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Prospects for Post-Copernican Dogmatism COLLAPSE V 1 2 Prospects for Post-Copernican 3 Dogmatism: The Antinomies of 4 Transcendental Naturalism 5 6 Iain Hamilton Grant 7 8 9 For it is not because there is thinking that there is being, but 10 rather because there is being that there is thinking. 11 1 Schelling 12 13 [T]he fundamental error of dogmatism [...][is to] search outside 14 the I in order to discover the ultimate ground of all that is in 15 and for the I. 16 2 Fichte 17 18 What is the dogmatism against which transcendental 19 philosophy launched its Copernican revolution? Since 20 Kant’s invention of the thing-in-itself, we are apt to think 21 3 dogmatism in terms of an access problem, and therefore 22 to conclude that any philosophy is dogmatic that, through 23 insufficient attention to its own conditioning, denies that 24 there is an access problem. Yet characterising dogmatism as 25 1. F.W.J. Schelling, Sämmtliche Werke, ed. K.F.A. Schelling, 14 vols (Stuttgart und 26 Augsburg: Cotta, 1856-61), vol. XIII, 161 n., trans. B. Matthews, The Grounding of 27 Positive Philosophy (New York: SUNY, 2007), 203 n. 28 2. J.G. Fichte (1971) J.G. Fichtes sämmtliche Werke (hereafter: W), ed. I.H. Fichte, 8 vols (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1971), vol. IV, 174, trs. D. Breazeale and G. Zöller, The 29 System of Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 165. 30 3. For an excellent recent account of the access problem, see Chapter One of Quentin 31 Meillassoux’s After Finitude (London: Continuum, 2008). 1 grant.indd 1 28/12/08 13:53:04 COLLAPSE V Grant – Post-Copernican Dogmatism 1 access-positivism does little to define it positively, providing Schelling’s claim above: it is a transcendental argument in 1 2 only a formal regression to inhibit speculative or rational that it stipulates what conditions the possibility of thinking 2 3 egress beyond reflection, as the Fichte citation above makes without reducing these conditions to any given or particular 3 4 sun-clear. Nevertheless, the Fichtean egress-prohibition has domain of objects. Hence Kant’s having noted, with regard 4 5 latterly been posited as a positive criterion of ‘philosophi- to Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism, that ‘tran- 5 6 cally effective’ transcendental arguments: scendental idealism is realism in an absolute sense’ (1993, 6 7 255). In accordance with this absolute realism, Schelling’s 7 The transcendental argument must not invalidly infer objective 8 thesis stems from his ontological naturalism:7 being is the 8 and or unrestricted conclusions from purely subjective and/or 9 necessary condition of thinking and not vice versa. 9 merely parochial premises.4 10 The point to note is that neither claim is inherently 10 11 Again, following Fichte, this criterion is expressly designed inconsistent, both are transcendental, and accordingly, that 11 12 to counter any claim to a ‘transcendental naturalism’, which transcendental positions are themselves open to counterpo- 12 13 comes close, as Bell claims, to an oxymoron.5 It follows sitions. Given this, in what follows, we shall argue that tran- 13 14 from the above criterion that the only valid transcenden- scendental philosophy is itself a dogmatism8 on the basis of 14 15 tal argument is one that demonstrates and asserts the the applicability of three criteria specified by transcendental 15 16 parochial subjectivism of its premises. What is striking is 16 17 17 that the double assertion of subjectivity and parochialism is what Kant sought by way of the ‘ether proofs’ in the Opus postumum, trans. by E. 18 asserted against the rest of being or nature. We must ask, Förster, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 62-99. Transcendental 18 19 philosophy is then defined as the ‘system of ideas, which are problematic (not 19 however, whether the Bell-Fichte subjective parochialism assertoric) in themselves […] but must nevertheless be thought as possible forces 20 thesis does in fact exhaustively define transcendentalism, affecting the rational subject’ (ibid., 250), necessitating a dynamica generalis (ibid., 224) 20 21 so that to reject the one is to dismiss the viability of the to ground both the system of objects and the system of ideas. 21 22 other, and thus to assert that there can be no other basis for 7. ‘Anything whose conditions simply cannot be given in nature, must be absolutely 22 impossible’ (Schelling, Werke III, 571). Although it could be argued that the ‘positive 23 transcendental philosophy. If this is so, transcendentalism’s philosophy’ of the Grounding is incompatible with the ‘negative philosophical’ theses 23 24 parochialism is as much the grounds for its rejection as for of the System of Transcendental Idealism, this would be to disguise the extent to which 24 Schelling’s naturalism is precisely the kind of ‘absolute realism’ with which Kant 25 its putative value. If not, we cannot conclude a transcen- identifies ‘transcendental idealism’. 25 26 6 26 dental naturalism to be oxymoronic. Consider for example 8. As indeed Fichte claims in the ‘Review of Anesidemus’: ‘the [Dogmatic] system holds 27 open the possibility that we might someday be able to go beyond the boundary of 27 the human mind, whereas the Critical system proves that such progress is absolutely 28 4. D. Bell, ‘Transcendental Arguments and Non-Naturalistic Anti-Realism’, in R. 28 impossible, and it shows that the thought of a thing possessing existence and specific Stern (ed.) Transcendental Arguments. Problems and Prospects (Oxford: Oxford University 29 properties in itself and apart from any faculty of representation is a piece of whimsy, 29 Press, 1999),189-210, at 192. 30 a pipe dream, a nonthought. And to this extent the Humean system is sceptical and 30 5. Ibid., 194. the Critical system is dogmatic – and indeed negatively so’ (W I, 16; Eng trans. by 31 D. Breazeale in Fichte: Early Philosophical Writings, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 31 6. The prospect of a naturalistically grounded transcendental philosophy is precisely 1988, 70-71). 2 3 grant.indd 2-3 28/12/08 13:53:05 COLLAPSE V Grant – Post-Copernican Dogmatism 1 philosophers for the identification of dogmatism. These Since (3) can itself be construed as satisfying (2), it may 1 2 criteria are: be subsumed under it. Our point in its separate statement 2 3 is threefold. Firstly, to highlight the crucial role played 3 C.1 Logical: the susceptibility of dogmatic systems to 4 by ‘things’ not only in the determination of the nature 4 internally consistent but antinomic counter-systems.9 5 of dogmatism, as above, but also in the development of 5 6 C.2 Metaphysical: the attempt to provide a ground or cause transcendental philosophy’s ontology, for which the concept 6 7 of beings external to the I, or to satisfy the Principle of ‘thing-in-itself’ asserts only the most elementary determi- 7 8 Sufficient Reason;10 and nation of existents; but transcendental philosophy is itself 8 dogmatic when it concludes that therefore that they exist at 9 9 C.3 Ontological: the thesis that beings are things or all, and that this is how being is, as when, for instance, 10 10 objects.11 11 it asserts that ‘concepts of relation presuppose things 11 12 12 9. ‘[Reason, in] its dogmatic employment [...] lands us in dogmatic assertions to which are absolutely [schlechthin] given, and without these 13 which other assertions, equally specious, can always be opposed’ (Kant, Critique are impossible’.12 That is, the condition of possibility of 13 of Pure Reason, trans. N. Kemp Smith, London: Macmillan, 1958, B22-3; hereafter 14 14 CPR). ‘[I]n the dogmatic procedure of reason […] unavoidable contradictions of objects of intuition – even of their distinction – is simply 15 reason with itself have long since undermined the authority of every metaphysical ‘things absolutely given’. At this point, transcendental 15 system yet propounded’ (CPR: A10/B23-4). In ‘the dispute between the idealist and 16 16 the dogmatist […] reason gives us no principle of choice [… and n]either of these philosophy, whose ‘supreme concept […] is the division 17 two systems can directly refute its opposite’ (Fichte W I, 429-432; trans. by P. Heath into the possible and the impossible’, can avoid dogmatic 17 and J. Lachs, The Science of Knowledge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982; 18 18 hereafter SK, 12-14). ontological commitment only at the cost of antithesis: 19 19 10. While metaphysics, ‘as science […] has to deal […] only with itself and the Thus the object of a concept to which no assignable intuition 20 20 problems which arise entirely from within itself, and which are imposed upon it by whatsoever corresponds is = nothing. That is, it is a concept 21 its own nature, not by the nature of things which are distinct from it’ (CPR: B23), 21 ‘dogmati[sm] claim[s] acquaintance with the constitution of the object fuller than that without an object (ens rationis), like noumena, which cannot be 22 22 of the counter-assertion’ (CPR: A388). See also Fichte W IV, 174; System of Ethics, trans. reckoned among the possibilities, although they must not for 23 and ed. by Daniel Breazeale and Günter Zöller (Cambridge: Cambridge University 23 Press, 2005), 165: ‘[T]he fundamental error of dogmatism [...][is to] search outside that reason be declared to be also impossible.13 24 the I in order to discover the ultimate ground of all that is in and for the I’. Wayne 24 25 Martin confirms this diagnosis in his Idealism and Objectivity: Understanding Fichte’s Jena 25 Project (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 37: ‘dogmatists are not identified The ‘things absolutely given’ on which the objects of 26 simply as those who assert that things-in-themselves exist; rather they are those who intuition depend are neither possible nor impossible, and 26 27 assert that things in themselves constitute the ground of experience’.
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