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Kant's Idealism Kant’s Idealism The New Synthese Historical Library Texts and Studies in the History of Philosophy VOLUME 66 Managing Editor: SIMO KNUUTTILA, University of Helsinki Associate Editors: DANIEL ELLIOT GARBER, Princeton University RICHARD SORABJI, University of London Editorial Consultants: JAN A. AERTSEN, Thomas-Institut, Universität zu Köln ROGER ARIEW, University of South Florida E. JENNIFER ASHWORTH, University of Waterloo MICHAEL AYERS, Wadham College, Oxford GAIL FINE, Cornell University R. J. HANKINSON, University of Texas JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Boston University PAUL HOFFMAN, University of California, Riverside DAV I D KONSTAN, Brown University RICHARD H. KRAUT, Northwestern University, Evanston ALAIN DE LIBERA, Université de Genève JOHN E. MURDOCH, Harvard University DAV I D FATE NORTON, McGill University LUCA OBERTELLO, Università degli Studi di Genova ELEONORE STUMP, St. Louis University ALLEN WOOD, Stanford University For further volumes: http://www.springer.com/series/6608 Dennis Schulting · Jacco Verburgt Editors Kant’s Idealism New Interpretations of a Controversial Doctrine 123 Editors Dr. Dennis Schulting Dr. Jacco Verburgt University of Amsterdam VU University Amsterdam Department of Philosophy Faculty of Philosophy Oude Turfmarkt 141–147 De Boelelaan 1105 1012 GC Amsterdam 1081 HV Amsterdam The Netherlands The Netherlands [email protected] [email protected] ISBN 978-90-481-9718-7 e-ISBN 978-90-481-9719-4 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9719-4 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Preface The theme of this collection of essays concerns a longstanding issue in Kant stud- ies, namely Kant’s controversial doctrine of idealism, most notably his notion of ‘the thing-in-itself’ and its distinction from ‘appearance’, which is Kant’s term for an empirically real object but of which he also notoriously says that it is a ‘mere representation’. The question surrounding that somewhat nebulous notion of a ‘thing-in-itself’ is one of those perennial questions for Kant commentators, who after more than 200 years of Kant scholarship haven’t been overcome by consensus as to how even to interpret Kantian idealism and the attendant distinction between appearance and thing-in-itself, let alone weigh its philosophical merits. What is it about Kant’s idealism that still occupies the minds of so many Kantians and non-Kantians alike? Why and how is it different from standard idealism about objects? How do Kant’s commitment to the empirical realism of objects as appear- ances and his denial of their ultimate metaphysical reality go together? Is it true, as Hegel charged already early on in his critique of Kant, that Kant’s objects are not genuinely, objectively real, but in fact only subjectively objective? That, in Hegel’s view at least, his idealism is not objective enough? Ever since Kant’s contemporary Jacobi famously complained, in his David Hume (1787), that the thing-in-itself presents an obstacle to understanding the critical phi- losophy, many philosophers, sympathetic or not to Kant’s overall thought, have struggled with it. As Jacobi pointed out, without presupposing the thing-in-itself, which somehow causally affects us, ‘arouses sensations in us’, one cannot ‘enter the system’, but with the presupposition it’s impossible ‘to remain in it’ for within Kant’s system it’s not possible to give justifiable sense to trans-phenomenal causal- ity. Put differently, Jacobi’s point is that Kant needs an argument that objects exist ‘outside of us in the transcendental sense’, thus not ‘merely subjectively but actually objectively’—which supposedly is the real relevant issue here. But such an argu- ment is unavailable for Kant, Jacobi argues, since he claims absolute ignorance of knowledge of things in themselves (or, as Jacobi puts it, the ‘transcendental object’), which is the major implication of transcendental idealism. The idea that things in themselves affect our sensibility, but nevertheless are inac- cessible for minds such as ours remains a major stumbling block for many readers of Kant. A striking exception is Hegel, who thought, with some exaggeration, that the v vi Preface easiest thing to grasp in Kant’s philosophy was precisely the thing-in-itself. Hegel observes with simulated wonder: “We must be quite surprised [...] to read so often that one does not know what the thing-in-itself is; for nothing is easier to know than this” (Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, §44). But given that so many words have since been dedicated to grappling with the meaning of the thing-in- itself and its ostensible relevance for Kant’s critical thought the notion is apparently not so easy to grasp as Hegel has us believe. However, as Karl Ameriks has aptly noted, precisely because “[t]he doctrine of transcendental idealism is so difficult”, “one should not turn away from considering any serious hypothesis that might shed light on it” (Interpreting Kant’s Critiques,p. 147). Indeed, widely varying and even deflationary interpretive approaches to ide- alism might together give us a better picture of possible avenues of approaching this controversial doctrine that seems to be central to Kant’s philosophy. In the first part of this volume, which focuses more generally on interpreting Kantian idealism, Manfred Baum argues that Kant’s first concern in the Critique of Pure Reason is not idealism at all, but rather the fundamental question regarding the a priori cognizabil- ity of objects. Insofar as idealism is conceived of in the traditional sense, namely in terms of an ontological claim regarding the existence or non-existence of objects, it is not part of the argument in the Transcendental Analytic. One would thus do best not to attach too much importance to the label transcendental idealism, also because Kant himself uses it rather infrequently. Ido Geiger, on the other hand, seeks to defend the thesis that in the Critique of the Power of Judgment Kant formulates a superior version of transcendental idealism, which is no longer committed to the idea that things in themselves as existing entities underlie appearances, as Kant on his reading still argues in the first Critique. Having written extensively on the topic, Ameriks himself offers what he now calls the Moderate Interpretation of Kant’s ide- alism, which one may see as his considered view on the topic. More in particular, in his essay Ameriks subjects the naturalist assumptions underlying a very recent reading of Kant’s idealism, offered by Robert Hanna, to a critique. The articles in this volume are partly based upon the proceedings of a conference that was held at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in May 2008. The main theme of the conference concerned the relation between Kant’s transcendental idealism and his transcendental logic—a relation that has been much neglected in the Kant literature. The reason for this appears to be the common but disputable conception that Kant’s doctrine of idealism and his discursive logic are wholly unconnected. More than forty years after the publication of P.F. Strawson’s classic The Bounds of Sense, there is an ongoing interest among epistemologists in the potential for epistemology of a so-called transcendental theory of experience, which however dispenses with the ostensible speculative excess of Kant’s idealism. In some way or other, it is argued, the argument for a priori constraints for the experience of objects must be able to accord with unabashed naturalism about objects and, as Strawson forcefully argued in the latter part of his influential book, it is thus to be seen as quite independent of the doctrine of transcendental idealism. One of the reasons underpinning this view is the standard empiricist assumption that the Preface vii analysis of knowledge has nothing in common with the forms of logic. This goes of course against Kant’s explicit claim that the categories of experience correspond to, and are derivable from, the forms of judgment. More importantly, it obstructs an understanding of the relevance of transcendental inquiry for Kant’s critical project and thus an understanding of his idealism as contributing to what he asserts, in the preface of the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, is a “change in the way of thinking” (Bxvi; emphasis added). It would appear therefore that transcendental philosophy cannot concern merely a theory of knowledge as traditionally conceived. In some further specifiable way, it must have to do with the logic of thought itself, not just the logic of experience. More often it is claimed that Kant’s idealism is intrinsically linked up with his controversial views on space and time, more in particular his notorious view that spatiotemporal objects are not ultimately real, and that consequently idealism can easily be detached from his views on the conceptual requirements for knowledge. However, it is debatable whether Kant’s distinctive transcendental logic regarding the cognitive structure of experience can indeed be separated from idealism about spatiotemporal objects. Whereas in the earlier literature the relation between Kant’s aesthetics and idealism has been extensively covered, the essays in this collection do not especially address Kant’s views on spatiotemporality, important though this topic is for grasping Kant’s idealism. An important goal of this volume is to fill a gap in the existing literature regarding the need for an explanation of an element that is equally important for understanding Kant’s doctrine of idealism, namely his par- ticular view on logic and the discursivity of human judgment.
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