Kant: Making Reason Intuitive

KANT MAKING REASON INTUITIVE Edited by Kyriaki Goudeli, Pavlos Kontos and Ioli Patellis

Kant denies that Reason is intuitive, but demands that we must - in some way - 'make' Reason intuitive, and follow its guidance, particularly in matters of morality. In this book, a group of scholars attempt to analyse and explore this central paradox within Kantian thought. Each essay explores the question from a different perspective - from political philosophy, ethics and religion to science and aesthetics. The essays thus also reformulate the core question in different forms. For example, how are we to realise the moral gpod in personal character, political arrangements or religious institutions? What function do moral examples of good or evil play in our understanding of rational morality according to Kant, or what do Kant's own examples of savages reveal concerning Kant's conception of reason? How do we represent the rational requirement of systematicity and totality for knowledge, if this requirement necessarily transcends our current understanding, and our powers of sensible representation? Kyriaki Goudeli is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Patras, Greece, and author of Challenges to German Idealism: SchelUng, Fichte and Kant (2002). Pavlos Kontos is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Patras, Greece. His publications include L'action morale chezAristote (2002) and Gadameret les Grecs (2005). loli Patellis is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Patras, Greece. Her publications include Meaning and Action: Presuppositions of Radical Translation and Interpretation (1991) and The Phitosophy of Thomas Hoboes: Reason and Causah'ty in the New Phystcat *nr4Dnllt-lr-^l Crionre

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Kant: Making Reason Intuitive

Kant Making Reason Intuitive Edited by Kyriaki Goudeli Pavlos Kontos and

Ioli Patellis

palgrave macmillan

Editorial matter, selection and Introduction © Kyriaki Goudeli, Pavlos Kontos and loli Patellis 2007 Chapters 1-11 © contributors 2007 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmitls, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin's Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13:978-0-230-50689-3 ISBN-10:0-230-50689-5 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kant: making reason intuitive/editors, Kyriaki Goudeli, Pavlos Kontos, loli Patellis. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-230-50689-5 (cloth) 1. Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804.2. Reason, 3. Intuition. 4. Phenomenology. I. Patellis, loli. II. Kontos, Pavlos. III. Goudeli, Kyriaki, 1962B2798.K2236 2007 193—dc22 2006044843 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07

Contents Notes on the Contributors

vii

List of Abbreviations

ix

Introduction

xi

1

Practical Schematism, Teleology and the Unity of the Metaphysics of Morals Gary Banham

2

The Transition Problem in Kant's Opus Postumum Howard Caygill

3

Self-Submission and Mutual Domination: Constructions of Marriage and Gender in Kant and Fichte Georges Faraklas

4

Concept and Intuition in Kant's Philosophy of Religion Maximilian Forschner

5

The Categories of the Good as Categories of Moral Action Pavlos Kontos

1 16

28 43

62

6

Kant: Sciences, Systems and Organisms Mi Patellis

77

7

On the Logic of the Realization of Reason in Society and History Kosmas Psychopedis

97

8

'Fact of Reason' and 'Natural Human Reason': On Kant's Notion of Moral Experience Konstantinos Sargentis

9

The Problem of Philosophical Knowledge in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: How to Make Theoretical Reason Intuitive Stelios Virvidakis v

113

129

vi Contents 10 The Abject Root: Kant and the Problem of Representing Evil Jason M. Wirth

146

11 Negative Presentation: The Role of the Imagination in the Mathematically and the Dynamically Sublime Georg Xiropaidis

164

Index

195

Notes on the Contributors Gary Banham is Reader in Transcendental Philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is the author of Kant's Transcendental Imagination (2006), Kant's Practical Philosophy: From Critique to Doctrine (1993) and Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics (2000). He is also the editor of Husserl and the Logic of Experience (2005) and general editor of the Palgrave Macmillan series Renewing Philosophy. Howard Caygill is Professor of Cultural History at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is the author of Art of Judgement (Oxford, 1989), A Kant Dictionary (Oxford, 1995), Walter Benjamin: The Colour of Experience (1999) and Levinas and the Political (2003). Georges Faraklas is Associate Professor of Political Philosophy at the Panteion University in Athens. His books include Machiavel: Le pouvoir du prince (1997), Position and Truth: For a Dialectical Theory of Knowledge of Social Phenomena (in Greek, 1997), Theory ofKnowledge and Method in Hegel (in Greek, 2000), Auto to Pragma: Critique of Causality and Self-relatedness in the Constitution of the Social Object (in Greek, 2001). Maximilian Forschner is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. His main publications include Gesetz und Freiheit. Zum Problem der Autonomie bei Immanuel Kant (1974), /.-/. Rousseau (1977), Die stoische Ethik (2nd edn, 1995), Mensch und Gesellschaft (1989), Über das Glück des Menschen (1993), Über das Handeln im Einklang mit der Natur (1998), Thomas von Aquin (2006). Kyriaki Goudeli is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Patras and author of Challenge to German Idealism: Schelling, Fichte and Kant (2002). Pavlos Kontos is Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Patras. He works in the area of phenomenology. His writings include D'une Phänomenologie de la perception chez Heidegger (1995), L'action morale chez Aristote: une lecture phenomenologique et ses adversaires contemporaines (2002), Gadameretles Grecs (co-editor, 2005). Ioli Patellis is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Patras. Her publications vu

viii Notes on the Contributors include Meaning and Action: Presuppositions of Radical Translation and Interpretation (in Greek, 1991), The Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. Reason and Causality in the New Physical and Political Science (in Greek, 1995), and articles on the philosophy of language, the philosophy of science, and Quine, Carnap, Frege, Kant and Hobbes. Kosmas Psychopedis, before his recent death, was Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Athens. His publications include Untersuchungen zur politischen Theorie von Immanuel Kant (1980), Geschichte und Methode. Kant-Hegel-Marx-Weber (1984), Rules and Antinomies in Politics (in Greek, 1999). He was also co-editor of the collections of articles Open Marxism 1-3 (1992, 1993, 1995). Konstantinos Sargentis is Lecturer in Ethics at the Department of Philosophical and Social Studies, University of Crete. His publications include 'Moral Insight and Spontaneity of Human Will' (in Greek; Deucalion, 2003), 'A Kantian Approach to Plato's Moral Psychology in the Republic from the Standpoint of Metaethics' (in Greek: Hypomnema, 2004), I. Kant, Towards Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (Introduction, Modern Greek Translation, Notes, forthcoming). Stelios Virvidakis is Professor of Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy and History of Science, University of Athens. His main publications include La robustesse du Men (1996) and several papers in metaethics, epistemology and the history of philosophy. Jason M. Wirth is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Seattle University. He works in the areas of German philosophy, comparative philosophy, and aesthetics. His books include The Conspiracy of Life: Meditations on Schelling and His Time (2003), Schelling Now (2004), and Zen no Sho (2003). He is currently at work on a book on Kundera as well as a critical edition of Schelling's Freedom essay. Georg Xiropaidis is Associate Professor of Philosophy of Language and Aesthetics at the University of Athens. His books include Heidegger and the Problem of Ontology (in Greek, 1995), The Antinomy of Aesthetic Semblance. Kant, Schiller, Gadamer, Adorno (in Greek, forthcoming). He is author of numerous articles in German and English on Kant, Husserl, hermeneutics, Habermas, Greek philosophy and aesthetics.

List of Abbreviations Works of Immanuel Kant Anthr Conflict Conj Hist CJ CP Ethics F Int GMM Idea

J Logic MFN MM MM/R Obs

Op Pos PP Prol Rel TP

Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht - 1798) The Conflict of the Faculties (Der Streit der Fakultäten 1798) Conjectural Beginning of Human History (Mutmaßlicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte - 1786) Critique of the Power of Judgement (Kritik der Urteilskraft 1790) Critique of Practical Reason (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft 1788) Lectures on Ethics (Vorlesungen über Moralphilosophie) First Introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgement (Erste Einleitung in die Kritik der Urteilskraft) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Grundlegung der Metaphysik der Sitten - 1785). 'Idea of a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View' ('Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht' - 1784) Jäsche Logic (Jäsche Logik - 1800) The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (Die metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft - 1786) The Metaphysics ofMorals (Die metaphysik der Sitten -1797) The Metaphysics ofMorals/Doctrine of Right (Rechtslehre) Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen 1764) Opus Postumum Toward Perpetual Peace (Zum ewigen Frieden - 1795) 'Prolegomena to Every Future Metaphysics' ('Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik ...' - 1783) Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft- 1793) 'On the Old Saying: That May Be Right in Theory But Does Not Work in Practice' ('Über den Gemeinspruch: IX

x

List of Abbreviations

Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis'-1793) Works of J. G. Fichte SW3

Sämmtliche Werke (1845-46), vol. 3 of Fichte, Werke, de Gruyter, Berlin 1971.

Introduction This collection of eleven essays attempts to connect significant aspects of the Kantian enterprise by approaching it through an issue that runs through the whole of Kant's critical work and engages with core concerns of his philosophy: the issue is that of the relation between reason and intuition, and specifically the question of how the dictates of reason are realized in the world of phenomena. This multifaceted question arises from Kant's dualist positions. Thus, the strict Kantian distinction between intellectual capacities and sensibility, and the corresponding distinction between noumena and phenomena, give rise to problems concerning the relation of the former to the latter. Because reason is normative and regulates actions and mental acts, Kant is faced with the problem of explaining how it can constrain and effect changes in the empirical world, since reason is not subject to space and time and causality, whereas the phenomenal world is spatiotemporally and causally constituted. The issues which present themselves derive directly or indirectly from Kant's doctrine of schematism, which specifies the way in which the categories are applied to objects of experience. Thus, on the one hand and directly stemming from the problem of schematization, is the question of what would count as an instance (in experience) of an idea or principle of reason, for example, a science, a moral action or the institutions proper to a republican state. A solution to such problems is presupposed by the realization of the relevant ideas in the phenomenal world in case it is humans who intentionally act so as to bring them about. On the other hand and rarely separately discussed by Kant, is the problem of how the various ideas and principles of reason are, or are to be, realized. Amongst the latter are issues concerning the quasi-schemata (symbols, ideals, the type of the moral law) of ideas and principles, which facilitate or enable their realization, and the ways in which ideas and principles can be approximated in the phenomenal world by utilizing the mechanism of nature, such as the use of the monarchical state and its institutions to gradually approximate the republican state, and the use of the natural means afforded by human sensibility to attain the moralization of humans. The works in this volume cover a wide range of issues belonging to the above topic. They, thus, address the problem of the relation between reason and intuition or experience as it arises in various areas of Kant's XI

xii Introduction

philosophy: the theory of knowledge, moral philosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, aesthetics and so on. They also engage with a variety of specific issues within the more general topic, such as different forms of quasi-schemata and moral and natural teleology. In addition, these articles approach the relation between reason and intuition from the standpoint of a number of philosophical schools and traditions: analytic philosophy, modern European philosophy, the Hegel-Marx tradition. Four works address issues in Kant's theory of knowledge. Two of them engage specifically with matters concerning the theory of knowledge and the status of philosophy. Thus, in Chapter 2, 'The Transition Problem in Kant's Opus Postumum', Howard Caygill thematizes the open-ended character of Kant's philosophizing by examining the way in which the hierarchical relation between intuition and understanding and reason, established in the Critique of Pure Reason, is inverted in the late work, where Kant argues for the temporal and logical priority of reason over intuition. He illustrates some of the implications of this position by analysing the role of force and the system of forces in the transition from physics to transcendental philosophy, while Stelios Virvidakis, in Chapter 9, 'The Problem of Philosophical Knowledge in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason', traces problems in the relation between reason and intuition that arise from Kant's views on philosophical knowledge. The transcendental conclusions of the First Critique constitute synthetic a priori judgements; it is not clear, however, that the relevant syntheses of concepts are achieved on the basis of material furnished by intuition, as is required by Kantian doctrine in order that these judgements have cognitive content; nor is it clear what kind of intuition, if any, is at the basis of such syntheses, for example, does the a priori involve independence of all experience or of any particular experience? The other two works both look to the Critique of the Power ofJudgement in order to raise questions and explore matters concerning Kant's conception of knowledge. Georg Xiropaidis, in Chapter 11, 'Negative Presentation: The Role of the Imagination in the Mathematically and the Dynamically Sublime', looks to the 'Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgement' in order to do so. He examines aspects and dimensions of the functioning of the imagination explicitly discussed neither in the First Critique nor in the 'Analytic of the Beautiful' of the Third. He investigates the use Kant makes of the concept of 'negative presentation' in order to reveal and clarify the antinomic structure of the sublime, in connection with which the imagination succeeds in presenting ideas of reason (totality and freedom) precisely through its failure to present them aesthetically; while at the same time showing up the augmented role of

Introduction xiii

intuition in relation to reason. Ioli Patellis, in Chapter 6, 'Kant: Sciences, Systems and Organisms', turns to the 'Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgement' in order to develop and explore the thought that for Kant the living organism as a natural end is a symbol of the idea of a system of cognitions, that is, of a science proper. She investigates the functions accomplished by organisms as symbols of science and suggests that the reflection on organisms required, if they are to function as symbols, leads to the use of the scheme of Kantian theoretical and practical values as a framework for the reflection on the various sciences required for the realization of the ideas of these sciences. The article thus connects Kant's theory of knowledge with his teleology and theory of values. The other pieces in this collection address problems and issues concerning the realization of the principles of reason arising in Kant's practical philosophy. Banham, Psychopedis and Faraklas discuss problems which concern both Kant's moral as well as his political philosophy or the relations between the two. In Chapter 1, 'Practical Schematism, Teleology and the Unity of the Metaphysics ofMorals', Gary Banham examines Kant's treatments of the typic and the schematism of analogy, which he holds are essentially related to the determination of the conditions of progressive moral historical development. He thus investigates the variety of ways of realizing the moral law to be found in Kant and shows how they are incorporated in Kant's moral teleology. He then brings to bear his investigations on the question of the unification into a consistent and coherent whole of Kant's enquiries into virtue and right. Kosmas Psychopedis' Chapter 7 'On the Logic of the Realization of Reason in Society and History' addresses the relevance of Kant's views on the possibility of actualizing critical reason through actions and institutions to the contemporary epistemology of the social sciences. In order to do so, he investigates issues such as the contingency of causally determined occurrences which lead to the problem of the indeterminacy of the realization of the rational, the realization of the highest good as the coordination of the good with evil, the types and ways of realizing practical values in socio-historical reality, and so on, while at the same time engaging with similar issues in the Hegel-Marx tradition. While Georges Faraklas in Chapter 3, 'SelfSubmission and Mutual Domination: Constructions of Marriage and Gender in Kant and Fichte', addresses a more specific and concrete issue in Kant and Fichte's practical philosophies. It inquires into the way in which the ideas of equality and rationality are realized in the marriage contract, by examining the exploitation or the voluntary selfsubmission proposed by Kant and Fichte, correspondingly, in answer to the purported superiority of the male in marriage. Kant holds that male

xiv Introduction

superiority is a pragmatic factor extrinsic to the equality of the sexes based on their common rationality, while according to Fichte the superiority of the male derives from the active nature of his instinct and is thus incorporated in the deontology of the sexes. The chapters by Kontos and Sargentis discuss issues in Kant's moral philosophy proper. Thus, in Chapter 5, 'The Categories of the Good as Categories of Moral Action', Pavlos Kontos holds that the Typic of practical reason examines the moral law as a law of causality regarding moral actions and not objects in general. He, then, attempts to interpret the Categories of Freedom through a double perspective indicated by Kant, namely both as categories of the good and as categories of action. He argues for the unity of these two dimensions on the grounds that no access to the good is possible without the categories of moral action which give intuitive content to the mere universality of the law. While in Chapter 8, 'The Fact of Reason and Natural Human Reason', Konstantinos Sargentis addresses the question of the form that consciousness of the moral law takes for the ordinary person who does not engage in philosophical reflection, but who ought nevertheless to determine her actions by it. He examines its construal in terms of the concept of moral experience and argues for the claim that in the 'phenomenology' of the moral law as presented by Kant there is a moment of particularism inasmuch as the universal law appears to the ordinary consciousness in the form of concrete moral constraints not valid for other cases. Finally, Forschner and Wirth extend the investigation of the relation between reason and intuition in the domain of the moral to cover Kant's philosophy of religion and his anthropology, respectively. Maximilian Forschner in Chapter 4, 'Idea and Intuition in Kant's Philosophy of Religion', examines one of the ways in which practical reason's demand for the realization of a completely moral community can be met, notwithstanding the finitude of human nature. Accordingly, he discusses Kant's doctrine of Jesus as a historical example of the ideal of the moral perfection of humans and investigates the possibility and limits of the historical realization of a universal visible church as representative in experience of the ideal of the invisible church. In Chapter 10, 'The Abject Root: Kant and the Problem of Representing Evil', Jason Wirth finds an antinomy, tacitly operative throughout Kant's critical project, which arises when reason treats of the good, that is, that we cannot but speak to the good whilst at the same time betraying it; perhaps because of its uncontrollable origin. In order to show this, he turns to Kant's depiction of evil via his anthropological propositions about savages in his late works. He argues that these reveal that the mechanical self-love grounding evil

Introduction xv

issues from the 'to us unknown root' which, surprisingly, is also the ground of morality, that is, freedom. The representation of good and evil are paradoxically intertwined and nature and freedom inextricably linked by this unknown root. KYRIAKI GOUDELI PAVLOS KONTOS IOLI PATELLIS

1 Practical Schematism, Teleology and the Unity of the Metaphysics of Morals Gary

Banham

My focus in this piece will be to show the manifold manner in which Kant utilizes the procedure of schematism in his practical philosophy. I will suggest that his use of this procedure is integrally connected to his development of a notion of moral teleology and that the crucial significance of this latter notion can be most clearly displayed in addressing the question of how the two halves of the Metaphysics ofMorals are interrelated. Hence I will first develop my account of the uses of schematism within practical philosophy, then connect this to the conception of moral teleology and in conclusion demonstrate the significance of these accounts for understanding the relationship between the Doctrine of Right and the Doctrine of Virtue. The senses of schematism in practical philosophy The first place in Kant's practical philosophy that an account of schematism is made use of is in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Immediately after stating the categorical imperative as involving a reference to universal law Kant explicates what this involves and gives an account of it that enables him to derive an account of duties. This is done by revealing the formal consequences of the notion of appeal to universal law: 'Since the universality of law in accordance with which effects take place constitutes what is properly called nature in the most general sense (as regards its form) - that is, the existence of things insofar as it is determined in accordance with universal laws - the universal imperative of duty can also go as follows: act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature' (GMM 4:421).1 When Kant goes on to discuss four examples of duties immediately after stating this reformulation that brings the law closer to intuition it is notable that all of them refer 1

2 The Unity of the Metaphysics of Morals not to a universal law in general but to a universal law of nature. Hence it is only through this device of thinking the law of nature that Kant is able here to describe how the categorical imperative can be applied. After stating the examples Kant adds a condition that was stated within the examples but is not specified as a further means of being able to apply the categorical imperative when he writes: 'We must be able to will that a maxim of our action become a universal law: this is the canon of moral appraisal of action in general' (GMM 4: 424). I will return subsequently to examining the force of this statement. What we can state about it immediately, however, is that it adds to the reference to nature that is given in the reformulation of the categorical imperative a manner in which our relation to nature has to be intuitively captured, namely by reference to the condition under which we are able to make something happen, hence that the condition of our volition has itself to be built into the canon of appraisal as its essential condition. The most general explanation for a procedure, which I hope to subsequently show to be essential to the argument of Groundwork II is given not within the Groundwork itself but rather in the Second Critique. Here, in the remarkable section on the typic of practical judgement Kant describes the process of use of the schematism in practical philosophy as involving not 'the schema of a case in accordance with laws' such as is given in theoretical philosophy but rather 'the schema of a law itself... since the determination of the will (not the action with reference to its result) through the law alone without any other determining ground connects the concept of causality to conditions quite other than those which constitute natural connection' (CP 5: 68-9). The reference to the will is here revealed to be all important in the description of the form of schema that operates in practical philosophy as it is the will that is being determined by the law in question. However since the will is here to be thought purely as the means by which choice is manifested as there could be reference to the conditions of the operation of natural causality involved (at pain of repeating the errors of the Third Antinomy), therefore, it follows that the law of nature, if it is to be thought as a condition of operation of willing, has to be presented only with regard to its form. Kant now makes clear that the procedure of practical schematism in the most general terms is one of thinking a possible nature in which there operates a law of freedom so that we can use 'the nature of the sensible world as the type of an intelligible nature1 (CP 5: 70). Thus we think, as a condition for application of the principle of universal law, a schematization of this law in the sense of giving the law conditions of application that would be those of thinking the will under the rules of freedom. The nature and

Gary Banham

3

content of these rules of freedom is not here specified when the general procedure of practical schematization is given in the Second Critique. The manner of the connection of the law to conditions of willing is however explicated in subjective terms in the succeeding section of the Second Critique where Kant speaks of the 'drives' of practical reason as involving what he terms 'intellectual' or 'moral' feeling. The eruption of this type of feeling within the subject affected is a product however of the example of the moral law that is provided to me in the case of witnessing action that is in conformity to it, in observing that is, the manner of behaviour of another person:

since in human beings all good is defective, the law made intuitive by an example still strikes down my pride, the standard being furnished by the man I see before me whose impurity, such as it may be is not so well known to me as is my own who therefore appears to me in a purer light. (CP 5: 77) Kant here describes the law being made intuitive of me in terms of its effect on my feelings through this example of the law being shown actual in the behaviour of another and this already reveals the importance of thinking the law as one that connects together the actions of distinctly different wills. Hence it is a law that has to be thought as constituting the necessary interconnections of free wills as a whole. Not only is this brought out in the passage from the Second Critique but the other important point here is the fact that Kant has begun at this stage to think of feeling as not merely pathological but also inclusive of intellectual elements. The step in this direction in the Second Critique is small with Kant here still hesitant about the status of this feeling and suggestive of only one feeling that purely has to be thought of in this way, namely, respect (though indicating a parallel to this in humiliation). Combining together the explicit statements of the Groundwork with the Second Critique we are able to form a preliminary picture of the operation of practical schematism. It is a procedure whereby we think the connection of the universal law of nature to the conditions of willing but the coherence of this operation requires the assumption of connection of discreet wills to each other and the important provision of examples in the shape of the form of the actions of other persons.2 Moral teleology Turning now from the description of practical schematism to that of moral teleology I should point out that just as the first use of the former

4 The Unity of the Metaphysics of Morals is included within the argument of the Groundwork this is also the case with the latter. Kant writes in a footnote to this work: Teleology considers nature as a kingdom of ends, morals considers 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 idea, that which does not exist but which can become real by means of our conduct. (GMM 4: 436n.) The practical use of teleology is here explicated as a means of making clearer the shape of the moral world as a world of ends within which we can make real that which is not through the use of our will. This is what is expressed as the notion of the 'kingdom of ends'. Connected with this conception of a practical use for teleology is a notion of schematism that, so far, I have not mentioned. This is given in the Critique ofPure Reason but in the chapter on the architectonic of pure reason rather than in the chapter on schematism. In this later section of the First Critique Kant speaks of a schema that originates from an idea and which realizes this idea through 'a constituent manifold and an order of its parts' (A833/B861) that comes about through 'the affinity of its parts and of their derivation from a single supreme and inner end' (A834/B862). I would term this a final end schema since it makes possible the whole through determining it by reference to that which makes it unitarily possible. Kant applies this notion to the very conception of 'science' (Wissenschaft) but it is important to be clear that when Kant specifies the operation of this schema in the developing process of enquiry he is at pains to point out that the type of subsumption that is at work in this schema is one that is constitutively open. Improvement in the conception of the system is a part of its development and this improvement effectively re-develops the 'origin' of the system in question or to put it another way, the idea becomes clearer in its progressive development (A834-5/B862-3). The conception of the moral world as a purposive world in which the operation of relation between wills is manifest as an inter-connection of feelings with purposes requires us to conceive of this world as in some sense conforming to the final end schema. This is traced in the moral teleology Kant develops in his treatments of historical development. Within the essay on universal history, for example, the notion of history as a self-alienating process is effectively one in which the purpose that is being manifested through humanity is one of which humanity is unaware

Gary Banham 5 but is being directed towards through the immanent sense of its own activity. This argument indicates that the rationality within human purposes is one that is discoverable through the manner in which they are worked out although it is not manifest to the actors involved. This has important consequences particularly for the structure of political action. The role of teleology in political structures has an oddly twofold character as on the one hand it is often unconscious whilst on the other, when Kant arrives at the notion of perpetual peace as the highest political good, it has a determinacy that is lacking to a purely moral teleology whilst being in harmony with the latter's structure. If we return to the Groundwork then we should note that there are only two formulas in it, which are accompanied with discussions of examples. One, as already noted, was the law of nature formula. The other arrives after Kant has insisted on the importance of the will and involves the metaphysical element in this work. This is the notion of rational agency as an end in itself. The will is here stated to have a capacity to direct itself through the representation of ends and Kant goes on to describe that 'the representation of which is necessarily an end for everyone' (GMM 4: 428). What makes this representation necessarily an end for everyone is that it is exactly the possession of this capacity itself that enables anything to be an end at all so that if anything is valued it is valued through and because of this. This is why Kant terms it an 'end in itself as it is the condition for the possession of any other ends and hence its existence has to be taken to be an end for anything else to be an end. This gives him the important formula: 'So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means' (GMM 4: 429). It is the combination of this formula with the universal law of nature that effectively gives the basis of Kant's practical philosophy since the universal principle without reference to nature is never used by Kant to specify duties and the kingdom of ends is merely a notion introduced to fill out the picture of the moral world, not to provide an imperative formula. On the basis of these descriptions of the formulas and the location of the importance of recognizing that it is only the formulas that bring us close to intuition that are used to specify duties, we can note that Kant also describes the will directly in the Second Critique as 'the faculty of ends' (CP 5: 59). Understood in this way we can begin to see that the will effectively has to take its own capacity for action universally as its end and that this gives us the unity of the two formulas in the notion of autonomy. Hence Kant's description of morality is as an immanent selfspecification of the properties of willing in general. In fact the whole

6 The Unity of the Metaphysics of Morals division of duties into perfect and imperfect is defended in this manner when first introduced in the Groundwork where Kant speaks of this division in terms of the connection of the universal law of nature to the purposive capacity of willing in general as follows: Some actions are so constituted that their maxim cannot even be thought without contradiction as a universal law of nature, far less could one will that it should become such. In the case of others that inner impossibility is indeed not to be found, but it is still impossible to will that their maxim be raised to the universality of a law of nature because such a will would contradict itself. (GMM 4: 424) The actions that operate on a maxim that would involve a contradiction in conception are accordingly specified as violations of perfect duties whilst those that involve a contradiction in the will are based on maxims that violate imperfect duties. Whilst the former type of duties have to be thought as indicating standards that have a universal applicability the latter type involve conditions of consistency within the structure of purposiveness in general. Hence the latter type of duties are ones that are based on an analysis of purposiveness as a general capacity and thus do not disclose a direct contradiction within the maxim itself but an indirect contradiction of this purpose with the conditions of purposiveness. We can see the connection of these duties to the types of formula in question as the treatment of the four examples in the Groundwork involves an implicit appeal to the criteria of the end in itself even prior to its explicit introduction. Thus, for example, when treating the question of whether there is a duty to develop our talents Kant describes this duty, when applying the law of nature formula, as one that rests upon the fact that a rational being necessarily wills 'that all the capacities in him be developed, since they serve him and are given to him for all sorts of possible purposes' (GMM 4: 423). However when treating the examples with regard to the formula of the end in itself Kant further distinguishes two ways of comprehending this notion, one in terms of whether a maxim of an action conflicts with the notion of humanity and one in terms of whether it harmonizes with it. If it merely conflicts with the notion of humanity as an end in itself then it falls before it as involving the contradiction in conception that rules it out by reference to a law that in a sense does not require of necessity an invocation of purposive law, just of law understood in the sense of the logic of contradiction. If however the maxim conflicts with the conception of humanity as an end in itself in terms of not harmonizing

Gary Banham 7

with it then Kant can now state that these maxims whilst not conflicting with the imperative preservation of humanity do conflict with the purposive furthering of humanity or, as we might otherwise put it, with its teleological development and it is on these grounds that there exists a duty to cultivate one's talents. A final element of this picture is however contained in the rationale for thinking of the capacity of purposive action of a will as connected necessarily to the wills of all others. This is provided when Kant describes, in accordance with the formula of the end in itself, the rationale for the duty of beneficence: 'For, the ends of a subject who is an end in itself must as far as possible be also my ends, if that representation is to have its full effect in me' (GMM 4:430). Just as we discovered that it is the example of the other person who makes vivid for me the reality of the moral law so the working out of action as directed by the purpose of conforming oneself to it is one that is based upon the adoption of the ends of others as necessarily intertwined with my own ends and the ends adopted by these others as affecting me and requiring my harmonization with them. Having thus developed the principles of practical schematism and moral teleology I now wish to turn to the question of how these notions help us to understand the inter-connection of the two halves of Kant's culminating work of practical philosophy, the Metaphysics of Morals. I will do this first by disclosing the relationship of the supreme principles of right and virtue to the formulas I have described as providing us with the discussion of how to apply the categorical imperative in the Groundwork and then by demonstrating how the schematization of these principles brings them together in a manner which suggests a rationale for thinking the unity of practical reason.

The supreme principles of right and virtue and the formulas of the categorical imperative In the 'Introduction' to the Metaphysics of Morals Kant reminds us again of the whole ground of his moral philosophy when he writes: 'The ground of the possibility of categorical imperatives is this: that they refer to no other property of choice (by which some purpose can be ascribed to it) than simply to its freedom' (MM 6: 222).3 The importance of specifying that the moral world is structured by laws of freedom is that this enables us to comprehend the different type of schematism at work within practical philosophy to that given in theoretical philosophy. However, what is considered and described in the division of the Metaphysics of Morals is two manners in which this freedom is manifested: namely through

8 The Unity of the Metaphysics of Morals actions whose performance is open to mandatory coercive intervention and actions that are related to maxims that, whilst of crucial importance for describing moral character, are not suitable to such intervention. Kant describes the difference between these two manifestations of freedom as a difference between external and internal freedom. Kant's account of the notion of right is a description of the conditions of external freedom in general. This is described in terms that conform to the requirement specified in the categorical imperative as requiring conformity to a notion of universal law that is explicitly here characterized as 'a universal law of freedom'. Kant describes the universal principle of right as follows: 'Any action is right if it can coexist with everyone's freedom in accordance with a universal law, or if on its maxim the freedom of choice of each can coexist with everyone's freedom in accordance with a universal law' (MM 6:230). The statement of this principle has an importantly negative feel: action that can coexist is emphasized as is freedom of choice that can coexist. All that is required, therefore, is that the actions in question be based on maxims that do not involve a contradiction in conception; no appeal is made to the criterion of contradiction in the will in this formula. What is immediately made manifest by Kant, however, is the way in which this principle is effectively schematized, that is, made available for application. The manner in which this is done is by specifying the way in which the principle has to be comprehended, which is as making morally plausible to us the action of coercion of others without violating the condition of freedom in general. Kant writes: 'if a certain use of freedom is itself a hindrance to freedom in accordance with universal laws (i.e., wrong), coercion that is opposed to this (as a hindering of a hindrance to freedom) is consistent with freedom in accordance with universal laws, that is, it is right' (MM. 6: 231). For the moral world to be a world that is governed by laws of freedom it must be possible to conceive of a use of force to prevent free action if this action is itself in contradiction with the universal possibility of freedom itself. This is to say that we must be able to treat freedom as having law-like elements that require universal observance in practice if the adherence to the notion of it is not to become merely nominal. Hence in justifying the use of coercion in accordance with an appeal to the principle of freedom itself Kant is here effectively utilizing the notion of a law of nature in order to specify the application of the universal principle of right. When defending the notion of coercion as thus effectively consistent with a universal rule of freedom and indeed as required by this law Kant states that this is an effective counterpart in practical philosophy to the appeal to intuition in theoretical philosophy: 'The law of a reciprocal

Gary Banham 9

coercion necessarily in accord with the freedom of everyone under the principle of universal freedom is, as it were, the construction of that concept, that is, the presentation of it in pure intuition a priori' (MM 6: 232). This is a description of the law of freedom as that which affects external action by specifying what types of action are incompatible with the possibility of the exercise of the free will as such. Those actions are hence wrong and action that performs them is action that it is rightful to restrain, and if restraint fails, to punish. Thus the principle of right is in accord with the universal law of nature and with the merely negative comprehension of the principle of humanity. Not only is it in accord with these principles but the form of it as a universal formal law is derived from the categorical imperative and its conditions of application are specified in accordance with the way the categorical imperative is itself schematized. If we now turn to the account that is given of the nature of virtue and the principle that Kant supplies for this we will find an important set of contrasts between this treatment and that provided for the notion of right. Whereas the universal principle of right is thought of as a negative principle that sets only the conditions of formal law that enable the survival of freedom and therefore gives the basic laws of the moral world, the description of virtue is by contrast described directly teleologically as here Kant refers us to 'an end of pure reason' (MM 6: 380). In the Doctrine of Virtue he is aiming to describe the conditions of ethics proper, that is, the conditions of maxim formation and action that are in accordance not merely with what can be regarded as minimally necessary for there to be moral action at all but the specification of what will enable the formation and prospering of moral character and the development of moral psychology. When placed in this setting we can see why Kant describes ethics as 'the system of the ends of pure practical reason' (MM 6: 381). Once we have comprehended that ethics is equivalent, however, to moral teleology understood as a description of the setting of the conditions for formation and development of moral character within the will of every moral actor, then Kant's account of the supreme principle of virtue should not surprise us. The supreme principle of virtue is: 'act in accordance with a maxim of ends that it can be a universal law for everyone to have' (MM 6: 395). Thus what is described in the Doctrine of Virtue is a process of selection of ends that are capable of harmonizing with the ends of all other purposive rational beings. The Doctrine of Virtue thus in general terms is a further application of the formula of humanity as providing us with a picture of a moral world that secures and furthers the conditions of purposiveness in general. The complication here is that the division of the Metaphysics of Morals into the Doctrine of Right and

10 The Unity of the Metaphysics of Morals the Doctrine of Virtue does not conform, as might have been expected, to the distinction of duties into perfect and imperfect as provided in the Groundwork, as this division is rather part of the Doctrine of Virtue itself. It is in justifying the division of the duties of virtue into perfect and imperfect that Kant schematizes the principle of virtue and hence provides us with a way of thinking its application. We can see this in two distinct ways as Kant not only divides duties of virtue into perfect and imperfect but also indicates that when we treat of virtue we have to include not only duties towards others but also duties to oneself. In describing the difference between perfect and imperfect duties to oneself he schematizes the principle of virtue: 'The first principle of duty to oneself lies in the dictum "live in conformity with nature" ... that is, preserve yourself in the perfection of your nature; the second, in the saying, "make yourself more perfect than nature has made you"' (MM 6: 419). We can note again the appeal to the typic as the basis of application of the categorical imperative as if it were a law of nature that in fact describes the conditions here of inner freedom. Clearly to live in accordance with nature is here meant in the sense of live in accordance with the conditions of your rational nature, that is, in conformity with the purposive notion of yourself and thus is meant as a description of the end in itself formula understood in the more limited manner, whilst the description of making yourself perfect is a final end schematization of the principle of virtue in accord with the positive conception of humanity as autonomous selfgoverning rationality. The representation of the same division between perfect and imperfect duties of virtue when related to others is however cast not merely in accord with the schematism of the typic or even that of the final end schema but rather utilizes the account of intellectual or practical feeling that we first noted in the Second Critique. Kant writes of this as the division between acting in accordance with respect for others (which is what characterizes the perfect duties to others) and acting in accordance with love of others (which is what characterizes imperfect duties to others). This reference to feeling is however specified by Kant in terms of practical not pathological feeling as these feelings are produced by the entry of the moral law into my affections, turning these affections into something that is produced by an intelligible not a pathological cause. And, in the Doctrine of Virtue, Kant sets out in fact an account of the range and type of such feelings under the general title of 'anthroponomy'. The description of duties to others, whether perfect or imperfect, refers throughout to the principle of humanity, understood purely as an end in itself in the case of perfect duties and in the positive sense of harmonization with autonomy in general in the case of imperfect duties.

Gary Banham

The unity of the Metaphysics

11

of Morals

The division of the Metaphysics of Morals between principles that can be used to directly constrain actions and provide the basis of comprehension of what types of actions are minimally necessary for the existence of a basically moral world on the one hand and of a world in which ethical character formation is possible and even being capable of being furthered on the other hand is also described by Kant as a division between 'strict' right and ethics proper. The suggestion is thus that within the account of right there is no appeal to ethical principles proper but if this is understood to mean that the principle of humanity is not utilized in the Doctrine of Right then it will be thought that Kant has mis-described his own endeavour.4 We have seen that whilst the principle of humanity is constitutively crucial to the Doctrine of Virtue, reference to it underpins the schematization of the universal principle of right as providing us with the necessity of viewing coercion as not merely not in conflict with freedom but actually as authorized by it in terms of preventing action that would destroy its universal possibility. In stating, therefore, that there is a difference between ethics proper and right Kant cannot mean that the latter does not involve appeal to the principle of humanity as, without this principle, the minimal conditions of moral action such as are given through and in the principle of right would not be specifiable. Therefore what Kant means in stating that it is possible to conceive of the notion of right independently of the reference to ethics should instead be taken to mean that there is in the conditions of right no requirement of reference to the ends of the actors for a rightful condition to exist. This is stated in vivid language in Perpetual Peace when Kant states that the problem of establishing a state could be solved even by a 'nation of devils' (PP 8: 366). The devils could, that is, govern themselves by reference to only a formal law that did not require their maxims to adopt principles of respect for persons, just to establish conditions under which free action was possible. There is intended here something like a difference between two kinds of moral world. The world that is purely one of right would be one in which it would be possible for there to be a civil condition in which adherence to coercive laws could be reasonably expected as a condition for there being any possibility of formulating ends for oneself that would, for example, permit personal gain to be possible and for that which is gained to be held secure. However, it is quite in conformity with the rules of such a purely rightful world that those in it pay no attention to the rules of ethics strictly speaking in, for example, never helping anyone in distress since this cannot be included within the rules of coercive law.

12 The Unity of the Metaphysics of Morals The reference to the need for beneficence as something that would be ethically requisite but not necessary for right indicates that the former requires a formation of character understood as adopting a set of purposes that would create persons as beings that respected each other through the adoption of purposive maxims that would ensure this. Since devils would have no reason to do this they could form a state but not a moral world in the full sense of a world in which there is ethical conduct and in which people have concern for both their own and others' moral characters. When put like this, however, a problem might be thought to arise in that it now seems that Kant has put asunder the conditions of right and the conditions of virtue even though the former supplies something like the minimal conditions of the latter. How then are these to be brought together again, something that we might think should be possible if they are to be treated together as two parts of the metaphysics of morals? The manner of thinking the relation between these two in Kant is necessarily indirect but not for that reason lacking in power. For example in Perpetual Peace Kant writes the following: morals has in it the peculiarity - and indeed with respect to its principles of public right (hence with reference to a politics cognisable a priori) - that the less it makes conduct dependent upon the proposed end, the intended advantage whether natural or moral, so much the more does it harmonize with it on the whole; and this happens because it is just the general will given a priori ... that alone determines what is laid down as right among human beings; but this union of the will of all, if only it is acted upon consistently in practice, can also, in accordance with the mechanism of nature, be the cause bringing about the effect aimed at and providing the concept of right with efficacy. (PP 8: 378) This should remind us of the argument in the essay on history of a notion of immanent teleology that is at work in actions, institutions and processes despite the ends that may be adopted by people. This sense of a teleology that is unconscious is of key importance for Kant's conception of a political teleology and what this remark suggests is that when it comes to comprehending the structure of political action it is preferable not to appeal to people to adopt ethical ends in order to ensure that these ends are in fact met. But whilst this might suggest that Kant is merely making an appeal to something like a cunning of rational nature, he also in this work promulgates a principle that underlies the notion of right.

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This is effectively another type of schematization of the principle of right, a final end schema. Kant writes: If I abstract from all the matter of public right as teachers of right usually think of it... I am still left with the form ofpublicity, the possibility of which is involved in every claim to a right, since without it there would be no justice (which can be thought only as publicly known) and so too no right, which is conferred only by justice. (PP 8: 381) There is a form that is implicit in right that is additional to that of universality of application and this is that the rules of right must be made available in a public fashion as the rules to which all are expected to conform. If the principles of right lack this public status then they cease to provide us with the criterion of conforming with the conditions of external freedom in general as stated in the authorization of coercion, as this authorization was that such coercion should conform to the principle of protecting the conditions of freedom in general. It is not possible to protect the conditions of freedom in general, however, if the coercive laws operative in a state are not clearly known within that state as in that condition no one can know when, where or how their conduct will be governed and thus they live not in a state of freedom but of terror in which freedom is effectively banished. Thus the absence of publicity involves the violation of external freedom in general and this in itself forces secretive actions on principles that cannot be announced to others and prevents acting with respect for them. Hence the condition of right has to accord with publicity, a fact that negatively specifies the conformity of right with ethics as it sets an end for law in general and thus for lawgivers. This end is even itself capable of being grasped in the two ways in which the principle of humanity is available as there is a negative form of it in the state: 'All actions relating to the rights of others are wrong if their maxim is incompatible with publicity' (PP 8: 381) and positively in the form 'All maxims which need publicity (in order not to fail in their end) harmonize with right and politics combined' (PP 8: 386). A republican polity in Kant's sense should in fact adopt the second positive form of the statement, not merely the first negative form. Even a nation of devils would have to adopt at least the first form, however, and this would require them to renounce legislation that matched their devilish nature hence at least ensuring that their moral world did not promote in its forms that which they desired in their innermost hearts. At least therefore the state of right has to be conceived of as that which does not allow the promotion of that which is wrong and

14 The Unity of the Metaphysics of Morals this ensures that it cannot contravene the conditions for there being moral character. The unity of the Metaphysics of Morals is given through the conditions for freedom existing and flourishing being treated in two distinct but parallel fashions that describe in increasing specification the conditions for the moral world existing, being preserved and being furthered. That it exists at all as a world in which laws of freedom enable and enforce coercion is the burden of the Doctrine of Right and, as we have just seen, the schematization of the principle of right requires reference to a principle that permits any rightful state to exist in a manner that enables moral character to be possible. Perfect duties to oneself are what secure this character and enable it to survive, whilst imperfect duties to oneself permit one's moral character to develop. Perfect duties to others secure the moral world not just as one that is manifested in external actions that can be coerced but also in relation to actions that are comprehended as based on entailments that derive from our common possession of purposive nature. Imperfect duties to others allow the shared world to grow. The basis of there existing an ethical community is that there is first a political one as without the latter there can only be a condition of wrong, that is, a condition in which no external action can be guaranteed of effect or enforcement. That there is a civic sphere protected and externally enforced is the precondition of there being any means of intuiting freedom at all. This is in a sense the basic schematization of the categorical imperative and it allows there to be an immanent and unconscious ideological rationale permitted within actions. On the grounds of this, there can grow an ethical community that will allow a testing of maxims against a criterion of not merely logical consistency but also of teleological consistency. There is thus a twofold connection between right and virtue. On the one hand, there is an immanent teleology within right that unconsciously promotes virtue and on the other, the very form of right itself is one that does not permit there to be enforceable law that would prevent the possibility of virtue. In the first, political teleology operates in a manner that does not conform to the presentation of ends that is required for moral teleology, but the second form allows for the possibility of moral teleology also being operative in addition to political teleology. The possibility of the cooperation of these two forms of teleology is however itself a maximal view of the moral world as being a kingdom of ends. That this would be a further schematic presentation of the categorical imperative is clear but that it would also involve a vastly extended treatment of the manner in which the operation of these imperatives has been manifest in the world is what requires Kant, in addition to the presentation of practical philosophy

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as that which permits the possibility of ethics, to trace the rudiments of an enquiry that could be termed 'moral history'. The relationship between that enquiry and the basic practical philosophy that culminates in the Metaphysics of Morals would however be another story for another occasion. What we can see in conclusion, however, is that Kant's practical philosophy requires that the typic and the final end schema are intertwined in the presentation of the conditions of rationally free willing, a presentation that effectively produces, within the practical philosophy, a reference to something like an imaginative procedure even t h o u g h n o direct intuition of moral p h e n o m e n a is possible. Notes a n d references 1. References to Kant's works are by volume and page number (preceded by the abbreviated title of the work), to the Academy Edition: Kants gesammelte Schriften, Berlin 1902 ff. References to the Critique ofPure Reason are to the first and second editions. Translations are from the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, general editors Paul Guyer and Allen Wood, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1997 ff. 2. What I cannot trace in this piece but have developed elsewhere is the place of the 'schematism of analogy' in Religion within the Boundaries ofMere Reason. For a comprehensive treatment of this notion see Gary Banham, Kant's Practical Philosophy: From Critique to Doctrine (Palgrave Macmillan: London and New York 2003), Chapter 5. 3. This involves an implicit reference to the importance of the demonstration of the reality of the categorical imperative as undertaken in Groundwork III. For a defence of the argument of Groundwork III and a demonstration that it is consistent with the discussion of the Second Critique see Gary Banham (2003) op. cit. Chapters 3 and 4. 4. This is argued for example in Leslie A. Mulholland, Kant's System of Rights (Columbia University Press: New York 1990).

2 The Transition Problem in Kant's Opus Postumum Howard Caygill

Even two hundred years after his death the character and extent of Kant's legacy is still not agreed. A jaundiced retrospect might even see in the past two centuries of 'Kantianism' little more than the repeated attempt to stabilize Kant's thought, to transform the critical into a dogmatic philosophy and to lull Kant back - posthumously - into his famed dogmatic slumbers. The Akademie Ausgabe bears some responsibility for this looming as a more than life-size monument to a certain conception of Kant's thought and philosophical development, one which sees it as an almost seamless and internally consistent whole available for patient and even pious exegesis and commentary. Yet, paradoxically, Kant did not have a philosophy; he did philosophy, and he did it in a number of different ways and places: in newspapers, at the lectern, in the journal of a secret society, in the pages of his three critiques and in his notebooks. There is no object - 'Kant's philosophy' - to be presented, embalmed, to posterity but rather the scattered traces of his acts of philosophizing. This view of his legacy has considerable implications for the ways in which we approach now, after two hundred years, the Kantian text. Reading Kant is to engage in philosophizing with him, putting into question everything, including what might seem to be such indisputable parts of his philosophical legacy such as the critical distinction between intuition, understanding and reason. To read Kant in this way is to remain critical, and to follow the Kantian example. What this entails may be surmised from the closing pages of the Critique of Pure Reason, in the section on 'The Architectonic of Pure Reason' where Kant meditates upon the meaning of philosophy. He describes it as 'a mere idea of a possible science which nowhere exists in concreto' and distinguishes it rigorously from 'philosophizing' philosophieren] which consists in exercising the 'talent of reason, in accordance 16

Howard Caygill 17

with its universal principles, on certain actually existing attempts at philosophy, always however, reserving the right of reason to investigate, to confirm, or to reject these principles in their very sources' (A838/B866).1 Philosophizing is the principled critique of what claims to be philosophy, as Kant shows in his celebrated critique of Leibniz and Locke in the 'Amphiboly of the Concepts of Reflection' earlier in the Critique of Pure Reason. There Kant used the principle of the 'transcendental distinction' between sensible intuition and the understanding to criticize the foundations of Leibniz and Locke's philosophy: 'In a word, Leibniz intellectualised appearances, just as Locke sensualised all concepts of the understanding' (A272/B328). Yet it is essential that this distinction in its turn not be allowed to become dogmatic, that it too, even while being used critically against other claims to philosophy, must continue to be investigated and if necessary criticized and discarded. Kant bequeathed a splendid but predictably neglected example of the unlimited radicality of his own philosophizing, or the exercise of the right of reason to investigate and discard the very principles of his own philosophizing. The Opus postumum written from the mid 1790s to the early 1800s shows the extremity of Kant's commitment to philosophizing, putting into question the very principles of his own 'critical philosophy'. He exercises the right of reason to 'investigate, confirm or reject' the principles of philosophy even to the extent of putting into question the very organizing principles of the critical philosophy of the 1780s. The critical philosophy is in this way itself not allowed to become dogmatic; its basic principles continue to be scrutinized even, and perhaps above all, its fundamental architectonic distinction between intuition, understanding, and reason. For many readers the Opus postumum or the work that Kant himself described as his 'chief work, a chef d'ouevre' as his 'most important work' presents a limit which it is not easy to cross. Remarkably few have followed Kant's philosophizing into his critique of the critical philosophy itself, preferring the security of the three critiques, understood dogmatically. If this was not bad enough, many readers confronted by the Opus postumum compounded their betrayal of his commitment to philosophizing by accusing him of betraying his own philosophy. For his contemporary admirers and posthumous editors, the Transition (Kant's working title for what became the Opus postumum) was testimony to the collapse of his reason, a document of senility. For to put in question your own life's work was surely the folly of old age, the equivalent in philosophy of King Lear's undoing of the security of his kingdom. The commitment to philosophizing manifest in the Opus postumum appeared to some of Kant's contemporaries as an indiscretion, and the text of the

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The Transition Problem in the Opus Postumum

Transition disappeared for decades. The text remained unwelcome even in the full anti-Hegelian revival of Kant in the 'back to Kant' and neo-Kantian movements of the mid- and late-nineteenth centuries, when it presented a threat to the security of reason. Kuno Fischer in the Geschichte der neueren Philosophie (1860) described it as bearing the 'marks of decrepitude' while a useable edition in the Akademie Ausgabe (whose editors had initially rejected it) had to wait until 1936-8. The Opus postumum has thus been occluded for much of the two hundred years of Kantian posterity, and it was only after Gerhard Lehmann 's pioneering and still challenging work that it began to be understood and appreciated.2 With the recent commentaries and translations the text is finally provoking a delayed re-appraisal of Kant's philosophizing.3 Yet it remains an uncanny text, above all for its commitment to philosophizing over philosophy and its author's willingness to put into question the axiomatic distinctions of the critical philosophy. Its status as a work-inprogress also poses specific problems of interpretation, since it was never completed. The work was motivated by the perception, after the optimistic announcements of the closure of the critical philosophy in the Critique of Judgement, of an abiding gap in the critical system. This was located between the 'metaphysical principles of natural science' and physics. In the former, referring to Kant's 1786 text of the same title, Kant proposed a metaphysically founded doctrine of force which then had to be carried over into empirical physics. The transition from a metaphysical to a physical concept of force was necessary due to precipitate unifications of physical and metaphysical force, accomplished notably by Newton.4 The work-in-progress on this transition was intended to comprise three parts, the first on the doctrine of force and its relationship with the concept of ether, the second on an anti-Newtonian 'system of the world' and the third on a re-affirmation of metaphysics in the 'System of the Absolute Idea' with its objects God, the World and the Soul supposedly suspended by the 'Transcendental Dialectic' of the Critique of Pure Reason.5 The scope of the Opus postumum permits many possible approaches to its philosophizing, but I wish to focus in particular on Kant's treatment of one of the basic principles of the critical philosophy, namely the 'transcendental distinction' between intuition, understanding and reason. Although basic to the critical enterprise, this distinction itself is unstable even in the first critique. At the outset of the 'Transcendental Dialectic' in the Critique of Pure Reason we are presented with taxonomic hierarchy of Erkenntnis (knowledge) which has nested within it a genetic account of its emergence: 'All our knowledge starts from the senses, proceeds from thence to the understanding, and ends with reason, beyond which there

Howard Caygill 19

is no higher faculty to be found in us for elaborating the matter of intuition and bringing it under the highest unity of thought' (A298/B355). Intuitions are unified by the rules of the understanding, which in turn are unified under the principles of reason. Reason has no direct contact with intuition, it is mediated or indirectly related by means of the concepts of the understanding; and Kant candidly confesses that the relationship between reason and the understanding is itself the cause of considerable perplexity. He lays out the relationship between the three faculties in the following terms: Understanding may be regarded as a faculty which secures the unity of appearances by means of rules, and reason as being the faculty which secures unity of the rules of the understanding under principles. Accordingly, reason never applies itself directly to experience or to any object, but to understanding, in order to give the manifold knowledge of the latter an a priori unity by means of concepts, a unity which may be called the unity of reason, and which is quite different from any unity that can be accomplished by the understanding. (A302/B359) However, if the demarcations between the faculties are followed rigorously, if the unities of reason and the understanding are generically different, then experience and the process of unification becomes problematic. It is thus necessary, already in the first Critique, to show that the demarcations between the faculties are bridgeable, or in the language of the Opus postumum, that it is possible for there to be a transition between them. The distinction between the faculties is given a further dimension later in the Critique when it is shown to involve a difference between the 'receptivity of sensibility' and the 'spontaneity of reason' - between passivity and activity. Reason is able to 'frame for itself with perfect spontaneity, an order of its own' (A547/B575) as opposed to sensibility which responds to the objects of intuition. This spontaneity or 'freedom' which lies at the source not only of theoretical but also of practical construction is capable of producing monsters of its own invention: the endless series that dissolve any beginning or end to the world, all powerful singularities such as God, focused sites of knowledge such as the soul. Reason's inventive capacity has to be aligned with the receptivity of sensibility, but this means that the genetic account of knowledge that moves from sensibility to reason is also a story of the passage from receptivity to spontaneity. Yet if sensibility was completely passive, then it would never start the adventure of passing to spontaneity, and if reason were completely spontaneous then it would never stoop to compromising its spontaneity by admitting the passivity of sensibility. The inescapable conclusion is that there is already

20

The Transition Problem in the Opus Postumum

a complicity between sensibility and reason which allows them eventually to produce experience - there is a secret transition between them, pointing to the presence of spontaneity in sensibility and receptivity in reason. The Opus postumum openly questions the distinction between sensibility and reason, and experiments with alternative orientations of reason and sensibility to the hierarchical forms that it assumes in the first Critique. The re-orientation is indeed the entire programme of 'transition' that pre-occupied Kant during his last decade of work. While the Critique of Pure Reason obeys an unsustainable pre-orientation of the faculties, beginning with sensation and the sensible manifold of intuition moving to the unity of the concepts of the understanding and arriving eventually at the higher unity of the ideas of reason (God, World, Soul), the Opus postumum places in question the entire direction of the genesis of knowledge and thus of the relations between the faculties. My presentation of the project of transition will depart from a line selected from the Xth fascicle6 usually dated 1799-1800 drawn from part C of a reflection upon 'Principle of the transition from the metaphysical foundations to physics': We can have knowledge of the object of the senses only through a concept of reason (not through experience), namely, the concept of a system of moving forces [that is to say, through] a system of empirical representations, represented a priori, through that which we insert into sensible representation for the sake of empirical representation (and which we must insert for the sake of possible experience). (Op Pos: 105)7 The opening clause on the possibility of knowledge of the object is helpfully read as an answer to the question of why there is a manifold in intuition how is knowledge of objects of sense possible? It is only possible by means of a 'concept of reason'. The disturbance of Kant's usual conceptual distinctions is already evident in the phrase concept of reason, since strictly speaking the unity proper to the concept - that of the understanding differs from that of reason, described in the first critique as an idea of reason. However, the apparent slippage is not accidental since here Kant is precisely exploring what was forbidden in the critical philosophy, namely a proximity between sensibility and reason. The profound implications of postulating a concept of reason at the core of the possibility of experience, to make experience and its objects dependent upon a system of forces, may be explored by reflecting upon some of the tropes of Kant's argument. First of all, the general problem of the transition from metaphysical principles to physics is also a specific

Howard Caygill 21

problem internal to Kant's philosophy. It involves the transition from the 1786 Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science to a new understanding of physics. The 1786 text attempts to describe 'the metaphysical foundations of the theory of body' by means of a 'complete analysis of matter in general'. It performs this analysis by scrutinizing matter according to the four groups of categories and the sciences of matter that correspond to them: quantity (phoronomy), quality (dynamics), relation (mechanics) and modality (phenomenology). Within this analysis dynamics holds a privileged place, indeed, the concept of matter that Kant unfolds is cast almost entirely in dynamic terms - as the outcome of the play of attractive and repulsive force. What Kant seeks to chart in the 'transition' project is the path from the metaphysical doctrine of matter as force to physics as the science of body, the latter understood as comprising material, vital and even social bodies (all of which are supposed to be constituted by attractive and repulsive force). This entails moving from the 'dynamics' of a system of attractive and repulsive forces to objects and bodies and even to the subjects that experience them. Not only the object, but also the perceiving subject is fundamentally a negotiation of active and repulsive force. In this sense force corresponds to the 'highest principle of synthetic a priori judgements' announced in the Critique ofPure Reason - that of which the conditions of experience are also the conditions of the object of experience. I will return to this principle below. It is enough to note for now that in the transition project, Kant gives flesh to the 'highest principle' by describing it as an idea or concept of a system of forces, that is, the articulated totality of forces as distributed in the material, vital and intelligible worlds. In an intensification if not a departure from the central insight of the critical philosophy, Kant intimates a genetic account of both the subject and object of experience from out of an idea of reason, the idea of the cosmos as a system of attractive and repulsive forces. The systematic and articulated character of the play of attractive and repulsive force is already suggested in the Metaphysical Principles of Natural Science, but without a full reckoning of the implications of this position. In the Opus postumum Kant is prepared to pursue the full implications of this argument, however uncomfortable the conclusions may prove to be. The systematic and articulated character of the reciprocal action of attractive and repulsive force is evident from the thought experiments of supposing what would happen if one of the forces were to prevail. Without the tension and even oscillation between them, the result would be stasis: 'in the absence of such a principle of the continual excitation of the world-material, a state of lifeless stasis would come about... a complete

22

The Transition Problem in the Opus Postumum

cessation in the moving forces of matter would occur'. (Op Pos: 25) This would occur if one of the two forces prevailed over the other - 'unceasing universal attraction' would result in the contraction of the matter of the universe - matter in this case 'would fill no space' while in the case of the predominance of repulsive force, matter 'would disperse itself into the infinity of space' (Op Pos: 25). In both cases 'space would be empty,' there would be no 'object' since matter would be concentrated into a singularity or dispersed into infinity, and without an object there would of course be no experience of an object. There must be a systematic articulation or idea of a totality of attractive and repulsive force, for without it there would be neither subjects nor objects of experience. In the early text on cosmogony Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755) Kant proposed a view of the universe as passing through cycles of expansion (prevalence of repulsive force) and contraction (prevalence of attractive force). In the Opus postumum he sees the same movement at an infinitesimal rather than infinite scale. The play of attractive and repulsive force constitutes all matter, and its microscopic manifestations are manifest at a macroscopic or cosmological level. He offers this splendid synoptic statement of his position in the discussion 'Of the Difference between Living and Dead Forces of Matter in Motion' in the Illrd fascicle: All matter must have repulsive forces, since otherwise it would fill no space, but attractive force must be attributed to it, since otherwise it would disperse itself into the infinity of space - in both cases space would be empty. Consequently, one can think of such alternating impacts and counterimpacts [as existing] from the beginning of the world, as a trembling (oscillating, vibrating) motion of the matter that fills the entire universe, includes within itself all bodies, and is both elastic and at the same time attractive in itself. These pulsations constitute a living force, and never allow dead force by pressure and counterpressure (i.e. absolute rest inside this matter) to occur. (Op Pos: 25) This matter, at times called 'ether' at others 'caloric' is not itself strictly an object of experience, but its condition. It 'fills' the entire universe thus forming the condition for space, and with its perpetual oscillation also of time. The principle of replete matter that underlies space and time is close to the pneuma of Stoic physics, which like Kant's version fills the universe and is manifest dynamically in tonike kinesis? Its elastic, almost liquid quality allows it both to fill and adapt itself perfectly to its receptacles, to penetrate as well as to mould itself in a vast variety of forms. It is, Kant insists, not a hypothesis but an idea of reason, with the total properties

Howard Caygill 23

of such an idea: thus it is 'universally distributed' filling the entire universe, it is 'all penetrating', and 'all moving'. The emphasis upon the universal and all are proper to an idea of reason, and matter as caloric or ether is thus appropriately extensively and intensively total. The view that the system of forces that constitutes ether or caloric is the metaphysical condition of the possibility of experience entails the consequence that reason precedes intuition. With the Opus postumum Kant points to another level of explanation underlying the critical doctrine that experience is possible because of the combination of the receptivity of sensibility and the spontaneity of the understanding. In a note on caloric from the Xllth fascicle, Kant insists on the priority of the idea of caloric to experience; it is not an hypothesis through which to explain experience, but its very condition: Caloric is actual, because the concept of it (with the attributes we ascribed to it) makes possible the whole of experience; it is given by reason, not as a hypothesis for perceived objects, for the purpose of explaining their phenomenon, but rather, immediately, in order to found the possibility of experience itself. (Op Pos: 89) In a marginalia Kant remarks on the apparent peculiarity of the 'indirect proof of caloric, elsewhere he describes it as 'strange,' but its consequences are perhaps even stranger than its mode of proof. The proof is strange because caloric is not an object or an appearance or an experience, but is their condition, the consequence is stranger because this implies that 'we' or the subjects of perception are just as much internal to caloric as the objects that we encounter. The same marginalia concludes that 'all socalled experiences are always only parts of one experience, in virtue of the universally distributed unbounded caloric which collects all celestial bodies in one system and sets them in a community of reciprocity' (Op Pos: 89). Our experiences are part of the experience of caloric, its play of attractive and repulsive force; indeed we are also part of caloric, part of its play of repulsion and attraction. The idea of the system of forces that is a condition of the possibility of experience now takes its place as the 'Highest Principle of All Synthetic Judgements' sought in the 'Analytic of Principles' of the first Critique. This asserts that 'the conditions of the possibility of experience in general are likewise conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience, and for that

reason they have objective validity in a synthetic a priori judgement' (A158/B197). The objective validity of synthetic a priori judgements that rests on the highest principle can be seen to rest upon the idea of a system

24 The Transition Problem in the Opus Postumum of forces: synthetic a priori judgements are possible because both experience and its object are the same, both modes of caloric. Not only the principles of judgements but also any account of the genesis of experience involves describing the emergence of the subjects and objects of experience out of caloric. The process by which the play of attractive and repulsive forces that makes up caloric forms itself into the states and patterns that form experience and its subjects and objects can only be hinted at here.9 At the centre of Kant's account is the idea that the system of forces making up caloric possesses plasticity, that it is a Bildungsmittel whose 'liquid' 'elastic' state can be transformed into solids. This occurs through a local inequality between attractive and repulsive force which provokes an 'arrest' and consequent rigidification. In the pages of the Opus postumum Kant works towards a complex genetic account of how local inequality of forces provokes arrest, rigidification and then the emergence of strata, textures and blocks within caloric. Here is one of his descriptions of this process taken from the IXth fascicle: This rigidification, if it takes place from a still fluid state, results in a certain texture (textura), as experience teaches. Under the name of crystallisation (crysallisatio), it regularly forms fibers (fibras), plates (tabulas) and blocks (truncos) according to the three geometrical dimensions. (Op Pos: 32) Objects are thus formed out of the system of forces in this way, from inequality of forces to arrest, rigidification and the emergence of morphology. In a way reminiscent of Platos's Timaeus, Kant's 'highest principle of synthetic a priori judgements has changed an epistemological to a cosmological and ontological principle. Kant is happy to push his argument even further. Not only are the objects of experience formed out of the arrests and rigidifications of the system of forces, but also the subjects of experience and the patterns of experience itself. Almost anticipating Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle (which presents itself as a critique of Kant's doctrine of the forms of intuition in the first critique), Kant insists that we subjects of knowledge and our experiences are but textures of caloric. The famous critical distinction between the receptive (sensibility) and spontaneous (understanding) parts of experience referred to earlier can be mapped directly on to attractive and repulsive force - the emergence of experience from out of the play of sensibility and understanding is strictly analogous, if not the same thing, as the cosmic play of attractive and repulsive force. Kant states this

Howard Caygill 25

with epigrammatic clarity in the Vth fascicle when he claims 'Experience depends on the forces which agitate the subject'. Intuition as attractive and spontaneity as repulsive force arrest each other and provoke the rigidifications that form our patterns of experience - the serial filaments of the intuitions of space and time, the encompassing surfaces of the concepts of the understanding and the all encompassing shapes of the ideas of reason. The uncanny implication emerges that for the Opus postumum we are not only traversed by caloric, but are indeed a ripple in the caloric, one with the peculiar characteristic of experiencing other ripples in the same caloric. At this point Kant seems distant from the critical philosophy, but yet all he has done is give flesh to 'the highest principle of synthetic a priori judgements'. The Opus postumum makes explicit the ontological commitments presumed by the first critique and radicalizes them. It is already radical to view the subject as traversed by caloric and texturing attractive force/receptivity and repulsive force/spontaneity into patterns of experience, how much more so to regard this activity as but an expression of the play of attractive and repulsive force within caloric. The discussion of 'selfaffection' in other words, prominent in certain parts of the Opus postumum, does not necessarily involve the self-affection of a subject10 but of caloric or ether, one of whose modes of self-affection manifests itself as the subject. A final extra-ordinary feature of the transition in the Opus postumum is the notion that the systematic operation of attractive and repulsive forces not only manifests itself abstractly in objects and subjects, but is at work in all forms of animate and inanimate objects, from matter to human society and beyond. The transition from metaphysical principles to physics that governed the first two main sections of the Opus postumum - the system of forces and the system of the world - undergoes a further transition towards a third system which would have re-affirmed the traditional objects of metaphysics - God, World and Soul - a 'System of Absolute Ideas'. Some hint of the transition from the system of the world to that of absolute ideas - via cosmology - is given in a remarkable marginalia from the XII fascicle that may be dated to 1800. Although situated in the first transition, it looks ahead to the second, and while the subject is 'nature' this is none other than the play of forces: Not to be comprehended: that there are to be discovered, in the strata of the earth and in the mountains, examples of former kinds of animals and plants (now extinct) - proofs of previous (now alien) products of our living, fertile globe. That its organizing force has so arranged for one another the totality of the species of plants and animals, that

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The Transition Problem in the Opus Postumum

they, together, as members of a chain, form a circle (man not excepted). That they require each other for their existence, not merely in respect of their nominal character (similarity) but their real character (causality) which points in the direction of a world-organization (to unknown ends) of the galaxy itself. (Op Pos: 85) Such passages as this, and there are many similar, justify the more readings of the Opus postumum such as those of Lehmann that see it as Kant's attempt to unite natural and historical reason. It is not simply a transition from metaphysical principles to physics in any narrow, disciplinary sense, but rather the move towards an anthropic cosmology in which human subjectivity, experience and society is set within an immanent understanding of nature as a system of forces. This movement, from cosmos, to anthropos and beyond is perhaps the real 'transition problem' of the Opus postumum.

Beyond the interest of its content, the Opus postumum also reveals an extraordinary glimpse of the radicality of Kant's philosophizing. It shows how, even at the end of his life he was willing to throw the organizing principles, the achievements of the critical philosophy into the air. To put everything in question, turn his philosophy on its head and to place reason before intuition and metaphysics both before physics and after cosmology. In the late Kant, everything melts into the caloric, especially the monuments erected to Kant as the parodic philosopher of enlightenment reason. The Opus postumum invites and obliges readers of Kant to remain critical, to remain sceptical of the distinctions and routines of interpretation and argument that while born of critical freedom lapsed into dogmatism, and to begin again, after 200 years, to philosophize with Kant.

Notes and references 1. The Critique ofPure Reason is quoted from the Norman Kemp Smith translation (New York, St Martin's Press 1965). 2. Gerhard Lehmann, Beitrage zur Geschichte und Interpretation der Philosophie Kants, Berlin, de Gruyter 1968. 3. In English the work of Eckhart Forster has been crucial, not only as translator but also commentator, see Kant's Final Synthesis: An Essay on the Opus postumum, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2000. 4. I have discussed Kant's Newton critique in the Opus postumum in 'The Force of Kant's Opus postumum: Kepler and Newton in the Xlth Fascicle' in the Angelaki special issue on German philosophy of science, 2006. 5. See the reconstruction of the intended architecture of the Opus postumum proposed by the Italian translator of the work Vittorio Mathieu, Kant. Opus postumum, Editori Laterza, Roma-Bari 2004, pp.58-9.

Howard Caygill 27 6. The manuscripts making up the Opus postumum are distributed according to twelve fascicles, a thirteenth made up of a single page does not form part of the transition project. 7. Kant's Opus postumum, ed. and trans., Eckhart Forster and Michael Rosen, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 1993. 8. See S. Sambursky, The Physical World of the Greeks, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul 1956, p.139. 9. I have considered it in more detail in 'Kant's Cosmic Object' in G.Banham and D. Morgan, Cosmopolitics (forthcoming). 10. As seems to be assumed in Eckart Forster's essay 'Ether proof and Selbstsetzungslehre' in Kant's Final Synthesis: An Essay on the Opus postumum, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2000.

3 Self-Submission and Mutual Domination: Constructions of Marriage and Gender in Kant and Fichte Georges Faraklas

Morality, which represents the highest form of my own freedom, requires that the other be free as well. Hence, it is connected with recognition. For Kant, who holds that in moral action (to the extent that there exist such actions) pure reason is realized as such, / am not free if I use another rational being as unfree, that is, merely as a means to an end. That explains why Fichte, being Kantian, considers recognition as the realization of reason. So it is, I think, in a truly Kantian spirit that he goes on to claim that not only should one be treated as free, hence as rational, when one is indeed free, but that one should be treated as if one were free or already rational, in order to become free or rational. Indeed, within a Kantian framework, my being rational or not cannot be determined by my belonging to a category of natural beings, be it men or even humankind. For this framework contains nothing else than what is valid for each and every finite rational being. All the same, Kant and his disciple Fichte make of patriarchal ideology a criterion for reason. This does not mean that they are simply conservative. On the one hand, we could argue that, since all that Kant says about gender in the Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime (Part III; 2: 228-43),1 the Remarks related to them (20: 1-192), and the Anthropology (7: 303-11), is said 'from a pragmatic standpoint', and since Kant himself teaches us to distinguish the normative from the factual or pragmatic, all these views are only relevant to the biography of Kant and his historical background, not to the possible truth of Kantianism.2 We could argue that even the fact that Kant denies women the right to vote is not sufficient to support the claim that he does not include them in the category of persons,3 for it has been a commonplace ever since the Ancients, that (active) citizenship presupposes social independence. We 28

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could even argue that it would be unfair to blame Kant and Fichte for having relativized the separation of 'ought' and 'is' in order to realize 'ought': we could claim that there can be no alternative. On the other hand, their positions are problematic, because, at a certain point, they adjust 'ought' to 'is' whereas, according to their own criteria, they should be correcting 'is'. They should correct it at the point where recognition fails: at that precise point they should not allow 'is' to stand for 'ought'. Of course they do not succumb to ideology in exactly the same way. As we shall see, Kant resorts to ideology when deduction proves to be incomplete, whereas Fichte deduces it, thus transforming it from a posteriori to a priori, namely from 'is' to 'ought'. For example, they both believe that for a couple to remain united it is the man who must always have the last word, but Kant appeals to man's 'natural superiority' as to something factual, namely something that is to be found outside the scope of reason or contingent, whereas Fichte deduces male superiority from his own definition of reason and what he considers to be the difference between male and female desire, thereby making it necessary. Another difference between the two philosophers is to be found in the manner in which each of them conceives the realization of 'ought' in the relation between genders. How can becoming a means be avoided when someone takes pleasure from my own body? Either by freely suspending my freedom while preserving it formally when I submit to the pleasure of the other, or by restoring it indirectly through my taking pleasure in the other as well, namely by making the two inverse subordinations coexist. Thus what liberates me is either a negative self-relation which as such releases me from the other, or a negative mutual relation with the other, namely a mediation with oneself through the submission of the other. Mutual use will be set forth by Kant in his Doctrine of Right whilst Fichte will opt for self-submission during the same year 1797 in his Foundations of Natural Right. Now, self-submission or mutual domination, enduring or repaying, renouncing one's rights OT claiming them, are equally contradictory. As a matter of fact, consensual renunciation of freedom or mutually enforced freedom equally contradict freedom, since both of them preserve transformation to a means, that is, exploitation. Nevertheless, they do differ in the way they preserve it, namely in the way they incorporate ideology. From this point of view, it is self-submission rather than mutual domination which directly expresses prejudice, given of course that it is always the woman who submits. It seems in general that mutual domination is more apt to remove exploitation than does self-submission. The Aristotelian citizen taking

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Constructions of Marriage and Gender

turns in governing and being governed seems more free than the selfsubmitting Hobbesian subject. The removal of exploitation demands reciprocity in human relations rather than stoic resignation (this is analogous to Kant's position that freedom of thought requires the free exchange of thoughts). The same idea seems even more plausible if we say simply that freedom rests on claiming one's rights, not on giving them up. As it is, these solutions may be viewed as two models for bringing practical reason into the pragmatic order. And it is this generalization

that I want to explore. However, in order that Kant and Fichte's views about women and men be germane to this purpose, the difference between having recourse to 'is' when 'ought' remains silent (Kant) and deducing 'is' from 'ought' (Fichte) should relate intrinsically to the difference between mutual domination and self-submission, respectively. If the way freedom is to be realized within the factual gender relation does depend on how Kant and Fichte articulate 'ought' with 'is' in general, their opinions cannot just be the opinions of two men in 1797; they must be two interpretations of a common rational framework. I shall try to show that this is the case by discussing their constructions of marriage and gender. Mutual domination between genders and natural male superiority in Kant The confusion between legal and affective language in expressions such as 'enjoy' or 'possess' is not fortuitous. In fact, it represents an overlapping of the right to a thing and the right against a person.4 Kant discovers it in every family relation, whether marital, filial or master-servant and introduces a new category, the Rights to persons akin to rights to things, which he defends in the Appendix (MM/R, 6: 357-62; 494-7)5 against criticism by saying that 'carnal enjoyment is cannibalistic in principle', that 'in this sort of use by each of the sexual organs of the other, each is actually a consumable thing' (MM/R, 6: 360; 495),6 thus that the right against a person is transformed here into a right to a thing: 'The natural use that one sex makes of the other's sexual organs is enjoyment (Genuß), for which one gives itself up to the other. In this act a human being makes himself into a thing, which conflicts with the right of humanity in his own person'. But then it is not only submitting to someone which is deemed to be immoral, it is also immoral to submit myself so as to make of myself a means to an end. How then are we to avoid any consequences that may be destructive of freedom in this case? Kant goes on to say: 'There is only one condition

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under which this is possible: that while one person is acquired by the other as if it were a thing, the one who is acquired acquires the other in turn; for in this way each reclaims itself and restores its personality' (MM/R, sect. 25; 427). Therefore, when reification, a master-slave relation and exploitation are factually inevitable, as is the case in the sexual relation, it is reciprocity, the fact that both parts possess each other, hence that the woman also 'enjoys', which deflects the harmful consequences of the aforementioned relation. Marriage is what prevents persons from becoming corrupted by the 'bestial cohabitation' in which the man wants to 'enjoy [the woman] as a thing' and the woman wants to 'give herself to him for this'. This is not to say that the woman will no longer become reified, but that she will reify her partner as well. Thus, there seems to be some similarity between the situation to be avoided and the desired one: if the woman surrenders, 'both renounc[e] their personalities', while marriage is 'a reciprocal giving up of one's very person into the possession of the other' (MM/R, 6: 359; 495)7 This contract gains in morality when its intrinsic reciprocity does not concern a relationship that is factually unequal, but spreads to the content of the relationship where it also produces reciprocity. In this case, the shedding of one's personality no longer denotes an unequal use but rather a mutual, egalitarian possession. It is in positing alienation that deliberate alienation suppresses involuntary alienation. In positing 'is', it corrects it, it equalizes 'is' through the mediation of 'ought'. Marriage is the 'possession of each other's person which is realized only through the mutual use of their sexual attributes by each other' (MM/R, sect. 27, 429). Kant was not a bachelor by conviction, and he was probably not virgin either.8 Thus it is a matter of choice for him to think of marriage in such general terms, because in this way he may manage to unearth the 'ought' in it. This is how he can forbid adultery since it pertains to the organ and not to the person (MM/R, sect. 25, 427). Marriage being thus 'a relation of equality of possession' (MM/R, sect. 26, 428), polygamy is thereby forbidden as well, on the grounds that it presents an inequality of possession. So, here, Kant corrects the 'is' by virtue of the 'ought', by deducing all restrictions (no matter if already in force) from a rational ground. Marriage is a contract for the mutual cession of the use of sexual organs (MM/R, sect. 24, 426-7) which extends to the person, since the latter constitutes 'an absolute unity' (MM/R, sect. 26, 427). Nevertheless, Kant isn't always as rigorous. At times he grants naturality no authority, whilst at others he endows it with some such. If marriage were to serve reproduction then it would be temporary.9 Thus, Kant relates it to the 'sexual union', commercium sexuale, to the 'reciprocal use'

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of 'the sexual organs and capacities', not to the 'end of begetting and bringing up children', even though nature has indeed 'implanted within each gender a tendency towards the other' for this particular 'end of nature'. Even though this 'end of nature' is the content of our sexual instinct, it is on this instinct not on that end that Kant is rationally founding marriage: 'even if it is supposed that their end is the pleasure of using each other's sexual attributes, the marriage contract is not up to their discretion' (MM/R, sect. 24, 427).10 Thus, among different natural aspects of marriage, that is reproduction and pleasure, Kant chooses the one which favours stability by using a criterion that is not in itself natural. However, nature - a concept often used to present an ideological bias as a pragmatic constatation - constitutes his criterion for distinguishing within the sexual community between a 'natural use' and an 'unnatural use' - accusing the latter of 'dopng] wrong to humanity in our own person' - and, even more so, for justifying male authority on the basis of the 'natural superiority' of man. In the cases of zoophilia and homosexuality Kant cannot invoke the sterility of these practices since he rejects procreation as the purpose of marriage. So, how is their being 'unnatural' responsible for their being evil? If a beast is not a person why isn't it legitimate to use it as a means to an end? The fact that Kant doesn't come to this conclusion implies that, for him, fornication is intrinsically a relation between equal individuals. Otherwise, why must they belong to the same genus, in the sense of the animal species (Gattung)? The problem is that, in this case, equal freedom is no longer a requisite of reason but of nature. But, if the unnatural is immoral, then what is moral must also be natural. However, the paragraph I question concludes with the above claim that equality is endangered by the natural character of fornication, from which marital rational reciprocity protects us. Now, when it comes to homosexuality the presupposition is generally inverted. Here it is identity which is against nature, namely belonging to the same genus in the sense of gender (Geschlecht). But the identity of gender means that both individuals are considered to be free, hence their relation is not illegitimated1 Certainly, the two interdictions of the non-natural concern different levels of nature, that is the demand for identity views nature as the condition of the rational being, not so the demand for difference. However, the Kantian definition requires identity only as the natural condition of reason. Therefore, the rejection of homosexuality is more ideological than the rejection of zoophilia and one cannot help but wish that reason here could have beaten prejudice, as is the case when Plato rejects the distinction between Greeks and barbarians

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on the grounds that it constitutes a flawed logical division.12 For the originality of the Kantian approach lies in the fact that it grounds the heterosexual bond on equality, whereas it was only homosexual friendship which was traditionally founded on it and, as Luce Irigaray puts it, tradition seemed to be wholly included in such a homosexual perspective.13 This brings us to the second appeal to nature. Equality is suppressed by the 'law' which prescribes to the woman: man 'is to be your master'.14 According to Kant this law cannot be regarded as conflicting with the natural equality of a couple if the dominance is based only on the natural superiority of the husband to the wife in his capacity to promote the common interest of the household, and the right to direct that is based on this can be derived from the very duty of unity and equality with respect to an end. (MM/R, sect. 26, rem. in fine, 428) Hence, the male's right to command would rest on 'natural equality' before the common objective which requires a 'natural' inequality. Undoubtedly, here 'naturalness' is equivocal; it is normative when pertaining to equality, and factual, therefore contingent, when pertaining to inequality. It is from this particular point of view that Kant may be said to resort to a contingent fact in order to make up for the incompleteness of his construction.15 Nevertheless, the minimal objective of marriage is sexual community - so much so that Kant refuses to validate an unconsummated marriage16 - and this in no way seems to require that one of the partners should command where the other obeys. Thus, as is often the case, the fact that two contradictory ideas - equality and inequality - support one and the same conclusion - the woman's necessary submission - is the consequence of an ideological petitio principii. This characteristic of ideology is to be found in any pragmatic founding of 'ought'. This kind of justification, apart from easily becoming immoral, is not even conclusive, since it supports a and non-a simultaneously. For example, tradition holds, just like Nietzsche will later on, that 'the woman wants to be taken ... as a property', that she desires the 'absolute renunciation of her own rights',17 while at the same time it holds exactly the opposite thesis - maybe in the search for a justification namely that 'the woman wants to dominate, the man to be dominated', as Kant himself does.18 Therefore, because it is not quite clear who is dominant by nature, it would be risky, or simply ideological, to found male domination on this, unless we deduce the woman's renunciation of her own rights from our rational framework, in order to overcome the

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inconclusive character of 'factual' factors. This will be the solution of Fichte, who will try to deduce factual inequality from moral, normative equality. Female self-submission and male natural rationality in Fichte In his Principles of the Theory of Science of 1795, Fichte is convinced that he is merely systematizing Kantian philosophy. In the Foundations of Natural Right, he wonders whether Kant, in his Towards Perpetual Peace, wanted to found right on morality or whether, like himself, he has refused to found the conditioned juridical law on the unconditioned moral law (SW 3, 13; 13),19 and hence to soil ethical purity with juridical casuistics. Now, even if Kant wants his juridical framework to be valid for a 'nation of devils',20 he nevertheless does base it on morality. We have already ascertained to what extent marriage depends on practical reason.21 This relation of right to morality explains why the intrusion of the natural in juridical law appeared to be a problem in Kant's theory of right, since, as we know, practical reason should be free of any such presuppositions. But this intrusion will also be a problem for Fichte's framework, where it is assumed that right does not depend on morality. Before examining this point let me summarize Fichte's systematization of the Kantian framework. Fichte defines 'moral law' as the 'absolute agreement with oneself (SW 3,10; 11), in accordance with his synthesis of the categorical imperative with the ego as the condition of the unity of cognition, which, in his view, is no other than reason itself. This is why moral law is formal: its content is directly deduced from reason understood as 'egoity' (transcendental identity of the subject). Thus, rationality is to be found at the point where 'that which acts and that which is acted upon are one and the same' (SW 3,1; 3). But right constitutes a relation with the other, not oneself. It says 'limit your freedom through the concept of the freedom of all other persons with whom you come in contact' (SW 3, 10;10). Besides, freedom does not precede right; instead, it is right which constitutes a 'condition of self-consciousness' (SW 3, 11; 12), of selfhood, it is the relation to the other which constitutes the condition for the relation to oneself. I act freely, rationally, I am both acting and acted upon, only if I have been acted upon in the first place. A person, in order to become one, needs the relation implied by mutual acknowledgment (SW 3, 43-4; 41-2), the 'concept... of free reciprocal efficacy (34; 33). A person is not free on her own (SW 3, 30, sect. 3, Theorem 2; 29).

Georges Faraklas 35

But what is it that triggers acknowledgement? It is a 'summons' through which I am 'determined to be self-determining' (SW 3, 32-3; 31). The subject of this acting 'resolve [s] to exercise its efficacy', to be rational, hence to be not acted upon. Its independence from what is exterior to it is granted to it 'as if it were from the exterior: it is 'self-active by means of an external check (Anstoß), which must nevertheless leave the subject in full possession of its freedom to be self-determining' (SW 3, 33; 32), namely not use it as a means to an end. That is what education is about (SW 3, 39; 38). It rests on 'free, reciprocal interaction by means of concepts and in accordance with concepts', which constitutes the 'distinctive character' of humanity (SW 3, 40; 38). The 'as if cures the circularity22 deriving from the fact that 'a rational being's self-consciousness' presupposes the 'summons' which, in turn, presupposes that its recipient is already a thinking and free person.23 To be free implies that I think of myself as such, which implies self-thinking, which implies that I have been called to do it as if I were already a free and thinking person. I am a subject only if the others treat me as one. This relation is tightly bound to the subject, considered as egoity. As a matter of fact, according to Fichte's main thesis, the ego is only to the extent that it posits itself,24 which means that I exist only to the extent that I have consciousness of myself. For, what is it that can generate the ego, namely its self-positing before which the ego does not exist, if not the incitement to its self-positing? Descartes had already proposed a scheme along the same lines concerning our relation to authority. It is only by my acting as if it were already just that authority acquires the possibility of becoming such, because in this context one may, according to him, go so far as to affirm that 'the Tightest of actions may become unjust when those who perform them think that they are such'.25 More importantly, this is the line of thought along which the factually ascertained inequality of genders will be refuted. If women are not rational, it is because we don't act towards them as if they were, for example, it is because they don't have any access to education that they are not cultivated, therefore it is absurd to accuse them of ignorance, sentimentalism and so on. Kant uses the same kind of argument, not about our relation to authority, but about that of authority to us: the so-called realist politicians don't just follow the bad habits of people, as they claim they do, rather they produce those habits by presupposing them (cf Conflict, 7: 80). The appeal to realism is all but a self-realizing prophecy, a prophecy in which the prediction is imposed by the person who makes it.26 Consequently, this scheme is not as strange as it seems at first glance. Besides it is only as such, namely as a non pre-existing natural being, that the ego can be

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thought of as free, because qua being it would simply be included in the causal constitution of nature. But Fichte chooses not to construct gender by means of such a liberal and critical form. His position is that marriage does not stand for 'merely a juridical association' - Hegel will also reject Kant's contractual thesis as a 'horrible' thing (Philosophy of Right, sect. 75) - but a 'natural and moral association' whose deduction is not juridical (SW 3, 304; 264). Its starting point is the natural character of the species and its division in two genders where 'the individual has an enduring existence only as a tendency to form the species' (SW 3, 306; 265). Here the individual is not defined by its freedom, but by something opposed to freedom, namely natural impulse. Fichte defines the conjugal bond and its juridical consequences on the basis of this naturalness of the species, which is not moral, since woman and man, if considered as moral entities, are equal (SW 3, 308; 268). And he will judge whether the individual participates in rationality on the basis of this natural determination, not of recognition as might be expected. In contrast to Kant, in Fichte woman and man are distinguished on the basis of the nature of their sexual drive. Given that the rational being is the being in which the actor coincides with the acted upon, and this is thought of as self-positing, 'actus purus', and given that the male drive is active whereas the female drive is passive (SW 3, 306, sect. 2; 266), it is only the man who participates immediately in rationality which is destroyed by passivity. In order, then, to become rational, the woman must transform her passive impulse into an active one (SW 3, 307, sect. 3; 267). Here lies Fichte's objection to those women who want to justify 'the denial of [their] true destination' (SW 3, 308, my translation; cf. trans, p. 267). When a woman surrenders to sexual pleasure she is passive and thus no longer rational. Therefore, she must refuse herself pleasure and succumb to the man only for the sake of his pleasure. This is exactly the opposite of that which follows from Kant's position. Here the female must voluntarily become the means to the end of another person, in order to remain free, for her aim is to save the reason which is in her in spite of the particular nature of her desire. This female artifice,27 this sublimation of pleasure, is love. A woman in love 'maintains her dignity - even though she becomes a means - by freely making herself into a means' (SW 3, 310; 269). Now things start to toughen up. Although love is held to be the necessary condition for the surmounting of female natural desire, that is, for the acquisition of reason or freedom by a being who by nature revels in not being free or rational, it is by the same token held to be woman's

Georges Faraklas 37

natural tendency. Here reason and nature coincide by nature (SW 3, 310, 351-3; 269, 304-5). Therefore women are rational by nature even though their natural desire refuses reason, because love as their natural trait is 'the only juncture where nature penetrates into reason', whereas man has to be instructed in reason (SW 3, 310; 269) - even though we know that he participates in reason without refusing his desire and that, consequently, he does not need to fall in love with the object of his desire in order not to lose reason. There is an inversion of terms because the transformation of natural female desire from passive to active is also defined as being natural. It goes without saying that all this is conditional on the woman's not getting any pleasure. Her dignity lies in her giving herself up for the other, in her becoming forever and unconditionally alienated, in not living 'the life of an individual', in making her life a 'part' of the life of a man (SW 3, 311-13, sect. 4, 5, 6; 269-71). The union of the sexes is the 'realization of the whole human being' (SW 3, 315; 273), but on condition that the woman submit herself: It is her being included as a part within the man as a whole which constitutes the complementarity of the sexes. In this way he stands for the whole and she stands for his Derridian supplement, as the complement of an already completed whole. 28 This amounts to saying that the sexes may unite morally only if the common end of this union is the same as that which man pursues on his own, since the woman, by becoming a means for the other, renounces her desire. Thus, in the juridical expression of this moralnatural situation the woman submits herself unlimitedly to the will of her husband 'not because of juridical, but moral, reasons'. The reason of this 'limitless subjection' is in fact her dignity which she can only keep when renouncing pleasure, that is, passivity as an end: 'The wife does not belong to herself, but to her husband' (SW 3, 325; 282). However, there is an attractive part to this argument. The state must make sure that each woman is in love with the man with whom she has sexual intercourse, since a loveless submission entails a loss of personality (SW 3, 318, sect. 10; 275). Consequently, it must put rapists to death (SW 3, 319, sect. 11; 276) and persecute ex officio any parents that will not allow their daughters to marry the men of their own choice (SW 3, 320-1, sect. 12; 277-8). On the other hand, at the same time and for the same reasons, adultery is held to be of no particular consequence in the case of men, since they ought not to be in love, but destructive for women because it denotes either a lack of the love which constitutes the foundation of their domestic freedom, or that they are after pleasure and thus that they lack reason (cf. SW 3, 328-9, sect. 19; 284). All this comes

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to signify that those women who try to emancipate themselves have given up their dignity.29 Above all, this means that although women possess equal rights with men, they nevertheless cannot will to exercise them in order not to lose their dignity - given that their dignity requires their complete surrender, their free transformation into a means for the man they love (SW 3, 344-5, sect. 33-4; 298-9). In other words, renunciation is preferable because claiming one's rights is contradictory, but the contradiction is ascribed to the particular case of the female soul, not to the maintaining of a relation of exploitation. Hence, to be sure, women are not autonomous and this justifies the fact that they are not given access to public office (SW 3, 349; 302), but above all it explains why, despite the basic divisions of reason, they are thought of as naturally rational, that is rational by means of feelings, that is, rational without concepts (SW 3, 351-2; 304). So, we are back again to this contradictory being, which is naturally rational with no need of instruction, while, at the same time, radically irrational with respect to the natural character of its desire and pleasure desire to submit, pleasure in being passive - in short a passive impulse which must be transformed - or is always already transformed - into a reason without concepts, namely an emotional one. In this way we avoid one contradiction by giving in to another, more serious one, given that it shakes the very foundation of right, namely recognition. According to the Fichtean analysis of this concept, my right to be free or rational is, as we already said, a condition of possibility of self-consciousness itself. Now, in the Fichtean couple, the woman is a supplementary part and the man is the other part, the partner, the associate in the contract and, at the same time, the whole, namely the master of the house to which she belongs. From the point of view of the associate, Fichte adopts Kant's total freedom of the two parties. But something in Fichte's construction produces a relation in which the one of the two sides is, at the same time, the whole. This derives from the fact that the man is potentially immediately rational insofar as he does not refuse his, altogether active, desire. In this way Fichte infers the opposition upon which Kant stumbled, namely, when he used both 'natural' equality and 'natural' inequality as a justification for male authority. But this is immediately contradictory, because it is by the same reason that the man is not immediately rational, since he has to be instructed in it, in the sense that he does not sublimate, that he need not naturally sublimate his natural desire into a naturally rational affection, whereas the woman is immediately rational in this very same sense. The immediate or natural possession of reason, a quality which is contradictory in

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39

itself, is thus immediately transmitted from the one to the other side of the opposition, from the carrier of the naturally active desire to the carrier of the passive one, because the desire of the latter naturally becomes active. Thus, in Fichte what consecrates the inequality of the sexes as if it belonged to the a priori level is either that the man is immediately rational thanks to his natural sexual instinct or, and this is the other side of the same antinomy, that the woman is immediately rational thanks to the natural refusal of her sexual instinct. This is how female self-submission is connected with the deduction of a necessary male authority. When male domination is thought of as immediately rational, the woman naturally invalidates herself. This example makes clear why, within the Kantian framework, it is contradictory to be considered immediately rational, as well as naturally to suspend one's natural instinct. The rational being ought to suspend its natural character rationally, not naturally. That is why we are not free naturaliter but only if we are recognized as free, a problem that Fichte tried to solve by saying that we can make other humans become free or rational only if we treat them as if they were already just that. Consequently, in accordance to the Kantian framework itself, the idea of an immediate participation in reason is contradictory, and its contradiction cannot be solved by some natural suspension of the natural instinct, namely by means of the woman's self-submission, which means that immediate participation in reason cannot justify androcracy. As a matter of fact, the solutions of both Kant and Fichte for applying practical reason to the genders concern the realization of 'ought' in a reality that is conceived as governed by rules other than those which govern the intelligible space within which 'ought' is defined. Self-submission presupposes that 'ought' subsumes reality, and is thus faced with the necessity to adjust to reality's peculiarities such as the existence of a passive impulse. Mutual usage does not presuppose the submission to reality, but its reconstruction in such a way as to make its immoral rule, namely exploitation (the use of the other as a means to an end), undermine itself, by attempting to approach the 'ought' with the - no matter how antideontological - tools of reality. Anyway this is how we may view Kant's solution if we don't take into account what he says 'from a pragmatic standpoint'. Paradoxically enough, this line of thought agrees completely, if seen from this point of view, with the grounding of our existence as rational and free beings on recognition, which was developed by Fichte and not by Kant. This leads us to a specific question. The dilemma between selfsubmission and mutual domination can be reduced to a dilemma between

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giving up one's rights and claiming them. This is the dilemma that the young Hegel wants to overcome because he, too, holds that both sides of it are contradictory.30 He claims that the Kantian idea of the realization of 'ought' as a subordination of the sensible to the intelligible is responsible for these contradictions because it inevitably determines these two terms as contrary, it 'subjugates' the sensible, it submits 'the singular to the universal'. Of course, Hegel's own solution at that time remained naturalistic so to speak. His proposal that the sensible be 'elevated' to the intelligible through the 'suppression' of their opposition called for the 'inclination towards moral acting'. 31 Undoubtedly also, his later analysis of marriage will not do away with ideology. However, his idea that the sensible should be reconstructed in such a way as to produce the 'ought' by itself will lead him to his famous interpretation of the master-slave relation (the use of the other as a means to an end) as the failure of recognition, and to his understanding of this failure as constitutive of self-consciousness, that is, as something that must destroy itself in order for self-consciousness to exist. If, within the Hegelian framework, reason is not something 'natural', thus if it rationally suppresses the natural, as it was already supposed to do within the Kantian framework, it is because the self-suppression of naturality does not lead to reason as to a pre-existing term, and is therefore conceived as part of reason itself, in contrast to what the Kantian framework presupposes. As to the logical aspect of the opposition between Kant and Fichte that we have analysed here, Hegel arrives at a solution which is less wellknown and which claims that it is rational not to deduce contingent actions which cannot be rationally founded, that it is rational to leave them to chance. 32 Possibly, one of the reasons that led Hegel to this idea was the fact that he held that Fichte was wrong in not accepting that naturalness is morally indifferent and in trying to deduce empirical facts from concepts.33 As we have seen, Kant is able to introduce the supposedly natural male superiority as something which is morally indifferent only because he does not deduce it.

Notes and references 1. All references to Kant are to the Akademie-Ausgabe: Gesammelte Schriften, ed. the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Berlin 1902 ff. 2. Kant's views as set out in the above are summed up and criticized, for example, by B. Edelman, La maison de Kant. Conte moral, Payot, Paris 1984, pp. 37-^81, and L. Irigaray, Speculum de l'autre femme, Minuit, Paris 1974, pp. 253-65. 3. As C. Pateman puts it in The Sexual Contract, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1988, p. 171.

Georges Faraklas 41 4. Cf. my book Auto to pragma (in Greek), Nesos, Athens 2001, Chap. 10 (esp. pp. 209-11). 5. All references to the Metaphysics of Morals are to the Doctrine of Right (Metaphysik der Sitten, A: 1797, B: 1798, Rechtslehre), they include the section number or the page number of the Akademie-Ausgabe, followed by the page number of the English translation by M. J. Gregor in I. Kant, Practical Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1996. 6. This idea is not as strange as it may seem: cf. A. Dworkin, Intercourse, 1987, Arrow, London 1988, ch. 1. 7. Oddly enough, as L. Marcil points out, the contradiction of reification is solved through voluntary reification ('Possessio noumenon ...', Proceedings of the 8th International Kant Congress, Marquette University Press, Milwaukee 1995, vol. II, p. 573). 8. A. Gulyga, Immanuel Kant, German trans, from Russian 1981, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 1985, pp. 76-7. 9. As it is in Locke's state of nature (Two Treatises of Government, 1690, ed. P. Laslett, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1963, II, sect. 79, pp. 238-9). 10. I don't agree with S.M. Shell who thinks that the end of marriage is the conservation of the species at the cost of the individual (The Embodiment of Reason, University of Chicago Press, Chicago-London 1996, p. 153). I rather hold with A.W. Wood that 'its function is rather to enable people to engage in sex without violating their right of personality' (Kant's Ethical Thought, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1999, pp. 257-8). 11. Why should it be illegitimate if it occurs 'between consenting adults'? (This is the title of the corresponding chapter in O. O'Neill's Constructions of Reason, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1989, pp. 118-22; where, however, the author does not refer to homosexuality in the section on sexuality.) 12. Statesman, 262 c-d. Plato rejects in an analogous way the sexual division of labour: 'We might very well be asking one another whether there is not an opposition in nature between bald and long-haired men, and, when that was admitted, forbid one set to be shoemakers, if the other were following that trade' (Republic, 454 c 3-5; trans. F.M. Cornford, Oxford University Press, London 1941). 13. Cf. for example Speculum, op. cit., p. 26. Although, even in Kant, 'true' marriage, i.e. mutual possession, takes place in friendship between people of the same sex; cf. Wood, op. cit, pp. 279-80. 14. Cf. Genesis, III, 16: autos sou kurieusei. 15. This is S. Goyard-Fabre's interpretation (La Philosophie du droit de Kant, Vrin, Paris 1996, p. 138), which is completely opposed to that of S. Mendus ('Kant: "An Honest but Narrow-Minded Bourgeois"?', in H. Williams (ed.), Essays on Kant's Political Philosophy, University of Wales Press, Cardiff 1992, pp. 166-90), who accuses Kant of misogyny! According to Goyard-Fabre (op. cit, note 1), the only thinker of the time who stood for absolute equality was Condorcet. 16. Except 'if incapacity appears only afterwards' (MM/R, sect. 27, 429). 17. F. Nietzsche, Gaya scienza, 1882, sect. 363 (Werke in 3 Bänden, Hanser, Munich 1955, vol. 2, pp. 236-7, my translation). 18. Anthr, 7: 307 (my translation). And, according to Kant, she dominates him in fact (Akademie-Ausgabe, 20: 16).

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19. References are to the page number of vol. 3 of J. G. Fichte, Werke, de Gruyter, Berlin 1971 followed by the page number of the English translation by M. Baur, Foundations of Natural Right, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2000. 20. PP, 1st. Suppl., 8: 366. 21. This point is analysed by Goyard-Fabre, op. cit., pp. 136-7. 22. I will not consider here the non-circular, alternative foundation, which is reconstructed by A. Wildt: 'there is no circle if I am supposed to find myself to be originally free in the form of an object' (Autonomie und Anerkennung, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1982, p. 271). 23. '... an intelligence and ... a free ... being' (SW 3, 35, 36; 33, 35). 24. 'The rational being is, insofar as it posits itself as being, i.e. insofar as it is conscious of itself (SW 3, 2; 4). 25. Descartes, Oeuvres etlettres, Gallimard, Paris 1953, p. 1237-8 (my translation). Cf. my book Position and Truth (in Greek), Kritike, Athens 1997, chap. 6. 26. K. Psychopedis thinks that valid social critique should find this kind of structure in reality. Cf. Untersuchungen zur politischen Theorie von Immanuel Kant, Schwartz, Göttingen 1980, p. 33; Geschichte und Methode, Campus, Frankfurt 1984, pp. 61, 300; 'Normativity, Relativity and Moderation in Modern Political Philosophy' (in Greek), Deukalion 11/2 (1993), p. 89; Politics within Concepts (in Greek), Nesos, Athens 1997, p. 115. 27. Cf. Hegel, Jenaer Systementwürfe HI, Gesammelte Werke, vol. VIII, Meiner, Hamburg 1976, p. 205-7. Cf. also my book Position and Truth, op. cit, pp. 215 ff. 28. 'Up to now, the male and the female were two poles which were simultaneously opposite and complementary, in that they were both defined within the male pole", L. Irigaray, in Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Marxistes, Les femmes aujourd'hui, demain, Editions Sociales, Paris 1975, p. 151 (my translation). The anthropologist L. Dumont defines 'hierarchy' precisely as that kind of wholepart relation and finds its typical example in the man-woman relation that is expressed by the use of words such as homo or man, that denote the male (part) and the species (whole) at the same time; cf. Homo hierarchicus, 1966, Gallimard, Paris 1979, p. 397. (For the difference between supplement and complement, cf. J. Derrida, De la grammatologie, Minuit, Paris 1967, p. 208.) 29. Because they seek glory, i.e. they want men to find them attractive: woman's ambition is only a means for vanity (SW 3, 347, sect. 34, rem.; 300-1). 30. 'The vindication of one's rights and the mere painful renunciation of one's rights are both unnatural states, as appears from the fact that both contain a contradiction, that they suppress themselves', Hegel, Werke in 20 Bänden, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 1969, vol. 1, p. 348 (my translation). This is a fragment of an unpublished text that Hegel struck out, and which does not refer to the man-woman relation. 31. Op. cit, p. 299, 301. 32. It is his way of justifying the existence of the Pythian oracle, of Socrates' demon, which is an 'inner oracle', as well as the fact that nature decides who will be monarch (cf. Phänomenologie, Werke, op. cit, vol. 3, p. 520-1; Gesammelte Werke, op. cit, vol. 9 (1980), p. 382; Philosophie des Rechts, sect. 279, rem.; trans. H.B. Nisbet, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1991, pp. 319-20. 33. Cf. Glauben und Wissen, Werke, op. cit, vol. 2, p. 421; Geschichte der Philosophie, Werke, op. cit, vol. 20, p. 392.

4 Concept and Intuition in Kant's Philosophy of Religion Maximilian Forschner

The difference between religion and morality is merely formal, that is to say, reason in its legislation uses the idea of God, which is derived from morality itself, to lend to morality an influence on man's will to fulfil his duties. This is why there is only one religion. Although there are indeed different varieties of belief in divine revelation and its statutory teachings, beliefs which cannot spring from reason - that is, different forms in which the divine will is represented to the senses so as to lend it influence on our minds there are no different religions. Of these forms, Christianity, as far as we know, is the most adequate. (Conflict 7: 36) The sublime, yet never wholly attainable, idea of an ethical commonwealth dwindles markedly under men's hands. It becomes an institution which, at best capable of representing only the pure form of such a commonwealth, is, by the conditions of sensuous human nature, greatly circumscribed in its means for establishing such a whole. How indeed can one expect something perfectly straight to be framed out of such crooked wood? (Rel 6: 100).1 I Kant has emphasized vigorously, in opposition to the rationalist school of philosophy, that human understanding originates from two different capabilities, intuition and thought. In his option for the 'unforethinkable', Martin Heidegger believed he could perceive in Kant's texts a dominance in the value given to intuition over that given to the conceptual understanding of an object.2 43

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It is clear that, according to Kant's theory, when intuiting we refer directly to a single object; when thinking, on the other hand, we try to understand an object indirectly through a characteristic which 'can be common to different things' (A320/B376f.). It is also clear that Kant explains human cognition of reality as a successful interplay of intuiting and understanding arising from cognition's ranking between God's creative intuition and an animal's receptive perception. In contrast to God's creative intuition, 3 human intuition is limited, is preset in its form, and refers in its content to the given. In contrast to animals' understanding, which through perception is bound to a situation, thinking allows human beings the distancing objectification of the situation, the understanding of something as a case of something common, the categorization of something given within a total context. As a cognitive being, man stands between animal and God. We are free in our thinking; we can play with representations as we wish (A155/B194). In order to understand something by thinking, however, we must rely on our intuition. A concept as the achievement of our thinking has objective reality only if this concept applies to a given intuition which is possible to us.4 A thought in freeing itself from the link with intuition loses itself in a mere game with representations. Nevertheless, our thinking does indeed free itself from the link to intuition, without merely playing with its representations. We form concepts with which we leave the area of possible intuition, concepts which cannot, nevertheless, be described as simply made up or as empty figments of the imagination. On the one hand, there are pure theoretical concepts of reason which are concerned with 'completeness, that is, the collective unity of the whole of possible experience, and which therefore extend beyond any given experience' (Prol § 40, 4: 328). They have a meaningful, indeed indispensable epistemic function. They give the lie to our presumption of the absolute validity of our minds' world of understood intuitions. Furthermore, they permanently drive forward the empirical search for a principle of unattainable completeness (CJ 5:167f.). On the other hand, there are pure practical concepts of reason with which we, in contrast to the world of experience accessible to us and understandable by us, build our very own order according to ideas; ideas of a moral world (A548/B576), ideas which as principles of reason should determine our actions in the world of experience. Now, these purely practical concepts of reason have a peculiar status in their relation to possible intuition: as ideative and normative ideas they reach out beyond the field of possible experience. They also, however,

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reach into our world of experience, insofar as they, not with theoretical intentions but certainly with practical intentions, also include 'principles of the possibility of experience, namely such actions as could be encountered in accordance with moral precepts in the history of mankind' (A807/B835). Practical concepts of reason must contain a reference (also theoretically relevant) to possible intuition if we are to be able to use them to understand given things in the world of experience, things which correspond to what they command us to realize, independent of experience, in the world of experience. The reasonable employment of concepts of reason is immanent in experience and intuition. As Kant puts it, it must be possible to read a corresponding intuition into a concept of reason, or rather, it must always be possible that the object which corresponds to the concepts of reason is given in the (pure or empirical) intuition so that it possesses objective reality and can lead to cognitions (CJ § 57, 5: 342 n.l). The employment of ideas, of concepts of reason, in some way transcends intuition and experience. This means that an idea is a representation which does not and cannot have an equivalent, or rather a complete or adequate equivalent, in a given intuition. According to Kant, in the case of a concept of reason 'the imagination with its intuitions' never attains to 'the given concept' (CJ § 57, 5: 343 n.l). The non-equivalence of the object represented by the concept of reason can, in an intuition which is possible to us, refer to the quality of the object or to the degree of the object (CJ § 57, 5: 343 n.l). As an example of the first possibility Kant offers us the term 'freedom', of the second possibility the term 'virtue'. This means that what is meant by 'freedom' does not, of its nature, correspond to formal or material facts within the framework of the forms of intuition, space and time. What is meant by 'virtue' is an optimum or maximum that cannot be graded; in our experience we can identify only a more or less. Concepts require their corresponding intuition to lend them objective reality, but concepts already need an intuition to lend them comprehensibility and clarity, even if this is only to a certain degree. In his Critique of the Power of Judgement (§ 59), Kant differentiates between three methods of representing concepts: exemplary, schematic, and symbolic. The first two are direct forms of representing a concept; the last is an indirect form. According to Kant, a concept is represented through an example if it is an empirical concept.5 A schema, Kant says, is the non-empirical form of intuition which corresponds to a pure concept of reason (a category). Symbolic representation is reserved for those concepts of reason for which no sensible intuition can be appropriate. Symbolic representation works

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by means of analogy. Here the faculty of judgement performs a double task: 'first applying the concept to the object of a sensible intuition, and then, secondly, applying the simple law of reflection on that intuition to an entirely different object, for which the first one is only the symbol' (CJ § 59, 5: 352 n.l). 6 Symbolic representation, accordingly, plays its own special role at the different levels of the employment of reason. Symbolic representation with its special qualities is of immense importance for the comprehensibility of theoretical concepts of reason (for example, the concept of God), the object of which is, of its nature, beyond any direct depiction in space and time, although such a depiction is essential for our practical view of ourselves. It is one thing to picture a state's practical concept of reason and another totally different thing with a different function, to represent symbolically the concept of God. The structure given by Kant in § 59 of the Critique of the Power of Judgement is not complete and, for the purposes of this paper, requires supplementation. Both empirical and non-empirical concepts can, in fact, be illustrated through examples, through reference to something given; a geometrical concept can, for example, be illustrated by a drawing; a moral concept can be illustrated by reference to a historical person. Here, however, something empirically given can never correspond entirely with the non-empirical term with regard to its degree; or rather, it cannot be determined that the one entirely corresponds with the other. And along with non-empirical forms of intuition of pure concepts of reason, our imagination also produces schemata of empirical concepts (for example, the concept of a dog) which, on the basis of repeated empirical intuition, we use to picture and summarize and anticipate, in a sketchy and monogrammatic fashion, things of the same kind. A certain form of representation which Kant calls Idealbildung [forming ideals] is of significance primarily (but not exclusively) for practical concepts of reason. Kant understands an ideal as an idea 'not merely in concreto but in individuo, that is, as an individual thing determinable or indeed determined by the idea alone' (A568/B596). The ideal is the fictional, clear definition and individualization of an abstraction; more exactly, it is the idea of a single object which possesses a characteristic of perfection or indeed a set of characteristics of perfection and which functions as the archetype against which every copy in the realm of appearance is to be measured.7 In the field of morality, that is, where pure reason through ideative concepts and rules sets the gauge of our actions in the realm of appearance, we work with ideals.8 Thus the figure of the stoic sage is an ideal, a man who exists only in one's thought, a man 'who is completely congruent with the idea of wisdom', and this

Maximilian Forschner 47 ideal serves as an archetype for the universal determination of the copy (A569/B597). Kant particularly stresses that such a formation of an ideal which personifies abstract concepts of virtue is, for man's practical experience, an 'indispensable standard of reason' (A569/B597), 'a standard with which we can compare, judge and thereby improve ourselves, even though we can never attain it' (A569/B597). In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant leaves open the questions of whether and how it is at all possible that a moral ideal can be made more intuitive than through the, still always abstract, personification of moral predicates of perfection. He warns us against fictional decoration, and against the further concretizing of the ideal through the productive imagination; he warns against giving moral ideals a concrete form and history in novels by literary means, because by doing so, the 'good itself that lies in the idea is thereby (made) suspect and similar to a mere invention' (A570/B598). He says nothing about the possibility of a historical example of human perfection.9 The passage just quoted suggests that we need ideals for orientation, for judgement and imitation, but that we will never attain them, that is, that we cannot exemplify them adequately through our own way of life in our world of experience. The Critique of the Power of Judgement, as already mentioned, identifies 'virtue' as a concept that is not demonstrable in degrees (CJ § 57, 5:343 n.l). This means, first and foremost, that in mankind's practical experience we will never entirely be able to do justice to the ideal, and not, or only secondarily, that, even if a human being could fulfil this ideal, we could not entirely recognize this (in the realm of appearance). On the other hand, practical reason requires of us the full realization of morality. If this requirement is to be meaningful then the fundamental possibility of the given existence in experience of a perfect human being and a perfect human community must exist. How do these fit together? At this systematically problematic point, Kant's religious philosophy comes into play in the shape of two pieces of doctrine: firstly, in the doctrine of the 'Saint of the Gospels' (des 'Heiligen des Evangelii'), in which he offers a historical example of the ideal of human moral perfection, and secondly in the doctrine of the true visible church, which is the representation through which we can experience the ideal of the invisible church. II I shall begin by dealing with the first piece. The second chapter of Kant's Religionsschrift (Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason)10 concerns itself with 'the conflict between the good and the evil principle for

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sovereignty over man'. In the first section of this chapter he talks about the 'personified idea' of the good principle, first in the abstract, and then in concrete terms. Kant works with the Platonic figures of archetype and copy. The starting point for reflection is the concept of the creation of the world, and this within the framework of the complete Kantian project of reconstructing the sense (of our understanding) of reality's completeness, taking as a basis man's moral understanding of himself. In the Religionsschrift, the postulates of the Critique of Practical Reason are

taken to be true. That which (seen from the point of reason) alone can move God to create a world and that which can, thus, be the purpose of creation, is the realization of the highest good (outside Himself). This highest good can only be 'mankind (rational earthly existence in general) in its complete moral perfection' and 'with such perfection as the prime condition, happiness as the direct consequence, according to the will of the Supreme Being' (Rel 6: 60). Everything else, as it is and occurs, is and occurs in order to attain this goal. Kant now reconstructs the ideal of moral perfection in the sense of an archetype which directs both God's relationship with his creation and human efforts to attain practical reason. He does this referring closely to the prologue to the Gospel according to St John, which was much influenced by Platonism. The core of the reconstruction is the identification of the ideal of moral perfection with God's Word and with God's Son. The different levels refer to St John's two central thoughts: that the Word is with God in the shape of his son who was begotten from all eternity; and that the Word was made flesh, that it took on human nature to lead us to salvation. For Kant's personalist metaphysics of reason, it is, first of all, essential that man in his role as a rational being in the world should differ from any mere thing or anything merely made, and that he should express his relationship with the divine: therefore the symbolic characterization of the divine archetype as the only begotten Son: 'this man alone pleasing to God, is in him from all eternity'; the idea of him proceeds from God's being: he is, therefore, not a created thing, but the only begotten son of God; 'the Word (the Fiat!), through which all other things are and without which nothing that is made, would exist' (Rel 6: 60). Secondly, it is essential for Kant's anthropology that the ideal of moral perfection should lie within us. It is essential that, on the one hand, we should be categorically bound to the ideal of our reason, but, on the other hand, that it should not be apparent on the basis of the experience which we generally have with the behavioural tendencies of man in the company of his kind, how man of himself comes to feel bound to treat

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the precepts of such an ideal as the basis for imitation. As the first chapter of the Religionsschrift attempts to explain, the individual is, as a human amongst humans, provided with a deep-rooted propensity to evil ['Hang zum Bösen'], a propensity to represent his sensible-empirical existence as the absolute truth; a propensity for which he alone is responsible. From this point of view, it is incomprehensible how human nature 'could have even been receptive of the idea of moral perfection (Rel 6: 60). Therefore, says Kant, it makes sense for us to understand (symbolically) the forming of an ideal which creates a categorical duty for us as coming from God, and to make it understandable to ourselves in terms of the descent of the archetype from heaven, its acceptance of humanity, its incarnation and the abasement of the Son of God. The ideal of moral perfection can, under the human condition, be thought of only as good intentions and proving oneself impeccable in the face of the trials and tribulations of empirical self-love; it can be thought of only as accomplished 'virtue in battle': This ideal of a humanity pleasing to God (hence of such moral perfection as is possible to an earthly being who is subject to wants and inclinations) we can represent to ourselves only as the idea of a person who would be willing not merely to discharge all human duties himself and to spread about him goodness as widely as possible by precept and example, but, even though tempted by the greatest allurements, to take upon himself every affliction, up to the most ignominious death, for the good of the world and even for his enemies. For man can frame to himself no concept of the degree and strength of a force like that of a moral disposition except by picturing it as encompassed by obstacles, and yet, in the face of the fiercest onslaughts, victorious. (Rel 6: 61) On the one hand, a human being knows he is bound to the idea of moral perfection. But he also knows that he has a deep rooted propensity to evil for which he alone is responsible. He knows that he is therefore never free of guilt, and hence unworthy of the ideal of holiness. The bridge between these divergent insights is a practical faith, the hope of and confidence in renouncing evil through a revolution of one's disposition, and the hope of and confidence in continuously winning the battle with the temptations of self-love, irreproachably without weakness or relapse, in accordance with the archetype (Rel 6: 61f.). As far as the objective reality of this idea is concerned, it stands or falls with the congruence (or rather the identity) of reason and morality. Whoever knows himself to be bound to this, also knows that he is, in

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principle, able to meet its requirements. If this were not possible its categorical requirement would make no sense. One does not have to look to the past or present for a person whose life demonstrates that this ideal of moral perfection in the sense mentioned is not a chimera but something a human being is able to realize in time. The ideal which we make comprehensible through the suggested theologoumena is a guideline for our own legislative reason. 'There is no need, therefore, of any example from experience in order for us to take the idea of a human being who is morally pleasing to God and make it a model for us; the idea as a model is already present in our reason' (Rel 6: 62). On the other hand: if practical reason demands of us that we prove ourselves morally irreproachable during our lives, then 'an experience must be possible in which the example of such a human being is given (to the extent that one can at all require and expect to discover evidence of inner moral disposition in an external experience)' (Rel 6: 63). The controversy at the time concerning the ideal of perfect humanity was related to the alternative: Socrates or Jesus. Kant (along with Rousseau and in contrast to the Encyclopaedists) sees in the Jesus of the Gospels a man of whom history, or at least general opinion, which cannot with good reason be doubted, reports that he 'exhibited in himself, through teaching, conduct and suffering, the example of a human being well-pleasing to God ... [and] had, thus, brought about an incalculably great moral good in the world, through a revolution in the human race' (Rel 6: 63; see also Rel 6: 158). We judge the historical person of Jesus by measuring the image that the reports paint of his life against the ideal we carry of the god-pleasing human being in our mind. In connection with this Kant discusses the question of whether it makes sense to attribute supernatural characteristics to the man Jesus, characteristics such as his being conceived supernaturally and the related qualities of 'unchanging purity of will, gained not through effort but innate' (Rel 6: 64). Kant objects to this for pragmatic reasons: if this is done, the historical Jesus loses his function for us as an 'example to be emulated' (Rel 6: 64). 'The elevation of such a holy person above all the frailties of human nature would rather, so far as we can see, hinder the adoption of the idea of such a person for our imitation' (Rel 6:64). In the first part of the Religionsschrift, Kant sees frailty (Gebrechlichkeit) in contrast to dishonesty (Unlauterkeit) and maliciousness (Bösartigkeit) as the mildest expression of an evil heart. There, he categorizes it as 'the general weakness of the human heart in complying with the adopted maxims' (Rel 6: 29). In a note to the second edition, Kant seems in the second part to say something different about this question: 'To conceive

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the possibility of a person free from innate propensity to evil by having him born of a virgin mother is an idea of reason consistent with, as it were, a moral instinct which is difficult to explain and yet undeniable'. Nevertheless, he wants to maintain this theoretically difficult concept, which makes sense in practice, if only as a model for us 'as a symbol of humankind raising itself above temptation to evil (and withstanding it victoriously)' (Rel 6: 80). To my mind, these two passages seem to be compatible only if Kant means something different by 'frailty' in each: on the one hand (with reference to Jesus) frailty is a possible, but only possible weakness which makes temptation meaningful and its resistance virtuous in human terms; on the other hand (with reference to us 'normal' human beings) 'frailty' is meant to be understood in the sense of an incurred propensity to weakness which requires a state of already acquired weakness. Whether one counts frailty as relating to unspoilt human nature which can nevertheless be tempted, or as relating to an evil propensity which human nature has incurred, Kant, for his part, pleads for thinking of the historical Jesus, if he is to be seen as an example to be emulated, as a person who also had to fight against the possibility of betraying a good maxim when acting concretely. The treatment of and answer to this problem have a fundamental significance for the question of the requirement and the appropriateness of making sense of the supersensible. Kant's pure rational faith includes theoretical assumptions with a practical intention: God, freedom, immortality and, as we saw, also the idea of perfect humanity in God's Son. Kant knows the limitations of human reason, which can make supersensible characteristics comprehensible to us only through analogy with natural beings, and moral characteristics comprehensible only in human terms (Rel 6: 64f., n.). He speaks here of the 'schematism of analogy' (Schematismus der Analogie). And schematizing here simply means 'rendering the concept of the supersensible comprehensible by analogy with the sensual' (Rel 6: 65). This kind of schematizing of analogies from our world of experience is essential for our theoretical utterances about the divine with practical intention. The language remains inappropriate but is nevertheless valid. The criteria of its correctness are theoretical consistency and ethical-practical suitability. It would, therefore, be a fundamental mistake to fail to reflect on the analogy and to understand the schema as direct and not as a mere comparison, a mere image, a symbol, a metaphor; or, considering the fact that, subjectively, we need a schema (of analogy) for our thought process, to understand a term of the supersensible, it would be a mistake to assume that this schema must be a characteristic of the object itself. According to Kant, 'transforming [the schematism of

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analogy] into a schematism of object-determination (as means for expanding our knowledge) constitutes anthropomorphism, and from the moral point of view (in religion) this has most injurious consequences' (Rel 6: 65). In a significant footnote, from which this quotation is taken, Kant gives two examples of a schematism of analogy, whose form of reflection however requires clarification. Within the framework of religion, that is, when we regard our duties towards people as divine laws, it is essential, with regard to the duty to act morally and with regard to encouraging such acts, to picture God's immeasurable love. To illustrate the concept of this immeasurable love, the Gospel according to St. John uses the image or schema of a father who sacrifices his only son to save people although they offer no guarantee that they themselves are or will be good. To use this schema to expand our understanding of God would lead to theoretically and morally absurd consequences. We cannot, after all, 'through reason form any concept of how a self-sufficient being could sacrifice something that belongs to his blessedness, or rob himself of a possession' (Rel 6: 65), and if we were to use the image directly and as an example for how to behave, then we would also have to consider the cruelty of such a sacrifice to be exemplary. Much the same is true of the second example. Despite our propensity to evil, we consider our freedom to do good or evil to be more precious than the innocent striving of an animal which is governed by its nature. Indeed, we make the immense value of this freedom, tried and tested in battle, comprehensible by transferring the comparison with the innocent animal to the innocent angels in heaven. Here, the schematism of analogy makes good sense, not for the objective classification of the angels' place in the hierarchy but for strengthening us subjectively for the war with evil: Thus a philosophical poet assigns a higher place in the moral gradation of beings to man, so far as he has to fight a propensity to evil within himself, nay, just in consequence of this fact, if only he is able to master the propensity, than to the inhabitants of heaven themselves who, by reason of the holiness of their nature, are placed above the possibility of going astray. (The world with its flaws - is better than a realm of weak-willed angels. Haller). (Rel 6: 65)

III I come now to the second piece of doctrine. Kant's anthropology assumes that man is provided by nature with a disposition towards good

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as well as a propensity to evil. It also implies that a human being, as a man amongst men, is, by nature, exposed to the almost irresistible danger of ruining his moral disposition. The one man amongst many needs a political-civil, a legal state to provide legal stability and security in the face of the danger of a war of all against all. The idea of law is complemented and made complete by the idea of morality. Humans need a legal community as much as they need a community of virtue; they need an ethical-civil community within whose integrating, supporting and sheltering environment they will be able to survive and develop as moral beings. Although it is the individual alone who can take up a moral position, it is all but impossible for him to do so without the support and moral encouragement of a tangible public community. And one cannot work for the realization of the highest good on earth as an isolated individual. For Kant, the realization of morality and a morally acceptable state of affairs is essentially a task for a community. He calls such a public-moral community, in contrast to a politico-civil community, a church. A church serves to enable and promote the highest good as a communal goal: the dignity of being happy and the equivalence of dignity and happiness in life. The founding and the spread of a church is a command of reason: just as it is necessary to leave the legal state of nature it is also necessary to move on from the moral state of nature (Rel 6: 94). Nevertheless, the legal command differs from the moral one. The realization of the legal idea on earth happens, sensibly enough, in the plural, in the form of many individual states and (not in the form of disbanding but) of a federation of independent states in a worldwide legal community. The idea of morality on the other hand makes demands on and unifies all people in the same, immediate way. The idea of a (true) church therefore implies universality, in keeping with its nature and goal. Its values and norms transcend all national laws and borders. Its aim is the full, undifferentiated, direct membership of all people. Kant makes a distinction between the invisible church in the sense of a Platonic concept of reason and the (true) visible church as an attainable public union of people, as a moral community which corresponds to this idea (Rel 6:101). The founding of a (visible) church is a moral duty, which is not however to be fulfilled by the individual person: it is rather an obligation on the species.11 The ideal contains the whole of humankind directly as a 'universal republic based on the laws of virtue' (Rel 6: 98), and in this it differs essentially from a political community. The true church's concept of reason is the concept of God as a moral ruler of the world, and a concept of mankind as God's people under

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moral laws, which are morally founded in the rational freedom of each individual person (Rel 6: 98f.). The visible church requires the public (moral) laws which form and preserve the community and give moral orientation and regulation to the life of every member. And it requires authorities who see themselves as, and who can be seen as, servants of the laws and as administrators of the affairs of the church's invisible supreme head (Rel 6: 101). From a moral point of view, only pure religious faith is able to found a true visible church, but, says Kant, sadly, ecclesiastical faith 'naturally' precedes pure religious faith (Rel 6:106). As he puts it, 'a special weakness in human nature is to blame for the fact that one can never count on that pure faith as much as it may deserve, which is, to found a church on it alone' (Rel 6: 101f.). What does this mean? Kant wishes to say that people do not de facto tend to form a community of the like-minded simply for the sake of the realization of an abstract idea of reason. Human communities, which think of themselves as moral and are based on an understanding of morality as divine law, come to exist, as we know, through the initiative, leadership and teaching of unusually charismatic personalities and through the community-creating power of a connecting original history, which is continuously commemorated. Nor do they come into existence purely as communities which define themselves through the idea of a joint realization of morality. Seduced by the example of earthly rulers, human beings generally tend to assume that realized morality cannot be everything which a god requires of them. People look for a special divine service which consists of ritual acts, acts of prayer, of cult, of sacrifice; acts which, in themselves, have nothing to do with morality. People also require a special ordering of this special service in line with a divine rule. Neither the authority of a founding figure legitimized by God nor the authenticity of his special instructions can be understood by pure reason. To achieve this (legitimacy or authenticity), it is always necessary to claim experience of a special revelation which transcends reason. Every visible church is thus, de facto, founded on a historical belief in revelation and on an outstanding personality who transcends, in his claim to knowledge and a right to instruct, that which can be explained by general reason (Rel 6: 102f.). This kind of historical belief in revelation and ecclesiastical faith has occurred and still occurs often in the history of mankind in different shapes and forms, remarkably so in the Jewish, the Christian and the Islamic faith. Basically, a particular religious community, which aims to build an ethical whole that includes everyone, cannot yet be the true ethical community nor be called the true visible church. This is because

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'each partial society is only a representation or a schema... since each of these societies can in turn be represented, in relation to others of this kind, as situated in the ethical state of nature, with all the imperfections of the latter' (Rel 6: 96, my italics). It is not entirely clear what Kant means by the expression 'only a representation or a schema'. It does seem clear, however, that a partial ethical-community still differs from the true visible church, not only in degree but also in kind. Seen thus, the expression connotes the 'schema of analogy': there are characteristics in a partial ethical-community which can be put to work as an analogy of the true visible church which is yet to be founded. On the other hand, we are talking here about the ideal and the inadequate (starting-) forms of its empirical realization, and the Platonic context of imagination is manifest: in Platonic terms, particular religious communities are 'mere representations', that is, only copies with deficiencies, shadow images of the true visible image and only representations of the (for Kant) invisible archetype. There cannot be a true visible church in the plural because 'church' in its normative definition means the reality of 'an absolute ethical whole'. The true visible church is, however, reached 'naturally' and inevitably by way of partial churches. Such a partial church or a historical faith in revelation or ecclesiastical faith with its bond to a founder personality, and with its special community-creating original history, with its Holy scripts and dogmas, and with its rites and statutes can, such is the nature of things, claim legitimacy only if it serves as a means to creating the one true religion; if, in other words, it contributes to the communal realization of moral laws on earth (Rel 6: 104). In this sense, it is, for Kant, 'natural' and 'sadly unalterable', that 'a statutory ecclesiastical faith is associated with pure religious faith as its vehicle and as the means of public union of men for its promotion' (Rel 6: 106). It is, however, necessary to differentiate between the different ecclesiastical faiths. Kant believes it is possible that 'in the various churches divided from one another because of the difference in their kinds of faith, one and the same true religion can nevertheless be encountered' (Rel 6: 107f.). But it can be encountered only if, within these divided churches, a distinction is made between historical belief in revelation and statutory ecclesiastical faith on the one hand and, on the other hand, pure religious faith arising from a 'frame of mind given to self-expansion' (Rel 6:109), and only if the claims to validity of the former are relativized in favour of the latter and are honoured only as contingent symbols with a practical purpose (Rel 6:123 n.). Therefore, the differentiation in the attitude of the believers towards 'what constitutes the matter of the veneration of God'

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(Rel 6: 105) is crucial; the awareness that only observance arising from his moral disposition to regard all of a human being's duties as divine commands is of an absolutely binding nature, while the 'solemnities, professions of faith in revealed laws, and the observance of precepts that arise from the form of church' do not constitute real service, 'cannot be seen as being able to bind all human beings universally' (Rel 6:104), but, rather, possess only a historically accidental function of unification and mediation, anchored in the socio-historico-cultural situation, on the way to a true visible church, to the 'actual union of human beings in a whole that accords with this ideal' (sc. of the invisible church) (Rel 6:101). Theoretically, Kant believes that, 'if we turn for it to human nature' there is 'little hope of bringing about in a visible church' the goal of 'reconciling ecclesiastical unity of faith with freedom in matters of faith' (Rel 6:123). Nevertheless, from a practical-pragmatic standpoint, out of a 'moral interest', Kant sees mankind's history of religiousness as a history of progress. Religiousness climbs from the level of superstition, service to false gods and priesthood, via the level of manifold partitioned, only partly moralized ecclesiastical beliefs (asymptotic?) to the final level of a visible church as a public community of all of humankind, which can be experienced under the laws of virtue and experienced as a temporary 'representative' of the idea of an invisible church. 12 Kant is aware of the fact that the 'idea of a people of God' as a 'human organization' is 'never fully attainable ... under the conditions of sensuous human nature' (Rel 6:100). Nonetheless, he is, at the same time, inclined to speak, under certain circumstances, of the 'true (visible) church' in the sense of an 'idea' (still with deficiencies, but even so) which can be experienced. He is also already prepared to speak of a 'schema (of analogy)' of the true visible church, that is, a church which 'displays the (moral) kingdom of God on earth inasmuch as the latter can be realized through human beings' (Rel 6: 102). The decisive condition for such a true church, which is still in conflict because it is still caught up in historical (and therefore necessarily controversial) theories or beliefs (Rel 6: 115), is that 'though indeed divided and at variance with itself in accidental opinions, yet, as regards its essential purpose, it is founded on principles that necessarily lead it to universal union in a single church' (Rel 6:101). Kant clarifies how the schema (of analogy) of the true visible church, understood in this way, must be structured. He does this by referring to the relationship between statutory revelation-based ecclesiastical belief as a mere vehicle for the true visible church as an illusion: Without either renouncing the service of ecclesiastical faith or attacking it, one can recognize its useful influence as a vehicle and at the

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same time deny to it, taken as the illusory duty of divine worship, all influence upon the concept of genuine (that is, moral) religion. Thus, amid the diversity of statutory forms of belief, a mutual compatibility of the adherents to these forms can be established through the basic principles of the one and only religion of reason, toward which the teachers of all such dogmas and observances should direct their interpretations; until, in time, by virtue of the true enlightenment (conformity to law, proceeding from moral freedom) which has now prevailed, the form of a debasing means of constraint can be exchanged, by unanimous consent, for an ecclesiastical form which squares with the dignity of a moral religion, to wit, the religion of a free faith. (Rel 6: 123 n.) In this respect Kant sees in the Jesus of the Gospels the founder of the schema of the true visible universal church. So far, this is only a schema (of analogy), or a deficient image because the Christian church is in conflict within itself and is particularized into different historical doctrines of faith, and because it is also still (in its moral natural-state) ranged alongside other churches with similar historical doctrines of faith. But, as is evident, in the New Testament, Jesus (in contrast to Moses and Mohammed) publicly taught a general moral religion which is universally comprehensible and which is founded on purity of heart. In short: the natural religion. He strongly opposed the primarily historical-statutory belief in revelation and the ecclesiastical belief of his own environment, and he made the general religion of reason the highest condition of any religious faith. For pragmatic reasons he is said, nevertheless, to have added 'certain statutes ... containing forms and observances intended to serve as means for the establishment of a church founded upon those principles (Rel 6: 158). Jesus is thus said to have laid the foundation for the true visible church through his teachings and work, and therefore to have created 'through all this, an incalculably great moral good in the world, through a revolution in the human race (Rel 6: 63). For Kant, it is only dissension on inessentials which still keeps apart the partial religious communities which are based on Jesus' teachings and work and on Holy Scripture. Furthermore, it is only this disagreement on inessentials which prevents them from making the unity of the Christian church more apparent. This dissension, however, is based on a serious misunderstanding, a misunderstanding which takes certain forms and observances, which can be only a contingent vehicle for the promotion of the real religion, to be the reliable, sensible-temporary expression of true religiousness. A general and perspicacious understanding is still missing, the understanding that everything that is historic and statutory

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in the Christian religion has a temporary nature with regard to its function of 'uniting human beings for the promotion of the good' (Rel 6: 121). This provisional arrangement must be dismantled step by step through gradual reform, through reasoned clarification by intelligent teachers of faith and morality, with the aim of helping the general religion of reason and free, mature faith to achieve victory and triumph: The integuments within which the embryo is first formed into a man must be laid aside if the man is to see the light of day. The leading strand of holy tradition, with its appendages, its statutes and observances, which in its time did good service, gradually become dispensable, indeed this becomes a fetter when a human being enters upon his adolescence. (Rel 6: 121) The ecclesiastical forms of Christianity today offer only a schema or schemata of analogy for the true visible church which must be striven towards. Kant demands 'an ecclesiastical form commensurate with the dignity of a moral religion (Rel 6: 123 n.). But he does not give us a clear indication of what this form should be. 13 He does, in fact, finally express doubts that the envisioned manifest unity of the true visible church will ever come to be. How is it possible, asks Kant, under the conditions of sensible human nature, to expect 'to construct something completely straight from such crooked wood?' (Rel 6: 100): Combining a unity of ecclesiastical belief with freedom in matters of faith is a problem toward whose solution the idea of the objective unity of the religion of reason continually urges us, through the moral interest which we take in this religion; although, when we take human nature into account, there appears small hope of bringing this to pass in a visible church. It is an idea of reason which we cannot represent through any [sensible] intuition adequate to it, but which, as a practical regulative principle, does have objective reality, enabling it to work toward this end, i.e. the unity of the pure religion of reason. (Rel 6: 123) According to Kant, in a resignedly-realistic note on the Religionsschrifi, historical faith hinders the unity and universality of the (Christian) church. Still within the 'as yet indispensable shell' one should work diligently, through the continuous development of the pure religion of reason, toward a 'religious faith which illumines the whole world equally'. But one should work 'not that "it will cease" (for it may always be useful

Maximilian Forschner 59 and necessary, perhaps as a vehicle) but that "it can cease"; by which is meant only the intrinsic firmness of pure moral faith' (Rel 6: 135 n.). This last sentence is an appendix to the second edition. It admits the possibility of an inevitable and durable bonding of pure religious faith with shells which cannot be thrown off and the indispensable vehicle of a (probably inevitable) particularizing historical belief (in Platonic terms, for the 'many'?) Did Kant, in the end, toy with the idea of bringing the concept of a true visible church into line with the political-legal idea of a federation of republics? 14 Notes a n d references 1. I quote Kant's works, with the exception of the Critique of Pure Reason, according to volume and page number of the Academy edition [Kants gesammelte Schriften. Herausgegeben von der Königlich Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1902 -]. The Critique of Pure Reason is quoted from the editions A and B. Damian Quinn and Sheila Regan have translated the German text into English. I thank Wolfgang Ertl and Friedo Ricken for advice and criticism. 2. Starting from A 19/B 33: 'In whatever way and by whatever means a cognition may refer to objects, still intuition is that by which a cognition refers to objects directly, and at which all thought aims as a means'. See Martin Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics), 2nd edn. Frankfurt a.M., 1950. 3. It creatively produces the individual as well as the whole in an act of intuition (with regard to intuitus originarius see B72;139;145) 4. See A155/B194: 'If a cognition is to have objective reality, i.e. if it is to refer to an object and have in that object its signification and meaning, then the object must be capable of being given in some way. For otherwise the concepts are empty, and though we have thought by means of them, we have in fact cognized nothing through this thinking but have merely played with presentations.' 5. Here, Kant also speaks of 'demonstrating' in the sense of the mere description of a concept (CJ § 57, 5: 342 n.l). 6. The passage's sequel shows what is meant by 'the mere rule of reflection': 'A monarchical state is represented as a living body when it is governed by constitutional laws, but as a mere machine (such as a hand mill) when it is governed by an individual absolute will; but in both cases the representation is merely symbolic. For there is certainly no likeness between a despotic state and a hand mill, whereas there surely is between the rules of reflection upon both and their causality. Hitherto this function has been but little analysed, worthy as it is of a deeper study.' 7. Kant explicitly refers to Plato's understanding, or rather, to the Platonic understanding of 'idea' (remoulded by Augustine) without, of course, adopting Plato's thinking on the possibility of an intellectual intuition for man: 'What to us is an ideal was for Plato an idea of the divine understanding, an individual object in this understanding's pure intuition, the most perfect of each kind of possible being and the original basis of all copies thereof in [the realm of] appearance.' A568/B596.

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8. Moral ideals differ from aesthetic-artistic ideals insofar as they refer to certain concepts and provide certain rules by which we ate to judge and which are to be complied with, while 'no one can offer an explication nor give a comprehensible concept of the creations of the imagination', and so they also 'provide no rule capable of explication and examination'. A570/B598f. In many respects, technical ideals resemble moral ideals; they differ from the latter essentially, however, insofar as their copy in [the realm of] appearances can be more clearly judged. 9. We know that the important Stoic scholars avoided calling themselves sages, but they were inclined to see their ideal historically realized in the life of Socrates. 10. On Kant's philosophy of religion cf. A. W. Wood, Kant's Moral Religion, Ithaca, NY/London 1970; F. Ricken and F. Marty (eds), Kant über Religion, Stuttgart 1992; N. Fischer (ed.) Kants Metaphysik und Religionsphilosophie, Hamburg 2004. These works, however, do not explicitly take up our topic of making reason intuitive in the context of religion. The last comprehensive (and artificially complicated) monograph on Kant's philosophy of religion, S. R. Palmquist, Kant's Critical Religion, Aldershot 2000, takes it in consideration in chap. 5 'Symbolic Theology and the Nature of God'. It refers to W. B. Gulick, 'The Creativity of the Intellect: From Ontology to Meaning. The Transformation of the Sensible and Intelligible Worlds in Kant's Critical Thought' and C. Ess and W. B. Gulick, 'Kant and Analogy: Categories as Analogical Equivocals', both articles in Ultimate Reality and Meaning 17/2 (1994) 99-108 and 89-99, and to M. Despland, Kant on History and Religion, London 1973. Palmquist rightly emphasizes that for Kant our language about God must always be understood symbolically (p. 92); he also rightly stresses that symbolic language means the construction of several rational analogical models of God's nature (p. 94). But he regrettably does not provide a distinct conceptual and systematic analysis of Kant's 'schematism of analogy' in his philosophy of religion. 11. 'For every species of rational beings is objectively - in the idea of reason destined to a common end, namely to the promotion of the highest good as a good common to all.' Rel. V6: 97. 12. See Rel 6: 102; 106: 'In men's striving towards an ethical commonwealth, ecclesiastical faith thus naturally precedes pure religious faith; temples (buildings consecrated to the public worship of God) were before churches (meetingplaces for the instruction and quickening of moral dispositions), priests (consecrated stewards of pious rites) before divines (teachers of the purely moral religion); and for the most part they still are first in the rank and value ascribed to them by the great mass of people'. 13. 'Considered as the mere representative of a state ruled by God, it really does not seem to have a constitution that resembles a political constitution in its principles; its constitution is neither monarchical, nor aristocratic, nor democratic. It could best of all be likened to a household (family) under a common (though invisible) father, provided that his holy son (meant here is the ideal of the morally perfect humanity in us) knows his father's will and takes his place, makes all members better acquainted with this will, so that they therefore honour the father in him and thus enter into a free, universal and enduring union of hearts.' Rel 6: 102.

Maximilian Forschner 61 14. Rel 6: 123 n.: 'In this it is like the political idea of the rights of a state so far as these are meant to relate to an international law which is universal and possessed of power. Here experience bids us give over all hope. A propensity seems to have been implanted (perhaps designedly) in the human race causing every single state to strive if possible to subjugate every other state and to erect a universal monarchy, but, when it has reached a certain size, to break up, of its own accord, into smaller states. In like manner every single church cherishes the proud pretension of becoming a church universal; yet as soon as it has extended itself and commenced to rule, a principle of dissolution and schism into different sects at once shows itself.'

5 The Categories of the Good as Categories of Moral Action Pavlos Kontos

The title of this chapter suggests that it is legitimate to query the conditions upon which the good is subject to an intuitive approach. The demand for an intuitive approach to the good is formulated in the context of the categorical imperative. When Kant sums up his findings in relation to the three types of the categorical imperative, he notes that they 'bring an idea of reason closer to intuition (Anschauung)' (GMM 4: 436).* In this instance Kant refers to the practical law and its content; an intuitive approach to this content seems to require the use of all three variations of the categorical imperative.2 This is valid only insofar as the moral law, qua practical, is not only real but also principio executionis. On the other hand Kant introduces a second demand, without inserting any further comments: 'in order to provide access to the moral law, it is very useful to bring one and the same action under the three concepts mentioned above and thereby, as far as possible, bring it closer to intuition' (GMM 4: 437). Kant's latter suggestion3 raises a crucial question: in which sense does the intuitive character of the good reside in the intuitive character of moral action? Do we have to detect therein a relation of parallel demands or a relation of foundation? Let us spell out our thesis in advance: the moral law cannot admit of any intuitive content, unless this content has been illuminated by the categories of moral action as such. I will attempt to demonstrate this thesis by means of a corresponding interpretation of the table of the categories of freedom. I Before any further analysis, it is important to investigate the concept of moral action since it forms the foundation of Kantian practical philosophy. 62

Pavlos Kontos 63 It is a commonplace assumption that the Kantian concept of moral action is quite perplexing and even problematic.4 To begin with, Kant maintains that the realization of the action remains morally insignificant, to the extent that it is dependent on empirical conditions and not on the moral will and the moral law (CP 5: 57). In addition, Kant does not hesitate to claim that even the practical awareness of the means (that are necessary in order for the agent to accomplish his ends) has no moral relevance.5 The same seems to be the case generally with respect to the awareness of the Erreichbarkeit of the action. This theoretical strategy inevitably leads to a split of the action into an internal and an external part, only the former being susceptible to genuine moral evaluation.6 Besides, Kant accentuates this tension by maintaining that the maxims of the action do not manifest themselves through the action or in the action, as they remain captured in an internal landscape (Ethics 27: 434) inaccessible even to the agent himself. Despite their public character, actions of this kind do not allow their maxims to be transparent. Furthermore, 'what counts is not actions which one sees but those inner principles of actions that one does not see' (GMM 4: 407). Finally, moral action will be identified with the ultimate action of the choice of the maxims, with the 'Intelligibile Tat' Religion refers to (Rel 6:31). Therefore, it is impossible for Kant to find a way to avoid the identification of moral action with an internal and invisible activity. And yet, on close inspection it appears that there is an alternative approach to this problem. In fact, Kant firmly insists on a constitutive feature of moral action that weakens the aforementioned ambiguities. As a matter of fact, moral action is identified as a being that is subject to a two fold approach: it represents a being that constitutes at the same time a fact (Ereignis), an appearance in the empirical world, and a product of the causality of freedom. This two fold perspective is omnipresent throughout the Critique of Practical Reason and the Lectures on Ethics. It suffices to mention a representative quotation: 'actions on the one side belong under a law which is no law of nature but a law of freedom, but on the other side as also events in the sensible world yet belong to appearances' (CP 5: 65). In keeping with this thought, Kant notices that these two perspectives give access to the same beings (CP 5: 43), focusing on two causal chains that take place 'in the same action' (CP 5: 97). From our point of view, it is worthwhile pointing out that moral action is simultaneously grasped as an event in the sensible world and as a product of freedom. That is to say, when one of these two fold perspectives is annulled, there is no moral action (in the proper sense of the term)

64 The Categories of the Good involved. In other words, moral action necessarily bears the form of an event in the sensible world and, consequently, the intelligible act referred to in Religion is not, properly speaking, a moral action perse, to the extent that it does not allow recognition as a sensible event: there is no moral action without an external side. Two further Kantian theses seem to corroborate our interpretation. Firstly, it is well known that Kant distinguishes between the will (Wille) and the mere wish (Wunsch) (GMM 4: 394).7 This distinction cannot hold true unless we presuppose that the will involves a reference to the realization of the action in the world. Even if the final accomplishment of the action relies on empirical knowledge of the world, it remains true that the will encompasses a moral interest in the realization of its ends. Indeed, this same kind of interest will find its definite expression in the ernstlichen will of the Third Critique (CJ 5: 451); besides, the same interest is presupposed by Kant's argument regarding the relation between the moral will and the supreme good.8 Secondly, it is significant to stress that according to Kant practical omissions (Unterlassungen) do not constitute genuine actions. By contrast, the actions corresponding to the obligations of right have practical relevance only if they represent a fact in the sensible world (Ethics 27: 565). Moral omissions concern our activities in the realm of maximspolicy. That is to say, even if I have adopted the maxim of beneficence, I am not obliged to act always and toward everyone as a benefactor. Failing to act in this way, I do not act badly, but rather I do not act at all: 'moral omissions are not actions' (Ethics 27: 290). The correctness of this thesis aside,9 what matters here is to examine its premise. In fact, Kant maintains that, whilst they represent an intelligible act of choice of maxims, these activities do not constitute moral actions in the proper sense of the term, precisely due to the fact that there is nothing here that could be grasped as an event, Ereignis, or, according to the terms Kant uses in the Lectures, as a Faktum. This remark is highly suggestive of the fact that the distinction between moral actions, judged in light of their invisible motives, and actions judged externally, in light of the right, is not the most radical one. Indeed, it turns out that Kant has drawn a sharper distinction between moral actions in general (moral or juridical ones, that simultaneously represent a sensible event and a product of freedom) and moral omissions that do not represent genuine actions. Accordingly, in what follows we would like to use the concept of moral action in light of the above connotations.

Pavlos Kontos 65 II Despite this preliminary account of moral action, we have not yet touched upon the issue of the good and its intuitive character. The question that arises at this point, and perhaps even more contentiously, is whether any attempt to render the moral law intuitive should presuppose the concept of moral action we have referred to above. The further we follow the thread of the Kantian analysis of the good, the more confused we become. As is well known, the moral law must be grasped without any reference to experience or to any empirical elements, since it can produce the internal unity of freedom on the basis of its pure form. Let us concede in the present context that the reality of freedom is sufficiently depicted by the following Kantian thesis: 'every being that cannot act otherwise than under the idea of freedom is just because of that really free in a practical respect' (GMM 4: 448). The Kantian syllogism then runs as follows: 1. under the condition that it is lawful, freedom represents the foundation of every value ['Freedom is the inner worth of the world. But on the other hand, insofar as it is not restrained under certain rules of conditioned employment, it is the most terrible thing there could ever be' (Ethics 27: 344)];10 2. this lawfulness has to be defined a priori and by contrast to physical causality, and 3. it maintains the internal coherence of a moral nature and its noncontradiction. The theoretical demands depicted above are spelled out in the first formulation of the categorical imperative, that is, the formula of the law of nature (GMM 4: 421). Nature is here defined in a formal manner as 'the existence of things insofar as it is determined in accordance with universal laws' (GMM 4:421). This definition will prove highly important in what follows. The correlation between the universality of the moral law and the aforementioned concept of nature will find its utmost representation in the famous notion of the 'type' introduced in the chapter: 'Of the Typic of pure practical judgement' (CP 5: 67-71). Therein Kant claims that the moral law is not subject to any kind of schematization, on the grounds that it does not correspond to any kind of intuition. Moreover, the only possible form of schema available in the moral field would be the one that projected the moral law onto the concept of a universal law as such,

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or rather, onto the lawfulness (Gesetzmässigkeit) of the law (CP 5: 70). Thus, the schema in question would be a schema modelled upon a concept, that is, a schema without sensibility.11 At any rate, the current argument indicates that the law of nature would constitute the type of the moral law (CP 5: 69-70). In addition, the lawfulness of the law would determine what constituted a consistent nature and, therefore, what constituted an impossibility in the realm of this nature. Consequently, this law would determine what presents itself as 'morally impossible' (CP 5: 70). Nevertheless, it is worth noting that this conclusion holds true only following the presupposition Kant expressively evokes at the end of his analysis: 'to this extent laws as such are the same, no matter from what they derive their determining grounds' (CP 5: 70). In other words, the lawfulness of the law operates as the type of the moral law, on condition that practical reason cannot define more closely the kind of law the moral law consists of, and the kind of manifold that is thereby unified. Following the same line of argument, Kant maintains that practical reason refers to objects in general and not to objects of a certain kind, namely, that freedom produces objects in general that are susceptible to no further determination. Interestingly enough, Kant conceives of freedom as 'causality with respect to objects in general' (CP 5:49). Admittedly, this thesis reflects the Kantian theory of 'noumena', a theory we must leave aside due to the problems it entails. In summing up, the moral law is presented as the law of a nature whatever its content may be, and thus as subject only to the lawfulness of the law. The moral law constitutes the moral world as a world, that is, as a nature, irrespective of the type of this nature. Furthermore, we should note that the moral law as defined above represents the foundation of the good: 'it is the moral law that first determines and makes possible the concept of the good' (CP 5: 64). The derivation of the good from the moral law is possible only insofar as this law has been liberated from any attachment to a particular material content. Consequently, we may infer that intuitive access to the good can be founded exclusively upon the type of the moral law. Ill All things considered, the preceding thesis cannot hold true in the context of Kantian ethics, on the grounds that neither the moral law is a law in general, nor is the moral nature (world) constructed thereby a nature in general, and therefore, nor does the schema of the law rely on the type of lawfulness in general! Throughout the Kantian texts, an alternative interpretation imposes itself.

Pavlos Kontos 67 Firstly, the moral law is a priori not a law in general but rather a law of causality, or more precisely, a law of freedom as causality. The above seemingly inessential determination of the moral law as a law of causality accompanies all the aforementioned references to the lawfulness of the law, thus displacing the centre of gravity of Kantian ethics. It is indeed obvious that the moral law (as it is presented in the antinomies of pure reason) is a law of freedom as causality.12 Similarly, in the Critique of Practical Reason Kant identifies from the outset freedom with causa noumenon (CP 5: 98), with a free causality (CP 5: 100). Likewise, the concept of the will involves an essential reference to causality. In this respect it is indicative that the 3rd chapter of the Grundlegung begins by relating the three terms (that is, will, freedom and causality), insofar as 'the will is a kind of causality' (GMM 4:446). As a matter of fact, the will presupposes freedom to the extent that both are defined as causality (GMM 4: 452). Therefore, it is uncontroversial that 'the moral law is, in fact, a law of causality through freedom' (CP 5: 47). Although they reflect a commonplace interpretation of Kant's practical philosophy, these last remarks call for further discussion. We should query their consequences with respect to our previously developed concept of the type of the moral law. In fact, assuming that the moral law lies essentially in a law of causality, as it is undoubtedly the case, one may wonder why the Typic of practical reason should restrict itself to the type of a law in general, that is, to the lawfulness of the law. One may reasonably wonder whether it is legitimate to suggest that the schema of a particular law, namely of a law of causality, should be different from the schema of lawfulness in general. Our argument will be reinforced once we realize that the concept of causality encompasses a priori a second element, that is, a necessary reference to moral action. Secondly, the moral law is a law of causality regarding moral actions and not objects in general. It is obvious that any description of free causality refers to moral action. Besides, in the Kantian corpus the concept of action (Handlung) always denotes the relation between a cause and its effects, the particularity of moral action residing in the particularity of its cause:13 the cause of moral action is freedom and not natural necessity. Consequently, the moral law, essentially and a priori, refers to moral actions. We should therefore distance ourselves from any interpretation maintaining that the moral law is an autonomous formal principle onto which we should, on a second level, project the moral action in order to

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evaluate its moral worth. This argument seems to take for granted that the moral law is a pre-given criterion with which the moral action has to conform. And admittedly, there are innumerable passages where Kant evokes the notion of conformity (Gemässheit) to the moral law, giving rise to the aforementioned tendency of commentators to treat moral action as something external with respect to the form of the moral law. However, the moral law does not constitute a law for moral action, but a law of moral action. And this entails that the schema of the moral law cannot be defined without a reference to the structure of moral action itself. Consequently, the Kantian thesis according to which freedom is a causality regarding objects in general cannot hold true. By contrast, in keeping with our previous arguments, we should query the necessary and a priori relation between the moral law and moral action. Two passages of the Critique of Practical Reason seem to corroborate our point of view: '[practical reason] must, of course, cognize in a determinate way causality with respect to the action of the will in the sensible world' (CP 5:49); 'I have in the moral law a purely intellectual determining ground of my causality (in the sensible world)' (CP 5: 115). Based on the evidence provided by these passages we can conclude that the moral law is in fact the law of moral action. This implies that practical reason cannot provide any intuitive access to the moral law other than by taking into consideration the structure of moral action. IV The preceding remarks give rise to the possibility of an alternative reading of the Typic. Whilst the last sentences of the Typic admittedly insist on the notion of lawfulness, the concept of moral action (in its two fold nature as an event and as a product of freedom) does intervene decisively in the Kantian syllogism. What is more, it is worthwhile noting that Kant here refers to the 'subsumption of an action possible to me in the sensible world under a pure practical law' (CP 5: 68). In this perspective, it is expected that Kant will relate the schema of the moral law to a law of causality: 'the determination of the will through the law alone without any other determining ground connects the concept of causality to conditions quite other than those which constitute natural connection' (CP 5: 68-9). This passage makes two points: 1. The schema of the moral law should be defined as a schema of the law of causality.

Pavlos Kontos 69

2. The schema of the moral law should also reflect the particularity of a law peculiar to the will and, especially, its difference from the schema of the law of natural causality. On the whole, it turns out that the schema of the moral law cannot be simply reduced to pure lawfulness in general, but that it ought to encompass the traces imposed by a special kind of causality, that is, the causality of moral action.14 In other words, the schema of the moral law turns out to be more material than the type Kant had argued for. As long as the type of the moral law remains formal, it cannot be practical. We might add a final argument. If the schema of the moral law had been reduced to the lawfulness of the law, the Typic would concern exclusively external actions, since there would be no space left for an account of the causality of actions.15 By contrast, provided that the Typic focuses on causality per se, it will concern the whole genre of moral actions, whatever the evaluation of their moral worth may be. The above assumption calls for further philosophical investigation and supplementary textual evidence. We will query below whether, despite the reservations spelled out in the Typic, Kant has ever conceived of the moral law as a genuine law of causality and founded the intuitive access to the moral law upon the schema of the causality of moral action as such. We will argue that the table of the categories of freedom furnishes the proofs we are looking for. V The categories of freedom are introduced in the chapter: 'On the concept of an object of pure practical reason' (CP 5: 57-67). Kant's comment according to which this table is 'intelligible enough in itself (CP 5: 67) shows itself to be more ironic than a reliable note. We have to come to terms with a highly obscure table whose architectural symmetry intends to veil the insufficiency of its foundations. Besides, no less indicative of the vagueness of this table is the fact that only a few commentators have tried to cope with the interpretative problems this table gives rise to, let alone treat it as a central piece of Kantian practical philosophy.16 Three points are worth noting from the outset: 1. The categories of freedom presuppose that the reality of freedom is taken for granted, namely that we recognise the fact of reason (CP 5: 66). 2. Freedom is defined in its entire range, that is, both as spontaneity and as autonomy [in other words, according both to practical and moral principles (CP 5: 67)].

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3. These categories constitute the thread both for the moral decision of the agent and the external judge evaluating a completed moral action. Let us review the three alternative interpretations to which the table of categories lends itself. Kant defines this table as the 'table of the categories of freedom with respect to the concepts of the good and evil' (CP 5: 66). In addition, he has already argued that the good and the evil are the only objects of practical reason (CP 5:58). Following this line of argument, it seems that Bruno Haas' interpretation is justified: 'the categories of freedom are nothing but forms of judgement, to the extent that they determine formally the moral law'.17 And yet, this interpretation is developed at the expense of the autonomy of moral experience. In other words, one must admit that there are no genuine categories of moral action, since the categories of pure reason have already been charged with the role of constituting moral action qua action. Indeed, Haas maintains that there is no need to presuppose categories of moral action qua moral, thus conceding that moral reason is simply a kind of judgement and not a kind of experience. However, our findings concerning the necessary relation between moral law and moral action seem to belie this suggestion. Elsewhere Kant restricts the role of the categories in that they 'subject a priori the manifold of desires to the unity of consciousness of a practical reason' (CP 5: 65). From this point of view, the categories of freedom are called for in order for the agent to determine the relation between his maxims and his desires. Lewis Beck and Roger Benton have subscribed to this interpretation. 18 Nonetheless, this argument cannot be definite for the obvious reason that it takes for granted that the maxims themselves are formulated without presupposing the categories of freedom. On the other hand, Kant introduces a third perspective regarding the status of this table. He maintains that the categories concern 'actions possible through freedom as appearances in the sensible world' (CP 5: 67). As a matter of fact, Gerhard Schönrich and Susanne Bobzien have paid attention to the significance of this passage: 'an action as appearance, being at the same time free and determined by reason, cannot be conceived without the categories of freedom'.19 Freedom is defined as causality and furthermore, with reference to moral actions grasped in their two fold nature as events and as products of free causality. No other alternative, either moral judgement, or the unifying of human desires, can satisfy what is required of a schema of freedom as causality. Hence, the categories of freedom represent the categories of moral action defined in terms of causality. However, it remains to be seen whether there is an essential relation between the categories of moral action and the same categories as

Pavlos Kontos 71

determinations of the good and the evil. Is this relation a pure juxtaposition? Does moral action represent simply the topos of the good? In other words, does the relation between these two kinds of categories simply denote that the attribute 'good' is to be primarily ascribed to moral actions? Only by answering these questions shall our topic be expounded more precisely. VI One may object to our claims by pointing to a seeming paradox arising from our interpretation. In fact, provided that we conceive of the categories of freedom as categories regarding the causality of moral action, we are obliged to cope with the following difficulty: the category of causality cannot occupy but a single place in the table of categories and, particularly, in the first group of the categories of relation. However, this objection is beside the point, since Kant hastens to notice from the outset that: '[the categories of freedom] are rather, without exception, modi of a single category, namely that of causality' (CP 5: 65). We should not diminish the importance of this remark. Kant seems to suggest that the categories of freedom do not constitute anything but categories of moral action grasped in light of causality. The crucial point is that all these categories must be viewed as different approaches to the causality of moral action.20 Given that freedom is nothing but causality, the practical realm is necessarily modelled upon a single category. Let us put to the test our assumption regarding the exclusive role causality is charged with in this context. It is not an exaggeration to claim that this insistence on causality is highly significant and brings about crucial changes to the interpretation of the table of the categories of freedom. It suffices to mention two examples. The first group of categories, the categories of quantity, refers to maxims. According to current interpretations of the Kantian text, the issue in question concerns the universality or the subjective character of maxims. Furthermore, whoever conceives of the categories of freedom as categories of moral action describes the role of this group as follows: without reference to maxims, it is impossible for anyone to perceive an event as a moral action.21 Nonetheless, the above formulation calls for a further explanation. Given that the categories of quantity describe moral action as causality, as do all the categories, the reference to maxims has to function as a reference to a kind of cause. However, it sounds strange to claim that maxims constitute a cause of moral action. Hence, we should concede that the categories of quantity do not concern maxims as moral laws, as subjective axioms or as precepts, that is to say, they do not concern maxims as

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norms, whatever the degree of their universality may be. By contrast, according to the 'incorporation thesis',22 these categories have to refer to the very action of adopting maxims (Rel 6: 24). No norm could postulate the status of a cause: only an action could. Similarly, one may wonder whether the category of personality, the first one in the group of relation, could claim to operate as a kind of cause. Whoever insists on interpreting the categories of freedom as categories of action also interprets the category of personality as follows: 'in contradistinction to a simple event, action is ascribed necessarily to the history of a person'. 23 We completely agree. However, this sentence also requires a further explanation. We should equally presuppose that this reference to personality does not apply either to a concept of moral reasoning or to a kind of essence; it has to refer to a kind of action, the particular action the formulation of our moral character is reduced to. 24 We do not intend to present a detailed account of all the categories. We trust we have provided enough arguments to indicate that the categories of freedom describe freedom as causality, that is, moral action as the pattern free causality is modelled upon. In this perspective, the table of the categories of freedom may be reformulated as follows: 1. Every moral action is conceived as caused by an action of adopting a maxim, whatever its universality may be (quantity).25 2. Every moral action is conceived as encompassing, qua result, an action bearing the form of an event in the sensible world, whatever the evaluation of its maxims may be (quality). 3. Every moral action is conceived as caused by an action of constitution of a moral character (essence), as bringing about a change regarding the condition of the agent qua agent (cause), and as standing in reciprocal relation to the actions of other agents (reciprocity). 4. Finally, every moral action is conceived as caused by an action of submitting our own will to a type of duty, irrespective of whether it refers to the hypothetical or to the categorical imperatives (modality).26 VII And yet, whilst the preceding remarks highlight the meaning of the categories of moral action, our previous question still remains open: in fact, one may wonder why the analytic of practical reason, that is, the definition of the good and the evil, should contain a table of the categories of freedom as categories of moral action. Does our interpretation not belie the original Kantian intention to present a table that illuminates the

Pavlos Kontos 73 concepts of good and evil? The difficulty in question concerns the role of the above ontological27 categories of moral action in the context of the conceptual analysis of the good and the evil. Addressing this final difficulty, we suggest that the categories of moral action provide the foundation for the concepts of the good and the evil. This does not simply mean that the good can appear only insofar as its realization is intended by the moral will and moral action,28 or that the good resides in an attribute to be primarily ascribed to moral actions.29 The hypothesis we would like to put to the test is that any intuitive access to the good presupposes its reduction to the structure of moral action. The above syllogism can be formulated as follows: provided that, (a) the good can be derived only from the moral law, and (b) the moral law resides in a law of causality with respect to moral action, (c) it is legitimate to conclude that the good can be derived only from the law governing free causality, namely, from the categories of moral action. One may draw the same conclusion following the inverse path. In fact, assuming that the categories of freedom concern the concepts of the good and the evil, and that these categories are reduced to the category of causality, one may wonder why the categories of the good and the evil should be categories of causality. What is in question throughout concerns the missing thread relating the categories of the good to the fundamental category of causality. The good is schematized as causality, because the good is schematized on the grounds of the categories of moral action. Conversely, assuming that the good could be defined without any reference to the categories of action, no relation between the good and causality would be conceivable. To put it briefly: practical reason cannot have any intuitive access to the moral law in the absence of the categories of freedom qua categories of moral action. Let us conclude by further explaining the last phrase. It is uncontroversial that the moral law defines the non-contradiction in the moral nature. Moreover, according to the categorical imperative, good is whatever does not oppose the universal moral law as a law of non-contradiction. On the other hand, this law has been defined as a law of causality with respect to moral action. Consequently, the non-contradiction holding in the moral realm cannot be reduced to the pure lawfulness of a law in general, but necessarily makes a reference to the particular law of noncontradiction imposed by the practical causality of moral action. The categories of moral action institute their own peculiar norms of noncontradiction, namely, the material norms of practical non-contradiction. In this sense, morally good is whatever conforms to the categories of moral action, and evil (that is, morally impossible) is whatever contradicts

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these categories. Consequently, it turns out that the categories of moral action determine where the practical non-contradiction resides in. Hence, the table of the categories of freedom lends itself to an alternative reading: contradiction, that is, evil, lies in an action x I will to accomplish:

1. Without willing the action that adopts the corresponding maxim (quantity). 2. Without willing its realization as a fact in the empirical world (quality). 3. Without willing the personality that would recognize this action as its own (essence). 4. Without willing the resulting moral condition of the agent (cause), 5. Without willing the resulting moral condition of the others (reciprocity). 6. Without willing to submit my will to the corresponding maxim conceived as duty (modality). Assuming that this interpretation of the table of the categories of freedom is meaningful, the following conclusions might be valid: 1. The categories of the good, that is, intuitive access to the good, are founded upon the categories of moral action. 2. The table of the categories of freedom 'establishes' the metaphysics of morals in the proper sense of the term, to the extent that it adds to the categories of pure reason only a single 'material' concept (MGN 4: 470), namely the concept of moral action. Notes and references 1. References to Kant are to the Academy Edition: Kants gesammelte Schriften, Berlin 1902 ff. Translations are from the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, P. Guyer and A. Wood (eds), Cambridge 1997 ff. 2. See: T. Pogge, 'The Categorical Imperative' in: O. Hoffe (edit.), Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, V. Klostermann, Frankfurt a. m., 1993, pp. 172-93. 3. Rawls attempts to lessen the significance of this reference to the action itself: J. Rawls, Lectures on the History of Morals, Harvard University Press, Cambridge 2000, pp. 182, 201, 208. 4. See R. Bubner, 'Action and Reason', in: L.W. Beck, Proceedings of the Third International Kant Congress, Reidel, Dordrecht 1972, pp. 225-33. 5. However, one may find some rare passages where the opposite view is supported: Rei 6: 47, 98. 6. See the critical comments by O. Schwemmer, 'Die praktische Ohnmacht der reinen Vernunft', Neue Hefte ßr Philosophie, 22, 1983, pp. 1-24 (especially pp. 3-15); J. Aul, 'Aspekte des Universalisierungspostulats', Neue Hefte für Philosophie, 22, 1983, pp. 62-94 (especially p. 67).

Pavlos Kontos 75 7. G. Prauss, Kant über Freiheit als Autonomie, V. Klostermann, Frankfurt a.m. 1983, p. 78. 8. P. Kleingeld, 'Moral und Verwirklichung', Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung, pp. 44-3, 1990, pp. 4 2 5 ^ 1 . 9. M. Forschner, 'Reine Morallehre und Anthropologie', Neue Hefte ßr Philosophie, 22, 1983, pp. 25-44 (especially pp. 42-43). 10. In contradistinction to Guyer's argument: P. Guyer, Kant on Freedom, Law, and Happiness, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2000, p. 159. 11. See A. Renaut, Kant Aujourd'hui, Aubier, Paris, 1997, p. 310. 12. See H. D. Klein, 'Formale und materiale Prinzipien in Kants Ethik', Kant Studien, 60, 1969, pp. 183-97 (especially p. 184); Schwemmer, ibid., p. 294; K. Cramer, 'Metaphysik und Erfahrung', Neue Hefte ßr Philosophie, 30/31, 1991, pp. 15-68 (especially p. 55). 13. See V. Gerhardt, 'Handlung als Verhältnis von Ursache und Wirkung' in: G. Prauss (ed.), Handlungstheorie und Transzendentalphilosophie, V. Klostermann, Frankfurt a. m. 1986, pp. 98-131 (especially p. 107). 14. It is worthwhile noting that the reference to moral action does not establish the applicability of the moral law but its intuitive character; this intuitive moment is essentially different from the simple 'unity of the supra-sensible' as suggested by V. Kokoszka, La mediation de l'experience, Cerf, Paris 2005, pp. 19-73. 15. See Renaut, ibid., p. 311 and G. Krüger, Philosophie undMoral in der kantischen Ethik, Mohr, Tübingen 1967, pp. 103-11. 16. The following is a selection of studies on the categories of freedom: L. W. Beck, A Commentary on Kants CPR, Phoenix Books, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1960; R. Benton, 'Kant's Categories of Practical Reason as Such', Kant Studien, 71, 1980, pp. 181-201; S. Bobzien, 'Die Kategorien der Freiheit bei Kant' in H. Oberer H. - G. Seel (eds), Kant: Analysen, Probleme, Kritik, Königshausen und Neumann, Würzburg 1988, pp. 193-220; C. Graband, 'Das Vermögen der Freiheit: Kants Kategorien der praktischen Vernunft', Kant Studien, 96, 2005, pp. 41-65; B. Haas, 'Die Kategorien der Freiheit' in: H. Oberer H. - G. Seel (eds), Kant: Analysen-Probleme-Kritik, Königshausen und Neumann, Würzburg 1997, pp. 41-76; Kokoszka, ibid.; Renaut, ibid.; M. Riedel, Urteilskraft und Vernunft, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.m. 1989; G. Schönrich, 'Die Kategorien der Freiheit als handlungstheoretische Elementarbegriffe' in: G. Prauss (ed.), Handlungstheorie und Transzendentalphilosophie, pp. 246-70; J. Silber, 'Der Schematismus der praktischen Vernunft', Kant Studien, 56, 1966, pp. 253-73; J. Simon, 'Kategorien der Freiheit und der Natur' in: D. Koch, K. Bort (eds), Kategorie und Kategorialität, Königshausen und Neumann, Würzburg 1990, pp. 107-30. 17. Haas, ibid., p. 54. 18. Beck, ibid., p. 153; Benton, ibid. 19. Bobzien, ibid., p. 203. It is obvious that the categories of freedom do not constitute moral actions simply as appearances but as appearances that are at the same time moral phenomena caused by freedom. If this explanation is meaningful, the objections presented by Graband, ibid., are irrelevant. 20. To a certain extent we agree with Riedel's thesis {ibid., p. 170), despite our reservations regarding the fact that his interpretation does not allow for any consideration of the relation between the category of causality and the concept of the good.

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21. Schönrich, ibid., p. 261; Bobzien, ibid., pp. 208-9. 22. H. Allison, Kant's Theory of Freedom, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1990, p. 40ff. 23. Schönrich, ibid., pp. 262-3. 24. See H. Heimsoeth, 'Freiheit und Charakter', in: G. Prauss (ed.), Kant. Zur Deutung seiner Theorie von Erkennen und Handeln, Kiepenhauer und Witsch, Köln 1973, pp. 292-309. 25. This analysis could be taken as a response to Bittner's arguments against the Kantian definition of the will: R. Bittner, 'Handlungen und Wirkungen' in: G. Prauss (ed.), Handlungstheorie und Transzendentalphilosophie, pp. 13-26 (especially pp. 13-21). 26. For this unusual interpretation of the categories of modality, see Schönrich, ibid., pp. 264-5. 27. Let us use this term in its phenomenological meaning. 28. See the analysis of Aristotelian inspiration proposed by P. König, Autonomie und Autokratie, de Gruyter, Berlin 1994, p. 63. 29. This is the only relation of the two tables of categories Bobzien (ibid., p. 202) has pointed to.

6 Kant: Sciences, Systems and Organisms Ioli Patellis

In his 'System und Geschichte in Kants Philosophie', Gerhard Lehmann 1 raises the question whether Kant's references to living organisms in connection with the idea of a system are to be taken as metaphors or, alternatively, as biological explanations. He argues2 that such comparisons between organisms and systems cannot be metaphorical as they are not limited to drawing analogies, but refer to organisms using the full biological terminological apparatus of the second part of the Critique of the Power of Judgement and indeed the corresponding scientific terminology is appended in parentheses, as for instance at A832f/B860f. of the Critique of Pure Reason? They should thus be taken much more seriously. This, however, does not mean that they constitute biological explanations of reason's aspirations to systematicity. For this, according to Lehmann, would amount to changing the subject;4 it would be to read Kant not as philosophy but as biology and therefore as science.5 He suggests, instead, that for Kant the living organism is the symbol of the idea of a system. A symbol, according to Kant, is a type of hypotyposis, the presentation of a concept in sensory terms (CJ 5: 351). Concepts of the understanding are schematized in that the corresponding intuition is given a priori. Ideas, on the other hand, 'which only reason can think, and to which no sensible intuition can be adequate' (CJ 5: 351) are presented symbolically: the idea is provided with a sensible intuition, the symbol, 'with which the power of judgement proceeds in a way merely analogous to that which it observes in schematization, i.e., it is merely the rule of this procedure, not of the intuition itself, and thus merely the form of the reflection, not the content, which corresponds to the concept' (CJ 5: 351). Kant further clarifies his thought when in writing of symbols as containing indirect presentations of the relevant concept, he holds that they do so: by means of an analogy (for which empirical intuitions are also employed), in which the power of judgement performs a double task, 77

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first applying the concept to the object of a 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. (CJ 5: 352) Guyer seems to interpret Kant as holding that symbolism is based on the similar way in which 'ideas are connected when we think either of the symbol or of what is symbolized',6 so that the procedure in question is that of determining the rule of reflection by abstraction. Lehmann, however, remarks that first the rule for reflecting is abstracted and then it is made concrete anew.7 If we develop this suggestion, we have the following procedure: one first applies the idea to the appropriate object of a sensible intuition in order to determine, by abstraction, the required analogy or what is common to the structure of reflection in the two cases. One then adds the categorial and conceptual trappings of the symbol to this abstract structure. The structure of reflection on the symbol is, therefore, a concrete object. This second step of the procedure, by which the rule for reflecting is concretized, is of particular importance. For, in order to determine that an analogy holds between the structure of reflection on an idea and the structure of reflection on its symbol, one must already have knowledge of the first structure. So that, unless the rule for reflecting is concrete, the symbol is redundant. Finally, one follows this concrete structure in reflecting on the object symbolized. The presentation of an idea thus requires an analogy between the structure of reflection on some sensible intuition and the structure of reflection on the object of the idea. This is Kant's explicit doctrine of symbolism; and it seems to imply that in order for an object of intuition to be a symbol of an idea, it is enough that there be an analogy between the structure of reflection in the two cases. The same implication can be drawn from Kant's example of a handmill as a symbol of a despotic monarchy and a living organism as a symbol of a monarchy subject to a civil constitution (CJ 5: 352). However, Kant's discussion of beauty as a symbol of the good, a more elaborate illustration of his doctrine, seems to set further constraints on symbols. And I am here referring to Kant's claim that '[t]aste as it were makes possible the transition from sensible charm to the habitual moral interest without too violent a leap' (CJ 5: 354), that is, that the development of taste, the capacity for aesthetic judgement, is conducive to the development of a moral disposition, and thus to the realization of the idea of the morally good. In other words, beauty is a symbol of the good, not only because the four points of analogy Kant mentions in § 59 of the Critique of the Power of Judgement hold between aesthetic and moral judgements, but

Mi Patellis 79

also because, in virtue of these analogies, a person's capacity to make aesthetic judgements assists in developing her capacity to make moral ones, that is, it assists in the realization of the idea of the good. I am, thus, suggesting that symbols do not only have a theoretical or cognitive function but also a practical one. They are required not only for the presentation of the idea in sensory terms, but also for its realization. They, thus, pertain to the essential nature of ideas, their normative status, which binds the person who thinks the idea to act in such a way as to promote its realization.8 What I shall do in the sequel is develop Lehmann's suggestion that the organism is a symbol of a system. More specifically, I shall argue that the organism is a symbol of the idea of a system of cognitions, that is, of the idea of a science, and, as such, reflection on organisms facilitates the systematization of our knowledge. It may seem a trivial point that organisms are symbols of the idea of a system of cognitions, for organisms are systems, they have systematic unity, and are thus symbols of all ideas, since ideas are the result of the totalizing, systematizing activity of reason. However, the analogies between organisms and systems of cognitions I shall draw attention to go beyond the trivial observation that reflection on organisms as systems is structurally similar to reflection on systems of cognitions. And it is these further points of analogy that are germane to the teleological judgements that facilitate the realization of the idea of a system of cognitions. Analogies between organisms and systems/reason In the Critique of Pure Reason, and elsewhere, Kant does indeed draw a number of analogies between systems and organisms or reason and organisms. Organisms lend themselves to this analogical use, on the one hand, because they are systems and, on the other, because they are the only naturally occurring instances of the idea of a system, of the product par excellence of reason. Thus, in the 'Architectonic of Pure Reason' of the First Critique, where Kant's fullest views on the idea of a system (of cognitions) are expressed, Kant writes of this idea that it 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 scientific rational concept thus contains the end and the form of the whole that is congruent with it ... The whole is therefore articulated (articulatio) and not heaped together (coacervatio); it can, to be sure, grow internally

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{per intus susceptionem) but not externally {per appositionetn), 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. (A833/B861) Further on at A835/B863 Kant writes that: [t]he systems [of the sciences] seem to have been formed, like maggots, by a generatio aequivoca from the mere confluence of aggregated concepts, garbled at first but complete in time, although they all had their schema, as the original seed, in the mere self-development of reason, and on that account are not merely each articulated for themselves in accordance with an idea but... Finally, Kant further writes in the Architectonic that the idea of a system 'lies in reason like a seed, all of whose parts still lie very involuted and are hardly recognizable even under microscopic observation' (A834/B862). Kant also compares reason with organisms in the Preface to the 2nd edition of the Critique of Pure Reason: pure speculative reason is, in respect of principles of cognition, a unity entirely separate and subsisting for itself, in which, as in an organized body, every part exists for the sake of all the others as all the others exist for its sake, and no principle can be taken with certainty in one relation unless it has at the same time been investigated in its thoroughgoing relation to the entire use of pure reason. (Bxxiii) And he also writes that it is in the nature of a pure speculative reason that it contain 'a truly articulated structure of members in which each thing is an organ, that is, in which everything is for the sake of each member, and each individual member is for the sake of all' (Bxxxvii-xxxviii). Finally, in the Prolegomena Kant writes that pure reason constitutes so thoroughly connected a sphere, that one can do nothing to any part of it without affecting all the others, for 'the validity and use of every part depends on the relations in which it itself stands to the others in reason, and as with the limb of an organized body the end of every part can only be derived from the complete concept of the whole' (Prol 4: 263 - my translation). Systems of cognitions The most detailed treatment of the Kantian conception of a system of cognitions is to be found in the Methodology of the First Critique, in the

MiPatellis 81 chapter on 'The Architectonic of Pure Reason', where Kant discusses the systematicity of knowledge as the hallmark of the scientific. In order to understand the significance of this chapter, we should note that for Kant sensibility and understanding alone, unassisted by reason, cannot yield science, that is, a body of empirical laws explanatory of phenomena, because the necessary presuppositions, methodological principles, hypotheses and so forth are lacking. The Kantian case is somewhat analogous to the view that observation alone, without the help of theories, hypotheses, perspectives and so on, does not result in science. It is reason, on the Kantian view, that either directly or indirectly supplies the latter through its regulative principles or ideas, injunctions to realize certain ends, which motivate and regulate inquiry.9 In the 'Architectonic' Kant focuses on these aspects of the idea of a system10 that enjoin one to relate science to the theoretical and practical ends of reason, and ultimately the highest good. Thus, Kant's doctrine of the systematicity of science goes beyond the general thesis that reason is required for the achievement of scientific knowledge. For it designates certain specific traits of science, for which reason is responsible, that are by and large additional to what is generally held to be characteristic of science and are thus particular to the Kantian conception. The points Kant makes in the 'Architectonic' about systems of cognitions are the following: First, in order that cognitions constitute a science they have to be unified into a system by reason. We shall see what this entails when we discuss the other points. Second, cognitions support and advance the essential ends of reason only when systematically unified, that is, only when they constitute a system. Why this is so becomes apparent when we consider the next point. Third, then, a system is a body of cognitions unified under one idea, whose content is determined by the ends of reason and ultimately by its highest end (the highest good). This idea organizes the manifold of cognitions into the form of a whole, by determining a priori the scope of the system, that is, which cognitions belong to it, and the position of the cognitions in it, that is, their relations to the idea and to each other. As a result, the cognitions do not form a mere aggregate, but an articulated whole. Formally, an aggregate differs from an articulated whole in that cognitions can be externally added to the first, but only internally to the second. That is, although cognitions can be haphazardly added to an aggregate, they can only be added to an articulated whole according to a principle (the relevant idea) that determines the relations obtaining between cognitions, and cognitions and idea; in consequence of which a cognition can only be added to a system, if a suitable relatum of the relations making up the system

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is missing. Kant draws an analogy with organisms and their organs to make this structure clear.11 Kant further clarifies what he means by the unity of systems, which he calls 'architectonic', when he juxtaposes it to what he here (as against the Critique of the Power of Judgement and the First Introduction to it) calls

'technical' unity. Technical unity arises when a manifold of cognitions is not entirely lacking in principled organization or structure, but is structured either by similarity or by arbitrary ends, that is, by the use one can make of cognitions in furthering empirical ends. Architectonic unity, on the contrary is the kind of unity possessed by a manifold of cognitions when it is structured by the essential ends of reason. Kant tells us, on the one hand, that systems of cognitions are derived 'from a single supreme and inner end' (A833/B861), 'the chief end of reason' (ibid.) and, on the other, that they promote the essential ends of reason. As regards the latter, he writes that '[mathematics, natural science, even the empirical knowledge of humankind, have a high value as means, for the most part to contingent but yet ultimately to necessary and essential ends of humanity' (A850/B878). And the philosopher 'controls all [(rational) cognitions] and uses them as tools to advance the essential ends of human reason' (A839/B868). So it would seem that a bi-directional relation of 'production' obtains between ends and cognitions and possibly between pairs of cognitions. The former is presumably a logical relation of entailment, the latter a means-end relation. A fourth point made by Kant is that the idea of a science is normative. Kant distinguishes between the scholastic and the cosmopolitan concepts ('Schulbegriff and 'Weltbegriff) of a science in respect of its aims: according to the former concept the science 'is regarded only as one of the skills for certain arbitrary ends', while according to the latter the science 'concerns that which necessarily interests everyone' (A839 n./B867 n.). Philosophy in particular, which Kant treats in detail, falls under the scholastic concept until such time as it should coincide with its idea, with 'the archetype for the assessment of all attempts to philosophize' (A838/B866), which carries with it the aim of relating all sciences to the essential ends of reason (A838-9/B866-7). As an archetype, then, with which one assesses actual philosophical systems, the idea of philosophy is a norm, and so presumably are the ideas of the other sciences.12 A fifth point concerns the system of all sciences. Sciences are not only themselves systems, but are all also 'purposely united with each other as members of a whole in a system of human cognition, and allow an architectonic to all human knowledge' (A835/B863), that is, they are component subsystems of the system of all sciences with philosophy at its apex

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(A835/B863, J Logic 9: 46). Philosophy holds a designated place in the system of sciences, for, amongst other things, 'philosophy is the science of the relation of all cognition to the essential ends of human reason (teleologia Talionis humanae)' (A839/B867). More specifically, philosophy views all other sciences as means and uses them 'as tools to advance the essential ends of human reason' (A839/B867). Although all sciences are valuable as means to arbitrary ends, their ultimate value derives from their constituting means to the 'necessary and essential ends of humanity' (A850/B878), of which the highest is the final end (A840/B868). And a fundamental characteristic of the philosopher is the ability to see the conformity of all cognitions and skills to the highest ends of human reason (J Logic 9: 25). Thus, it is the task of philosophy to forge the means-end connection between the two. Organisms and nature as a system of ends We turn now to Kant's teleological conception of an organism. The points in his treatment of organisms relevant to the analogy we are drawing are the following. First, the organism is produced according to an idea and organized by it into a systematic whole. An organism is an end or, more properly, the actualization of an end. This means that, as concerns its form, it is not produced by the causality of the laws or mechanism of nature, but by that of an end, a final cause (CJ 5: 369-70, 360). As the realization of an end, the organism should thus be conceived as falling under an idea which determines a priori both everything that is contained in it, that is, its scope, as well as the form and combination of its parts, that is, their location in the whole (CJ 5: 373 f.). In addition, the parts of an organism combine into the unity of a whole by being reciprocally causes and effects of their form and manner of combining with each other (CJ 5: 373, 376). Thus, in an organism every part is both means and end: it is a constituent of the organism both as a means to the realization of its other constituents, and consequently of the whole, and as an end brought about by their operation (CJ 5: 373-4, 376). 'Nothing in it is in vain, without an end, or ascribable to a blind mechanism of nature' (CJ 5: 376). Finally, because an organism is a natural product and not an artefact produced by a rational being in realization of an end, 13 the idea is not employed by rational beings so as to produce the organism, but so as to acquire knowledge of the form of its parts and their relations to each other, since they cannot be identified and cognized but through their contribution to the realization of the whole end (CJ 5: 373, 376-7).14

84 Sciences, Systems and Organisms The analogy with systems of cognitions is obvious. We acquire knowledge of the content both of systems, that is, their constituent cognitions, and of organisms, that is, their matter or raw materials, through the understanding. This content is organized into a systematic whole by an idea that determines a priori the scope of the whole and the relations of its constituents to each other and to the whole. In fact, as we have seen, it is especially in this respect that Kant compares systems to organisms. Systems and organisms have the same kind of unity. Moreover, the constituents of both systems and organisms are related by a bi-directional relation of 'production': in the case of systems, a logical relation of entailment and a means-end relation, and in the case of organisms, a bi-directional causality of final causes and efficient ones. Finally and most significantly, both systems and organisms are related to ends, and, as we shall see in the sequel when we discuss the place of organisms in nature as a system of ends, they are related ultimately to the highest essential end of reason. Second, as an idea, the idea of an organism has normative character - as does the idea of a system; it sets normative standards to which organisms of that species ought to conform, although they may in fact deviate from them in particular instances. For example, a human being may have one leg rather than two and its heart may not function properly. Direct textual evidence for the normative character of ideas of organisms is available in the Critique of Pure Reason (A317-8/B374-5), and more elaborately in § 10 of the First Introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgement where, after stressing that aesthetic judgements are not psychological generalizations but normative statements, Kant discusses the normative status of teleological judgements. He writes that '[a] teleological judgement compares the concept of a natural product as it is with what it ought to be' (F Int 20: 240). Thus, an eye differs from a stone which can be used to batter something on or build a house on, in that only of the eye can one say that it ought to be suitable for seeing - but not of the stone that it ought to be suitable for building on (F Int 20: 240). Discussion of the normativity of teleological judgements drops out of the introduction proper to the Third Critique, as does discussion of the normativity of aesthetic judgements - although of course the latter is discussed at length in the first part of this work. However, the notion that ideas of organisms are norms is indirectly supported by the text. Thus, Kant twice writes concerning concepts of reason in general, that is, ideas, that, contrary to concepts of the understanding, they require symbols rather than schemata for their realization, precisely because no sensory intuition can be appropriate {angemessen) to them (CJ 5: 351). This, of course, seems to be belied by the fact that

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organisms are objects of experience. And, indeed, Kant points out that, contrary to what is the case with other ideas, 'for which no appropriate object can be given in experience', objects of ideas of organisms are to be found in nature; and in this ideas of organisms differ from all other ideas (CJ 5:405). However, he subsequently partly retracts this statement when he writes that, although the objects of such ideas are given in experience, they 'cannot even be determinately (let alone completely appropriately) judged in accordance with the idea' (CJ 5: 405). This seeming vacillation in Kant's thought disappears if we construe teleological judgements normatively. For then, organisms can both be objects of experience and fall short of the relevant idea (when they deviate from the normative standards set by it), while in principle there could be a perfect fit between idea and organism, although probably no organism conforms to its idea in all its minutest details. In fact Kant holds that one of the most wondrous traits of organisms is their ability to adapt their form to the exigencies of internal and external circumstances (malformations in growth, injuries to the organism) and thereby produce anomalous creatures (CJ 5: 372), that is, organisms that do not conform to their idea. Organisms organize themselves by appropriate deviations from the exemplary as called for by their preservation given the circumstances (CJ 5:374). Comparing them to watches, Kant notes, that organisms make good their defects in various ways, while watches do not (CJ 5: 374).15 A third, most important, aspect of organisms is their place in the Kantian conception of the whole of nature as a system of ends (CJ §§ 67, 82, 83, 84), for through this conception organisms are related to the highest good, the union of morality with the happiness proportionate to it,16 thus to moral values, and to political ones as a means to the realization of them. The idea of nature as a system of ends constitutes a principle of reflective judgement, which directs us to conceive the whole of nature, organic and non-organic, natural and, as I shall argue, human-made, as a system of ends aimed at promoting the highest good. In this system, humans hold a designated place:17 as moral beings they are the final end of creation, while as natural ones they are the ultimate end of nature. As regards the first point, humans are the only beings in the world that can form and set for themselves a necessary, unconditional end, the highest good in the world possible through freedom (CJ 5: 450), to which they can subordinate the whole of nature, that is, which they can conceive as the end of the system of nature, as the final end of creation (CJ 5: 435-6). Therefore, humans provide the system of nature with an end that satisfies two requirements. Whereas all ends within nature are empirically conditioned (CJ 5: 441) and so cannot provide a categorical

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answer to the question 'Why does X exist?', for any X in nature, the highest good is unconditional (CJ 5:435,450,453-4) and can thus provide such an answer and thereby serve as the final end of nature. In addition, the highest good renders unique and determinate the system of ends. In § 82 of the Critique of the Power of Judgement, Kant considers alternative conceptions of nature as a system of ends, one progressing from the plant through the animal kingdom to humans, the other in the reverse direction. The first serves the multiplicity of uses, suggested by their understanding, to which humans put nature - presumably happiness which takes a multiplicity of forms; the second serves to achieve an equilibrium in the productive and the destructive forces of nature. The point is that we have no way of choosing between these ends, so if we confine ourselves to ends within nature, the outcome is a multiplicity of systems. It is only when we leave the realm of nature and adopt the moral point of view determined by reason that we find an unconditional and unique end. 18 As regards the second point, human beings are the ultimate end of nature, because they are the only beings within nature capable of forming the concept of an end and of making, through their reason, a system of ends out of an aggregate of purposefully formed things (CJ 5: 426-7). These two abilities are necessary in order that humans be able to approach the whole of nature ideologically. Kant here seems to be saying that the teleological approach to mechanistic nature is a creation of humans and is dictated by their requirements as empirical beings which ought to become moral. Since humans ought to become moral and attempt to realize the demands of reason, they ought to do whatever advances the ends of reason. A problem arises because humans as noumena are bound by reason, by the a priori rational justification of values, to promote these values, but because of their empirical nature, their psychological make-up, they require some sort of encouragement in order to act on their commitments. Teleological constructions, and in particular the idea of the system of nature, can provide such encouragement, for they constitute ideas, the realization of which, when achieved, testifies to the fact that, although nature has not been designed to promote these ends, it is so constituted that it does promote them. As regards the contents of the idea of nature as a system of ends, on a first reading of the relevant passages of the Third Critique, it may seem that it only includes natural products, that is, it excludes human-made ones. However, on a closer reading, it seems to me that nature is intended to include all the phenomenal world, natural as well as human-made. It may be objected against this suggestion, that human artefacts, material or immaterial, cannot be components of the system of nature, for they

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are intentionally produced by humans to serve some purpose. Consequently, they can not fulfill the function of components of nature as a system of ends, which presupposes that they are natural and therefore purposeless. However, if the purposes by which one locates them within the natural system of ends differ from the human purposes for which they have been designed and constructed by humans, then they can indeed fulfill the above function. For, in such a case, although they have in fact been designed and constructed to serve arbitrary purposes, locating them in the natural system of ends shows that they also conduce to the realization of the highest end. While if they have been intentionally produced by humans to promote the ends of reason, this obviously provides further support for the thought that nature is in tune with the rational ends of humans. Now, if nature as a system of ends includes human-made products, then it has a historical dimension. This is evinced by the repetition and elaboration of various points made in Kant's essays on the philosophy of history in § 83 of the Critique of the Power ofJudgement, that is, in the section immediately following § 82, in which Kant lays out the principles for the construction of a system of nature as regards natural products, and immediately preceding § 84, in which Kant argues that humans as moral beings, that is, as the highest good, constitute the end of nature. In § 83 Kant outlines the place of cultural products, political institutions and economic organization in the system of ends, by showing how they (or specific forms of them such as a civil constitution and a federation of states) facilitate and advance the moralization of humans (CJ 5: 431ff.). In this section, then, Kant outlines what must be achieved culturally, politically and economically in order that humankind prepare itself for a moral life and the happiness consequent on it, by cultivating its ability to set ends and further them. Kant does not suggest that any of these institutions are purposefully set up by humans to serve the ends of reason. Instead he stresses that they are the result of other motives (CJ 5: 432ff.), although in his essays on the philosophy of history, written before and after the Critique of the Power ofJudgement, he argues for the thesis that, it is not only nature, but also human beings as free agents that constitute a motive power of history and a cause of the achievement of the final end. This is hinted at in 'The Idea of a Universal History' of 1784 and explicitly stated in 'The Conflict of the Faculties' of 1798. In the former work, Kant seems to hold that knowledge of a universal history, integrating a planless aggregate of human actions into a teleological system that advances the highest political good will further the latter. Once such a history has been revealed to humans, they will be encouraged to pursue

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its ends intentionally, thus achieving them more rapidly for their descendants through their own rational arrangements (Idea 8th and 9th Propositions). In the latter work, he argues from the fact of the enthusiasm awakened by the French Revolution in its witnesses (Conflict sect. 6), to a moral capacity in humans (Conflict sect. 7),19 which allows one to predict with certainty that humanity will progress,20 since such progress is something that humans themselves, being moral, will want to bring about (Conflict sect. 4). The significance of this fact lies in its constituting a sign for history (Geschichtszeichen), a 'signum rememorativum,

demonstrativum,

prognosticon' (Conflict sect. 5). That is, it is an event that allows us, from the standpoint of the present, to conceptualize our past history in terms of the highest political good as progressive, since this history has led to this event, and to predict that our future history will similarly progress towards it, since this enthusiasm constitutes evidence of the acquisition by humanity of a political-cultural capital that can no longer be lost. The enthusiasm awakened by the French Revolution, thus, justifies our systematizing our past, present and future into a whole tending towards the highest political good. A fourth point of the Kantian conception of organisms concerns their relation to the highest good. Organisms form part of nature as a system of ends. As such, they are related to the highest good as a means to it. Kant writes that once one has thought of an understanding as the cause of the forms of organisms, one must further inquire into the 'objective ground that can have determined this productive understanding to an effect of this sort, which is then the final end for which such things exist' (CJ 5: 434-5). In fact, since the system of ends is formed with reference to the highest good, the latter sets constraints on every item in the system, that is, the world, including organisms. This, after all, is the point of the relevant idea: that it is possible to conceive of nature as a system of ends aimed at promoting the highest good and therefore that things in nature meet the requirements set by it. In effect, the idea directs us, amongst other things, to examine how humans, as the ultimate end of nature and motive power of history, should utilize organisms - including their own capacities - so as to achieve the highest good, rather than for the achievement of their arbitrary, non-moral goals (CJ 5: 368, §§ 82-4). Consequently, the ideas of organisms must contain such of their properties as promote the realization of the highest good, while their remaining properties must be such as to vouchsafe the existence of the former ones. The conception of an organism as a being all of whose parts are reciprocally means and ends, and means to the whole, does indeed insure that this is so, for the existence of any one of its properties, consequently

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of the designated one(s), does depend on its other properties. The idea of the whole, then, as the determining ground of the form and relations of its parts, is itself determined by the requirements of the highest good. Kant gives a detailed example of this in the case of humans. In order to achieve the highest good, human beings must become moral, that is, their actions must be both dictated and motivated by the moral law. This requires both the development of their rationality, in order that they acquire knowledge of the moral law and its concrete dictates, and the development of their capacity to form and set ends irrespective of their empirical inclinations, in order that they act autonomously for the sake of duty alone. Consequently, unlike other animals, humans are biologically under-equipped for survival. They thus perforce have to cultivate their (instrumental) reason in order to satisfy their instinctual drives (food, shelter, safety). In the course of so doing, they form and pursue new, sophisticated goals, not informed by such drives (Idea 3rd Proposition, Conj Hist 8: 111 f., CJ 5: 431 f.). They thereby cultivate both their reason and their goal-setting capacity,21 and prepare themselves for a life of action for the sake of duty. The biological constitution of humans is dictated by the requirements of the highest good, since, contrary to other animals, they must accomplish everything themselves (that is, not instinctively and naturally), so as to become worthy of life and well-being (Idea 3rd Proposition). As Shell writes, 'Man is born in order to give birth to himself',22 that is, to a rational and free being. This end, however, is achieved, or rather only approximated, historically, in the species, not in the individual.23 Finally, Kant's essays on the biological characteristics of the human species24 ties them up not only with the ability to survive in various physical environments, but also with the ability of the species as a whole to pursue and realize an endless multiplicity of different goals, thereby relating the biological makeup of the human species to its moral destination.25 We have no such detailed discussion of the relation of other organisms to the highest good, but this is only to be expected for they are only mediately related to it. Other organisms exist for the use of humans, they are 'means and tools, subject to [their] will, for the attainment of [their] chosen objectives' (Conj Hist 8: 114, my translation). This, however, does set two constraints on non-human organisms. First, they must not be rational (CJ 5: 464 n.). For, if they were, they would be capable of morality and thus would have to be treated as equals by humans, on a par with all rational beings (Conj Hist 8:114), that is, not as means, but as ends in themselves. Second, organisms must be capable of reproducing themselves and surviving as species (CJ 5: 371), for humans attain morality

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only as a species and thus require the use of other organisms for the duration of humankind's progress towards morality. Consequently, organisms must have properties suited to their environment and their relations with other organisms, properties that allow them to propagate their species (CJ 5: 419, 420). Non-human organisms, then, are connected to the highest good only because they are of use to humans in attaining this end (CJ §§ 82, 83, 84). This could either mean that humans intentionally use them so as to promote the final end or merely that they constitute means for humans to promote the final end - whether humans are aware of it or not. However, we have seen that nature constitutes a system of ends only for human beings, that is, only insofar as humans conceive of it as such. As Guyer writes, Kant's claim that the ultimate end of creation must be one which is capable of forming the concept of end and making a system of ends out of the raw material of the world, is 'a reminder that we are after all within the realm of reflective judgment and that this whole story of ends is an artifact of our own judgment that will be inconceivable unless we ourselves can conceive of ends and nature as a system of and for [the final] end'. 26 The same applies to the ideas of organisms. Consequently, since the contents of these ideas are derivative on because they are grounded in the idea of the final end, humankind acquires knowledge of these contents only by forming the idea of the final end and of its subordinate system of ends, that is, by integrating and locating each species within this system. Reflection Once we take into account the whole teleological edifice of the idea of nature as a system of ends, the analogies between systems and organisms become more pronounced and significant. To the system of all systems of cognitions corresponds nature as a system of ends. The relation between systems and the essential ends of reason is mirrored by the relation between organisms and the highest good. Organisms are not only in themselves systems, but are also components of a larger system with the highest good as its final end. Analogously, sciences are not only themselves systems, but are also component subsystems of the system of all sciences with philosophy at its apex. As does humankind in the system of ends, so does philosophy hold a designated place in the system of sciences. For it is the task of philosophy to relate our knowledge to the essential ends of reason, view all other sciences as means and use them as tools to advance these ends.

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Although all sciences, like organisms, are valuable as means to arbitrary ends, their ultimate value derives from their constituting means to the final end. And a fundamental characteristic of the philosopher is the ability to see the conformity of all our knowledge and skills to the highest ends of reason. Thus, it is the task of philosophy to forge the means-end connection between the two, just as it is the task of humans to forge the means-end relation between items of nature and the highest good. We, thus, see that as a result of these activities, what we may call the 'essential structure' of nature, that is its structure as defined by its relations to the highest end, is mirrored by the essential structure of knowledge. Moreover, organisms have a certain degree of autonomy with regard to the highest end they ultimately serve as components of the natural system of ends. They are products of nature, not artefacts of humans that can be fashioned by humans so as to serve the ends of reason; humans can only use them so as to promote these ends. Similarly, systems of cognitions, sciences, are autonomous; they cannot be constructed instrumentally so as to promote the essential ends of reason. Truth, in whatever sense Kant conceives of it, is a value that cannot be sacrificed for practical ends, although it must be made to serve them or seen as serving them. As a result of these analogies, the structure of reflection is the same in both teleological judgements about organisms and in judgements about systems of cognitions. The same sorts of factors have to be taken into consideration when judging organisms and when judging sciences. Thus, matter constitutes an organism in case it is identifiable into parts that constitute a systematic whole with reference to the idea of this species of organism, but ultimately, as a component of nature as a system of ends, with reference to the highest good. And cognitions constitute the components of a science in case they constitute a systematic whole with reference to the idea of the science in question, but ultimately with reference to the essential ends of reason and the highest good. Moreover, judgements about sciences share a number of similarities with judgements about the natural system of ends, and in particular with organisms as components of this system. We judge that a cognition is part of a science (or a science a component of the system of sciences) when it is located in a system of cognitions (in the system of all sciences) that advances the essential ends of reason and ultimately its highest end. Similarly, we judge that an organism or any other item is part of the system of nature when it is located in a system of all such items that ultimately advances the highest end. That is, we base such judgements on considerations of systematic unity and the ends of reason. In both cases one is required to positively evaluate an item with reference to rational values

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and ultimately the highest end. Since the ends of reason are objective, both sorts of judgement are to the same degree objective, while empirical interests have no place in either sort. Consequently, our capacity to make judgements about cognitions and sciences is developed by making judgements about organisms as components of the natural system of ends, and so is our capacity to unify cognitions into systems - to the extent that it presupposes the former sort of judgements. In addition, the idea of stepping back from nature in order to reflect on it and evaluate it positively with respect to the highest end, provides a context that gives point to the idea of unifying our cognitions into a whole that advances the ends of reason. One is enjoined to reflect on all things in nature in order to see how they promote or can be utilized to promote the highest good, rather than unreflectively utilizing them for arbitrary purposes. In the same way and for the same reasons, one is enjoined to reflect on the knowledge acquired by humans, in order to see how it promotes or can be used to promote the ends of reason, rather than just unreflectively amassing more knowledge and using knowledge for arbitrary purposes. In effect, one is enjoined to reflect on the purposes served by various sorts of knowledge, on the purposes to which it is put and on the purposes to which it could and should be put. Kant does not explicitly say that we should alter our knowledge to suit our rational purposes. But that is only because he believes that, although past attempts at constructing philosophical systems were wrong and did not advance the highest end, the critical philosophy is the true philosophy and it does advance it. And this philosophy provides the foundations for metaphysics, the a priori part of science, which in turn provides the 'theory' for its empirical part. Thus, the sciences are now more or less on the right track. Kant himself indirectly engages in such reflection. He accepts that the object of the natural sciences is the discovery of causal laws, for causal laws are necessary for the control and manipulation of nature. But he implicitly denies that this is so in the case of the social sciences by treating them ideologically. The purpose of the social sciences is not the control and manipulation of human beings, for this would conflict with their autonomy - to say the least. The purpose of the social sciences is to bring humans to the point at which they will exercise their autonomy and themselves actively endeavour to realize the ends of reason. That is, they will be brought to a point where they will actively initiate change for the better - as we see from Kant's philosophy of history. The object of the social sciences should, thus, conform to this purpose and not to the purpose of the physical sciences.27

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The problems addressed by Kant are of great significance today when, on the one hand, the natural sciences are becoming increasingly instrumental and valued as means for the production of technology, while, on the other, the social sciences are modelled on the natural ones - as if their object was the control and manipulation of human beings. In neither case is there much reflection on the subject; in neither case is the relation of knowledge to values thematized. I would now like to present a consideration that strengthens the points of this last section: if my argument that nature as a system of ends includes cultural products is correct, then judgements about sciences are a species of judgements about nature as a system of ends. For in that case, cognitions and sciences are items of nature, cultural products, that have to be incorporated into the idea of nature as a system of ends. Part of this process is set out in the 'Architectonic' of the Critique of Pure Reason, since cognitions are there held to constitute a science just in case they form a whole that advances the essential ends of reason. And sciences are held to constitute the system of all sciences just in case they form a whole that advances the highest end of reason. What is further required is their incorporation into the whole system of nature. And it is this idea that is added in the Critique of the Power of Judgement. Thus, the process described in the First Critique coincides, at a certain level of abstraction, that is, if one abstracts from the quasi-artefactual nature of science, with part of the process described in the Critique of the Power of Judgement. If we consider the process in its more concrete form, as a process of organizing cognitions and sciences into systematic wholes and thus making them conform to their idea, then the Critique ofPure Reason enjoins us not to rest content until our knowledge has reached scientific status. We are then within the historical dimension of nature as a system of ends.

Notes and references 1. In Gerhard Lehmann, Beiträge zur Geschichte und Interpretation der Philosophie Kants, Walter de Gruyter: Berlin 1969. 2. Ibid. p. 161. 3. References to Kant's work are, by volume and page number (preceded by the abbreviated title of the work), to the Academy Edition: Kants gesammelte Schriften, Berlin 1902 ff. References to the Critique of Pure Reason are to the pagination of the first and second editions. The translations used are those of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, general editors, Paul Guyer and Allen Wood, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1997 ff. I do not refer to the pagination of this edition since the Academy Edition pagination is given in it.

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4. I am here using the expression Davidson uses in 'Mental Events', in Donald Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1980, p. 216 to describe a similar situation. 5. Lehmann, op. cit, p. 162. 6. Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1979, p. 375. 7. Lehmann op. cit, p. 165. 8. See, e.g., Susan Neiman, The Unity ofReason, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1994, pp. 66-7 for the view that, for Kant, to proceed in scientific inquiry on the assumption that nature is systematic is to act rationally. Systematicity is an idea of reason and as such equivalent to an injunction to seek or realize systematicity to which all humans, qua rational, are subject. 9. See ibid, Chapter 2 for a discussion and defence of an extreme view about the part played by the understanding: '[it] plays a severely limited role in the construction of science, restricted to mechanically recording particular events and guaranteeing the existence of some causal order or other' (p. 54). 10. Ideas other than systematicity are either parts or aspects of systematicity (e.g., homogeneity, specification) or equivalent to it (e.g., totality). See Ioli Patellis, 'Patterns of Difference, Sameness and Unity in Some Kantian Principles', Kant Studien, 84 (1993) pp. 78-89 for a discussion of the relations among Kantian ideas in various areas. 11. See the passage at A833/B861 cited in Section I above. 12. See Yirmiyahu Yovel, Kant and the Philosophy of History, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NT 1980, Introduction and Chapters 6 and 7, concerning the archetype of philosophy and reason and its realization in Kant's critical system. 13. In fact, Kant seems to hold that organisms have no analogy with any form of causality known to us (CJ 5: 323). But see also CJ 5: 306, F Int 20: 55) where he seems to go back on this claim. 14. This is not to say that there are no exegetical and philosophical problems with Kant's teleological conception of an organism, its metaphysical status and epistemological significance, connected in particular with regulative principles and reflective judgement. Our argument, however, does not require our coming to grips with them. Thus, John H. Zammito, The Genesis of Kant's Critique of Judgement, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1992, Chapter 10, questions whether on Kant's premises one can even think organisms as ends. See also, e.g., Clark Zumbach, The Transcendent Science. Kant's Conception of Biological Methodology, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague 1984, pp. 18-29 for an analysis of Kant's concept of organisms as natural ends which raises some of these problems, and Peter McLaughlin, Kant's Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation, Studies in the History of Philosophy, Vol. 16, The Edwin Mellor Press, Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter, 1990, Chapter 3, especially pp. 137 ff., for a survey and discussion of the interpretations of the antinomy of judgement, in effect of the dialectic of mechanism and teleology. 15. See Hannah Ginsborg, 'Kant on Understanding Organisms as Natural Purposes' in Eric Watkins (ed.) Kant and the Sciences, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2001 for a more detailed discussion of the normative status of ideas of organisms which also takes into account various biological considerations.

Mi Patellis 95 16. The question whether the happiness included in the highest good is a moral value or not has occasioned a lot of controversy since the inclusion of happiness in the object of the moral will seems to entail heteronomy of the will (see e.g. Lewis White Beck, A Commentary on Kant's Critique of Practical Reason, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1960, p. 243). In addition, Kant is less than clear as to what exactly constitutes the highest good: chiefly, how it is related to the will and how its two components - morality and happiness - are related to each other (see e.g. Yovel, op.cit, Chapter 1, for a discussion of the variety of conceptions of the highest good and their development in Kant's work). These two points, bolstered by the endeavour in the last two decades or so to find a place for empirical human nature in Kant's moral philosophy, have motivated the search for an interpretation that integrates the highest good with Kant's moral philosophy. Thus, Paul Guyer, 'From a Practical Point of View: Kant's Conception of a Postulate of Pure Practical Reason' in Paul Guyer, Kanton Freedom, Law, and Happiness, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000, pp. 339 f., argues that morality and happiness are not two separate ends, but that the happiness in question derives from the dictates of the moral law which commands universal respect for all rational beings as ends in themselves (roughly, their happiness) and the establishment of a kingdom of all ends in systematic connection. 17. The following is a more elaborate and in some respects different version of Paul Guyer's dfscussion of the two conditions laid down by Kant on the nonarbitrary end of nature in: 'The Unity of Nature and Freedom: Kant's Conception of the System of Philosophy' in Sally Sedgewick (ed.) The Reception of Kant's Critical Philosophy: Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2000, pp. 38-9. 18. Guyer op. cit, pp. 37, 38-9 suggests that the highest good makes the concept of nature as a system of ends determinate and unique, and certainly this seems to be Kant's view at least as regards the general picture of such a system. It is not clear, however, that Kant holds that the highest good is unique and that even if it is, it uniquely determines a system of ends in all its details. 19. Larry Krasnoff, 'The Fact of Politics: History and Teleology in Kant', European Journal of Philosophy 2 (1994) pp. 22-40, argues that the enthusiasm of the spectators constitutes a 'fact of politics' akin to the fact of reason in that it shows that we understand ourselves as moral (political) agents capable of making moral demands to authority in the justified hope that these demands will thereby bring about political change in line with the requirements of reason (pp. 31 ff.). 20. Not necessarily morally. But there will certainly be an increase in legal actions (Conflict sect. 9). 21. See Allen Wood, Kant's Ethical Thought, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1999, pp. 234-42 for an extended analysis of this process as set out in Kant's 'Conjectural Beginning of Human History'. 22. Susan Meld Shell, The Embodiment of Reason. Kant on Spirit, Generation, and Community. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1996, p. 167. 23. Ibid., pp. 167-78, for an interpretation of 'Idea of a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View' which brings to the fore the theme of human self-formation as a historical process.

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24. 'On the Various Races of Humans' ('Von den verschiedenen Rassen der Menschen'), 'Determination of the Concept of a Human Race' ('Bestimmung des Begriffs einer Menschenrasse'), 'On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy' ('Über den Gebrauch teleologischer Prinzipien in der Philosophie'). 25. See Patellis, op. dr., on this point. 26. Guyer, op. at., p. 38. 27. This constitutes an example of how we could alter a science without making truth instrumental.

7 On the Logic of the Realization of Reason in Society and History Kosmas Psychopedis

A central idea of the Enlightenment as it appears in Kant's philosophy is that critical reason can be realized in society and history through human action and institutions. The Kantian concept of the Enlightenment connects this idea to complex epistemological issues and sets significant problems for contemporary critical thought. In particular, these problems concern the manner of determining what is rational and the valuecontents which accompany its realization in history and society; the possibility of a non-schematic application of reason in history, and the consequences of Kant's own answers to the problem of the realization of reason for his conception of the possibility of realizing an enlightened, free and equitable society; finally, another pertinent issue concerns the relevance of the Kantian approach to the problem of reason's realization in society and history for contemporary research concerned with justifying a critical social philosophy and a critical epistemology of the social sciences. I will concentrate on three of the above issues, which will allow us, I hope, to examine in some depth the problem of the realization of reason. The first of these issues concerns the problem of the contingent within Kantian formalism and early historicism, a problem related to that of the indeterminacy attendant on the realization of the rational in its social object. A second issue addresses the problem of clarifying the valueconstituted nature of reason as a problem related to the elucidation of the concept of the 'good' in modernity. Finally, we will address the question of the modes and types of the realization of reason in society and history, and will search - on the basis of the above - for some of the foundations of contemporary epistemology which have recourse to the philosophy of Kant.

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98 Realizing Reason in Society and History I We begin with the problem of the contingent and of indeterminacy in Kantian formalism. Kant elaborated a type of explanation, which can be characterized as an 'explanation from within reason', inasmuch as it treats the element of indeterminacy as something internal to philosophical argument. This form of explanation resorts to a normative framework of freedom, equality, autonomy ('the form of reason'), to which it juxtaposes experience, while it raises the question whether the socio-historical process accords with or supports the normative framework. Such sociohistorical processes could stem, for example, from selfish and quasimechanistic calculations leading either to the introduction of norms (laws), or to prudential calculations of the agents integrated into the mechanistic arrangement of events. But since different causal chains overlap, the time at which rational normativity will be causally accomplished remains open; the precise time at which such an event will occur will have to remain indeterminate (Conflict 7: 88-9).J Kant discerned, in the way in which the interaction between nature and freedom occurs in the human species, a type of causality different from the causal chains of successive events referred to by the 'technical experts of power' in order to construct explanatory models. In fact, Kant turns the idea of the contingent, in the sense of the indeterminacy of the historical event, against the technicians of power: if the event were spatio-temporally determined, they could, by cancelling it, have destroyed the force of the morally causal completion which philosophy brings to the fore during the reconstruction of its own normative dimension. But as it remains indeterminate, the normative framework remains both open and active, thus rendering possible the formation and continuous recurrence of 'reinvigorated efforts', in order that 'the desired constitutional order' be established. The structure of this argument can be properly grasped, if one turns to the justifications, in terms of the concepts of causal explanation and methodical deduction, to be found in the analyses of Kantian critical transcendentalism. One must then look for the specific reconstruction which these concepts undergo, in order for them to be utilized in the grounding of a critical science of the practical. In his analyses of the antinomies of reason, Kant approaches the relations between phenomena through a categorial framework, where necessity in the ordering of these phenomena is only restored as a process transcending this very ordering. In other words, the necessity of the occurrence of events is linked to the very freedom of rational beings (in fact, it is a condition of the world being constituted through the acts

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of the transcendental subject). In the actual sequence of phenomena there is no necessity proper but rather, contingency. Necessity and its opposite, namely, contingency constitute modal categories, the explanation of which is contained in the postulate of empirical thought to treat as necessary whatever conforms to the general (both material and moral) conditions of experience (that is, the transcendental framework of critical reason). In other words, the mode of necessity is recognized only as pertaining to the conditions of the critical scrutiny of reason. In this sense, we define as necessary whatever is not subject to other conditions (unless it is to reason's own conditions). Thus, the unconditional is called 'necessary' while the conditional event, is called 'contingent' (B448/A420). In Kant's own words: 'The conditioned in existence in general is called contingent and the unconditioned necessary' (B447/A419). This reasoning has important consequences for the Kantian conception of causal completion as presented in the fourth antinomy of pure reason, according to which, there is no cause in the world of appearances the existence of which is absolutely necessary; while, on the contrary, this world is not conceivable, unless it is related to the idea of a necessary being as its cause (B480,482/A452,454). According to the argument of the fourth antinomy, things are coincidental precisely because they are empirically determined, while their totality refers to a non-empirical and, in this sense, necessary condition of their possibility. This antinomic determination of reality also characterizes the Kantian notion of explanation (B644/A616). This notion refers to a heuristic-regulative idea of an a priori and complete explanation governing every explanatory act; which act, however, cannot be other than the methodical deduction of a phenomenon from another phenomenon, hence a practice which takes these phenomena as not necessarily existing (that is, as not existing independently of and as consequences of other phenomena). These dialectical analyses aim at the practical justification of scientific explanation, that is, at the investigation of its hypothetical constitution and its juxtaposition to the binding nature of the claims of practical reason. By accomplishing this task, they disclose the dialectical nature of the contingent-coincidental. The contingent emerges in every causal chain in which the preceding connecting link is not necessary in the sense of being practically binding. In this sense, any causal connection of events, which stops short of free and autonomous relations, is constituted as contingent. 2 The concept of causality is thus related to the concepts of 'conditional existence' and of the 'contingent'. The contingent is whatever exists under conditions, in other words, that whose non-existence is conceivable. Such a formulation is valid for whatever results from something

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else, from its cause. Being a result stands, in relation to the event, as contingent 'for-itself (that is, it is necessary with regard to whatever constitutes an 'alien' cause for it). This approach to Kant's problem of the contingent is presupposed in order to render the purpose of the Kantian practical grounding comprehensible. However, the project of constituting a social-practical causal science becomes at the same time an impossible task, given that the only condition posited as necessary for this science is that of the 'selfdeterminations' of the event. This way of addressing the problem of the contingent, which shows the path taken by Kant in his intellectual transition from the first to the third Critique, was set aside by various approaches to the problem of contingency, by twentieth-century irrationalism, and even by the neoKantians, who attempted to address the problem through the relation between the logical form 'universal-particular', and through the critique of abstract universality which characterizes the philosophy of the 1920s. A typical example is to be found in the analyses of Bäumler (1923).3 These place the Kantian problem in the tradition of Baumgarten's 'new logic', which is characterized by an emphasis on 'aesthetics', on the art of invention (ars inveniendi) and on induction. Nevertheless, both types of logic failed to escape the dilemma between a regress to an analogicalinductive scientism, on the one hand, and to an accentuation of aesthetic particularity or of cultural singularity, on the other. Ars inveniendi remains a logic of the probable (according to the Leibnizian demand), while the logical nature of problems pertaining to the reality of the non-probable and to the fragmentation of the self-evident ordering of the causal are not addressed. This idiosyncratic 'inversion' is attracted by the logic of mathematical proofs (principium reductionis), which invert the unknown into the known in order to discover a new truth (for example, they invert the circle into a polygon in order to calculate its area). However, in attempting to integrate into themselves the contingent and coincidental experiences, the logics of invention are not confined to the mathematical way of operation. The modes of integration they select do not follow an intellectual rule (which would presuppose abstracting from the richness of the object's particular features); rather, they follow a path from one feature to the other, in conformity with the object's 'particular' character. What lies at the core of this tradition in aesthetics, is the coupling of the aesthetic-intuitive with the axiological element. The successful transition from one feature to the other within an aesthetic whole is not effected by the abstract rule, but presupposes instead the 'education' of the

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aesthetic-intuitive, an improvement of the materiality of the aestheticcognitive process, allowing the aesthetic acknowledgement of the object and rendering aesthetic communicability possible. This aesthetic theme in the work of Baumgarten paves the way to the third Kantian Critique and the issue of the aesthetic idea, in which the particularity of the intuitive is manifested. But it is along this path that Kant's innovation is situated. Baumgarten's tradition survives in the idea of aesthetic individuality taken up by Herder and Romanticism and their ideal of complete individuation. Here, the dimension of contingency becomes part of the object, precisely because the latter is shown up as contingent. By contrast, the Kantian insertion of the contingent in the Critique ofthe Power ofJudgement integrates it within a whole, which brings to the fore the relation between the intuitive and the coincidental to the act of intellectual abstraction performed by the understanding, a relation which determines the Kantian notion of reflective judgement according to aesthetic ideas. However, the chief omission in the Romantic interpretation of the Baumgarten tradition, in contrast to the logic of the Critique of the Power ofJudgement, is its failure to distinguish, in the manner in which the contingent is introduced into the aesthetic-teleological judgement, precisely this element of critique that completes the inversion initiated by Baumgarten; this is achieved by inverting the relationship between the contingent and the necessary, thus showing up as contingent those causal relations which impede the fulfillment of free and creative particularity (to which is awarded the prestige of necessity). Within the tradition of neo-Kantianism, Emil Lask does not connect the two Kantian concepts of the contingent in such a way as to further the construction of a 'logic of civilization', in spite of the fact that the exploration of the conditions of such a logic is an object with him. Such a connection discloses the antinomies contained in the problem of schematization, as a problem of the impossibility of closure in those causal chains relevant to socio-political relations; by inverting the relationship between contingency and necessity, this connection leads to the justification of the position that something is binding only to the extent that it is free and self-determined; that is, it leads to the cardinal idea of Kantian critical philosophy, which is grounded on the primacy of the practical. Emil Lask's reluctance to forge such a connection stems from his questioning the very notion of 'the right of materiality', of the possibility of rational material contents (values), and also from the prior identification of value with the irrational/contingent (this standpoint was encouraged by Kant's rigid practical thesis that materiality can be salvaged only to the extent that it is identified with form).

102 Realizing Reason in Society and History II This brings us to my second main point: that the Kantian problem of the historical and social realization of reason presupposes a critical notion of the modern good (which can be reconstructed through the analyses offered by Kant in the complete critical system). We will discover from the start that the Kantian notion of the good is thoroughly modern and grounded on the radical supersession of all pre-modern narratives concerning the good. Certainly, from within the concept of the good as articulated in these pre-modern narratives, one can identify the processes of differentiation of those historical societies which grasp ethical values as internal to systems of domination. The good is thus rendered unstable. The particular constituents of the good in the context of totality are also obscured, so that what is absolutely good can no longer be detected within a whole. Equilibrium, peace, gradually become the accepted values. These second-order values are realized through the moderation of traditional notions of the good. What really counts as good in modernity is now relative to persons, place and time. 4 The modern tradition of normativity, as expressed by Kant, attempted to transcend the relativism of values characteristic of modern philosophy, commencing with the critique of reason. Within the framework of this critique, the good can be identified as a consequence of the striving of reason to transcend its own antinomies. The good, then, is reason's own formalism as it emancipates itself from egoism and sheer passion, and is characterized by the generality which guarantees dignity and equality for all. The above approach of Kant also seems to provide an answer to the question of the coordination of action and communication in a modern society. Although Kant's transcendental philosophy presents itself as a monologic philosophy referring to the right action of the subject, one can extract from it principles for the regulation of social communication, for the right political and legal norms, and for the promotion of social happiness. These principles presuppose an idea of the good as the focus of their orientation. The good emerges, according to Kant, as a relation between the cognitive-practical powers of humans (the human species), namely, of understanding (which subsumes under itself the empirical multiplicity given in intuition) and of reason. Understanding and reason are categorially constituted powers; inscribed in their internal constitution is the idea of sociability (compare the third category of relation in the Critique of Pure Reason, which is community). They differ, however, between themselves in that the standpoint of understanding looks to

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the subsumption of a 'material' (physical or social phenomena) under its conceptual determinations, while the standpoint of reason looks to the realization of relations of freedom and autonomy. Within the framework of the critique of reason, the coordination of understanding and reason, mechanism and teleology, lies at the basis of the coordination of happiness and morality, which consists, according to the analyses of the Critique of the Power ofJudgement, in the highest good. That moral action will be compatible with the happiness of the agents is a matter for God. The idea of God represents the highest level of coordination of the relations governing the Kantian architectonic of pure reason. Within this architectonic, conditions (understanding) and values (reason) have been connected, and the possibility of the transition from the conditions of 'being' to 'ought' has been demonstrated. (It is worth noting here, that this Kantian idea is foreign to the neo-Kantians for whom the validity of 'ought' is separate from the truth of 'being'.) 'Ought', as conceived by Kant (that is, the Kantian good), governs both communication and political relations among human beings. Modern society regulated by a constitution is a good, since relations of legality are operative within it; while legality, on the one hand, coordinates mechanistic relations, drives and egoism in society, and on the other hand, partakes of the rational, since it is characterized by the generality which governs legislation in civil societies. For Kant this polity is conceived as a society which forms people capable of acting freely. The good, then, is realized through the moral education which forms the personalities of free agents, who interact unrestrainedly and are capable of maintaining themselves and of being worthy members of society, while they also consider themselves as having intrinsic value. In the Critique ofPractical Reason, the highest good is established as the highest object of pure practical reason, not however as its determination, since a determination of moral action cannot refer to contents, but consists solely in the moral law. Rather, the highest good combines virtue and happiness, and it is a priori necessarily deduced by practical reason (deduction from the freedom of the will). In the concept of the highest good, we think the connection between virtue and happiness synthetically as a causal relation. This causal relation will either entail that the drives and desires to acquire happiness determine virtuous action, which is impossible since the moral cannot be deduced from the non-moral, or it will entail that virtue is the cause of happiness, which is equally impossible, since the success of actions, including those accomplished through moral goals, depends on rules of prudence and combinations of natural laws. The solution to this antinomy of practical reason relies on the position that

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the first alternative is in any case erroneous, while the second is false only when it applies to the mode of causality compatible with the sensible world. If, on the contrary, one proceeds from an intelligible determining reason of causality (which, however, always manifests itself in the sensible world), one cannot rule out that the morality of disposition should be linked as a necessary cause to happiness as a result in the sensible world. This link, however, presupposes the mediation of an intelligent creator of nature. In this sense, the highest good as the necessary highest purpose of a morally determining will constitutes the true object of practical reason. This idea of the highest good, as the coordination of happiness and morality, leads the Kantian analysis to the postulates of practical reason (the immortality of the soul, freedom, and the existence of God). How, though, should one translate this whole issue of the solution of practical reason's antinomy, into principles of a theory of social action enabling the realization of the contents of reason in society and history? The idea of the highest good provides an answer to this question by demanding that morality coordinate with happiness; this demand coincides with a similar dialectical claim to coordinate the good with the evil, and to conceptualize social interaction as the negation of evil during humanity's process of formation and development. For Kant evil does not stem directly from the senses or from the pursuit of pleasure; rather, it alludes to rational legislation, to the freedom to deviate from the morality attributed to humans by their species nature. In this sense, evil is immanent to humans. However, accepting or rejecting such moral principles is ultimately an expression of human freedom. The human 'heart' may be characterized by good or evil, it may err, it may mix moral with non-moral motives, and it may be corrupted or perverted. Indeed, good acts may emerge out of perversion; yet, these good acts are characterized by contingency (when for example, they are driven by instinct, egoism, even by compassion), as long as they don't spring from the virtuously determined will. Humans then, according to Kant, do not possess some sort of evil will, as does a devilish being, but rather, accepting that the moral law exists alongside non-moral motives, humans invert the right way of subsuming one principle under the other; that is, they subsume the moral principle under selfish terms, instead of rendering it unconditionally valid and making it the highest condition for the validity of any principle of happiness. Evil presupposes human autonomy, while autonomy implies the possibility of an inversion, of a distorted subsumption, of a 'revolution within the mode of thinking' which will turn evil into good. This 'revolution' will mark a 'new creation', it will fashion a 'new humanity', which

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will become established through a new series of acts, whose starting-point 'consists in an unconditional moral act'. The moral education of humans, then, does not consist in an improvement of morals, but rather in a transformation of their mode of thinking and the establishment of a character appropriate to the human species. In the formation of this character, the cognitive and practical powers of human beings are related in such a way as to achieve a rational arrangement among them and to gradually realize an idea of humanity that 'would please God'. What is stated here is the idea of a 'continuous progress from the incomplete good towards the constantly better, all the way to infinity' namely, the idea of the realization of 'the kingdom of God' on earth. With regard to the manner in which this progress is realized, Kant writes that the conflict of drives allows reason to develop a 'free play' leading to their subordination, and instead of establishing evil with its self-destructive nature, establishes the authority of the good, which will maintain itself once in existence (TP 8: 312-13). Evil has the property of contradicting and destroying itself, thus allowing the good to progress, albeit slowly. This perspective grasps evil as 'the incomplete development of the seed of the good', as 'the restriction of the good', which defines itself in relation to the good, and by cancelling itself allows the good to develop. Evil then is not derived from its own original seed in humans, but is a 'concomitant' of the good. Humanity externalizes its own nature, understanding and reason, turning it into law and praxis governed by freedom. It is this externalization that constitutes modern value. Value is mediated by its negation, by evil and by selfish competition between human beings. However, this competition does not destroy totality; on the contrary, it renders it stronger, it contributes to the development of its powers (Idea 8: 2022). Ill We now come to discuss the Kantian construction of concepts of realization and the logic governing them, and the significance of Kantian epistemologies for us today. The preceding points may help us, I believe, to clarify the ways in which Kant constructed the concepts dealing with the realization of the rational in society and history. These concepts are developed in Kant's Metaphysics of Morals (in the Doctrine of Right) and in his writings on political philosophy and the philosophy of history, such as 'Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View', 'On the Common Saying: "This May Be Correct in Theory, But is of

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no Use in Practice"', 'Toward Perpetual Peace' and The Conflict of the Faculties.

Here, morality finds its 'realization' in legality, as regards its form, reason is juxtaposed to right (its correlate with respect to its form), even egoism will manage to become integrated within the teleological frame of a purpose of nature, which treats egoistic action as a means of developing the productive powers of the human species and as a motive for introducing general legislation (that is, rational purposes). The deeper epistemological idea governing the construction of all these 'concepts of realization' seems to be the idea of indeterminacy (freedom) in modernity, which also signals the possibility that reason should fail to be realized in society and history. In addition, the construction of these concepts presupposes the possibility of transcending indeterminacy in the process of justifying events, by showing up the dimension of praxis as immanent to these concepts. From a purely theoretical perspective the causal explanation of an event is indeterminate and impossible, given that one cannot predict whether an event will result from the actor's selfish or moral motives. This indeterminacy leads to the necessity of altering the way of thinking that governs the examination of phenomena, turning to reason and evaluating society and history with reference to cases, which designate the generality of the form of a specific historical phenomenon or the freedom rendered possible by some specific formation of political relations. A well-known Kantian argument relevant to this issue is to be found in the second part of the Conflict of the Faculties and concerns the French Revolution. Characteristically, it is here said that the normative consequences of the French Revolution (elements of a natural-law based constitution, such as freedom, equality, publicity, which are proper to reason) are accepted as moments of the realization of reason in history, not however the preceding acts of violence and terror (which are usually taken by historians to be necessary conditions for the success of the Revolution). That is, Kant does not accept the 'causal' connection, whereby the revolutionary atrocities constitute necessary conditions of the normatively acceptable event, and are legitimized to the extent that the event itself is - as conditions of its realization. One must here recall that, from the standpoint of logic, the construction of the Kantian good with reference to the distinction between mechanical and moral-teleological elements (which is accompanied by the postulate of their coordination) presupposes the modern idea of a possible non-coordination of the mechanism of socioeconomic action, on the one hand, and the purposes that advance an ethical, just and enlightened humanity. This possibility of diremption in

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coordinating mechanical and teleological elements is reproduced within the Kantian model of historical explanation. To maintain that one has knowledge of the precise mode of joining mechanical and teleological elements in history would be tantamount to one's claiming completeness in knowledge and to aspiring to the role of God, that is, it would constitute hubris within epistemology. This is why the Kantian spectator of the events of the French Revolution has the possibility of a distinguo. He accepts the teleological aspect of the given, its normative dimension (freedom, equality and so on), but does not accept its mechanical complement, the violence and terror which accompanies (or 'co-articulates') the event. He, thus, accepts indeterminacy with respect to the exact way of piecing together mechanical and teleological conditions in a historical event, while attempting to reconstruct the event from a moral viewpoint. It is obvious that this Kantian approach to the historical speaks to us today and about problems which we now face. Indeed, the problem of the indeterminacy of action makes itself felt in a striking fashion in modern societies, as a problem of coordinating action within a totality of social relations. This coordination is hindered by the particularizing and individuating forms of social relations in market societies, as well as by the rigid, alienated form of communication, and the distorted media-structures of bureaucratic societies. Eventually, what qualifies as indeterminate is action aiming at the maximization of interest in societies marked by competitive action and by the contrast between owners and non-owners of the means of production, as does also action aiming at the optimal collective administration of resources in societies characterized by the opposition between rulers (bureaucrats) and ruled. In societies where action proves to be indeterminate, it appears to be impossible to evaluate action normatively (as to whether it is good or evil). These societies run the risk of what Robert Musil describes, that it makes no sense to attempt to regulate the whole, instead of doing good to one's self. Because in this world, when one attempts to minimize evil and adversities: the container or measure for all that is disagreeable and bad [is] instantly filled up again by new forms of evil and adversities, as though the world were always sliding back with one foot while it takes a step forward with the other. One would have to discover the cause of this, the secret mechanism of it.5 This ironic formulation approaches the problem of the historical and social construction of the real as a problem of its evaluation. A framework

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for this analysis is provided by the Kantian notion of the good, approached as the unity of the mechanisms governing nature and society, and the teleology (the set of purposes) deriving from moral action. According to Kant, coordination within such a framework is not humanly possible; instead, as we have seen, the idea of such a coordination is an idea deriving from human reason. In face of the indeterminacy of the outcomes of human goals and actions, the actor turns to a formal moral ideal; while we saw that the degree to which the total result of moral and mechanical actions will be beneficial to the world is, according to the Kantian critique, a matter to be left to God. The element of indeterminacy is 'sublated' in Hegel's mature work, especially in his dialectical Logic, through the organization of the succession of concepts during the movement of their exposition (Darstellung) within this logic. The outcome of action follows a succession of concepts which are 'concretized' as they advance from the normatively lower stage to the normatively higher one: from the level of being to that of relation, then to that of reality, of necessity, of mechanism and of teleology (which are already forms of freedom), finally to the normatively highest level of the Idea. In the field of dialectical social philosophy this logical premise means that it is possible to determine a level of coordination in social and political relations (Philosophy of Right), where freedom is realized in the highest degree possible in modern societies under the institutional conditions of civil society and of modern political economy. However, Marx's critique of the bourgeois political economy of his time, had already demonstrated that the norms aimed at regulating the relations of civil society, in order that this society not be dissolved by the destructive forces reproduced by itself, show instability and regulation remains indeterminate, since social relations suffer the continuous reversals associated with the capitalist mode of organizing social production.6 A thorough coordination of social relations in order that their indeterminacy be overcome would presuppose the transcendence of capitalist relations of production and the realization of relations of the 'ultimate ideal', solidarity and cooperation. However, twentieth-century experience has taught that a coordination of social praxis on the basis of such an ultimate ideal is destined to transform relations of solidarity and cooperation into relations of barbarity, as long as it fails to guarantee the negation of society's division between rulers and ruled. Such a transformation could be avoided if the issue of normativity and democratic self-legislation were set anew on the basis of principles binding on the legislating solidary actors themselves. Today's global society lacks a framework of regulation (one might say: a framework for the application of rational norms) guaranteeing the survival

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and dignity of humanity (securing peace, protecting the environment, countering poverty and disease, ensuring self-government). However, this regulation cannot consist in a 'regulation' controlling all the conditions of social reproduction at a global level (an 'Empire', or the Kantian Universalmonarchie). Because such a 'regulation' would deny actors the possibility of engaging in freely and consciously pursued cooperation in order to mediate social needs, and of establishing together the political institutions of their society. By cancelling this possibility, a 'global monarchy' would lead to further opposition, instability, indeterminacy and destruction at a planetary scale. As against this global monarchy stands the self-government of peoples, global solidarity and the collective safeguarding of survival and dignity in contemporary societies. Anyone who wishes to control all the conditions of the social assumes the role of God, and deprives others of their autonomy 'for their own good', treating them as immature and of nonage. He does not differ from the terrorist who wishes to remove 'bits of evil' from the whole of reality in order that this totality become better. The 'resolution' of this antinomy coincides with the search for a regulation of the whole through collective autonomy, which would strengthen the autonomy of the societies which make up this whole called planet earth or humanity. In fact, it reflects the search for a determination, which is rendered indeterminate in so far as it is constituted through coercion and exploitation. The idea of such a determination is formulated in Kantian political theory which adopts the French Revolution's normative results, without adopting the violent conditions (terrorism), which allowed their realization. I may want the normative result, the just regulation which provides autonomy to the dependent and the resources for life to the hungry, without wanting the condition which made possible this regulation. If the unjustified occupation of a country by some 'global monarchy' constitutes a condition for stabilizing a region, thus facilitating the solution of an open political issue, such as the provision of self-government to a subjugated people, this solution may constitute something which I may desire without desiring the actual condition (the 'necessary' condition) of its realization. If I desire the result, I also desire the critique of the thesis which holds that this result cannot be realized unless through the evil nature of its condition. In fact I want the condition that is cancelled by the 'bad' condition, namely the establishment of peace and democracy in a country without the rape of its people which negates the former, which does not lead but to contingent combinations of conditions - bad conditions as contingent ones - even if these are favourable to an event which would occur in a different way elsewhere. If I accept the entire chain of necessary

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causes of a desired event, I play God, interweaving and cancelling conditions in mysterious ways, maintaining that something good established in the past or to be established in the future needs precisely this interweaving as a Theodicy. Let us assume that the 'necessary' condition rendering possible a just 'regulation' of a political issue (for instance, the removal of a tyrant or a dictator is such an acceptable event) is the action of the superpower which acts according to the logic of a 'global monarchy', perpetuating exploitation and poverty, waging wars for the control of productive resources and so on. The 'regulation' made possible in this manner is unstable and indeterminate. The critique of such a condition of its occurrence, showing how this condition was constituted, reveals as necessary its replacement by a condition which negates the initial undignified one, which negates those global social relations grounded on coercion and exploitation in such a way as to endanger survival and cancel human dignity, and which denies these relations the logical property of being a condition for the occurrence of an endorsed event, such as the autonomy of a people. What is accomplished through this critique is the determinate negation of the real, which retains a normatively justified content without being credited its undignified form. As long as the determinate negation is not effected, the real remains indeterminate and the realization of reason in society and history does not occur. The condition that cancels the unworthy condition will need to be inserted into the place of the initial condition and itself made the real condition for the occurrence of an acceptable event. Together with all the conditions that negate the idea of social relations as constituted through undignified conditions, they constitute, in their turn, an idea of the unity of the emancipatory purposes which they contain, while negating the interweaving of the necessary conditions of the realization of the real. But isn't this idea of negating those life-denying conditions, which cancel the realization of the autonomy and dignity of humanity, a Utopian idea? On the contrary, it is indelibly inscribed in human reason. The scheme according to which the 'logical form of transition from a to ß is true when ß is true, even in the case where a is not true' has a moral complement. This complement can be understood as the capacity of human freedom to accomplish the transition from the coercive to the free condition, thus consolidating the latter independently of the circumstances through which it emerged. It abstractly captures and simultaneously rejects a historical dialectic of genesis and power such as the one Nietzsche described in order to ridicule it, and which concerns an idea of human

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freedom's achievements and creativity as regressing to oppressive and humiliating conditions of historical genesis. Freedom, however, is the human capacity of negating the unworthy constitutive condition through the supposition that the positive event could potentially emerge from an alternative, normatively worthy condition. The chain of these negations alongside the unworthy conditions constituting the history of human beings cannot be grasped as a closed idea which culminates in a Utopian future through a successive negation of all freedom-inhibiting conditions. Rather, it constitutes an open chain, relating those values, which are cancelled in order that things remain as they are (coercive relations), and positing as causes of the emancipated relations whose establishment is attempted in the present the negations of the contingency of their necessary conditions. This open chain brings together necessary conditions and values, and as such it constitutes an idea already reflected upon by the dialectical tradition initiated by Kant. Implicated in this idea are values: a value is the resistance offered to the conditions of life infringed upon by the coercive and exploitative organization of society. But, this idea requires its own mediation in the present, by bringing forth the mode of its realization in every historical moment, so that the cause of this moment should become the mean of the intended cause and purpose. This mean contains an element of indeterminacy precisely because it is a mode of realization of an open totality without however constituting its schematization. It is not an arbitrary enforcement of a norm on being, but rather action, which negates indeterminacy, rewrites and recreates the historical social relation as a relation of solidarity between those injured and those who realize that they participate in processes which undermine human life and dignity, and who eventually stand up against their own participation in these very processes. Translated by Spyros Gangas

Notes and references 1. References to Kant's work are by volume and page number to the Academy Edition: Kants gesammelte Schriften, Berlin 1902 ff. References to the Critique of Pure Reason are to the pagination of the first and second editions. Translations are from the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, general editors Paul Guyer and Allen Wood, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1997 ff. 2. The significance of the introduction of indeterminacy between the result and its supposed 'cause' lies in that it allows the acceptance of normatively justified results.

112 Realizing Reason in Society and History 3.

Cf. A. Bäumler, Das Irrationalitätsproblem in der Aesthetik und Logik des 18. Jahrhunderts, Tübingen 1967, and E. Lask, Fichtes Idealismus und die Geschichte, in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1, Tübingen 1923. 4. Cf. Thomas Hobbes, De Homine, in Thomas Hobbes, Opera Latina (ed. by William Molesworth) London 1845, vol. 2, 11, 2. 5. Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities: The Like of It Now Happens (i). Volume 1 (Picador. London [1930] 1979), pp. 25-6. 6. K. Marx, Marx-Engels Werke, Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1972L, vol. 23, p. 14.

8 Tact of Reason' and 'Natural Human Reason': On Kant's Notion of Moral Experience1 Konstantinos Sargentis

Kant introduces his famous theory of the 'fact of reason' in his second Critique in the following way: Consciousness of this fundamental law may be called a fact of reason because one cannot reason it out from antecedent data of reason, for example, from consciousness of freedom (since this is not antecedently given to us) and because it instead forces itself upon us of itself as a synthetic a priori proposition that is not based on any intuition, either pure or empirical, although it would be analytic if the freedom of the will were presupposed; but for this, as a positive concept, an intellectual intuition would be required, which certainly cannot be assumed here. (CP 5:31)2 As we can see, Kant employs the term 'fact of reason' to refer initially to the consciousness of the moral law. The common man, 'every natural human reason' (CP 5:91), reaches this consciousness directly. The central question of this paper is: what exactly is this consciousness? The common man is not in a position to be conscious of a formal and universal principle such as the categorical imperative. This type of knowledge can only be the product of philosophical reflection. What form then does the consciousness of the moral law have for the common man? Some of the leading Kant scholars interpret the consciousness of the moral law by means of the notion of moral experience.3 My objective is, first to explain the meaning of 'moral experience' in this context and second, on the basis of this explanation, to argue that in Kant's 'phenomenology of the moral law'4 there exists a moment of particularism. As far as the former is concerned, I will proceed with an interpretation of the concept of Factum by summarizing and bringing together the various 113

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meanings that have been ascribed to this term in the relevant literature: 'act', 'creation', 'product', 'fact'. My interpretation, based on an analysis of the phenomenon termed 'moral insight' by Dieter Henrich, will lead to the conclusion that the aforementioned meanings are all contained within the transcendental, primary, or invisible side of the fact to which natural human reason has no access. But there also exists the visible side of the fact,5 which pure practical reason has an interest in creating so as to determine human agency.6 This is the side that coincides with moral experience. Moral experience is the 'deduced'7 fact of reason. I will consider the meaning of 'moral experience' in terms of Barbara Herman's interpretation. Herman introduces the notion of 'rules of moral salience' (RMS). In Kantian ethics these rules that are not of a prescriptive but rather of a descriptive type, constitute the particular rules the agent is equipped with and allow him/her to recognize the moral significance of an occasion before s/he proceeds to the test of his/her maxim by means of the categorical imperative. According to Herman, moral experience results from this perceptual process. I will employ P. Lukow's recent criticism of Herman's interpretation and, without adopting the solution he proposes, I will refute Herman's interpretation of RMS and propose that we should understand them instead as rules of a prescriptive type, which, when applied on a particular occasion, manifest exactly the moment when the consciousness of the moral law emerges in the common man, the 'deduced' fact of reason. The position I will maintain by refuting Herman's interpretation - and this is the second main argument here - is that in Kant's theory of the fact of reason one can find a moment of 'phenomenological' particularism, since the application of RMS to the concrete occasion causes the emergence of the universal moral law in the form of particular moral imperatives that are not valid on other occasions. I believe that a form of this particularism is also found, rather tacitly, in T.C. Williams's interpretation. The knowledge of such particular imperatives that 'every natural human reason' acquires in view of an imminent act is precisely what moral experience is in Kant; and only due to this knowledge the 'natural human reason' becomes conscious of the fact that it is subject to the obligation of the universal moral law. I In order to explain the fact (of reason) the following terms are provided in the corresponding literature: 'act', 8 'creation', 9 'product', 10 'fact' (Tatsache)11. These terms are all well known to interpreters of Kantian ethics

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and in a sense are all true, not in isolation, but to the degree to which they reveal distinct aspects of the factual character of the good. Nevertheless, to actually explain the fact of reason we need to answer several questions beforehand: if the fact means an act of reason, then what is it that constitutes this act? If it should mean a creation or a product, then what is this product? And if it means a fact, then how does fact differ from product? According to Kant himself the term 'fact' denotes the meaning 'given': 'However, in order to avoid misinterpretation 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, sicjubeo).' (CP 5:31). In this case, who 'gives' and who 'receives' the law? These questions can only be answered in the context of the differentiation between 'Wille' and 'Willkiif. Kant explains: Laws proceed from the will, maxims from choice [Willkür]. In man the latter is a free choice; the will, which is directed to nothing beyond the law itself, cannot be called either free or unfree, since it is not directed to actions but immediately to giving laws for the maxims of actions (and is, therefore, practical reason itself). Hence the will directs with absolute necessity and is itself subject to no necessitation. Only choice can therefore be called free. (MM 6:226). The Wille is the legislative function (Wl), and the Willkür is the executing function of the unified faculty of 'Wille' (W2).12 Dieter Henrich has attempted to discover the characteristic traits of the phenomenon of 'moral insight' in Kant's theory of the fact of reason.13 Whilst his interpretation seems quite incompatible with several important aspects of Kant's moral psychology and theory of freedom, as is, for instance, what Henry Allison calls Kant's 'incorporation thesis',14 it nevertheless provides an excellent model for understanding Kant's notion of moral autonomy. Henrich writes: There is no knowledge of the good without an act of assent ... The demand of the good to be approved must precede the approval. The legitimacy of this demand is immediately understandable ... To the moral insight, the good that approves it is 'evidently' legitimate. It does not need any foundation ... this assent is a spontaneous accomplishment of the self. It can be said that it is constituted as self for the first time in the moral insight... The self is in the act of its selfidentification related to the good in the form traditionally called 'feeling' ... Moral insight founds the self.15

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Despite the fact that Henrich characterizes the demand made by the good as 'the sole fact of reason, and at the same time the only conceivable one', 16 what one finds in his understanding of moral insight is rather the constitution of autonomy as a fact.17 His model of the 'Kantian' phenomenon of moral insight is actually nothing but a framework for the self-understanding of man as an autonomous being. The aforementioned distinction Wille - Willkür is therefore readily applicable to this model, which allows us to argue as follows: The good raises, according to Henrich, a demand. Yet, what does the good consist in? If the good's demand coincides with the fact of reason, then raising the demand constitutes an act of reason; not an act of 'practical' reason, but as Kant puts it in the above passage (CP 5:31), an act of pure reason alone. Thus it seems that the good is to be found in the essence of reason. This then raises the question what is 'reason'. Maximilian Forschner makes the following remark: 'In the context of an objective consideration reason primarily means universal validity, necessity, accordance to law; unity and necessary universality constitute the essential characteristics of the realm of reason'.18 These characteristics can be traced in the formulation of the moral law: 'So act that the maxim of your will could always hold at the same time as a principle in a giving of universal law' (CP 5:30). Forschner continues: 'Of great importance in this context is to see that the universal validity of the moral law arises out of the essence of reason'.19 The good is therefore to be found in the universality of reason's validity. Consequently, the act of the good and the act of reason represent the same act, namely the raising of the demand. What exactly happens when pure reason raises this demand? If the demand expresses itself in the moral law and if the moral law is the law of Wl, then the result of the raising of the demand is that pure reason becomes practical. Kant himself states that practical reason is identical with Wl (MM 6:213, 226; CP 5:55).20 Wl is therefore pure reason which has become practical by means of an act (the fact as 'act'). Since the result of the act is the moral law, the latter can be considered a 'creation' or a 'product' of reason (the fact as 'creation' and 'product'). Now the demand calls for assent. The product of Wl is 'given' to the consciousness of the Willkür and requires its assent. The Willkür provides its assent through respect. In his theory of respect Kant mentions: 'Recognition of the moral law is ... consciousness of an activity of practical reason from objective grounds' (CP 5:79). This 'activity' constitutes the intellectual aspect of respect.21 Since respect, 'as a subjective ground of activity', constitutes the moral incentive (ibid.), it complements the possibility of moral autonomy, which

Konstantinos Sargentis 117 besides a principium diiudicationis bonitatis asks for aprincipium executionis bonitatis.22 Thus, the subsequent acknowledgement of the product of Wl on the part of Willkür confirms the fact that W2 is autonomous and that pure reason is practical23 (fact as 'Tatsache1): This Analytic shows 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 in which pure reason in us proves itself actually practical, namely autonomy in the principle of morality by which reason determines the will to deeds. (CP 5:42) This reveals why the 'primary' facticity concerns the autonomy of the will (W2) and the practicality of reason. It is important to emphasize that moral autonomy coincides with the factual constitution of the moral self. Assuming that human autonomy is a fact, then one cannot reduce the expression 'fact of reason' to the expression 'fact for reason'.24 As Beck observes, Kant cannot be deemed a Platonist in the sense of an intuitionist. 25 An autonomy given to man would denote a contradiction. The 'giveness' of the facticity can, for this reason, be found within autonomy (and because of autonomy). In other words, 'giveness' presupposes the autonomy of W2. This lays open the possibility of interpreting Kantian ethics as constructivist ethics. As Onora O'Neill emphasizes, 'autonomy does not presuppose but rather constitutes the principles of reason and their authority'. 26 In this sense the fact of reason can be understood as a construction of reason. Interestingly enough, the notion of construction of reason allows us to move to the concept of moral experience. Finite but rational beings who, due to their finitude, do not necessarily possess moral knowledge need to acquire a consciousness of the moral law, to experience it. Pure practical reason has an interest27 in determining human moral actions and therefore it must make itself known to natural humans. Thus, it must make itself visible to their consciousness and must be converted into a certain experience. But experience presupposes concrete cases of agency where consciousness is always applied. Consciousness of the moral law cannot be but an applied consciousness. Application is the act by means of which reason establishes moral experience28 and this is - if one follows the present argument - the deduced fact of reason. The question then is what constitutes the exact nature of the deduced fact. So far, the fact we have examined in this section (in its several meanings) is the primary fact, which is not known to natural human reason. (Only philosophical reflection has access to it.) When Kant refers to 'natural human

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reason' he uses the expression 'so to speak, as a fact' (gleichsam als ein Factum):

that pure reason, without the admixture of any empirical determining ground, is practical of itself alone: this one had to be able to show from the most common practical use of reason, by confirming the supreme practical principle as one that every natural human reason cognizes a law completely a priori and independent of any sensible data - as the supreme law of its will. It was necessary first to establish and justify the purity of its origin even in the judgment of this common reason before science would take it in hand in order to make use of it, so to speak, as a fact that precedes all subtle reasoning about its possibility and all the consequences that may be drawn from it. (CP 5:91, the latter's emphasis) Natural human reason perceives and treats the moral law as if it were as indisputable as the facts ('gleichsam als ein Factum').29 In the following two sections I will examine what I have termed 'the deduced fact'. II Barbara Herman explains the notion of moral experience in the following manner: 'we can perceive things under moral categories and, when we do, we cannot be wholly indifferent to what they require'.30 Following Herman we can say that 'perceiving' is a process, which on the one hand is based on moral law as the fact of reason but on the other precedes the test of maxims through the categorical imperative. A moral knowledge whose structure contains peculiar rules for moral understanding, not to be thought of as maxims (named by Herman 'rules of moral salience' - RMS), provides the basis for such a process: It is useful to think of the moral knowledge needed by Kantian agents (prior to making moral judgments) as a knowledge of a kind of moral rule. Let us call them 'rules of moral salience'. Acquired as elements in a moral education, they structure an agent's perception of his situation so that what he perceives is a world with moral features. They enable him to pick out those elements of his circumstances or of his proposed actions that require moral attention. 31 It is important for Herman that the RMS do not have a prescriptive function but rather they provide those descriptive moral categories that precede

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the formulation of maxims and allow the test of the latter through the categorical imperative.32 Herman believes that the foundation of the RMS is inherent 'in the conception of a person as moral agent (or end-in-himself) that comes from the experience of the Moral Law as a Fact of Reason.'33 That aspect of the moral law, which, according to Herman, is present in every day moral consciousness, consists exactly in the self-understanding of the individual as a moral being amongst other moral beings. Recently P. Lukow has criticised Herman's interpretation. 34 He agrees with Herman's accentuation of moral education in the context of Kant's ethics, albeit he thinks that the introduction of the RMS is problematic mainly for two reasons: firstly, because Herman denies the identification of the RMS with maxims and secondly, because he finds Herman's establishing of the RMS through the fact of reason foundationalist. On the contrary, Lukow favours a constructivist35 understanding of Kant's ethics, according to which he gives an account of 'flexible' - one could use this expression - maxims that can be revised and possess various degrees of generality. What is important in this account is that the process of moral judgement is already implicit in the formulation of general maxims and does not require any other pre-existing principles or rules. 'Application of moral principles does not necessarily require an eternal order of moral truths or rules of moral salience rooted in the agent's moral design.'36 In this way Lukow refutes the widespread 'algorithmic' understanding of the practical syllogism in Kant's theory.37 He replaces Herman's RMS with general maxims (as opposed to specific maxims). His general maxims are different from RMS in the sense that the agent, especially in cases of moral conflict, can revise them as well as modify the notional frame on which they are based. In opposition to Herman's RMS Lukow's general maxims are not pre-established rules of the agent. I believe that Lukow's critique has two aspects: it is correct with regard to the problem it unveils, but it is not so with regard to the solution it offers. In my view, the main problem with Herman's interpretation consists in deducing the RMS out of a fixed experience of the moral law as the fact of reason, which is immanent in the notion of a person as an end in itself. The issue here is that Herman unnecessarily dissociates the experience of the moral law from the RMS and, afterwards, complements it with the latter. It is exactly this issue that on the one hand causes Lukow's accusation of foundationalism and on the other renders the RMS superfluous. Thus, following Lukow one could ascertain that 'apart from the foundationalism of Herman's interpretation of the fact of reason and its role as the basis for RMS, her proposal seems to add one thing too many to the moral theory and to our moral experience.'38 However, the solution

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to this problem is not, as Lukow believes, to reject the RMS in favour of general maxims, but rather to adopt an alternative interpretation of Kant's theory of the fact of reason in which the RMS are sustained. Maxims can be both general and specific,39 but they do not change according to a particular situation; otherwise, they would be deprived of any stability.40 Dissociating the RMS from the self-understanding of the agent would deprive the maxims of their universality and make it difficult to explain why moral self-understanding is the self-understanding of a stable character. In what follows I would like to propose an alternative interpretation of the moral experience in Kant's ethics, based on the above-mentioned 'deduced' fact. Ill RMS should be seen as elements of the agent's personality acquired by means of moral education - Herman argues during childhood, as a part of the process of socialization41 - and constitute the structure of moral sensitivity. They enable the agent to recognize the moral attributes of a certain case of action to the degree that these are its salient aspects. But most of all, the knowledge that the imminent case is a moral and nonprudential issue originates from the application of the RMS. As Herman rightly points out, Kant's moral subjects are not naive.42 They do not act as somewhat 'innocent' and ignorant beings who proceed to the test of the categorical imperative after their action (or the plan of their action) in order to find out whether they have acted (or they are going to act) morally rightly or wrongly. Such an approach would certainly be a caricature of Kant's moral syllogism. What is more, Kant's moral subject is equipped with elements of moral understanding that constitute her/his personality and alert her/his moral attention. Due to these elements s/he recognizes in given particular situations the specific moral characteristics that allow her/him to pick out the proper maxim out of a corpus of maxims and to act according to them. Knowing that the imminent case of action could harm someone or that the planned action could be not-permitted and the associated awareness of 'moral danger'43 could at least according to Herman's understanding - be examples of the function of the RMS. In his own example of false promise, Kant says about his agent: 'He would like to make such a promise, but he still has enough conscience to ask himself: is it not forbidden and contrary to duty to help oneself out of need in such a way?' (GMM 4:422; my italics). The awareness that such an action couldbe impermissible is a case for the RMS, since 'enough conscience to ask himself has nothing to do with the application of the

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categorical imperative, but it is rather a structural element of the agent's personality that marks the possible impermissibility of the action. Nonetheless, we need to point out that: to 'have' an RMS does not already mean to 'apply it' to a particular case. In its turn the process of application has nothing to do with the Typic of the practical faculty of judgement, since the latter refers to the procedure of morally judging actions and maxims.44 What does then the application of the RMS consist in? Unlike Herman's interpretation, it is more than apparent to me that the application of the RMS to the particular case is the moment when the agent becomes conscious of the moral law for the first time. However, this application is not the procedure of a syllogism - the latter would require the categorical imperative - and, what is more, one cannot ask how this happens: It is exactly to do with the fact of reason.45 Thus, it becomes clear why Kant characterizes the consciousness of the moral law as the fact of reason. Moral law can be given to 'every natural human reason' only in the modus of consciousness, because moral law as a formal principle is the product of philosophical reflection to which natural human reason does not have access.46 Only Kant and whoever studies his theory are aware of the universality of reason and the universal validity of the moral law. On the contrary, in every day life natural human reason confronts itself with possible cases of agency, to which pure practical reason has no other access but the consciousness of an Ought with specific content attributed to the particular case; in other words the moral experience.47 Thus, Kant says about his agent standing before the erected gallows: 'He judges, therefore, that he can do something because he is aware that he ought to do it and cognizes freedom within him, which, without the moral law, would have remained unknown to him' (CP 5:30). The consciousness that he ought to do something does not yet contain a judgement. The judgement (in the above example) concerns only the reality of freedom. This can be clearly seen in Kant's words. The consciousness of an Ought is however an immediate consciousness that one ought or ought not to do something, by means of which, at the same time, the agent recognizes the punctum salience of an action's moral relevance. But above all, knowing that one must do this (here and now), s/he also knows that this case is a moral and a non-prudential one. In other words one realizes that this Ought is a moral Ought. Thus, what we have here is on the one hand the RMS, as described by Herman, and on the other, unlike Herman's view, the moral law given factually to consciousness, which now becomes known for the first time through the application of the RMS. Whilst the RMS are pre-existing elements of moral sensitivity of the agent's personality, their application to

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specific cases produces the consciousness of particular obligations, such that one knows what one should do or omit. Since the particular obligations precede the formulation of maxims, they concern directly the content, or the concrete end of an action on the basis of which the maxim is chosen.48 This might have to do with a first inkling, which can later be corrected by means of moral appraisal, if, for instance, the adopted end is proven to be incompatible with the morality of the maxim. But this inkling already has a prescriptive character. This is exactly the point where I depart from Herman's view. As we have seen, Herman argues against the prescriptive function and claims that the application of the RMS can only produce the inkling - as Herman puts it, the knowledge that this or that could be impermissible. However, this already contains the consciousness of an Ought. Certainly, sometimes the case might be 'turbid', such that the object of the Ought is not readily discernible. There can also be cases where the Ought is immediately discernible. In any case the RMS are applied in the form of one or more particular Oughts. For this reason I would on the one hand agree with Allison, when he says, concerning Kant's relating the fact to 'natural human reason': 'This cannot mean, however, that everyone is supposed to have a distinct and explicit awareness of the moral law as Kant defines it, that is, as a formal principle. It is rather that the consciousness attributed to "every natural human reason" is of particular moral constraints'; but on the other, I would disagree with him when he adds: 'as they arise in the process of practical deliberation, with the law serving as the guiding rule (decision procedure) actually governing such deliberation. Moreover, the latter is the law in its "typified" form, the rule of judgment.' 49 As I understand it, Allison confounds the question 'what do I know, when I am conscious of the moral law?' with the question 'how can I know whether my intended action is a morally good one?'. Whilst the former question concerns the fact and precedes the moral syllogism, the latter concerns the moral syllogism itself and the appraisal of maxims. 50 I believe that - however curious this may seem - following this understanding of moral experience in Kant's theory of the fact of reason, one could find a special form of particularism. What is particularism? J. Dancy explains it this way: The leading thought behind particularism is the thought that the behavior of a reason (or of a consideration that serves as a reason) in a new case cannot be predicted from its behavior elsewhere. The way in which the consideration functions here either will or at least may

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be affected by other considerations here present. So there is no ground for the hope that we can find out here how that consideration functions in general, somehow, nor for the hope that we can move in any smooth way to how it will function in a different case.51 If my understanding is correct, then the consciousness of the moral law in Kant's theory of the fact of reason is nothing else but the every time particular and concrete obligations 'experienced' by the moral subject on every specific case of moral agency and which constitute the moral background of the specific moral decision or action. It is clear that, because of the multiplicity of conditions of everyday agency, the particular obligations of one case cannot be valid in another case. What is commanded here is not commanded there or it is even prohibited. In the framework of Kant's theory of the fact of reason particularism would mean that the fact that something is commanded here is not a reason for assuming that it is

also commanded there. And it is to do with a phenomenological moment, because it actually means that the common man can acquire knowledge of the universal moral Ought only through knowledge of the every time concrete and particular Oughts; this excludes a foreknowledge of Ought in other cases of agency, that is, it excludes the knowledge of the concrete Ought before a case with its special conditions is given. The universal Ought appears to the common man only as a concrete and every time different Ought. This should not be considered as incompatible with the universal validity of the moral law in Kant. Particularism does mean a holism of reasons,52 but one could also maintain that here both the conception of the RMS itself and their application to a particular case already constitute a holistic treatment of moral reasons for action. In the case of this phenomenological particularism, what is opposed to particularism, namely generalism,53 would not also contain the concept of the (commanded) objective universal validity of the maxim. As far as moral appraisal is concerned, which follows the application of the RMS, Kant could by no means be deemed a particularist. It seems to me that one version of my proposal can be found in T.C. Williams's interpretation when he says: In general, men know very well how they ought to act in particular situations and that a certain 'fluency' in moral acting is presupposed in the very existence of any form of moral society. In this doctrine Kant is, in fact, setting forth the common-sense view of conscience as

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the arbiter of what ought to be ... On Kant's theory ... 'consciousness of the moral law' is equated with the 'experiencing of the categorical imperative', i.e. with the experiencing or consciousness of being categorically 'obligated' or 'necessitated' in a particular situation to follow a certain course of action ... It is only through this experience, i.e. the experience of particular 'commands of reason', that the agent becomes conscious of his freedom ... At the same time, and in the act of being categorically 'commanded', the agent 'cognizes' or 'sees' what he ought to do in the situations in which he finds himself; the categorical imperative is the moral cognition. For without such 'seeing' or 'cognizing' there can be neither moral judgment nor moral willing.54 I think this can be thought of as a version of what I have called 'Kant's particularism'. It is important that, according to Williams, this moral experience, this 'seeing' or 'cognizing' of a particular Ought, constitutes a presupposition of the moral appraisal, which means that it does not contain the appraisal itself. This becomes especially clear when Williams says that 'seeing' must logically precede the ability of the Willkür to act according to a particular maxim. (This ability is connected to moral judgement.) 55 This aspect of Williams's interpretation has been criticized by Allison. Although Allison agrees in general with this interpretation (even follows it), he cannot discern why Williams in this context does not refer to the Typic of the practical faculty of judgement.56 But it is exactly this point that, I believe, renders Williams's understanding very appropriate. If experience of the moral law consists in this, namely in that the adoption of a particular end of agency is immediately commanded, then the process of formulating maxims and the corresponding moral appraisal must follow this moral experience. Kantian ethics do not alienate us as rational agents from the given conditions of our every day life, from the particular aspects of the situations in which we act and from our social and cultural context. They are certainly not founded on these conditions, these aspects and this context. But we, as moral beings, are not (or at least not only) 'abstract citizens' or 'citizen legislators of a notional republic', despite B. Williams's insisting on it. Kant's moral subject is not 'distinct from the concrete, empirically determined person that one usually takes oneself to be'. 57 The moral subject is in fact this concrete man himself to the degree to which s/he is conscious of the moral law. The terms 'most common practical use of reason' and 'every natural human reason' in Kant's theory of the fact of reason seem to confirm that.

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Notes and References 1. I would like to thank Maximilian Forschner for his useful comments on an earlier version of this paper and Pagona Togia for her help with the English translation. 2. CP 5:6, 42, 47, 55, 91, 104. - Kant's quotations follow the Akademie-Ausgabe (1902 ff.). The English translations are from the 'Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, general editors: Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, Cambridge University Press' - The translations from the German secondary literature are the author's (KS). 3. S. Allison, Henry, E.: Kant's Theory ofFreedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1990, p. 231 ff.; Herman, Barbara: The Practice of Moral Judgment. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press 1993, p. 85 ff.; Hoffe, Otfried: Immanuel Kant, Beck'sche Reihe; 506: Denker, 4., durchgesehene Auflage, München: Beck 1996, p. 207 (here also referred to as 'moral self experience'); Ilting, Karl-Heinz: 'Der naturalistische Fehlschluß bei Kant', Rehabilitierung der praktischen Philosophie, Band I, Manfred Riedel (ed.), Freiburg: Rombach, 1972, p. 124 ff.; Williams, T. C: The Concept of the Categorical Imperative. Oxford: Clarendon 1968, p. 101 ff. 4. This term is used by Jean Grondin (Grondin, Jean: 'Zur Phänomenologie des moralischen "Gesetzes". Das kontemplative Motiv der Erhebung in Kants praktischer Metaphysik', Kant-Studien 91, 2000). 5. I believe these two sides of the fact constitute the main reason why Kant identifies the fact with both the consciousness of the law and the law itself. See CP 5:31, 42. Cf. Beck, Lewis White: A Commentary on Kant's 'Critique of Practical Reason'. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1960, p. 167. 6. In this context moral experience is seen as a determinant of finitude, yet as only one aspect of finitude. It is not finitude itself by which experience differs from facticity, since the concept 'fact' presupposes the finitude of humans as well. The interpretation of Maximilian Forschner should be taken into account here: 'That it [moral law] ... is described as fact, namely as something given in advance, the foundation of which cannot be seen in pure lack of relation, in pure reality in itself and ontological necessity, such a thing cannot be based on its external-to-reason origin, but it has to be founded on the peculiar kind of being of human reason in general'( Forschner, Maximilian: Gesetz und Freiheit. Zum Problem der Autonomie bei I. Kant. München: Verlag Anton Pustet 1974, p. 255). 7. In this context the term 'deduced' does not mean 'deduced as fact', which is not at all possible (see CP 5:31), but rather 'deduced from the original fact' which in itself is not deducible. 8. Willaschek, Marcus: 'Die Tat der Vernunft. Zur Bedeuteung der Kantischen These vom "Factum der Vernunft"', Akten des Siebenten Internationalen KantKongresses, Kurfürstliches Schloß zu Mainz, 1990, ed. by G. Funke, Bonn: Bouvier 1991, p. 458; Ilting: 'Der naturalistische Fehlschluß bei Kant', p. 127. 9. Forschner: Gesetz und Freiheit..., p. 255; Beck, Lewis White: 'Das Faktum der Vernunft: Zur Rechtfertigungsproblematik in der Ethik', Kant-Studien 52, 1961, p. 271. 10. Allison: Kant's Theory of Freedom, p. 234 f.; Forschner: Gesetz und Freiheit..., p. 257.

126 Kants Notion of Moral Experience 11. Henrich, Dieter: 'Der Begriff der sittlichen Einsicht und Kants Lehre vom Faktum der Vernunft', Die Gegenwart der Griechen im neueren Denken. Festschrift H.G. Gadamer, Tübingen 1960, p. 113; Hoffe: Immanuel Kant, p. 203; Beck: A Commentary..., p. 168; Willaschek: 'Die Tat der Vernunft...', p. 459. 12. The understanding of this differentiation between Wille and Willkür originally comes from Allison (Kant's Theory ofFreedom, p. 129): 'Kant uses the terms Wille and Willkür to characterize respectively the legislative and executive functions of a unified faculty of volition, which he likewise refers to as Wille'. I think this explanation is sufficient for the arguments discussed in the present paper. 13. See Henrich: 'Der Begriff der sittlichen Einsicht...' 14. An attempt to explain this problem would go beyond the scope of this chapter. I will only briefly mention that Henrich's understanding is not compatible with the 'indeterministic' thesis according to which respect for the moral law must be incorporated into the Willkür (s. Rel 6:24) in order to develop its motivational force as an incentive. 15. Henrich: 'Der Begriff der sittlichen Einsicht...', pp. 83-8. 16. Henrich: 'Der Begriff der sittlichen Einsicht...', p. 110. 17. L.W. Beck (A Commentary..., p. 167) observes that Kant at some point (CP 5:42) identifies the fact with the autonomy. 18. Forschner: Gesetz und Freiheit..., p. 208. 19. Forschner: Gesetz und Freiheit..., p. 209. 20. Forschner (Gesetz und Freiheit...,) considers such an identification as a subjective understanding of the essence of reason, which is added to the above mentioned objective understanding of it: 'A subjective consideration, which sees reason as Wille, as practical, can conceive reason only as something which wills itself (p. 209). He then complements these 'considerations' of the essence of reason with a third one, namely that of the autonomy of rational will (p. 211). Although, throughout this analysis (which concerns the 'lawfulness' of practical reason - see p. 199 ff.), Forschner mainly refers to the GMS, the aforementioned three ways of understanding suffice to explain the diverse meanings of the facticity of the good. 21. See CP 5:79; cf. GMM 4:401, note: 'What I cognize immediately as a law for me I cognize with respect...'. 22. This is Henrich's interpretation (Henrich, Dieter: 'Ethik der Autonomie', Selbstverhältnisse. Dieter Henrich (ed.), Stuttgart 1981, p. 14) on the basis of which he makes the distinction between autognosy and autonomy. Cf. also Allison Kant's Theory of Freedom, p. 233. 23. Cf. Beck A Commentary..., p. 169. In his debate with Beck, Allison (Kant's Theory of Freedom, p. 233) denies that the practicality of reason can be the fact. I agree with Beck when he affirms this possibility as a consequence of the Kantian theory. 24. It is Beck who has introduced 04 Commentary..., p. 168 f.; cf. 'Das Faktum der Vernunft...') this distinction in the literature. 25. See Beck: 'Das Faktum der Vernunft...', p. 279 f. 26. O'Neill, Onora: Constructions ofReason: Explorations ofKant's Practical Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1989, p. 57. 27. On the Kantian notion of the interest of reason see, Forschner: Gesetz und Freiheit..., p. 265 ff.: 'Finite reason has an interest in it, namely in that the

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28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40.

41. 42. 43. 44.

pre-giveness, which is independent from it, corresponds to its own needs' (p. 268). This is how we can distinguish the concept of moral consciousness from that of moral experience. The latter is the consciousness of the moral law that has been applied to action. Cf. Lukow, Pawel: "The Fact of Reason. Kant's Passage to Ordinary Moral Knowledge", Kant-Studien 84, 1993, p. 218. Although Lukow hints at this, he finds moral experience exclusively in the feeling of respect. Whilst this is correct, it must be pointed out that respect constitutes only the psychological aspect of moral experience. (However, further development of this argument is outside the scope of the present chapter.) Herman: The Practice of Moral Judgment, p. 85. Herman: The Practice of Moral Judgment, p. 77. See Herman: The Practice of Moral Judgment, p. 79, 84. Herman: The Practice ofMoral Judgment, p. 87. According to Herman (p. 86 f.) the experience of the moral law (as the fact of reason) opens up the perspective of viewing every human as a member of a community of equal moral beings. Ilting ('Der naturalistische Fehlschluß bei Kant', p. 129) supports a similar view: 'The problem of a universal obligation through the moral law... points to the question whether we are justified in assuming that every individual who is called upon to recognise the moral law has declared "durch die Tat" [by what it does] that s/he wants to be considered as a member of that community of rational beings whose ground norm is the moral law'. But according to Ilting this thought in Kant is 'buried under a decor of platonic metaphysics' (p. 130). See Lukow, Pawel: 'Maxims, Moral Responsiveness, and Judgment', Kant-Studien 94, 2003, p. 421 ff. Lukow explains this thoroughly in a previous work, concerning the fact of reason, in which his starting point is the interpretation of O' Neill. See Lukow: 'The Fact of Reason...' Lukow: 'Maxims, Moral Responsiveness, and Judgment', p. 425. It is not clear to me to what extent Lukow considers Herman's understanding of the moral syllogism as algorithmic. Lukow: 'Maxims, Moral Responsiveness, and Judgment', p. 423. For further discussion on the views of Beck, Hoffe, Bittner, O' Neill and Allison on this subject, see Allison: Kant's Theory of Freedom, p. 85 ff.; cf. also Albrecht, Michael: 'Kants Maximenethik und ihre Begründung', Kant-Studien 85, 1994, p. 133. Regarding the stability of the maxims, namely that they cannot be (easily) revised and allow for no exceptions, cf. Albrecht: 'Kants Maximenethik und ihre Begründung', p. 144 f. Cf. also Rel 6:22, 48, 63; and also CP 5:33, where Kant speaks of the 'constancy' (Unwandelbarkeit) of the moral maxims in the context of virtue. See Herman: The Practice of Moral Judgment, p. 78. See Herman: The Practice of Moral Judgment, p. 75. See Herman: The Practice of Moral Judgment, p. 78. See CP 5:69. Kant seems to mean that the Typic concerns not solely the generalization of the maxims but of actions as well. (Cf. Beck: A Commentary, p. 162.) However, in any case it is to do with a procedure of syllogism which follows the application of the RMS.

128 Kant's Notion of Moral Experience 45. Unlike Willaschek I do not believe that the fact consists in the rational acts (see Willaschek: 'Die Tat der Vernunft...', p. 464 f.). It rather consists in the knowledge that precedes such actions. 46. Cf. GMM 4:403: 'Thus, then, we have arrived, within the moral cognition of common human reason, at its principle, which it admittedly does not think so abstractly in a universal form but which it actually has always before its eyes and uses as the norm for its appraisals.' 47. I think that this is an important aspect of a 'phenomenology of moral law' and it is overlooked by Jean Grondin ('Zur Phänomenologie des moralischen "Gesetzes"...'). 48. The fact that, according to Kant, maxims have an end or a 'matter' is not always agreed upon. For that see, Albrecht: 'Kants Maximenethik und ihre Begründung', p. 132. Albrecht affirms this position: 'As subjective principles maxims - contrary to the objectivity of the universalisation through the mere form - have a "matter", therefore an "end", out of which the subject establishes the maxims for itself (ibid.) 49. Allison: Kant's Theory of Freedom, p. 233. 50. I must admit that Kant sometimes gives the impression that this might not be his opinion. For instance, at some point he mentions: 'It is therefore the moral law, of which we become immediately conscious {as soon as we draw up maxims of the will for ourselves), that first offers itself to us' (CP 5:29 - my italics). Following Albrecht ('Kants Maximenethik und ihre Begründung', p. 140 although in relation to another point) one could explain this point as follows: 'A maxim is first taken into consideration when it is constituted and not afterwards, when it is applied'. What is more, I believe that Kant's deposit example (CP 5:27) supports my argument. 51. Dancy, Jonathan: Moral Reasons. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, p. 60. It does not seem necessary to discuss particularism any further. My aim is to ascertain a possible affinity between the central idea of particularism and my proposed reading of Kant's theory of the fact of reason, in order to render the latter more comprehensible. 52. See Dancy: Moral Reasons, p. 60 ff. 53. See Dancy: Moral Reasons, p. 57. 54. Williams, T. C : The Concept of the Categorical Imperative, p. 110 f. 55. See Williams, T.C.: The Concept of the Categorical Imperative, p. 109. 56. See Allison: Kant's Theory of Freedom, p. 283, n.13. 57. See Williams, Bernard: Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. London: Fontana Press/Collins 1985, pp. 63-5.

9 The Problem of Philosophical Knowledge in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: How To Make Theoretical Reason Intuitive1 Stelios Virvidakis

Philosophers often reflect upon the epistemological status of their own work. To the extent that they consider their inquiry as continuous with scientific investigations they are eager to accept that it has cognitive or quasi-cognitive aspirations. On the contrary, if they consider their enterprise as completely different in nature, or as unfolding at a different level from science,2 they will be ready to acknowledge that their goals are not cognitive. Their aim could thus be related to scientific knowledge only insofar as it consists in the methodological groundwork which would sustain its systematic pursuit, or in an activity of elucidation of meaning which would protect thought from logical and 'grammatical' confusion. Here, one could bring to mind the opposite examples of Russell and Quine, on the one hand, and of Wittgenstein, on the other. However, it is not at all obvious that philosophers usually can and do provide satisfactory accounts of the credentials of the basic claims constituting the starting points, or presuppositions of many of their arguments. To use Lewis White Beck's expression, such claims may seem to be 'suspended from nothing in heaven and supported by nothing on earth'. 3 Wittgenstein himself understood that any attempt to occupy a 'higher' viewpoint and engage in the self-referential scrutiny of the status of his own assertions, would lead to a paradoxical assessment of these assertions not only as empty of cognitive content, but as - strictly speaking - nonsensical.4 In fact, when we go back to Kant and try to apply his own epistemological criteria for the evaluation of cognitive claims, we seem to be confronted with a paradoxical situation of a somewhat analogous kind, involving a kind of self-undermining of all philosophical assertions, which is, of course, still very far from dictating a Wittgensteinian verdict of nonsensicality. To begin with, there are many knowledge claims that are 'made 129

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and used' in the Critique of Pure Reason, without any serious attempt at a justification. These include important views about the nature of our mental faculties, such as our sensible intuition and our discursive understanding, which are supposed to reflect 'brute facts' of our human constitution, but are not at all self-evident.5 Moreover, one wonders exactly how to construe the epistemic status of most of the substantive claims that are supposedly demonstrated in the course of the critical enterprise. Of course, we are warned that critical philosophy must give up the ambitions of traditional metaphysics, since it cannot attain pure rational knowledge of the supersensible and thus: this investigation we can properly call not doctrine but only transcendental critique, since it does not aim at the amplification of the cognitions themselves but only at their correction and is to supply the touchstone of the worth or worthlessness of all cognitions a priori... Its principles [of the understanding] are merely principles of the exposition of appearances, and the proud name of an ontology, which presumes to offer synthetic a priori cognitions of things in general in a systematic doctrine ... must give way to the modest one of a mere analytic of the pure understanding. (A12/B26, A247/B303)6 Nonetheless, the conclusions of the central arguments of the Critique of Pure Reason itself, which provide only the first basis for a system of Pure Reason, constituting a further task that was never completed and was probably unrealizable,7 are presented as possessing the status of synthetic a priori judgements. Thus, they appear to form a body of limited but robust knowledge of foundational importance, a propaedeutic to a more developed science of metaphysical synthetic a priori truths: Such a critique is accordingly a preparation, if possible, for an organon, and if this cannot be accomplished, then at least for a canon, in accordance with which the complete system of the philosophy of pure reason, whether it is to consist in the amplification or the mere limitation of its cognition, can in any case at least some day be exhibited both analytically and systematically. (A12/B26) Indeed, if they do have cognitive content and they are a priori, such conclusions must reveal truths which rely on the cooperation of sensibility with the understanding, combining concepts with (presumably pure) intuitions, and it is not clear exactly how this takes place.8 To use the terminology of critical philosophy, Kant owes us a convincing account of

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how reason 'can be made intuitive' in the realm of philosophy itself, so that it can serve a cognitive goal. Now, according to Susan Neiman's description of his metaphilosophical positions, the sage of Königsberg is torn between a regulative and a constitutive conception of philosophy, an ideal of critical 'self-knowledge' of reason, on the one hand, and the 'determination to put metaphysics on the secure path of a science and to complete a necessary edifice that will never have to be revised', on the other.9 The notion of the constitutive conception refers us to the high supersensible reaches of rationalist metaphysics, which, despite Kant's own self-imposed discipline, remain the ultimate and perhaps inevitable objects of his philosophical quest. These include God, the soul and freedom, that is, ideas the reality of which he eventually managed to approach only via the path of practical philosophy. However, what I am interested in is the correct understanding of the ground floor of the edifice, of the 'sturdy dwelling house' of critical philosophy and not the incomplete tower of a grand-scale critical metaphysics, which would 'reach the heavens': If I regard the sum total of all cognition of pure and speculative reason as an edifice for which we have in ourselves at least the idea, then I can say that in the Transcendental Doctrine of Elements we have made an estimate of the building materials and determined for what sort of edifice, with what height and strength, they would suffice. It turned out, of course, that although we had in mind a tower that would reach the heavens, the supply of materials sufficed only for a dwelling that was just roomy enough for our business on the plane of experience and high enough to survey it; however that bold undertaking had to fail from lack of material. (A707/B735) This much humbler but still safe abode is also part of constitutive philosophy and one wants to know exactly how it is built. What kind of knowledge could philosophy provide at the end of the day? Is this just self-knowledge of the human mind and at the same time of the world of appearances, only to the extent that the world, as the sum of appearances, is shaped by the cognitive faculties of the human mind? What is the source of justification to which it may appeal and what is the nature of the truths that it establishes?10 What exactly are its necessary grounds in intuition if any, and how are they established? In a few words, how does transcendental philosophy, conceived as an enterprise with cognitive aspirations, relate to experience? Finally, how could our assessment of the proper conception

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of philosophy, according to Kant's critical guidelines, contribute to our construal of transcendental idealism? In what follows, I shall concentrate on these questions in an attempt to cast light on the main features of transcendental philosophical claims. What is at stake is of course the legitimacy of transcendental knowledge, which is not only one of the explicit or implicit goals of Kant's philosophy, but could also be aimed at by contemporary philosophers engaging in new, more or less ambitious, projects of a (descriptive) 'metaphysics of experience', relying on the use of transcendental arguments.11 For most, I shall be focusing mainly on the first Critique, although a proper analysis of the central issues pertaining to the nature of transcendental philosophy should extend to most of Kant's writings of the critical period. In fact, Kant does provide a methodological account of the philosophical knowledge he aims at, trying to distinguish it from mathematical knowledge. At this point, it is I think appropriate that we begin by taking into consideration some of the methodological positions developed in the section on the 'Transcendental Doctrine of Method' of the Critique of Pure Reason. Now, the central idea which allows us to capture the main differences between the two kinds of transcendental cognition, dealing 'not so much with objects but with the mode of our knowledge of objects in so far as this mode of knowledge is to be possible a priori' (A11-12/B25) is that mathematics, unlike philosophy, proceeds to the construction of concepts: Philosophical cognition is rational cognition from concepts, mathematical cognition that from the construction of concepts. But to construct a concept means to exhibit a priori the intuition corresponding to it. For the construction of a concept therefore, a non-empirical intuition is required, which consequently, as intuition, is an individual object, but that must nevertheless, as the construction of a concept (of a general representation) express in the representation universal validity for all possible intuitions that belong under the same concept. (A713/B741)12 Hence, it is not difficult to understand why philosophy seems to be at a disadvantage, when compared to mathematics and cannot aspire to the same kind, if not degree, of certainty. As it is often explained in the Critique and in the Prolegomena (§ 40 ff.), mathematics doesn't need any special credentials in order to prove its cognitive status - its synthetic a priori claims are presumably immediately obvious and certain. On the contrary, metaphysics has to show whether and how its assertions can be synthetic and a priori. Undoubtedly, the main problem to be confronted pertains

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to the synthetiaty of such a priori assertions. Transcendental philosophy itself, constituting the 'propaedeutic groundwork for any future metaphysics', must make clear that its concepts - which are not constructed and cannot be exhibited in pure intution - have a legitimate application in the world of experience, in other words it has to provide a deduction for them. 13 As Kant puts it: All of our cognition is in the end related to possible intuitions: for through these alone is an object given. Now, an a priori concept (a non-empirical concept) either already contains a pure intuition in itself, in which case it can be constructed; or else, it contains nothing but the synthesis of possible intuitions, which are not given a priori, in which case one can well judge synthetically and a priori by its means, but only discursively, in accordance with concepts, and never intuitively through the construction of the concept... (A720/B748) ... The great fortune that reason enjoys by means of mathematics leads entirely naturally to the expectation that, if not mathematics itself, then at least its method will also succeed outside of the field of magnitudes, since it brings all of its concepts to intuitions that it can give a priori and by means of which, so to speak, it becomes master over nature; while pure philosophy, on the contrary, fumbles around in nature with discursive a priori concepts without being able to make their reality intuitive a priori and by that means confirm it. (A725/B753) However, transcendental philosophy may succeed in 'rendering the reality of its concepts intuitive' in a sense, in so far as it finds a concrete way to display the third thing = X 'on which the understanding depends when it believes itself to discover beyond the concept of A a predicate that is foreign to it and that is yet connected with it' (A9/B13). It could thus enable reason to begin 'from mere concepts' and yet move outside them to experience in order to secure their necessary connection. Its judgements wouldn't be analytic but synthetic and yet possess the features of the a priori.1* Understanding how this could be achieved shall provide us with the key to explaining the possibility of transcendental philosophical knowledge. Indeed, if the 'principle of all synthetic judgements or theoretical cognition' is that they are possible only by 'the relating of a given concept to an intuition', so that, 'if the synthetic judgement is an experiential judgement, the intuition must be empirical; if the judgement is a priori synthetic, there must be a pure intuition to ground it',15 we have to see how the 'relation to possible intuitions' could function as the substitute, or the analogue of pure intuition, as a source of syntheticity,

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which however does not compromise apriority. Kant, in Derk Pereboom's words, must 'walk a tightrope: justification in transcendental philosophy is a priori in some significant sense, but it must also involve some intuitive element. Since such justification does not plausibly involve a priori intuitions, it would seem that it must depend on experience'.16 Going back to Kant's account of philosophical methodology, we realize the extent of the difficulty: There is to be sure a transcendental synthesis from concepts alone, with which in turn only the philosopher can succeed, but which never concerns more than a thing in general, with regard to the conditions under which its perception could belong to possible experience. (A719/B747) ... The mathematical concept of a triangle I would construct, i.e. give in intuition a priori and in this way I would acquire synthetic but rational cognition. However, if I am given the transcendental concept of a reality, substance, force etc., it designates neither an empirical nor a pure intuition, but only the synthesis of empirical intuitions (which thus cannot be given a priori), and since the synthesis cannot proceed a priori to the intuition that corresponds to it, no determining synthetic proposition, but only a principle of the synthesis of possible empirical intuitions can arise from it. A transcendental proposition is therefore a synthetic rational cognition in accordance with mere concepts, and thus discursive, since through it all synthetic unity of empirical cognition first becomes possible, but no intuition is given by it a priori ... By means of the concept of cause, I actually go beyond the empirical concept of an occurrence ... but not to the intuition that exhibits the concept of cause in concreto, rather to the time-conditions in general that may be found to be in accord with the concept of cause in experience. I therefore proceed merely in accordance with concepts, since the concept is a rule of the synthesis of perceptions, which are not pure intuitions and which cannot therefore be given a priori (A722/B750 and note). ... Since philosophy is merely rational cognition in accordance with concepts, no principle is to be encountered in it that deserves the name of an axiom. Mathematics, on the contrary, is capable of axioms, e.g. that three points always lie in a plane, because by means of the construction of concepts in the intuition of the object it can connect the predicates of the latter a priori and immediately. A synthetic principle, on the contrary, e.g. the proposition that everything that happens has its cause, can never be immediately certain from mere concepts, because I must always look around for some third thing, namely the

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condition of time determination in an experience, and could never directly cognize such a principle immediately from concepts alone. Discursive principles are therefore something entirely different from intuitive ones, i.e. axioms. The former always require a deduction, with which the latter can entirely dispense, and since the latter are on the same account self-evident, which the philosophical principles, for all their certainty, can never pretend to be, any synthetic proposition of pure and transcendental reason is infinitely less obvious ... than the proposition that: Two times two is four. (A732/B760-A733/B761) Indeed, in philosophy we have to confine ourselves only to 'discursive' and not to 'intuitive' principles, which could be considered as axioms. Nonetheless, our task is not simply the negative one of 'revealing the deceptions of a reason that misjudges its own boundaries and of bringing the self-conceit of speculation back to modest but thorough self-knowledge by means of a sufficient illumination of OUT concepts' (A735/B763). We believe

we can attain some kind of positive philosophical knowledge, and thus we want to know exactly how we do succeed to establish the necessary synthetic link between concepts, which will guarantee and preserve the a priori character of our cognitive claims. Indeed, what is required is a necessary element which will enable reason to erect 'secure principles, not directly from concepts, but rather always only indirectly through the relation of concepts to something entirely contingent, namely possible experience' (A737/B765). The transcendental move of 'going beyond the concept of a thing to possible experience (which takes place a priori and constitutes the objective reality of the concept)' (A766/B794), provides us with a law for the synthesis of possible intuitions. Such a move is transcendentally, though not purely logically, necessary, and the synthesis it provides should not be confused with the empirical synthesis of the objects of actual experience (A767/B795). How is this to be understood? How exactly is the cognitive aspiration of reason satisfied, without betraying the spirit of critical philosophy and leading to new dialectical errors and illusions, similar to those plaguing traditional metaphysics? Here, the 'third thing' which constitutes the bridge between pure concepts and pure intuition is described as 'the condition of time-determination in an experience' (A733/B761), involving the function of schematism.17 In fact, if we wanted to elucidate the way the pure concepts of the understanding assume the intuitive aspect without which they could not apply to experience, we should dwell on the dense and unfortunately rather obscure account of transcendental schematism, with a view to casting light on the contribution of transcendental

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imagination to philosophical cognition. We would have to engage in a close study, which could perhaps help us settle a number of thorny interpretative issues concerning the origin and the nature of schemata. However, whether we adopt Henry Allison's proposal to regard schemata as formal intuitions, or we decide to endorse alternative construals, such as the analysis of Costas Pagondiotis, according to which transcendental schemata should not be described as formal intuitions, but rather as 'mental forms of the synthesis of possible intuitions, while formal intuitions would be the result of the application of these forms on the pure manifold of space and time', 18 we may agree that their function in rendering pure concepts intuitive remains the same. And the question of the truth of the conclusions of transcendental argumentation in which they do their work remains the same. Thus, I believe that we could here bypass the issue of schematism and concentrate directly on the peculiar character of transcendental proofs, in the hope of getting a better grasp of the nature of philosophical knowledge as conceived by Kant. To be sure, the section of the Methodology dealing with 'The discipline of Pure Reason in regard to its proofs' is not much clearer than the other sections regarding the details of the process which makes it possible for reason to achieve a substantial cognitive access to the world of experience. What we are particularly interested in is the way the 'third thing' invoked by Kant contributes the synthetic element, indispensable for a priori philosophical cognition, thus securing the results we are interested in. We soon realize that we lack any explicit and detailed analysis of the role of this third thing in the transcendental proofs of pure reason. Nevertheless, we come across important hints about the argumentative procedure to be employed in philosophical thinking, which may to an important extent prove valuable for our understanding of the main versions of contemporary transcendental arguments, however different they may be from the examples of the first Critique. Kant's introductory remarks remind us once more of the problem of the 'infirmity' of philosophical attempts at establishing synthetic a priori truths, compared to their mathematical counterparts, already pointed out: The proofs of transcendental and synthetic propositions are unique among all proofs of synthetic a priori cognition in that in their case reason may not apply itself directly to the object by means of its concepts, but must first establish the objective validity of the concepts and the possibility of their synthesis a priori. This is not merely a necessary rule of caution, but concerns the essence and the possibility of the proofs themselves. It is impossible for me to go beyond the concept

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of an object a priori without a special clue which is to be found outside of this concept. In mathematics it is a priori intuition that guides my synthesis, and there all inferences can be immediately drawn from pure intuition. In transcendental cognition, as long as it has to do merely with concepts of the understanding, this guideline is possible experience. The proof does not show, that is, that the given concept (e.g., of that which happens) leads directly to another concept (that of a cause), for such a transition would be a leap for which nothing could be held responsible; rather it shows that experience itself, hence the object of experience, would be impossible without such a connection. The proof therefore had to indicate at the same time the possibility of achieving synthetically and a priori a certain cognition of things which is not contained in the concept of them. (A782/B810-A783/B811) In fact, if one wanted to study the special features of transcendental proofs, as they are developed in the first Critique, supposedly leading to some kind of synthetic a priori knowledge, one should take into account Kant's observations about: (a) the need to consider in advance the question 'whence one can justifiably derive the principles on which one intends to build' and understand 'with what right one can expect success in inferences from them' (A786/B814); (b) the uniqueness of the proof of each transcendental proposition - contrasted to alternative ways of drawing inferences, 'not from concepts but rather from the intuition which corresponds to a concept, whether it be a pure intuition, as in mathematics, or an empirical intuition in natural science", where we can connect synthetic propositions in more than one ways' (A787/B215) and, (c) their direct or ostensive and non-apagogic character which guarantees certainty and insight into its sources (A789/B817). Unfortunately, even a careful analysis of the details of the exposition of such supposedly essential characteristics of transcendental proofs, on which we cannot dwell in the context of this short paper, leaves one with the impression that they are not very well explained. In any case, one cannot appreciate the accuracy of the methodological guidelines provided by Kant in order to elucidate his argumentative techniques, unless one is ready to endorse his general account of the function of our mental faculties, of their scope and the legitimacy of their aspirations, and his assumptions about conceptual content and conceptual relations. For instance, contemporary philosophers eager to employ transcendental arguments, may puzzle over the ostensive element that he emphasizes and point out that apagogic proofs also could grant us insight into the grounds of their possibility.19

138 Philosophical Knowledge and Intuition However, it is important to realize that the features isolated in this section do capture to a significant extent some of the most interesting and at the same time controversial aspects of transcendental argumentation of all kinds, from Kant to the present, and hence cast light on the nature of the philosophical knowledge supposedly attainable by it.20 What constitutes, I think, both a strength and a limitation of the proofs in question, underlying all other characteristics, such as uniqueness and directness, are the self-referential dimension and the circularity entailed by this dimension. Self-referentiality emerges in all attempts at elucidating the function of principles of synthesis of our a priori conceptual apparatus without which intelligible experience wouldn't be possible for us and for beings like us. There is no other way for the subject of experience to 'deduce' the legitimacy of the central categorical concepts of the understanding, by 'making intuitive' their necessary applicability, in their schematized forms as transcendental time-determinations, than by turning to himself or herself. Indeed, their indispensability is demonstrated through the use of elaborate thought - experiments which help us exclude all alternatives which are shown to be inconceivable by us. The test of unintelligibility, presented as transcendental, not strictly logical, inconceivability, presumably shows the only way theoretical reason can be 'rendered intuitive', to the extent that its concepts cannot be justified simply and evidently, since, unlike mathematical concepts, they cannot be constructed in pure intuition. Such thought experiments can be found in the Aesthetic and in the Analytic of Concepts, but assume a most elaborate form in the Analytic of Principles. The circularity which is involved in all this and which transcendental philosophers should apparently consider as non-vicious is unavoidable: Through concepts of the understanding, [reason] certainly erects secure principles, but not directly from concepts, but rather always only indirectly through the relation of the these concepts to something entirely contingent namely possible experience; since if this (something as object of possible experience) is presupposed, then they are of course apodictically certain, but in themselves they cannot even be cognized a priori (directly) at all. Thus no one can have fundamental insight into the proposition 'Everything that happens has a cause' from these concepts alone. Hence it is not a dogma, although from another point of view, namely that of the sole field of its possible use, i.e., experience, it can very well be proved apodictically. But although it must be proved, it is called a principle and not a theorem, because it has the special property that it first makes possible its ground ofproof, namely experience and must be presupposed in this [my emphasis]. (A736/B764- A737/B765)

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At the end of the day, how much do we get to know through reason in its proper transcendental use? After all, we should not forget that, according to the central idea of the Copernican turn, 'we can cognize of things a priori only what we ourselves have put into them.' (Bxviii). If one doesn't want to follow Kant in embracing the full implications of his critical approach, and doesn't adopt some idealist or verificationist premise that makes possible the valid transition to the conclusion of any transcendental argument purporting to reveal truths about the world as it appears to us, one should perhaps admit that the knowledge attained by such arguments concerns only our beliefs and the (analytic) connections between our concepts.21 One would then accept the fact that substantive a priori philosophical knowledge of the kind aspired to by Kant isn't possible at all. Indeed, regardless of the plausibility of some weak, idealist or antirealist assumptions, which would allow transcendental philosophers to sustain their cognitive claims, at the expense of sacrificing the robust, independent reality of the objects of their cognition, one may still wonder whether Kant's original philosophical project could lead to significant and positive cognitive results, by his own lights. Limiting our inquiry to more purely exegetical concerns, we may still not be sure we fully comprehend his idea of a class of a priori judgements, arrived at by transcendental proofs, establishing the synthetic connection of concepts through a demonstration of their indispensability for the possibility of experience. Such proofs, as we saw, would presumably highlight in an a priori way the necessary 'third' element external to analytic conceptual relations - thus also securing an empirically realist connection. In fact, we shall soon have to come back to the problem of the interpretation of Kantian transcendental idealism itself and of its bearing on the assessment of the results supposedly attained. Now, according to a recent construal of Kant's account of the synthetic a priori, the key to understanding how claims to philosophical knowledge of the kind we encounter in the first Critique could be considered as plausible, at least in principle, is a weakening of the a priori. Moreover, the a priori qualification of the synthetic claims in question should be understood in a justificatory and not in a genetic sense, that is, as pertaining to the possibility to provide a justification or warrant for their truth and not to the origin of the concepts they contain. Thus, if we adopt Philip Kitcher's notion of an a priori warrant, we shall think of the a priori as involving independence not of all experience, but of any particular experience. Following Kitcher's analysis, we may assume that 'a priori knowledge is knowledge produced by a special type of process which would have been available whatever (sufficiently rich) experience the subject had had'. 22

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What is important in the suggestion to apply this notion of the a priori to Kant's philosophical enterprise is the fact that it helps us cast light on the reference to possible experience, or to the 'synthesis of possible intuitions' as essential to non-mathematical knowledge through reason. It explains how a priori justification may pertain to conceptual elements contributed by the structure of our 'mindedness'23 and at the same time rely on the fact that any particular intuition has to fit the synthesizing function of these conceptual elements. Indeed, weakening apriority seems to make it possible to secure syntheticity.24 As Pereboom, who draws on Kitcher's insight, points out: Transcendental philosophy is justified a priori in the sense that the only empirical information can be derived from any possible experience ... For Kant... philosophy aims to arrive at a knowledge of the pervasive structure of our experience. If indeed there is such a pervasive structure, then any possible human experience can serve as the touchstone by which knowledge of this structure can be grounded.25 To be sure, Kitcher's suggestion for the reinterpretation of the a priori clearly points in a naturalistic direction that any account which tried to remain true to the original spirit of Kantian thought would find it difficult to accommodate.26 At this point, one may wonder about the extent to which philosophical knowledge as just described is made possible precisely by the idealist thrust of the transcendental approach. In fact, according to a traditional 'strong' or 'two-worlds' interpretation, Kant's transcendental idealism postulates the existence of two ontological realms or dimensions and the model that emerges seems to be incoherent, among other things, insofar as it tacitly presupposes the possibility of some cognitive access to things in themselves, concerning not only their very existence, but also the synthesizing activities of the 'transcendental self in itself, which cannot be reduced to a mere phenomenon. On the contrary, the 'weak' or 'two aspects' construal, elaborated, among others, by Gerold Prauss and Henry Allison allows us to consider noumena or things in themselves and phenomena simply as two aspects or viewpoints or perspectives on the world, respectively sub specie aeterni and in relation to us, in other words, independently from the epistemic conditions imposed by the human mind and in strict conformity to them. 27 It could be argued that the 'two-aspects' interpretation, despite its difficulties as an exegetical proposal, as far as the letter of the Kantian text is concerned, is philosophically more convincing.28 Moreover, it seems that the kind of transcenddental knowledge we would like to accept as a legitimate goal of the transcendental enterprise is accounted for in a

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more natural way, if we accept this 'epistemological' reading of Kant's critical idealism. We want to conceive of a metaphysics of experience which describes the structure of the world as conforming to the structure of our minds, and in so doing we would like to be able to claim to know a priori certain facts about how all possible intuitions must be synthesized by certain central concepts that we can't help applying to experience. Hence, we can't avoid admitting that we know more about the T of the subject of experience and the empirical 'manifold' that is conceptualized, and that fits our mental structures,29 than it is apparently allowed by the austere guidelines of the first Critique. However, it is much easier to understand the extent and the nature of such cognition if we don't have to assume the existence of a mysterious supersensible ontological realm of things in themselves, wherein we shall be looking both for the transcendental agent and his faculties and the 'affinity' of the matter informing our senses and necessarily adjusting to the forms of our sensibility and to the synthetic functions of our understanding, the knowledge of which shall be part of the basis of our transcendental edifice. Of course, I am not sure whether the subtler and more relaxed two-aspect reading of transcendental idealism provides for any real metaphysical space for the satisfaction of the interests of practical reason and for the existence of supersensible properties or entities that we may hope correspond to the ideas of reason, but this is another matter. In any case, I don't have the space to expand upon such concerns and explore all the epistemological implications of the model of transcendental idealism that we would like to elaborate as most appropriate for our conception of philosophical cognition. I shall conclude by formulating some questions which could provide hints for further research into the nature and the limits of philosophizing in a transcendental mode: How elementary is the experience we have to appeal to in order to render theoretical reason intuitive? How inevitably conceptually laden is it?30 Exactly how far can we extend the philosophical knowledge arrived at by such a transcendental procedure? How strong can we render transcendental arguments which are not limited to negative anti-sceptical goals and how robust a metaphysics of experience can we hope to construct by their use - without adopting objectionable idealist premises? Could we seek analogues of this kind of transcendental knowledge in the realm of practical reason, which would form the basis for a metaphysics of morals? What about synthetic a priori claims in that area and what is the real analogue of intuition there, necessary for any aspiration to cognition? 31 Such questions are hard to answer and I cannot even begin to deal with them here. In any case, what the above analysis must have indicated, Kant's own original philosophical endeavour, is not incoherent as such and his

142 Philosophical Knowledge and Intuition 'constitutive' conception of philosophy may lead to substantive, however minimal, cognitive results, insofar as it remains within the limits of criticism and does not try to violate its self-imposed restrictions, purporting to attain further knowledge beyond the bounds of experience. Notes a n d references 1. I would like to thank Gary Banham, Howard Caygill, Wolfgang Ertl, Maximilian Forschner, Kakia Goudeli, Georg Xiropaidis, Costas Pagondiotis and Ioli Patellis for their questions and their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. 2. As Wittgenstein puts it, 'Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences. (The word "philosophy" must mean something that stands above or below the natural sciences, not beside them.)' Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 4.111, transl. by D.F. Pears and B.R McGuiness, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1961. 3. See Lewis White Back, 'Towards a Meta-Critique of Pure Reason', in his Essays on Hume and Kant, New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1978, pp. 20-37, 30. 4. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, op.cit. 5. Ibid. 24f. pp. 36-7. In fact, such claims are the main object of the 'meta-critical' inquiry envisaged by Beck. On the contrary, our analysis will focus on the status of the substantive conclusions derived from the central arguments of the Critique. See the discussion that follows. 6. All the translations of passages from the Critique of Pure Reason are from the edition and translation by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood (The Cambridge Edition of the Works ofImmanuel Kant, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997). 7. Fragments of the results of attempts at pursuing this task are collected in the Opus Postumum. See I. Kant, Opus Postumum, ed. and transl. by Eckhart Förster and Michael Rosen, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1993. 8. As Kant puts it in the Prolegomena, '... metaphysics properly has to do with synthetic propositions a priori, and these alone constitute its aim, for which it indeed requires many analyses of its concepts (therefore many analytic judgments), in which analyses, though, the procedure is no different from that in any other type of cognition when one seeks simply to make its concepts clear through analysis. But the generation of cognition a priori in accordance with both intuition and concepts, ultimately of synthetic propositions a priori as well, and specifically in philosophical cognition, forms the essential content of metaphysics.' (Prolegomena Concerning any Future Metaphysics, transl. and edit, by Gary Hatfield, revised edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004 § 2, 22.) 9. Susan Neiman, The Unity ofReason, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press 1994, pp. 185f. After pointing out the insurmountable difficulties besetting the ambitious ideal of the constitutive conception of philosophy, Neiman dwells on the regulative conception which, following Onora O'Neill she considers as related to the idea of freedom and the autonomy of reason. For a clear indication of the coexistence in Kant's mind of versions of the two conceptions, see 'The Architectonic of Pure Reason' in the first Critique:'... Among all rational sciences (a priori) therefore, only mathematics can be learned, never philosophy (except historically); rather, as far as reason is concerned, we can at least only

Stelios Virvidakis 143 learn how to philosophize ... Now the system of all philosophical cognition is philosophy. One must take this objectively if one understands by it the archetype for the assessment of all attempts to philosophize, which should serve to assess each subjective philosophy, the structure of which is often so manifold and variable. In this way philosophy is a mere idea of a possible science, which is nowhere given in concreto, but which one seeks to approach in various ways ... One can only learn to philosophize, i.e. to exercise the talent of reason in prosecuting its general principles in certain experiments that come to hand, but always with the reservation of the right of reason to investigate the sources of these principles themselves and to confirm or reject them ... Philosophy is the science of the relation of all cognition to the essential ends of human reason (teleologia rationis humanae) and the philosopher is not an artist of reason, but the legislator of human reason ... Thus the metaphysics of nature as well as morals, but above all the preparatory (propaedeutic) critique of reason that dares to fly with its own wings, alone constitute that which we can call philosophy in a general sense ... Mathematics, natural science, even the empirical knowledge of mankind, have a high value as means, for the most part to contingent but yet ultimately to necessary and essential ends of humanity, but only through the mediation of a rational cognition from mere concepts, which, call it what one will, is really nothing but metaphysics' (A837/B865-A839/B868, A850/B878). See also Howard Caygills' concluding remarks in the entry for philosophy in his Kant-Lexicon: 'Kant's definition of philosophy is undogmatic and shifting. This is due to his historical view of philosophy as the outcome of philosophizing ... The questions which determine the field of philosophy are inseparable from the interests of human reason, and cannot ever be given a dogmatic answer. For this reason, it is impossible to give a definition of philosophy which would answer these questions: such a philosophy would mark the end of philosophizing and the death of philosophy itself (A Kant-Dictionary, Oxford: Blackwell 1995, 320). In any case, the trouble with the emphasis on the dynamic, regulative approach to philosophy, which avoids any specific determination of its doctrines, is that it doesn't seem to do justice to the cognitive nature of synthetic a priori claims that are indeed part of the 'constitutive' basis of critical philosophy, according to Kant's own description. 10. For the purposes of our analysis, we could perhaps agree that trancendental knowledge of this sort is a kind of 'justified true belief, setting aside Gettier's worries. 11. For such projects, see mainly P.F. Strawson, Individuals, London: Methuen 1959, but also Ross Harrison, On What There Must Be, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1974, and Leslie Stevenson, The Metaphysics of Experience, Oxford: Blackwell 1984. See also the use of transcendental arguments in various works by Donald Davidson and Hilary Putnam. 12. I shall not worry here about the difference between geometry on the one hand and arithmetic and algebra on the other, 'the construction of magnitudes (quanta) and of mere magnitude (quantitatem)' (A717/B745). Costas Pagondiotis in his article 'To Provlima tis kataskevis ton Mathematikon Ennoion ston Kant' ('The Problem of the Construction of Mathematical Concepts in Kant'), Deukalion 19/1(2001) pp. 5-26, provides a convincing interpretation of the peculiarity of arithmetical/algebraic propositions and of the sense in which they are supposed to be constructed. I will come back to

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13.

14.

15.

16. 17. 18.

19.

20.

Pagondiotis' approach below when we refer to transcendental schemata and their role in philosophical cognition. In the sense of a complex legitimation procedure, explicated by Dieter Henrich, in his 'The Proof-Structure of Kant's Transcendental Deduction', The Review of Metaphysics 22 (1969) pp. 640-59 and 'Kant's Notion of a Deduction and the Methodological Background of the First Critique' in E. Förster (ed.) Kant's Transcendental Deductions, Stanford: Stanford University Press 1989. Here, I agree with commentators who insist on the synthetic character of transcendental philosophical claims and reject readings which interpret them as analytic. See Derk Pereboom's critique of Ermanno Bencivenga's account, in Pereboom's 'Kant on Justification in Transcendental Philosophy', Synthese 85 (1990) pp. 25-54. My discussion in what follows draws heavily on Pereboom's paper, as well as on his 'Is Kant's Philosophy Inconsistent?', History ofPhilosophy Quarterly 8 (1991) pp. 357-72. Kant's letter to Reinhold, May 12,1789, in I. Kant, Philosophical Correspondence 1759-1799, edited and translated by Arnulf Zweig, Chicago: Chicago University Press 1967, p. 141. See also Kant's discussion of the 'supreme principle of all synthetic judgments' in the first Critique, which is, 'Every object stands under the necessary conditions of the synthetic unity of the manifold of intuition in a possible experience' (A158/B197). Pereboom, 'Is Kant's Philosophy Inconsistent?', op.cit., p. 367. 'The schemata are nothing but a priori time-determinations in accordance with rules.' (A145/B184). Pagondiotis, op.cit, p. 19. Of course, one should try to assess the arguments for and against the various possible readings of the section of Transcendental Schematism in some detail, before one endorses an interpretative option. On the issue of the schematism of pure a priori concepts, see also Beatrice Longuenesse, Kant and the Capacity to Judge: Sensibility and Discursivity in the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1998, pp. 242-51, 373-6. Indeed, one could interpret some contemporary anti-sceptical arguments cast in a transcendental mould as displaying an 'apagogic' form and constituting particular versions of a modus tollens. See such arguments in the recent literature from Strawson's Individuals, op.cit. to A.C Grayling's, The Refutation of Scepticism, London: Duckworth 1985. For an effort to isolate the distinctive characteristics of what I describe as a general 'transcendental stance' (or 'approach'), first elaborated by Kant and transformed in post-Wittgensteinian philosophy, see Stelios Virvidakis, 'Wittgenstein and the Development of Transcendental Philosophy', in R. Haller and J. Brandl (eds), Wittgenstein; Towards a Re-Evaluation, Proceedings of the 14th Wittgenstein-Symposium: Centenary Celebration, 13th to 20th August 1989, Kirchberg am Wechsel, Wien 1990: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky Verlag, 1990, pp. 144-6, and 'On McDowell's Conception of the Transcendental', forthcoming in Teorema. However, we should not underestimate the differences between Kant's original transcendental deductions, which display most of the characteristics of the stance in question, and contemporary transcendental arguments. On this, see D. Bell (1999), 'Transcendental Arguments and Non-naturalistic Anti-Realism', in R. Stern (ed.), Transcendental Arguments: Prospects and Problems, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1989, pp. 189-210.

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21.

22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30

31.

Bell emphasizes the idealist or antirealist character of premises informed by the transcendental stance and tries to show that the central argument of the Refutation of Idealism in the Critique of Pure Reason, is quite different in this respect and can be construed as closer to more recent models of transcendental argumentation. See also Kenneth Westphal, Kant's Transcendental Proof of Realism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004. See Barry Stroud's critique of contemporary transcendental arguments, focusing on their tacit verificationist premises, in 'Transcendental Arguments', The Journal of Philosophy 65 (1968) pp. 241-56. Strawson recognizes the force of Stroud's strictures and modifies his position in a more Humean direction in Scepticism and Naturalism, London: Methuen, 1985. On the hidden idealist or verificationist assumptions of all transcendental arguments, see also A. Moore, 'Conative Transcendental Arguments', in Stern, op.cit. pp. 270-92: 270-1 and above note 21. See Philip Kitcher, 'A Priori Knowledge', Philosophical Review 89 (1980) pp. 3-23 and 'How Kant Almost Wrote "Two Dogmas of Empiricism"', in J.N. Mohanty and R.W. Shahan (eds), Essays on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press 1982, pp. 217-49. Kitcher adds a stronger infallibility clause to the effect that such a process 'would have produced warranted true belief whatever (sufficiently rich) experience the subject had had'. Derk Pereboom rejects this additional clause. See Pereboom, 'Kant on Justification in Transcendental Philosophy' and 'Is Kant's Philosophy Inconsistent?', op.cit. To use a term coined by Jonathan Lear. See his "Leaving the World Alone", The Journal of Philosophy 79 (1982) pp. 382-403 and 'The Disappearing "We"', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 53 (1984) pp. 243-58. In fact, Kitcher considers this interpretation as showing a strange affinity between Kant's ideas and Quine's insights in his criticism of the analytic/ synthetic distinction. Pereboom, 'Kant on Justification in Transcendental Philosophy', op. cit. pp. 49-50. See note 25 above. See Gerold Prauss, Erscheinung bei Kant, Berlin: De Gruyter 1971, and Henry Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism, op.cit. For a critical assessment, see Karl Ameriks, Interpreting Kant's Critiques, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2003, pp. 95-111 and passim. See Pereboom, 'Is Kant's Philosophy Inconsistent?', op.cit. See also Ameriks, op. cit. pp. 5-6 and passim, and his, Kant's Theory of Mind: An Analysis of the Paralogisms, 2nd rev. edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000. See McDowell, Mind and World, Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press 1994. One might observe that McDowell is more interested in the converse of the problem that we have been dealing with, namely in 'how to make intuition rational'. Indeed, he insists on how understanding and reason inevitably determine intelligible experience, which constitutes from the first moment an 'actualization of conceptual capacities'. However, it must be noted that in embarking upon his apparently quasi-Hegelian inquiry he doesn't really aspire to any philosophical knowledge, because of the therapeutic, Wittgensteinian nature of his whole enterprise. Kant discusses this problem in the 'Typic of Pure Practical Judgement' of the Critique of Practical Reason.

10 The Abject Root: Kant and the Problem of Representing Evil Jason M. Wirth

More often, however, we ourselves are a plaything of dark representations [Vorstellungen], and our understanding cannot rescue itself from the absurdity in which their influence involves it, even though it recognizes them as illusions. Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (1798)1 I am here concerned with an antinomy that I claim tacitly operates throughout Kant's critical project. This antinomy, in its unexpressed operation, is not therefore one of the four antinomies found in the second section of the second chapter of the second book of the second division (Transcendental Dialectic) of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, although it is implied as the problem of the antinomic character of thinking as such. Moreover, either thinking secures a sense of its own antinomian character, or it loses itself entirely in the barbarism of scepticism, which Kant decisively eschewed at the outset of the critical project as the 'euthanasia of pure reason' (A407/B434) and a 'nomadic' assault on 'settled life' (Aix). I will ask about the tacit antinomian ground by virtue of which all particular antinomies emerge. I will attempt to do so by tracing a tacitly operating theme throughout the critical enterprise. Thinking's civil war against the barbarians within At the risk of rehearsing the obvious, I begin by drawing attention to the fact that in a proper Kantian antinomy, the thetic proposition is dogmatic and the antithetic proposition is not a contrary dogma, but rather that contests the proper and defensible domain of the dogmatic as such (A426/B448). As Kant, eschewing utterly the domain of the dogmatic, attempts to adjudicate these four antinomies, he proposes not scepticism 146

Jason M. Wirth 147 (the fundamental impossibility of philosophy) but rather the deployment of a sceptical method, itself intent on preserving the possibility of the proper operation of the various faculties of thinking as well as the interests of reason, despite the fact that we can 'only defend them in our own station (namely in the station of frail humans)' (A476/B504). It is this station of human frailty that I propose to link to the antinomian ground of thinking and which I will track in what follows. I will attempt to establish that this phrase is not a declarative description of thinking, as if one were merely bemoaning a paucity of resources. It speaks to the fundamental antinomy of human thinking itself. I aim to pursue this thesis by articulating a fundamental tension implied by the operation of Kant's philosophical activity: We must speak to the good, that is, we cannot, despite the relentless force of the categorical imperative, utterly avoid the realm of the anthropological. At the same time, such speaking always also betrays the good. Indeed, Kant reminded us at the very beginning of the preface to the A edition of the first Critique that 'human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer' (Avii). Kant calls Reason's antinomian dimension its Verlegenheit, its awkward inheritance of its own inner aporia. The critical project must reject, as its stated enemy, scepticism, which is a form of ignorance which would 'undermine the foundations [Grundlagen] of all knowledge in order, wherever possible, not to leave behind any of knowledge's reliability and certainty' (A424/B451). Scepticism, which feeds at the root of thinking, is the threat of the impossibility of philosophy as such. In enervating all truth claims, it leaves thinking with no orientation. It fundamentally annihilates the fundament itself, and although the intellect is barred from dogmatically constituting its own root (the 'to us unknown root'), it cannot afford the magnitude of the catastrophe that pure scepticism would wreak. It must speak to that to which it cannot properly speak. It must represent the unrepresentable, although it must do so in a way that does not succumb to the perils of dogmatism. It must avoid the fanaticism [Schwärmerei] of claiming that one has adequately represented the unrepresentable and known the unknowable by adhering to a strict proscription against graven images. One must put the unrepresentable 'under the strict surveillance of reason' so that one's claims do schwärmen but rather can dichten or poeticize (A570/B598). Reason must contrive a poetic mode of address that navigates the treacherous waters between the Scylla of Schwärmerei and the Charybdis of scepticism.

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I will pursue this problem in arrears, that is, by tracing it backward through Kant's critical project, beginning with his late works on anthropology, and, even more tellingly, with his reflections on radical evil (1793). Both works seem to appear as a late surprise in the critical project, as if Kant were suddenly introducing some peripheral fancies. I do not think that this is the case, and hence one must account for the place of these works in the overall critical project. Goethe, for example, expressed shock and dismay when he learned that Kant had turned to the evil that attains to the heart of humanity. 2 Furthermore, in turning to the problem of radical evil, Kant refused his own pre-critical subscription to the traditional privatio account of evil.3 By carefully analysing two rather dramatic images from Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft essay, I hope to locate this tacit and fundamental antinomy at work. As Kant explores the putrid heart of humanity, he discovers that, in a way, humanity is indeed wild at heart and that such an antinomy tacitly belongs to the foundation of human freedom and thinking. I attempt to locate this antinomy by closely examining Kant's own comments on the 'wild,' namely his anthropological theses about savages. I examine first Kant's claim that savages have a penchant for intoxication that almost cannot be extirpated and secondly, that they can murder not for rationally coherent political or personal gains, but simply for its own sake. I trace the tensions within these two examples retroactively all the way back to the initial commencement of the critical project itself and its disavowal of the savagery implicit in scepticism itself. The representation of the good At the risk of pursuing this plan in a fashion that may appear eccentric and bizarre, I would first like to begin with an initial image, which does not come from Kant but rather from Nietzsche. Hence, despite Kant's denigration of examples in the first Critique as the 'Gängelwagen [go-cart] of judgement' (A134/B173),4 and the consolation prize for those who lack philosophical talent, I shall proceed unperturbed, convinced that this image, as well as the two Kantian images that shall soon follow, are more than mere illustrations of abstract principles that could be stated more purely. Furthermore, two of my examples derive from Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft? where Kant himself claims that to understand this particular text, 'only common morality is needed' thereby obviating the need for 'meddling with the first two Critiques' (Rel 13/15). I will both examine 'examples' and meddle with the critical project.

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But again, my initial image and its analysis aim at generally orienting the overall problematic. It derives not from Kant, but from the early Church Father TertuUian, by way of Nietzsche's Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887). Attempting to sway ambivalent Christians away from blood drenched public spectacles, TertuUian regales them with the prospects of a truly sublime programme of Bread and Circuses, namely, the view from heaven of the fiery torment of the damned. Amidst listing the many species of spectacular anguish that will be available for the beatific splendour of the saved, TertuUian comes to the item that I would like to consider. Following those who martyred Christians one finds a particular congregation of philosophers, namely, the ones 'reddening before their disciples as they blaze together, the disciples to whom they suggested that nothing was of any concern to God; to whom they asserted that our souls are either nothing or that they will not return to their former bodies!'6 Not only must these poor philosophers burn in hell forever, they must be do so while enduring the perpetual consternation of their students. But what crime merited such heinous punishment? Misrepresenting good and evil! In a way, their wretched fate speaks to philosophy's greatest possible failing, namely, the surrender of its fundamental obligation to articulate and foster the good. Of course, Nietzsche's inclusion of this discourse allows for TertuUian to hang himself by his own hatefulness. For TertuUian, indeed, according to Nietzsche, for all moralists, the good is always my and our good, and our refusal of any exteriority is born of slave morality's ressentiment before the immense plenitude and dissonance of the good. Morality reduces the good to its good, to its representation of the good and therefore concomitantly to its condemnation to what can be represented as evil, that is, the resistance and contestation of this representation of the good. On the other hand, the original and sovereign distinction between gut and schlecht demanded neither that one represent the good nor that one persecute the ignoble. Nietzsche's transvaluation of all values rests, at least inadvertently, on the preeminence and urgency that Kant endowed the demand that Reason come into relation with the good, despite its inability to understand and represent it. On the one hand, the price for not articulating the good and its corollary (evil) is enormous. In these times of both terrorism and George W. Bush's lamentable hubris and Manichean adventurism, or in reflecting on the enormous violence that has been the history of modernity (slavery, colonialism, genocide, and wars of unprecedented savagery), we experience the collapse of representation as such acutely. How does Reason address our own savagery? On the other hand, one can

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argue that the representation of the good contributed precisely to the various ideological underpinnings of these calamities. Bush, for example, remarks that it is not the United States that is giving the Iraqi people the gift of freedom. Freedom is a gift from God. Hence, we come to an antinomy. We must speak to the good and, at the same time, such speaking always also betrays the good. As we have already seen, Kant reminded us at the very beginning of the preface to the A edition of the first Critique that 'human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of Reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer' (Avii). The hereditary station of human frailty Kant calls the stain of our Verlegenheit, the inherited embarrassment and awkwardness of thinking itself. I turn to such a Verlegenheit- such tragic awkwardness - in an examination of Reason's imperative but ineluctably troubled representation of evil.7

Savagery Allow me first to preface the remaining two Kantian images with the following reflection. It could be argued that in terms of the critical enterprise, its epistemological stakes, while necessary, are far less urgent than reason's capacity to somehow speak of the good. As Deleuze astutely observed, 'If there were only the speculative interest, it would be very doubtful whether reason would ever consider the things in themselves.'8 If radical skepticism is 'the 'euthanasia of pure reason' (A407/B434) and a 'nomadic' assault on 'settled life' (Aix), then it is most catastrophically registered in the collapse of moral judgements. Nomadic thought cannot transcend its errant ways and settle itself on the foundation of the moral law. A defence of Reason is hence more fundamental and urgent than securing a small island abode for the understanding amidst the savage sea of incomprehensibility. The pursuit of defensible knowledge claims, for example, assumes that such thing is a good idea. Yet, for Kant, one cannot know the good. Indeed, in the preface to the second edition of the first Critique, Kant already argued that 'Morality does not, indeed, require that freedom should be understood, but only that it should not contradict itself, and so should at least allow of being thought' (Bxxix). Freedom, even though it is stricht sensu incomprehensible, must be nonetheless somehow thought in its freedom. It cannot be thought as something that contradicts and thereby renders wholly unavailable that which Reason endeavours to think. The good must be thought in its

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goodness. Failure to do so euthanizes Reason itself, leaving it powerless before the nomadic hordes of noxious sceptics for whom the good is not a governing idea. In this light, I would like to present the first image, which is found in a footnote to Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft. A propensity [Hang] is really only the predisposition [Prädisposition] to crave a delight which, once experienced, arouses in the subject an inclination to it. Thus all savage peoples have a propensity for intoxicants; for though many of them are wholly ignorant of intoxication [Rausch] and in consequence have absolutely no craving for an intoxicant, let them but once sample it and there is aroused in them a craving for it that almost cannot be extirpated. (Rel 24/28) Kant does provide a rather disturbing characterization of savage peoples as primarily governed not by freedom but rather by the obdurate propensity to founder in brutish behaviour in such a way that it assaults the very intelligibility of the idea of humanity.9 Savages are given to Rausch, a term almost Dionysian in its dimensions, invoking Corybantes and Maenads and dithyrambic excesses. Of course, Kant's forays into anthropological speculation are notoriously parochial and intolerant. One wonders how the absolute demands of the categorical imperative could have spared either the racism and misogyny of his courses in anthropology and physical geography, which far outnumbered his course offerings in any other subject, including moral philosophy,10 or his Anthropologie in pragmatisher Hinsicht, the last of the texts that Kant himself personally published. Yet it is not my purpose here to rehearse these grievances nor to support Kant's 'wild' anthropological hypotheses about far-flung people. I am turning to this passage to examine what possibilities Kant's account of human savagery might shed on our problematic. For Kant, savage, nomadic, pernicious humanity, humanity that for Kant contradicts the very possibility of humanity, is virtually enslaved to the dictates of its own savage, ungovernable nature. Kant uses the Latin Prädisposition and not Anlage. Had he simply used the latter, this would have committed him to claiming that savages ineluctably follow the dictates of their wild nature. Such hapless but nonetheless wholly amoral inner commands would not therefore inherently have any inner limitations whatsoever that would regulate the potential or actual range of their violence. An Anlage (an inborn property) would condemn savages by their very nature to adhere exclusively to what Kant called 'physical and purely mechanical self-love, where no Reason [Vernunft] is demanded' (Rel 22/26).

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Kant calls this 'die Anlage für die Tierhextim Menschen', 'the predisposition to animality in humans'. He argues that it has three main instantiations in humanity: (a) the impulse for self-preservation, (b) the impulse for propagation through the sexual impulse, including the impulse for child rearing, and (c) the social impulse, in which we seek to congregate with others. Yet such a predisposition is mechanical and thereby involves no freedom and if these mechanics are not themselves more fundamentally governed by a ground anterior to such mechanics, they have the propensity to degenerate into purely bestial impulses. It is as if one's humanity must pull moral rank on one's animality. Otherwise this predisposition degenerates into 'the vices of the savagery of nature' (Rel 22/26). The Anlage for self-preservation devolves into the vices of gluttony and drunkenness. One's need to eat no longer abides by any limits (either of quantity or quality, opening one up to massive consumption as well as to the proclivity for extreme forms of gluttony like cannibalism).11 Nor does one's thirst seek simply to be slaked. It presumably seeks temporarily through inebriation to annihilate Reason, that through which humanity seeks to govern its inherited animality. The Anlage for propagation degenerates into lasciviousness, that is, presumably, the libertine's gleeful sensuality and thereby bestial indifference to the procreative aspects of his or her pleasure. The Anlage for sociality deviates into 'wild lawlessness (in relation to other men)' (Rel 22/26), as if one perhaps became like Polyphemos in the Odyssey, whose kind did not cultivate the land, practise politics, assemble together, live in houses, or wince at eating their guests, thus violating the human code of xenia.12 Kant dubs these three deviations from the automatic or 'mechanical' animal instincts die viehische Laster, 'the bestial vices' (Rel 22/26). Vieh is the word for livestock, although, when applied to humans, it assumes a pejorative sense, as if Circe had stolen one's humanity and leaving only one's animality, which now prevails without contest. A viehisch person, ein viehischer Mensch, then, is a person in name only, but at heart, they are swinish. Viehisch essen means to swill, to eat like a pig.13 Kant elsewhere in his University of Königsberg Lectures on Ethics called the swinish degeneration of the Anlage for propagation a criminen carnis contra naturam [as opposed to secundum naturam, which merely contradicts Reason]. The latter is exemplified by concubinage and adultery, which the moral law forbids, the former on the grounds of inequality (women surrender but men do not) and the latter on the grounds of the breach of an inviolable trust.14 Carnal criminality is far more grievous. It opposes one's proper animality [propagation] and thereby contradicts the ends of nature [and one's rational faith in the teleology of nature and thereby

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natural law] and it is a contradiction of one's natural instinct. Foremost among these transgressions of human animality for Kant was onanism. It is utterly wild and exuberant [like the intoxicants that drive the savages to the perpetual cultivation of Rausch and frenzy], achieving no natural ends whatsoever. Perhaps the immorality of concubinage and adultery transgresses Reason's unremitting respect for the categorical imperative, but it does not offend nature. Perhaps one will inadvertently impregnate one's concubine, but masturbation is the very epitome of moral nihilism as one's animal predisposition deviates into a savagely errant and useless act. 'By it man sets aside his person and degrades himself below the level of animals.' 15 Kant appends this list with two more crimina carnis contra naturam, namely homosexuality (it neither preserves the species - as a crimen carnis secundum naturam could do - and it degrades a person's humanity 'below the level of animals') and bestiality, which is again 'below the level of animals, for no animal turns in this way from its own species'. Human savagery, that is, the propensity for animality to triumph over humanity to such an extent that it exceeds all other animals 'is the most abominable conduct of which man can be guilty'. Let us be clear about this: having sex with a cow or masturbating in the night is more 'abominable' than, say, perpetrating genocide. Kant, who presumably had to do all of his research into animal behaviour within the city limits of Königsberg and within books, believed, contrary to what any peasant would quickly confirm, that no animals ever masturbated or engaged in homosexual acts, or experimented with other species. The fact that humans do something that presumably no other animal would, and do so as a 'frequent occurrence', 'makes us ashamed that we are human beings'. Returning to the image of the savages and their predilection for chemically induced frenzy, one can argue that Kant's use of the term Prädisposition, in its most charitable reading, allows one to surmise that Kant has in mind here a difference in degree not in kind. Once savages discover drugs and alcohol, these sirenic charms rouse 'a craving that almost cannot be extirpated'. Vertilgen, to extirpate, to remove at the root, of course, immediately evokes the problematic of 'radical evil', evil that adheres to the root, to the heart, of one's freedom. For Kant 'human powers' cannot extirpate {vertilgen) the corruption that attaches itself to the root (Rel 32/39). This propensity of the human heart, which is itself neither good nor evil, but free, can only be attenuated. Kant uses the verb überwiegen, which does not mean 'overcome,' as Greene and Hudson, as well as George di Giovanni,16 translate it, but to keep the upper hand on, to attempt to

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maintain an advantage over, to have a greater counterweight than, to outweigh and thereby predominate. This propensity cannot be subjugated altogether, but remains a kind of barbarian knocking at the gate of morality. Despite the unlikelihood that among savages and their Rausch loving propensities it would be actualized, it remains a logical possibility that such a craving could one day be governed. Freedom, through Reason's steady and responsible exercise of good maxims, could predominate over the savage propensities in every human heart, even that of the obdurately savage. Hence, savagery marks an extreme difference in degree between civilized humanity, whose freedom is more open to the possibility of being governed by the moral law, and savages, who are especially remote from the good. One might say that the Prädisposition of savages is not the Anlage by which they must be wild, but rather the recalcitrance and density of their mechanical self-love, which has an inordinate degree of bestial dullness before the command of the moral law. Their de facto law is to be helplessly lawless, as if this were somehow the law of the wild, namely, that the wild not contradict its own wildness. Such savagery is unsettled, unsettling, and resists settling down. This is the wilderness of antihumanity, in which the core of humanity almost cannot come under the sway of freedom. In this sense, therefore, there is a madness that characterizes savagery in the sense that, for Kant in the Anthropologie, all species of madness share in common its loss of the sensus communis and the emergence of a sensus privatus. Madness is the loss of the faculty for public judgement: 'a man sees in broad daylight a lamp burning on his table that another man present does not see, or hears a voice that no one else hears' (Anthr 88). The madness of savagery has an obdurate propensity to act wholly on its own, oblivious to the externality of others. Madness and evil speak to an escalating and sinister solipsism, a pernicious scepticism in which all judgements are the sole provenance of a single subject. Yet mechanical self-love and its bestial extravagances born of deafness to the call of the good is not the final word on savagery. Arguing against a sentimental account of a virtuous humanity initially found in a state of nature but later corrupted by society, Kant speaks, by way of counter examples, of the overwhelming evidence of das Laster der Rohigkeit, the vice of a raw, undeveloped, uncultivated brutality (Rel 28/34). Kant cites, inter alia, 'the unending cruelty (of which Captain Hearne tells) in the wide wastes of northwestern America, cruelty from which, indeed, not a soul reaps the smallest benefit' (Rel 28/34). Kant in a footnote then recounts Hearne's report17 that the 'war ceaselessly waged between the

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Arathapescaw Indians and the Dog Rib Indians has no other object than mere slaughter'. These foes do not pursue honour within the auspices of a noble war for which sacrifice is commendable. Rather one can glean from the 'complacency with which victors boast their mighty deeds (massacres, butchery without quarter, and the like) that it is merely their own superiority and the destruction that they can wreak, without any other objective, in which they really take satisfaction' (Rel 28/34).18 The more absorbed one becomes in one's own ego, the more diabolic one becomes. Although Kant is not explicit about this, it would follow that the devil, no longer an obedient angel absorbed without hesitation or distance in the absolutely good, unleashes the absolute savagery of egoism. The devil is the pure vacuum that tolerates only itself. The inner movement of the satanic ego is to swell to the point in which there is nothing but itself, in which there is nothing external to oneself. This second kind of extreme propensity of savages, then, exemplifies the outermost collapse of the Anlage not to animality, but to humanity, which results in a comparative self-love (Rel 22/26-27). Presumably taking his lead from Rousseau's account of self-love in Emile,19 Kant argues that the original desire for equality, which stems from the desire to be esteemed by others, soon degenerates into jealousy, rancour, and spite, when such desires are thwarted and therefore must be more violently pursued. Soon the desire for equality gives birth to revenge and the desire to dominate. These 'vices of culture' at their most extreme become 'diabolical', presumably in direct proportion to their capacity to foreswear cultivation itself. They exceed 'what is human' when they pursue with animal savagery a human propensity. Implicitly this gives rise to something like a paradoxical culture of animality, where one diabolically pursues one's own aggrandizement, much like Hearne's Native American culture of extreme war, where personal conquest exceeds any communitarian military goals.20 Kant's savages not only do morally despicable things, but they are morally despicable. That is to say, savagery is not simply a compendium of savage accidental predicates that come to characterize one's behaviour as savage. One is a savage for savagery more fundamentally characterizes a property of the subject. A savage acts savagely because a savage is a savage. A savage acts, or has the obdurate propensity to act, from their wild heart. As such, whether or not they have yet done anything particularly despicable, they have the latent heart of a savage and one realizes that it is simply a question of time before it expresses its terrifyingly unsettled ways. Self-love, whether it issues from the Anlage of animality or humanity, is a propensity for freedom to become confounded in an oxymoron.

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If one loves the phenomenal self, than one does not love. If one loves, it is not the self that one pursues, but the exteriority of the good. Yet this self-love, which issues from the 'to us unknown root' that is our own freedom, appears to Kant and to morality as anything but good. Moreover, it has the 'propensity' to appear 'within the boundaries of mere Reason' in the exact opposite way, as awful and horrible, the general repulsiveness of the human heart. Radical evil is the inscrutable freedom of 'the putrid stain of our kind' (Rel 34/39). The unity of apperception and the humiliation of self-conceit In what remains, I would like to pursue the antinomic relationship between Reason and evil by turning to the grounding of the propensity for evil in both mechanical and competitive self-love. Unlike the predisposition for the respect for the humanity in others, the savagery of selflove is an intensification of the otherwise welcome predispositions towards animality and human sociality. As the selfishness of self-love intensifies, swinishness grows more deaf to Reason's relationship to the absolute and shared humanity of oneself and others. Savagery is simply more extreme in degree than the petty swinishness of quotidian life. Yet bestial vices, regardless of their intensity, are themselves intensifications of natural virtues. Masturbation and bestiality are forms of bestial self-love and selfabsorption whose deviation from humanity can be traced to the natural impulse to love oneself by propagating one's kind, caring primarily for one's own family and loved ones, and so on. In bestiality, for example, one loves oneself at the expense of one's humanity. What then is this self that can go awry when it comes into contact with the Circe within? What is this self that, when it loves itself exorbitantly, degrades the moral value of its very selfhood? The extremity of Kant's allergy to animality points to the antinomy within Kant's analysis of Reason's moral relationship to selfhood. On the one hand, evil is the propensity of the 'to us unknown root,' freedom, to pervert itself by loving its phenomenal mask as if it were its noumenal humanity. The more the phenomenal self becomes absorbed with itself, and it always has the propensity to do so because that propensity is the very impetus of the phenomenal selfhood to preserve and enhance itself, the more savage (bestial or diabolical) it becomes. Yet when Reason submits to the moral law and when freedom consequently prevails - however tentatively - over the propensities of self-love through the self-abdication that is obedience to good maxims, the more love converts to the absolute

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dignity that is the noumenal humanity of humankind. Radical evil is the Verkehrtheit des Herzens, the topsy-turvy propensity of freedom to fight for its slavery as if it were for itself. Verkehrtheit (Rel 25/30) is a turning (kehren), the perversity of freedom's propensity to turn on itself and thereby become deaf to itself and oblivious to the imperative voice of an exteriority that grounds the moral order. Submission to the moral law is hence a Wiederkehr zu dem Guten (Rel 39/47), the good's return to itself, freedom freely becoming freedom again. It is freedom's selfuniversalization of itself, its conversion from the perversion of the sensus privatus. This is done when self-love converts to the love of noumenal humanity as such. Yet can one simply return to an absolute humanity and, to borrow Kierkegaard's felicitous and penetrating phrase (in Fear and Trembling), have an absolute relation to the absolute? Kant, for example, refers to absolute humanity as itself a self and that furthermore, this 'self is the absolute self, the absolute humanity, of the human species. Why is this 'self exclusively restricted to the domain of humanity as it is in Kant and even in Fichte? Why is this 'self not, as Schelling so powerfully argued, the dark and absolutely dignified ground, the irreducible remainder, of all of nature! Hence, in Schelling's tremulous Freedom essay (1809), the question of evil cannot be separated from the question of nature. Or as the great Chinese Zen (Chan) master Linji argued over a millenium before Kant, 'the true person of no rank' is indistinguishable from the heart of nature itself. Kant, as we have seen, despite the extraordinary power of his insight, resorts to a natural teleology as a regulative ideal to protect freedom from its own propensity for abomination. As Diane Morgan argued, in the end 'there is no reassuringly teleological schema; instead, we are marked by the contaminated opposition between good and evil. This opposition fuels the permanent moral revolution within the individual, which can only express itself for him/her as a perpetual reform.'21 Kant prefaced the B edition of the first Critique with a motto that began De nobis ipsis silemus - of ourselves we say nothing. Why did Kant not say: Of ourselves we are nothing? Or begin as Nietzsche began the Genealogie, 'We are unknown to ourselves, we knowers'? In the first Critique, a work that is in its own way a propaedeutic for the urgent need to articulate freedom's command that it return to itself, that it not lose itself in the sceptical madness of solipsism,22 that it respect the absolute humanity of the 'to us unknown root', the antinomial problematic of selfhood is first articulated as the unity of apperception. As is well known, transcendental apperception is not a reflection in which one gets to know oneself and finds oneself as if one were in therapy. It is not

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empirical apperception (A107) but is rather 'the pure original and immutable consciousness' (A107) and das stehende und bleibende Ich, the standing and abiding ego (A 123). It is, in the formulation of the B deduction, the 'I think' that 'must be able to accompany all of "my" representations' (B131-2). Hence, the representing subject is secured in transcendental apperception. The self, while opaque, nonetheless holds onto itself while keeping the freedom of nature at bay, having already been schematized. In no way or place do the inscrutable energies of nature break through perception's a priori synthetic arrangement of them. Hence, I concur with Kyriaki Goudeli when she astutely argues that 'the requirement of the static, formal identity of the self excludes the possibility of dreams, visions, or any states where the subject does not recognize in them its continuing and absolutely same ego'.23 Kant was not a thinker of the ecstatic self amidst the logogriph of nature. 'In Kant's conceptual thinking the world is turned into the representation of the subject.'24 Even the Kritik der Urteilskraft, which offers so many lines of escape, in the end falls prey to Kant's commitment to the representing subject and its legislative character. The free play of form does not speak to the sovereignty of nature, but rather accords pleasurably with the architectonic structure of human subjectivity. Even though the sublime, for example, clearly contests the imperial propensities of mechanical and comparative self-love, the freedom of nature is, in the end, a projection of my freedom. 'The order of pleasure gives way to the pleasure of order, since the free play proves to be but a programmed ceremony for the celebration of the principles of Reason.'25 Nowhere, then, is there a place, as there is in Schelling, for what Goudeli eloquently dubbed the 'abduction' 26 of Reason. In a way, then, one could say that more fundamentally evil is, as Schelling later implies, nature forgetting herself. As such, the antinomial relationship between Reason and evil manifests itself in Kant's own location of freedom in self-hood. Yet this to us unknown root, which, starting with the first Critique, restrains the power of the productive imagination, for 'the principle of necessary unity of pure (productive) synthesis of imagination, prior to apperception, is the ground of the possibility of all knowledge' (A118). Hence, Martin Heidegger rather provocatively argued that: The original, essential constitution of humankind, 'rooted' in the transcendental power of the imagination, is the 'unknown' into which Kant must have looked if he spoke of the 'root unknown to us' for the unknown is not that of which we simply know nothing. Rather, it is what pushes against something unsettling in what is known. 27

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The abyssal character of reason would rob him of the universality in which 'to wander critically through the region of Moral Philosophy and to repair the indeterminate, empirical universality of popular philosophical doctrines concerning morals'.28 This is not in any way to belittle Kant's accomplishment, which I regard as monumental. The good, even in its restriction to our absolute humanity, has the structure of an imperative originating in pure exteriority, disrupting ordinary time. In the second Critique, the 'root' of nobility29 'elevates the human above her or himself and breaks the spell of time by restricting the domain of experience (CP 86) and hence the moral law excludes self-love and 'humiliates' the self-conceit (CP 75) that operates with increasing intensity in comparative love. In this way, Kant's description in the Religion text of Gesinnung, one's ethical disposition, as not being 'acquired in time' (Rel 20/24) becomes both clearer and more profound. The good contests time and returns to itself in its place before and otherwise than time. The good is the absolute dignity of eternity humiliating the self-conceit of human experience and thereby the selfconceit of human time itself. Richard Bernstein has argued that 'Kant is at war with himself and that he wants to have his cake and eat it too! On the one hand, Kant insists on the absolute freedom of humanity but on the other hand we are responsible for a propensity that we do not choose and that we are guilty before we have acted. 30 1 concur with Bernstein's assessment that Kant is at war with himself, but for different reasons. The humiliation of selfconceit by the absolute exteriority of eternity reveals the ineluctable guilt of being free beings, of being the (third) antinomy of phenomenal necessity and absolute freedom. This aporia is the aporetic structure of the good itself. We must always endeavour to speak its name and always know with guilt that we alas have said too much. Reason is dirempted, exiled from its ground, yet unable to ignore it. For Kant, there is - as there always is - the temptation of the conservative, for both good and evil haunt the need to conserve. When one looks to Kant in the third Critique on laughter, one does not see the superabundance of Nietzsche's laughter. For Kant, laughter is a kind of prophylactic against the incongruous (just as teleological judgement is a regulative ideal that preserves the moral intelligibility of nature). Such laughter is committed to the primacy of order, as if such laughter did not hide its host's own element of self-conceit. Kantian laughter neutralizes the incongruous and preserves order, as if congruity were primary and the incongruous were a secondary and accidental nomadic invasion. In the foundering of the understanding before the unexpected, 'for laughter is an affection

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arising from the strained expectation being suddenly reduced to nothing'. 31 Laughter does not surrender the eminency of the understanding but rather 'produces an equilibrium of the vital forces of the body' (CJ 199). The understanding, having expected things to be a certain way, confronts something absurd, which, in turn, utterly evaporates the understanding's current expectations. The pleasure of laughter, however, does not result for the utter frustration of the entirety of the understanding. Rather, the understanding, engaged in a single act, suddenly comes to nothing as something wild happens. Again, we find ourselves among the savages who illustrate, in their savagery, how laughter is in its own way the momentary savaging of the understanding. Kant, who will never be known for his wild flights of comic fancy, turns to a hapless savage to illustrate his point. Supposing that an 'ignorant Indian' were present when a bottle of ale had been opened and all of its contents had suddenly, presumably due to pressure, reduced to froth and flowed out. The Indian loudly expressed delight, prompting the Englishman to ask him why he found the loss of ale to be so damn funny. The Indian explained that he did not find it funny that all of the ale had suddenly come flowing out, but that it was amazing that they had got so much ale into so tiny a bottle (CJ 199-200). The absurdity of the Indian's response does not fundamentally disorient the understanding. Rather it disappoints one of its expectations, annihilating it, and thereby producing equilibrium maintaining laughter. The settled life of Reason once again safeguards itself from the savage nomads. Oh, the good - an impossible demand, a nomadic and, in its own way, savage question that unsettles Reason as much as it settles it!

Notes and references 1. The Anthropologie, section 5. Anthropologyfroma Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Mary J. Gregor (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1974), translation modified. 2. Karl Vorländer, Kant-Schiller-Goethe (Leipzig: Meiner 1923). I am indebted to Joe Lawrence for this reference. See his fine essay 'Radical Evil and Kant's Turn to Religion,' The Journal of Value Inquiry 36 (2002), pp. 322-3. 3. See Olivier Reboul's superb study, Kant et le Probleme du mal (Montreal: Presses de l'Universite de Montreal, 1971). 4. I have used, with many of my own emendations, the Norman Kemp Smith translation (New York: St Martin's Press 1965). Kritik der reinen Vernunft, ed. Raymund Schmidt (Hamburg: St Meiner Verlag 1956). I use the Standard pagination, referring to both the A and the B editions where appropriate. 5. Religion within the Limits ofReason Alone, trans. Theodore Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson (New York: Harper Torchbooks 1960). I have, where needed, amended

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6. 7.

8. 9.

10.

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the translation. Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft, ed. Karl Vorländer (Hamburg: Meiner Verlag 1956). The English citation is followed by the German citation. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy ofMorality [Zur Genealogie der Moral], trans. Maudemarie Clark and Alan J. Swensen (Indianapolis: Hackett 1998), p. 30. Smith translates Verlegenheit simply as 'perplexity/ which, in preserving the antinomian character of thinking, nonetheless sacrifices the primary resonance of the word as embarrassment and awkwardness. According to the Kluge, the term before the 18th century (in its Middle High German root) denoted a laziness induced by inactivity, and its 18th century usage evolved from these situations. This awkwardness emerges in an inability to act well in a situation that demands action. Gilles Deleuze, Kant's Critical Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press 1984), p. 6. For a provocative examination of the problem of Savages and wild and brutish peoples in the European cultural imagination, see Hinrich Fink-Eitel's excellent study, Die Philosophie und die Wilden: Über die Bedeutung des Fremden für die europäische Geistesgeschichte (Hamburg: Junius Verlag 1994). Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze reports that']. A. May (1970) has calculated that at the University of Königsberg where he spent his entire career, Kant offered as many as 72 courses in anthropology or geography, compared to only 54 in logic, 49 in metaphysics, 28 in moral philosophy, and 20 in theoretical physics'. See his 'Introduction' to Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader (Cambridge, MA, and Oxford: Blackwell 1997), p. 2. I suspect that Kant's extremely allergic racism cannot be separated from his allergy to savagery (i.e., the predominance of animality and super-animality over humanity). Already in his pre-critical phase in his essay Observations on the Feelings of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764), Kant had adopted David Hume's rather virulent racism. 'Mr. Hume challenges anyone to cite a single example in which a Negro has shown talents' (Eze, 55). In his Lectures on Physical Geography, Kant argues that savages even have a savage relationship to their own death. 'Montesquieu is correct in his judgment that the weakheartedness that makes death so terrifying to the Indian or the Negro also makes him fear many things other than death that the European can withstand. The Negro slave from Guinea drowns himself if he is forced into slavery. The Indian women burn themselves. The Carib commits suicide at the slightest provocation. The Peruvian trembles in the face of an enemy, and when he is led to death, he is ambivalent, as though it means nothing' (Eze, 64). Of course, to be fair, Kant does not spare even the Europeans as the conclusion to the Anthropologie attests.

11. Hence it should come as no surprise that in section 29 of the Anthropologie, Kant argues that one cannot effectively judge the character of another when they are drunk. 'But all of them, once they have slept off the Rausch, will laugh, when reminded of what they said the evening before, at his wondrous [wunderlich] disposition [Stimmung] or indisposition [Verstimmung] of their senses (Anthr, 48, translation slightly modified). Stimmung suggests a mood as well as a being in tune (as in a piano) while Verstimmung is to be out of tune and thereby disgruntled. It is a mood gone astray, a foreign (wunderlich, i.e., the intrusion in the normal order of something seemingly magical, an actio in distans) and nomadic mood.

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12. We 'reached the country of the lawless outrageous Cyclopes who, putting all their trust in the immortal gods, neither plow with their hands nor plant anything ... These people have no institutions, no meetings for counsels'. The Odyssey, trans. Richard Lattimore (New York: Harper Colophon 1975), chapter XI, lines 106-15. 13. For a discussion of the problematic of animality, see my 'Animal Desiring: Nietzsche, Bataille and a World without Image,' Research in Phenomenology, volume 31 (2001), pp. 96-112. 14. In my effort to flush out a fundamental aporia in the critical project, I do not want to ignore the profundity and merit of many of Kant's moral arguments, including the problems of sex and marriage. For a good treatment of this, see Georges Faraklas, chapter 3 in this volume. Furthermore, I do not want to suggest that Kant is somehow a rigid and reactionary thinker. He was a philosopher as opposed to someone simply articulating the various parts of an already finished system. For a discussion of this virtue in Kant's thinking, see also Howard Caygill's chapter 2 in this volume. 15. Immanuel Kant, lectures on Ethics, trans. Louis Infield (New York and Evanston: Harper 1963), pp. 169-70. My entire discussion in this paragraph derives from these two pages. 16. Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant: Religion and Rational Theology, ed. Allen Wood and George di Giovanni (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press 1996), p. 83. 17. Samuel Hearne, Account of a Journey from Prince of Wale's Fort in Hudson's Bay to the Northwest (1795) Since this was published after Kant wrote the Religion essay, it has been surmised that Kant learned of Hearne's account from Cook's Third Voyage (1784). See the editor's footnote (Rel 28). 18. The third and final predisposition was the Anlage für die Persönlichkeit, which was an inherent receptivity or sensibility [Empfänglichkeit to respect the moral law as a sufficiently motivating incentive for the will (Rel 22-23/27). It is the predisposition to eschew savagery out of respect for humanity. 19. 'We have love for oneself, which is only concerned with ourselves, when our true needs are satisfied; self-love, however, which is an object of comparison, is never satisfied - nor can it be, because this sentiment, in preferring ourselves to others, also requires that others prefer us to themselves.' Quoted in Religion and Rational Theology, p. 458. 20. As in Homer's Iliad, where soldiers become so enraged that they become drunk on it, convinced that they have becomes gods, and thereby absolutely heedless. 21. Diane Morgan, Kant Trouble: The Obscurities of the Enlightened, Warwick Studies in European Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge 2000), p. 194. 22. Although I hope that it should now have become obvious, allow me nonetheless to be clear about the emerging status of that sinister nomad, the sceptic. For Kant, the sceptic sabotages the possibility of public judgement, that is to say, the sceptic, like the savage, the insane, and the drunk, sacrifices the universal or the common (the sensus communis) to the singular. 23. Kyriaki Goudeli, Challenges to German Idealism: Schelling, Fichte and Kant (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave 2002), p. 31.

Jason M. Wirth 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31.

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Goudeli, p. 37. Goudeli, p. 63. Goudeli, p. 2. Martin Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann 1991), p. 160; Kant and the Problem ofMetaphysics, fourth edition, trans. Richard Taft (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1990), p. 110. See also John Sallis: 'The tension is obtrusive: On the one hand, imagination is that by which subjectivity is first constituted as such; on the other hand, imagination continues to be reduced to a mere power possessed by the subject. Imagination is freed with one hand, only to be suppressed, bound with the other.' The Gathering of Reason (Athens: Ohio University Press 1980), p. 175. Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, p. 168; Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, p. 115. Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften edition, vol. 5, ed. Paul Natorp (Berlin 1900-1942). Richard J. Bernstein, Radical Evil: A Philosophical Interrogation (Cambridge and Maiden, MA: Polity 2002), p. 33. This is a fascinating study of the problem of articulating evil. Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790), Book II, Deduction of Pure Aesthetic Judgments, § 54. I am using the Meredith translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1952), p. 199.

11 Negative Presentation: The Role of the Imagination in the Mathematically and the Dynamically Sublime Georg Xiropaidis In the aesthetic texts of Friedrich Schiller, undoubtedly one of the most perceptive readers of Immanuel Kant, we come across the first traces of a reception of Kant's theory of the sublime which tends completely to bypass its critical and transcendental texture. This resulted in the formulation of the conditions for a metaphysical appropriation of the relevant Kantian analyses. By understanding the feeling of the sublime as an elevation [Erhebung] above the limit of sensibility, this appropriation prepares the ground for a dialectic sublation {Aufhebung] of the limit at issue. Especially in his essays on the sublime, Schiller categorically detaches himself from the formal and subjective character of the Kantian approach, while at the same time transferring the feeling of the sublime, which, in Kant, is caused mainly by natural phenomena, to the sphere of art. This allows him to define as sublime not only the subject's feelings but also the objects that appear to cause them. But if the feeling of the sublime is also caused by works of art, then it is transferred to a space which is subject to the control of the human will and action. It is from this initially hesitant objectification that a kind of hypostatization of the sublime finally emanates, which renders it controllable by the dispositions of the subject. The hypostatization of the sublime is accompanied by its imprudent moralization which is imprinted on the turn towards sublime actions in tragedy, in the one-dimensional highlighting of the active elements of the sublime, as well as in its careless identification with the moral feeling of respect. The sublime is gradually absorbed by the field of morality. At the same time, the Kantian distinction between the mathematically and the dynamically sublime is rejected as minimally enlightening: But because the concepts dynamically and mathematically can shed no light on whether the sphere of the sublime is exhausted through this 164

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Classification, for this reason I have given preference to the classification into theoretically and practically sublime.1 What is remarkable in this case is that Schiller concentrates exclusively on the dynamically sublime, which he names practically sublime and also 'the sublime of praxis',2 because here the comparison between the subject and the natural phenomena that threaten its biological existence activates practical reason. Indeed, in his theory on art and tragedy, the German dramatist completely ignores the mathematically sublime, which he renames theoretically sublime. But this should not surprise us. Schiller studied the phenomenon of the sublime mainly from the standpoint of one who was interested in the conditions that govern the process of artistic creation.3 From the point of view of the artist, sublime nature as the object of the mathematically sublime is simply a metaphor for the absolutely unique sublime object that exists in the universe, that is, moral law, the sublimity of which acquires a sensible form through the hero of the bourgeois drama. But this is possible because the sublimity of the hero finds its ideal expression in his moral integrity, which remains intact, even after his fall. This is also the source of the peculiar passion which characterizes bourgeois dramas, since it is through them that 'the mechanism for the elimination of social evils'4 is vividly illustrated. This mechanism consists of the symbolic salvage of the hero's moral dignity, even at the instant of his tragic destruction. However, Schiller's main objection concerns Kant's attempt to differentiate the sublime from the beautiful. At first sight, he seems to wish to preserve the Kantian distinction: 'Without the beautiful there would be a continuous dispute between our natural determination and our rational determination ... Without the sublime, beauty would make us forget our dignity.'5 Soon, however, it is revealed that, in essence, he is aiming at a fusion of these two aesthetic categories: Only when the sublime comes together with the beautiful and our receptivity to both has developed to the same degree are we consummate citizens of nature, without, because of this, being its slaves and without losing the rights that are our share as citizens of the intelligible world.6 But this merging ultimately proves to the detriment of the sublime. The beautiful uses the sublime as a vehicle in order to expand and transform itself into an ideally beautiful, which results in the loss of the autonomy of the sublime: 'for the sublime too must become lost in the ideally

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beautiful.'7 Moreover, the beautiful presentation, towards which, according to Schiller, art aims, incorporates the - from Kant's standpoint - essentially non-presentable relation of the sublime to the supersensible. What proves to be Schiller's true concern is the ideally beautiful synthesis in art not only of the beautiful and the sublime, but also of the sensible and the supersensible or of the finite and the infinite: 'The ultimate aim of art is the presentation of the supersensible, and tragic art especially achieves this by rendering sensible to us moral independence from natural laws through our affective state.'8 But when the sublime is subordinated to ideal beauty, this facilitates its remoulding into a feeling of assent which emanates from the successful transcendence of the space of the sensible and, for this reason, may be represented positively by a work of art. All the elements which, in Kant, make up the negativity of the sublime, that is, its formlessness, its resistance to any attempt to present it positively, and the dissatisfaction it causes - all of which bring to light the thread of complicity between identity and difference, of presence and absence which defines the process of transcendence in the case of the sublime Schiller gradually pushes into the margin. Attempts such as those of Schiller, which aim at cancelling the antinomic structure of the sublime and incorporating its inherent negativity in a harmonious whole, allow us to understand why the concept of the sublime lost its central place in the post-idealistic aesthetic. It is no accident that interest in the sublime was rekindled after the appearance of Theodor W. Adorno's Aesthetic Theory, which was published in 1970, shortly after the death of the German thinker. But Adorno also turns his attention first and foremost to the moral dimension of the sublime. Even though he acknowledges that 'inclement negativity'9 constitutes the heritage per se of the sublime, he believes that this is manifested undistractedly only within the limits of the dynamically sublime, since that is where Kant 'defines the concept of the sublime based on the resistance offered by the spirit to the superiority of nature'. 10 He also agrees with the circumspection of the judgements formulated by Kant concerning the possibility of an art of the sublime and he interprets this view of Kant as an indirect critique of heroic classicism and the emphatic art that originates from it. Nevertheless, he believes that he is entitled to subject Kant to harsh criticism because, by analysing the sublime using terms drawn from the 'contrast between power and powerlessness', he is essentially accepting its 'undeniable synergy with dominance'. 11 According to Adorno, the sublime in Kant has its roots in the taming of the last outposts of indomitable nature which has long since ceased to truly make us afraid because of modern scientific and technological

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achievements, which encourage its proclamation to an object of aesthetic satisfaction. The Kantian sublime is basically the aesthetic version of the Cartesian program of the self-grounding of the subject and the subjugation of nature; it is the aesthetic strategy of the self-affirmation of the modern subject through which instrumental reason can prevail over the fear caused by omnipotent nature: 'The grandeur of man as an intellectual being and tamer of nature had to be sublime.'12 But when the spirit, which in Kant is understood to be a supersensible faculty, is recalled to the limits set by nature, 'then the annihilation of the individual is no longer positively sublated within it'. 13 Whenever the intelligible triumphs within the individual that intellectually resists death, the individual 'puffs up with pride' 14 as if it were, nonetheless, something absolute. The distance between such a sublime from the ridiculous is indeed insignificant.15 Certainly, Adorno's critique is proven correct in regard to those features of the metaphysically defined sublime16 which today are not acceptable. But he fails to distinguish with the necessary clarity the Kantian interpretation of the sublime from its moral and metaphysical reception which began with Schiller, continued with idealism, and was consolidated by romanticism. Adorno's error was that he lent an intensely intellectual hue to the sublime so as to secure its application in the analysis of the modern work of art. Undoubtedly, his critique is extremely enlightening, since it substantiates, albeit indirectly, the need to substitute the dominant metaphysical interpretation of the sublime through an approach, which will understand the sublime as an in itself ambiguous experience of the limits of the subject, which will distinguish its irreducible differences from the feeling of the beautiful, and which will allow its radical distinction from the moral feeling of respect. Faced with an attempt to identify, in an undifferentiated way, the aesthetic with the moral, it is imperative that we guard the aesthetic character of the sublime and that we remember once again that the judgement on the sublime is a purely aesthetic judgement which should not have any purpose of the object as its determining ground, 'if it is to be aesthetic and not mixed up with any judgment of the understanding or of reason'.17 But the explicit highlighting of the aesthetic dimension of the judgement on the sublime directly depends on the reinforcement of the inner entanglement of supersensible reason with the 'greatest faculty of sensibility' (CJ 141), that is, the imagination. That which defines the feeling of the sublime through Kant's transcendental schema is its contradictory quality, the experience of a split between the intuitive power of the subject and its rational power to comprehend Ideas that belong to the order of the supersensible and remain

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inaccessible to its intuition. If, therefore, we wish to safeguard the limit which divides the sublime from the feeling of the beautiful, where the subject experiences its individuality through the harmonious coordination of its cognitive powers, we need to highlight the antinomic dependence of the imagination and reason and to avoid any attempt to harmonize them for the benefit either of the sensible pole (sensualism) or of the supersensible pole (intellectualism). The sublime as an aesthetic feeling is, therefore, indissolubly tied to reason and hence to morality. This tie is so important that in his analysis of the dynamically sublime, Kant is led around the limits of the aesthetic. Yet even though the aesthetic experience of the sublime is expanded by the addition of an essentially moral element, its physiognomy is not altered: it remains aesthetic. If we take into account that the aesthetic texture of the sublime is connected to the autonomy of the imagination, it becomes clear that a critical approach must oppose any attempt to reduce the sublime to its dynamic version and to defend the methodological primacy of the mathematically sublime compared to the dynamically sublime. In his monograph, The Life and Work of Kant, which still today presents great interest, Ernst Cassirer notes that in the sublime there takes place a new osmosis between aesthetic and moral experience, and he goes on to add: 'at the same time, the critical separation of the two points of view proves all the more necessary here'. 18 It is precisely this necessity that the following analyses will attempt to demonstrate. I The 'Analytic of the Sublime' follows the 'Analytic of the Beautiful,' the outcomes of which are of use to Kant as a guiding thread towards the determination of the sublime. There are many similarities between the beautiful and the sublime. Both 'please for themselves', while they presuppose 'neither a judgment of sense nor a logically determining judgement, but a judgement of reflection'. These are singular judgements, which, however, 'profess to be universally valid in regard to every subject' (CJ128). However, there are also indelible differences between the two.19 While the beautiful preserves our mind [Gemüt] in a 'calm contemplation', the sublime brings with it a 'movement of the mind' which is judged as subjectively purposive, since the sublime pleases. But because this movement is related 'through the imagination either to the faculty of cognition or to the faculty of desire' (CJ 131), the sublime is divided into the mathematically and the dynamically sublime. This division does not imply that there are two kinds of sublime - a mathematical and a dynamic one - but rather that

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the sublime is interpreted in the former case mathematically, while in the latter dynamically.20 Kant begins his analysis of the mathematically sublime with certain observations on magnitude in general: 'That something is a magnitude (quantum) may be cognized from the thing itself, without any comparison with another; if, that is, a multitude [Vielheit] of homogenous elements together constitute a unity' (CJ 132). Consequently, the apprehension of a magnitude is based on a primary synthesis which is carried out by the aesthetic estimation of magnitude. But this synthesis is distinguished from the mathematical estimation of magnitude, since the latter aims at the objective definition of magnitude 'by means of numerical concepts' (CJ 134). Of course, in the mathematical estimation of magnitude what is important is not only the multitude, that is, the number, but also the magnitude of the unit of measurement. But the magnitude of the specific unit in turn needs another measure with which it can be compared, which is why we see 'that any determination of the magnitude of appearances is absolutely incapable of affording an absolute concept of a magnitude but can afford at best only a comparative concept' (CJ 132). Now, when we say that something is great, we do not merely mean that the object has a magnitude; at the same time we are stating that we prefer it to other similar objects, without objectively denning this preference. Of course, the judgement: 'x is great' is based on a standard which we consider acceptable to everyone; however, this is useful not for a mathematical but for an aesthetic estimation of magnitude, 'since it is a merely subjective standard grounding the reflecting judgement on magnitude' (CJ 133). Thus, despite the fact that the standard used for the purpose of comparison is subjective, the judgement demands everyone's approval. When we say that an object is great, then we are judging 'that in mere intuition (measured by the eye)' (CJ 134) and so we can proceed to an estimation of 'the magnitude of the basic measure,' which consists in the fact that 'one can immediately grasp it in an intuition and use it by means of imagination for the presentation of numerical concepts' (CJ 135). From this it is inferred that all estimation of the magnitude of objects of nature, including mathematical estimation, is, ultimately 'aesthetic (i.e. subjectively and not objectively determined)' (CJ 135). Aesthetic estimation does not define magnitude objectively, but judges it as purposive towards our reflecting power of judgement, thus offering a satisfaction which does not owe its existence to the object but to 'the enlargement of imagination in itself (CJ 133). The object which gives rise to the feeling of the sublime is, however, 'absolutely great (CJ 131). The effort of aesthetic estimation to conceive

170 Imagination in the Sublime this absolutely great object proves fruitless. When Kant claims that the mathematically sublime is 'great beyond all comparison' (CJ 132), he means that here there is no point in seeking neither a subjective measure outside of it or inside ourselves, as is the case with the simply great, nor an objective measure, as required by the mathematical measuring of magnitude. Rather it is 'a magnitude which is equal only to itself (CJ 134) and thus first requires an 'absolute measure' (CJ 135), which can draw its measure only from itself. When comparing the subject to the absolutely great, the aesthetic estimation of magnitude reaches its limits. In the mathematical estimation of magnitude there is no such restriction. On the contrary, imagination is proved adequate for the mathematical estimation of every object, that is, for giving an adequate measure for it, because the numerical concepts of the understanding, by means of progression, can make any measure adequate for any given magnitude. (CJ 138-9) But it is relative to a measure and never reaches that fundamental measure which is the basis of every aesthetic estimation of magnitude, nor of course does it reach the absolute measure. In this regard, the infinite which has been condensed into a given whole 'can never be completely thought in the mathematical estimation of magnitude through numerical concepts' (CJ 138). Mathematical measurement cannot adequately conceive the whole and thus create the terms for producing satisfaction. It is the demands of this whole that aesthetic estimation now attempts to meet. In aesthetic estimation, imagination is able to measure a magnitude without comparing it to others, by conceiving an object as a unity. But while mathematical estimation fails objectively to conceive the whole, aesthetic estimation fails subjectively to conceive the absolutely great. In order to shed light on the causes for this failure, Kant distinguishes, besides the immediate grasp [Fassung, prehensio] of the basic measure in intuition, two acts of the imagination which are necessary for the aesthetic estimation of magnitude: apprehension [Auffassung, apprehensio] and aesthetic comprehension [ästhetische Zusammenfassung, comprehensio aesthetica]. Apprehension is described as the process which is able to continue in perpetuity. I apprehend magnitude means that I conceive its parts successively through time. The comprehension of magnitude first requires dealing with a more complex problem which concerns the possibility of conceiving it as a unitary whole. This second act, which allows us to

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advance from a simple basic measure to more comprehensive measures, becomes problematic in the case of the sublime: There is no difficulty with apprehension, because it can go on to infinity; but comprehension becomes even more difficult the further apprehension advances, and soon reaches its maximum, namely the aesthetically greatest basic measure for the estimation of magnitude. For when apprehension has gone so far that the partial representations of the intuition of the senses that were apprehended first already begin to fade in the imagination as the latter proceeds on to the apprehension of further ones, then it loses on one side as much as it gains on the other, and there is in the comprehension a greatest point beyond which it cannot go. (CJ 135) The comparison between the subject and the absolutely great results in the cancellation of the synthetic function of the imagination. At the view of an object of huge dimensions, such as the church of Saint Peter in Rome, the activation of the subject's mental faculties is tested in a way which is crucial in its antithetical intensity. As the imagination attempts, on the level of apprehension, to run through the intuitions that cumulatively make up the representation of the immense object into their linear succession, on the level of comprehension - through which the endless series of distinguishable sensible data are linked together in a unitary intuition - it verifies its inability to perform its totalizing function. And that is because the incessant incorporation, during the apprehension process, of increasingly new representations weakens the lucidity of the preceding ones which lie at the base of the series. As a result, the faculty of the comprehensive imagination to simultaneously present the different features of the oversize object expands to such a degree, that it finally collapses. The originality of Kant's theoretical grounding consists in the fact that it elucidates the inadequacy of the imagination using temporal terms: The measurement of a space (as apprehension) is at the same time the description of it, thus an objective movement in the imagination and a progression; by contrast, the comprehension of multiplicity in the unity not of thought but of intuition, hence the comprehension in one moment of that which is successively apprehended, is a regression, which in turn cancels the time-condition in the progression of the imagination and makes simultaneity intuitable. It is thus (since temporal succession is a condition of inner sense and of an intuition) a subjective movement of the imagination, by which it does violence to the

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inner sense, which must be all the more marked the greater the quantum is which the imagination comprehends in one intuition. (CJ 142) It follows that during the apprehension of objects of ordinary magnitude the imagination also performs the function of comprehension. Hence we are entitled to surmise that when it encounters the beautiful, the imagination performs both functions,21 only that here, as in every ordinary aesthetic estimation of magnitude, comprehension is not immediately perceived. Therefore, in these cases too a violence is done to the inner sense, that is, to time, even though this is not obvious. This violence refers to the regressive movement of the imagination, which, ultimately, cancels the time-condition. Here the concept of the instant is used as in the Critique of Pure Reason, that is to say, as a limit of the continuous time. One instant limits time precisely as a point limits space. In the same way that space consists of spaces and not points, so is time made up of times and not instances: Space and time are quanta continua, because no part of them can be given save as enclosed between limits (points or instants), and therefore only in such fashion that this part is itself again a space or a time. Space therefore consists solely of spaces, time solely of times. Points and instants are only limits, that is, mere positions which limit space and time. (A169/B211)22 Therefore, the instant is not a self-existent component of time but a limiting point of the line of time. In this respect, the cancellation of time during the regressive movement of the imagination does not imply that time is surpassed definitively. Kant wishes to show that the regressive movement of the imagination is necessary to limit and form time in order for it to intuitably present the simultaneity of different elements. However, during the apprehension of the absolutely great object and in our subsequent effort to include it in a whole, the regressive movement is suspended, which in turn leads to time being fragmented into a multiplicity of unconnected elements and thus to creating the impression of formlessness. From this, one infers that the creation of a form always requires the contribution of time and, hence, of a violent act.23 II The subversive power of the 'Analytic of the Sublime' becomes fully apparent when its conclusions are explored in connection to that 'threefold

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synthesis which must necessarily be found in all knowledge' (A97). The relevant teaching can be found in the notorious section 'The Deduction of the Pure Concepts of Understanding,' which constitutes one of the most difficult parts of the Critique of Pure Reason. It is a known fact that in the second edition, Kant implemented certain crucial changes with the aim of downgrading the role and significance of the imagination in the process of acquiring valid knowledge.24 But in regard to the problem being examined here, it is legitimate to overlook these differences and to focus our attention on those analyses of the first edition which are compatible with the relevant analyses of the second edition. In his 'Transition to the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories', Kant notes that there are three original sources ... which contain the conditions of the possibility of all experience, and cannot themselves be derived from any other faculty of the mind, namely, sense, imagination, and apperception. Upon them are grounded (1) the synopsis of the manifold a priori through sense; (2) the synthesis of this manifold through imagination; finally (3) the unity of this synthesis through original apperception. All these faculties have a transcendental (as well as an empirical) employment which concerns the form alone, and is possible a priori. (A94-5) Even if we ignore the intractable problem in relation to the place of the imagination within the bipolar pattern of knowledge from which Kant starts out, the model of triple synthesis described in the above passage stands out for its complexity. The synopsis, which is defined as 'the synthesis of the apprehension of representations' (A97) in the sphere of intuition, constitutes a kind of elementary synthesis. Here Kant maintains that all representations, which, as 'modifications of the mind belong to inner sense', are 'finally subject to time, the formal condition of inner sense' (A99), as the framework within which these must, as a whole, be arranged and related to each other: Every intuition contains in itself a manifold which can be represented as a manifold only in so far as the mind distinguishes the time in the sequence of one impression upon another; for each representation, in so far as it is contained in a single moment, can never be anything but absolute unity. In order that unity of intuition may arise out of this manifold (as is required in the representation of space) it must be first run through [Durchlaufen], and then held together

174 Imagination in the Sublime [Zusammennehmung]. This act I name the synthesis of apprehension, because it is directed immediately upon intuition, which does indeed offer a manifold, but a manifold which can never be represented as a manifold, and as contained in a single representation, save in virtue of such a synthesis. (A99) For a representation to become perceptible as a distinguishable unity, what is required is a synthesis taking place on the level of receptive sensibility itself. Certainly, space and time provide our understanding with the sensible manifold, however, as pure forms of an intuition they presuppose an elementary synthesis. Here Kant proceeds to reverse the relation between space and time on the one hand, and synthesis on the other. While previously he had described the synopsis as the result of the effect of the pure forms of intuition, that is, of space and time, he now claims that time - and, by extension, space - can 'be produced only through the synthesis of the manifold which sensibility presents in its original receptivity' (A100). From this he infers that 'we have a pure synthesis of apprehension' (A100), which, in fact, is considered a necessary condition for the making up of time as a pure form of intuition. In the second synthesis, the 'synthesis of reproduction in imagination' (A100), the purpose is no longer elementary synthesis, which guarantees the possibility of us perceiving a representation as a distinguishable unity, but the connecting of two or more representations. For I should be able to reproduce the first representation to be able to relate the second one to it, and so on and so forth, even if it is only a single object which becomes perceptible at different times. However, a relation to the first synthesis continues to exist, as is shown by Kant's example of the line: When I seek to draw a line in thought, or to think of the time from one noon to another, or even to represent myself some particular number, obviously the various manifold representations that are involved must be apprehended by me in thought one after the other. But if I were always to drop out of thought the preceding representations ... and did not reproduce them while advancing to those that follow, a complete representation would never be obtained: none of the abovementioned thoughts, not even the purest and most elementary representations of space and time, could arise. (A102) The synthesis of reproduction may be moving on a higher level than the synthesis of apprehension, nevertheless the description maintains its power even in relation to the first synthesis. For when that which comes

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first is for us to synthesize an object as a unitary whole, we are not allowed to forget those of its parts which have already been apprehended, even if such a problem rarely occurs in ordinary cases. Quite justly then, Kant claims that 'the synthesis of apprehension is thus inseparably bound up with the synthesis of reproduction' (A102). Finally, the third synthesis, the 'synthesis of recognition in a concept' (A103), guarantees the transcendental unity of apperception, which is necessary for knowledge. A critical role is played here by the consciousness understood as an 'act' (A104) - of the fact that I am the one who is synthesizing the representations: If, in counting, I forget that the units, which now hover before me, have been added to one another in succession, I should never know that a total is being produced through this successive addition of unit to unit, and so would remain ignorant of the number. For the concept of the number is nothing but the consciousness of this unity of synthesis. (A103) It is indeed from the synthesis of recognition, which, by consciously representing the two first consciousnesses objectively determines them, that all concepts emanate. The object we seek to know is understood as an X, where X 'can be nothing else than the formal unity of consciousness in the synthesis of the manifold of representations' (A105). The transcendental base of this unity is, however, 'transcendental apperception', since without it 'no fixed and abiding self can present itself (A107) in this flux of inner appearances. In relation to these syntheses, from the coexistence of which knowledge emanates, Kant stresses that, even though they are manifested in an empirical way, they possess a transcendental base. But while it is clear that understanding is the faculty proper for the first synthesis and the imagination for the second, Kant indirectly determines the cognitive capacity which performs the first synthesis during the discussion on the cooperation of the syntheses. There it is revealed that the first synthesis also belongs to the domain of the imagination: Now, since every appearance contains a manifold, and since different perceptions therefore occur in the mind separately and singly, a combination of them, such as they cannot have in sense itself, is demanded. There must therefore exist in us an active faculty for the synthesis of this manifold. To this faculty, I give the title, imagination. Its action, when immediately directed upon the perceptions, I entitle

176 Imagination in the Sublime apprehension. Since imagination has to bring the manifold of intuition into the form of an image, it must previously have taken the impressions up into its activity, that is, have apprehended them. (A120) The apprehension of the manifold cannot produce of itself any image or any sequence of impressions. This is the domain not of the productive imagination but of the reproductive one, which, in turn, is guided by the rule provided by understanding. Despite the distinction between productive and reproductive imagination, we must always bear in mind that the two first syntheses are indisolubly tied. Both are performed by the imagination and contribute to the realization of the third synthesis by understanding. The three syntheses are analysed in the Critique of Pure Reason in combination with the exploration of the conditions of the possibility of knowledge. But for knowledge, intuition without the involvement of the concepts of understanding is of no value. By contrast, in the Critique of the Power of Judgement, Kant attempts to analyse sensibility not from the viewpoint of knowledge, but of itself. Imagination, which, in the Third Critique, is defined as the faculty 'of intuitions or presentations' (CJ 168), does not serve understanding here as a means of acquiring knowledge, but rather it appears as a free and autonomous mental faculty which maintains an equal relationship with both understanding and Reason. The purpose here is not the way in which understanding elaborates intuitions and translates them into valid knowledge, but the way in which it is possible to integrate these sensible intuitions and perceptions into the system of transcendental philosophy. And the Third Critique shows that this can be achieved through the anatomy of the feelings they produce. Given this view, one might understandably expect that the syntheses form the base for the sensible intuitions of the Third Critique. Certainly, transcendental aesthetic in the First Critique does not deal with the feelings of the subject. But its conclusions continue to apply to the Third Critique, since here too, although he is indifferent to the conditions for acquiring knowledge, Kant examines sensible intuitions and their effects. This indifference explains why the theory of aesthetic experience of the Third Critique is compatible with the two first syntheses but not with the synthesis of recognition in the concept. But because the third synthesis is the one that lends objectivity to the first two, that means that these first two are themselves indefinable and subjective, just like feelings are in the Third Critique. In the 'Analytic of the Beautiful,' no mention is made of syntheses. Even though the feeling of the beautiful is interwoven with the perception of

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the form of the object, Kant gives us no information about the way this specific form is produced. From the analysis of the mathematically sublime, conclusions are drawn which may possibly be applied a posteriori to the beautiful and which may enlighten us retrospectively concerning the shaping of the form that constitutes the feeling of the beautiful. For this analysis shows that the feeling of the sublime is not roused so much by the form as by the 'formlessness' (CJ 131) of the object, which is produced by the fact that the object is oversized. If then the object wishes to acquire form, it must not exceed that size which constitutes the maximum limit for aesthetic estimation. It is therefore legitimate to suppose that for the production of the feeling of the sublime, it is necessary for the object not to exceed a specific size in order for it to be perceived as something that possesses form. That this is not explicitly underscored by Kant in his analysis of the beautiful is due to the fact that here the magnitude of the object does not create problems. Nor does Kant need to distinguish between apprehension and comprehension. This distinction becomes necessary in the 'Analytic of the Sublime,' where magnitude impedes the aesthetic estimation of the object. We saw above that Kant outlines the failure of aesthetic estimation so that the object appears formless and unshaped. If we now do a parallel reading of the image of the two first syntheses given by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason, we will see that the correspondence of these two descriptions extends even to the choice of words. The imagination acts in the Critique of the Power of Judgement just as it did in the First Critique, the

only difference being that in this case understanding does not intervene in order to subordinate the imagination to its defining function in order to produce knowledge: in the Third Critique the imagination is free, as opposed to the First Critique where it is not. For us to perceive an object as an aesthetic form, the imagination must first 'apprehend' the object, that is, 'run through' its multiplicity, and then 'comprehend' in one unity and thus 'comprehend simultaneously' the parts we apprehended in this way. But when we encounter sublime objects, comprehension cannot take place. If we also take into account Kant's example of the line, we draw the conclusion that the second synthesis is the one that fails when we try to estimate aesthetically the magnitude of a sublime object. This failure also directly affects the first synthesis. If we understood it to be that activity, which results in the apprehension of objects, there would be no problem with sublime objects: because they too are undeniably apprehensible. However, in the first synthesis we are also dealing with a definite, albeit elementary, unity, since here the crucial issue is to make the object

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perceptible as a single object which is contained in a single instant. This is implied by Kant when he talks about the manifold being run through and then held together. In our comparison with sublime objects, therefore, we see the failure also of the first synthesis, which, as it arises, is not limited only to the function of apprehension. The failure of aesthetic estimation in the sublime shows ex negativo that the two first syntheses are also active in the Third Critique and thus in the feeling of the sublime as well. Reconnecting with the analyses of the First Critique helps us in our effort to understand the way the sublime functions. We saw that Kant describes the comprehension of multitide in the unity of intuition as a regressive motion which cancels the time-condition during the progressive motion of the imagination and thus renders sensible the simultaneous existence of the different elements of the intuition. But since 'temporal succession is a condition of inner sense and of an intuition,' it is inevitable that during the act of comprehension a violence is done to inner sense 'which must be all the more marked the greater the quantum is which the imagination comprehends in one intuition' (CJ 142). By referring to the two first syntheses of the First Critique we can now elucidate, to a degree, this obscure assertion. The failure of the syntheses reveals not only that in every perception of a form a violence is done to inner sense, but also that the syntheses responsible for the present and the past are rendered non-functioning. The sublime object cannot be perceived as a single object contained in a single instant, thus time is broken into many different pieces which can no longer be connected to each other and which are subject to a uniform moment, as is usually the case. The feeling of the sublime allows us to see that time exists as the product of a prior synthesis. Along with time, given reality is also fragmented and transformed into a shapeless mass. But if the basic syntheses constitute a procedure through which the subject processes the real as it is given directly to our senses, then the sublime reveals that here we encounter an object, which according to the model of perception used by Kant in his First Critique cannot be perceived. However, it is perceived, otherwise there would be no feeling of the sublime. According to the model of the First Critique, the object at issue cannot exist here and now, it cannot be offered to the subject under the guise of a sensible intuition, and thus exists as something which cannot be formed into an image. The suspension of the function of the syntheses in the sublime directly influences space and time as pure forms of intuition. According to Ernst Cassirer, space and time remain 'the model and archetype perse in which the peculiar relation that exists between the infinite and the finite,

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between the universal and the private and the individual is clearly and fully presented'.25 Our juxtaposition with the peculiar formlessness of the sublime object places this subject under dispute. Space and time as conditions for the possibility of our experience are made, in a way, momentarily invalid. It is as if time is cancelled and nothing exists. And yet something does exist: there is a non-form which undermines even the elementary synthetic capacity of the subject in relation to time. At the appearance of the sublime object the unity of the subject is deconstructed, while at the same time it becomes manifest that this unity can be reinstated only by resorting to violence.26 The sublime, therefore, requires the expanding of the model of sensible perception in which reside Kant's analyses in the Critique of Pure Reason. For through the sublime, something which Kant's critical philosophy excludes from this world is perceived in the sensible world. It is not possible for infinity, which characterizes time and space in the First Critique, to be perceived through the senses; it is, however, perceived in the sublime, where the supersensible is reconnected to the sensible. The sublime creates the conditions for an instantaneous appearance of time and space as they are before the first, elementary synthesis is carried out by the productive imagination and hence before they take on form: in the sublime, space and time appear as infinitely indeterminate magnitudes. From the standpoint of the Third Critique, the negative experience related to the suspension of the function of space and time as a priori forms of intuition produces the activation of reason itself as a counterbalance. The comparison to sublime objects takes on the form of an encounter with reason. On the contrary, from the standpoint of the First Critique, this comparison is rather an encounter with time itself, which, according to the transcendental aesthetic 'yields no shape' (A33). If we do not relativize these two viewpoints through their mutual comparison, if we attempt to synthesize them dialectically, then we run the danger of slipping into a metaphysical representation of absolute time, which, according to Kant, is not an 'object of perception' (A200). But this also applies to sublime objects. And these are not objects of perception, yet they exist. It seems that they are 'a kind of hermaphrodite constructions':27 on the one hand they can no longer be appearances, in terms of it being possible for them, as for all appearances, to come under the concept of a magnitude or in the sense that it is feasible for their magnitude to be estimated aesthetically. Which is why their main function, according to Kant, is to refer to the supersensible substratum [übersinnliches Substrat], in which the sensible intuition of the world is grounded. On the other hand, they are also appearances, since they are perceived as such. They

180 Imagination in the Sublime seem then to be suspended above the limit which separates appearances from things in themselves, but without cancelling it in the way of dogmatic metaphysics. When, therefore, the function of the two fundamental syntheses is suspended, what is revealed is similar to nothingness. Whence the feeling of displeasure in the mathematically sublime. The comprehension of this absolutely great magnitude, that is, infinity, within a whole is proven unfeasible. Equally unfeasible proves the presentation of infinity as given totality. But what is equally important for Kant is the fact that 'even being able to think of it as a whole indicates a faculty of the mind which surpasses every standard of sense' (CJ 138). Completely unexpectedly, the ultimate self-restriction of the imagination as cognitive power - its failure to compare to the infinity of the sublime object - is repelled and transformed into a source of reaffirmation of the transcendental power of reason. The mere fact that we are able to think 'the given infinite without contradiction', implies that in the human mind there is inherent a faculty: that is itself supersensible. For it is only by means of this and its idea of a noumenon, which itself admits of no intuition though it is presupposed as the substratum of the intuition of the world as mere appearance, that the infinite of the sensible world is completely comprehended in the pure intellectual estimation of magnitude under a concept, even though it can never be completely thought in the mathematical estimation of magnitude through numerical concepts. (CJ 138) The revealed nothingness is not, therefore, nothing but something. Whence the feeling of pleasure in the sublime. The failure of the aesthetic estimation in the sublime is offset by its intellectual estimation carried out by reason which manages to include fully the infinity of the sensible world under one concept. However, does this offsetting not cost the imagination its autonomy, which constitutes the fundamental condition for every pure aesthetic judgement? Does the feeling of the sublime not risk being transformed into a judgement of reason [Vernunfturteil]? Kant reminds us that in this case, the enlargement of the mind carried out by reason has a negative dimension: Even a faculty for being able to think the infinite of supersensible intuition as given (in its intelligible substratum) surpasses any standard of sensibility, and is great beyond all comparison even with the faculty of mathematical estimation, not, of course, from a theoretical

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point of view, in behalf of the faculty of cognition, but still as an enlargement of the mind which feels itself empowered to overstep the limits of sensibility from another (practical) point of view. (CJ 138) The sublime as a 'disposition of the mind' is in accordance with that which 'the influence of determinate (practical) Ideas on feeling would produce' (CJ 139). The power of judgement in the judging of an object as sublime relates imagination to reason, in order to subjectively correspond with its ideas, 'though which is undetermined' (CJ 139). Imagination in the mathematically sublime is not conscious of the fact that the idea of totality is involved in this specific case. It is, in a way, blind. The sublime is a feeling, not a judgement of reason. Reason is revealed only on the level of feeling. Kant stresses that the mind 'can aesthetically judge' (CJ 142) the unlimited capacity of reason in a negative way, that is to say, through the incapacity of the imagination. The tendency towards comprehension, which is attributed to the influence of reason, is revealed through feeling. Imagination fails, but it does awaken within us 'the feeling of this supersensible vocation' (CJ 141). By creating here the possibility of a comprehensio aesthetica, Kant introduces an element in the activity of the imagination which he had analysed explicitly neither in the Critique of Pure Reason, nor in the 'Analytic of the Beautiful'. While previously the imagination was connected to understanding and helped it to synthesize the progressive sequence of representations or to specify its terms over time, here Kant claims, by referring to the mathematically sublime, that the imagination proves incapable of comprehending an infinite magnitude in one intuition. This failure, however, allows us to become aware of the sublime infinity of the ideas of reason. The change of perspective from the imagination to the supersensible faculty of reason, which takes place because of the inadequacy of the imagination, has often been understood metaphysically as a direct transition to the, in itself timeless, domain of noumena. However, it is feasible that the results produced by the cancellation of the process of comprehension in the mathematically sublime be interpreted in a critical way. This is reaffirmed by the following passage from the Critique of the Power of Judgement:

For here there is a feeling of the inadequacy of his imagination for presenting the Ideas of a whole, in which the imagination reaches its maximum and, in the effort to extend it, sinks back into itself, but is thereby transported into an emotionally moving satisfaction. (CJ 136)

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This implies that failure forces the imagination to reflect on itself. Through this reflective process, it arises that its failure could legitimately be read as a sign of the existence within us of a supersensible capacity. Hence, the imagination is the one that is transposed to a state of moving satisfaction and not reason, which remains essentially passive and inactive. Consequently, a rupture occurs between the actions of the imagination and every interpretation which attributes a dominant role to reason in the experience of the sublime; these actions function simply as an indication that reason may be present but that its presence is attested to only by feeling. While then, in their judgement of the beautiful, the imagination and the mind produce 'subjective purposiveness of the powers of the mind' through 'their unison', the same is caused in the case of the sublime by the imagination and reason through 'their conflict: namely, a feeling that we have pure self-sufficient reason' (CJ 142). Therefore, we must imagine the relation between the two components of the sublime feeling which are involved in this conflict, as a horizontal co-existence. The sensible dimension is of the same value as the supersensible one: the relation between the imagination and reason is not organized on the base of a vertical hierarchy. The transformation of displeasure into pleasure which takes place in the mathematically sublime is determined by a shift in our point of view which allows us to judge the fact itself - the incapacity of the imagination - negatively from the standpoint of the imagination and positively from the standpoint of reason. Ill To the mathematical version of the sublime, Kant juxtaposes the equally fundamental version of the dynamically sublime. While in the former the judgement on the sublime refers to the magnitude of the object and presupposes the faculty of knowledge, the latter refers to the element of power of the object and presupposes the faculty of desire. Kant discovers the manifestation of the dynamically sublime in those cases where the human mind is faced with the indomitable power of nature. The devastating force of a typhoon or the threatening waves of the ocean 'make our capacity to resist into an insignificant trifle in comparison with their power' (CJ 144) and, with the fear they inspire, they humble man as an empirical being. At the same time, man finds within him a faculty which allows him to judge himself as independent of nature. Upon this faculty is grounded 'a self-preservation of quite another kind than that which can be threatened and endangered by nature outside us, whereby the

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humanity in our person remains undemeaned even though the human being must submit to that dominion' (CJ 145). The imagination is transformed into 'an instrument of reason and its ideas, but as such a power to assert our independence in the face of the influences of nature' (CJ 152). But in the dynamically sublime too, the feeling of displeasure is produced by the failure of the presentational function of the imagination. As Kant points out, 'nature is here called sublime merely because it raises the imagination to the point of presenting those cases in which the mind can make palpable to itself the sublimity of its own vocation even over nature' (CJ 145). However, this presentation appears to have merely the character of a representation. The imagination represents objects which cause us fear, for which courage is required, and because of the presence of reason, one may feel not only terror but also pleasure. Nature is presented by the imagination as a power that exercises no dominion over man; on the contrary, man is presented as nature's superior, a fact which produces in us a feeling of satisfaction. However, Kant's text allows us to safely surmise that a kind of failure of the imagination is described in the dynamically sublime as well. This failure lies in its incapacity to present the measure of a resistance which counterbalances the omnipotence of the object. But just as in the case of the mathematically sublime, this incapacity reveals the supersensible vocation of the mind and arouses its rational capacity to comprehend the idea of infinite resistance put forth by supersensible reason, thus cancelling the apparently irresistible power of nature. We see then in the dynamically sublime the appearance of the same negative dialectic occasioned by the power of natural phenomena, just as in the mathematically sublime, occasioned by their magnitude, we see the same simultaneous appearance of two contradictory feelings, as well as the same change of our viewpoint, which indeed here is described more clearly: we are superior to nature, when it comes down 'to our highest principles and their affirmation or abandonment' (CJ 145). The aforementioned superiority over nature appears, however, only 'as long as we find ourselves in safety' (CJ 144). As long as man is genuinely afraid, he is lacking the necessary preconditions which will produce the feeling of the sublime, that is, 'a mood of calm contemplation and an entirely free judgement' (CJ 147). Being reflective, the judgement on the sublime must reside in a controllable feeling of fear which cannot but appear when the subject feels that it is not actually exposed to the omnipotent power of nature. The danger that emanates from the imagination is therefore fictitious. However, this fictitiousness is an inherent element of the experience of the dynamically sublime. As a result,

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our mind's superiority in the face of nature is something that we can only 'imagine' (CJ 146). Hence, both the representation of the object which inspires fear and our superiority over nature are results of the free effect of the imagination. It is in this primacy of the imagination that lies the aesthetic dimension of the sublime. As 'a judgment of the aesthetic reflecting power of judgment' (CJ 130) the feeling of the sublime is not determined by the external existence of the subject, but is rather attributed to the rational capacity of the subject itself, since it is that capacity which introduces the predicate of 'sublime' into the representation of nature. Therefore, 'nothing that can be an object of the senses is ... to be called sublime' (CJ 134). The sublime per se 'cannot be contained in any sensible form, but concerns only ideas of reason' (CJ 129). Thus, while 'for the beautiful in nature we must seek a ground outside ourselves', for the sublime we must search 'merely ... in ourselves and in the way of thinking that introduces sublimity into the representation of nature' (CJ 130). But since the ideas of sublimity are distinguished from the idea of a purposiveness of nature, the theory of the sublime can only constitute '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' (CJ 130). During his exploration of the modality of the judgement on the sublime, Kant concludes that we cannot promise ourselves that our judgment concerning the sublime in nature will so readily find acceptance by others. For a far greater culture, not merely of the aesthetic power of judgment, but also of the cognitive faculties on which it is based, seems to be requisite. (CJ 148) By the use of the word 'culture' Kant means here the morality of the separate individual; its receptivity to Ideas. Because 'without the development of moral Ideas, that which we, prepared by culture, call sublime will appear merely repellent to the unrefined person' (CJ 148). But that the judgement on the sublime requires culture, and indeed more so than the judgement on the beautiful, does not in the least mean that it is 'first generated by culture and so to speak introduced into society merely as a matter of convention' (CJ 149). On the contrary, the sublime is grounded in human nature 'and indeed in that which can be required of everyone and demanded of him along with healthy understanding, namely in the predisposition to the feeling for (practical) ideas, that is,

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to that which is moral' (CJ 149). Upon this is based, therefore, the necessity for the judgement of other people on the sublime to assent to our own judgement, 'which (assent) we at the same time include in the latter' (CJ 149). The necessity of the judgement on the sublime seems, therefore, to be based on morality and the feeling which corresponds to it, that is, respect. But if this necessity, which is crucial to the a priori character of the sublime, is based on morality, does that not dispute the autonomy of the sublime as aesthetic judgement? Once again, the question is posed of whether the sublime constitutes a foreign body in the Third Critique, since it is, essentially, the moral feeling of respect which is analysed in the Critique of Practical Reason. The structural affinity between the sublime and respect is indeed obvious not only in the Third Critique. In the texts in which he deals with moral issues, Kant is constantly linking the feeling of respect to the sublime.28 Specifically, in the Critique of Practical Reason, he often refers to the sublime feeling of duty or to the 'sublimity of our own supersensuous existence'.29 It is difficult to ignore the similarity between these two feelings. Respect is a subjective feeling made up of a negative and a positive pole, while the explicit reference to displeasure and pleasure implies, indirectly yet clearly, that here too a similar change of viewpoint is taking place. In this case, what is of interest is the fact that during the analysis of the mathematically sublime we have already come across the feeling of respect which is defined as 'the feeling of the inadequacy of our capacity for the attainment of an idea that is a law for us' (CJ 140). This law seems to be the moral law, and this hypothesis is reinforced by what Kant claims in the next passage, where he emphasizes that the feeling of the sublime in nature is respect for our own vocation, which we show to an object in nature through a certain subreption (substitution of a respect for the object instead of for the Idea of humanity in our subject). (CJ 141) From the ensuing elucidation it arises, however, that what we are dealing with here is not the moral law. At first, Kant points out rather neutrally that striving for ideas of reason 'is nevertheless a law for us' (CJ 141), while he then goes on to determine with greater precision that 'the greatest effort of the imagination in the presentation of the unity for the estimation of magnitude is a relation to something absolutely great (CJ 141), hence to something which in this case is none other than 'the idea of the absolute whole' (CJ 143). As a result, the greatest effort

186 Imagination in the Sublime

of the imagination within the framework of the mathematically sublime is 'a relation to the law of reason,' which forces us 'to adopt this alone as the supreme measure of magnitude' (CJ 141). Morality is not, therefore, a component of the mathematically sublime, despite the fact that 'the necessary enlargement of the imagination to the point of adequacy to that which is unlimited in our faculty of reason' (CJ 143) is presented by Kant as favourable to the realizing of practical aims and intentions and hence 'is judged as purposive for the whole vocation of the mind' (CJ 142). But Kant is also especially careful in his analysis of the dynamically sublime. At no point does he say that the feeling of respect is identified with the sublime or that it constitutes its base. He simply limits himself to pointing out their similarity: 'In fact, a feeling for the sublime in nature cannot even be conceived without connecting it to a disposition of the mind that is similar to the moral disposition' (CJ 151). This differentiation is preserved even in the analysis of the modality of the judgement on the sublime. For, if the sublime is based on the predisposition to the moral feeling, then it simply attests to the existence of a moral predisposition and is not necessarily identified with respect. Hence, the a priori character of the feeling of the sublime is not guaranteed by morality but by the predisposition to morality, which, we can safely claim, is inherent in all human beings.30 Of course, both feelings have a negative and a positive dimension, which is why they both appear as a mixture of pleasure and displeasure. Nevertheless, in the feeling of respect, displeasure is merely a negative phenomenon which accompanies the expression of the feeling in question, since the bypassing of the subject's empirical interests necessary for the realization of the categorical imperative is linked to 'humiliation' (CP 183) and hence to 'pain' (CP 181): respect 'is so far from being a feeling of pleasure' (CP 185), that one only reluctantly gives in to it. By contrast, in the case of the sublime, displeasure is a necessary condition for the revelation of Reason and thus for producing pleasure. Respect is an added feeling which 'is concerned only with the practical' (CP 187). It follows, by comparing respect and sublimity, that the latter is predominant here. The former also exists, however it does not function as a condition but as a consequence; which is why Kant claims that, as a feeling which is produced of itself inside us, respect is more active and less passive and sensible than the sublime. Indeed, Kant describes it as 'active and dominating (CP 248). But the other expressions he uses also raise doubts as to whether respect is actually a feeling, especially when he claims that for the moral law 'there is no feeling," since everything takes place within 'the judgment of reason' (CP 183). In any case, for a judgement

Georg Xiropaidis 187

to be aesthetic it must be based on feeling. By contrast, feeling cannot constitute the base for a cognitive judgement, since such a judgement resides in a concept. Moral feeling is a special case: it is the feeling produced by the rational definition of the will by moral law. Though we may feel the goodness of the action, the judgement on its goodness is not based on feeling but on the rational concept which defines the will. Beyond its rational and therefore active aspect, the feeling of the sublime also has a passive, receptive aspect, which is equally important. It is not a purely moral feeling and it does not urge us to act, for example to extend our dominance over nature at any cost.31 It brings to the light the abstract possibility of acting, but it does not urge us to carry out a specific act. Not even the thought of realizing the sublime is registered in this feeling. Even when Kant talks about the superiority of man over sensibility and hence nature, he simply means that this superiority is rendered 'intuitable' (CJ 141) through the imagination, therefore it is fictitious. Because of sensibility's increased role, the concepts of reason which are active in the feeling of the sublime remain indeterminate. The imagination is unaware of the fact that these are the ideas of totality and freedom. It may thus acquire 'an enlargement and power which is greater than that which it sacrifices', but its base 'is hidden from it' (CJ 152). When, therefore, Kant describes the sublime as a 'feeling of spirit' (CJ 78), in no way does he identify it with a feeling of reason. For the 'disposition of the mind' (CJ 134) which corresponds to the sublime is not the disposition of Reason but of the imagination. The imagination is that which feels itself broadening limitlessly; that which feels its predisposition to morality; that which is responsible for the fact that we imagine the superiority of our mind, while it is the imagination, through its failure, and not reason which produces displeasure and pleasure. Whatever the imagination succeeds in presenting in an intuition, in its effort to conceive the magnitude or the power of the object, is nothing more than the inadequacy itself of its presentational capacity. Though it is unable to present the Ideas of totality and freedom, as reason requires of it, it is able to present the absence of totality or freedom and to make it felt as a presence. This negative presentation of the Ideas of totality and freedom makes up the self-consciousness which appertains to the imagination. In these terms, the presentational inadequacy that cancels the identity of the imagination with itself can be seen, from a different angle, as comprising the ideal expression of its identity: in its negative interaction with the object, the imagination locates in that which it lacks the ground of

188 Imagination in the Sublime

its function, without, however, being able to trace the elements it lacks in the ideas of totality and freedom. The sublime demonstrates through feeling the existence of reason. In order to guarantee the appearance of pleasure in the context of the experience of the sublime, reason need not do anything: it must merely exist. Of course, the transformation of the imagination into an implement of reason gives the impression that reason is absolutely dominant here. But we must not forget that the sublime is not a feeling of reason, since it is achieved 'without any rationalizing, merely in apprehension' (CJ 129). Positive pleasure is produced by the imagination and not by reason, which remains passive, since it is not led of itself to the experience of the sublime, but is driven there by the imagination. Therefore, both faculties participate in the forming of the feeling of the sublime. Indeed, because of their coexistence, an ambiguous feeling arises, a 'negative pleasure' (CJ 129). Of course, the sublime constitutes 'a presentation of the infinite' which 'expands the soul' but which, for that reason, 'can never be anything other than a merely negative presentation' (CJ 156). It is precisely this negativity that curbs the 'risk of visionary rapture, which is a delusion of being able to see something beyond all bounds of sensibility, i.e.,

to dream in accordance with principles (to rave with Reason)' (CJ 156). The negative presentation is the expression of the judgement exercised by sober reason over raving reason. On the other hand, unlike Adorno, Kant does not claim that from the sublime springs only pure negativity; on the contrary, it opens new horizons of experience, thus arousing within us a feeling of satisfaction. The two contrasting structural elements of the sublime appear simultaneously, but displeasure determines pleasure to such a degree that Kant is able to describe the feeling of the sublime analytically as a constant and cohesive succession of two different phases. Sublime objects split the inner cohesion of pre-existing reality, since in the case in question the subject appears not to be receiving anything through its senses. Of course something comes to its notice, but that peculiar something appears to the observer as something which is not real. Satisfaction in the sublime is produced by the fact that the subject goes from the sensible viewpoint of the imagination to the supersensible in such a way as to be able to adopt, beyond the sensible, the supersensible perspective and thus to be able to trace in failure itself the signs of the existence of reason. For it is only through this failure that reason can be activated and process the shock of the subject, giving it the opportunity to interpret this failure in a positive way and thus create the provisions to feel pleasure. This progress from the negative to the positive does not imply the total replacement

Georg Xiropaidis 189

of the negative by the positive, since both elements continue to coexist and to penetrate into each other. The defeat of the imagination remains painfully present even after the domination of reason. In the light of this analysis, negativity, to which the presentational action of the subject obeys, takes on the meaning of a complex category. First of all it emerges as a prime feature of aesthetic judgement on the sublime: it is the presentation of that which is impossible to be presented. From the standpoint of reason, both the idea of totality and the idea of freedom are thought of as pure concepts, entrenched within the limits of the ineffable and the non-communicable, since the mind is unable to determine the specific conditions of their empirical application and to register their existence in the interior of the sensible intuition. Briefly, their presence on the level of reason means their absence on the level of the imagination. Based on this dichostasia, the feeling of the sublime is thus charged with the tension of a negative pleasure which is directly proportional to the inexpressible meaning of the ideas of totality and freedom. But because negativity, with its contradictory rhythm, destabilizes the system of contrasts which it is concurrently producing, the subject's consciousness of unity as the element which guarantees its autonomy emanates, paradoxically, from the consciousness of its ellipticity. If the imagination desires totality and freedom and the ideas in question are represented by reason with the immediacy of the inexpressible, and if then whatever makes up the identity of the subject is the consciousness of its infinite difference, then every attempt of the imagination to usurp the authority of reason by ceding to itself the right to express in its own language the ideas of totality and freedom or, conversely, every effort of reason to repel its negative link to the imagination would downgrade the difference between them and would disarticulate the unity of the subject. Despite the fact that the effort made by the imagination to summarize the limitless multitude of perceptions which corresponds to the object into a unitary intuition as well as the subsequent failure of this effort seem to be dictated by the regulatory imperative of reason that demands from the imagination that it arrives at a unifying conception of the object by overexpanding its synthetic power, the appearance of pleasure is not caused solely by the intervention of reason, because then the sublime would be reduced to the moral feeling of respect. The prerequisite on which reason bases the self-recognition of its superiority over nature and of its unimpeded freedom is precisely the repressed sense of totality and freedom which characterizes the imagination. 32 The element of transcendence in the aesthetic experience of the sublime

190

Imagination in the Sublime

does not weaken the intensity of the difference by absorbing the finite order of the sensible and the infinite order of the supersensible and by cancelling their heterogeneity, but rather it incorporates it in the ambiguous way of a metaphor: the substitution of the imagination by reason resides in the indelible distance which divides their function. The object which produces within us the feeling of the sublime incites the mind 'to abandon sensibility and to occupy itself with ideas that contain a higher purposiveness' (CJ 129), but this abandonment is paradoxically carried out within the space of sensibility. Therefore, the change of perspective which takes place is similar to a leap, in which the sensible continues to be the present and thus the supersensible maintains its undiminished connection to the sensible. But the sublime does not only prove the existence of reason on the level of feeling. It also drives us to proceed to an aesthetic judgement of reason, from which it arises that it is not necessary for the sublime to be moral, but that morality, judged aesthetically, is sublime. The affinity between the sublime and respect lies in the fact that both display a similar structure, but which, through a changing point of view, is evaluated differently. Reason is the protagonist in respect as the feeling of moral law. The sublime is the aesthetic judgement of this moral law. Between respect and the sublime there takes place a transition from the moral viewpoint to the aesthetic one. It is precisely to this affinity, which is not an identity, that Kant is referring when he observes that 'the intellectual, intrinsically purposive (moral) good, judged aesthetically, must not be represented so much as beautiful but rather as sublime' (CJ 153). Notes for references 1. Friedrich Schiller, 'Vom Erhabenen' (Of the Sublime) in his Sämtliche Werke, Bd. V, München: Carl Hanser Verlag 1962, p. 490. 2. Friedrich Schiller, 'Über das Pathetische' (On the Pathetic), ibid,, p. 527. 3. See Paul de Man, 'Kant and Schiller' in his Aesthetic Ideology, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1996. 4. Hartmut Böhme, 'Das Steinerne. Anmerkungen zur Theorie des Erhabenen aus dem Blick des 'Menschenfremdesten', in Christine Pries (ed.) Das Erhabene. Zwischen Grenzerfahrung und Größenwahn, Weinheim: VCH, Acta Humaniora 1989, p. 127. 5. Friedrich Schiller, 'Über das Erhabene', ibid., p. 807. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid., p. 797. 8. Friedrich Schiller, 'Über das Pathetische' (On the Pathetic), ibid., p. 512. 9. Theodor W. Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie (Aesthetic Theory), Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp 2000, p. 296.

Georg Xiropaidis 191 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid., p. 295. 13. Ibid. 14. JfeM. 15. See Wolfgang Welsch, 'Adornos Ästhetik: eine implizite Ästhetik des Erhabenen,' in Christine Pries (ed.) Das Erhabene. Zwischen Grenzerfahrung und Größenwahn, ibid., pp. 185-213. According to Welsch, the sublime occupies a central place in Adorno's aesthetic theory. Not only does it constitute its core, but it also forces him to gradually move away from the ideal of a final reconciliation and to replace it with the 'ideal of justice with regard to the heterogenous.' On the contrary, in his essay 'Adorno, die Moderne und das Erhabene,' which was published in: W. Welsch and Chr. Pries (eds) Ästhetik im Widerstand, Weinheim: VCH, Acta Humaniora 1999, pp. 45-66, Albrecht Wellmer claims that the two ideals in question are indeed compatible. 16. In her exceptionally lucid doctoral thesis, Übergänge ohne Brücken. Kants Erhabenes zwischen Kritik und Metaphysik, Berlin: Akademie Verlag 1995, Christine Pries also supports the distinction between a critically and transcendentally defined sublime and a metaphysically understood sublime. 17. References to Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgement are to the translation of P. Guyer and Er. Matthews, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2000, pp. 136-7. 18. Ernst Cassirer, Kants Leben und Lehre, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1994, p. 348. 19. For the distinction between the sublime and the beautiful, see Paul Guyer, 'The Beautiful and the Sublime', in his collective work Kant and the Experience of Freedom. Essays on Aesthetics and Morality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1993. 20. See Jean-Francois Lyotard, Die Analytik des Erhabenen. Kant-Lektionen, München: Wilhelm Fink 1994, pp. 106-8. By contrast, Lazaroff Starts off from the erroneous position that there are two distinguishable kinds of sublime, which is why he is puzzled by the fact that the mathematically sublime has the structural elements [Momente] of quality and quantity and the dynamically sublime those of relation and modality, while one would expect both kinds to have all four structural elements (see Allan Lazaroff, 'The Kantian Sublime: Aesthetic Judgment and Religious Feeling', Kant-Studien 71 (1980), pp. 202-20). 21. Very different - well-nigh opposing - is the position formulated by Friedrich Kaulbach in his outstanding monograph: Ästhetische Welterkenntnis, Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann 1984, p. 103. 22. References to the Critique of Pure Reason are to the pagination of the first and second editions. The translation used is that of Norman Kemp Smith, New York: St. Martin's Press 1965. 23. The interpretation of the temporality of the sublime proposed by Rudolf A. Makkreel is based on the erroneous view that the imagination moves regressively only when it encounters the absolutely great and thus sublime object (See R. A. Makkreel, Imagination and Interpretation in Kant, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press 1990, pp. 73-7). In reality, the

192 Imagination in the Sublime

24.

25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30.

31.

regressive motion is a condition for every successful aesthetic estimation of magnitude, but we become aware of that when this motion, due to the comparison between the subject and the sublime object, fails to perform its anticipated function. But Paul Crowther also believes that the imagination is in a position to perform the function of comprehension only when the time sequence is cancelled in the sublime through the regressive motion of the imagination, a view which conflicts with the Kantian text. In fact, from this unfounded interpretation, Crowther draws the arbitrary conclusion that, through the sublime, Kant revises his view of the First Critique, since he now seems to profess that the subject can directly know the infinite magnitude of sublime objects (see Paul Crowther, The Kantian Sublime. From Morality to Art, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1991, pp. 52-4). See Martin Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann 1973, pp. 173-5. Here Heidegger attempts to show that in the first edition - as opposed to the second one - the imagination as time constitutes the basis for intuition as well as for the understanding and hence for all syntheses. Ernst Cassirer, Kants Leben und Lehre, ibid., p. 172. See Jacob Rogozinski, 'Der Aufruf des Fremden. Kant und die Frage nach dem Subjekt', in M. Frank, G. Raulet and W. v. Reijen (eds) Die Frage nach dem Subjekt, Frankfurt a. m.: Suhrkamp 1988, pp. 218-19. Christine Pries, Übergänge ohne Brücken. Kants Erhabenes zwischen Kritik und Metaphysik, ibid., p. 140. To a certain degree, the analyses included in this chapter are based on Christine Pries's thesis. However, it is worth pointing out here that aesthetic asymmetry is not an exclusive privilege of the sublime. The rigid contrast which Pries builds between the beautiful and the sublime comes conspicuously in conflict with the ideal of justice with regard to the heterogenous of which she herself is a champion. Her claim that the aesthetics of the beautiful have long since descended to the level of design is totally unfounded. On the contrary, an aesthetic theory which starts out from the sublime would have to be open to the peculiarity of the experience of the beautiful, which it would have to describe in juxtaposition to its traditional metaphysical approaches. For a thorough as well as convincing critique of Pries's views which are inspired by Lyotard, see Martin Seel, 'Gerechtigkeit gegenüber dem Heterogenen?', Merkur 487/488 (1989), pp. 917-22. See Milton C. Nahm,' "Sublimity" and the "Moral Law" in Kant's Philosophy', Kant-Studien 48 (1957), pp. 502-24. References to Kant's Critique of Practical Reason are to the translation of Lewis White Beck, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1949, p. 194. See Henry E. Allison, Kant's Theory of Taste. A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001, pp. 334-6. I intend to address the complex issue of the deduction of judgements on the sublime in a forthcoming paper. The purely aesthetic nature of the feeling of the sublime - as opposed to the nature of moral feeling which is rooted in practical Reason - is often bypassed by Kant's commentators who tend to deny the aesthetic character of his judgements on the sublime. (For an assiduous critique of all these misreadings, see Patricia Matthews, 'Kant's Sublime: A Form of Pure Aesthetic

Georg Xiropaidis 193 Reflective Judgment', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 54 (1996), pp. 165-79. But Sarah Gibbons also shows that Kant's commentators are unable to see the aesthetic properties of his judgements on the sublime because they do not understand the role played by the imagination in these judgements. See Sarah Gibbons, Kant's Theory ofImagination: Bridging Gaps in Judgment and Experience, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1994, pp. 148-51. 32. This is overlooked by Hubertus Busche, who, as a result, interprets the aesthetic of the sublime univocally as the logic of superiority (see Hubertus Busche 'Die spielerische Entgegnung der Idee auf die ernste Natur. Versuch über Kants Analytik des Erhabenen', Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 45 (1991), p. 528).

Index Adorno, Th. W. 166-8, 190-1 Aesthetic 169-93 Allison, H. 76, 115, 122, 124-8, 136, 140, 145 Analogy and symbols 15, 46, 51-60, 77-9, 82-4, 94 Animality 152-62 Animals and plants 25, 89 Anthropology 48, 52, 148, 160-1 Antinomy 2, 39, 94, 99, 103-5, 109, 146-59 A priori

synthetic 21, 23-5, 130-42 'weak' notion of 139-40 Archetype 82-94, 178 Architectonic 4, 16-17, 79-82, 93 Autonomy 5, 10, 69-70, 91-2, 98, 1 0 3 ^ , 109-10, 115-26 Baumgarten, A.G. 100-1 Bäumler, A. 100,112 Beauty 78, 165-6 Beck, L. 70, 74-5, 95, 117, 125-7, 142 Benton, R. 70, 75 Bernstein, R. 159, 163 Bobzien, S. 70, 75-6 Cassirer, E. 168, 178, 191-2 Categorical imperative 1-15, 34, 48-50, 62-3, 72-4, 114, 118-27 Categories of freedom 62-76 Causality 26, 98, 104 causal chain 94, 98-9, 101 causal law 92 causal relation 101,103 final 84 natural 2, 65, 83 of moral action 63, 66-74 Character 5, 8-14, 21, 26, 35, 38-9, 120, 122 Church (visible/invisible) 47-61 Coercion 8-14,109-10

Commonwealth 43, 60 Concept of reason and Opus Postumum 16-27 Dancy, J. 122, 128 Deleuze, G. 150, 161 Derrida, J. 37, 41 Dialectics 4,9,18,99,104,108-11, 146, 164, 179, 183 Domination 28-42, 102 Duty 49, 52-7, 72-4, 120 perfect/imperfect 6-14 Education 100-5, 118-20 End(s) 4-8, 18, 63-1, 81-3, 143, 152-3 kingdom of 4, 14 nature as system of 83-93 Epistemology 94, 97-107 Ether/caloric 18-27 Ethical community 14, 52-6 Evil (radical) 148-63 Explanation 23, 77, 94, 98-107 Exploitation 29-39, 109-10 Feeling 3-10, 115, 127, 164-92 Fichte, J.G. 28-42,112 Fischer, K. 18 Force (attractive/repulsive) 18-27 Forschner, M. 75, 116-26 Freedom 18, 26, 28-38, 50-8, 62-76, 98-111, 113-28, 148-59 external/internal 8-14 laws of 2-3, 7, 14, 66-7 French Revolution 106-9 Freud, S. 24 Gender 28-42 Genetic account/explanation 18-24 God 43-60, 103-10, 149-50, 162 Goethe, J.W. 148, 160 Good (highest) 5, 48, 53, 60, 64, 81-95 categories of the 62-76 195

196 Index Goudeli, K. 158-63 Guyer, P. 75, 78, 90, 93-6, 125, 142, 191 Haas, B. 70, 75 Happiness 48, 53, 102-4 Hearne, S. 154, 162 Hegel, G.W.F. 36, 40, 42-3, 108 Heidegger, M. 43, 59, 158, 163, 192 Henrich, D. 114-16, 126 Herman, B. 114-27 History 4, 10-15, 45-56, 87-8, 94-5,97-111, 149 Homosexuality 153 Humanity 4-13, 30-5, 49-51, 60, 104-10, 148-62, 183-5 Ideal 46-60, 101, 108, 131, 165-7, 188, 191-2 Idealism 132-45, 167 Imagination 136, 158, 161, 163-92 Inner sense 171-8 Irigaray, L. 33, 40, 42 Jesus 50-7 Judgement aesthetic 78, 84, 166-93 determinant 21-5, 46, 130-9 practical 2, 65, 70, 78, 119-24, 150, 154, 162 reflective 47, 77, 101-2 teleological 79, 84-5, 91-3 Kierkegaard, S. 157 Kitcher, Ph. 139-40, 145 Lask, E. 101, 112 Lawfulness 65-9, 126 Lehmann, G. 77-9, 93-4 Leibniz, G.W. 17 Locke, J. 17 Love (self-love) 10, 36-8, 49-52, 151-9 Lukow, P. 114-20, 127 Marriage 28-42 Marx, K. 42,108,112 Mathematics 132-40, 142-3

Matter 19-25 Maxim 1-2, 6-14, 50-1, 63-74, 114-26, 154, 156 Means 2-14, 28-43, 52, 56-7, 63 Mechanism 83, 94, 165 Moral action 9, 11, 28, 40, 62-76, 103, 105 experience 70, 113-28, 168 law 34-6, 54-5, 62-75, 103-4, 113-28, 150-4, 165, 185-8 perfection 10, 46-55 Morgan, D. 157, 162 Musil, R. 107, 112 Mutual domination 28-41 Nation/state of devils 11-13, 155 Negativity 166-89 Neiman, S. 131-42 Neo-Kantians 101-3 Newton, I. 18, 26 Nietzsche, F. 33, 41, 110, 148-9, 161-2 Normative 28, 33-4, 42, 79, 82-5, 94, 98-111 Onanism/masturbation 153-6 O'Neill, O. 41,117,126 Organisms 77-95 Pagondiotis, C. 136, 142-3 Particularism 113-14, 122-8 Pereboom, D. 134, 140, 144-5 Philosopher/philosophy 16-18, 21, 25-6, 77, 82-3, 87, 90-108, 129-45 Physics 18-26 Plato 24, 32, 41, 48, 55, 59 Pleasure 29, 32-8, 152, 158-60, 180-9 Politics 12-13, 42, 95, 152 Postulates 48, 72, 95, 99, 104-6, 140 Practical schematism 1-15, 65-75 Prauss, G. 75-6 Predisposition to animality 152-61 Progress 56, 86-90 Propensity to evil 49, 51-3, 151-9 Publicity 13, 106

Index Rational faith 51 Receptivity 19-20, 23, 25, 165, 174, 184 Reciprocity 23, 30-2, 72, 74 Recognition 28-9,36-40,64,116, 175, 189 Reflection 90-4 Respect 3, 10-13, 33, 65, 116, 126, 153, 156-7, 162, 164-190 Right 1, 7-15, 28-42, 54, 60-1, 64, 101-8 Rousseau, J.-J., 50, 155 Rules of moral salience 118-29 Savagery 148-62 Schelling, F.W.J. 157-62 Schiller, J.C.F. 164-7, 190 Schönrich, G. 70, 75-6 Science 77-96 Self-submission 28-42 Sexual intercourse 37-41 Shell, S. 41 Space and Opus postumum 22-5 Spontaneity 19-25, 69,115 Strawson, P. 143-5 Stroud, B. 145 Sublation (Aufhebung) 108, 164, 167 Supersensible 51-6,130-1, 141 Symbol 45-60, 77-S4,165

197

System of cognitions 79-83 of ends 83-93 of forces 20-6 Taste 78, 94, 192 Teleology moral 9-14, 108 political 12-14,95 Terror 13, 106-9, 149 Tertullian 149 Totality 21-5, 94, 99-109, 180-9 Transcendental 129-45 knowledge 132-45 schemata 135-6, 144 Type/Typic 2-13, 65-9 Unity

1-13, 84-95

Value 5, 43, 52, 60, 82-95, 97-111, 143 Virtue 7-13, 31, 45-57, 65, 127, 156, 162 Wille/Willkür distinction 115-16, 126 Williams, T.C. 114, 124-8 Wish 64 Yovel, Y. 94-5