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“Kant's Diagnosis of the Unity of Skepticism” Philosophers’ volume 14, no. 14 ecent decades have seen a sea change in work in the Anglo- may 2014 phone world on Kant’s view of skepticism. Earlier scholars – fol- Imprint R lowing seminal readings by P. F. Strawson and Jonathan Bennett – read Kant as directly refuting the radical skeptic by somehow providing a more-or-less demonstrative proof of some metaphysical fact that pre- cludes skeptical doubts.1 More recently, however, scholars have recog- nized that Kant’s diagnostic and methodological reading of skepticism is far more complex, and even ambivalent, than this. When Kant explic- “Kant’s Diagnosis of the itly discusses these “nomadic” “benefactors of human reason,” he char- acterizes their position as a high-level metaphilosophical stance: a whole cluster of attitudes and beliefs about the roles, aims, and procedures of philosophical reflection, which the Critical philosopher must appreci- Unity of Skepticism” ate and learn from (cf. Aix–xii and A377–378, respectively).2 Only a di- agnostic understanding of skepticism deep enough to identify both its remarkable appeal and its pivotal assumptions could succeed in casting doubt on such metaphilosophical commitments. For this reason, Kant argues, skepticism rewards close scrutiny, even if its true lessons are not what the skeptic herself thought she was teaching in advancing her gloomy verdict on the human epistemic situation in general.3 1. Here, I have in mind Strawson’s Bounds of Sense and Bennett’s Kant’s Analytic, both published in 1966. 2. Quotations from Kant’s works are from the Akademie Ausgabe, with the Cri- tique of Pure Reason cited simply by the standard A/B edition pagination, and the other works by both volume and page. Translations and editions are from Matthew A. Kelsey the Cambridge edition, as indicated in the references. Specific texts are ab- breviated as follows: Tarrant County College – South Campus Letters: Kant’s Correspondence Notes: Kant’s Notes and Fragments Pro: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics G: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals MF: Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science “O”: “What Does it Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?” CPrR: Critique of Practical Reason “D”: “On a Discovery Whereby Any New Critique of Pure Reason is to Be Made Superfluous by an Older One” © 2014 Matthew A. Kelsey RP: What Real Progress Has Metaphysics Made in Germany Since the Time of Leibniz and Wolff? This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Jäsche: The Jäsche Logic Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License. 3. Insightful proponents of the more nuanced view of Kant on skepticism in- <www.philosophersimprint.org/014014/> clude Ameriks 2005; Anderson 2001; Engstrom 1994; Forster 2008; Hatfield matthew a. kelsey “Kant’s Diagnosis of the Unity of Skepticism” This development within Kant scholarship is of wider philosophi- propose, can serve to illuminate these broader developments, as well cal interest, since it dovetails with a great deal of contemporary work as to clarify the nature of Kant’s own approach. on skepticism. Many epistemologists now argue that a direct refu- A general outline of the Kantian diagnosis of skepticism is easy tation of skepticism is impossible. In place of such straightforward enough to provide. For Kant, all forms of philosophically motivated proofs, these philosophers recommend a variety of diagnostic strate- skepticism – i. e., all forms that purport to be rational, rather than de- gies, which aim to show (as Barry Stroud puts it) that skepticism is scents into mere misology – are articulations of a creeping distrust of merely “conditionally correct”: inescapable if certain initially plausible reason, a sense that reason’s “peculiar fate” of confronting unanswer- premises are granted, and yet capable of being turned aside indirectly, able metaphysical questions already amounts to the skeptic’s gloomy so long as one of those key premises turns out to be something we verdict (Avii). The crux of Kant’s engagement with the skeptic is his can satisfactorily do without (1984: 179).4 Indeed, this is the dominant attempt to progressively reinterpret various skeptical arguments as approach to skepticism in contemporary epistemology, rivaled only by more or less adequate articulations of a radical underlying suspicion broadly Wittgensteinian attempts to show, “therapeutically,” that skep- concerning the nature (or even the existence) of “human reason.” tical challenges are in some way nonsensical, or perpetually dialecti- As we shall see, Kant does not regard skepticism as a fixed pack- cally inappropriate.5 Closer attention to Kant’s battle with skepticism, I age of arguments, but as a guiding thought or maxim, common to all who philosophize skeptically: “how little cause have we to place trust in our reason if in one of the most important parts of our de- 2001 and 2003; Henrich 1989; Kitcher 1995; Kuehn 1987; Neiman 1994; Proops 2003; Stapleford 2007; Stern 2006 and 2008; and Velkley 1989. My sire for knowledge [viz., metaphysics] it does not merely forsake us goal in this essay is to contribute to this body of work by highlighting an as- but even entices us with delusions and in the end betrays us!” (Bxv) pect of Kant’s theory of skepticism which these scholars generally downplay or overlook. Thus, “Kantian skepticism” – skepticism as Kant understands it – is 4. For valuable studies of diagnostic (or nonrefutational) approaches to skepti- intentionally unified: disparate strategies are related as means to a sin- cism, see Pritchard 2001 and Williams 1996. gular skeptical end. (“Kantian dogmatism” likewise comprises dispa- 5. Candidates for “the lesson of skepticism” are widely varied and hotly con- rate means to the end of attaining knowledge of things as they are tested. Here is a sampler of possibilities: hard-to-abandon internalist de- in themselves.) By pursuing this line of thought, Kant proceeds from mands make a satisfying answer impossible (Fumerton 1995); stop assuming that knowledge and its ascription are context-invariant (Cohen 1999, DeR- vague doubts about human knowledge to a specific (and soluble) ose 1995, Williams 1996); knowledge is not, after all, closed under known problem for pure reason. As he sees it, transcendental philosophy’s entailment (Dretske 2003, Nozick 1981); the traditional conception of the objectivity of the world is unworkable (Rorty 1981); bad metaphors of the charge is to enable us to “become critical” – to reflectively regain our mind as a perceptual space create the whole problematic (Fischer 2010, fol- trust in reason, without falling back into the dogmatist’s naïve faith in lowing Wittgenstein); we should have remained direct realists all along our powers of rational insight.6 (Huemer 2001); experience is through-and-through conceptual, as Hegel saw (McDowell 1996); or, we can and should ground our cognitive lives on readings of Kant himself, by Bird 2006, Mosser 2008, and even P. F. Strawson an existential-epistemic “leap of faith” (Foley 1993, Lehrer 1997). What these in 1985, later on his career. all have in common is a rejection both of skepticism, and of any attempt to directly guarantee our knowledge. Therapeutic responses to skepticism in- 6. Compare “D” 8:226–7: “By dogmatism in metaphysics the Critique understands clude Austin’s ordinary-language philosophy, as in his 1962; Carnap’s 1950 this: the general trust in its principles, without a previous critique of the faculty distinction between framework-internal and framework-external questions; of reason itself, merely because of its success; by skepticism, however, the gen- Cavell’s doubts about the skeptic’s ability to “say what she means” in his 1979; eral mistrust in pure reason, without a previous critique, merely because of the and, perhaps, Wittgenstein’s (1969) quietism – along with Wittgensteinian failure of its assertions. The criticism of the procedure concerning everything philosophers’ imprint – 2 – vol. 14, no. 14 (may 2014) matthew a. kelsey “Kant’s Diagnosis of the Unity of Skepticism” What that trust amounts to, how it is to be reached and then sus- the legitimate aim and starting point of epistemology – assumptions tained, and the precise way it is meant to take the sting out of reason’s which, as it turns out, could only be motivated by the threat of a most “peculiar fate,” are all very complex questions – and too much for me fundamental mode of skepticism. Thus, I shall say that one skepti- to address here. In order to get a grip on this subject, then, I focus in cal argument reduces to another when it turns out that the reducing this essay on a single, crucial, but often overlooked element of Kant’s problematic provides the crucial dialectical context for the reduced diagnosis of skepticism. This is what I will call the unity of skepticism one. I focus on the strong unity thesis here, since its defense entails thesis, or just the “unity thesis” for short: Kant’s claim that beneath the weaker thesis as well. the diversity of skeptical arguments lies a unifying metaphilosophical By showing how deeply both unity theses structure Kant’s think- maxim, which can be unearthed and repudiated by Critical philoso- ing, I defend three related claims: (1) we can only grasp the point of phy. Even those who take a broadly diagnostic approach to reading Kant’s arguments in light of the unity theses; (2) both of these two Kant against the skeptic generally do so piecemeal, by focusing on this theses are at least more plausible than they may seem at first blush; or that particular skeptical problematic, and so ignore Kant’s explicit and (3) Kant’s diagnosis of the skeptic incorporates certain insights claim that there is truly only one way to be a skeptic. Yet only the unity that suggest a novel conception of the nature and responsibilities of thesis could allow a Kantian to entertain hopes of diagnostically turn- the human cognitive subject.
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