection of the manifold of imagination follows 38

Cf. Rush 2001, 624 for a similar understanding of purposiveness without a purpose in relation to aesthetic Ideas.

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some general lawfulness of the concepts of the understanding, that is, some lawfulness that all concepts of the understanding have in common. But the fact that the imagination follows its own lawfulness does not entail that the understanding is not a necessary component in aesthetic reflection. On the contrary, the manifold of imagination with its own lawfulness, and how it relates to the understanding, that is, how these faculties “actually stand in the case of a given perception,” is compared in aesthetic reflection to the relation between intuition and understanding in determinative judgments, that is, to “the relation in which they must stand in the power of judgment in general” (EEKU, 20: 220). The outcome of this comparison is grasping that the lawfulness of the manifold of imagination is consistent with the discursive demands of the understanding, even though the former is not the product of the latter, and, moreover, that the connections of the manifold of imagination move well beyond those demands. In sum, the outcome of the comparison is the recognition that the connection of the manifold, which is the achievement of the fictive power of imagination, is purposive for the understanding, that is, is suitable for the application of various concepts of the understanding. When reflecting on an aesthetic object we can identify various representations of objects: “This is a poem”; “This is Juno’s eagle with lightening in its claws.” However, as demonstrated in the examples of aesthetic Ideas discussed above, none of these determinate cognitions, that is, determinate thoughts, can exhaust the unity of this manifold. The faculty of fictive imagination continues to present related images, inviting understanding to employ further concepts: “the power of creation,” “fear,” “awe,” “humility,” etc. As for the precognitivist interpretation, on the view I defend, imagination operates under some internal normative constraint, that is, the rule of the connection of the manifold is not derived from some preexisting determinate concept of the understanding.39 But unlike on a precognitivist interpretation, on this view, the normativity of the synthesis of imagination, whether the synthesis is as it ought to be, is not assessed relative to a possible, but never realized, empirical cognition. Put differently, in aesthetic reflection the manifold of imagination is not especially purposive for cognition so that the activity of imagination is as it ought to be in a perception of that object without ever being subsumed under its concept. On this view, the manifold of imagination is purposive, not for our cognition, but for our cognitive faculty of the understanding insofar as it is 39

For a more elaborate discussion of the precognitivist interpretation see a longer version of this chapter in Ostaric 2017.

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possible for us to “think it clearly” (V-Anth/Mensch, 25: 946) although never exhaustively. This entails that the imagination provides a schemaanalogue40 of the universal in its synthesis. And while its schematization presupposes a number of determinate cognitions, it exceeds them, that is, it can never be identified with any single one of them, any collection of them, or any abstract version of them. And, finally, like the multicognitivist interpretation I engaged in Section 5.1, this view acknowledges that in aesthetic reflection we use various types of determinate concepts although the unity of the manifold presented by the imagination cannot be reduced to any of those determinate concepts of the understanding or any finite number of those concepts. However, this interpretation departs from the multicognitivist view insofar as the unity of the manifold accomplished by the fictive power of imagination is not reduced to the schema of the understanding, understood as “the faculty in general” or as “the general concept of the understanding.” In the “affinity” (Verwandtschaft) of presentations, writes Kant, “the play of the power of imagination […] still follows the rules of sensibility, which provide the material whose association is achieved without consciousness of the rule, and this association is in conformity with the understanding although not derived from it” (Anth, 7: 177). If we recall our discussion earlier, the aesthetic presentation of productive imagination is not only unlike logical presentation, but it is also unlike another type of aesthetic presentation, the one that is characteristic of rhetoric and which sensibly enlivens the concepts of the understanding for the “goal” (V-Anth/Pillau, 25: 760) defined by determinative judgments of the understanding. On the multicognitivist interpretation, as with rhetoric, because the “goal” is set by the understanding, the imagination “is in the service” of the understanding, that is, the service of enlivening the determinate cognition of the understanding. But for Kant, in aesthetic reflection the “goal” is set by the imagination and “the understanding is in the service of the imagination” (V-Anth/Pillau, 25: 760). Put differently, the determinate thoughts of the understanding serve to articulate the content presented by the manifold of the imagination, but the “goal” set by the manifold of the imagination goes well beyond the “goals” of the understanding. 40

I use the term “schema-analogue” instead of “schema” because “schema” for Kant is a rule of synthesis of the imagination in accordance with a concept that has objective reality. See KrV, A137/B176–A147/ B187. In KU, Kant refers to “schemata” as “direct […] presentations of the concept” in sensible intuition. See KU, §59, 5: 352. Because the imagination in its synthesis follows its own law as it strives to present a universal that can never have a corresponding object in empirical reality and thus can never receive a full determination in empirical intuition, I use “schema-analogue” instead of “schema.”

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If the aims in the free play of our cognitive faculties are defined by the imagination, and not the understanding, that is, if it is the imagination that “sets the goal” (V-Anth/Pillau, 25: 760), what is that “goal”? One possible answer to this question above could be pleasure in a free play in contrast to cognition. This pleasure is the outcome of a contingent conformity between the unity in the manifold of imagination and the understanding. And any attempt to say more about the “goals” of imagination in the free play would contradict Kant’s claim that, although the unity of the manifold of imagination anticipates a universal, that is, is purposive for the understanding, this universal that is quasi-schematized in the manifold is inexhaustive for our finite discursive cognitive capacities. But Kant describes the feeling of pleasure in the free harmony of the faculties as the “feeling of life” (Lebensgefühl) (KU, §1, 5: 204). And it is to this issue that we must turn now.

5.4

Aesthetic Reflection and the “Feeling of Life”

In the secondary literature this formulation is either overseen or, if addressed, then it is interpreted as an enlivening (Belebung) of the faculties in their mutual free play, their mutual enhancement of their own functions, “the reciprocally animating [belebend] imagination in its freedom and the understanding with its lawfulness” (KU, §35, 5: 287).41 But the concept “life” for Kant is not completely metaphorical, that is, standing for the vigor that one feels in the activity of one’s cognitive capacities. It is a technical term in Kant and, more broadly, in the philosophical tradition that provided the context for the development of his thought. In the Metaphysical Foundation of Natural Science, Kant defines “life” as follows: Life is the power [Vermögen] of a substance to determine itself to act from an internal principle, of a finite substance to change, and of a material substance [to determine itself] to motion or rest, as change of its state. Now we 41

See Makkreel 1990, ch. 5 and his interpretation of “the feeling of life” as a “feeling of vitality.” Henry Allison interprets this notion as a “sense of the increase […] of one’s level of activity, particularly one’s activity as a thinking being” (Allison 2001, 69). Similarly, Longuenesse understands Kant’s characterization of aesthetic pleasure as the “feeling of life” in analogy to Hegel’s conception of “spirit,” that is, “the life of the universal community of human minds” (Longuenesse 2006, 199), which is also how she understands Kant’s notion of the supersensible substrate in the Antinomy, that is, as a community of judging individuals that are responsive to reasons and to freedom understood as the spontaneity of the understanding that makes this possible. (See Longuenesse 2006, 217.) It is not, however, clear how a community of individuals responsive to reasons can represent anything super- or supra- sensible in Kant. Although these may be interesting connections, especially Longuenesse’s in light of Kant’s notion of sensus communis, they represent a revisionist reading

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The Free Harmony of the Faculties know no other internal principle in a substance for changing its state except desiring, and no other internal activity at all except thinking, together with that which depends on it, the feeling of pleasure or displeasure, and desire or willing. But these actions and grounds of determination in no way belong to representations of the outer sense, and so neither [do they belong] to the determinations of matter as matter. Hence, all matter, as such, is lifeless. (MAN, 4: 544)42

We see from the cited passage that at the time of the publication of the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science in 1786 Kant considers the feeling of pleasure and displeasure to be dependent on the activities of thinking and desiring. The passage above does not explain the nature of this dependence, but one can discern it from a short paragraph in the second Critique. There, Kant defines pleasure as “the representation of the agreement of the object or the action with the subjective conditions of life” (KpV, 5: 9n). Thinking and desiring, as this is suggested in the passage cited from the Metaphysical Foundations, are those “subjective conditions of life,” the conditions under which a substance can exercise its power (Vermögen) to determine itself. Pleasure thus is the outcome of the representation of the agreement of the object in nature with the faculties of desire and thinking. By the time of the publication of the third Critique in 1790, it becomes clear that the feeling of pleasure and displeasure that is dependent on desire is the interested type of pleasure, the pleasure of the agreeable one feels in the satisfaction of one’s inclination. And the pleasure that in the Metaphysical Foundations Kant defines as dependent on thinking becomes in the third Critique the disinterested type of pleasure or displeasure, the one that, together with the faculty of cognition and the faculty of desire, constitutes the basic faculties of the mind. In the third Critique, the disinterested feeling of pleasure and displeasure is grounded in the contingent purposiveness of the manifold of the imagination with the discursive demands of the understanding, that is, on the power of judgment, with its own special a priori principle for the exercise of this faculty.43 But the “feeling of life [Lebensgefühl],” or the feeling of one’s freedom or spontaneity, is not the same as the feeling of the subjective conditions of its manifestation, a special heightened awareness of our discursive capacity, thinking, or desiring. Instead, it is the feeling of its “principle” or “ground.” For Kant of the Critical period, we cannot have knowledge of

42 43

of Kant because they bracket the history of the concept “life” in Kant’s own philosophical development as well as in the tradition that he, to some extent, inherits. Translation slightly altered. See EEKU, 20: 245.

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the principle of life, the inner principle of the substance’s power to determine itself. However, Kant’s position in his pre-Critical period is rather different. In his Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (1766) he writes the following: The principle of life is to be found in something in the world which seems to be of an immaterial nature. For all life is based upon the inner capacity to determine itself voluntarily. On the other hand, the essential characteristic mark of matter consists in the filling of space in virtue of a necessary force which is limited by an external force operating against it. It follows from this, therefore, that the state of all that which is material is dependent and constrained, whereas those natures which are supposed to be spontaneously active and to contain within themselves the ground of life in virtue of their inner force—in short, those natures whose own power of will is capable of spontaneously determining and modifying itself—such natures can scarcely be of material nature. (TG, 2: 328n)

The principle of life is thus to be found in the noumenal realm, in the immaterial soul, which, in his Critical period, Kant claims, cannot be the object of our theoretical cognition.44 Hence, the “goal” of imagination’s interpretive activity is not limited to the discursive demands of the understanding. Instead, the imagination quasi schematizes, that is, strives to sensibly represent not only many different Ideas of reason, as I have shown in my earlier discussion of aesthetic Ideas, but also, and principally, the Idea of the supersensible “ground of [freedom]” (KU, §59, 5: 353). It does this through its own spontaneous synthesizing activity, which is not determined by the understanding and yet it contingently meets its demands. This activity of the imagination further makes possible a fully spontaneous activity of the understanding insofar as the latter is not merely affected by sensibility, but is instead presented by the manifold that is already suitably structured for its application. In other words, it is not 44

The “principle of life” is not only limited to rational souls, but it pertains also to animal natures and plants. See TG, 2: 329–30. Later, in the Critique of Teleological Judgment Kant distinguishes “formative power” of animals and plants from “motive power” of mechanisms. The former presupposes their power to self-propagate, to be the cause and effect of themselves, which cannot be explained through the capacity for movement alone (that is, mechanism). According to Kant, “one comes closer to this inscrutable property if one calls it an analogue of life” (KU, §65, 5: 374; my emphasis – LO). In order to avoid hylozoism according to which matter is endowed or “stands in communion” (KU, §65, 5: 374) with a property (a soul) that contradicts its essence, and which thus represents a threat to natural science, the concept of a thing as a natural end, that is, a thing that is a cause and effect of itself, cannot be a constitutive concept of the understanding or of reason. Instead, it is a merely regulative concept for the reflective power of judgment. Thus, to represent these objects as “analogues of life” is to represent their causality with a “remote analogy with our own causality in accordance with ends” (KU, §65, 5: 375), or to represent them as the “analogues of reason.” For the theories of life and soul in the work of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) and in the reception of Stoic philosophy in seventeenth-century Germany, which represent two likely sources of influence on Kant, see Tonelli 1969.

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only the imagination that is free, but also the understanding insofar as it is not merely affected by sensibility that is fully passive and that the understanding must synthesize according to its own rules. Instead, the manifold is already synthesized by the imagination in the manner that is suitable for the discursive activity of the understanding. The imagination and understanding reciprocally animate each other (KU, §35, 5: 287) in their “free play” and their reciprocal causal relation gives us license to place aesthetic feeling beside the Idea whose object cannot be given to us in inner intuition, whose object we cannot “feel” – that is, the Idea of the soul, the substance with the power of self-determination. In other words, their reciprocal causal relation gives us license, as I have shown in the previous chapter, for an indirect or analogical exhibition of a transcendent Idea. When the focus is on the experiencing subject (and not the aesthetic object in the world) the Idea that is indirectly schematized is the Idea of the “supersensible substrate” (KU, §59, 5: 353) of freedom. This is also why in the Resolution of the Antinomy of Taste Kant claims that the concept of the “supersensible substrate of humanity” is “a general ground for the subjective purposiveness of nature for the power of judgment […] from which, however, nothing can be cognized and proved with regard to the object, because it is in itself indeterminable and unfit for cognition” (KU, §57, 5: 340). To be sure, the object of this concept cannot be cognized because it is not given in empirical reality. But the imagination in its schematizing activity strives to sensibly represent this concept, intimating its object through the feeling of a fully spontaneous activity of our cognitive faculties in the experience of beauty. The fact that the imagination in its synthesis intimates the Idea of the soul can have a merely psychological significance insofar as we will be encouraged to persist in our efforts to realize the highest good which is the object of infinite striving. But the significance of the imagination’s synthesis can move beyond the merely psychological effects: it helps to reinforce the view that the highest good must have an “objective theoretical reality” (KU, §88, 5: 453) and not merely a “subjectively practical reality” (KU, §88, 5: 453). In other words, we do not only intellectually “conceive” the possibility of having an immortal soul from the perspective of the truth of the moral law but also, given the synthesizing activity of the imagination in aesthetic experience, the soul is intimated as if obtaining in us.45 Insofar as 45

I use the word “intimation” and not “symbolization” because the supersensible that is indirectly schematized by the synthesizing activity of the imagination is the “supersensible within” the judging subject and not the “supersensible without.” For the latter, the schematizing activity of the imagination is taken in reference to an aesthetic object in the world which stands for a sign or a symbol of the “supersensible without.” See KU, §49, 5: 316–17.

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the free harmony of the faculties grounds aesthetic experience the ensuing feeling of pleasure is “universally communicable without the mediation of a concept” (KU, §40, 5: 295). Because the relation of the cognitive faculties in pure aesthetic judgment is “lawful” (KU, §40, 5: 295), that is, it meets the minimal requirements of cognition even though it goes beyond them, we have a rule by means of which to judge whether the feeling of pleasure is universally communicable and whether we have the right to demand that others feel the same. And yet, the schematizing activity of the imagination in the free harmony of the faculties in aesthetic reflection does not merely satisfy reason’s minimal ends, that is, the schematizing activity does not merely meet the requirements necessary for cognition.46 It also serves reason’s final ends. The free synthesizing activity of the imagination in aesthetic experience indirectly exhibits the Idea of the soul whereby the object practical reason demands that we conceive as real is intimated as if obtaining in us. Because the free harmony of the faculties in aesthetic judgment is normatively necessary in the epistemic sense, and because it also indirectly exhibits the Idea whose object is normatively necessary in the practical sense, the activity of the imagination in the free harmony of the faculties provides an instance of “moral image realism” (MIR).

5.5

Conclusion and Evaluation

An objection may be raised that the view I defend in this chapter relies heavily on Kant’s discussion of productive imagination in artistic creation, especially poetry, and that the same may not apply to aesthetic judgments in our reception of beauty. But Kant claims that the free harmony of the faculties is a necessary condition for both our reception and our production of beauty.47 Therefore, the underlying assumption of my view is that some degree of productive, fictive power of imagination is in place in our reception of beauty as well. Next, one may object that on the view I defend in this chapter, according to which the logical structure of aesthetic judgment cannot be considered in isolation from Kant’s practical concerns, that is, morality and the supersensible ground of freedom as a necessary condition of its realization, our judgments of beauty cannot remain distinctively aesthetic. However, what makes a judgment distinctively aesthetic and not, for example, cognitive is 46

47

Insofar as aesthetic judgments are universally valid and entail some agreement with the object (i.e., “this x is beautiful” is either true or false of the object), by means of them we determine the object in some sense and hence aesthetic judgments are in service of a narrow notion of cognition. See KU, §49, 5: 316–17.

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the fact that it is grounded on a feeling of pleasure (or displeasure) and not the concept of the object. If the aesthetic judgment is pure, then this feeling of pleasure presupposes a special transcendental ground, a principle of subjective purposiveness, a contingent agreement of the sensible manifold with the discursive demands of the understanding. And here the emphasis should be on the contingency of this fit, which is exactly the advantage of my view in contrast to some other views discussed in this chapter. This is because the manifold of the imagination is not organized according to the rules of the understanding, even if only in its “general form.” Instead, it is organized by the imagination following its own laws, which explains the fact that the understanding has no ground to expect that the manifold be structured in an orderly manner. And although on the view I defend, the logical structure of aesthetic judgment is related to the concept of the supersensible ground of freedom, I never claim that it is grounded on the experience of the object of the supersensible ground of freedom. The latter claim would invite Baumgarten’s view according to which aesthetic experience is a confused representation of perfection, making the manifold objectively and not merely subjectively purposive. On the view I defend, the imagination can only strive to sensibly present that which can never be given in empirical intuition and hence never be fully determined by the understanding. A further resistance to my view may come from a long history of imagination’s bad reputation as a faculty of deception. But I hope that the view defended here helps us value even more the significance of Kant’s contribution that paved the way for an even stronger reassessment of the value of imagination in the works of the Early Romantics for whom imagination not only has a poetic or aesthetic, but also a philosophical significance. It helps us understand that the aesthetics of Early Romanticism has deeper roots in Kant than this is normally acknowledged. By means of the productive imagination, for the Early Romantics, the unconditioned or the Absolute receives in aesthetic experience, if not full, then its partial determination.48 Finally, the view according to which the unity of the manifold in aesthetic reflection is seen as the accomplishment of the “law of sensibility,” and as a unity that presents a schema-analogue of the supersensible ground of freedom, may be considered as overly ambitious and strong in its claims. Instead, I argue that it is modest, and modest in a very Kantian sense: it treads a middle path. While the two existing competing views, 48

See my 2016.

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the proto-Hegelian and precognitivist, in some sense put greater emphasis on imagination’s independence, they do so at the expense of our need for judgment. The interpretation defended in this chapter, however, emphasizes even more strongly the need for our cultivation of judgment. The “law of sensibility” is unstable and requires a continuous practice of subsuming the particular, the manifold of imagination, under the universal, the faculty of the understanding, in order for imagination’s interpretive power to be reminded of what it means to be in conformity with the understanding, or what it means for the connection of its manifold to be capable of being clearly, although inexhaustively, thought by us. And while the multicognitivist view puts greater emphasis on the role of the understanding and judgment in aesthetic reflection, it does so by undermining the role of imagination. But this chapter has shown that undermining the role of imagination in the free harmony of the faculties comes at great costs. It precludes us from realizing imagination’s unique interpretive power that has a special role in completing Kant’s Critical system and in facilitating the connection of the sensible to the supersensible, that is, it precludes us from seeing imagination’s practical as opposed to merely cognitive significance.

chapter 6

Genius, Ugliness, and Nonsense

Kant on the Purity of the Ugly and the Failure of the Artist’s Power of Judgment

In recent years, there has been an increase in the interest in the possibility of pure aesthetic judgments of ugliness in Kant. This attention is well deserved not only because of the general question in modern aesthetics of whether ugliness, like beauty, can be a pure aesthetic category, but also because of the implications this question has for Kant’s moral teleology. If, for Kant, the beauty of both nature and art can tell us something about the world, namely, that it may be hospitable for the realization of our highest ends, that is, morality, then the occurrences of ugliness in nature and art suggest the contrary. That is to say that if there are signs in nature indicating that nature may not be hospitable for the realization of our highest ends, then our motivation to persist in realizing what the moral law tells us we ought to do will gradually subside together with our belief that the moral law is true.1 The possibility of pure ugliness would also undermine, what I called in Chapter 3, “moral image realism,” our representation of the highest good as having an “objective theoretical reality” (KU, §88, 5: 453), to wit, our representation of the highest good as the end of nature, the world. In sum, the possibility of pure ugliness would undermine the systematic aims of the third Critique, which, I have been arguing, consist in the coherency of the theoretical and practical aims of reason. The question of the possibility of pure aesthetic judgments of ugliness is challenging because Kant says very little about it in his published work. Consequently, there is a wide range of positions on the issue in the secondary literature. There are (1) those who claim that pure aesthetic judgments of ugliness are possible,2 (2) those who contend that they can only be impure,3 and finally (3) those who argue that there is no room for any type 1 2 3

See KU, §86, 5: 446 and KpV, 5: 114. See Strub 1989, Fricke 1990 (esp. 48–52), Hudson 1991, Allison 2001 (esp. 53, 71, 116–18), McConnell 2008, Philips 2011, Wenzel 2012, Cohen 2013. See Gracyk 1986, Brandt 1994, Rind 2002, Ginsborg 2003, Guyer 2005b (the chapter “Kant on the Purity of the Ugly”).

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of negative aesthetic judgments in Kant.4 But the wide range of positions on the issue is also in part due to a tendency among scholars to approach the problem irrespective of the development of Kant’s teleology, that is, of the development of Kant’s system as a whole, and its historical context, namely, the philosophical tradition he inherited. The view I defend in this chapter will attempt to avoid this current tendency. Thus, this chapter has a twofold aim: historical and systematic. With respect to the latter, I argue that Kant’s conception of aesthetic judgment in the third Critique, a conception according to which aesthetic judgment has its own a priori principle, left open the possibility for a pure aesthetic judgment of ugliness. This judgment however could not arise in response to a quality in the object of nature,5 but instead could only be limited to works of art.6 More specifically, the origin of ugliness as a pure aesthetic 4

5

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See Shier 1998. Shier does not take into account what Guyer calls “aesthetic trivalence” (Guyer 2005b, 143; see also my discussion of this issue in Section 6.1), namely, that Kant’s aesthetic theory allows for the distinction between judgments “x is beautiful,” “x is not beautiful,” and “x is ugly.” Hence, by arguing that Kant’s aesthetic theory “leaves no place for negative judgments” (Shier 1998, 417) Shier takes a view that, as Guyer rightly claims, “goes too far” (Guyer 2005b, 142). “x is not beautiful” is a negative aesthetic judgment and for Kant clearly there are many objects that we do not find beautiful. Although the predicates “is beautiful” and “is ugly” in pure aesthetic judgments do not determine a quality in the object but rather a feeling of pleasure or displeasure in a judging subject, pure aesthetic judgments are objective. This is because they have an underlying relation to the object insofar as our reflective judgments arise in response to the quality in the object’s form that is excessive for the discursive capacities of the understanding. On the objectivity of Kant’s judgments of taste, see Ameriks 1983. Paul Guyer’s view also entails the position according to which pure aesthetic judgments of ugliness are not possible with respect to objects in nature. On his view, the pure aesthetic judgment of ugliness “is blocked by the entire epistemology of the Critique of Pure Reason” (Guyer 2005b, 146). In other words, some minimal form of harmony between the understanding and the manifold of imagination is required in order for us to be conscious of the object of aesthetic judgment. Hence, a state of sheer disharmony of the cognitive faculties that would be the transcendental ground of pure aesthetic judgments of ugliness “is not consistent with the transcendental unity of apperception” (Guyer 2005b, 147). Miles Rind advances a similar argument in Rind 2002, 27–29. While I grant that Guyer’s and Rind’s views are correct with respect to natural objects, it is wrong to assume, as they do, that pure aesthetic judgments of ugliness are not possible at all. I show in this essay that Kant leaves room for the possibility of pure aesthetic judgments of ugliness in our evaluation of artworks that is consistent with the application of at least the concept of the object of the work of art while at the same time presupposing a disharmony of the cognitive faculties in some aesthetically relevant sense. Reinhardt Brandt similarly argues that, “ugliness destroys communication and that it belongs as little to aesthetics as death does to teleology” (Brandt 1994, 36; my translation). Brandt, just like Crawford (see Crawford 1974, esp. 145–60), argues that universality of aesthetic judgments is grounded in the indeterminate concept of the supersensible (see Brandt 1994, 47–50). Therefore, on Brandt’s view, universal communicability pertains only to our judgments of beauty and not to our judgments of ugliness. For the latter to be universally communicable they would have to be grounded in a transcendental principle of counterpurposiveness. This principle, however, could not provide the desired connection to the indeterminate concept of the supersensible substrate because it directly contravenes the contingent harmony between nature and our cognitive faculties. But

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category for Kant is epistemic, that is, in the failure of the artist’s power of judgment, a failure of the artist to find the appropriate form or concept for the manifold content of her imagination. In the third Critique, Kant calls these works of art “original nonsense” (KU, §46, 5: 308). With respect to the historical aim of this chapter, I shall provide an overview of the development of Kant’s position and trace the influences of other philosophical schools on Kant’s thought in order to get a better grip on Kant’s view on this problem in his mature Critical period. There are three aspects of Kant’s view on ugliness in the pre-Critical phase that are relevant for understanding his view in the third Critique: (1) Kant’s identification of ugliness with idiosyncrasy as the opposite of sensus communis; (2) his association of ugliness, after Hutcheson, with relative displeasure that is subject-dependent; and following from the two points above (3) the fact that, just as for the internal sense theorists,7 ugliness cannot be found in nature. These three aspects of Kant’s early view on ugliness will help us understand how ugliness in his mature Critical phase can be not only a pure aesthetic category but also an aesthetic category that is excluded from nature and therefore consistent with the requirements of his moral teleology. In this chapter, I proceed as follows. In Section 6.1, I show that already in his pre-Critical period ugliness for Kant was a positive magnitude and not a mere absence of beauty. In Section 6.2, I give an overview of Kant’s conception of ugliness in his pre-Critical phase by focusing on its three features noted above: ugliness as originating in idiosyncrasy which opposes sensus communis, as relative and not positive displeasure, and as excluded from nature. In Section 6.3, building on the conclusions of Section 6.2, I reconstruct Kant’s view of ugliness as a pure aesthetic category in the third Critique and argue that it originates in the artist’s failure of judgment. In Section 6.4, within the context of Kant’s discussion of “exaltation” (Schwärmerei), I offer concrete examples of what Kant would consider “original nonsense.” I end the chapter with some concluding remarks and an evaluation of my own position in Section 6.5.

7

Brandt, just like Guyer, overlooks the possibility that the violation of the transcendental condition of universal communicability that blocks the possibility of pure judgments of ugliness in the context of nature may be their very ground in the context of artworks. This, as I will show later in the chapter, does not contradict the special role of aesthetic judgment in Kant’s moral teleology. Although every categorization carries with it some degree of ambiguity, one can identify a group of eighteenth-century British writers united by their view that aesthetic and moral value can be explained through a sense of taste that is analogous to our external senses, especially the sense of sight. Here I follow Costelloe 2013 who includes in this category Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713), Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746), and Thomas Reid (1719–1796). See Costelloe 2013, 11–36.

6.1 Kant’s Notion of Ugliness as “Negative Beauty”

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Kant’s Notion of Ugliness as “Negative Beauty”

At the beginning, it is helpful to distinguish in Kant pure negative aesthetic judgments of the type “this x is not beautiful” from the positive assertions of the type “this x is ugly.” In both cases, the object is regarded as not beautiful, but only in the latter case is the judgment accompanied with a distinct feeling of displeasure.8 It is already clear from his essay “Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy” (1763) that for Kant ugliness is a positive value and not a mere deprivation. In this essay, Kant criticizes Christian August Crusius’ lack of distinction between logical and real grounds that Kant finds to be parallel to his notion of logical and real opposition. Unlike a logical opposition according to which “something is simultaneously affirmed and denied of the very same thing” and the consequence of which is “nothing at all” (NG, 2: 171), a real opposition “is that where two predicates of a thing are opposed to each other but not through the law of contradiction. Here, too, one thing cancels that which is posited by the other; but the consequence is something (cogitabile)” (NG, 2: 171). The distinction becomes clearer once we refer to Kant’s example. If we claim that a body is both in motion and not in motion, then this is a logical contradiction, which is “nothing” because we cannot have a representation of such an object. But if we claim that there is a force acting on the body in one direction and a force of the same magnitude 8

A look into Kant’s early writings helps one to see that from the very beginning Kant conceived of beauty and ugliness as opposing values. This should undermine the view according to which Kant’s notion of the sublime in the third Critique is intended to take the place of pure negative aesthetic judgments that are contrary to beauty. The negative aesthetic judgments that are contrary to beauty should be accompanied with a feeling of displeasure, the opposite of the feeling of pleasure that accompanies the judgments of beauty. Judgments of the sublime, however, are accompanied by both “the feeling of displeasure […] and pleasure” (KU, §27, 5: 257). This indirect arising of pleasure in the sublime is not the same as the disinterested displeasure that should accompany the pure aesthetic judgments of ugliness. (Cf. Strub 1989, 419.) The proponents of the view according to which the judgments of sublimity take the place of the pure judgments of ugliness in the third Critique support their claims by emphasizing that for Kant both sublimity and ugliness presuppose “formlessness” of the manifold of imagination. (For the analysis of the disharmonious play of the faculties in judgments of ugliness on the model of the sublime, see Lohmar 1998, especially pp. 507–09.) However, the formlessness of the latter is in relation to the understanding and that of the former in relation to reason. (Cf. Guyer 2005b, 158–61.) Finally, in the history of aesthetics, the notion of sublimity has its own opposing category, that is, the comical. Kant mentions this opposition in the Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764): “nothing sinks more deeply beneath the sublime than the ridiculous” (GSE, 2: 233). This opposition builds on Hutcheson’s conception of the comical as that which follows our perception of “incongruity” in the object (Hutcheson, Thoughts on Laughter [1727]; see Hutcheson 1758). The comical is the negative representation of the infinite and rational and, hence, the opposite of the sublime, which is its positive representation. The opposition between the sublime and the comical continues in Romantic aesthetics. (See on this Ritter 1971, 889–93.). For the aforementioned reasons this essay will not consider the judgment of the sublime as a possible candidate for Kant’s pure judgment of ugliness.

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acting on the body in the opposite direction, the consequence of such an opposition is rest, which is “something,” that is, we can have a representation of an object in rest. Mathematicians, claims Kant, designate the magnitudes in this real opposition with the signs “+” and “−.” But Kant’s examples of this real but negative magnitude extend beyond mathematics and physics and into “[rational] psychology” and “moral philosophy” (NG, 2: 180, 182). As an example from rational psychology, Kant asks us to consider the following question: “Is displeasure simply the lack of pleasure?” (NG, 2: 180). He answers as follows: “Displeasure is accordingly not simply a lack of pleasure. It is a positive ground which, wholly or partly, cancels the pleasure which arises from another ground. For this reason, I call it a negative pleasure” (NG, 2: 181). Some examples of this “negative pleasure” that Kant offers are “aversion” as a “negative desire,” “hate” as a “negative love,” “ugliness” as a “negative beauty,” and “blame” as a “negative praise” (NG, 2: 182). Parallel examples can be found in moral philosophy: “Vice (demeritum) is not merely a negation; it is a negative virtue (meritum negativum). For vice can only occur insofar as a being has within him an inner law (either simply conscience or consciousness of a positive law as well), which is contravened by this action” (NG, 2: 182). In other words, vice is not simply an absence of virtue because in that case animals could also be called vicious. Instead, it presupposes an action that contravenes the principle of morality. In his lectures on logic, Kant also speaks of ugliness as something positive and not a mere absence of beauty: Aesthetic imperfection of want, of there lacking something, is dryness. The one of divestment is ugliness. Ugliness is therefore something positive, not a mere absence of beauty, but also the existence of that which is contrary to beauty […] There can be something that is not beautiful which is also not ugly, for example mannerist art [das Gekünstelte]. We do not like to see that someone produces something with great effort when he could have produced the same with ease in another manner. We deplore him for his failed art. (V-Lo/Philippi, 24.1: 364)9

Thus, an overly mannered art would be an example of an object we consider aesthetically, that is, in pure intuition, but that leaves us almost indifferent because the form of the work of art, how the work is put together, exhibits the artist’s excessive conscious effort and learned manner. Our aesthetic consideration of the object does not produce much pleasure, but 9

My own translation. The lecture notes are approximately dated to 1772.

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is also not accompanied with a feeling of displeasure, which would be the case if we were to find the work of art ugly.10 Having emphasized that for Kant ugliness is not a mere lack of beauty, but rather a distinct value that opposes beauty, I turn to give an overview of Kant’s development of his notion of ugliness in the pre-Critical period.

6.2 Kant’s Early Views on Ugliness Kant’s motivation for turning to internal sense theorists is evident in his 1764 Prize Essay. In the Prize Essay, Kant begins to develop through his critique of Christian Wolff’s notion of perfection a notion of the will as an independent faculty with its own principle. For Wolff, our recognition of the object’s structure, that is, its perfection or its good, determines the will to action. But Kant, following Crusius’ criticism of intellectualism in Wolff’s practical philosophy, claims the following: “[P]ractical philosophy is even more defective than speculative philosophy, for it has yet to be determined whether it is merely the faculty of cognition, or whether it is feeling (the first inner ground of the faculty of desire [Begehrungsvermögen]) which 10

Strub 1989, 445–46 raises the question of whether for Kant the category “dry” (trocken) characterizes a distinct aesthetic category or whether it excludes the object entirely from aesthetic consideration. Strub argues for the latter because one can explain such objects in an exhaustive manner, that is, through a finite number of determined judgments while inexhaustiveness and rich play of imagination is characteristic of our aesthetic judgments. However, Kant contends elsewhere that we cannot have an aesthetic object of this kind: “We find that with respect to pleasure and displeasure there is always a trichotomy – plus a – minus a, and – 0 – indifference, which is not ugliness. Pleasure is something positive, displeasure its opposite. Indifference is a state of mind when the representations evoke neither pleasure nor displeasure. But there is no object of that kind because everything arouses either pleasure or displeasure” (V-Met/Dohna, 28: 676; my translation – LO; the reference is also mentioned in Allison 2001, 72). There are clearly many objects that do not make any claims on us aesthetically and the passage, if read charitably, should not be interpreted as a denial of this view. Instead, when Kant contends that there is no object that leaves us with indifference, I take him to mean that we cannot have an object that we consider aesthetically, that is, “in intuition,” and, hence, not logically, which at the same time is an object that cannot qualify as an aesthetic object. In other words, the object either is a work of art or it is not, and then it is an artifact, a product of the understanding and not of sensibility and imagination. A way to resolve this ambiguity is to take Kant’s claim that overly mannered works of art that exhibit the artist’s excessive conscious effort and learned manner (i.e., “dry” artworks) are not beautiful as a rhetorical exaggeration. Some works of art are better and more beautiful and hence accompanied by a stronger feeling of pleasure and some works of art are less beautiful and accompanied by a weaker feeling of pleasure. “Weak fantasy with lots of understanding is dry” (Refl. 364, 15: 143; dated by Adickes approximately to 1760s). “Dry” artworks are after all works of art and, hence, primarily the products of the artist’s imagination and sensibility. The fact that the latter in “dry” artworks is “weak,” and not very rich and that it can be exhausted to a great extent by the determinate thoughts of the understanding does not imply that it is completely nonexistent. In the above cited passage from Logik Philippi, Kant contends that “dry” objects are “lacking” and presumably they are lacking in pleasure in comparison to other successful works of art. But this does not mean that they are entirely devoid of some minimal sense of pleasure, given that they are works of art and not artifacts.

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decides its first principles” (UD, 2: 300). While already Crusius stresses the importance of feelings in moral matters in order to argue against Wolff that the will is independent of the intellect, it remains unclear in Crusius how this moral feeling he calls the “drive of conscience” (Gewissenstrieb) is different from other drives or feelings. In order to continue the critique of Wolff’s rationalism, but also to look for an answer to the question of how the feeling of morality is different from other feelings of human beings, Kant turns to the internal sense theorists and their conceptions of the “moral sense” and the “sense of beauty” which presuppose approval or disapproval, that is finding something virtuous or vicious, beautiful or ugly.11 This evaluative feature of the feeling that pertains to moral matters is sufficient to distinguish it from other feelings. While in the Observations Kant stands in great proximity to the internal sense theorists, he departs from them insofar as he shows a growing tendency to divorce duty as a principle of action from sensibility.12 Although on Wolff’s view the will seeks the good for its own sake, Wolff did not have a clear enough distinction between things that are good in themselves and things that are a means to happiness. In the Prize Essay, Kant criticizes Wolff by distinguishing between “the necessity of the means (necessitas problematica)” and “the necessity of the ends (necessitas legalis)” (UD, 2: 298). For Kant, “[t]he first kind of necessity does not indicate any obligation at all. It merely specifies a prescription as the solution to the problem concerning the means I must employ if I am to attain a certain end” (UD, 2: 298). Only the latter kind of necessity is relevant for morality, which shows that in 1764 Kant already identifies a formal principle of action that is a precursor to his later notion of the categorical imperative.13 This notion of duty is central for developing in the Observations a distinction between beauty and sublimity. While both beauty and sublimity require an engagement of the intellect because both presuppose a sense of rule, this principle in beauty is not readily discernible from matter, that is, sensibility. By being closer to sensibility than to the principles of the intellect, beauty prepares us for virtue by means of “moral impulses” (GSE, 2: 231), that is, virtuous actions not based on obligation but on the feeling of sympathy. 11 12

13

For an account of the early development of Kant’s ethical thought through his critique of Wolff and Crusius see Henrich 2012. To be sure, among the internal sense theorists, Thomas Reid, like Kant, speaks of “duty as a rational principle of action in man, and as that principle alone by which he is capable either of virtue or vice” (Reid 2010, 169). But for Reid duty and honor pertain to our “moral sense” and he refers to duty also as our “sense of duty” (Reid 2010, 170, 174–80). The same distinction can also be found in Remarks (1764–1765). See BGSE, 20: 155.

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In the case of sublimity, the principle or the rule is much more readily abstracted from matter and the corresponding virtue for which sublimity prepares us is “noble virtue,” which is based on a sense of duty that presupposes subordination of feelings to principles. Because for Kant “matter” is the dominant quality of beauty in relation to “form” or rule, which is less pronounced, the opposite of beauty must also be a quality for which “matter” is dominant and not a form or a rule. Therefore, in the Observations Kant identifies “disgust” (Ekel) to be the opposite of beauty: “Nothing is so opposed to the beautiful as the disgusting” (GSE, 2: 233).14 “Disgust,” is an immediate visceral response of displeasure to a certain quality in the object.15 But “disgust” is not a purely aesthetic category. Just like beauty, it still cannot be entirely separated from a moral quality. The example Kant gives is of being “disgusted” at a woman’s lack of chastity. In the Observations, beauty and sublimity are identified in the object by means of the “feeling of the beautiful,” or the “feeling of the sublime,” which, just as for the internal sense theorists, acts almost as a sense organ capable of detecting these qualities in things that “make [their] impression on us” (GSE, 2: 208). However, in the Prize Essay of 1764, by isolating a special kind of feeling that is “the first, inner ground of the faculty of desire [Begehrungsvermögen]” (UD, 2: 300) and by identifying, in the “Remarks in the Observations on the Feeling of Beautiful and Sublime” (1764–1765), freedom to be the condition of this moral sentiment from which the principle of action must be deduced,16 Kant further reiterates his growing tendency to distinguish, unlike the internal sense theorists, the principle that is supposed to govern our actions and that belongs to the realm of freedom from the matters of taste. This tendency is further developed in the mid-1770s and allows Kant to focus more clearly on the principle that exclusively grounds taste.17 This principle is still not an a priori principle, 14 15

16 17

A similar tendency to identify disgust as the opposite of beauty can also be found in Remarks. See BGSE, 20: 52. Later in the third Critique, disgust remains an emotional, visceral response, a “strange sensation” (KU, §48, 5: 312) that can be contrasted to judgments of taste, which have their own a priori principle. On Kant’s view, disgusting representations disrupt the ideal quality of art. Here one can discern the influence of Lessing’s Laocoon (1766). In the Laocoon, Lessing describes an overly heightened depiction of emotions in art as an impediment to imagination. Lessing refers to this interruption of art’s ideality as “abhorrent to Nature” and as a representation that “inspires us with horror or loathing” (Lessing 1985, 67). See BGSE, 20: 31. Kant’s tendency to treat beauty and sublimity as merely aesthetic categories (and not, as he did in the Observations, as both aesthetic and moral categories) can already be discerned in the Remarks: “Beautiful and noble actions consist primarily of those to which one has no obligation” (BGSE, 20: 127).

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but rather, after Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, a notion of sensus communis, a notion of a commonly shared good and beauty. Just as he criticized the monism of Wolff’s practical philosophy for lacking a sufficiently clear distinction between the principle that governs the will from the intellectual principle, Kant also criticized the monism of Baumgarten’s philosophy according to which the faculty of pleasure and displeasure arises through our cognition of the good, or our cognition of objects through the senses in case of the beautiful.18 Kant used Baumgarten’s writings as his lecture notes over the span of more than thirty years and in his lectures on metaphysics and ethics he takes over Baumgarten’s (and Wolff’s) division of the human soul into intellectual faculty, the faculty of feeling of pleasure and displeasure and the appetitive faculty (Begehrungsvermögen). But for Kant, according to his lectures that date back to the mid-1770s, pleasure and displeasure are distinct from cognition, or the faculty of the understanding. Unlike the faculty of the understanding, which is about our cognition of the object, or “how I am acquainted […] with the object in itself,” the faculty of pleasure and displeasure is about “how the object affects the mind,” or how we are “moved by them [objects – LO]” (V-Met-L1/Pölitz, 28: 245–46). Thus, “[t]he determinations of things with respect to which we manifest pleasure and displeasure are not determinations which belong simply to the object, but rather ones which belong to the constitution of the subject” (V-Met-L1/Pölitz, 28: 245). Among those determinations that belong to the faculty of pleasure and displeasure, Kant identifies “the determinations of good and evil, of beautiful and ugly, of agreeable and disagreeable” (V-Met-L1/Pölitz, 28: 245) with respect to which we have a feeling of either pleasure or displeasure. This feeling of pleasure and displeasure can come “from private grounds of the sense of a subject” and in that case we speak of “gratification” in the object that we find “agreeable,” or “non-gratification or pain” in the object that we find “disagreeable” (V-Met-L1/Pölitz, 28: 248). Unlike this form of subjective satisfaction or dissatisfaction from private grounds, Kant distinguishes also “[o]bjective satisfaction or dissatisfaction” that is grounded in a universal judgment that has a universal validity and is valid for everyone independent of the particular conditions of the subject […] [t]his objective satisfaction or dissatisfaction is twofold: something pleases or displeases 18

In §655 of his Metaphysica, Baumgarten defines pleasure as “[t]he state of the soul that originates from the intuition of perfection” and he defines displeasure as “the state of the soul that originates from the intuition of imperfection.” “Hence,” writes Baumgarten, “the intuition of perfection and things that are good as such produces pleasure […] the intuition of imperfection and things that are evil as such produces displeasure” (Baumgarten 2013, 237).

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either according to universal sensibility or according to the universal power of cognition. What pleases from agreement with the universal sense, that is beautiful, and if it displeases from the same ground, it is ugly. What pleases from the agreement of the general power of cognition is good, and if it displeases from the same ground, then it is evil. (V-Met-L1/ Pölitz, 28: 248–49)

From the above passages, we see that, already in the mid-1770s, Kant’s division of the faculty of pleasure and displeasure resembles the types of aesthetic estimation in the third Critique of 1790. In the third Critique, Kant distinguishes between the judgments of agreeable and disagreeable that can only have private validity and the judgments of beauty and the good that have universal validity. But the latter, according to the abovecited passage, are grounded in cognition, that is, are based on concepts of good and evil, while the judgments of beauty and ugliness are based on “universal sensibility.” Although he speaks of the universality of the judgments of beauty and ugliness, Kant still clearly did not have available to him the faculty of reflective judgment and its subjective principle of purposiveness. However, the aforementioned distinction anticipates the later distinction in the third Critique between the universality of the judgments of beauty based on the subjective principle of purposiveness and the universality of the judgments of the good based on the concept of the good. Although for Kant in the mid-1770s, the faculty of pleasure and displeasure is distinct from the faculty of the understanding and cognition (which was not the case for the rationalists), he contends that the faculty of cognition, that is, the understanding, is a “condition” of the faculty of pleasure and displeasure. And while this on the surface may indicate that Kant is following Baumgarten, he quickly dispels any doubts by writing: “But it is not cognition in which pleasure is met, but rather feeling, for which cognition is the condition” (V-Met-L1/Pölitz, 28: 246). Put differently, the intellect should not be understood as an efficient cause of pleasure (i.e., pleasure as a consequence of cognizing perfection in objects), but rather as a formal cause of pleasure. Thus, even if Kant objects to Baumgarten that the faculty of pleasure and displeasure is not sufficiently distinguished from the cognitive act, he insists that the feeling of pleasure and displeasure must have some relation to the intellect as its own condition, which, I wish to contend, is a precursor to what will later become a transcendental condition. And while in the mid-1770s Kant does not have a concept of reflective judgment according to which in reflection a given manifold is found subjectively purposive for our cognitive faculties, he holds that the faculty of pleasure and displeasure involves in some way the

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faculty of the understanding. Kant is not clear exactly how the faculty of pleasure and displeasure engages the understanding. But one can attempt to rationally reconstruct the relation of the understanding and the faculty of pleasure and displeasure in the following way. By the term “cognition in sensation” we can take Kant to be referring to our judgments of the agreeable and disagreeable, which engage the understanding in a negative way, namely, as a recognition that those judgments do not presuppose any rules that engage the understanding, but only our sensibility. “Cognition of concepts” pertains to, what Kant calls, our “intellectual satisfaction” and “intellectual dissatisfaction,” which engages the understanding insofar as it is grounded in our a priori concepts of good and evil, utility or perfection and their opposite. “Cognition in intuition” pertains to the objects of taste that can either be beautiful or ugly. This is also what Kant in the abovecited passage calls “universal sensibility,” which presupposes some sense of agreement between our intellect and sensibility.19 Unlike the concept of the good, which “is an object of the understanding and is judged by the understanding” and, hence, is grounded on an a priori rule of the understanding, the rule of taste is universal but a posteriori. (V-Met-L1/Pölitz, 28: 251–52) This is because it is grounded on a “communal standard”: [t]he beautiful is not that which pleases one, but rather that which has an approval of all; it does please through sense as well but through a universal sense. For the investigation of the beautiful and the ugly we thus have a communal standard; this is the communal sense. This communal sense arises thus: each private sensation is still not a wholly particular sensation, but rather the private sensation of the one must accord with the private sensation of the other, and through this agreement we receive a universal rule. This is the communal sense or taste. (V-Met-L1/ Pölitz, 28: 250–51)

Kant begins to depart from the internal sense theorists insofar as he increasingly distinguishes, on the one hand, between the principle that governs our actions and that which governs the feeling of pleasure and displeasure and, on the other, between the principle that governs judgments of taste and that which governs our perception of good and evil, perfection and imperfection. However, the rule of taste is still for him an empirical rule, 19

One should also consider Kant’s later claim in his lectures on anthropology: “The beautiful is based on the concord of the understanding and sensibility insofar as it is promoted by the concord” (V-Anth/ Mron, 25: 1331). These lecture notes date back to the Winter Semester 1784/1785. At that time, Kant still did not have the notion of an a priori principle of taste, but, as it is evident from this citation, he had a notion of harmony between the understanding and sensibility as the ground of beauty.

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grounded, as was the case for Shaftesbury, in sensus communis.20 Because taste is governed by a rule grounded in a community, Kant claims that if a human being were to live a solitary life, “wholly alone on an island,” “he would choose not according to taste but rather according to appetite. Thus, only in the community with others does he have taste” (V-Met-L1/ Pölitz, 28: 251). Hence, taste engages the understanding insofar as it presupposes some universally communicable shared rules of “order and proportion.”21 Because the rule of taste is ultimately grounded a posteriori, in an agreement with a community, this universality cannot be a logical universality, but, rather, an empirical generality. In light of the above, it was not difficult for Kant in this period to conceive of ugliness as the opposite of beauty, which is just as universal as beauty insofar as it is grounded on the opposition to the rule of common sense. That is to say that there is a universal, that is, communal or shared, recognition that the aesthetic object is a product of private affections and inclinations which are contrary to the shared rules of “order and proportion”22 and which obstruct its universal communicability. For Shaftesbury, relying in one’s production on one’s private affections and inclinations makes one insensitive to the shared notion of harmony, which further results in ugliness, which he relates to deformity,23 that is, an improper subordination of parts within a system as a whole: What is it then should so disturb our views of nature as to destroy that unity of design and order of a mind, which otherwise would be so apparent? […] All is delightful, amiable, rejoicing, except with relation to man only and his circumstances, which seem unequal. Here the calamity and ill arises and hence the ruin of this goodly frame. All perishes on this account, and the whole order of the universe, elsewhere so firm, entire and immovable, is here overthrown and lost by this one view, in which we refer all things to ourselves, submitting the interest of the whole to the good and interest of so small a part.24

For Shaftesbury and, as evident from the passage cited earlier, for Kant, divergence from the principle of order and harmony can be discerned in 20

21 22 23 24

For Shaftesbury, sensus communis is a notion of the commonly shared good of mankind, which also includes a common sense of order and beauty. To this is also related “social love and common affection which is natural to mankind” (Shaftesbury 1999, 53). According to Shaftesbury, our disinterested pleasure in beauty, which, being a form of intellectual contemplation, is free of private inclinations and the satisfaction one may take in the use of the object, helps one to better attend to the notion of the publicly shared good and beauty. In the third Critique, Kant’s notion of aesthetic judgment’s quality as disinterested and his notion of sensus communis prove Shaftesbury’s influence. Shaftesbury 1999, 273. Shaftesbury 1999, 273. For the fact that Shaftesbury considers deformity in opposition to beauty, see Shaftesbury 1999, 239. Shaftesbury 1999, 276.

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the human products and actions, or in idiosyncrasy of one’s production and action. But Kant’s pre-Critical conception of ugliness demonstrates not only Shaftesbury’s but also Hutcheson’s influence. Shaftesbury’s principle of order and harmony in Hutcheson’s writings, albeit with a diminished metaphysical and an increased empirical meaning, becomes the principle of “uniformity amidst variety” and the objects whose form shows a poorly proportioned compound ratio of uniformity and variety “appear mean, irregular, and deformed.”25 To be sure, for Hutcheson, the objects whose form does not display the principle of uniformity amidst variety can be a source of displeasure, but this displeasure can never be “positive”: Deformity is only the absence of beauty, or deficiency in the beauty expected in any species. Thus, bad music pleases rustics who never heard any better, and the finest ear is not offended with tuning of instruments […] where no harmony is expected. A rude heap of stones is in no way offensive to one who shall be displeased with irregularity in architecture, where beauty was expected. And had there been a species of that form which we [now call] ugly or deformed, and had we never seen or expected greater beauty, we should have received no disgust from it, although the pleasure would not have been so great in this form as in those we now admire. Our sense of beauty seems designed to give us positive pleasure, but not positive pain or disgust, any further than what arises from disappointment.26

For Hutcheson, our internal sense is “not designed” to detect a quality in the object that would be opposite to the principle of unity amidst variety and that would be a source of positive displeasure. Instead, only when our expectation with respect to this object is not met do we experience this object with displeasure. There are passages in Kant’s pre-Critical writings that allow us to trace his conception of ugliness back to Hutcheson’s view as described above: Ugliness is merely relative in comparison with others. If we keep regularity in mind, then the ugly, too, is regular. Nothing can be altered about it, otherwise one appears ten times worse. A general once lost his nose in combat; since it was very large and had made him look disfigured, he wanted a really attractive one – and thus had the best waxen nose sent from Paris. But when he had the new nose put on, he looked ten times uglier. He therefore had to have his old one put on again. (V-Anth/ Mron, 25: 1378–79) 25 26

Hutcheson 1973, 55. Hutcheson 1973, 74–75.

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For Kant, as for Hutcheson, whatever appears in nature ugly is only an apparent ugliness, relative to some antecedent representation of the object we may have and is not met in nature. Thus, in Kant’s example, the general’s nose is ugly only in relation to some preexisting representation of a human face we may have. But once the general attempted to improve his own appearance he became even uglier relative to the antecedent representation of his face with which everyone was already familiar. Given the above, it is not surprising that, like Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, for Kant ugliness has no place in nature. For Shaftesbury, nature cannot “err” and “when she seems the most ignorant and perverse in her productions” nature is “wise and provident as in her godliest works.”27 According to Shaftesbury, objects in nature that on the surface may appear to us as ugly and deformed have their own place in nature’s system and hence contribute to the overall beauty. Following Shaftesbury, Kant contends the following: “Can an ugly thing perhaps be brought forth in nature as a natural product? No, for if we had broad cognition of its purposes, if we knew the use of all of its limbs, then nothing produced from the rules of nature would appear to us as ugly, but rather as truly beautiful” (V-Anth/ Mron, 25: 1378). For Kant, the only type of true displeasure in this period, namely, displeasure that is neither epistemic (i.e., a form of idiosyncrasy as in Shaftesbury), nor psychological (as in Hutcheson), but rather ontological, is a displeasure that is related to evil as the opposite of good: “True ugliness emerges out of the features of the face that betray malice […] [m]aliciousness of temperament and character is true ugliness. It is designated by a derisive mien and spiteful face. If an evil temperament turns into an evil character, the ugly facial features express themselves even more distinctly. We detest such a thing” (V-Anth/Mron, 25: 1379).

6.3

Ugliness in the Third Critique

While in the writings that precede his third Critique, Kant’s judgment of beauty and its opposite ugliness was based on an empirical principle and, hence, had a claim to universality that could only be understood as empirical generality, in the third Critique Kant employs the notion of aesthetic judgment based on an a priori principle, that is, the subjective principle of nature’s purposiveness. The question now is whether there is room in the third Critique for a pure judgment of ugliness, which would be based on a principle that contravenes the subjective principle of nature’s 27

Shaftesbury 1999, 244.

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purposiveness, namely, a subjective principle of counterpurposiveness. Just as judgments of beauty are accompanied by a feeling of disinterested pleasure, pure judgments of ugliness would be accompanied by a feeling of disinterested displeasure. In the third Critique, Kant gives very few examples of “things that in nature would be ugly or displeasing” (KU, §48, 5: 312). Those are “the furies, diseases, devastations of war” (KU, §48, 5: 312), which are clearly examples of interested aesthetic judgments and, therefore, interested and not disinterested displeasure. They are, namely, grounded on our estimations of evil as the opposite of good. But this still cannot answer the question of why in the Introductions, when referring to pure aesthetic judgments, Kant speaks of both the feeling of pleasure and displeasure.28 Furthermore, it is unlikely a confusion on Kant’s part that in the section Definition of the Beautiful Derived from the First Moment, he writes as follows: “Taste is the faculty for judging an object or a kind of representation through a satisfaction or dissatisfaction without any interest. The object of such satisfaction is called beautiful” (KU, §5, 5: 211). Although not explicitly stated, the passage implies that on Kant’s view the object of disinterested dissatisfaction is called ugly.29 Moreover, in his lectures on metaphysics delivered in the years following the third Critique, Kant makes a distinction between beautiful, non-beautiful, and ugly: “That which pleases through mere intuition is beautiful, that which leaves me indifferent in intuition […] is non-beautiful; that which displeases me in intuition is ugly” (V-Met-K3/Arnoldt, 29: 1010).30 Finally, in the First Introduction, Kant indicates more specifically what would constitute the pure ground of disinterested displeasure. There Kant contrasts the “objective” or cognitive relation between imagination and understanding according to which the imagination provides a schema to the concepts of the understanding to the “subjective” relation of these cognitive faculties “insofar as one helps or hinders the other in the very same representation and thereby affects the state of mind, and [is] therefore a relation which is sensitive […]” (EEKU, 20: 223). Thus, the pure transcendental ground of disinterested displeasure would be the opposite of the pure transcendental ground of disinterested 28 29

30

See for example the passages at EEKU, 20: 207–08 and ZEKU, 5: 197. The possibility of pure aesthetic judgments of ugliness is also suggested by Kant’s claim that a judgment of taste, “if it is pure, immediately connects satisfaction or dissatisfaction to the mere consideration of the object without respect to use or to an end” (KU, §22, 5: 242; my emphasis on “dissatisfaction” – LO). These are the notes taken by Kant’s lawyer and an informal student Johann Friedrich Vigilantius (1757–1823) in Winter Semester 1794/1795.

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pleasure and would consist in a state of disharmony between the cognitive faculties of understanding and imagination according to which the faculties “hinder” each other’s performance. As shown in Section 6.1, in order to argue that the feeling of displeasure has a pure transcendental ground, it is not sufficient to claim that this displeasure is a consequence of a merely negative aesthetic judgment of the type “This x is not beautiful.” Judgments of the aforementioned type are neutral and do not have a feeling of displeasure associated with them. There are a lot of things that we do not find beautiful, namely, things that do not make any claims on us aesthetically. Therefore, the transcendental ground of disinterested displeasure cannot amount to a mere absence of a subjective principle of purposiveness. Instead, because pure aesthetic judgments of beauty are grounded on an a priori principle of purposiveness without a purpose and a free harmony of the cognitive faculties this principle entails, pure judgments of ugliness require something like a subjective principle of counterpurposiveness and a free disharmony of the cognitive faculties. If pure aesthetic judgments of ugliness could meet this condition that pertains to the moment of relation, then other characteristics that pertain to the moments specific to pure judgments of beauty, namely, quality, quantity, and modality would also follow: (1) instead of disinterested pleasure they would be characterized by disinterested displeasure, (2) universal validity, and (3) necessity. Henry Allison proposes a view according to which pure aesthetic judgments of ugliness are possible because they have a pure transcendental ground. On his view, showing that pure judgments of ugliness have a pure transcendental ground requires us to distinguish in Kant’s notion of the harmony of the cognitive faculties the “harmony” from the “free play.” The latter refers to the relation of the cognitive faculties in mere reflection, which can then result in either a harmony and a disinterested pleasure or a disharmony and a disinterested displeasure.31 When the state of “free 31

See Allison 2001, 116–17. Allison here follows Strub 1989 who contends that the possibility of a pure aesthetic judgment of ugliness excludes the interpretation according to which the free play of the cognitive faculties can only ground a feeling of pleasure in Kant. (See Strub 1989, 423.) According to Strub, we should distinguish two types of “free play”: (1) a free play that does not presuppose a free harmony, but rather an independent synthesizing activity of the cognitive faculties, imagination and understanding, and that is further possible as soon as the synthesizing activity is not aimed at object constitution in determinative judgments; (2) a free play that presupposes a harmonious relation between the two cognitive faculties and the mutual furthering of their own activities. (See Strub 1989, 429–31.) Allison’s separation between “free play” and “harmony” of the cognitive faculties builds also on the work of Fricke 1990. Fricke argues that reflective judgments first of all presuppose an “aesthetic stance” in which the cognitive faculties are in “free play” (Fricke 1990, 45). The subsequent step is a search for a universal at the end of which it will be shown whether the cognitive faculties can play harmoniously or disharmoniously with each other.

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play” is separated from the state of “harmony,” then, according to Allison, the relation of the two cognitive faculties can be the one of harmony and mutual furthering of each other’s activity or the one of disharmony and mutual hindering of each other’s activity. This free play of disharmony and the cognitive faculties’ mutual “hindering” of each other’s activities constitute a pure transcendental ground of the aesthetic judgment of ugliness that has the same claim to universal validity as the aesthetic judgment of beauty. There are several problems with Allison’s position. (1) For Kant, “play” of the cognitive faculties takes place only when mutual furthering of their activities is presupposed.32 In other words, the synthesis of the manifold of intuition is conducted by the productive imagination in a way that it contingently agrees with the demands of the understanding. This synthesis, therefore, is not the product of the concepts of the understanding as in empirical judgment. Because of this contingent agreement of the cognitive faculties, according to which the concepts of the understanding find suitable application in the manifold provided by the imagination while the latter provides the material that is not restricted by the content of the former, the cognitive faculties further each other’s activities and are therefore in free play. (2) It is not clear how a state of disharmony could meet the conditions of experience required by the transcendental unity of apperception.33 Imagination in its synthesis must pick out those perceptions in the manifold and unify them into an image so that this collection of perceptions does not conflict with the possibility of a unified and identical subject. To wit, although the unity of intuition accomplished by the synthesis of the imagination is still not “the consciousness of the synthesis of the representations” (KrV, B134) in a judgment, the synthesis must be performed in a manner that makes the manifold suitable for judgment of a unified and conscious self. In other words, there must be at least a degree of unity between imagination and understanding that would allow for the object of aesthetic judgment to be subsumed under a determinate concept so that we can judge “This x is ugly” just as we can judge “This x is beautiful.” (3) Finally, it is not clear how on Allison’s view the possibility of pure judgments of ugliness could be consistent with the requirements of Kant’s moral teleology. In order to argue that a pure aesthetic judgment of ugliness is possible for Kant in the third Critique while at the same time avoiding the 32 33

See on this also Brandt 1994, 33. See Paul Guyer’s chapter “Kant on the Purity of the Ugly” in Guyer 2005b, 147.

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objections Allison’s view faces I first wish to raise the question of whether we need to conceive of the transcendental ground of pure aesthetic judgments of ugliness as a state of “sheer disharmony”34 between the cognitive faculties. In other words, I wish to argue that it is possible to think of the manifold synthesized by the imagination as (1) allowing for the application of various determinate concepts of the understanding, including the concept of the object of aesthetic judgment, as well as (2) displaying a sufficient disharmony with the discursive demands of the understanding that can serve as the transcendental ground of pure judgments of ugliness. If I can show that (1) and (2) are true, then I can argue that it remains unproblematic to ascribe the predicate “is ugly” to objects that we recognize as falling under specific determinate concepts in order to form judgments of the kind “This x is ugly” and that have a pure transcendental ground that makes them universally communicable.35 For Allison who conceives of aesthetic reflection as a form of logical reflection,36 harmony of imagination and understanding in aesthetic judgment of beauty consists in the fact that the imagination, “under the general direction of the understanding,” schematizes not a specific concept of the understanding but the “form of a concept in general.”37 Therefore, on this interpretation, the state of disharmony must be one of “sheer disharmony.” Put differently, if free harmony consists in the schematization of the form of the concept in general, then a state of “free disharmony” must consist in the manifold synthesized in a way that does not harmonize with any concept of the understanding and, hence, does not allow any application of determinate concepts of the understanding, including the concept of the object of aesthetic judgment. However, if we, unlike Allison, do not conceive of aesthetic reflection in Kant on the model of logical reflection and instead allow, as I argued in the previous chapter, for a greater freedom of imagination in its 34 35

36 37

Guyer 2005b, 147. This, I believe, is the general intuition of Alix Cohen who argues that the harmony of the cognitive faculties required for cognition is consistent with the possibility of aesthetic disharmony or, what she calls, “foul play” (Cohen 2013, 208). In pure aesthetic judgments of beauty free harmony of the faculties is consistent with the application of various determinate concepts of the understanding. Thus, when we judge an object beautiful we also have a clear concept of the object even though we do not find the object beautiful in virtue of that concept. Analogously, argues Cohen, we should be able to have a clear concept of the object we find ugly even though aesthetically the cognitive faculties are in disharmony. Although I agree with her overall intuition, Cohen must still explain how it would be possible for the manifold of the imagination to allow for the application of various determinate concepts while at the same time being in disharmony with the understanding in some aesthetically relevant sense. See Allison 2001, 20. Allison 2001, 50, 171.

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synthetic activity of the manifold entirely independent of the concepts of the understanding even when considered in their “general form,” then it becomes possible to conceive how the manifold synthesized by the imagination could allow (1) for the application of various determinate concepts while at the same time (2) displaying a disharmony with the requirements of the understanding in an aesthetically relevant sense. Moreover, rejecting logical reflection as a model for aesthetic reflection will also help us understand (3) how pure aesthetic judgments of ugliness can be excluded from nature and thereby made consistent with the requirements of Kant’s moral teleology. Let us consider first if objects in nature could be judged ugly such that they satisfy the conditions (1) and (2) listed above. Is a judgment like “This rose is ugly” possible such that it occurs in virtue of the perception of the form of the object the imagination synthesizes, and does so in such a way that it allows the application of, at least, the determinate concept “rose” while at the same time displaying a disharmony with the discursive demands of the understanding? If we judge the rose to be ugly because it is wilted or too thorny we are judging it in virtue of the concept and the ideal notion of its species that it fails to meet. Hence, our judgment would not be properly aesthetic, that is, it would not be pure. If our judgment were to be based on our dislike for its color or smell, we would be confusing a judgment of disagreeableness with a judgment of ugliness as a pure aesthetic category. For it to be a pure judgment of ugliness the manifold of imagination in our perception of the rose would have to be such that it allows for the application of at least the determinate concept “rose” while at the same time displaying an overall disharmony with the discursive demands of the understanding. It is indeed hard to see how objects of nature could allow for this possibility, that is, how in my aesthetic reflection on the natural object the manifold synthesized by the imagination, the connections of various aesthetic Ideas, could clash with the discursive demands of the understanding. But this becomes easier to see if we move to the realm of art. Works of art presuppose, on the one hand, a creative “spirit” (KU, §49, 5: 313), that is, a richness of the productive imagination, and, on the other, taste, that is, a honed judgment of how this rich manifold of imagination must be synthesized so that it meets the discursive demands of the understanding. It is in this context that the pure notion of disinterested displeasure can be located: it must be grounded in the failure of the artist’s power of judgment. In the first Critique, Kant defines judgment as follows: “[i]f the understanding in general is explained as the faculty of rules, then

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the power of judgment is the faculty of subsuming under rules, i.e., of determining whether something stands under a given rule (casus datae legis) or not” (KrV, A132/B171). Thus, the artist’s judgment fails when his choice of particulars (whether colors, metaphors, symbols, musical notes, etc.) are not combined in a way that they meet the epistemic standard of the subjective principle of purposiveness. In other words, the artist can set out to make a painting, a sculpture, a musical composition, or write a poem so that the manifold of her imagination allows for at least an application of the concept of the object of her aesthetic production. Yet, the exact arrangement of aesthetic Ideas in the manifold of her imagination may display a disharmony with the discursive demands of the understanding. This is what Kant in the third Critique calls “original nonsense” (KU, §46, 5: 308). If we consider once again the historical reconstruction of Kant’s views on ugliness prior to his third Critique I provided in Section 6.2, we can see the extent to which Kant’s position in his mature Critical period is consistent with his early views. Let me address the three major aspects of Kant’s early views in turn: ugliness (1) as originating in idiosyncrasy that opposes the sensus communis, (2) as relative and not positive displeasure, and (3) as excluded from nature. In the mid-1770s Kant defines beauty as a pleasure in the agreement with universal sensibility and ugliness as a displeasure in disagreement with universal sensibility. And universal sensibility, or sensus communis, entails a certain agreement with the requirements of the intellect. Therefore, as we saw in Section 6.2, Kant associates ugliness with a lack of taste, which results in idiosyncrasy that clashes with the universal sense and the requirements of the intellect. I would argue that in the third Critique, the mature period of his Critical philosophy, a lack of taste and artistic idiosyncrasy remains in Kant’s model of ugliness but now within a transcendental context. That is to say that while for the Kant of the mid1770s the rule of taste, that is, universal sensibility, was still empirical, grounded in a community, in the third Critique, the rule is transcendental, consisting in the relation of the cognitive faculties and serving as the ground of the universal feeling of pleasure and displeasure, which is a new meaning Kant ascribes to the notion of sensus communis in his mature Critical period. Next, I would argue that Kant’s notion of ugliness, as with his view prior to the third Critique, remains connected to relative and not positive displeasure. However, the context in the third Critique is no longer psychological. In other words, displeasure in the third Critique does not

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pertain to a failed psychological expectation that our preconceived representations be met.38 The context instead is transcendental, that is, the aesthetic object, the work of art, that is made with the aim of making an aesthetic claim on us, fails to meet its own standard, that is, the subjective principle of purposiveness. It is only in this sense that it fails to meet our expectations as the viewers and interpreters of this work of art. Finally, by limiting pure judgments of ugliness to our perception of artworks that are the products of a failed human judgment and thereby implying, just as he did in his early views, that pure ugliness cannot be found in nature, Kant eliminates the possibility for nature to be perceived as uncooperative with our final rational ends, that is, morality. According to Kant’s moral teleology, our aesthetic experience serves to reinforce our representation of nature as cooperative with our moral ends, that is, serves to reinforce our representing the world as one that makes doing what we know we ought to do, namely the moral good, possible for us to do. Thus, the experience of beauty has a positive effect on our moral motivation insofar as it provides signs that nature may be cooperative with our moral ends, which helps us persist in our already existent moral dispositions. The experience of pure ugliness in nature would have the contrary effect. The possibility of pure ugliness in nature would also undermine, what I called in Chapter 3, “moral image realism” (MIR) and, thereby, the systematic aims of the third Critique, which, as I have been arguing, consist in the coherency of theoretical and practical aims of reason. Reinhard Brandt rightly contends that this would be a “sacrilege”39 for Kant’s mature conception of reason and also a pure contradiction to the concluding paragraphs of Kant’s third Critique. By continuing to follow the tradition of the internal sense theorists in his mature Critical period and by limiting ugliness as a pure aesthetic category to art and the failure of human judgment, Kant’s aesthetic theory remains consistent with the demands of his moral teleology. I turn now to examine in more detail Kant’s conception of “original nonsense” and, thus, what I take to be his conception of pure ugliness. 38

39

According to Hannah Ginsborg, this is the only type of judgment of ugliness that Kant’s aesthetic theory allows. Ginsborg’s example of being “struck by the ugliness of […] a piece of gravel worn as an earring” but “indifferent to the same thing in contexts where beauty is not expected or required: for example when the piece of gravel is part of a gravel path” (Ginsborg 2003, 178) brings to mind Hutcheson’s conception of the relative displeasure we feel when our expectations with respect to the object are not met. (See Section 6.2.) But for both Ginsborg and Hutcheson this failed expectation is psychological, whereas the failure that my view addresses is normative. See Brandt 1994, 35.

6.4 Genius’s “Original Nonsense”

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Genius’s “Original Nonsense”

In his lectures on anthropology and his unpublished notes (Reflexionen), Kant elaborates on the conception of “exaltation” (Schwärmerei), a form of irrationality and a pathological state of mind, which amounts to a failed attempt to give one’s emotions and the wealth of one’s imagination a cognitive significance. Kant distinguishes between an “enthusiast” (Enthusiast) and an “exalted person” (Schwärmer) to whom he also sometimes refers as a “fantast” (Phantast): “With the enthusiast, the power of imagination is unreined [zügellos]; with the fantast, it is unruled [regellos]. I can still tame the former, for it is a mere exaggeration of the rules, but not the latter, for it is without all rules” (V-Anth/Mron, 25: 1373). The imagination is “unreined” insofar as “it does not stand under the power of the will [Willkühr]” (Refl. 369, 15:144). It is unruled insofar as “it contradicts the rules of the understanding” (Refl. 369, 15:144). For Kant, “[t]he power of imagination being unruled is far more worrisome than its being unreined” (V-Anth/Mron, 25: 1261). This is because in the latter case the manifold is in conformity with the requirements of the understanding insofar as “[t]he enthusiast has after all a true archetype as his object” (V-Anth/Fried, 25: 530). In other words, in the case of, for example, the “enthusiasm of patriotism” (V-Anth/Fried, 25: 530), one forms from a concept of civil society an archetype or an Idea of this concept that presupposes the well-being of all of its members. We all, according to Kant, have Ideas or archetypes of things, a standard by means of which we measure reality. An archetype of a perfect civil society is one example but the Idea of a perfect friendship, or the Idea of a perfect virtue are some other examples offered by Kant. An enthusiast, unlike other individuals, forms by means of her imagination a sensible representation, an image, of this archetype or an Ideal. The formation of the latter helps her strengthen her belief that the archetype is indeed realizable in the phenomenal world. Thus, for Kant, other individuals act from “cold judgment” (V-Anth/Fried, 25: 530), that is, they pursue the realization of the good, whether friendship, virtue, or just civil society, with the awareness that the archetype of these concepts can never be fully realized in the phenomenal world. Nevertheless, they commit themselves to contributing toward an infinite progress in the realization of these archetypes. An enthusiast acts also in accordance with the understanding, that is, with judgment, but her judgment is not “cold” but spirited. In other words, she commits herself toward the realization of the good in the world but “pursues the ideal with affect” (V-Anth/ Fried, 25: 530), that is, she acts believing that the perfect civil society,

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perfect virtue and perfect friendship can in fact be realized in the phenomenal world. According to Kant, this is “noble fantasizing,” and “[o]ne is wont to speak highly of enthusiasm, that it does many great things, and that all the great changes in the world are to have originated from enthusiasm” (V-Anth/Fried, 25: 529–30).40 The imagination of a “fantast” on the other hand, is not merely “unreined,” that is, it does not merely give one, against one’s will, images of the Ideas of reason as being realizable in the phenomenal world. Instead, it “contradicts the rules of the understanding.” In other words, while the enthusiast starts with the concepts of the understanding and their corresponding archetypes, that is, their unconditioned versions in reason, for which her imagination provides a vivid sensible image suggesting its realizability in the real world, a “fantast” starts with the presentations of his own imagination, the mere “figments of the brain” (Hirngespinste) (KrV, B417n) and regards them as if they had corresponding concepts in the understanding. The result is that the “fantast” “believes inner intuition that he actually has a sensation of the objects of his power of imagination in themselves” (V-Anth/Mron, 25: 1287). Kant describes this state of mind in the third Critique, “a delusion of being able to see something beyond all bounds of sensibility” (KU, §25, 5: 275). Kant distinguishes several forms of exaltation (Schwärmerei) and, therefore, several types of “fantasts.” “Fantasts” in morality “are led into the delusion that it is not duty – that is, respect for the law whose yoke (though it is a mild one because reason itself imposes it on us) they must bear, even if reluctantly – which constitutes the determining ground of their actions […] but it is as if those actions are expected from them, not from duty but as bare merit” (KpV, 5: 84–85). In other words, a moral “fantast” gives a presentation of his imagination a concept such that this concept now has objective reality for him, that is, he regards his actions in the phenomenal world to be moral because they are the outcome of the “spontaneous goodness of [his] heart” (KpV, 5: 85). A religious “fantast,” according to Kant, “believes, for example, in community with God, revelation” (V-Anth/Mron, 25: 1288). Finally, a philosophical “fantast,” would have a tendency to give her representation of noumenal objects objective reality and, therefore, treat noumena as empirical objects in the phenomenal world.41 It is not clear, however, how ascribing objective reality to one’s representations of imagination could be a disadvantage in art. One may be 40 41

Kant’s position here is similar to Shaftesbury’s in “A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm,” Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times. See Shaftesbury 1999, 4–28. See Kant’s On a Recently Prominent Tone of Superiority in Philosophy (1796), VT, 8: 395.

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inclined to hold that this can only be an advantage in artistic production, that is, taking objects of one’s imagination as actual, for example, Petrarch experiencing his imaginary presentations of Laura as real,42 could only contribute to the artist’s more powerful expression. But Kant describes the unruly imagination of the poet who “raves” (schwärmt) as the “involuntary running of images that do not appear to us according to our choosing or resolve, that cannot be guided or ruled at will, but, rather, emerge in our nature by an accidental occasion. But then it takes its course in the soul according to rules [Gesetzen] so that it is not possible for us to think it clearly” (V-Anth/Mensch, 25: 946). It is this example of art that attempts at making aesthetic claims on the viewer and fails to do so because “it is not possible for us to think it clearly” that I contend Kant understands by “original nonsense.” I take Kant to mean by this phrase that the unruly imagination of the artist connects the manifold in a manner so that the rule of the imagination’s synthesis is not harmonious with the lawfulness of the understanding. Thus, the “fantast” takes her imagination’s representations, the imagination’s synthesis, as lawful, that is, as a concept. This she does in spite of the fact that the rule of her imagination does not cohere with the lawfulness of the understanding. Consequently, the determinate concepts of the latter cannot find their application in the sensible manifold presented by the former, or if they do, those determinate thoughts could never constitute a coherent interpretation of an intentional content. The examples can range from Kant’s concern with artistic idiosyncrasy, which we saw in Section 6.2 was his concern already in the mid-1770s when he conceived of ugliness as the opposite of sensus communis, to utter madness, which at Kant’s time was considered a common feature of genius. It is this sense of disharmony in intuition that can produce a feeling of displeasure that is different from the displeasure of something that we find disagreeable in mere sensibility and also different from the feeling of displeasure in a disapproval with something that we find to be evil, or imperfect.

6.5

Conclusion and Evaluation

There are several objections I anticipate one could raise against the view I defend in this chapter: (1) the problem of genre requirements, (2) the problem of universality, and (3) the problem of aesthetic indifference. Let me address each in turn. 42

The example is given by Kant in V-Anth/Mron, 25: 1286–87.

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One could argue that my interpretation of Kant’s notion of ugliness in the third Critique ultimately amounts to an impure and not a pure aesthetic judgment. This is because the failure of the artist’s judgment cannot be separated from his or her failure to meet the requirements for objects of a certain class, that is, objects that belong to a specific genre, style or period. Therefore, the aesthetic judgment of ugliness is reached in relation to a specific concept of the object and it cannot be pure.43 However, in this essay I argue that the fact that the manifold of imagination in the artist does not meet the requirements of taste and, therefore, the discursive demands of the understanding, does not entail that one must judge the aesthetic object as a failure against a specific concept of what that object is supposed to be. The object is judged as not meeting the discursive demands of the understanding and it is not judged as not meeting the rule of a specific concept of the understanding. Therefore, the object is considered in virtue of its form and the aesthetic judgment that is grounded in the intuition of the object’s form as opposed to a specific concept would be a pure and not an impure aesthetic judgment. Next, one may raise the question of how, on my view, pure judgments of ugliness can be consistent with the requirements of universal communicability. For Kant, judgments of beauty meet the requirements of universal communicability in the following way: “This subjective universal communicability of the kind of representation in a judgment of taste, since it is supposed to occur without presupposing a determinate concept, can be nothing other than the state of mind in the free play of the imagination and the understanding (so far as they agree with each other as is requisite for a cognition in general)” (KU, §9, 5: 217–18). By “cognition in general” Kant understands the agreement of the manifold with the “lawfulness of the understanding in general” (KU, §22, 5: 241). If the necessary condition of communicability of pure judgments of beauty is in the 43

In the history of aesthetics, Lessing would be a good example of someone concerned with artistic errors that violate genre requirements, for example, when the artist produces visual art defined by spatial representations while being governed in her production by the requirements of poetry defined by action and temporal sequence. For Lessing, the outcome of these errors is not ugliness but a diminished aesthetic effect. See Lessing 1985. Among contemporary commentators, Paul Guyer considers violations of genre requirements as possible candidates of impure judgments of ugliness in Kant. See Guyer 2005b, 155–56. Theodore Gracyk’s example of a symphony performance in which a member of the orchestra plays wrong notes repeatedly by mistake (see Gracyk 1986, 55) would also be an example of the object that fails to meet our expectation for objects of a certain class. It is a judgment with respect to our concept of the object, that is, our concept of how this particular symphony ought to sound, or, at least, of how a symphony of that particular musical period ought to sound. In other words, what we find to have a disturbing effect in one of Beethoven’s symphonies may not have the same effect when an atonal musical composition is expected.

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agreement between the manifold synthesized by the imagination and the discursive demands of the understanding, then it becomes difficult to see how pure judgments of ugliness that presuppose a disharmony between the synthesized manifold and the requirements of the understanding could ever meet this condition. But the universal communicability of pleasure in judgments of beauty is possible because this pleasure is grounded on a transcendental principle, which for judgments of beauty is the principle of subjective purposiveness or the contingent agreement of the synthesized manifold with the discursive requirements of the understanding. In this essay, I argued that the displeasure of judgments of ugliness is also universally communicable because it is grounded on a transcendental principle. Kant himself never specified this principle but I attempted to reconstruct this subjective principle of counterpurposiveness as the contingent disagreement of the synthesized manifold with the discursive requirements of the understanding that for Kant, I argue, is only limited to art. If we look back to Kant’s conception of ugliness as the opposite of sensus communis in the 1770s, finding an object ugly was universal (albeit universality understood as empirical generality) but universality was achieved in a negative way. That is to say, it was achieved not insofar as the object could meet the demands of taste but insofar as the object failed to meet the demands of taste, a communally shared notion of order and proportion. In the transcendental context of the third Critique, universality is achieved similarly in the negative way. That is to say, it is achieved not insofar as the object when taken up in intuition agrees with the demands of the understanding but insofar as it fails to do so. Finally, one may wonder why, on my view, the works of art that fail to meet their own standard do not thereby exclude themselves entirely from aesthetic consideration, that is, why they do not leave the viewer in a state of aesthetic indifference. But, for Kant, objects that are aesthetically neutral are objects that are subsumed under a determinate concept of the understanding and, therefore, are fully exhaustive in virtue of their concept. But the objects of aesthetic judgments of ugliness are the products of a synthesizing activity of the imagination that is independent of any specific concepts of the understanding. Therefore, they are the outcomes of an aesthetic production, even if a failed one.

Part III

Teleological Judgment and the “Moral Image”

chapter 7

Kant’s Account of Nature’s Systematicity and the Unity of Theoretical and Practical Reason

Kant’s project of showing that reason’s representations of nature motivated by its theoretical needs must “cohere” with reason’s representations of nature motivated by its practical needs culminates with the third Critique. However, my aim in this chapter is to show that the origins of this project can already be identified in the Dialectic of the first Critique and its Appendix. In Kant scholarship, reason’s need for the unconditioned has been viewed exclusively as a reflection of its practical need. The Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason is either discussed within the context of reason’s unwarranted metaphysical claims, or, although less commonly, within the context of reason’s positive epistemic role as a transcendentally necessary faculty. With respect to the former, commentators tend to regard reason’s metaphysical illusions as errors due to its “own practical purposes.”1 With respect to the latter, they have difficulties reconciling Kant’s strong claims in certain places about the Ideas of reason as necessary conditions of the possibility of experience with the constitutive conditions of possible experience presented in the Analytic. For these commentators either the Analytic with its Appendix is sufficient to account for the unity of empirical knowledge, or reason’s positive epistemic role is considered as merely heuristic or optional.2 There is much in Kant that invites one to shuffle Kant’s Dialectic under the heading of reason’s “own practical purposes” and conclude that, from the theoretical point of view, the Analytic is sufficient to provide us with the necessary conditions of the unity of experience. For example, in the Dialectic Kant refers to Ideas in their regulative function in ordering our empirical knowledge as “heuristic fictions” (heuristische Fiktionen) (KrV, A771/B799). This, and similar terms in the 1 2

Longuenesse 1995, 535. See also her revised version of this paper in Longuenesse 2005, ch. 8, 233. See, for example, Longuenesse 1995, 535, Longuenesse 2005, 233, Horstmann 1998, 544, and Guyer 1990, 33.

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Dialectic, may undermine the transcendental status of Ideas and imply that their sole function is to serve reason’s practical purposes. But it is exactly this tendency to separate in Kant our theoretical from our practical engagement with the world that I want to question. For Kant, reason cannot be satisfied with a merely mechanical conception of nature that relies on the rendering of conditions in a “horizontal” manner, that is, explaining an empirical phenomenon, or a finite property, as dependent on some other empirical phenomenon or a finite property. Instead, it is in the nature of reason to think of empirical phenomena in some necessary connection because they all require for their existence something that is itself not empirically conditioned and is the underlying substrate of their inner coherence. Thus, some “unconditioned” (KrV, Bxx) must always be presupposed by reason. But even though it may be possible to account for our representation of nature as a system only in terms of our faculty of judgment, to claim that Kant’s appeal to certain metaphysical principles3 in order to explain nature’s systematicity is dispensable for reason’s theoretical purposes and necessary only in view of reason’s practical purposes entails either the position that Kant has a conception of two distinct reasons (i.e., a theoretical and a practical reason), or the position that reason for Kant has no final end. The latter consequently leads one toward an interpretation of Kant’s transcendental as some version of mentalistic idealism, an idealism that denies a real distinction between spatiotemporal (conditioned) appearances and ultimately real (unconditioned) things in themselves that are unknowable by us. On Kant’s view, there is only one reason with two distinct functions, or fields of application, namely, theoretical and practical, rather than two distinct reasons, that is, a theoretical and a practical reason. Thus, the need of reason to presuppose the unconditioned for everything that is conditioned in nature is not only the need of reason in its practical function, or even less so of practical reason, but the need of reason as such. That is to say that if one is to do justice to reason’s unity in Kant, then one must acknowledge that reason’s practical ends are presupposed in every theoretical investigation of nature.4 Therefore, in this chapter I argue that the 3

4

Here I have in mind various principles that serve this function in Kant’s different writings and different contexts, whether it is the Ideal of pure reason and ens realissimum of the first Critique, reason’s principle of systematicity in the Appendix to the Dialectic of the first Critique, or reflective judgment’s principle of purposiveness in the third Critique. This I take to be the meaning of Dieter Henrich’s claim that with Kant’s philosophy it became possible again, in a Platonic fashion, to think of ontology as inseparable from ethics. That is to say that it became possible again not to think that “the world of objects and the world seen from the moral view point are totally separate” (Henrich 1992, 4).

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notion of the metaphysical ground of the unity of nature should not be attributed to the “dynamics of reason” and its “own practical purposes.”5 The metaphysical ground of the unity of nature is in fact an indispensable and a necessary notion for reason in both its theoretical and practical functions, but this need of reason to presuppose such a notion can only find its satisfaction in the latter. That is to say that the objective reality of such a notion can only find its adequate proof in the practical.6 In this chapter, I will offer a synopsis of Kant’s accounts of nature’s systematicity in the Transcendental Ideal of the Critique of Pure Reason (Section 7.1), the Appendix to the Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason (Section 7.2), and in the Critique of the Power of Judgment (Section 7.3). I will identify in each section Kant’s theoretical and practical arguments for reason’s presupposition of the “unconditioned,” demonstrate their structural interdependence, and show a general continuity in Kant’s position on this issue throughout his Critical system.7

7.1

Nature’s Systematicity in the Transcendental Ideal

Unlike other forms of syllogism, or inferences of reason (Vernunftschlüsse), which end with the unconditioned,8 it is only in relation to the disjunctive syllogism of the Transcendental Ideal that Kant refers to the 5 6

7

8

Longuenesse 1995, 535 and Longuenesse 2005, 233. In Kant scholarship, some commentators have already argued that reason has an indispensable regulative function with respect to the acquisition of empirical knowledge. Consider, for example, Allison 2004, 423–48, Allison 2000, 78–92, and Rush 2000. And some have already argued that reason’s dialectical illusions are more than just an arbitrary error. See for example Grier 2001 and Ameriks’ chapter “The Critique of Metaphysics: Kant and Traditional Ontology” in Ameriks 2003 as well as his chapter “The Critique of Metaphysics: The Structure and Fate of Kant’s Dialectic” in Ameriks 2006. My aim is to complement these already existent accounts by arguing that the position according to which reason’s regulative function for the acquisition of empirical knowledge is dispensable is not tenable because it violates the unity of theoretical and practical reason in Kant. That Kant’s notion of nature is more comprehensive insofar as the practical end of reason determines our theoretical inquiry has been also suggested by Richard L. Velkley in Velkley 1989. See especially ch. 4, 89–135. Velkley, however, is more interested in showing how Kant’s conception of reason that has morality as its final end takes shape in Kant’s dialogue with Rousseau. Here I want to stress that for Kant the unity of theoretical and practical reason is grounded on the structural interdependence of theoretical and practical arguments for the “unconditioned” in order to differentiate Kant’s “modest system” from the more ambitious and radical systems of his successors, German Idealists, who argued that transcendental philosophy must begin with the principle which serves simultaneously as the ground of both theoretical and practical philosophy. The other two syllogisms are categorical and hypothetical syllogisms with their inferences to the unconditioned subject and the unconditioned member of the series respectively, and their corresponding dialectical illusions, namely, the paralogisms and the antinomies of pure reason.

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unconditioned as a “system” (KrV, A323/B380).9 Kant opens the section on the Transcendental Ideal by stating the distinction between what he calls, “the principle of determinability” (Grundsatze der Bestimmbarkeit) and “the principle of thoroughgoing determination” (Grundsatze der durchgängigen Bestimmung) (KrV, A571/B579). According to the principle of thoroughgoing determination, a principle Kant inherits from the rationalists, we thoroughly determine a concept by assigning to it a unique combination of predicates against the sum total of all possible predicates of things in general, or the “idea of the sum total of all possibility” (Idee von dem Inbegriffe aller Möglichkeit) (KrV, A573/B601). Unlike the metaphysical principle of thoroughgoing determination, the “principle of determinability” is the logical principle of the excluded middle according to which we determine a concept with respect to any given pair of contradictory predicates and not against the sum total of all possible predicates. According to the principle of determinability, “of every two contradictorily opposed predicates only one can apply to it” (KrV, A571/B579).10 According to Kant, to determine a concept is to specify it by assigning to it predicates which are not analytically contained in it. Following Wolff and Baumgarten, Kant argues that to determine a concept thoroughly is to determine it as an individual as opposed to a universal that is only determined partially. The principle of thoroughgoing determination is supposed to explain the a priori possibility of an individual thing. This possibility is not a logical possibility according to which we think of a concept as possible insofar as it is not contradictory and, hence, it is possible for us to think. Instead, the subject of the principle of thoroughgoing determination is a real possibility of an individual thing. However, in the Transcendental Ideal, Kant does not speak of the possibility of empirical objects, but of the possibility of “things in general” (Dinge überhaupt) (KrV, A572/B600).11 As has already been argued by Wood, the kind of real possibility that is the subject of the principle of thoroughgoing determination is not the one that requires the a 9

10 11

This also shows that my choice to discuss Kant’s Transcendental Ideal, as opposed to, for example, cosmological Ideas, is not arbitrary. The Idea of the world, or the cosmological Idea, is the Idea of the totality of appearances. Therefore, the Idea of nature suggested by the cosmological Ideas is not the same comprehensive account of nature (i.e., account of nature’s systematicity) as in the Transcendental Ideal, which presupposes a grounding relation to an ontologically prior entity to account for its unity. On this and on the specific difficulties Kant encounters in giving the exposition of these two principles see Wood 1978, 42–43. In the Transcendental Ideal, Kant also frequently uses the terms “durchgängige Bestimmung eines jeden Dinges” (KrV, A573/B601) and “durchgängige Bestimmung aller Dinge” (KrV, A575/B603). The former translates as “thoroughgoing determination of every thing” and the latter as “thoroughgoing determination of all things.”

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priori conditions of the possibility of experience specified in the Postulates of Empirical Thought in General. It is, rather, an “absolute possibility” that belongs to reason alone and, hence, considers the possibility of things independent of whether the concept can be exhibited in intuition.12 Thus, the principle of thoroughgoing determination considers the possibility of things as both noumena and phenomena. Although the concepts of things as noumena cannot be exhibited in intuition, they can still be thought as having a real, as opposed to a merely logical, possibility because we still think the concept a priori as a concept of an individual thing available for use in thought even though the content of this concept is not given in intuition. Kant contends that the “principle of thoroughgoing determination” has as its transcendental presupposition the Idea of the “material of all possibility” (KrV, A572–73/B600–01). That is to say that reason’s process of exhaustively defining the concept of an individual thing requires the Idea of a sum total of all possible predicates so that one predicate from each pair of predicates in this, as Wood, calls it, “ontological space” of an allinclusive predicate pool, will be drawn in order to thoroughly determine the concept of an individual thing. The thought underlying the Idea of the sum total of possible predicates reiterates that fact that Kant thinks of possibility not merely in formal or logical terms (lack of internal contradiction) but also in material terms, that is, that there is some content or matter to be thought: “The principle of thoroughgoing determination thus deals with a content and not merely the logical form” (KrV, A572/B600).13 The process of ascribing predicates to a concept of a thing, whether those of affirmation or negation, is, therefore, not a logical but a transcendental process. It is a process that determines a thing’s reality. The latter does not refer to its existence or actuality but, rather, its whatness (quiditas, essentia), or, as Kant puts it, “a being” and “not being,” its “thinghood” (Sachheit) (KrV, A574/B602).14 Thus if the thoroughgoing determination in our reason is grounded on the transcendental substratum, which contains as it were the entire storehouse of material from which all possible predicates of things can be taken, then this substratum is nothing other than the idea of an All of reality (omnitudo realitatis). All true negations are then nothing but limits, which they could not be called unless they were grounded in the unlimited (the All). (KrV, A575–76/B603–04). 12 13 14

Wood 1978, 47. For Kant’s discussion of the “absolute possibility” see KrV, A324–27/B381–84. See also Allison 2004, 399. On the scholastic roots of the Idea of “reality” as quiditas or essentia see Courtine 1992, 178–86. It is also mentioned in Allison 2004, 399.

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In the passage above, we see that from the Idea of the sum total of all possibility reason derives the Idea of an “All of reality (omnitudo realitatis)” (KrV, A575–76/B603–04). From here, Kant constructs the process of the thoroughgoing determination of a concept of a thing as a disjunctive syllogism so that the “either/or” of the major premise is understood in a way that only one part of the omnitudo realitatis will be predicated of the thing and the other excluded from it (“All A is either B or C”). The negation, or the minor premise in the syllogism in the process of complete determination of an individual thing, represents a “limitation” (KrV, A576/B604) of this “All of reality” (omnitudo realitatis) (KrV, A576/B604) (“A is not B”). The conclusion determines the concept as “A is C.” In this sense, the concept is completely determined in so far as no realities that could be predicated of it are left out. Furthermore, from the Idea of an omnitudo realitatis reason deduces the Idea of the unconditioned, an individual being, an ens realissimum, that does not need the Idea of anything else as a condition of its own determination. Put in another way, the concept of an ens realissimum is a concept of a thing that is “thoroughly determined through itself” (KrV, A576/B604). Thus, as this has been suggested by Wood, if we are to think of a thing as filling out only one portion of this “ontological space,” then it is natural for reason to think of a being that would completely fill this “ontological space,”15 or to which one predicate of each of the pairs of possible predicates and their negations would apply. Kant contends that we further “hypostatize” (KrV, A582/B660) the Idea of an ens realissimum, that is, we assume that the object corresponding to the Idea is given in reality. We can present this problem in terms of, what Kant calls, the “logical maxim” (KrV, A307/B364), namely, “to find the unconditioned for conditioned cognitions of the understanding, with which its unity will be completed” (KrV, A307/B364). While this principle is analytic insofar as every conditioned thing presupposes some condition, it also presupposes a further synthetic principle that “when the condition is given, then so is the whole series of conditions subordinated one to the other, which is itself unconditioned, also given (i.e., contained in the object and its connection)” (KrV, A307/B364). The latter Kant identifies as reason’s pretense to the objective reality of its subjective principle: “the subjective necessity of a certain connection of our concepts on behalf of the understanding is taken for an objective necessity, the determination of things in themselves” (KrV, A297/B354). The “subjective principle” is the 15

Wood 1978, 50.

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logical maxim of reason to look for conditions for every conditioned thing. It is “subjective” because it prescribes how reason must proceed in order to fulfill its function of providing explanatory completeness. The search for explanatory completeness cannot be fulfilled, however, unless we assume the second principle, namely, that the complete explanation is there to be found. This is why Kant refers to the transcendental illusion as necessary, “an illusion that cannot be avoided at all” (KrV, A297/B354). With the Idea of an ens realissimum, the transcendental illusion is precipitated by the parallel between the possibility of experience and the possibility of things in general – that is, they both require formal and material conditions. Kant argues as follows: “The possibility of objects of sense is a relation of these objects to our thought, in which something (namely, the empirical form) can be thought a priori, but what constitutes the material, the reality in appearance (corresponding to sensation) has to be given; without that nothing at all could be thought” (KrV, A582/B610). Just as Kant discussed a thoroughgoing determination of the concept of a thing in general, he contends that an object of sense can be thoroughly determined when compared with all the predicates of appearance. “Consequently,” writes Kant, “nothing is an object for us unless it presupposes the sum total of all empirical reality as condition of its possibility. In accordance with a natural illusion, we regard as a principle that must hold of all things in general that which properly holds only of those which are given as objects of our senses” (KrV, A582/B660). Thus, with the principle of thoroughgoing determination reason considers an object as fully individuated but also conditioned in relation to an unconditioned, that is, the concept of an ens realissimum. Furthermore, given reason’s necessary transcendental illusion according to which reason takes its mere demand for an “unconditioned” as an object that is actually given, we are drawn to conclude that the Idea of an ens realissimum is an object of a possible experience. In contemporary Kant scholarship, the origin of the Idea of an omnitudo realitatis and the nature of the object it denotes are disputed. According to Longuenesse, in the Transcendental Ideal, to the rationalist concept of the “whole of reality” (totum realitatis) Kant offers a “critical concept of the totum realitatis” that Kant established by the Transcendental Analytic.16 Much of Longuenesse’s argument relies on her interpretation of the meaning of “possible predicates” and “realities” in the 16

See Longuenesse 1998, 306–07. For her claim that in the Transcendental Ideal Kant “denounces” and “critically reduces” the rationalist concept of a totum realitatis see also Longuenesse 1995, 523–28 and Longuenesse 2005, 211–35.

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Transcendental Ideal. By referring back to the Postulates of the Empirical Thought in General, a “possible predicate” for Longuenesse is the predicate which “agrees with the formal conditions of experience” (KrV, A218/ B265), “realities” are “what corresponds to sensation,” and “negation” is “a concept of an absence of an object” understood as an absence of sensation (KrV, A143/B182, A291/B347).17 On Longuenesse’s account, therefore, the concept of the object that is thoroughly determined can only be the concept of an object of experience and the Idea of the “sum total of all possible predicates,” to which a thing is compared in the process of its thoroughgoing determination, is reduced to the “sum-total of possible positive predicates, or realities,”18 that is, sensations. In this way, on Longuenesse’s interpretation, Kant has “reduced” the rationalist Idea of a totum realitatis, which for the rationalists was a pure concept given in the intellect alone and independent of any sensible conditions, to the Idea of a totality of empirical reality. However, for Longuenesse, the Idea of a totum realitatis, even though it is critically reduced by Kant, remains a mere Idea. This is because the totality of positive predicates, or the totality of empirical reality, is not actually given in experience but can only be discursively thought. To think of it as actually given would be to follow the illusion of rational metaphysics.19 Longuenesse’s interpretation of Kant’s use of the rationalist concept of a totum realitatis in terms of the resources of Kant’s Transcendental Analytic is of special interest to the overall argument of this chapter because it precludes the fact that (1) for Kant the Idea of an ens realissimum is, although not an objectively, a subjectively necessary Idea of reason, and (2) that Kant’s characterization of the relation of the Idea of an ens realissimum to other things is that of a ground to something that is grounded. I will 17 18 19

Cited in Longuenesse 1995, 526. Ibid. In her detailed four-step analysis of Kant’s Transcendental Ideal, Grier suggests that Longuenesse’s “critical reduction” of the Idea of an omnitudo realitatis is motivated by her mistaken identification of Kant’s discussion of a real (as opposed to a mere logical) possibility with the possibility that agrees with the conditions of experience. Instead, following Allen Wood, Grier suggests that Kant in the Dialectic has in mind a real possibility understood as the “absolute possibility” of things in general, or what I called earlier a thing’s “whatness” or “thinghood.” Toward the end of Section Two of the Transcendental Ideal, Kant no longer speaks of a thoroughgoing determination of things in general (durchgängige Bestimmung aller Dinge) but of a thoroughgoing determination of an object of sense (Gegenstand). See KrV, A581/B609. Although this could invite one to conclude that the sense of a real possibility addressed in the Transcendental Ideal is the one that agrees with the conditions of experience, I have shown above that the aim of Kant’s discussion is to draw an analogy between the determination of things in general and objects of possible experience in order to point out how transcendental illusion is precipitated.

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proceed to show how the position that precludes (1) and (2) threatens the unity of theoretical and practical reason in Kant.20 The Idea of a totum realitatis interpreted by the resources of the Analytic – that is, as a whole of empirical reality that we reach through our use of disjunctive and infinite judgments21 – precludes Kant’s claim that “all thinking of objects in general must, as regards the content of that thinking, be traced back” to the Idea of an ens realissimum (KrV, A576/ B604).22 If Kant’s requirement for systematicity is, as Longuenesse suggests, a “logical requirement”23 that reason sets as the goal for the understanding in order to improve the understanding’s judging activity, then the Idea of a totum realitatis that is critically reduced as the whole of empirical reality would be a sufficient condition for perfecting our empirical cognition into science. This is because the “critically reduced” version of a totum realitatis would represent the Idea of completely systematized results of the judging activity of the understanding, a unified system of genera and species and, consequently, the unity of nature under empirical laws. In that case, neither the Idea of an ens realissimum, nor reason’s assumption of the existence of its corresponding object would be necessary. Longuenesse’s suggestion is that Kant continues to affirm the necessity of the Idea of an ens realissimum for reason’s “own practical purposes”24 and that “[n]one of this would be necessary unless Kant was intent on maintaining its role for practical reason. The unity of theoretical and practical reason is what drives the admissions of theoretical reason itself.”25 Although parts of the Transcendental Ideal seem to invite such an interpretation, in what follows I will show that Longuenesse’s formulation of Kant’s position on this issue is misguided. 20

21 22

23 24 25

In the revised version of her paper, Longuenesse suggests that her sole intention is to clarify what a “critical version” of the principle of thoroughgoing determination “might be,” given the terms of Kant’s own analysis and given the outcome of his Analytic. See Longuenesse 2005, 219, 10n. But even if her intention is to show how Kant might argue, as opposed to how he actually argues, my argument still applies because it moves beyond the discussion of whether her interpretation is adequately supported by the text. That is to say that my aim is to demonstrate how, what Longuenesse calls, a “critical version” of the principle of thoroughgoing determination is ruled out by the demands of the unity of theoretical and practical reason and, more generally, Kant’s transcendental idealism. Longuenesse 1995, 525. Cf. Grier 2001, 243. The objective of this chapter, however, is to show the subjective necessity of this Idea from the perspective of the unity of theoretical and practical reason. That this question thus far has not received sufficient attention has recently been suggested by Michelle Kosch. See Kosch 2006, 40, 54n. Longuenesse 1998, 150. Longuenesse 1995, 535. Longuenesse 2005, 235.

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In the Transcendental Ideal, Kant argues that a concept of a thing or a property must always be regarded as a limitation of the concept of an ens realissimum, the unconditioned. It is important to emphasize that Kant speaks of a concept of a finite property (or a thing) limiting the Idea (or a concept) of an ens realissimum. This is because if the concept of a property were taken for an actual property or a thing, then the Idea of an ens realissimum would be the Idea of an object that is an aggregate of finite things.26 The relation of the Ideal to finite things is that of the original image to defective copies and not the one of the sum total of finite things to individual finite entities: It is self-evident that with this aim–namely, solely that of representing the necessary thoroughgoing representation of things–reason does not presuppose the existence of a being conforming to the ideal, but only the idea of such a being, in order to derive from an unconditioned totality of thoroughgoing determination the conditioned totality, i.e., that of the limited. For reason the ideal is thus the original image (prototypon) of all things, which all together, as defective copies (ectypa), take from it the matter for their possibility, and yet although they approach more or less nearly to it, they always fall infinitely short of reaching it. (KrV, A578/B606)

The relation between the Ideal and finite things, as suggested in the passage above, is the one between that which is ontologically original (ens realissimum) and that which is ontologically derivative. But that the limited reality of finite things should be seen as conditioned in relation to some unconditioned ground is not a novelty of the Dialectic that Kant somehow imposes on his theoretical philosophy in order to appease the demands of practical reason and preserve the unity of the theoretical and practical domains. Already in the Transcendental Analytic, Kant suggests that our spatio-temporally determined appearances are conditioned insofar as they are dependent on some unconditioned ground that is independent from us. This is because the manifold is not simply present but “given” to our finite and receptive minds: In whatever way and through whatever means a cognition may relate to objects, that through which it relates immediately to them, and at which all thought as a means is directed as an end, is intuition. This, however, takes place only insofar as the object is given to us; but this in turn, is possible only if it affects the mind in a certain way. The capacity (receptivity) to acquire representations through the way in which we are affected by objects is called sensibility (KrV, A19/B33).27 26 27

See KrV, A579/B607. It is highly plausible that with this point Kant was interested in warding off Spinozism. On this point, see Ameriks 2006, 150.

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Thus, already in the Transcendental Analytic, Kant argues that appearances are dependent on something else that is itself not empirically conditioned. On Longuenesse’s reading, the conditioned/unconditioned relation between appearances and things in themselves is missed because on her view the transcendental ideality is grounded (in a Hegelian fashion) merely on the representations of our conceptual capacities so that the transcendentally real is that which goes beyond all our possible concepts and, therefore, has no ontological status and is an empty category. This however ignores Kant’s longer arguments for transcendental ideality based on the special features of our forms of intuition which are not limited to their epistemic function of structuring our experience28 but instead emphasizes that these forms themselves are relative (conditioned) in relation to transcendental reality (which is unconditioned). Once Kant’s transcendental idealism is approached as a metaphysical and not merely an epistemological doctrine, then reason’s necessity to think the unconditioned cannot be approached as something that would not be necessary “unless Kant was intent on maintaining its role for practical reason.”29 Upon being confronted with something conditioned reason “with every right demands [the unconditioned – LO] in things in themselves for everything that is conditioned, thereby demanding the series of conditions as something completed” (KrV, Bxx). Reason’s demand for explanatory completeness and the thought of the unconditioned is not merely necessary from a pragmatic point of view, namely, the possibility of a belief in the existence of the necessary conditions of the highest good. The unity of theoretical and practical reason in Kant, as demonstrated in Chapter 3, is that of the “coherence” between theoretical and practical domains, which is only possible if reason’s need to think the unconditioned is seen as truly necessary from both the theoretical and the practical perspective while the objective reality of reason’s Idea of the unconditioned can be demonstrated only from the practical perspective. The fact that the “unconditioned” is closely tied to the Transcendental Analytic suggests a complementary relation between Kant’s Analytic and his Dialectic.30 If we approach the relation between the Analytic and the 28

29 30

This interpretation of Kant’s transcendental idealism as a mere epistemic “standpoint” relative to our specific forms of intuition is defended by Henry Allison in Allison 2004. For a criticism of, what he calls, “short arguments” for idealism, see Ameriks’ chapter “Kantian Idealism Today” in Ameriks 2003, 98–111, and also his chapter “Kant, Fichte, and Short Arguments to Idealism” in Ameriks 2000b, 163–86. Longuenesse 2005, 235. In contrast, Longuenesse argues for a tighter connection between the Dialectic and the Analytic based on her interpretation of the Transcendental Ideal as “critically reduced” and, hence, consistent

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Transcendental Ideal of the Dialectic not only as consistent, but also as the former being the propaedeutic to the latter, then it is in fact never the case that the Idea of an ens realissimum of rational metaphysics “finds its overthrow”31 in Kant’s Critical philosophy. On the contrary, one must acknowledge that Kant’s views remain deeply indebted to his rationalist predecessors, which acknowledgment is not incompatible with also stressing that Kant criticizes many specific rationalist claims.32

7.2

Nature’s Systematicity in the Appendix to the Dialectic

The fact that it neither is, nor could ever be, Kant’s intention to “critically reduce,” or “dismantle,”33 the Idea of an ens realissimum is important for the role this concept continues to play in the Appendix to the Dialectic. There Kant argues that the Idea of the “highest intelligence” (KrV, A670/ B698) functions for reason as a “schema” (KrV, A670/B698), or an image, that guides reason’s efforts in obtaining a systematic unity of experience. I will show that in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic, as in the Transcendental Ideal, Kant provides an argument for the necessity of this Idea with respect to reason’s both theoretical and practical need. I will also argue for a stronger claim, namely, that in the Appendix to the Dialectic, as in the Transcendental Ideal, the necessity of the Idea of the “highest intelligence” with respect to reason’s practical need and the necessity of this Idea with respect to reason’s theoretical need exhibit a mutual interdependence. In the opening paragraphs of the Appendix, Kant contends that with respect to the functioning of the understanding reason seeks to achieve “the systematic in cognition, i.e., its interconnection based on one principle” (KrV, A645/B673). This I take to be a version of reason’s principle of systematicity that Kant formulated in the Introduction to the Dialectic, namely, the “logical maxim” to seek the condition for every conditioned which is inseparable from the synthetic principle according to which “when the conditioned is given, then so is the whole series of

31 32

33

with the premises of Kant’s Transcendental Analytic. Her argument relies in part on her claim that the Transcendental Ideal “complements” the chapter on the Amphiboly of Concepts of Reflection. See Longuenesse 1995. Longuenesse 1995, 532. For example, unlike the rationalists, Kant holds that we cannot have any knowledge of the existence of such a being and, hence, the relation between the Ideal and things is not the “objective relation of an actual object to other things” but, rather, “only that of an idea to concepts” (KrV, A579/B607). Longuenesse 2000, 262.

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conditions subordinated one to the other, which is itself unconditioned, also given” (KrV, A307/B364). The connection of particular cognitions of the understanding into one systematic whole is accomplished by, what I would call, reason’s sub-principles of homogeneity, specification, and continuity of forms (KrV, A657–58/B685–86). With respect to the principle of homogeneity, our scientific inquiry of nature proceeds by looking for the similarities in the variety of phenomena, so that several phenomena can be subsumed under a common genus. Without reason’s interest in unity, the understanding would not be able to unify given data by bringing them under empirical concepts and those under higher genus and so forth. According to the principle of specificity, reason demands of the understanding to be attentive to distinctness of species and subspecies. This is reason’s interest in differentiation, which proceeds toward the goal of complete determination discussed earlier. Finally, the principle of continuity of forms arises as a consequence of the former two principles and assures a gradual transition from more individuated to more general phenomena and vice versa without encountering any empty phenomena.34 At the beginning of the Appendix, Kant refers to reason’s principle of systematicity as a logical principle.35 That is to say that the principle of systematicity is a merely subjective maxim that reason needs to adopt in order to maximize empirical knowledge without assuming that the same systematic structure applies to the actual objects in nature. On this view, the principle of systematicity would be regarded as a maxim that is not a necessary condition for the successful functioning of the understanding but a maxim we have an option to adopt for the sake of maximizing our empirical knowledge. This interpretation of the status of the principle of systematicity is reinforced by Kant’s claim that the principle of systematicity is not properly constitutive and that it does not afford “a cognition 34

35

Kant’s account of the role reason’s principle of systematicity plays in empirical investigations of nature has been a topic of much debate among scholars interested in Kant’s theory of science. The principle of systematicity has been related to (1) the possibility of obtaining coherence among a variety of empirical laws (KrV, A649–52/B677–80), (2) the formation of empirical concepts (KrV, A654/ B682), (3) the capacity to make inductive inferences beyond the instances immediately given in experience and, hence, the capacity to discover empirical laws, and (4) the character of empirical laws as necessary. It has also been argued that all of these manifestations of the principle of systematicity are intimately connected. That is to say that it is not possible to make law-like empirical generalizations without distinguishing among species, genera, etc. And some of these topics have been particularly controversial, such as, for example, Kant’s claim that the principle of systematicity is a necessary condition for the formation and deployment of empirical concepts. I am aware that some of these issues are especially difficult to resolve and I postpone a more detailed consideration of these issues until another occasion since they are not central to the overall argument of this chapter. See, for example, KrV, A648/B676, A649/B677.

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of the object itself (as in the application of the categories to their sensible schemata), but only a rule or principle of the systematic unity of all use of the understanding” (KrV, A665/B693). Given that systematizing cognitions of the understanding in accordance with the projected systematic unity of reason does not amount to knowledge of the possible objects of experience, the maxims of the principle of systematicity are “all subjective principles that are taken not from the constitution of the object but from the interest of reason in regard to a certain possible perfection of the cognition of this object” (KrV, A666/B694). Thus, regarding their function of “perfecting” empirical cognition, Kant refers to reason’s Ideas as “heuristic fictions” (heuristische Fiktionen) (KrV, A771/B799).36 But later in the Appendix, Kant contends that reason’s principle of systematicity is a transcendental principle. That is to say that the principle of systematicity is a principle “which would make systematic unity not merely something subjectively and logically necessary, as method, but objectively necessary” (KrV, A648/B676). In other words, if Kant grants the principle of systematicity a transcendental, rather than a merely logical status, then this principle “pretends to objective reality” (KrV, A650/ B678), or entails that the same systematic order actually obtains in nature. And this is something that “reason does not beg but commands” (KrV, A653/B681). In other words, we are constrained by the nature of our reason to presuppose that a unanimity among manifold natural phenomena – for example, a variety of natural laws that stand under more general laws – is actually obtained in nature, so that the principle of nature’s systematicity “is not merely a principle of economy of reason, but becomes an inner law of nature” (KrV, A650/B678). The fact that the subjective necessity of nature’s systematic unity is taken for an objective necessity is, here in the Appendix as in the Transcendental Ideal, a manifestation of reason’s necessary illusion according to which reason takes that which is necessary relative to its own needs as objectively necessary. Kant articulates this transcendental illusion through the metaphor of a “focus imaginarius” (KrV, A644/B673), an imaginary focal point.37 36

37

Led by the above claims as well as Kant’s contention that a transcendental deduction of reason’s Ideas “is always impossible” (KrV, A663/B691), Paul Guyer concludes that the satisfaction of reason’s systematic concerns is “optional as far as the basic work of the understanding in constituting the unity of experience is concerned” and that “pursuing both variety and unity seems more practical than logical or theoretical, more a question of limits on time and resources than anything else” (Guyer 1990, 32). The connection between Kant’s metaphor of a focus imaginarius and the transcendental illusion presupposed by the principle of systematicity is emphasized by Henry Allison in Allison 2004, 425–30 and also Grier in Grier 2001, 37–38.

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Kant took the idea of a focus imaginarius from Newton’s Opticks where Newton used it to refer to an optical illusion involved in mirror vision whereby objects behind one’s back and outside of one’s visual field appear to be in front, just as it would be if the lines of light reflected in the mirror proceeded in the straight course. In Kant’s context, the idea of a focus imaginarius stands for a unifying point directing the understanding to “a certain goal respecting which the lines of direction of all its rules converge at one point” (KrV, A644/B672). Thus, with the principle of systematicity reason brings various empirical cognitions of the understanding (i.e., its “distributive unity” [KrV, A582/B660], or empirical phenomena “distributed” in space and time and unified in experience of a single subject) into a representation of the systematic whole of reason (i.e., “collective unity” [KrV, A582/ B660], rules of single empirical phenomena “collected” into a systematic whole of reason). Just as for Newton the imaginary focal point was outside of one’s visual field, so for Kant this imaginary focal point is outside of the possible experience. And even though the rules and the concepts of the understanding do not originate in this single unifying point, we represent them as if they did. Put differently, just as the optical focus imaginarius in the mirror image produces the optical illusion of objects behind one’s back appearing to be in front, so does Kant’s intellectual focus imaginarius produce a transcendental illusion, that is, we take the systematic unity of the laws of the understanding to pertain to the way nature is in itself. The claim that taking the subjective necessity of nature’s unity for its objective necessity is a matter of a transcendental illusion is brought into question by Kant’s claim that our representations of nature’s systematic unity is objectively valid and objectively real. Kant argues that the logical principle of reason presupposes the transcendental principle: “In fact it cannot even be seen how there could be a logical principle of rational unity among rules unless a transcendental principle is presupposed, through which such a systematic unity, as pertaining to the object itself, is assumed a priori as necessary” (KrV, A650/B678).38 Thus, if we were to take reason’s principle of systematicity as a merely logical principle Kant contends that we would lack a criterion for its correct application: “For by what warrant can reason in its logical use claim to treat manifoldness of the powers which nature gives to our cognition as merely a concealed unity, and to derive them as far as it is able from some fundamental power, when reason is free to admit that it is just as possible that all powers are different 38

For Kant’s claim that the logical principle presupposes the transcendental see also KrV, A656/B684 and A660/B688.

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in kind, and that its derivation of them from a systematic unity is not in conformity with nature?” (KrV, A651/B679) In other words, Kant suggests that reason could not direct the employment of the understanding unless we presuppose that nature conforms to reason’s demand for systematicity. It is for this reason that Kant regards the principle of systematicity both as having “objective […] validity” (KrV, A663/B691) and “objective reality” (KrV, A665/B693). With regard to the former, we can test reason’s systematic representation of nature as either true or false of nature.39 With regard to the latter, the principle of systematicity applies to the “objects” of experience, insofar as every principle of the understanding to which it applies also applies to the objects of experience. Although reason’s principle of systematicity is a transcendental principle, it is, unlike the categories of the understanding, not a constitutive but a regulative principle. That is to say that its transcendental status does not amount to the claim that nature is in fact so systematically ordered but, rather, that “this unity of reason conforms to nature itself” (ist der Natur selbst angemessen) (KrV, A653/B681; my emphasis – LO). Thus, we do not say that nature is so rationally ordered but, rather, we presuppose that nature is amenable to our rational ordering.40 Reason is thus not determinate with respect to the objects of possible experience in the manner in which the understanding and our a priori forms of sensibility are. Kant, thus, qualifies the objective validity of the principle of systematicity as “objective but indeterminate validity” (KrV, A663/B691). Similarly, because the objects of the principle of systematicity are the particular cognitions of the understanding, Kant suggests that objective reality holds of the principle “only indirectly” (KrV, A665/B693). In order to justify the transcendental status of reason’s principle of systematicity, that is, its status as a necessary condition of the possibility of experience, Kant appeals to his more general argument for transcendental idealism, that is, he appeals to what he takes to be the need of our cognitive capacities as specifically human. Thus, Kant argues that the accomplishments of the Analytic are limited and that, given the a priori conditions of the possibility of experience specified in the Analytic, one can still imagine that experience lacks uniformity: 39

40

Reinhard Brandt also argues that if the principle of reason were taken as merely logical, then it would either have nothing to do with truth, or truth would have to be identified with a merely inner coherence. Both of these options, as Brandt rightly notes, are foreign to the project of the Critique of Pure Reason. See Brandt 1989, 178. One has to keep in mind here that this distinction is the result of transcendental reflection. Cf. Grier 2001, 277.

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For the law of reason to seek unity is necessary, since without it we would have no reason, and without that, no coherent use of the understanding, and, lacking that, no sufficient mark of empirical truth; thus in regard to the latter we simply have to presuppose the systematic unity of nature as objectively valid and necessary. (KrV, A651/B679)

For Kant, the Transcendental Analytic is merely concerned with a priori rules that determine what can count as an object of possible experience. The concepts of the understanding supply the formal conditions that anything that counts as an object of a possible experience must satisfy. For example, if something is to count as an object of our experience, it has to fall under the predicates of quantity, quality, relation, and modality. But the fact that it does fall under these predicates is not sufficient to determine it as a specific object.41 Thus, only with the application of the principle of systematicity we can determine empirical phenomena as specific empirical phenomena that have their own specific place in the whole hierarchy of empirical phenomena (species, genera, families), or, as Kant puts it, in the “world-whole itself” (KrV, A677/B705). This is why Kant undertakes the transcendental deduction of the Ideas. Although, as Kant contends, “[t]he ideas of reason […] do not permit any deduction of the same kind as the categories; […] if they are to have the least of objective validity, even if it is only an indeterminate one, and are not to represent merely empty thought-entities (entia rationis ratiocinantis), then a deduction of them must definitely be possible, granted that it must also diverge quite from the deduction one can carry out in the case of the categories” (KrV, A669–70/B697–98). By taking the example of the theological Idea of God, Kant summarizes the deduction as follows.42 The Idea of the highest intelligence does not have a corresponding object in empirical reality. Instead, its object is “only a schema,” “the imagined object” (KrV, A670/B698). A schema of the pure concepts of the understanding is the product of the synthesis of the imagination that renders the rules of the categories sensible in the form of temporal succession. The object of the Idea of the highest intelligence is an “analogue of […] a schema” (KrV, A665/B693) because our representation of this object is a product of the imagination insofar as we represent all the objects of experience as if originating in the highest intelligence. Just as sensible schemata specify the application conditions of 41

42

I agree here with Henry Allison who, unlike Paul Guyer, argues that Kant’s Analytic “leaves ample room for the assignment of genuine transcendental status of reason’s principle of systematicity” (Allison 2000, 80). Kant provides the deduction of the psychological Idea of the soul and the cosmological Idea of the world but these examples lie outside of the scope of the present chapter.

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concepts of the understanding, so reason’s Idea of the highest intelligence and its principle of systematicity specify the condition for the application of the understanding. It is a mere “analogue of a schema” insofar as it is not aimed at the determination of empirical objects. Instead, its object is the understanding. Because “all rules of the empirical use of reason under the presupposition of such an object in the idea lead to systematic unity, always extending the cognition of experience but never going contrary to experience, […] it is a necessary maxim of reason to proceed in accordance with such ideas” (KrV, A671/B699). With this sentence Kant concludes his transcendental deduction of the Ideas. Thus, in the second part of the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic, in the chapter On the Final Aim of the Natural Dialectic of Human Reason, the Idea that serves as a schema for applying reason’s principle of systematicity to the functioning of the understanding is no longer the Idea of the “form of a whole of cognition” (KrV, A645/B673) but, rather, reason’s unconditioned now becomes the Idea of the “highest intelligence” (KrV, A670/B698). While the former notion emphasizes the epistemological aspect of the transcendental Idea (i.e., the fact that the transcendental Idea represents the whole that determines the place of each particular cognition and their relations to each other), the latter emphasizes the metaphysical aspect of the transcendental Idea (i.e., the thought of the origin of the concept according to which the whole precedes the parts and is not the product of their addition, which is specific to our discursive understanding). In the second half of the Appendix, Kant also no longer speaks of “conformity” (KrV, A653/B681) between reason’s demand for systematic unity and nature. Instead, he characterizes nature as “purposive” (zweckmäßig) (KrV, A686/B714), as if it were a product of an intention. One may, however, wonder whether Kant could have completely dispensed with the transcendental Idea of God and the notion of nature’s purposiveness, and could have appealed instead only to the notion of reason’s systematicity. One may be led to speculate, like Longuenesse in the example of the Transcendental Ideal, that Kant was pressured to appeal to the theological Idea and the notion of nature’s purposiveness in light of the role this concept plays in his practical philosophy. On such a view, if the theological Idea occurs in his theoretical philosophy, then it is only for the sake of preserving the unity of reason, that is, for showing that the Idea is not exclusive only to practical reason. This however would be to misunderstand the genuine meaning of the unity of theoretical and practical reason in Kant. Below I explain why.

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Kant contends that the pure concepts of the understanding cannot be used to explain the possibility of the “world-whole” (eines Weltganzen) (KrV, A677/B705): “The concepts of reality, substance, causality, even that of necessity in existence have, beyond their use in making possible the empirical cognition of an object [Gegenstand], no significance at all which might determine any object [Object]” (KrV, A677/B705). In other words, categories are conditions of a possibility of an object of experience [Gegenstand] but cannot be used to determine objects in general, including noumenal objects.43 Hence, the Idea of the “world-whole,” just like the Idea of a totum realitatis in the Transcendental Ideal, is not an Idea of a totality of all empirical reality that is engendered discursively but is completely beyond the totality of empirical reality and serves as a transcendent ground of that reality. Therefore, according to Kant, the possibility of the “world-whole” can only be explained if reason posits an understanding analogous to ours in its empirical use. However, unlike our discursive and limited understanding, this posited understanding contains all the qualities of ours but in “their highest perfection” (KrV, A678/B706) and, in relation to ours, this reason is a “self-sufficient reason” (KrV, A678/B706). Thus, Kant concludes, “I leave out all conditions limiting the idea, so as […] to make possible systematic unity of the manifold in the world-whole and, by means of this unity, the greatest possible empirical use of reason, by seeing all combinations as if they were ordained by a highest reason of which our reason is only a weak copy” (KrV, A678/B705). Hence, Kant conceives of the systematic representation of nature, the “world-whole,” as intentional, that is, as the object of an unlimited intelligence. Kant’s move from the Idea of a “world-whole” to the Idea of the “highest intelligence” in the second half of the Appendix can also be seen as issuing from the “proper principle of reason in general” (KrV, A307/B364), that is, the principle to find the unconditioned for everything conditioned: For if the greatest possible empirical use of my reason is grounded on an idea […] which in itself can never be presented adequately in experience, even though it is unavoidably necessary for approximating to the highest 43

I acknowledge that Kant’s formulation here is particularly difficult. This is because the passage may suggest that categories in general cannot apply at all to noumena so that a causal relation between noumena and phenomena would not be possible. This interpretation of the passage, however, would contradict some of the main ideas of Kant’s transcendental idealism, such as Kant’s argument for the possibility of our absolute freedom of choice. Thus, in this passage, although Kant fails to be specific, I take him to have in mind a spatio-temporal schematized version of the categories as opposed to pure categories that are derived from general logical features of the understanding that are not defined in terms of any specific forms of sensibility.

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The Idea of a “world-whole” relates to the Idea of the “highest intelligence” as a conditioned to an unconditioned. This is because if it were to exist as an object and not just as an Idea of our reason, it would require intelligence other than ours for its existence, which, in turn, would not depend on anything else as a condition of its possibility. Therefore, in the Appendix, as was the case in the Transcendental Ideal, reason’s engendering of the Idea of the “highest intelligence” issues from reason’s theoretical position, from its demand for explanatory completeness. This is because the Idea of the “highest intelligence” is the ground or origin of the concept of the whole that is metaphysically prior to the relation of its parts, while this concept, namely, the concept of systematic unity, is the necessary condition for the proper functioning of the understanding. However, already in the Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant suggests that the satisfaction of the minimal ends of our rationality (i.e., empirical cognition) presupposes the satisfaction of the final ends of our rationality, that is, morality. In other words, in the second half of the Appendix, by articulating reason’s need for systematicity teleologically, that is, in terms of purposes, and by contending the necessity of the Idea of the “highest intelligence,” Kant prepares the ground for his discussion in the Canon. In the Canon, Kant argues thusly: “The world must be represented as having arisen out of an idea if it is to be in agreement with that use of reason without which we would hold ourselves unworthy of reason, namely the moral use, which depends throughout on the idea of the highest good” (KrV, A815–16/B843–44). I cannot hope to discuss here in detail Kant’s conception of the highest good in the Canon. My sole intention is to show that the necessity of the Idea of the “highest intelligence” and the inevitable representation of nature’s systematic unity as a system of purposes is related also to reason’s final end, that is, morality. This is because the experience of nature that is purposive to our rational ordering leads us to see nature as a system that has our moral development as its goal.44 This, however, is not to say that “none of this” – that is, the necessity to think the Idea of the “highest intelligence” and the regulative role it plays in our 44

Here I concur with Velkley who argues that in the secondary literature the Canon has unfairly been considered as having only historical interest, that is, as a beginning and imperfect version of the analytic of the principles of practical reason. Velkley claims, and I agree, that the Canon’s aim is “not to provide the foundations of moral philosophy […] but the outline of the completion of the metaphysical strivings of reason in a new “system” of reason” (Velkley 1989, 138).

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cognition – would not be necessary “unless Kant was intent on maintaining its role for practical reason.”45 The argument of the Appendix shows that our practical ends are always implicit in all our knowledge acquisition and all our theoretical investigation of nature. To imagine that for Kant our theoretical engagement with the world could somehow be independent of our practical ends is to assign to Kant a conception of human rationality that is very different from the one he originally intended.46

7.3

Nature’s Systematicity in the Critique of Judgment

While in the Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason the task of representing nature as a unity is primarily assigned to the regulative role of the Ideas of pure reason, in the Critique of Judgment, this task is assigned to a new faculty – that is, the faculty of reflective judgment. Similar to reason’s “hypothetical” (KrV, A647/B675) function and its application of the principle of systematicity, Kant defines reflective judgment as a type of judgment that seeks for a particular a universal that is not yet given (e.g., a genus under which particular species can be subsumed, or an empirical law that would explain the relation among particular empirical phenomena).47 Similar to reason’s “apodictic” (KrV, A646/674) function, Kant defines determinative judgment as “the faculty for thinking of the particular as contained under the universal” (ZEKU, 5: 179), or, as Kant formulates this in the First Introduction to the third Critique, the “ability to subsume the particular under the universal” (EEKU, 20: 2020)48 Furthermore, in the third Critique, the inferences of pure reason [Vernunftschlüsse]49 of the first Critique’s Dialectic are replaced with the inferences of judgment [Schlüsse der Urtheilskraft]50 and, more specifically, the inferences of those judgments Kant regards as “merely reflective” 45 46

47

48

49 50

Longuenesse 2005, 235. In the chapter “Avoiding German Idealism: Kant, Hegel, and the Reflective Judgment Problem,” Robert Pippin expresses his puzzlement over Kant’s claim that “reason thus prepares the field for the understanding” (KrV, A658/B685) as opposed to systematizes the results. See Pippin 1997, 146, 34n. I believe that the issue of the unity of theoretical and practical reason provides the answer to this puzzle. In other words, for Kant it is not possible that our knowledge acquisition, and, thus, the satisfaction of the minimal cognitive ends of our rationality be independent from its final end, or morality. In the Appendix, Kant defines the hypothetical use of reason as the one in which “the universal is given only problematically, and it is a mere idea, the particular being certain while the universality of the rule for this consequent is still a problem” (KrV, A646/B674). According to the Appendix to the Dialectic, in the “apodictic use of reason” “the universal is itself certain and given, and only judgment is required for subsuming, and the particular is necessarily determined through it” (KrV, A646/B674). Cf. Frank, Manfred and Zanetti, Véronique 1996, 1174. See V-Lo/ Jäsche, §81–§85, 9: 131–33.

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(EEKU, 20: 220) – that is, aesthetic and teleological judgment that proceed from the particular to the universal.51 These inferences can take either the form of induction or the form of analogy: The power of judgment – which progresses from a particular to a universal in order to draw from experience, therefore not a priori, (empirical) universal judgments – infers either from many to all things of one kind, or from many determinations and characteristics, with respect to which the things of one kind agree, to the remaining things insofar they belong to the same principle. The former kind of inference is called the inference of induction and the latter the inference of analogy. (V-Lo/ Jäsche, §84, 9: 12)52

In the example of induction, judgment proceeds according to the rule that what applies to the first instances also applies to the remaining instances of the same kind in the series. Already in the Appendix, Kant gives examples of reason’s inductive inference in the example of the principle of homogeneity that allows one to group the given phenomena into higher genera and to subsume observed phenomenal regularities into empirical laws. In the third Critique, the role of inductive inference is given to the reflective judgment and the logical principle of nature’s purposiveness, which approaches nature as an organized system and further makes possible “classification” (EEKU, 20: 214) of the manifold into higher classes and its “specification” (EEKU, 20: 215) to lower species and subspecies. Because teleological judgment in its reflection on nature as a whole, or nature as a system, takes the indeterminate principle of nature’s purposiveness as a “guiding thread” (Leitfaden) (KU, §71, 5: 389) for its reflection, teleological judgment in its “artistic,” or “technical” (EEKU, 20: 213–14) procedure follows a form of analogy. That is to say that the judgment reflects on the representations of nature and the contingent order it finds in them and represents this order “in accordance with the analogy of an end” (ZEKU, 5: 193), or as if this order “had been designed by the power of judgment for its own need” (EEKU, 20: 216). 51

52

In a passage in the First Introduction (see EEKU, 20: 212), Kant suggests that reflection pertains to determinative judgments as well. This is the passage that inspired Longuenesse to argue that those judgments Kant calls “merely reflective” have a much tighter connection to determinative judgments than is normally thought. According to Longuenesse, this further suggests that, even in the third Critique, the systematic unity of experience can be achieved discursively, that is, by the resources Kant already provides in the Analytic of the first Critique. Instead of focusing, as Longuenesse does, on the fact that both determinative and those “merely reflective” judgments reflect, below I focus on the specific nature of reflection presupposed by the “merely reflective” judgments. Although Jäsche Logik was published in 1800, its content reflects Kant’s views prior to the publication of the third Critique, which also explains why in Jäsche Logik induction and analogy are ascribed to judgment in general and not reflective judgment.

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As with reason’s principle of systematicity in the Appendix to the Dialectic of the first Critique, reflective judgment’s principle of purposiveness is transcendental and, thus, not merely an optional procedure a judgment can follow relative to its goal of maximizing the cognition of nature. This also entails that when reflective judgment proceeds to investigate nature guided by the principle of purposiveness, it searches for the unity of empirical phenomena with the expectation that this unity is there to be found in nature. Kant’s justification of the transcendental status of the reflective judgment’s principle of purposiveness in the third Critique is reminiscent of his justification of the transcendental status of reason’s principle of systematicity in the first Critique:53 For although experience constitutes a system in accordance with transcendental laws, which contain the condition of the possibility of experience in general, there is still possible such an infinite multiplicity of empirical laws and such a great heterogeneity of forms of nature, which would belong to particular experience, that the concept of a system in accordance with these (empirical) laws must be entirely alien to the understanding, and neither the possibility, let alone the necessity, of such a whole can be conceived. (EEKU, 20: 203)54

Thus, in the First Introduction to the Critique of Judgment, Kant reminds us that the unity of nature that is the outcome of the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason is not sufficient for acquiring empirical knowledge of things. However, the representation of nature’s systematic unity by means of reflective judgment avoids the ambivalence of the transcendental status of reason’s principle of systematicity, that is, its status as objectively valid but in an “indeterminate way,” and objectively real but in an “indirect way.” The reflective judgment’s principle of purposiveness, although transcendental, is not objectively valid because it does not prescribe this order to nature. This feature of reflective judgment’s principle of purposiveness is explained by reflective judgment’s “heautonomy”: “The power of judgment thus also has in itself an a priori principle for the possibility of nature, though only in a subjective respect, by means of which it prescribes a law, not to nature (as autonomy) but to itself (as heautonomy) 53 54

See KrV, A653–54/B681–82 and my discussion of this passage in Section 7.2 of this chapter. A similar passage can also be found at EEKU, 20: 209. Frank and Zanetti rightly note that the insufficiency of a theoretical account of experience is more the subject of the First Introduction, while the Second Introduction addresses the question of how theoretical and practical reason, in spite of their opposed legislative domains (nature and freedom respectively), form a unity. Thus, the First and the Second Introductions of the Critique of Judgment differ in their contents and not only in their respective lengths. See Frank and Zanetti 1996a, 1169.

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for reflection on nature” (ZEKU, 5: 185–86). Thus, although nature is the object of reflective judgment’s investigation, it does not prescribe the rule to nature but to itself. That is to say that reflective judgment must satisfy itself with a merely subjective necessity. In other words, our representations of nature’s unity do not say anything about the way in which nature is in itself. There could exist other minds of a different kind that would represent nature differently. This procedure of reflective judgment is something relative only to our cognitive powers as specifically human. In other words, judgment’s subjective application of the principle of purposiveness is based again on Kant’s more general argument for transcendental idealism. This self-referential nature of reflective judgment’s normativity further emphasizes the element of contingency in the agreement of the order of nature with our cognitive needs and capacities.55 This element of contingency could not come to the foreground in the Appendix to the Dialectic of the first Critique because reason’s principle of systematicity was prescriptive of nature itself, although “indirectly,” that is, it was not constitutive of experience as the a priori principles of the understanding. In the third Critique, nature surprises us in its regularity because this regularity of nature is not merely an outcome of the understanding applying its a priori rules to nature. Nature could have turned out to be so chaotic that understanding would not be capable of cognition. The fact that nature is structured to our advantage results in our “admiration” (Bewunderung) (KU, §62, 5: 365) of nature as also the thought that there is “something lying beyond those sensible representations, in which, although unknown to us, the ultimate ground of that accord [Einstimmung] could be found” (KU, §62, 5: 365).56 This is what Kant in the Appendix to the Dialectic 55

56

That in the third Critique the goal of the systematic unity of reason “is attainable only through certain contingencies that elude the systematic legislation of reason” is also emphasized by Velkley. See Velkley 2002, 94. Velkley suggests that Kant’s move from his discussion of reason’s regulative unity in the first Critique to his discussion of nature’s purposiveness for our cognitive faculties in the third Critique is motivated by his greater acknowledgment of the conditioning of reason’s final end by sensibility and the problem of the unity of the human being as a contingent species, that is, a species for which the cooperation of reason and desire is not necessary. While I agree with the general thrust of Velkley’s argument, I argue in this chapter that this is not so much a novelty of the third Critique but, rather, a problem that Kant already formulates in the first Critique and which is more clearly articulated in the third Critique. Reinhard Brandt is correct in emphasizing that Kant’s concept of a “technic of nature” is not intentional. That is to say that Kant does not attribute to nature an intentionally acting cause. But this does not entail that for the Kant of the third Critique, as compared to the Kant of the first Critique, “God is overthrown” and that the “judgment cannot and must not embark on the idea of a creator” (Brandt 1989, 186). The above passages show that in the third Critique, just as was the case in the first Critique, the thought of a creator is necessary. What is denied to us is any determinative claim with respect to God’s existence or with respect to nature’s order as derived from such an intentional cause.

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of the first Critique called an “analogue of […] a schema” (KrV, A665/ B693) – a representation, which is a product of the imagination (in the first Critique under reason’s rule of the principle of systematicity and in the third Critique under the reflective judgment’s principle of logical purposiveness), and according to which all the objects of experience are approached as if originating in the highest intelligence. Thus, from the perspective of our human way of knowing or thinking, that is, from the perspective of our “human point of view” (KU, §75, 5: 400; §76, 5: 403; my emphasis – LO), we must go beyond the certainties of determinative judgments and represent nature as if intentionally ordered. But this is far from saying that the necessity of the Idea of the intellectus archetypus is “driven” by the requirements of Kant’s practical philosophy. The “image” of the world as intentionally ordered is anchored in nature, and not insofar as it tells us what is true of nature (determines its objects) but insofar as it is indirectly conducive to our cognition and exploration of nature. In this way, the representation of nature as corresponding to the needs of practical reason is not a representation devised for the needs of practical reason but a representation that receives some level of objective reality from the perspective of theoretical reason as well. The whole of nature in this way is not only approached as a world of theoretical exploration but also, at the same time, in relation to us as practical beings and, hence, as a world of action.

7.4 Conclusion and Evaluation In this chapter, I have argued that reason’s Ideas of the “unconditioned,” which Kant introduces in the Dialectic of the first Critique, is not dispensable for the acquisition of empirical knowledge and only necessary for the purposes of practical reason as some Kant commentators have argued. If we acknowledge that reason is confronted with the “given” manifold and, thus, with things that are conditioned, then it is a part of its theoretical function, its search for explanatory completeness, to think the “unconditioned.” I have also shown that for Kant the representation of nature as a unified whole is grounded in the Idea of a divine understanding which is not merely heuristic or optional but genuinely transcendental, that is, it is a condition of the possibility of the empirical knowledge of things. The paradox of transcendental Ideas’ regulative and at the same time transcendental function is resolved in the third Critique with the reflective judgment and its heautonomy. There Kant shows how the Idea of a divine understanding is necessary to reason both in its theoretical and practical

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functions. The fact that for Kant the aims of practical reason are already anticipated through the Idea of the “unconditioned” in his theoretical philosophy while the objective reality of the “unconditioned” can only be demonstrated in the practical I have called the mutual interdependence of theoretical and practical reason, its unity and coherence. The aim of this chapter was to show that this is not an issue unique to the third Critique but that it can already be discerned in both the Analytic and the Dialectic of the first Critique. It may be objected that one can acknowledge that the Idea of the “unconditioned” has a necessary epistemic and practical function in Kant’s philosophy but that this view does not require the realism that I have been ascribing to Kant, namely, that the Idea of the “unconditioned” has a real object with unconditioned, non-spatio-temporal properties, and that, although this object is not accessible theoretically, it is, on Kant’s view, cognizable practically. On Henry Allison’s view, transcendental Ideas have a transcendental and not merely heuristic status, that is, they are “indispensable”57 and not merely optional conditions for the possibility of experience. They also have a necessary practical function. But, on Allison’s view, the transcendental Idea of God in the Appendix to the Dialectic remains a “fiction”58 even though “its supposition is nonetheless essential to the extension of the understanding beyond what is immediately given in experience.”59 By claiming that the transcendental Idea is a “fiction” and at the same time necessary for experience, Allison wishes to suggest that the Idea does not have a real object even though it still plays a necessary normative function in empirical knowledge. His assertion should be understood within the context of his interpretation of transcendental idealism as a “metaphilosophical standpoint.”60 By the latter Allison understands that theoretical and practical reason are “points of view” with corresponding sets of norms with respect to which assertions about their objects (phenomena and noumena respectively) are justified. Thus, the theological Idea of God is a norm according to which we hold nature amenable to the systematic ordering of reason as if it were a product of a rational mind. The same Idea in practical philosophy is necessary for the sake of directing our will toward the pursuit of the highest good.61 57 58 59 60 61

Allison 2004, 445. Ibid., 430. Ibid. Ibid., 35. If we recall my discussion in Chapter 2, this would be normative necessity of a pragmatic kind, one of the two anti-realist arguments for moral Glaube.

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But this approach to transcendental Ideas falls short of the genuine unity of theoretical and practical reason in Kant. It presupposes that we approach the world from either a theoretical or a practical standpoint so that when I am considering myself as a thinking agent I need to abstract from myself as a practical agent in the world, and vice versa. In other words, if transcendental Ideas are norms of epistemic unity with no real object, then when considering nature theoretically, as a world of theoretical exploration, I am not compelled to see it at the same time as a practical agent, as a world of action.

chapter 8

Organisms as “Natural Ends” and Reflective Judgment’s “Image” of Externalized Freedom

In the literature, Kant’s conception of organisms1 is approached by some authors narrowly from the perspective of the history of philosophy of science and the context of the study of the life sciences in the eighteenthcentury. Another group of authors considers the Critique of Teleological Judgment more broadly within the context of the Critique of Judgment as a whole. And yet their focus remains strictly epistemological: articulating the conditions of the possibility of empirical lawfulness.2 A small group of authors discusses Kant’s Critique of Teleological Judgment within the 1

2

Kant never uses the term “organism” (Organismus) in KU. The terms used are “organized being” (organisiertes Wesen), “organized product” (organisiertes Produkt). The French word “organisme” can be found in Leibniz in his letter to Arnauld, his preface to the Théodicée (1710), and his correspondence with the German chemist and physician George Ernst Stahl among other places. The term denotes a divine machine, a principle of order that is essential to matter given its qualities that were predetermined by God. The word is also used by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (to whom Kant refers in KU, §82, 5: 427). The term was avoided by Christian Wolff whose teaching dominated the German universities in the eighteenth-century but it reemerges again in Kant’s very late writings and is frequently used by the German Idealists. On the use of the term in the life sciences of the eighteenth-century see Cheung 2006. In this chapter, for the sake of simplicity, I will use interchangeably “organism” and “organic formations.” Although I do not intend the list to be exhaustive, here I have in mind Hannah Ginsborg, Rachel Zuckert, and Angela Breitenbach. Ginsborg argues that “mechanical inexplicability of organisms […] generates a difficulty […] in subsuming biological phenomena under lawlike generalizations” and that we need the notion of a purpose in order to regard biological phenomena as “subject to normative rules and standards” (Ginsborg 2001, 232). For Zuckert, “Kant’s broader project in the CJ concerns our – independent, epistemic – need for a structure of the unity of the diverse or lawfulness of the contingent as such. Given this context for Kant’s investigation of organic behavior and the teleological judgment thereof, it is enough for Kant to show that mechanical explanation cannot supply such a lawfulness, and that purposiveness does so” (Zuckert 2007, 126). Breitenbach’s aim is to show the implications of our mechanical and teleological “perspectives” on nature for the “comprehensive understanding” and “scientific research” of nature (Breitenbach 2009, 154). One could include Eckart Förster in this group but for a somewhat different reason. Förster’s discussion of Kant’s conception of organism as a “natural end” is focused on the limitations of our discursive human understanding that must distinguish between possibility/actuality and contingency/necessity in contrast to Kant’s conception of intellectual intuition and intuitive understanding. His discussion of Kant’s teleology is aimed at showing the significance of §§76,77 for the development of German Idealism. See Förster 2002a, 2002b, 2008 and 2012.

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context of Kant’s systematic aims in the third Critique, that is, the relation between theoretical and practical reason and Kant’s concern with the problem of the causal efficacy of reason in nature. My approach is broadly sympathetic with the approach of this last group of scholars but it also diverges from it significantly. This is because their focus is on the Idea of God and Kant’s arguments in the Methodology of the Teleological Power of Judgment, that is, Kant’s notion of external purposiveness and the representation of nature as a whole as an organized system of ends with human beings under moral law as the final end of nature.3 But in the essay Kant wrote in January and February of 1788, not even two years before the publication of the Critique of Judgment, namely, the essay titled On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy, he writes that practical teleology that is concerned with the realization of moral ends in the world “may not neglect their possibility in the world, both as regards the final causes given in it and the suitability of the supreme cause of the world to a whole of all ends as effect” (ÜGTP, 8: 183). Thus, the experience of final causes in nature, or the representation of organisms as “natural ends,” has its own significance for the problem of the causal efficacy of reason in nature that can be separated from the representation of the whole of nature as a system of ends. The significance of the latter, as I have shown in Chapter 3, is in reflective judgment’s “image” of the reality of God’s existence and the final end of creation. The significance of the former, as I shall argue in this chapter, I take to be in reflective judgment’s “image” of a real possibility of freedom, absolute spontaneity, in the phenomena of nature which further contributes to the view that the world considered from a practical point of view and the world considered from a theoretical point of view “must cohere” (müssen zusammenhängen) (KU, §78, 5: 412). The Ideas of reason for Kant do not have objective reality in the world, that is, they can have no appropriate objects in experience and can only serve as “regulative principles in the pursuit of experience” (KU, §77, 5: 405). The Idea of an organism as a “natural end” is such a concept “as far as the cause of the possibility of such a predicate is concerned, which can only lie in the idea” (KU, §77, 5: 405). The predicate “natural” in the concept of a “natural end” refers to the fact that an organism is a part of nature and, therefore, its generation must presuppose the use of theoretical (mechanical) causal principles. The fact that it is an “end” or a purpose 3

I have here in mind the arguments presented by Paul Guyer and Ina Goy, respectively. See Guyer’s chapter “Purpose in Nature: What is Living and What is Dead in Kant’s Teleology?” in Guyer 2005a. See also Guyer 2014, Goy 2015, and Goy 2017.

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entails that its generation presupposes the use of practical (purposive) causal principles. Thus, the generation of a “natural end” presupposes an original unity of mechanical and teleological causes so that its possibility (i.e., its origin) cannot be sought within the given phenomenal causes in nature, to wit, whether in human intentional causality or mechanical causality of nature. The origin of the principle according to which “natural ends” are organized must, therefore, be sought in the supersensible. However, the consequence of this supersensible cause “is still given in nature […] and in this it differs from all other ideas” (KU, §77, 5: 405). Thus, although organisms as “natural ends” presuppose the Idea of a supersensible causality, as products they are a part of our experience of nature insofar as our representation of organisms as “natural ends” is the product of our reflective judgment. In other words, reflective judgment makes possible a representation that is subjective because it is relative to the needs of our human understanding which, limited to the mechanical principles of nature, cannot represent the unity of mechanism and teleology as constitutive of our experience. And yet, reflective judgment’s representation of organisms as “natural ends” is in some sense objective insofar as it is transcendental (i.e., condition of the possibility of our experience of some natural phenomena). I will argue in this chapter that by making possible a representation that is a part of nature and that unifies theoretical and practical causality and, although subjective, is in some sense also objective, reflective judgment makes especially salient the thought that freedom in nature is possible for us. This is because by means of reflective judgment we represent the organization of organic formation as lawful (according to a concept or a principle of the whole) and yet the origin of this lawfulness is not within nature but, instead, we represent organic formation as self-organizing according to a supersensible principle. Kant’s Idea of absolute freedom is the notion of the unconditioned causality, the causality that is self-causing because it is not determined by any other preceding cause. This unconditioned causality belongs to the supersensible because the phenomenal realm is defined by the chain of determinate causes. In reflective judgment’s representation of organisms as “natural ends,” objects that are self-maintaining and self-directed while at the same time being a part of nature, we are given an “image” of absolute freedom coexisting with the realm of causal determinism, or the image of freedom “externalized.” To be sure, the Idea of absolute freedom is not the only meaning of the “supersensible” that is relevant for Kant’s discussion of organisms as “natural ends.” In his discussion of organisms as “natural ends,” Kant evokes

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the notion of the supersensible in three different contexts: (1) the question of intelligibility of “natural ends” for our limited human cognitive capacities, (2) the question of the possibility or origin of the concept (the whole) according to which “natural ends” are organized, and (3) the question of the explanatory compatibility of mechanism and teleology in our representations of organisms as “natural ends.”4 I take the Idea of absolute freedom to be the meaning of the supersensible that is relevant for the first question, the divine designer for the second, and the intuitive intellect for the third. The first two parts of the chapter focus on the first question. In Section 8.1, I discuss the history of the problem of intelligibility of organic formations from Kant’s pre-Critical to his Critical writings. In both his preCritical and Critical writings Kant argues that the causal connections between parts of organic formations and their functions are not lawful and necessary but contingent. In the pre-Critical period, “contingency” of organic formations is posited in service of Kant’s philosophical theology. It is a proof of organisms’ status as creatures and their direct dependence on God. In the Critical period (in the late 1780s with his mature theory of freedom already in place), “contingency” of organic formations is in service of the needs of reason. I argue that in answering the question of intelligibility of organic formations as individual particulars Kant’s aim is to avoid supernaturalism in order to make room for science. But his aim is also to avoid pure mechanism in order to make room for the interest of reason. In Section 8.2, I show how in making individual organic formations intelligible to ourselves reflective judgment generates the “image” of absolute freedom as if obtaining in phenomenal nature. In Section 8.3, I turn to the second and third questions. I address the question of the possibility or origin of the Idea of a “natural end” as the one that presupposes a unity of theoretical and practical causality. I also engage the question of the explanatory compatibility of mechanism and teleology in our representation of organisms which Kant addresses in his Antinomy of Teleological Judgment. My aim in Section 8.3 is to show how both the Idea of a divine designer and the Idea of an intuitive intellect serve as the unifying ground of both the theoretical (mechanical) and the teleological (practical) perspectives of nature and how these Ideas are instrumental in creating an “image” of the world according to which the theoretical and the practical representations of nature “must cohere” (müssen zusammenhängen) (KU, 4

These three aspects of the supersensible in Kant’s discussion of “natural ends” are also identified (roughly) in Fischer, 2019, 60–61.

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§78, 5: 412). Finally, in Section 8.4, I summarize the importance of Kant’s conception of organisms as “natural ends” for the systematic concerns of the Critique of Judgment and offer a brief evaluation.

8.1

Contingency in Our Representations of Organic Formations

In order to better understand how our representations of organisms as ends or purposes are “subjective,” or relative to the needs of our discursive human understanding, we need to clarify how these organizations for Kant are “contingent” or “excessive” (überschwenglich) (KU, §74, 5: 396) for the determining power of judgment. For this purpose, it is useful to take a brief look into Kant’s treatment of contingency in his pre-Critical writings. In his Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755), Kant conceives of contingency within the context of the philosophical discussions of his time, namely, as the extent to which the laws of nature are necessary and the extent to which they are contingent, that is, dependent on the will of God. Kant here considers himself to be taking a middle position, one between the ancient Greek and Roman materialists and atomists (Lucretius and his predecessors, Epicure and Democritus) on the one hand, and Pierre Louis Maupertuis on the other. Kant argues that the universe was mechanically generated (the laws of nature are not dependent on God’s wisdom as in Leibniz) and yet this mechanical generation was not purely accidental as it was for the atomists, that is, a random effect of the motion of its particles. Instead, nature shows lawfulness and regularity. But these laws are also not absolutely necessary as argued by Maupertuis, demonstrating mathematical necessity because derived from the nature of matter alone.5 For Kant, laws have necessity insofar as they follow from the nature of matter but the nature of matter itself, “the essences of all things [,] must have their common origin in […] a single highest understanding, whose sage ideas designed them in constant proportions and implanted in them that ability by which they produce much beauty, much order if the state of activity is left to themselves” (NTH, 1: 332). Thus, the causal interactions of matter unfold on their own, following its essential property, because if the interaction of matter were left to God’s plan (Leibnizian preestablished harmony) or intervention (Malebranche’s occasionalism), then “one is required to turn the whole of nature into miracles” (NTH, 1: 333). Thus, already in his early pre-Critical writings Kant is carving out the space 5

See Tonelli 1959 for the discussion of the necessity of the laws of nature in the eighteenth-century.

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for natural science insofar as the lawfulness of the motion of matter follows the principles of Newtonian mechanics. At the same time, the lawfulness of the motion of matter serves as “evidence” of the dependence of “beings and their first laws of causation” on the “original being” (NTH, 1: 226). For Kant, the regularity exhibited in the shape and motion of celestial bodies has the motion and interaction of matter as its proximate cause but the divine design as its ultimate cause. However, while the organization of celestial bodies, for example, can be fully explained on mechanical grounds (i.e., in terms of the properties and motion of matter), the same cannot be said for organic formations, “the most insignificant plant or insect” (NTH, 1: 230): Are we in a position to say: Give me matter and I will show you how a caterpillar can be created? Do we not get stuck at the first step due to ignorance about the true inner nature of the object and the complexity of the diversity contained in it? It should therefore not be thought strange if I dare to say that we will understand the formation of all the heavenly bodies, the cause of their motion, in short, the origin of the whole present constitution of the universe sooner than the creation of a single plant or caterpillar becomes clearly and completely known on mechanical grounds. (NTH, 1: 230)

Thus, on Kant’s view, the organization of organic beings, unlike that of celestial bodies, cannot be derived from the mechanical causal interaction of matter.6 In The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (1763), Kant defines more precisely the notions of “necessity” and “contingency” by distinguishing between real and logical necessity on the one hand and contingency on the other. This time he endorses openly Maupertuis and argues that the laws of the motion of matter are “absolutely necessary,” that is, “if the possibility of matter is presupposed, it would be self-contradictory to suppose it operating in accordance with other laws” (BDG, 2: 100). This is necessity in the logical sense: denying mechanical laws as the predicates of matter would ensue in contradiction. However, the same laws are contingent in the real sense: “the laws of motion and the universal properties of matter, subject to these laws, must depend on some one great common original being, which is the ground of order and 6

One may conclude from the passage above that Kant’s aim is to argue that it would be only more difficult (but not strictly impossible) to explain the constitution of organic beings mechanically than that of the present constitution of the universe. One should not, however, ignore in the passage the force of contrast between the immensity of the universe and the minute size of a caterpillar. Once the latter is taken into account, one can see how “impossible” would be a more apt interpretation than “more difficult.”

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harmoniousness” (BDG, 2: 99). Thus, the laws and matter are contingent insofar as their nonexistence would not ensue in contradiction given that matter with its properties depends on God as its ultimate cause. And while “all things of nature are contingent in their existence,” that is, contingent insofar as their ultimate cause is in God, not only are particular laws necessary in the logical sense but so is their connection insofar as the movements and changes in matter can be traced down to one single cause, namely, gravity: “[I]t is not one set of causes which gives the earth its spherical form, and another which prevents bodies from flying off the earth as a result of a centrifugal force of its rotation, and yet others again which keep the moon in its orbit. Gravity by itself is a cause which is sufficient to produce all these effects” (BDG, 2: 106). For Kant in the pre-Critical period, this “unity” and “harmoniousness” is a proof of the ultimate dependence of nature on God. While the motion of matter follows the necessary law, the proximate, if not the ultimate, cause of which is the nature of matter itself, the same cannot be said for organic formations. In the Only Possible Argument (1763), just as in the Universal Natural History (1755), Kant argues that the organization of organic formations cannot be traced back to the movements and properties of matter alone. But now in the Only Possible Argument (1763), he explains in more detail what constitutes the contingency in their organization. On Kant’s view, their organization is not lawful and necessary but “contingent” because it presupposes different effects that cannot be traced back to one single cause: “if the ground of the effects of a certain kind, which are similar, is not at the same time the ground of effects of a different kind in the same being, according to another law, then the agreement of these laws with each other is contingent, and the unity which prevails among these laws is merely contingent” (BDG, 2: 106). Kant illustrates his claim by taking the human being as an example. In a human being the sentient functions (seeing, hearing, smelling, etc.) are traced back to different and not a single cause, that is, different organs are required for the different sentient functions. Similarly, at the level of each individual organ each function is traced back to a different part as its cause, “In the eye, the part which permits the light to enter is different from the part which refracts it, and the part which receives the image is, in its turn, different from the other parts” (BDG, 2: 106). Thus, the appeal to the idea in God’s mind is made based on the contingent connection of the parts and the particular laws governing their functions, that is, the fact that different parts and particular laws governing their functions in an organic formation are not united in virtue of a single mechanical cause the way the shape and motion of different celestial bodies point to gravity as their cause.

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In the Critical period, no longer is there room in Kant’s system for what he earlier called “real contingency,” the dependence of matter, its essence and its existence, on the original being. Necessity and contingency are the modal categories of the understanding and not properties of things. Furthermore, the question of the dependence of all things on one necessary being becomes the subject of the Fourth Antinomy. The resolution of the latter shows that transcendental idealism allows for the possibility of both thesis and antithesis to be true: it offers a possibility in the noumenal realm of the existence of an absolutely necessary being on which all other things in the phenomenal realm depend for their existence; and in the phenomenal realm, a possibility to regard all things in an infinite series of causal connections where each phenomenon depends for its existence on some other cause in the mechanical causal network. The mechanical laws of nature, which in the pre-Critical period Kant derived from the concept of matter, are now, beginning with the first Critique, derived from the principles of the understanding, more specifically the Second Analogy according to which “[a]ll alterations occur in accordance with the law of the connection of cause and effect” (KrV, A189/B232). These laws are transcendental and, hence, not merely “logically necessary” but have a real necessity because they are the conditions of the possibility of experience. That is to say that if something is going to be an object of a possible experience, then it must be connected to other possible objects of experience according to the necessary laws of cause and effect (just as, given the other categories of the understanding, it must be an extension, have a degree of intensity, a substance, etc.). While the mechanical laws qua transcendental make possible the concept of nature in general irrespective of the determinate objects of experience, in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786), Kant is concerned with laws that govern the objects of outer sense, that is, bodies. Put differently, the focus of the Metaphysical Foundations is the empirical concept of matter and its motion (physics). Because for Kant, “[a]ll proper natural science […] requires a pure part, on which the apodictic certainty that reason seeks therein can be based” he shows that physics as a “proper natural science” must rely on experience only in a very minimal way (MAN, 4: 470). Hence, the key concepts that pertain to matter must be mathematically constructed following the table of the categories in the first Critique and the fundamental empirically given forces of repulsion and attraction. If matter is considered with respect to its quantity, then matter is that which is “movable in space” (MAN, 4: 480) (Phoronomy). If matter is considered with respect to its quality, then matter is that which

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“fills a space” (MAN, 4: 496) and has a capacity to resist the motion of other bodies that try to penetrate into the same space (Dynamics). These properties are the manifestation of dynamic forces, the forces of attraction and repulsion respectively. Both forces are necessary: if there were only attraction, matter would contract to a single point and space again would be empty and if there were only repulsive force, matter would be infinitely dispersed and space again would be empty. The third part of the Metaphysical Foundations (Mechanics) focuses on the relation of two bodies to each other, that is, the effect the moving bodies have on each other “through the communication of their movement” (MAN, 4: 530). From here Kant formulates laws of mechanics that recall Newton’s laws of motion: “all changes of matter presuppose an external cause” because “each body would remain in the state of rest or uniform motion unless it is necessitated to leave its state by some external force” (MAN, 4: 543). This second law of Kant’s mechanics follows Newton’s first law of motion. And also, “in communicating motion, effect and counter-effect are always the same” (MAN, 4: 454). This third law of Kant’s mechanics follows Newton’s third law of motion. Finally, the fourth part of the Metaphysical Foundations (Phenomenology) discusses the modality of the movement of matter. The dynamical and mechanical laws of the motion of matter, like the transcendental laws of nature in general, have a priori necessity and universality. Moreover, the laws of dynamics and mechanics, the special metaphysics of the Metaphysical Foundations, presuppose the general metaphysics of the first Critique. This is because for something to be a movable material object in space, it has to meet the necessary conditions of what it means to be an object in general.7 But nowhere does Kant relate the lawfulness of the properties and motions of matter to God. Kant’s view of organic formations as “contingent” carries over from the pre-Critical period to KU. In §61 of the third Critique, Kant claims that the unity or organization of certain natural phenomena, namely organisms, is “contingent” (KU, §61, 5: 360) with respect to the “unity of particular 7

The nature of the relation of the Metaphysical Foundations and the first Critique is controversial and I will not be able to address this issue in this chapter given its overall aim. I will only note that commentators mostly agree that the special metaphysics, the project of the Metaphysical Foundations, complements the general metaphysics of the first Critique. However, some of those commentators argue that the principles of Kant’s special metaphysics are a special application or instantiation of the principle of his general metaphysics and that the project of the first Critique stands on its own and does not necessarily require the Metaphysical Foundations (see Friedman 2013, 563–64). Others, on the other hand, argue that Kant intended the construction of matter in the Metaphysical Foundations to secure the objective reality of transcendental philosophy and that, therefore, the project of the Metaphysical Foundations completes the project of the first Critique (see Förster 2012, 66–68).

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laws” (KU, §70, 5: 386; my emphasis – LO).8 Thus, in addition to the “universal laws of the material nature in general” (KU, §70, 5: 386) by which I take Kant to mean the laws of the general and the special metaphysics of the first Critique and of the Metaphysical Foundations respectively, there are also particular empirical laws “that can only be made known to us by experience” (KU, §70, 5: 386). Thus, let us take as an example a human eye with its various particular empirical laws: the law that governs the function of the cornea which focuses the light onto the retina, the law that governs the function of the iris that contracts and expands depending on the amount of light received, the law that governs the function of the lens that by changing its shape (becoming thicker to focus on nearby objects and thinner for distant objects) further focuses the light onto the retina, and the law that governs the function of the photoreceptors in the retina that transmit signals to the optical nerves. The possibility of all these particular laws being unified for the eye to produce vision is “contingent” so that, nature, considered as a mere mechanism, could have formed itself in a thousand different ways without hitting precisely upon the unity in accordance with such a rule, and that it is therefore only outside the concept of nature, not within it, that one could have even the least ground a priori for hoping to find such a principle. (KU, §61, 5: 360)

In this context, by “considering nature as a mere mechanism,” Kant understands neither (1) our representation of nature in accordance with the transcendental laws of the understanding, which any object if it is to be an object of a possible experience must meet, nor (2) the laws of the movement of bodies in space insofar as they are material bodies in general. Instead, Kant has in mind (3) the laws of efficient causality that govern the relation of the specific material objects in nature, that is, parts. In other words, he is interested in particular empirical laws of nature and their connection. But while in the pre-Critical period contingency in organic formations was for Kant the reason to appeal to the Idea in God’s mind as an explanation of their regularity and unity, in the third Critique Kant looks for their unity in the principle of reason, that is, in practical causality – the causality that presupposes the capacity of setting ends or purposes. In other words, if the lawfulness of organic formations cannot be accounted for by the resources of the understanding (i.e., by means of “mechanical” or efficient causality), then it must come from those of reason. 8

See also KU, §76, 5: 404.

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Organisms as “Natural Ends” Since reason must be able to cognize the necessity in every form of a natural product if it would understand the conditions connected with its generation, the contingency of their form with respect to all empirical laws of nature in relation to reason is itself a ground for regarding their causality as if it were possible only through reason; but this is then the capacity for acting in accordance with ends (a will); and the object which is represented as possible only on this basis is represented as possible only as an end. (KU, §70, 5: 370)

If organisms are going to be a part of our rational and systematic cognition of nature, then reason demands that the relation of their parts not remain contingent but instead that it be represented as lawful. If we take Kant’s example of a bird’s anatomy (§61), then we find that the hollow structure of its bones, the placement of its wings, and of its tail are all directed to the purpose of flight. Without the concept of a purpose, for example, flight, we could not find the necessary unity in the organization of a bird’s anatomy. In addition to the properties of particular parts, we can also formulate the problem in relation to the unity of particular laws that govern the function of those individual parts. In the example given above, the unity of all the particular laws in the human eye is provided with its overall function or purpose, namely, to produce vision. Because organic formations remain underdetermined relative to our human discursive understanding which is limited to the laws of efficient causation, and because “[r]eason requires unity, hence lawfulness” (KU, §76, 5: 404) or necessity since organic formations must accord with the rest of nature and the unity of our experience, an appeal to a final causation is required. But given that organic formations are products of nature and not of art, we cannot use the concept of an end constitutively but only analogically in reflective judgment, that is, we approach their organization as if it were a product of reason. Thus, an appeal to a final cause is required for “coming to know their [organic formations’ – LO] internal possibility,”9 and for “having an experiential cognition of their internal constitution” (KU, §74, 5: 396). This will bring necessary lawfulness to the contingency associated with the “form of the object (in relation to mere laws of nature)” (KU, §74, 5: 396). By the “form of the object” Kant understands the Idea of the whole, the object as an organized unit, which remains underdetermined or contingent with respect to the mechanical laws of nature. In the First Introduction, Kant describes the effect of this contingency as follows: “If we wished to judge 9

See also EEKU, 20: 232.

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their form and its possibility merely in accordance with mechanical laws […] then it would be impossible to obtain even one experiential concept of the specific form of these natural things which would put us in the position to move from their inner disposition as cause to the effect” (EEKU, 20: 235–36). In other words, by relying merely on mechanical causes (i.e., the three forms of “mechanism” identified above), we would not be able to identify any single part of the organization and its property as a cause of any specific effect or function of the organism. This is because none of the parts is prior and logically independent to the organism as a whole. Put differently, the existence and function of those individual parts depends on the overall function of the organism of which it is the cause. Thus, we would not be able to investigate any properties and functions of organic formations without the employment of reflective judgment and the objective principle of purposiveness. And if we cannot investigate the properties and functions of organic formations, then we would also not be able to cognize them empirically for what they are. That is to say, we would not be able to make those objects of experience intelligible to ourselves.10

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Organisms as “Natural Ends” and the “Image” of Absolute Freedom

I have shown thus far that Kant’s aim in his Critical period with respect to our cognition of organic formations is twofold: to defend, on the one hand, the interest of science, and on the other, the interest of reason. This led Kant to a conception of organic formations that is not just an end or purpose (as was the case in Kant’s pre-Critical period concerning the role philosophical theology played in his explanation of the uniqueness 10

At this point one may raise the question of whether Kant was justified not to consider the possibility of a reductive explanation, an explanation of the overall function of an organic formation in terms of its inorganic parts, molecules and atoms, which is closer to our contemporary understanding of cell biology. Ginsborg argues that Kant’s view of chemistry, especially of the chemistry of organic compounds, was “at odds with fundamental assumptions of contemporary science” (Ginsborg 2004, 48–49). That is to say that Kant rejected an atomistic view of chemistry and favored a dynamical view of matter. On the latter view, a newly emerged chemical solution could never be viewed as consisting of more basic particles of substances that entered a chemical reaction. However, even if his views of chemistry had been closer to that of contemporary science, a reductive explanation would still not be an option for Kant. This is because reductive explanations could be used to account for a function of the organism at one particular time but it would be impossible to capture reductively the organism as a whole and as an individual particular at all times, that is, its “inner possibility” (KU, §74, 5: 396). And without the latter, it would be impossible to view their relation with other particulars in the whole of nature as a system. The latter, on Kant’s view, is a demand of reason if we are going to have the science of nature.

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of organisms) but a “natural end” or purpose. To be sure, contingency implicit in the relation of parts and properties of organisms explains the need for an appeal to a rational causation. But contingency is not unique to organic formations. In KU, Kant offers the example of someone finding a hexagon drawn in the sand on uninhibited land. One would be unlikely to judge this geometric formation to be the outcome of the effect of a “cause in nature acting merely mechanically” (KU, §64, 5: 370) because “the contingency of coinciding with such a concept, which is possible only in reason, would seem to him so infinitely great” (KU, §64, 5: 370). Thus, one would have to regard the hexagon as a “product of art” (KU, §64, 5: 370). But if both artifacts and organic formations have in common the fact that their organization, the “whole,” cannot be explained mechanically and that both are in need of a concept of an end or purpose, which is a concept of reason, how do organic formations differ from artifacts? If one is to judge something not only as a purpose or an end but also at the same time a product of nature, that is, as a “natural end,” then its parts must be combined into a whole “by being reciprocally the cause and effect of their form” (KU, §65, 5: 373). Kant illustrates the meaning of this “reciprocal” causality in organic formations by directing us to the example of a watch where one part causes the other to move with respect to the overall end of a watch, which is to tell time. In an artifact, therefore, “one part is for the sake of the other” (KU, §65, 5: 374). But in a watch one part is not “because of it” (KU, §65, 5: 374). In other words, one part does not produce another. Because organisms have a productive and not merely a motive power and where parts reciprocally produce each other, the whole or the form of the organisms is the effect of the properties and functions of the parts (the growth, reparation, self-maintenance of an organism) but the whole is also at the same time the cause of the function and properties of the very same parts of which it is the effect (i.e., the growth, selfmaintenance of a deciduous tree is different from an evergreen and therefore dependent on the kind of plant/whole it is). The same cannot be said for a mechanism. In a watch, the positioning and movement of the gears (parts) constitutes an instrument that tells time as its effect. The concept “watch” in the agent who produced it determines the positioning and the function of the parts in the system as a whole but the whole itself, the actual watch, is not the cause of the function and properties of its own parts. In sum, the unique organization of organisms surpasses the rule of the understanding, namely, the rule of efficient causality (i.e., we cannot explain its unique organization in terms of the three meanings of

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mechanism identified earlier) but also that of reason and its reliance on final causes (i.e., we cannot explain its unique organization the way we explain the organization of artifacts). And we can only explain phenomena according to these two kinds of causalities: (1) the causal nexus of efficient causes (nexus effectivus) to which Kant refers to as “the connection of real causes” (KU, §65, 5: 373) and (2) the causality of reason (of ends), which Kant calls the causal nexus of “ideal” causes (KU, §65, 5: 373). Kant contends that by referring to them as “real” and “ideal” kinds of causality, “it would immediately be grasped that there cannot be more than these two kinds of causality” (KU, §65, 5: 373). Thus, the two requirements that an object that is to be a “natural end” must meet correspond to the explanatory failures of our two faculties. Requirement 1: “That its parts (as far as their existence and their form are concerned) are possible only through their relation to the whole. For the thing itself is an end, and is thus comprehended under a concept or an idea that must determine a priori everything that is to be contained in it” (KU, §65, 5: 373). This requirement corresponds to the failure of our understanding. An organism is unlike a sand dune that can be explained by the movement and forces of the particles of matter. Thus, an organism requires the use of a teleological explanation, the concept of an end or purpose (e.g., to tell time) that would determine the position and function of the individual parts. But even if this requirement is met, it would still be impossible to distinguish organisms from artifacts because “requirement 1” is what distinguishes an organized matter from a merely mechanical heap of matter. To distinguish an artifact from an organism “requirement 2” is necessary: “But if a thing, as a natural product, is nevertheless to contain in itself and its internal possibility a relation to ends, that is, is to be possible only as a “natural end” and without the causality of the concepts of a rational being outside it, then it is required, second, that its parts be combined into a whole by being reciprocally the cause and effect of their form” (KU, §65, 5: 373). This requirement corresponds to the insufficiency of the use of “ideal” causes, or the insufficiency of the faculty of reason to account for the possibility of organic formations because, unlike in artifacts, the cause of the whole of an organism is not possible to account for by appealing to the causality of a rational human agency and its end setting.11 11

Ginsborg’s account of “two kinds of mechanical inexplicability” (Ginsborg 2004) in Kant’s conception of organisms is insightful in the context of the existing literature which emphasizes onesidedly that organisms for Kant are mechanically inexplicable because of their “non-machine like quality” (Ginsborg 2004, 34). For Ginsborg, there are two kinds of mechanical inexplicability in Kant’s conception of a natural end, each corresponding to two separate aspects of Kant’s view of

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Thus, concludes Kant, for a thing to be a natural end the Idea of the whole must conversely (reciprocally) determine the form and combination of all the parts “not as a cause [Ursache] – for then it would be a product of art – but as a ground for the cognition [Erkenntnisgrund] of the systematic unity of the form and the combination of all of the manifold that is contained in the given material for someone who judges it” (KU, §65, 5: 373). On Ginsborg’s view, the “causal” nature of the unifying principle in artifacts is understood as the “external” power of producing an object, and the organizing principle of organic formations as the “ground of the cognition” (Erkennntnisgrund) is understood as its “internal” or epistemic power. On this view, the metaphysical status of the organizing principle of both mechanisms and organisms is the same, that is, they are both principles of our human cognitive faculties. They only differ in their functions: the function of the former is productive, while the function of the latter is epistemic. For Ginsborg, the objective principle of purposiveness in our reflection on organic formations serves as a normative rule or standard of how the object ought to be: “[T]o regard something as a purpose, for Kant, is to regard it as subject to normative constraints” (Ginsborg 2001, 250). To be sure, in the First Introduction, Kant contends that “teleological judgment compares the concept of a natural product according to that which it is, with what it ought to be. Here a concept of a purpose is laid at the ground of the judging of its possibility, and precedes it a priori” (EEKU, 20: 240). Indeed, in representing the regularity of organic formations the representation of their organizing principle is applied by the reflective judgment which proceeds “heautonomously” (EEKU, 20: 225; KU, 5: 186). That organisms: first, one that requires that organisms be understood in teleological terms, that is, as ends, and second, another that requires that they be understood as natural ends and not as artifacts. The first is the type of mechanical inexplicability that they share with mechanisms. The second type of mechanical inexplicability is the one that should account for their distinction from artifacts, “that they are not assemblages of independent parts, but that they are instead composed of parts which depend for their existence on one another so that the organism as a whole both produces and is produced by its own parts and is in Kant’s own words ‘the cause and effect of itself’” (Ginsborg 2004, 46). But Ginsborg does not relate our need for the employment of teleological judgment to the explanatory insufficiency of the two kinds of causalities that are available to us, namely, the one of the understanding and the other of reason. On her view, our need for the employment of teleological judgment is triggered solely by the explanatory insufficiency of our understanding, our lack of capacity to explain organisms mechanically, which then must be remedied by the proper use of the principle of reason. However, if our need for a teleological judgment is seen as due to the explanatory insufficiency of both types of causality available to us, namely, understanding and reason, then the causality that is behind the regularity observed in organisms must be viewed, Kant says, as “not analogous with any causality that we know” (KU, §65, 5: 375). This view has metaphysical implications that Ginsborg rejects because it would presumably detract from the status of organisms as “natural.” However, for Kant, interestingly enough, this is the necessary condition for defending the status of organisms as a part of nature as opposed to their status as human products, or artifacts.

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is to say that it does not prescribe this purposive order to the object itself but only to itself. Put differently, it prescribes the conditions of how one ought to proceed in one’s reflection on these natural phenomena encountered in experience in order even to be capable of representing them for what they are. But there is a normative dimension to the organization of artifacts as well: if something is to be a watch my employment of the concept of a watch in its production tells me how that mechanism ought to perform if it is to be a watch as opposed to a pen or a plane, that is, it ought to tell time as opposed write or fly. To be sure, in a mechanism, the organizing principle is applied constitutively and in an organism, regulatively. But what needs to be explained is why our representations of organisms as “natural ends” is something merely relative to “the peculiar constitution of my cognitive faculties” and is something that cannot enjoy the objective reality of things organized according to either efficient, or to final, causes. And for this, it is not helpful to assert that the organizing principle of natural ends has an epistemic function while those of artifacts has a causal/productive function, or that the latter presupposes the use of determinative judgment while the former that of reflective judgment. Instead, we need to inquire about what kind of rules or what kind of norms are presupposed in our representation of organic formations and how their organizing principle is different from the one presupposed by artifacts and, finally, why it is that Kant claims that the organization of organic formations “is therefore not analogous with any causality that we know” (KU, §65, 5: 375). Kant’s above cited contrast between a “cause” (Ursache) and “ground for cognition” (Erkenntnisgrund) is notoriously confusing because it presupposes a prior, more fundamental contrast between a “cause” (Ursache) and a “ground” (Grund) that remains unelaborated. The German word Grund can have an explanatory meaning, a cause of something, and also a justificatory meaning, a reason why something must be the case. However, we also saw in Chapter 5 that in his conception of the “supersensible ground of freedom” by “ground” Kant understands support, basis (Stütze, Basis) (KU, §59, 5: 352). Thus, the significance of Kant’s contrast between a “cause” and a “ground” is that by the latter Kant understands the organized unity, or the whole that is metaphysically prior to the combination of its parts and not temporally prior as some external intentional cause of our human agency, as this organized unity would be in a mechanism.12 12

Kant puts this thought more clearly in §77 where he refers to this conception of the whole as “the whole being the ground [Grund] of the possibility of the connection of the parts (which would be a contradiction in the discursive kind of cognition)” (KU, §77, 5:407).

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In other words, the organizing principle of organic formations has a connection to the supersensible that is not readily acknowledged on Ginsborg’s interpretation.13 Because “real” and “ideal” causalities are the only possible kinds of causalities, then the Idea of the whole as a “ground” (as opposed to a “cause”) must be a principle that unifies that which for our limited discursive understanding is forever separate: the theoretical activity of the understanding that follows the chain of efficient causality and the practical activity of reason that follows the principle of final causes. It is merely a “ground for the cognition” (Erkenntnisgrund) because conceiving of it constitutively would presume a faculty that is either “entirely fictitious and empty” (ÜGTP, 8: 181), as Kant demonstrated in his discussion of hylozoism and vitalism,14 or it would dogmatically presuppose the existence of a divine intellect that, unlike our limited human intellect, does not distinguish between theoretical and practical causality and instead is the metaphysically prior ground of both. However, because the organizing principle of organic formations is connected, as I have argued, to the notion of the supersensible, when Kant describes the rule of the organizing principle of organic formations as a reciprocal causality, and natural ends as different from mechanisms insofar as they are “reciprocally the cause and effect of their form” (KU, §65, 5: 373), the supersensible implicated by the special form of “natural ends” is the one of absolute freedom, or an entity that is spontaneous and 13

14

Kant’s notion of Erkenntnisgrund can be traced back to his conception of a divine understanding that he, in his lectures on metaphysics, describes as the “ground for cognition of possibility” (Erkenntnisgrund der Möglichkeit) (Vo-Met-L1/Pölitz, 28: 328) and the “ground for cognition of reality” (Erkenntnisgrund der Wirklichkeit) (Vo-Met-L1/Pölitz, 28: 328). According to the former description, only some of the possibilities in the divine understanding will be actualized and hence become real. According to the latter, the divine understanding is a productive faculty that knows no distinction between possibility and actuality. Kant criticizes hylozoism, a branch of vitalism, according to which the structure and organization of organic beings is explained by appealing to the properties of matter itself (a natural cause), but where each particle of matter was conceived as a “little life,” capable of acting in accordance with ends, or its activity presupposed an immaterial inner principle, a world-soul, distinct from and yet united with matter. According to Kant, intentionally acting causes cannot be a part of nature and therefore cannot be confirmed by experience. In Metaphysical Foundations, Kant defines matter as “lifeless” and contends that “[t]he possibility of a proper natural science rests entirely and completely on the law of inertia.” Therefore, “[t]he opposite of this, and thus also the death of natural philosophy, would be hylozoism” (MAN, 4: 544). This is also why in KU Kant contends that the concept of living matter contains a contradiction (KU, §73, 5: 394), that is, because matter is lifeless and inert, we cannot even conceive a priori of a “living matter.” And this is also why he avers that hylozoism contains circularity in its explanation: it explains the self-organizing nature of organic formations by appealing to special intentional causes of matter, and explains the proof of the reality of the latter by pointing to our experience of self-organizing (purposive) nature of organic formations (KU, §73, 5: 394–95).

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self-causing. Because representing the form of organisms as a “cause and effect of itself” is the way we, by means of reflective judgment, can represent those phenomena relative to the needs of our cognitive capacities, we cannot claim that the lawfulness of organic organization is the one of absolute freedom. Instead, we can only claim that the lawfulness of organic representation is an image of absolute freedom. By “image,” I mean the representation achieved by analogical procedure of reflective judgment I discussed in detail in Chapter 4. Let me summarize it briefly again by applying it to our experience of organisms. In analogical procedure, reflective judgment starts from the similarity of effects between the object given in reality and the object of the Idea that cannot be given in empirical reality. In the example of natural ends, the similarity of effects is between, on the one hand, the functioning of the organism that is not induced by any external cause and, on the other hand, absolute freedom as causality not preceded or determined by any other preceding cause. Next, we must identify the law of causality that pertains to our reflection on the given particular, namely, organic formation. This is reciprocal causality insofar as the whole or the form of the organisms is the effect of the properties and functions of the parts (the growth, reparation, self-maintenance of an organism). But the whole is also at the same time the cause of the function and properties of the very same parts of which it is the effect (i.e., the growth, self-maintenance of a deciduous tree is different from an evergreen and therefore dependent on the kind of plant/whole it is). Finally, because of the rule of causal reciprocity in our reflection on the organic formation, we are licensed to use this rule of causal reciprocity to represent or think the unknown causality of the Idea of absolute freedom that cannot have its corresponding object in empirical reality. This is because causal reciprocity in organic formations can serve the function of indirectly exhibiting autonomous will determination. That is to say that, on the one hand, the will that is determined by (is the effect of) the moral law is directed toward the universal moral good as its end. On the other hand, the will is the cause of the same law insofar as to act in accordance with the moral law is to will the form of the will itself and not its matter (some external object or end).15 By seeing organisms, a part 15

It should be noted here that Kant regards transcendental freedom (negative freedom) and autonomy (positive freedom) as two reciprocal concepts. This is not unique to the third Critique but is also present in the Groundwork and in the second Critique. See GMS, 4: 446–47 and KpV, 5: 29, respectively. Henry Allison refers to this thesis as the “Reciprocity Thesis” (Allison 1990, 201). Briefly, because “will [Wille] is a kind of causality” (GMS, 4: 446), it must be amenable to lawgoverning, that is, be “determinable” (KpV, 5: 28). Because the will is free (“Supposing that a will

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of the phenomenal world, as symbols of our autonomy, we are encouraged to view the world not merely as a place where the laws of nature do not contradict the laws of freedom (as this outcome is already achieved by the Third Antinomy of the first Critique) but as a place where the laws of nature are compatible and co-existing with the laws of freedom, or as a place where the laws of freedom and the laws of nature harmoniously “cohere” (KU, §78, 5: 412). Absolute freedom, however, is not the only meaning of the supersensible evoked by the lawfulness of the representation of “natural ends.” In relation to the Idea of a “natural end” Kant employs two additional meanings of the supersensible, namely, the Idea of a divine designer and the Idea of an intuitive intellect. It is to this issue that I now turn.

8.3 Organisms as “Natural Ends” and the Unity of Nature and Freedom Kant contends that a “remote analogy with our own causality in accordance with ends” (KU, §65, 5: 375; my emphasis – LO) is necessary when we try to inquire into the origin of the purposive or end-directed functioning of “natural ends.” As I have shown above, the predicate “natural” in the concept of a “natural end” refers to the fact that an organism is a part of nature and, therefore, its representation must presuppose the use of mechanical causal principles. The fact that it is an “end” or a purpose entails that its representation presupposes the use of teleological, purposive, causal principles. Thus, the Idea of a “natural end” presupposes an original unity of mechanism and teleology so that its possibility (i.e., its origin) cannot be sought within the given phenomenal causes in nature, to wit, whether in human intentional causality or mechanical causality of nature. The origin of the principle according to which “natural ends” are organized must, therefore, be sought in the supersensible. We can think of the supersensible origin of natural ends – a higher intellect which would not know the separation between “ideal” and “real causes” – only in “remote analogy” with our finite, derivative, human intellect that sets ends and for which ideal and real causes are separate. “Ends have a direct relationship to reason, be it foreign reason or our own. Yet, even in order to place them in is free” [KpV, 5: 29]), the law governing the will cannot be the law of nature, that is, “the will must be independent of empirical conditions (i.e., conditions belonging to the sensible world)” (KpV, 5: 29). But this also means that it cannot be governed by the “matter” (KpV, 5: 29) of the practical principle (the desired object or end) and instead must be governed by the “lawgiving form” (KpV, 5: 29), the moral law as the law it gives to itself.

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foreign reason, we must presuppose our own reason at least as an analogue to the latter” (ÜGTP, 8: 182). However, we are not licensed to infer that the characteristics of our own capacity for setting ends are also the characteristics of the assumed cause of organic formations: Thus I cannot say: Just as I cannot make the cause of a plant comprehensible to me (or the cause of any organic creature, or in general of the purposive world) in any other way than on the analogy of an artificer in relation to his work (a clock), namely by attributing understanding to the cause, so too must the cause itself (of the plant, of the world in general) have understanding, i.e., attributing understanding to it is not just a condition of my capacity to comprehend but of the possibility itself to be a cause. (RGV, 6: 65n)

As shown in Chapter 4, the analogy consists in indirectly exhibiting the supersensible concept by schematizing it by means of the rule that connects the sensible concept with its schema, and not by taking the schema of the sensible concept to serve also as the schema of the supersensible concept. The latter leads to Schwärmerei and, in this particular case, anthropomorphism. But it is not until the origin of the end-directed functioning of “natural ends” is considered with respect to the problem of the explanatory compatibility of mechanism and teleology in the Antinomy of Teleological Judgment that the Idea of a “natural end” again serves “our practical faculty of reason” (KU, §65, 5: 375) insofar as it provides a view of nature as consisting of a compatible co-existence of the laws of nature and the laws of freedom. 8.3.1

The Antinomy of Teleological Judgment

Kant contends that determinative judgment cannot generate its own antinomy because “it has [for itself] no principles that ground concepts of objects” (KU, §69, 5: 385).16 Put differently, unlike teleological judgment, determinative judgment does not have its own principle (such as the principle of objective purposiveness) according to which it can generate a concept (such as the one of a “natural end”). Determinative judgment “merely subsumes under given laws and concepts” (KU, §69, 5: 385), namely, those of the understanding. Because it does not have its own 16

I modified the Cambridge translation in order to show better the emphasis in the original German text that these are reflective judgment’s own principles, according to which in its reflection it generates concepts of objects.

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principles which could be contradictory, it cannot generate its own antinomy.17 As explained in the preceding discussion, the principle of reflective judgment does not determine the object as it is in itself but serves as a rule for reflection on the manifold relative to the needs of our human cognitive capacities and their limitations. Thus, Kant claims that this principle is not “objective” but a “merely subjective principle for the purposive use of the cognitive faculties” (KU, §69, 5: 385) which is also the reason why Kant calls it a “maxim” of the reflecting power of judgment. For this task, namely, the task of providing the necessary unity of the particular laws of nature, reflective judgment can employ two maxims: one that is given to it by “the mere understanding a priori” (KU, §70, 5: 386) and another that is “suggested to it by particular experiences that bring reason into play” (KU, §70, 5: 386), that is, the experiences of organic formations in nature. Kant formulates therefore the antinomy as follows: Thesis: “All generation of material things and their forms must be judged as possible in accordance with merely mechanical laws” (KU, §70, 5: 387). Antithesis: “Some products of material nature cannot be judged as possible according to merely mechanical laws (judging them requires an entirely different law of causality, namely that of final causes)” (KU, §70, 5: 386). Commentators find puzzling the fact that the thesis assigns mechanical principles a merely regulative status and thereby contradicts the conclusions of the Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant is unfortunately not clear about the meaning of “mechanical” in the Antinomy. However, from the preceding discussion of the three possible meanings of “mechanism” in relation to which the form of an organism can be considered “contingent,” it is clear that the meaning of “mechanical laws” in the thesis of the Antinomy is not the one of the Second Analogy according to which all events in the phenomenal world are causally determined according to universal laws (but not any particular empirical law). His aim is not to regard causal relations as a law that any object if it is to be an object of a possible experience must meet. It is also not the meaning of “mechanism” given in the Metaphysical Foundations, that is, the laws that determine the relation between two bodies in space insofar as they are material bodies in general. Kant’s concern here is to account for the unity or the whole 17

At this point one may raise the question whether Kant’s claim is consistent with his conception of the antinomial conflict in the Critique of Pure Reason where both the thesis and antithesis are determinative judgments. However, the antinomy in the first Critique is the antinomy of reason and not of judgment and it is driven by reason’s search for the unconditioned that is not given in empirical reality. It is grounded in determinative judgment which makes unjustified assumptions of the existence of the unconditioned which then leads to conflict. See on this Watkins 2008, 245.

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which presupposes the relation of the parts, or more precisely, to give an account of an organic whole that presupposes the particular function and properties of the parts. And “mechanism” is a specific way in which our understanding relates the parts to the unity of the whole. If we recall our earlier discussion in Section 8.2, our understanding explains the connection of the parts in the whole by the employment of real/efficient causes (e.g., the whole is like a sand dune explicable in terms of the properties and motions of matter) and by the employment of ideal/final causes (e.g., “the purpose of a watch is to tell time,” which further determines the position of the parts within the whole). In the former case, the whole is the unity of its parts. In the latter case, the whole is the unity of its parts but the positioning of the parts depends on the “representation of a whole” (KU, §77, 5: 408), the concept of the object. This particularity is specific to our discursive, “image-dependent understanding (intellectus ectypus)” (KU, §77, 5: 408) that may not be constitutive of nature. Therefore, it would be a mistake to conceive of the antinomy as the conflict between efficient and final causality. If that were the case, then the antinomy could be easily resolved on its own: “mechanism,” conceived as a series of efficient causes, would be necessary but not sufficient. In special cases, namely, those that present us with organic formations, it would have to be supplemented with the use of final causes.18 But we have seen in the preceding discussion that the whole of an organism is both unlike a mechanical heap of matter and unlike an artifact. The principle of its organization is “not analogous with any causality that we know” (KU, §65, 5: 375). Thus, if the antinomial conflict is to be a genuine conflict that cannot be resolved on its own, then by “mechanism” in the thesis Kant must understand the connection of the parts in the whole that pertains to the generation of a mechanical heap of matter and the one that pertains to the generation of an artifact so that the antithesis implicates the explanatory failure of any causality available to us (both real and ideal) and the 18

See on this point Zanetti 1993, 351. This is also the reason why some commentators have argued that the contradiction in the antinomy is merely apparent and that it ensues when one slides from mere reflection on certain empirical phenomena relative to the needs and limitations of our cognitive faculties to an ontological commitment that one must judge these phenomena in accordance with merely mechanical/teleological principles because they are possible only in accordance with those principles. The earlier proponents of this interpretation were, among others, Cassirer 1921, 289ff. and Adickes 1925, vol. 2, 473. For a helpful summary of these earlier interpretations see McLaughlin 1990, 137–45. More recently, this interpretation has been brought forward by Löw 1980, 206ff., Butts 1990, 4ff., and Allison 1991, 31ff. That refraining from taking regulative principles for constitutive is not an adequate solution to the antinomy of teleological judgment has already been argued by McFarland 1970, 122, McLaughlin 1990, 137ff., Zanetti 1993, 342–46, and more recently by Breitenbach 2008, 354–55 and Goy 2015, 65–66.

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necessary need to represent organic formations as if it were an end of a mind more powerful than ours. Moreover, if the antinomy is to generate a genuine conflict, both thesis and antithesis must be necessary.19 Kant’s claim that unless the maxim of the thesis is “made the basis for research then there can be no proper cognition of nature” (KU, §70, 5: 387), indicates that we are constrained to explaining nature in mechanistic terms relative to the limitations of our discursive human understanding. Our understanding, as discussed above, is discursive, that is, it must “progress from the parts, as universally conceived grounds, to the different possible forms, as consequences, that can be subsumed under it.” Kant claims further that “[i]n accordance with the constitution of our understanding […] a real whole of nature is to be regarded only as the effect of the concurrent moving forces of the parts” and that we “represent the possibility of the whole as depending upon the parts, as is appropriate for our discursive understanding” (KU, §77, 5: 407). It is also necessary, given the particularity of our discursive understanding, that when confronted with some special cases, namely organisms, our mechanical way of explaining the connection of particular empirical laws is insufficient for explaining the lawfulness of the whole and that we are compelled to employ the principle of objective purposiveness in order to represent the connection of the parts in the whole as lawful and necessary and not merely contingent. Thus, given the above, I shall argue that the antinomial conflict is best construed as the conflict between two necessary perspectives on nature that we are asked to take simultaneously when confronted with organic formations: the one of the analytic procedure of the understanding and the other of the synthetic procedure of reason.20 The former represents nature as governed by theoretical-mechanical lawfulness of the understanding presupposed by the method of science. The latter represents it as governed by the lawfulness of reason, namely, freedom. This is because if we are required to present organic formations as an end of nature, then we are 19

20

See this point emphasized in McLaughlin 1990, 156–57 and Allison 1991, 28. For Kant’s claim that reflective judgment’s maxim to research nature according to the mechanistic principle is necessary for the cognition of nature, consider KU, §78, 5: 410, 413. Breitenbach also argues that the conflict in the antinomy is between two distinct “views of nature” (Breitenbach 2008, 351). But for her these distinct views of nature are the one according to which nature is the “material object of scientific investigation” (thesis) and “nature as we experience it in everyday life” (antithesis) (Breitenbach 2008, 366). It is however not clear why on Breitenbach’s view nature as we experience it in everyday life must necessarily be limited to living nature. Clearly we can approach inorganic nature from a common sense perspective that does not require of us to explain it scientifically.

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also required to represent the whole of nature as creation, a system of ends with the human being and the highest good as its final end.21 If we recall our earlier discussion in Section 8.1, what for Kant in his pre-Critical writings was put into service of his rational theology, namely, the underdetermination of organic formations when considered from the perspective of nature’s mechanism, in his mature Critical philosophy is placed in service of the interests of reason: by being compelled to represent an organism by means of reflective judgment and it’s a priori principle of objective purposiveness, we are led to represent the whole nature as a system of ends with the human being and the highest good as its final end. In order to unite “[t]wo such dissimilar principles as nature and freedom” (KU, General Remark on the Teleology, 5: 479), that is, the principles of theoretical and practical reason respectively, in the representation of one single object of nature, we must offer a justification. 8.3.2

The Solution to the Antinomial Conflict

According to Kant, the solution to the antinomy should unfold as follows: “Now of course the principle of the mechanism of nature and that of its causality according to ends in one and the same product of nature must cohere in a single higher principle and flow from it in common, because otherwise they could not subsist alongside one another in the consideration of nature” (KU, §78, 5: 412). Thus, when it comes to the explanation of the possibility (the origin) of one single thing (organism) mechanism and teleology exclude each other: a thing in nature can either be a product of mechanical generation (a product of real and ideal causes, a heap of matter or an artifact), or we can think of it as a product of a mind more powerful than ours that we can only represent in “remote analogy with our own causality in accordance with ends” (KU, §65, 5: 375; my emphasis – LO), that is, as a product of divine creation. Yet, organisms, as we saw in Section 8.2, require for their intelligibility and their explanation both principles. In a “natural end,” parts must be combined into a whole “by being reciprocally the cause and effect of their form” (KU, §65, 5: 373). The whole or the form of the organisms is the effect of the properties and functions of the parts (i.e., mechanism) but the whole is also at the same time the cause of the function and properties of the very same parts of which it is the effect (i.e., 21

See my discussion of “external purposiveness” and the human being as the final end of nature in Chapter 3 of this volume. For Kant’s claim that the representation of an organism as a “natural end” necessarily leads to the Idea of the whole of nature as a system of ends, see KU, §67, 5: 379.

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teleology which entails the concept of an end “without the causality of the concepts of a rational being outside it” [KU, §65, 5: 373]). Their simultaneous explanatory employment can be done in a justified manner only if they are regarded as originating (and thus uniting) in one higher common principle. This principle is a “justifying [berechtigende] principle of the commonality of the maxims of natural research” (KU, §78, 5: 412).22 Put differently, regarding both principles as originating in one higher principle justifies us in taking these principles as having explanatory compatibility which also secures the unity of the organisms’ natural lawfulness. The fact that we take these principles as originating in one common principle does not mean that we can derive the possibility of organisms (i.e., explain them) from this common principle. This common principle is the supersensible which cannot be an object of our theoretical knowledge. Thus, for us, “from the human point of view” (KU, §76, 5: 403) these two principles must forever remain separate, but transcendental idealism leaves “at least a possibility that they may be objectively unifiable in one [supersensible] principle” (KU, §78, 5: 413). Because from our “human point of view” mechanical and teleological principles must forever remain distinct, their coherent and unified explanatory employment in accounting for the origin and functioning of a single organism requires that “the one (mechanism) can only be subordinated to the other (intentional technicism)” (KU, §78, 5: 414) in such a way that “the mechanism of nature as a means contributes to each final end” (KU, §78, 5: 414). Thus, for example, the mechanical mode of explanation enables us to cognize the laws of motion and movements of matter within a particular part of organic formation (e.g., study of refraction of light rays as they travel through cornea and the lens, finally focusing on the retina) but which ultimately is a means toward a certain end (e.g., vision). But because, given the discursive nature of our human understanding, without mechanical principles we cannot have a proper cognition of nature, we have, on Kant’s view, “the obligation to give a mechanical explanation of all products and events in nature, even the most purposive, as far as it is in our capacity to do so” (KU, §78, 5: 415).23 As we saw in Section 8.2, from the perspective of the intelligibility of organisms, reflective judgment leads us to an “image,” a view of the world according to which the practical and theoretical domains of reason coexist and cohere with one another, that is, the view of the world in which 22 23

Translation slightly modified. For a similar claim see EEKU, 20: 235.

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absolute freedom stands in a complementary relation with determinism insofar as organisms, which are a part of nature, stand for a symbol of absolute freedom. The resolution of the antinomy accomplishes a similar view of the world but form a different perspective. When we consider organisms with respect to their possibility, then, in order to justify the simultaneous employment and explanatory compatibility of both mechanical (theoretical view of nature) and teleological principles (the view of nature from a practical perspective) in our representation of a single organism, we must view them as if originating in a single supersensible principle. Thus, reflective judgment’s representation of organisms with respect to their possibility also creates an image of the world according to which theoretical (mechanical) and practical (teleological) perspectives stand in a special relation of “coherence” or in which theoretical and practical representation of nature, each governed by two entirely “dissimilar principles” (KU, General Remark on the Teleology, 5: 479), the law of nature and the law of freedom, “must cohere” (müssen zusammenhängen) (KU, §78, 5: 412). 8.3.3

The Intuitive Understanding

At this point, we must address Kant’s further characterization of this higher supersensible principle in which both our theoretical and practical representations of nature are united. In §78, Kant refers to this principle as a “supersensible ground” (KU, §78, 5: 413) and a “supersensible substratum of nature” (KU, §78, 5: 414). This is because, consistent with other antinomial conflicts in the first Critique, the solution to the Antinomy points to transcendental idealism. According to the latter, natural formations are appearances which presuppose the noumenal ground. But when the solution to the antinomial conflict is approached from the perspective of what is required given our “human point of view” (KU, §76, 5: 403), then it is necessary to think of this supersensible ground as a being that would not have those specific limitations. Kant claims that, given the peculiar constitution of our understanding as requiring of both mechanical and teleological principles in order to represent the function and organization of organic formations as lawful, we must think of an “intentionally acting supreme cause” (absichtlich-wirkende oberste Ursache) (KU, §75, 5: 399), “an (intelligent) world-cause” ([verständige] Weltursache) (KU, §71, 5: 389) and an “author” (Urheber) (KU, §75, 5: 400). Therefore, Kant’s conception of a divine artisan has both theoretical (epistemic) capacities (i.e., is an “intelligent being” [verständiges Wesen] [KU, §75, 5: 399]) and also practicalcausal capacities that define an agent (i.e., is a “cause […] that acts in

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accordance with intentions” [Ursache die nach Absichten wirkt], a “being that is productive” [Wesen …welches…produktiv ist] [KU, §75, 5: 398]). In sum, it is an “original understanding as cause of the world” (ursprünglicher Verstand als Weltursache) (KU, §77, 5: 410). Our discursive understanding (intellectus ectypus) (KU, §77, 5: 408) proceeds from an analytic universal (a concept) to a particular leaving the latter underdetermined, that is, leaving contingent the connection of its parts and its overall function. In contrast to our discursive understanding, the intuitive understanding (intellectus archetypus) (KU, §77, 5: 408) does not know the distinction between necessity and contingency, mechanism and teleology. Unlike our discursive understanding, it “goes from the synthetically universal (of the intuition of a whole as such) to the particular, i.e., from the whole to the parts, in which, therefore, and in whose representation of the whole, there is no contingency in the combination of the parts” (KU, §77, 5: 407). In the Transcendental Aesthetic, a priori intuition of space is a whole that cannot be conceived as an aggregate of different parts that could exist independently and prior to the whole. Instead, every part of space, or any location in space, is a whole divided only by limitation into regions. Similarly, in the Critique of Teleological Judgment, the “whole” of the synthetic universal of the intuitive understanding cannot be the sum of the parts but rather each and every part already presupposes the whole and the parts are abstracted by limitation from the whole.24 This is because the universal or the thought is at the same time intuitive, that is, it thinks all the parts at once. With no separation between thinking and intuiting, there cannot be any distinction between necessity and contingency, that is, the particular with its relation of the parts is never underdetermined by the universal of the divine understanding. If there is no contingency in judgment of the relation between the universal and the given particular, then there cannot be any distinction between mechanism and teleology for a divine understanding. In other words, for the divine understanding, there cannot be a distinction between the theoretical and the practical view of nature. Thus, although Kant describes the divine understanding as having both theoretical and practical-causal capacities, this understanding does not distinguish between the theoretical and the practical view of nature.25 24 25

See KU, §77, 5: 409. Eckart Förster has argued that the solution of the antinomial conflict does not require that the intuitive understanding be a “divine or causative understanding” (Förster 2012, 144). This conclusion however could only follow if the antinomy is construed as a conflict between efficient (necessity) and final causality (contingency). I have shown that the antithesis entails the use of reflective judgment’s principle of objective purposiveness and the representation of an organism as if created by

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8.4 Conclusion and Evaluation I have argued in this chapter that with reflective judgment’s Idea of an organism as a “natural end” the realm of the theoretical (nature) and the realm of the practical (freedom) are represented as harmoniously cohering with each other thereby giving us a special reassurance of reason’s causal efficacy in nature. Reflective judgment accomplishes this in two distinct ways that should be distinguished from each other. In order to make organic formations intelligible, we must represent the rule of their organization as reciprocal causality, a rule according to which organisms are “the cause and effect of their form” (KU, §65, 5: 373). I have contended that this rule of reciprocal causality serves as a schemaanalogue of reason’s Idea of absolute freedom. Because organisms are a part of nature, their indirect exhibition of the Idea of absolute freedom contributes to the view of the world in which the absolute freedom of the noumenal realm is seen as harmoniously coexisting and cohering with the realm of natural necessity, that is, the phenomenal realm. Put differently, reflective judgment’s representation of organisms as “natural ends” creates an image of freedom, understood as absolute spontaneity, as externalized in nature. I have further shown that the antinomial conflict should not be understood as the one between efficient and final causality. Instead, it should be construed as a conflict between, on the one hand, mechanism that pertains to both the generation of a mechanical heap of matter and the generation of an artifact, and, on the other, teleology necessitated by the explanatory failure of any causality available to us (both real and ideal). When formulated in this way, the antinomial conflict (more specifically its antithesis) entails the need to represent organic formations as if created by a cause “not analogous with any causality that we know” (KU, §65, 5: 375), by a mind more powerful than ours. We must think the latter only in a “remote analogy” (KU, §65, 5: 375) with our finite, derivative, human intellect. The antithesis, formulated in this way, leads us to the view of the whole of nature as creation, a system of ends with the human being and the highest good as its final end. The antinomial conflict then becomes a conflict between two perspectives on nature: theoretical (scientific) in the a mind more powerful than ours. See this point being emphasized also by Johannes Haag in Haag 2012, 998–1001. Haag also contends that Kant’s “problematic concept” (problematischer Begriff) (KU, §76, 5: 402) of intellectual intuition, which does not distinguish between possibility and actuality and which captures the aspect of the divine understanding as a causative understanding, is also necessary for the proper resolution of the antinomial conflict.

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thesis and practical in the antithesis. Therefore, the solution to the antinomy in the Idea of an intuitive understanding which unites that which for us remains forever separate, namely mechanism and teleology, does not merely offer a justification for the explanatory compatibility of mechanical and teleological explanation in our representation of a single organic formation but also leads to a view of the world according to which the theoretical and practical representation of nature “must cohere” (müssen zusammenhängen) (KU, §78, 5: 412). One might object that the distinction between pure practical reason (Wille) and the power of choice (Willkür) that Kant uses in the writings that follow the third Critique, namely, in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793) and the Metaphysics of Morals (1797), may obviate the need to conceive of the will in terms of the reciprocity Kant discusses in the Groundwork and the second Critique. Put differently, with the distinction between Wille and Willkür, we no longer think of the will’s determination by the moral law in reciprocal terms, that is, for the will to be determined by the moral law is for it to be determining (i.e., to will the form of the will itself). With the Wille/Willkür distinction, to be determined by the moral law is for the power of choice (Willkür) to be determined by pure practical reason (Wille). This would bring into question my contention that reciprocal causality of organisms as “natural ends” serves an indirect or analogical exhibition of freedom understood as autonomy. But this distinction may present a challenge to my interpretation only if we follow Lewis White Beck who argues that autonomy (positive freedom) pertains to Wille and spontaneity (negative freedom) to Willkür.26 Instead, my view is that Kant’s Wille/Willkür distinction is consistent with the conception of the will that he develops in his earlier writings. Kant’s conceptions of Wille and Willkür can be seen as the legislative and executive functions respectively of a broader faculty of volition to which Kant also refers as Wille.27 The reciprocity in this case would still apply: for the will to be determined by the moral law (the will in its executive function) is for it to will itself in its legislative function. 26 27

See Beck 1960, 199–200. Here I am in agreement with Henry Allison. See Allison 1990, 129–36.

chapter 9

Kant’s Teleological Philosophy of History

Kant’s shorter essays on history are a part of his work that is less well-known and the question of how to integrate Kant’s philosophy of history into his Critical system remains controversial. I will argue in this chapter that the best way to answer the question of the place of Kant’s philosophy of history in his Critical system is to interpret his brief essays on history in light of what I take to be the main problematic of the third Critique, namely, the realization of our moral vocation, the highest good in the world. Among Kant’s essays on history, his Idea for a Universal History With a Cosmopolitan Aim (1784)1 is the essay in which Kant offers his first comprehensive account of his philosophy of history and where he lays out his most fundamental ideas that will be important for understanding his other texts on history. This is why Idea in this chapter will receive greater attention. I will demonstrate that, as in his Critique of Teleological Judgment, Kant offers both an epistemic and a moral justification of his view of human history as continuously progressing. That is to say that the representation of human history as continuously progressing is in service of both the minimal but also the final ends of reason. When discussing Kant’s moral justification, I will identify, as I did in the previous chapters, his moral-psychological argument for strengthening moral Glaube as well as the argument that emphasizes the objective reality of reflective judgment’s representations (albeit from a “practical point of view”). I shall contend that the latter argument is aimed at supporting the view that the realm of nature (the realm of theoretical reason) coheres with the domain of practical reason. Sections 9.1 and 9.3 are dedicated to Kant’s epistemic and moral justification respectively. In order to make human history intelligible to ourselves, argues Kant, we must represent the individual events in human history under the Idea of “nature’s aim.” Section 9.2 briefly discusses the means that nature uses for advancing the progress of human history, namely, the “unsociable 1

Hereafter Idea.

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sociability” and its role in the formation of civil society, the republican constitution and the federation of states. Kant’s claim that we should represent human history as a history of progress toward the realization of our moral vocation has been interpreted by some commentators as Kant’s contention that the real goal of history is “moral history,” that is, history that shows how passing gradually accumulated moral knowledge onto the generations that follow results in more individuals with virtuous dispositions ready to effect changes in our social institutions, thereby enabling the latter to reflect our moral principles. In Section 9.4, I respond to these interpretations and argue that they build into Kant’s philosophy of history a compatibilist account of freedom that he repeatedly rejected in his writings. These interpretations also turn porous Kant’s solid limit between the realm of noumena and the realm of phenomena because they imply that we can have an insight into the inner noumenal character of human beings. Contrary to these interpretations, I will argue that Kant’s philosophy of history is limited to the history of the human being as a natural or phenomenal being and not as a noumenal being. This entails that Kant’s philosophy of history should be narrowed to a political history and the history of culture. Some commentators have argued that Kant’s philosophy of history is proto-Hegelian insofar as, at least in some of his essays, an increasing importance is given to human agency which with the Enlightenment becomes fully aware of its capacity to effectuate change in our social institutions. For these commentators, some of Kant’s essays on history indicate his readiness to abandon the regulative use of the Idea of “nature’s aim” and to take human historical progress to be objectively real insofar as it stands within the power of human rational agency. Section 9.5 is intended as a response to these proto-Hegelian interpretations. There I argue that Kant’s philosophy of history and its progress toward our moral vocation requires both our autonomous human rational agency and something that surpasses it and will cooperate in allowing our intentions to succeed. I conclude this chapter with a brief summary and an evaluation of my own position in Section 9.6.

9.1 Kant’s Philosophy of History and the “Aim of Nature”: The Epistemic Justification In Idea (1784), Kant contends that history “concerns itself with a narration” of “human actions” (IaG, 8: 17). These “human actions” are not limited to a particular group of people or a region but pertain to “the

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whole species” (IaG, 8: 17). This is why Kant refers to such a history as a “universal history.” Furthermore, human actions are “appearances” (IaG, 8: 17) of the freedom of the will. As “appearances,” they belong to the phenomenal realm and must exhibit lawfulness and regularity because they must be “determined, just as much as every other natural occurrence in accordance with universal laws of nature” (IaG, 8: 17). Instead, however, human history shows no demonstrable lawfulness. It appears “confused and irregular” (IaG, 8: 17) and “no history of them [human beings – LO] in conformity to a plan […] appears to be possible” (IaG, 8: 17). We can, Kant argues further, discover within history a “regular course” (IaG, 8: 17) provided that we change the “standpoint” (IaG, 8: 30). We need to replace an empirical standpoint with a philosophical one. In other words, finding lawfulness in human history requires forgoing the writing of history “merely empirically” (IaG, 8: 30), that is, as a mere recording of empirical events that took place. Instead, it requires that we think of world history as a “thought of that which a philosophical mind (which besides this would have to be very well versed in history) could attempt from another standpoint” (IaG, 8: 30). For Kant, world history is a “philosophical history” according to which a transcendental philosopher does not merely record but selects and arranges historical events in accordance with an “Idea” of reason, the Idea of an “aim of nature” (IaG, 8: 18), that serves to him as a “guiding thread”(IaG, 8: 17).2 When reflecting on historical events in accordance with this “Idea” of reason, that which from an empirical perspective seems “confused and irregular,” a “nonsensical course of things human” (IaG, 8: 17–18), can now be represented as steadily progressing in accordance with a plan. Although Idea was published in 1784, Kant’s justification of our need for a philosophical as opposed to a mere empirical history anticipates his later argument in the third Critique (1790) for the use of reflective judgment in representing organisms as “natural ends.”3 In Idea, Kant 2

3

In Idea, Kant occasionally seems to ascribe nature’s purposiveness determinative (rather than giving it merely regulative) status (e.g., “The human being wills concord: but nature knows better what is good for his species: it wills discord” [IaG, 8: 20].) These assertions have prompted some commentators to accuse Kant of making unwarranted claims to knowledge, of “commit[ting] a major dogmatic error” (Yovel 1989, 154), because he seems to suggest that nature is in fact purposive. To be sure, it would be hard to reconcile such claims with the rest of Kant’s Critical system. However, Kant’s contention that grasping the whole of our history’s trajectory requires a special “standpoint,” choosing to take a particular point of view, as well as his reference to the “Idea” as a “guiding thread,” gesture sufficiently toward the regulative employment of nature’s teleology while at the same time suggesting that Kant’s more “dogmatic” assertions should be interpreted as literary devices. Pauline Kleingeld argues that given the date of the essay’s publication it is more appropriate to interpret Kant’s view of human history in Idea in light of the Appendix to the Dialectic of the

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raises the question of “whether it is indeed rational to assume purposiveness in the arrangements of nature in the parts and yet purposelessness in the whole” (IaG, 8: 25). Applied to history, the meaning of Kant’s claim can be interpreted as his assertion that individual historical events (i.e., parts of the historical narrative as a whole) do have a clear causal explanation, but that the historical narrative as a whole, the activity of human beings as a species, cannot be made intelligible by appealing to a single causation. Thus, there is contingency, or underdetermination, with respect to the relation of parts (individual historical events) to the whole (human history). But reason cannot be satisfied with contingency and seeks necessity or a lawful connection of the parts into a whole. In order to find this lawful connection among individual historical events, Kant suggests in Idea that we should think of human history in analogy to natural history. In other words, we can make human history intelligible if we represent it in analogy to the way we represent the origin of properties and functions manifested in an organism as a member of a certain species.4 For Kant, explaining the properties and functions manifested in an organism as a member of a species consists in tracing causally these functions and properties to the development of some original predispositions (Anlagen) of some previously organized matter (the organization of its stem or “phylum”) without ever being able to account for the origin of that stem or phylum by means of the mechanical interaction of matter alone. On this model of explanation, it would also be possible to account for the origin of properties and functions manifested in a species so that mechanical causes are given their due importance in the idea of environmental adaptation. In contrast to the theory of preformation according to which a mature organism with its properties already exists in its miniature

4

first Critique and Kant’s discussion there of reason’s search to establish a systematic unity. Allen Wood, on the other hand, argues that for Kant, in Idea, our only hope for understanding human history is to look for regularities in the behavior of human beings considered as a biological species. (See Wood 1999, 207–25.) For this reason, it is best to interpret Kant’s Idea in light of his, albeit written five years later, Critique of Teleological Judgment. While I agree with Wood that the language of eighteenth-century biology permeates Kant’s Idea and that it is best to interpret this essay against the background of Kant’s third Critique, I do not think that either the Critique of Teleological Judgment or Kant’s philosophy of history should be conceived narrowly as a project in natural science. As I will proceed to argue below, Kant’s philosophy of history, as well as his Critique of Teleological Judgment, should be interpreted within a broader question of reason’s unity. While the previous chapter considered the problem of intelligibility of an organic formation as an individual particular, here the problem of intelligibility and determination of an organism is considered from the perspective of it as a member of a species with a recognizable set of inherited characteristics.

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form in the seed (Keim) to which it could trace its origin, the explanatory account employed in epigenesis leaves room for the mechanical explanations that define proper science. This is the reason why Kant endorsed Blumenbach’s Bildungstrieb (formative drive) and his version of epigenesis as a scientific theory that unifies both mechanical and teleological explanations.5 And this is why Kant provisionally defines a “natural end” as a “cause and effect of itself” (KU, §64, 5: 370). A tree’s reproduction, for example, can be explained as a process of generating a tree from another tree “in accordance with a known natural law,” that is, it is a process that can be explained mechanically. However, the tree generated is of the same species (with recognizable properties that belong to that particular species) and hence the parents are regarded as a purposively organized whole (species) producing one of its own parts (a new member of the species). Thus, the tree is regarded as a cause (considered as a species) and effect (considered as a particular generated offspring) of itself. But for Kant, unlike for Blumenbach, Bildungstrieb was a principle for our reflective power of judgment, representation of an organism acting as if directed toward an end or purpose. For Blumenbach, Bildungstrieb was a constitutive principle inhering in nature.6 It would be helpful to understand Kant’s justification for the use of a teleological principle in human history as similar to the way he justifies the use of a teleological principle in natural history. Human beings are not governed merely by instincts (like bees and beavers) but determine their will freely. We can call this the problem of “explanatory insufficiency of real causes,” that is, mechanical causality cannot be used as a constitutive principle for establishing a lawful unity in human history. But even if they determine their will freely, they do not behave “on the whole like rational citizens of the world in accordance with an agreed upon plan” (IaG, 8: 17), that is, they do not always do what they ought to. Human beings are not perfectly rational beings, but are also a part of nature. We can call this the problem of “explanatory insufficiency of ideal causes,” that is, rational causality cannot be used as a constitutive principle for establishing a lawful unity in human history. As in accounting for the lawfulness of properties and functions manifested by any organism as a member of a species, so also in accounting for the lawfulness in human history we must resort to 5 6

See Zammitto 2007, 62 for the point that the commitment to the persistence of species is what bound Kant and Blumenbach together. See Richards 2000 for a historically well-informed argument that Blumenbach’s and Kant’s mutual endorsement of their own theories was a product of “creative misunderstandings” (Richards 2000, 30).

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a principle that unites both mechanical and teleological explanation. This is why “there is no other way out for the philosopher – who, regarding human beings and their play in the large, cannot at all presuppose any rational aim of theirs – than to try whether he can discover an aim of nature in this nonsensical course of things human; from which aim a history in accordance with a determinate plan of nature might nevertheless be possible even of creatures who do not behave in accordance with their own plan” (IaG, 8: 18). Thus, in order to make human history intelligible reason must represent human history in relation to “an aim of nature” (IaG, 8: 17), which is a “guiding thread” of reason. This “Idea” of nature’s aim or purpose is a regulative and not a constitutive principle. The philosopher does not claim that this is how nature is constituted in itself but that the philosopher must represent the history of the human species as if developing in accordance with nature’s purpose. Kant defines this aim of nature in the first proposition: “All natural predispositions of a creature are determined sometime to develop themselves completely and purposively” (IaG, 8: 18).7 Only in the subsequent propositions does Kant make clear that with respect to human beings as a rational species it is not all natural predispositions that nature aims to develop fully but those that will be conducive to the use of reason. Furthermore, the predispositions that will be developed are neither those conducive to the use of theoretical reason, nor those conducive to the use of some practical instrumental rationality, but those that are important for morality, which is normative for us in the absolute or unconditioned sense: “But it appears to have been no aim at all to nature that he should live well; but only that he should labor and work himself up so far that he might make himself worthy of well-being through his conduct of life” (IaG, 8: 20). Thus, the aim of nature is not the development of theoretical and instrumental rationality for the purpose of attaining happiness but the development of rationality in virtue of which we can be worthy of being happy, 7

Karl Ameriks has already commented on the very ambitious formulation of Kant’s first thesis. One could define an animal’s natural predisposition as those that are necessary for its bare survival. But clearly Kant does not have in mind bare survival but those predispositions that are necessary for an animal to develop “completely.” Thus, on the first proposition, all species have some distinctive predispositions that go beyond bare survival and all these predispositions must be completely developed so that an animal can exist in a way that is proper for it as a member of its species. The contention is ambitious because it is not clear why all species have to strive toward a “complete” form of existence. Even if the distinctive mode of development goes beyond a bare survival, it is still possible to imagine an animal to prosper even without achieving a “complete form” of existence. And, finally, achieving a prosperous and even “complete” form of existence may require the development of some but not necessarily all natural predispositions. See Ameriks 2012, 210–11.

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that is, morality.8 We can make human history intelligible if we represent it as progressing toward the realization of a “cosmopolitan aim,” that is, a world-federation, governed by universal relations of right, which is to serve as a necessary condition for furthering human moral ends. Just as Kant’s justification for the employment of reason’s regulative Idea for making history as a whole intelligible to ourselves requires of us to look forward to the third Critique, so does our understanding of his formulation of the end of history in the same essay. In other words, a “cosmopolitan aim” is best understood as what in §83 of the third Critique Kant calls the “ultimate end of nature” (der letzte Zweck der Natur) (KU, §83, 5: 429) or “culture” (KU, §83, 5: 431). In §83 of the third Critique, Kant, echoing Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men (1754), discusses the development of the “culture of skill” (Geschicklichkeit) (KU, §83, 5: 431). For Rousseau, human beings are distinguished from the other creatures in virtue of their freedom (i.e., the ability not to be governed merely by appetites) and perfectibility (i.e., the capacity to learn and find new and better means to satisfy their needs). These characteristics, on Rousseau’s view, help human beings to start to develop reason in response to natural contingencies, and with it, different skills for agriculture, metallurgy, etc. For Kant, this type of culture, namely, the “culture of skill,” is grounded in merely instrumental rationality by means of which the human being transforms his outer nature (his social and physical environment) but also reforms institutions. The goal of the latter is ultimately to ground them on the universal principle of right intended to put limits on the human being’s self-interested nature so that the pursuit of one’s interest does not encroach on those of other human beings. Kant’s conception of human history and the development of the culture of skill, just as for Rousseau, is characterized by an increase in 8

Allen Wood contends that “Kant’s philosophy of history is ‘naturalistic’ in that he treats history as a branch of biology” (Wood 1999, 208). This is why Wood is eager to emphasize that Kant’s philosophy of history is not moral teleology: “Kant holds neither that morality should ascribe its purposes to nature nor that nature’s purposes are always ends of morality” (Wood 1999, 215). It is only that “sometimes” (Wood 1999, 215), such as in the achievement of the civil constitution, the end of nature coincides with the end reason, or morality. But Wood forgets that on Kant’s adoption of the theory of epigenesis the preformed “seed” (Keime) of the human species is not dependent on any empirical contingencies even though its actualization is in the real world and subject to natural and social contingencies. (See KU, §81, 5: 423 on epigenesis as the theory of generic preformation.) Indeed, it is not the case that nature’s ends for other species are those of morality but the development that is unique to the human species is the realization in the world of its capacity for acting morally. The fact that moral ends are to be realized in the world and are subject to natural and social contingencies explains why the mechanical laws of nature are still a factor even though Kant’s philosophy of history cannot be all the way “naturalistic.”

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inequality, an imbalance of human passions, and the rise of “ambition, tyranny, and greed” (IaG, 8: 21). However, ultimately, the culture of skill leads to the development of the arts and sciences the result of which will be the “culture of discipline” (Zucht) (KU, §83, 5: 432), aimed at transforming the human being’s inner nature, that is, the cultivation of human passions and inclinations so that they can be more amenable to the demands of morality. This is because the arts and sciences, grounded on universal sentiments and laws, respectively, help liberate the will from desires and prepare human species for the realization of the “final end” (Endzweck) of nature, the highest good in the world. With the development of the arts, we experience disinterested aesthetic pleasure, a feeling of independence from determination of sensible impulses, which is analogous to the state of independence from inclinations in an individual with a virtuous disposition bound by the moral law. With the development of sciences, we are increasingly focused on the universal laws of nature, which, as Kant argues in The Typic of Pure Practical Judgment of the second Critique, serve as a schema-analogue of the moral law because it captures the universal lawfulness of the moral law and, therefore, serves as its type. For Kant, only the “culture of discipline” (Zucht) is properly “adequate” (KU, §83, 5: 431) to be the “ultimate end” of nature insofar as it is the proximate condition of the realization of the highest good in the world.

9.2 The “Unsociable Sociability” as Nature’s Means toward Culture Nature’s fundamental means for achieving its “ultimate end” is a certain psychological characteristic of human beings as a species that Kant calls the “unsociable sociability” (die ungesellige Geselligkeit) (IaG, 8: 20). By the latter Kant understands a human “propensity” (der Hang) (IaG, 8: 20), a mixed set of inclinations, to enter society and form social bonds, and at the same time to break them. Unlike Rousseau’s solitary bon sauvage, Kant portrays a human being as having an inclination to become socialized, since in such a condition he feels himself as more a human being, i.e., feels the development of his natural predispositions [Naturanlagen]. But he also has a great propensity to individualize (isolate) himself, because he simultaneously encounters in himself the unsociable property of willing to direct everything so as to get his own way […]. (IaG, 8: 21)

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It is thanks to this selfishness of human nature, Rousseau calls amour propre, which presupposes comparing oneself with others in our concern for success or failure as a social being, and which manifests itself as “the incompatibility,” “the spiteful competitive vanity,” “the insatiable desire to possess or even to dominate” (IaG, 8: 21), that human beings can leave the “crudity” (IaG, 8: 21) of the state of nature and seek the formation of a civil society. The initial formation of social bonds is “a pathologically compelled agreement” (IaG, 8: 21), an agreement, motivated by one’s interest in one’s own self-preservation and development, to set the laws for social interaction. However, “[t]he uttermost goal of culture” (MAM, 8: 117n), writes Kant, is not an agreement to just any set of laws but a formation of a “perfect civil constitution” (MAM, 8: 117n) grounded on “civil right” (MAM, 8: 117n). “A perfectly just civil constitution” (IaG, 8: 22) would be the one that allows a free pursuit of one’s ends in such a way that this pursuit does not encroach on the freedom of others. On Kant’s view, the republican constitution is the only constitution that is compatible with the principle of right. His conception of a republican constitution is a bottom-up (individualist) response to Rousseau’s top-down (collectivist) conception of republicanism. In The Social Contract (1762), Rousseau argues that we can be free and equal in a civil society and, thus, resist succumbing to the coercion and power of others by agreeing to submit our particular and individual wills to the general will of the collective, which is directed toward the common good. To Rousseau’s version of “freedom, equality, and fraternity,” Kant offers his own, “external” version which is based on the principle of right. “External […] freedom” is the freedom of self-legislation9 or “the warrant to obey no other external laws than those to which I could have given my consent.” “External […] equality” is the equality of citizens before the law, or the “relation of […] citizens in which no one can rightfully bind another to something without also being subject to a law by which he in turn can be bound in the same way” (ZeF, 8: 350n). And finally, the concept of fraternity for Kant is the concept of “dependence” of all members of civil society on one common constitution. Thus, the social bonds that are initially formed out of self-interest receive in a republican constitution their proper 9

On Kant’s view, the freedom of self-legislation in a republican constitution should not be confused with the form of sovereignty (autocracy, aristocracy, democracy). For Kant, a perfect republican constitution does not have to have the form of a representative democracy. It is possible to have a republican constitution in an autocracy, the rule of a king, as long as each citizen could relate to the content of the laws and their demands as if they were legislated by them.

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rational justification and validation insofar as a republican constitution is the necessary condition for the self-transformation of the civil society into a “moral whole” (IaG, 8: 21). Kant compares this “external,” juridical lawgiving to the ethical lawgiving which he calls “internal” (MS, 6: 220). The former merely requires conformity of action with a law and the latter requires not merely conformity of action with the law but also that the duty arising from the moral law be an incentive to action. Kant gives the following example to illustrate his point: “So it is an external duty to keep a promise made in a contract; but the command to do this merely because it is a duty, without regard for any other incentive, belongs to internal lawgiving alone” (MM, 6: 220). This is why in another essay on the philosophy of history, Toward Perpetual Peace (1795), Kant contends that “[t]he problem of establishing a state, no matter how hard it may sound, is soluble even for a nation of devils” (ZeF, 8: 366). However, the same unsociable sociability that applies to individual human beings also applies to the relation of states. But nature again uses the antagonisms among states, which culminate in wars, to produce peace and establish a “federation of nations” (IaG, 8: 24): [a]ll wars are therefore only so many attempts (not, to be sure, in the aims of human beings, but yet in the aim of nature) to bring about new relationships between states, and through destruction or at least dismemberment of all of them to form new bodies […] until finally […] a condition is set up, which resembling a civil commonwealth, can preserve itself like an automaton. (IaG, 8: 24–25)

The federation of nations, or the “league of nations” (ZeF, 8: 354), should not be conceived as a “world republic” (ZeF, 8: 357), which prescribes coercive laws that apply to all member nations because each nation already has its own constitution. Instead, “in place of the positive idea of a world republic only the negative surrogate of a league that averts war, endures, and always expands can hold back the stream of hostile inclination that shies away from right” (ZeF, 8: 357). Unless the league of nations is established, violence and wars will “constrain the slow endeavor of the inner formation of their citizens mode of thought” (IaG, 8: 26). In other words, perpetual wars impede the development of culture, the “ultimate end of nature” (der letzte Zweck der Natur) (KU, §83, 5: 429) to which “the idea of morality still belongs” (IaG, 8: 26). The idea of morality belongs to culture insofar as culture, and more proximately the “culture of discipline,” is the necessary condition for making progress toward the realization of the highest good (the “final end”) in nature.

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Kant’s Philosophy of History and the “Aim of Nature”: The Moral Justification 9.3.1 The Moral-Psychological Argument

I have argued above that Kant’s “Idea” of a historical progress should be interpreted in analogy to natural history and to Kant’s argument in the third Critique, namely, that the origin of the properties and functions manifested in a species requires an explanation grounded in a complementary use of both mechanical and teleological causes. However, just as the principle of nature’s purposiveness in Kant’s reflective judgment is necessary not just for the minimal (epistemic) ends of reason but also for the final (moral) ends, so also is Kant’s “Idea” of historical progress. In Idea, Kant writes as follows: [A] guiding thread […] can serve not merely for the explanation of such a confused play of things human […], but rather there will be opened a consoling prospect into the future […], in which the human species is represented in the remote distance as finally working itself upward toward the condition in which all germs nature has placed in it can be fully developed and its vocation here on earth can be fulfilled. Such a justification of nature – or better, of providence – is no unimportant motive for choosing a particular viewpoint for considering the world. For what does it help to praise the splendor and wisdom of creation in the nonrational realm of nature, and to recommend it to our consideration, if that part of the great showplace of the highest wisdom that contains the end of all this  – the history of human kind – is to remain a ceaseless objection against it, the prospect of which necessitates our turning our eyes away from it in disgust and, in despair of ever encountering a completed rational aim in it, to hope for the latter only in another world? (IaG, 8: 30)

Our representing the whole of history as progressing toward its end is not only necessary with respect to the problem of rendering this whole of history intelligible to ourselves, that is, it is not merely a question of being able to offer an “explanation” of how its parts (singular events) cohere together in history as a whole, its unified narrative. It is also the question of being able to represent the world as a place where our moral efforts can have an effect and where our vocation, the realization of the highest good, is possible. By the time of the second Critique (1788), Kant conceives of the pure will as determined by the moral law and naturally concerned with the realization of the moral good in the world. We can see, however, that already in 1784 merely hoping for the highest good in the afterlife, in “another

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world,” no longer defines Kant’s moral Glaube. In the second Critique, we assent to the theoretical proposition, the postulate, “God exists,” because the duty to promote the highest good in the world must also be possible for us to do. Therefore, we are justified in assenting to the existence of “a supreme cause of nature” (KpV, 5: 125) who will guarantee that nature (both external and our internal nature), which is essentially different from the realm of our freedom, cooperates with the final end of reason. Thus, Kant’s postulate for God’s existence in the second Critique is sufficient for solving the problem of the possibility of progressing, albeit infinitely, toward the realization of the highest good. This entails that the mere issue of the possibility of the highest good does not justify Kant’s teleological view of history.10 However, for Kant, moral Glaube is voluntary and, hence, it “can waver even in the well-disposed” (KpV, 5: 146).11 Therefore, in the face of world events that display human “childish malice and the rage to destruction” (IaG, 8: 18) one’s moral Glaube may falter and one may fall into “despair of ever encountering a completed rational aim,” the highest good, in nature because experience indicates that our nature is far from being amenable to moral demands. This is why we need some confirmation from experience as a sign that what we take to be possible on moral grounds may in fact be so. Indeed, for Kant, once one takes the philosophical standpoint and looks at human history as if guided by an “aim of nature” (IaG, 8: 18), then the Enlightenment is especially suggestive of moral progress. Kant points to 10

11

Pauline Kleingeld rightly argues that from the command that we ought to promote the highest good only a modest claim, namely, that progress must be regarded as possible can follow. This more modest claim, she argues further, does not lend support for Kant’s teleological view of history. The postulate of God’s existence in the second Critique establishes some form of harmony between the realms of nature and morality, “but this harmony can be conceived in different ways” (Kleingeld 1999, 74). However, according to Kleingeld, representing the harmony between the realms of nature and morality in this particular way, as a teleological progress in history, “best serves the interest of morality” (Kleingeld 1999, 75). This is because this specific connection between nature and morality “would involve the assumption that nature (human natural predispositions) leads in the same direction in which morality commands us to go” (Kleingeld 1999, 75). Zuckert argues the same point and adds that with his teleological view of history Kant is especially motivated to respond to “Rousseauian doubts” that the development of human natural capacities is “deleterious for both human morality and happiness” (Zuckert 2021, 71). While I agree with both, I argue that we should be asking a more fundamental question, namely, the question of why merely intellectually conceiving the possibility of moral progress in history is not sufficient and why, as I have argued in Chapter 3 of this volume, we must be able to perceive the realization of the highest good as the final end of nature. In other words, we can already see in Idea that for Kant our need for a teleological representation of nature (including our history) is grounded in the fact that the problem of the unity of theoretical and practical reason must take into account that the human being is a finite being (not merely intellectual but also sentient) to whom things must be given in sensibility. See my earlier discussion of this issue in Chapter 3 of this volume.

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“civil freedom” which is “gradually advancing” so that “personal restrictions on the citizen’s doing and refraining are removed more and more” (IaG, 8: 27–28). There is also “a regular course of improvement of state constitutions in our part of the world (which will probably someday give laws to all the others)” (IaG, 8: 29). In a later essay, Conflict of the Faculties (1798), in Part II titled “A Renewed Attempt to Answer the Question, ‘Is the Human Race Continually Progressing?’,” Kant points to the reaction of the public to the French Revolution – that is, the reaction to the fact that a republican constitution that has a prospect of being “just and morally good in itself” (SF, 8: 85) was established – as a “historical sign” (SF, 8: 84) of the moral progress of the human race.12 This phenomenon in human history “will not be forgotten” because it has revealed a “tendency” in human nature for improvement, and “one which nature and freedom alone, united in the human race in conformity with inner principles of right, could have promised” (SF, 7: 88). Although the public reaction to the French Revolution serves as a sign that we have the good will that can be efficacious in nature, this cooperation of freedom and nature can only remain a “contingent occurrence” (SF, 7: 88). Nature, whether our own or external nature, has laws different from the laws of freedom and it does not necessarily cooperate with the demands of reason. This is why this historical event can only remain a “sign” that inspires hope in human historical progress. 9.3.2

The Unity of Reason Argument

In Idea, Kant’s moral argument for the teleological view of history has been moral-psychological. That is to say, it has been in service of offering some confirmation from experience, a sign, that what we take to be possible on moral grounds may in fact be actual. Signs from experience that the history of the human species is teleological and that our human nature is progressively more amenable to the demands of morality helps us sustain our moral Glaube and our already existent moral disposition. But, just as in Kant’s discussion in the third Critique of the moral significance of beauty and teleology of nature, his moral argument for the teleological 12

It is important to emphasize that for Kant it is not the French Revolution that serves as this special “historical sign” but the reaction of the public to the French Revolution. The actual revolution itself “may succeed or miscarry; it may be filled with misery and atrocities to the point that a rightthinking human being, where he boldly to hope to execute it successfully the second time, would never resolve to make the experiment at such a cost” (SF, 8: 85). For Kant, such a historical event, marred with acts of violence and atrocities, could not serve as a “historical sign” of moral progress.

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view of history is not merely moral-psychological, but also concerned with the problem of reason’s unity. In Theory and Practice (1793), in response to Mendelssohn’s claim that we have no ground for asserting that the human race is progressing morally, Kant offers a counterargument. In order to “exhibit” (darstellen) human history not as a “planless aggregate of human actions” but as a “system” (IaG, 8: 29) teleologically progressing toward its end Kant takes himself to be in need of no proof: I do not need to prove [beweisen] this presupposition […]. For I rest my case on my innate duty, the duty of every member of the series of generations […] so to influence posterity that it becomes always better […], and to do it in such a way that this duty may be legitimately handed down from one member [in the series of] generations to another. (TP, 8: 309)

He cannot offer a theoretical proof of his claim given that, according to Kant, we can have no insight into the way nature is in itself. But he sees no need to offer one because he can justify his claim “from a practical point of view” (FM, 20: 305). From the fact that we have a duty to further the highest good  – which presupposes passing one’s individual and cultural achievements on to the next generation because the highest good is not an end that can be realized in the life-time of a single individual or a single generation, but presupposes instead an infinite progress  – I’m justified in assuming that I can contribute meaningfully to this infinite progress toward the highest good.13 In Theory and Practice, Kant’s focus is on the normative force of what the moral law commands, or what “ought to be,” in relation to whether “it is possible (in praxis)” or whether “it can be” (TP, 8: 312). The possibility of realizing what reason commands Kant refers to as the question of practice while he refers to the absolute normative necessity of what the moral law commands as the question of theory. It is a “theory that is based on the concept of duty” and according to which “concern about empty ideality of this concept quite disappears. For it would not be a duty to aim at a certain effect of our will if this effect were not also possible in experience (whether it be taught as completed or as always approaching completion” (TP, 8: 276–77).14 Thus, one is justified in conceiving of human history as 13 14

In his second review of Herder’s Ideas for the Philosophy of the History of Humanity (1785), Kant compares the infinite progress of human history to an “asymptotic line” (RezHerder, 8: 65). Kant’s claim in the Conflict of the Faculties (1798) that the proposition that “the human race has always been in progress toward the better and will continue to be so henceforth” (SF, 7: 89) is “valid for the most rigorous theory […] and not just a well-meaning and commendable proposition in a

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progressing teleologically based on the normative force of the moral law that commands us to further the highest good which then must be possible for us to do. Given this “ought implies can,” Kant takes himself to be justified in conceiving of nature in general as purposive with the final end of reason: “but at the same time I put my trust (in subsidium) in the nature of things, which constrains one to go where one does not want to go” (TP, 8: 313). Just as he argued in Idea, even though human beings display a competitive vanity and need to dominate one another, one is justified of conceiving nature as aiming toward its “ultimate end.” He takes himself on the same ground to be justified in conceiving that reason can have causal efficacy with respect to human nature in particular: “In the latter [the nature of things] account is also taken of human nature, in which respect for right and duty is still alive, so that I cannot and will not take it to be so immersed in evil that morally practical reason should not, after many unsuccessful attempt, finally triumph over evil and present human nature as lovable after all” (TP, 8: 313). In Toward Perpetual Peace (1795), Kant goes a step further and argues that not only are we justified in conceiving the possibility of human historical progress but also that our purposive representation of nature and our representation of human history as progressing have objective reality, albeit from a “practical point of view”: its [nature’s – LO] purposiveness […] we do not, strictly speaking, cognize in these artifices of nature or even so much as infer from them but instead (as in all relations of the form of things to ends in general) only can and must add it in thought, in order to make for ourselves a concept of their possibility by analogy with actions of human art; but the representation of their relation to and harmony with the end that reason prescribes immediately to us (the moral end) is an idea, which is indeed transcendent for theoretical purposes but for practical purposes (e.g., with respect to the concept of the duty of perpetual peace and putting that mechanism of nature to use for it) is dogmatic and well founded as to its reality. (ZeF, 8: 362)

The Idea of the historical progress and, related to it, of nature’s purposiveness is not something that can be ascribed to the way nature is in itself. practical respect” (SF, 7: 88) should be interpreted in a similar way. That is to say that Kant’s focus here is the normative force of the moral law that should not be understood as something reason demands pragmatically, as something worthy of pursuing relative to some contingent end, our “well-being.” Instead, it is something that reason commands absolutely and necessarily and moreover finds “signs” in experience that what must be possible for us to do, may in fact be so. This is why the proposition of human moral progress does not shy away in its objectivity from any theoretical claim. This does not entail, as Shell contends, that in Conflict Kant abandons moral justification all together and that the proposition of human historical progress becomes an object of “theoretical belief.” See Shell 2021, 118.

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It is something that we “add in thought” or a merely regulative Idea with respect to which we regard nature in analogy with human art which is directed toward ends or purposes. Given its regulative status, from the theoretical point of view, this Idea does not have objective reality, that is, it does not determine the way nature is in itself. However, from the practical perspective it is “dogmatic and well founded as to its reality.” In other words, our “representation” (ZeF, 8: 362) of nature, by means of reflective judgment, as purposive and our representation of human history as indicating human moral progress, although they do not determine the way nature is in itself, have objective reality when considered from a “practical point of view,” and they are not something we merely assume hypothetically at will, given some contingent pragmatic ends. With reflective judgment, the objects that practical reason demands that we conceive as real are represented as if obtaining in nature. Because representations of reflective judgments are normatively necessary in the epistemic sense (i.e., we must represent human history teleologically in order to render it intelligible) and also serve as a schema, or its analogue, for the Ideas whose objects are normatively necessary in the practical sense (i.e., reflective judgment’s representation of human historical progress serves as an analogue of the schema of the Idea of God’s providence)15 the representation of human historical progress in Kant’s philosophy of history can be referred to as, what I call, “moral image realism” (MIR)16 Kant’s emphasis of the necessity of conceiving of human historical progress toward the highest good and his emphasis of the objective reality (albeit from a practical point of view) of reflective judgment’s representation of the Idea of human historical progress in nature, is also reflected in his way of referring to particular historical events that further reinforce this world view. In Theory and Practice, he writes as follows: “a good deal of evidence [Beweise] can be put forward to show that in our age, as compared with all previous ages, the human race as a whole has actually made considerable moral progress” (TP, 8: 310). Kant’s use of the term “evidence” (Beweis) is puzzling, especially when compared to his other essays on history where he contends that experience “reveals 15

16

At places, Kant refers to nature’s purposive cooperation with the final ends of reason through history as “providence.” See TP, 8: 312 and ZeF, 8: 362. However, using the word “nature” instead of “providence” Kant finds “more befitting the limitations of human reason” (ZeF, 8: 362) because “providence” implies knowledge of the supersensible cause of nature’s purposive cooperation with reason’s ends “with which one presumptuously puts on the wings of Icarus in order to approach more closely the secret of its inscrutable purpose” (ZeF, 8: 362). This is why human historical progress can only serve as an indirect, or symbolic, exhibition of the Idea of God’s providence. See the Introduction and Chapter 3 of this volume for my earlier discussion of this concept.

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a little” (IaG, 8: 27), only perhaps the “faint traces” (IaG, 8: 28), an “intimation, a historical sign” (SF, 7: 301) of nature’s aim. Restricting himself to a more modest claim, namely, that we can only have traces or signs that nature may in fact be cooperative with the final end of reason, is more consistent with the regulative status of the Idea of historical progress and with Kant’s critical limits on our knowledge which can never apply to the way nature is in itself. Why does Kant then venture into making a more ambitious claim in Theory and Practice? Although by “theory” in Theory and Practice Kant refers to the normative aspect of the duty to further the highest good, its absolute necessity, and the fact that the assent in moral Glaube has a knowledge-like quality, this meaning of “theory” should not be confused with a scientific theory. Nevertheless, Kant uses the theoretical language of proof (Beweis) for the empirical confirmation of the claims of human historical progress in order to emphasize the objective reality of the Idea of historical progress when considered from a “practical point of view.”

9.4

History of the Human Species and the Problem of Reason’s Development

Even though Kant justifies the Idea of human historical progress, which is for him moral progress, both epistemologically and morally, one must raise the question whether the Idea of moral progress contradicts the universality and necessity of the moral law, as if acting from duty were a matter of degree. This worry becomes even more central in light of Kant’s characterization of his own philosophy as a “system, as it were, of the epigenesis of pure reason” (KrV, B 167). That Kant indeed had in mind something resembling an epigenetic account of reason is further reinforced by Kant’s use of the language of eighteenth-century biology, by his reference to the progress of human social history as “develop[ing] completely the germs [Keime] of nature” (IaG, 8: 22),17 and by his characterizing reason as “grow[ing] steadily with advancing culture” (ZeF, 8: 380). In light of these passages, one may come to the conclusion that Kant indeed had a compatibilist account of freedom according to which the gradual and historical increase in freedom and morality were a matter of both mechanical, natural causes, and human spontaneity.18 17 18

See also IaG, 8: 26, IaG, 8: 30. According to classical forms of compatibilism, one asserts that universal determinism could be the case while at the same time holding that it is possible for our actions to be in some sense free. But Kant’s reference to his own system as the “epigenesis of reason” (KrV, B 167) is interpreted by some

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Kant’s claim in the first Critique that his own system is an epigenesis of reason is intended to address the issue in his epistemology, namely, that the special status of his a priori concepts, as neither innate nor acquired from experience, be adequately understood. He used the theory of epigenesis in order to illustrate that the a priori concepts do not merely sit passively in the mind but that they are representations that structure our knowledge. Kant’s evocation of epigenesis then is useful insofar as it emphasizes the normative role of the categories that are conditions of the possibility of empirical knowledge of the world and that this normative function of the categories cannot be understood independent of our activity of experience although this does not mean that they are the product of this experience.19 How should we then explain Kant’s evocation of the theory of epigenesis in his philosophy of history? Pauline Kleingeld argues that it is neither reason nor morality that undergoes a historical process but our rational capacities for judging and acting morally. There is some textual evidence that supports this view. In Idea, Kant contends that in the earliest stages of human social history human beings displayed the “rude natural predispositions to make moral distinctions” and it is only later “through progress in enlightenment [that] a beginning is made toward the foundation of a mode of thought which can with time transform into determinate practical principles” (IaG, 8: 21). In Conjectural Beginning, Kant speaks of “the transition from the crudity of a merely animal creature into humanity, from the go-cart of instinct to the guidance of reason  – in a word, from a guardianship of nature into the condition of freedom” (MAM, 8: 115). In contrast to the earlier stages of human social history, the man of the Enlightenment “understands the good perfectly” (IaG, 8: 28). Kleingeld contends that with these claims we should take Kant to be saying not that moral and rational capacities get to be created in time but that they “gradually come to be fully understood.”20 The progress in understanding the rational foundation of our moral distinctions, argues Kleingeld, will contribute toward having more individuals with a

19 20

commentators in a proto-Hegelian sense. Human freedom, on this view, is understood as a sociohistorical achievement, the achievement of certain practices and institutions, which some natural beings, like ourselves (namely, rational), are capable of. This continuity between nature and mind is different from classical compatibilism and its causal account of freedom and Robert Pippin calls it “Hegel’s compatibilism.” See Pippin 2008, ch. 2. Some Kant scholars not only claim that freedom is a historical achievement but also go so far as to claim that “[t]here is nothing ahistorical about Kantian ethics. It has a historical situated understanding of itself, and is addressed to the specific cultural needs of its own age” (Wood 1991, 336). On this issue, see the chapter “The Purposive Development of Human Capacities” in Ameriks 2012, 217. See Kleingeld 1999, 68.

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virtuous disposition: “Because history is a learning process, clearer moral insight and improved moral education enable later generations to lead more virtuous lives than earlier ones.”21 Kant, however, is explicit that moral progress in human social history does not entail that there will be more individuals with a virtuous disposition. In answering the question “What profit will progress toward the better yield humanity?” he writes the following: Not an ever-growing quantity of morality with regard to intention, but an increase in the products of legality in dutiful actions whatever their motives. That is, the profit (result) of the human being’s striving toward the better can be assumed to reside alone in the good deeds of human beings, which will become better and better and more and more numerous; (SF, 7: 91)

The progress for Kant consists in improvements made with respect to “external” and not “internal” lawgiving, that is, the union of individuals and states grounded on the principle of right, which will ensure that increasingly more good deeds will be done which may not necessarily be grounded in the good will. The problem is not the moral improvement of human beings but only the mechanism of nature […] It can be seen even in actually existing states, still very imperfectly organized, that they are already closely approaching in external conduct what the idea of right prescribes, though the cause of this is surely not inner morality (for it is not the case that a good state constitution is to be expected from inner morality; on the contrary, the good moral education of a people is to be expected from a good state constitution), and thus that reason can use the mechanism of nature, through self-seeking inclinations that naturally counteract one another externally as well, as a means to make room for its own end, the rule of right. (ZeF, 8: 366–67).

Establishing civil society grounded on the rule of right helps control each human being’s “malevolence,” or acting with respect to others based on their inclinations whereby civil society receives a “moral veneer” (ZeF, 8: 376n). It is a “moral veneer” because the curbing of their inclinations is not due to them determining their will “internally,” in accordance with the moral law but “externally” by civil laws grounded on the principle of right. This is why some Kant scholars have argued that Kant’s Idea of human historical progress should be narrowed to the political progress of the civil institutions.22 21 22

Ibid., 72. Otfried Höffe, for example, titles a chapter on Kant’s history “History as the Progress of Law” (Höffe 1994, 195). Yovel notes that Kant’s essays on history “reduce history at large to political history” (Yovel 1989, 127).

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However, in addition to the political progress of the civil institutions, by its [government’s – LO] checking the outbreak of unlawful inclinations, the development of the moral predisposition to immediate respect for right is actually greatly facilitated […]; thereby a great step is taken toward morality (though it is not yet a moral step) toward being attached to this concept of duty even for its own sake, without regard for any return. (ZeF, 8: 376n).

Thus, one should not argue that the moral progress of human social history should be limited merely to political progress and the reform of civil institutions that regulate human relations so that they can eventually become grounded on the principle of right. Grounding civic relations on the universal principle of right contributes to the development of the moral predisposition insofar as one does not merely act out of fear of the consequences of breaking the law but gradually learns to act out of respect for the principle of right, thereby cultivating civic virtue. This still does not entail that, as Kleingeld has argued, there will be more individuals with a moral Gesinnung. Instead, it suggests that there will be an improvement on the part of our moral predispositions, that is, our sensibility will be increasingly more amenable to rational demands. According to Kant, the predispositions of the human race “as a natural species” (MAM, 8: 116), which includes the predispositions to animality and humanity, stand in conflict with the predispositions of humanity “as a moral species” (MAM, 8: 116).23 “From this conflict,” argues Kant, arise all true ills that oppress human life, and all vices that dishonor it; nevertheless the incitements to the latter […] are in themselves good and purposive as natural predispositions, but these predispositions, since they were aimed at the merely natural condition, suffer injury from progressing culture and injure culture in turn, until perfect art again becomes nature, which is the ultimate goal [das letzte Ziel] of the moral vocation of the human species. (MAM, 8: 116–17) 23

The predisposition to animality and the predisposition to humanity are Kant’s versions of Rousseau’s distinction between the more primitive amour de soi, which is a desire for satisfaction of one’s basic needs, and amour-propre, which only arises with the emergence of society and presupposes comparing oneself with others. See Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile ou de l’ éducation (1762), in Rousseau 1969, vol. 4, 493. Thus, for Kant, the predisposition to animality manifests itself as a drive for selfpreservation, for the propagation of the species (sexual drive), for the preservation of the offspring, and the drive to live in a community with other human beings (social drive). The predisposition to humanity is manifested as an inclination not to allow for another’s superiority over oneself, and then gradually as a desire to acquire superiority for oneself over others. The predisposition to humanity also brings vices Kant calls “vices of culture,” such as “envy, ingratitude, joy in others’ misfortunes, etc.” (RGV, 6: 27) The moral predisposition or the “predisposition to personality” (RGV, 6: 27) is “the susceptibility to respect for the moral law as of itself a sufficient incentive to the power of choice” (RGV, 6: 27). This susceptibility Kant also calls the feeling of respect for the moral law.

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Our predispositions as “natural species” are purposive not only because they are conducive to our self-preservation but also because nature uses them as a means for the progress of culture. The progress will be complete once “the perfect art,” or culture at the peak of its development, becomes indistinguishable from nature. This will be “the ultimate end” (der letzte Zweck) or the “ultimate goal” (das letzte Ziel) of the moral vocation of human kind as a natural species. In other words, this will be the point when the human natural predispositions, passions and sentiments, cultivated through arts and sciences, become universally shared sentiments, no longer in conflict with the feeling of respect for the moral law, and fully amenable to the unconditional demands of morality. This progress toward eradication of the conflict between the human natural and moral predispositions still does not entail that there will be more individuals with a virtuous Gesinnung. Even though the natural predispositions may progressively be less in conflict with the moral predisposition, they will always remain essentially distinct. Moreover, determining the will in accordance with the moral law is a question of freedom and one’s intelligible character, into which we can have no insight. This is why Kant contends that, although the “final end” (Endzweck) of the human vocation is the realization of the highest good in the world, an ethical community, or a “people of God under ethical laws” (RGV, 6: 98), we cannot have a historical representation of the gradual establishment of the dominion of the good principle on earth: “We cannot expect to draw a universal history of the human race from religion on earth (in the strictest meaning of the word); for, inasmuch as it is based on pure moral faith, religion is not a public condition; each human being can become conscious of the advances which he has made in this faith only for himself” (RGV, 6: 124). Thus, determination of one’s will in accordance with the moral law and moral Glaube that is grounded in it is “internal lawgiving” (MM, 6: 220). Only “external” or juridical lawgiving (MM, 6: 220), based on the principle of right, is manifested in the public institutions, the changes in which we represent as the outcome of the unique cooperation of “nature’s aim” and human rational spontaneity. Hence, a universal history of the human race can only focus on the realm of culture: the gradual change in public institutions so that they shall be grounded on the principle of right, and the gradual removal of the conflict between the moral and natural human predispositions.24 24

Based on the distinction Kant draws in Conjectural Beginning between “the history of nature” and “the history of freedom,” Allen Wood argues that the “epoch of nature will end when we achieve peace with justice in a cosmopolitan community of republican states” (Wood 1991, 343). “The epoch of freedom,” he argues further, “begins with enlightenment […] when reason itself begins to

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Therefore, Kant’s allusion to epigenesis within the context of human history is neither related to (1) a natural progressive development of morality (i.e., increasingly greater number of individuals with moral Gesinnung), nor (2) a natural progressive development of freedom and reason as such. Instead, it refers to the development of our institutions which are increasingly based on the principle of right and the overcoming of the conflict between the human natural with the human moral predispositions. All this development takes place in space and time and in accordance with the laws of nature. However, just as in epigenetic explanations of development in biology, there is an aspect to this development that is atemporal and ahistorical (and therefore “preformed” in some sense), namely, human absolute freedom and morality, which belongs to the noumenal realm and is not the object of the historical progressive development.

9.5 Kant’s Philosophy of History and the Hegelian Problem In the work of some commentators, Kant’s philosophy of history has been interpreted as an anticipation of Hegel’s situating of practical reason historically. Axel Honneth for example has argued that in addition to Kant’s shape culture […] through the imposition on disordered social relationship of the rational law of autonomy which people come to know in its purity when they become enlightened and begin to think for themselves” (Wood 1991, 343). For Wood, whereas the principle of right is to “control” social conflict for the realization of nature’s ultimate purpose (i.e., culture), morality is to “abolish” the rule of right for the realization of the final end of reason, the ethical community in the world. (Wood 1991, 344) According to Wood, the realization of the cosmopolitan community of republican states is merely “the halfway mark” (IaG, 26) in human history. The second half of human history is focused on establishing gradually an ethical community of people whose relationship is regulated by the moral law and no longer by the principle of right. But Wood forgets Kant’s explicit claims that the universal history of humanity cannot be grounded on “internal lawgiving” but only on “external lawgiving” grounded in the principle of right and manifested in the change of our institutions. Wood further ignores the specific context of Conjectural Beginning where the distinction between the “history of nature” and the “history of freedom” is made. Conjectural Beginning of Human History (1786), was an essay Kant wrote as a satirical response to book 10 of Herder’s Ideas where Herder interprets the book of Genesis as the actual historical account of the beginnings of the human species. Kant was critical of Herder’s interpretation of the book of Genesis as a literal history and instead argues that it should be a “conjectural” or imagined history in the tradition of the social contract theorists like Rousseau, Hobbes, or Locke. Contrary to Herder who criticizes the Enlightenment and sees in human reason the source of corruption and misery, Kant offers a defense of reason and argues that human suffering is a part of nature’s plan to bring human species closer to morality. Kant’s aim in this essay is to provide his own philosophical theodicy and to contend that the “history of nature begins from good, for that is the work of God” and the “history of freedom from evil, for it is the work of the human being.[…] The individual therefore has cause to ascribe all ills he suffers, and all the evil he perpetrates, to his own guilt, yet at the same time as a member of the whole (of species), also to admire and to praise the wisdom and purposiveness of the arrangement” (MAM, 8: 115).

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justification of progress in human social history from the perspective of the unity of reason there is also a type of justification that is “system-bursting” because it is Kant’s “attempt to ‘detranscendentalize’ practical reason by situating it historically.”25 Honneth grounds his interpretation in Kant’s essay What is Enlightenment? (1784) and his later essay The Conflict of the Faculties (1798). In these two essays, argues Honneth, the intention of nature is replaced by the intention of the historically situated practical agent who is aware of the moral achievements of the present generation. In the Enlightenment essay, Kant addresses the readership as practical participants in the political reforms of the Enlightenment during the reign of Friedrich II. In The Conflict of the Faculties, Kant addresses the public that is aware of the historical significance of the French Revolution. The readership of these essays is compelled to see the moral achievements of the present (the idea of universal civil and human rights expressed in the political reforms of Friedrich II and the constitution of the French Republic) as a mid-point in a progressive course of human history. These reforming and revolutionary events gain their legitimacy in virtue of the moral law. Now, however, argues Honneth, “they are viewed at the same time as the source of institutional transformations. They also now possess […] an element of empirical or historical reality.”26 According to Honneth, in the Enlightenment essay and The Conflict of the Faculties, the “intention of nature,” or providence, as the propelling force behind the progress of history is replaced by the products of a human learning process. But is it the case that Kant removes completely the function of nature’s purposiveness and replaces the regulative with a constitutive status of the progress of human history, namely as that which necessarily follows from reason that is now fully aware of its own potential? Indeed, the Enlightenment essay and The Conflict of the Faculties stand out from Kant’s other essays on history insofar as Kant moves his focus away from responding directly to Rousseau by showing how the historical overcoming of the conflict between the natural and moral predispositions is “nature’s aim.” In the Enlightenment essay and Conflict, Kant’s focus is historical progress as the result of human rational agency. This, however, does not entail that one perspective excludes the other, namely, that either the historical progress is the “work of nature” or that it is the “work of a human being.” For Kant, our representation of human history is one in which history is the effect of a joint causality of both freedom and nature. For if it were 25 26

Honneth 2007, 11. Honneth 2007, 10.

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only the “work of nature” our history could not be called a moral progress that must be the outcome of a free rational agency. But for Kant reason is finite, acting in nature, which follows its own laws, so that the problem of reason’s own efficacy in nature is never fully overcome. Thus, any representation of history as progress must involve “nature’s aim.” That even in the Enlightenment essay Kant does not divide history into a pre-enlightenment period that is not the product of human rational agency and a post-enlightenment period that is the result of human freedom can be discerned from Kant’s brief reference to the aim of enlightenment as “people’s emergence from their self-incurred minority” (WA, 8: 41). Thus, the fact of human beings not using their own reason is also their own doing. Moreover, Kant assigns a special role of enlightening the public to a “few independent thinkers” (WA, 8: 36), among whom he may see himself as belonging, and who “after having themselves cast off the yoke of minority, will disseminate the spirit of a rational valuing of one’s own worth” (WA, 8: 36). Although Kant is not explicit, it is plausible to argue that as with the production of artistic genius so does the production of independent thinkers presuppose a unique activity of both freedom and nature. Both have a special role in guiding the progress of our culture.27 Finally, in the conclusion of the Enlightenment essay Kant again evokes the merits of “nature”: Thus when nature has unwrapped, from under this hard shell, the seed for which she cares most tenderly, namely the propensity and calling to think freely, the latter gradually works back upon the mentality of the people (which thereby gradually becomes capable of freedom in acting) and eventually even upon the principles of government, which finds it profitable to itself to treat the human being, who is now more than a machine, in keeping with his dignity. (WA, 8: 41–42)

Public awareness of the historical significance of the Enlightenment includes the world view according to which “nature” has helped to bring about this stage in history and will continue to help the human race progress toward its moral vocation. In Conflict, as I have shown above, the French Revolution is not a piece of evidence that we have finally started to shape the world to the moral standards of which we are now finally fully aware. Instead, it is the public sentiment toward the French Revolution 27

For an account of the creative process of a genius-artist as presupposing a joint causality of free human activity and nature see my 2012. For the role of a genius-artist in the moral progress of culture, see Chapter 4 in this volume.

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that serves as a sign for strengthening our hope that we have the good will that can be efficacious in nature. Thus, contrary to Honneth’s interpretation, Kant does not offer a picture of the self-sufficiency of moral agency, that is, of a moral agent who is aware that her own progress is the sole merit of her own reason and of the cumulative learning process from generation to generation. Learning, according to Kant, comes “from above” (Anth, 7: 328) and not from below. In other words, “nature within the human being strives to lead him from culture to morality, and not (as reason prescribes) beginning with morality and its law, to lead him to a culture designed to be appropriate to morality” (Anth, 7: 328). Yovel, like Honneth, interprets Kant’s philosophy of history as protoHegelian. However, his interpretation, at least initially, appears to be more modest. Yovel contends that for Kant, with the Age of Enlightenment when the public becomes aware of the pure sources of its rational principles, “it was the rational will and not just the cunning of nature that was expected to affect the political world as well, and thus the two rival principles in fact become complementary.”28 According to Yovel, history for Kant is the “history of self-explication of reason,”29 that is, reason becoming gradually aware of itself and its nature. This process culminates with the Enlightenment, which is a period in history that marks the emergence of a new principle that competes with the cunning of nature on the institutional level as well. With the Enlightenment, the moral principle, or the principle of freedom, competes with the principle of nature to effect institutional reforms. For Yovel, the real goal of history is not the history of the human being as a “natural being,”30 “a reconciliation of nature and culture”31 in the civil institutions grounded in the principle of right, and which is subject to the “cunning of nature.” The real goal of history is “moral history”32 and its end, that is, the history of the human being as a “free being”33 who aims at the realization of the highest good in the world that takes the shape of an ethical community. According to Yovel, the cunning of nature cannot produce the goal of history. “It reaches only as far as the stage of culture […] But it cannot bring about the system of ethical 28 29 30 31 32 33

Yovel 1989, 8–9. Ibid., 9. Ibid., 194. Yovel contends at places just the opposite by referring to Kant’s philosophy of history as a “political history.” Ibid., 193. Ibid., 179. Ibid., 194.

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dispositions itself. On the contrary, for this system to arise, the cunning of nature, representing the opposite dispositions, must rather be destroyed.”34 Yovel in the end ignores Kant’s own denial of the possibility of establishing a world history on human intentions that belong to the intelligible and not the phenomenal realm. And like Honneth, he does not acknowledge that for Kant human progress toward its moral vocation requires on our part the affirmation of both autonomous human rational agency and something that surpasses it and will cooperate in the realization of our moral ends. The latter is the object of our belief which is strengthened by reflective judgment.

9.6 Conclusion and Evaluation I have argued that Kant’s teleological philosophy of history is best interpreted in light of his third Critique and the justification for the employment of reflective judgment and the priori principle of nature’s purposiveness he provides there. Thus, I have shown that our representation of human historical progress is justified by reason’s minimal ends, that is, epistemologically, as the way of rendering human history intelligible. I have also shown that Kant justifies our representation of human historical progress by reason’s final ends, that is morality. With respect to the latter form of justification, I have identified Kant’s moral-psychological argument, that is, the role of the representation of human historical progress in strengthening moral Glaube and our belief in the existence of the good will and its efficacy in nature. The teleological representation of human history helps us maintain the existent moral disposition in the face of disheartening singular historical events that may bring doubt as to whether both external nature (the world) and internal human nature may be amenable to our moral efforts. I have also identified what I have called Kant’s moral justification with respect to the problem of reason’s unity. I have argued that reflective judgment’s representation of human historical progress serves as a schema-analogue of the Idea of God’s providence. The latter does not have objective reality. And yet, with the representation of human historical progress, reflective judgment imaginatively represents it as if it were obtaining in nature. Because reflective judgment quasi-schematizes that which is not merely optional or useful given some pragmatic ends but that which is absolutely necessary from the “practical point of view” given our duty to further the highest good in nature, Kant refers to human historical 34

Ibid., 196.

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progress as being “dogmatic” and “well founded as to its reality.” I have referred to such reflective judgment’s imaginative representations, which reinforce the unity of reason insofar as they represent as if obtaining in the theoretical domain of nature that which is absolutely necessary from the perspective of the practical domain, as “moral image realism” (MIR). I have further argued that for Kant human historical progress should be limited to the progress of its civic institutions as well as the progress toward elimination of the conflict between our predispositions as a moral species and our predispositions as a natural species. In other words, I have argued that human universal history should be limited to the history of ourselves as phenomenal beings and that we should be precluded from making any claims with respect to our moral progress, understood as having an increasing number of individuals with the moral Gesinnung. It may be objected that for Kant the question of whether human moral progress in history entails more individuals with a virtuous disposition is more ambiguous than I have argued in Section 9.4. After all, with the establishing of the civil constitution based on the principle of right, of the federation of states the goal of which is to prevent war, and with the development of arts and sciences, favorable conditions are made for moral education. This education, as Kant outlines it in the Doctrine of Method of the second Critique, consists in presenting young minds with the examples of virtue whereby an opportunity is presented to them to exercise their faculty of judgment, that is, to perform appraisals of virtuous actions, distinguish essential duties required by right from nonessential duties defined by needs, distinguish actions from duty from those that are merely in conformity with duty, etc. This exercise of the faculty of judgment is intended to draw the pupil’s attention to the purity of will in examples in order to help the pupil become conscious of her own freedom and to feel respect for herself, that is, to understand her own worth in light of the moral law.35 However, understanding oneself and one’s own worth in terms of one’s autonomy and the moral law remains one’s own free choice, one’s own choice of character. This decision belongs to one’s noumenal self of which we cannot have any knowledge and, therefore, we are precluded from including this in our representation of human historical progress. Furthermore, for some commentators, Kant’s conception of human historical progress is best interpreted as proto-Hegelian, that is, as the 35

See KpV, 5: 161. Robert Louden, for example, has argued that for Kant one’s exercise of judgment and the cultivation of one’s sensibility affects the noumenal self and what Kant calls “sudden inward revolution in the manner of willing” (RGV, 6: 47). See Louden 2000, 152.

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outcome of reason which effectuates changes in our social and civic institutions so that those institutions in turn could shape the values of future generations. I have argued that contrary to those interpretations Kant’s conception of human history always presupposes a unique combined activity of human rational agency and “nature” that transcends human subjectivity. It could be objected to me that even though Kant never gives up the regulative Idea of “nature’s aim,” this is something he should have done, especially in light of the importance he ascribes to the Enlightenment and our increased awareness of the rational foundation of our moral distinctions. To this I would respond that Kant never gives up the conception of reason as finite, to which something ontologically prior and more fundamental is given. Kant emphasizes in his later writings that the highest good is to be realized in the world, but that this always remains an object of infinite striving and infinite approximation. His conception of absolute freedom is never replaced by a Hegelian compatibilist conception conceived as a mutual cooperation between human intentionality on the one hand and social and civic institutions on the other.

Concluding Remarks

In these brief concluding remarks I wish to sum up the emerging picture, as presented in these pages, of Kant’s conception of the faculty of reason, of reflective judgment, and of their relation to the world. For Kant reason is not only instrumental but architectonic or teleological. In its theoretical domain, it does not rest with an infinite series of conditioning relations but seeks either the first unconditioned principle or the first unconditioned object. In regard to the former, its logical use, reason seeks to formulate a series of interconnected syllogisms ranging from more specific cognitions to more general ones until it reaches the first selfevident principle, not conditioned by any others. In regard to the latter, its real use, reason seeks the unconditioned for the conditioned objects (the world as a totality, an uncaused cause, a necessary being, etc.). In its practical domain, reason does not determine the will for the pursuit of multiple, unrelated conceptions of the good. Instead, it seeks to realize the highest good as its unconditioned, final end. But reason is also not merely architectonic but finite. Unlike for the infinite intellect for whom to think an object is for that object to exist, our finite reason distinguishes between possibility and actuality. For it to think the unconditioned is not the same as to cognize it. For it to conceive that the highest good must be possible is not the same as to realize it and make it actual. This is what explains Kant’s reference to reason’s “need” (KpV, 5: 142) and its “interest” (KpV, 5: 119) in that which fulfills its “need.”1 Speculative reason’s need is the cognition all the way to the unconditioned principle or object and practical reason’s need is the determination of the will to action with respect to the promotion of the highest good. Hence, there is the “incalculable gulf” (unübersehbare Kluft) (ZEKU, 5: 176) between the autonomous domain of reason 1

Cf. Yovel 1989, 17–18 and Gibbons 1994, 178 for the connection between the finitude of reason and its interest and need.

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and the world. In the theoretical domain, for the object to be cognized, it must be given in empirical intuition. In the practical domain, it is not always the case that we formulate proper moral intentions and even when we do the natural world may not necessarily be cooperative with our moral ends. In Chapter 2, I discussed the primacy of practical reason and how speculative reason must ultimately recognize, as its own, the interest of practical reason and, further, how its need not only to think but also to posit the unconditioned can only be satisfied legitimately by the practical cognition of the postulates of practical reason. The assent of moral Glaube and the postulate of freedom I discussed in Chapter 2 and Chapter 1, respectively, are only the first steps in the fulfillment of reason’s practical need. This is because the assent to the postulates helps us intellectually conceive that our progress toward the highest good must be possible. However, conceiving the possibility of the progress toward the highest good is not the same as experiencing its actuality. This is why reason requires the assistance of reflective judgment. I have argued in this book that both aesthetic and teleological judgment help us perceive (and not merely conceive) the highest good together with its supersensible conditions as if obtaining in nature. In other words, by means of reflective judgment these Ideas of reason receive a reality even though this reality is merely the one “sufficient for the reflecting power of judgment” (KU, General Remark on the Teleology, 5: 479). Reflective judgment accomplishes this task by its analogical procedure by means of which it indirectly exhibits these Ideas of reason. What does reason gain with reflective judgment presenting these Ideas as if obtaining in nature? In this book, I have argued for a twofold function of reflective judgment with respect to its furthering of reason’s ends. One function I have called “moral-psychological,” which has to do with the voluntary nature of Glaube. In the face of adverse events one’s moral Glaube may falter and with it our hope of approximating the highest good. The experience of beauty, nature’s systematic unity, and our representation of the whole of history as progressing serve as signs that what we conceive must be possible on moral grounds may in fact be actual. Such signs help us persist in our existent moral dispositions. The other function of reflective judgment is that which reinforces reason’s unity. Reflective judgment’s principle of purposiveness (whether subjective, objective, or logical) makes possible the satisfaction of reason’s theoretical ends, that is, the representation of particular forms and objects in nature as not merely contingent but lawful and necessary. Forms in nature that are excessive for

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our determinative judgments become objects of universal and necessary aesthetic judgments. That which from the perspective of determinative judgment is a contingent relation of parts in an organism, or of particular empirical laws to each other, becomes lawful and necessary, forming a unified system suitable for our exploration of nature. But the same principle of purposiveness that guides reflection on these particulars in nature makes possible an indirect exhibition of the Ideas of the postulates and the highest good, representing the objects of these Ideas not merely as objects that must be possible but as if actual in nature. In this way, reflective judgment not only satisfies reason’s minimal cognitive ends but, insofar as it creates an image of the world as an analogue of freedom and reason, it simultaneously promotes reason’s practical ends. Reflective judgment therefore reinforces reason’s unity insofar as its representation of the world in response to reason’s theoretical need and its representation of the world in response to reason’s practical need “must cohere” (müssen zusammenhängen) (KU, §78, 5: 412). This is because the rule governing the former grounds the analogical exhibition, the indirect schematization, of the Ideas required for the latter. Reflective judgment’s indirect schematization of the Ideas of reason serves the function of reason’s poiesis, its creation of the image of the world as amenable to its final end. And although the concept of an “image,” or a schema, implicate an important role of the imagination, this image is not merely fictional, rather, it is an instance of what I called “moral image realism” (MIR). This is because reflective judgment, starting from a concrete particular in nature which is excessive for determinative judgment, generates representations that are normatively necessary in the epistemic sense and helps us determine these particulars in some way. But these very same representations serve as schemata for the Ideas whose objects are normatively necessary in the practical sense. Finally, the interpretation of Kant’s third Critique offered in this book sets out, I hope, the path for a better understanding of the tremendous influence this book had on both Early Romanticism and German Idealism. The Early German Romantics were inspired by the special power of imagination suggested by the third Critique and its role in the infinite approximation of the Absolute.2 German Idealists, on the other hand, were troubled by the mere “coherence” of theoretical and practical reason and were seeking to identify the first principle as the unifying ground of both and which would ultimately abolish the distinction between possibility 2

See Frank 1997.

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(a concept) and actuality (an intuition). In other words, they were seeking to abandon the conception of reason as finite and limited. However, the story of the development of Early Romanticism and German Idealism that takes into account the deep roots of these philosophical movements in Kant’s Critique of Judgment while at the same time identifying their distinct motivations for modifying Kant’s Critical system must be left for a future endeavor.

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Index

aesthetic Idea, 110, 119, 138–41, 145, 168 Allison, Henry, 20, 110, 114–15, 118, 127, 129–32, 165–68, 189, 204 Ameriks, Karl, 25, 27, 43, 70, 151, 240, 252 analogy (of reflective judgment), 102–10, 233 and human history, 238, 250 and inferences of judgment, 199–200 and “natural ends,” 224–25 qualitative analogy, 103–104 quantitative analogy, 103 antinomy of practical reason, 52 of taste, 146 of teleological judgment, 15, 225–29, 231, 233–34 Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy, 153–54 autonomy, 223–24, 234. See also transcendental freedom Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb, 119, 148, 158–59, 182 Beck, Lewis White, 234 Bildungstrieb (formative drive), 239 Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich, 239 categorical imperative, 22, 24 and the concepts of good and evil, 34 as the form of a pure will, 29 its objective validity and reality, 35 and the postulates, 60 as a priori given, 30–31 as specific to finite human beings, 31–32 causality efficient, 215, 218, 222 final, 227, 229, 232–34 ideal, 219, 222, 224, 227, 229 mechanical, 107–10, 239. See also mechanism practical, 19–21, 33, 41, 50 real, 219, 222, 224, 227, 229 reciprocal, 15, 107–10, 112, 218–24, 233–34 common experience, 22–23, 27–29. See also common sense

common sense, 22, 32. See also common experience judgments of, 26 the rule of, 161 compatibilism, 21, 236, 251, 262 Conflict of the Faculties, 247, 257 Conjectural Beginning of Human History, 252 contingency in the agreement of cognitive faculties in aesthetic judgment, 111–12, 126, 131, 143–45, 148, 166 in the agreement of nature and freedom, 9 in the disagreement of cognitive faculties in aesthetic judgment, 175 intuitive vs. discursive understanding, 232 of natural order, 85, 200–202 in part to whole relation in human history, 238 in part to whole relation in organisms, 209, 214–18 in the relation between happiness and morality, 49 vs. logical and real necessity, 210–12 in works of art, 116, 117 Critique of Practical Reason, 19–22, 28, 29. See also second Critique Critique of Pure Reason, 68, 117, 179, 181, 198–99, 201, 226. See also first Critique Crusius, Christian August, 153, 155 culture, 122, 254–55, 259 of discipline, 3, 242, 244 of skill, 241 deduction, transcendental A-Deduction of the categories, 132, 136, 138 of the highest good, 59 of the Ideas, 195–96 of the moral law, 22, 24–27, 43–44 discursive understanding, 5, 48, 196, 216, 222, 228, 232. See also intellectus ectypus disgust, 156–57, 162 Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, 145

277

278

Index

Early Romanticism, 148, 265 epigenesis, 239, 241, 251–53 exaltation (Schwärmerei), 152, 171, 172 exposition definition of, 29 metaphysical of pure forms of intuition, 24, 44 metaphysical of space, 29, 31 transcendental of space, 37 fact of reason, 20–22, 26, 30–31, 40, 66 faculty of pleasure and displeasure, 158–60 feeling of life (Lebensgefühl), 14, 126, 143, 144 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 21, 26, 43, 46 final end of nature, 6, 73–76, 82, 88–89, 98, 207, 229 first Critique, 7, 14, 19, 49–52, 54, 58, 59, 64, 68, 72, 81, 84, 92, 106, 127, 132–36, 168, 179, 200–204, 213–15, 252 free harmony (of the faculties), 13, 36. See also free play (of the faculties) and beauty as a symbol of morality, 111–18 free disharmony (of the faculties), 165, 167 and the primacy of imagination, 123–26, 130–31, 146–49 and pure aesthetic judgments of ugliness, 165–68 free play (of the faculties), 126, 143, 146, 166, 174. See also free harmony (of the faculties) Gardner, Sebastian, 61, 68–70 genius, 113–22, 258 and ugliness, 171, 173 German Idealism, 9, 81, 206, 265 Ginsborg, Hannah, 170, 217, 219–20, 222 Glaube, 63, 66 doctrinal, 65 moral, 4–6, 8–11, 15, 47–48, 62, 66–266 pragmatic, 64 Groundwork, 20, 31, 41, 234 gulf, incalculable (unübersehbare Kluft), 2, 3, 263 Guyer, Paul, 3, 110, 113–15, 124, 174 happiness empirical, 37–39 intellectual, 51 moral, 79–81 universal, 52–53, 77–78 heautonomy (of reflective judgment), 201–203 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 120, 125, 140, 143, 149, 189, 236, 252, 256, 259, 262 Henrich, Dieter, 40, 43, 52, 180 highest good, 3–13, 15, 47–59, 263, 264 and aesthetic judgment, 101–102, 113 and anti-realism, 59–62, 91–92

and ethical community, 76–81 and human history, 245–46, 248–49 and realism, 66–266 and works of genius, 115–18, 122 history of culture, 236 human, 7, 15, 122, 236, 241–42, 246–50 Kant’s philosophy of, 235, 256 natural, 238, 245 philosophical, 237 political, 236 universal, 237, 261 Honneth, Axel, 256–59 Hume, David, 74, 85 Hutcheson, Francis, 151–54, 158, 161–63, 170 hylozoism, 145, 222 Idea for a Universal History With a Cosmopolitan Aim, 235–38 imagination (power of), 13, 112, 126, 131–33, 145–49 and disharmony of cognitive faculties, 164–69, 172–73 fantasy (Phantasie), 136–38 fictive faculty (Dichtungsvermögen), 125, 137, 138 productive imagination, 133, 137, 138 reproductive imagination, 133, 138 synthesis of apprehension, 132–36, 138, 140 synthesis of reproduction, 133 synthesis of the imagination, 90, 107, 112, 142, 166, 195 transcendental imagination, 7, 96 incentive (Triebfeder) of the will, 35, 39, 49–51, 67–68, 118, 244 intellectus archetypus, 203, 232. See also intuitive understanding intellectus ectypus, 227, 232. See also discursive understanding interest of a faculty, 55 of practical reason, 55, 57, 264 of reason, 55, 209, 217, 229 of speculative reason, 55, 57, 263 intuitive understanding, 9, 15, 231–34. See also intellectus archetypus Kleingeld, Pauline, 246, 252, 254 lectures on anthropology, 116, 136–38, 171 on logic, 128–29, 154 on metaphysics, 131, 134, 158, 164 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 157, 174 Longuenesse, Béatrice, 131, 143, 185–90, 196, 200

Index mechanism, 109, 215–23, 226–30, 233. See also causality, mechanical Meier, Georg Friedrich, 28, 67, 139 Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, 144, 213–15, 226 Metaphysics of Morals, 3, 77, 78, 234 moral motivation, 62, 68, 84, 118, 170 moral proof (of God’s existence), 81–84, 87–90, 98 moral respect, 24, 26, 28–29, 35–40, 50, 255 moral teleology, 84 and beauty of art, 101–102 and pure aesthetic judgments of ugliness, 150, 166–68, 170 and its relation to physical teleology, 89 and works of genius, 121 natural end, 8, 74, 206–10, 217–25, 229, 233–34, 237–39. See also organism Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, 156–58 On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy, 207 Only Possible Argument, 84, 211–12 organism, 8, 14–16, 89, 96, 108, 206–10, 214, 216–31, 233–34, 237–40, 265. See also natural end original nonsense, 152, 169–73 physical teleology, 86–90, 95 physical theology, 86. See also physical teleology physico-theological proof (of God’s existence), 84–87. See also physical theology pleasure definition of, 144 pleasure, aesthetic displeasure (interested), 163 displeasure (pure, disinterested), 155, 164–66, 168 of the agreeable (interested), 144 pure (disinterested), 3, 13, 112, 115, 147 postulates, 5–7, 11, 47, 48, 55, 56, 58, 60, 61, 63, 68–266 power of choice (Willkür), 234 practical cognition, 5, 9–13, 22–26, 43–45, 48, 89, 264 and aesthetic judgment, 102, 119–21 and the feeling of respect for the moral law, 39–40 of the form of the moral law, 29–32 of the matter of the moral law, 32–34 and moral Glaube, 62–63, 66–266 of the objective reality of the moral law, 34–37 and transcendental freedom, 41–43

279

preformation, 238, 241 primacy of practical reason, 53, 55, 57, 59, 264 Prize Essay, 155–58 purposiveness counterpurposiveness, 163–65, 175 external, 74, 207 internal, 74 logical principle of, 2, 200–203 nature’s, 9, 113, 115, 117–18, 121–22, 249 objective principle of, 75, 217, 220, 228–29 principle of, 93, 96, 265 subjective principle of, 111, 146, 148, 159 realism, 48, 69–266 anti-realism, 11, 47–48, 59–62, 69–70 moral image realism (MIR), 9, 16, 73, 96, 98, 102, 147, 150, 170, 250, 261, 265 rational necessitation realism (RNR), 48, 70, 71, 95–97 reflection aesthetic, 7, 13, 112, 120, 125 compared to logical, 167 compared to logical and transcendental, 129 and imagination, 138, 140 and multicognitivism, 142 and precognitivism, 141 and the primacy of imagination, 142 comparison and abstraction, 128 definition of, 109, 127 logical, 126, 127 similarity between reflection on aesthetic Ideas and reflection on the morally good, 110 teleological, 7, 86, 94, 96, 200–202, 220, 223 transcendental, 127 Reid, Thomas, 156 Religion, 37, 78–81, 234 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 241–44, 254 schema, 7, 13, 95–97, 102–103, 106–107, 123–32, 145–47, 190, 195–99, 250, 265 schema-analogue, 9, 14–16, 98, 142, 233 second Critique, 6, 11, 20, 22–24, 28, 42, 50–54, 63, 66, 77–78, 80–81, 97–98, 144, 234, 242, 261 sensus communis, 151–52, 158, 169, 173, 175 Shaftesbury, The Third Earl of (Anthony Ashley Cooper), 158, 160–63 supersensible, 21–24, 123, 149, 209, 222–24 causality, 208 ground, 125–26, 145, 147–48, 221, 231 origin, 224 and practical judgment, 45 principle, 208, 231

280

Index

supersensible (cont.) substrate, 13, 117–18, 146 substrate of humanity, 146 substratum, 231 “within,” 12, 114–15, 117–18, 126 “without,” 12, 101, 114–15, 117–18, 126 symbol, 12, 101–104, 106–11, 118–22. See also analogy (of reflective judgment) and human history, 250 and “natural ends,” 224, 231 and works of genius, 113–18 systematicity of nature, 14, 180–81 reason’s principle of, 190–96, 199–203 Theory and Practice, 247–51 Toward Perpetual Peace, 244, 249 transcendental freedom, 19, 41, 126, 223. See also unconditioned, causality transcendental ideal, 14, 181–83, 185–90, 196–98 typic (of pure practical judgment), 44–45, 242 ugliness, 150–55, 161–63 pure judgments of, 163–68, 170, 175 ultimate end of nature, 3, 15, 75–76, 241, 244 unconditioned, 5, 9, 203 causality, 19, 20, 47. See also transcendental freedom

cognition of, 55 and Early Romanticism, 148 end of reason, 4, 51, 52, 76, 86. See also highest good ens realissimum, 181–86 as the final end of nature, 76 as the “highest intelligence,” 196–98 moral good, 22 need of reason for, 14, 179 practical principle, 41 and reason’s architectonic, 263 things in themselves, 180 and the unity of reason, 188–90 unity of reason, 4–5, 48, 59, 91, 192, 196, 247, 257, 261. See also unity of theoretical and practical reason unity of theoretical and practical reason, 5, 24, 45, 90, 95, 98, 181, 186–87, 189, 196, 199, 205, 246 Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, 210, 212 unsociable sociability, 236, 242, 244 Willaschek, Marcus, 55, 57 Wolff, Christian, 155–58, 182 Wood, Allen, 70, 182–84, 255 Yovel, Yirmiyahu, 259–60, 263