(Fragments)

Ted Sadler

225. Kant on Metaphysics. In the Preface to the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant connects with and to a large degree endorses a prevailing sentiment, namely that metaphysics is an exercise in futility. The reasons that Kant gives are familiar: that no progress has been made in this area, so that it remains the battle ground of endless controversies and disputations. The suspicion of metaphysics was not new. Already in the 15^th century Scholasticism was criticized as dry and abstract, mere hair-splitting, leading nowhere (Colet, Erasmus). Luther also rejected metaphysics, for in his view it occluded the revealed word of God in the Bible. Luther had regarded the importation of Aristotle into Christian culture as a source of degeneration. Kant too was a Lutheran, of the specifically Pietist variety prevailing in East Prussia. To ‘limit knowledge to make room for faith’ was a Lutheran sentiment. On the other hand, the criticism of metaphysics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has a new force and motivation, coming naturally from the new sciences. Kant could thus mount a double-pronged attack on metaphysics, and this is the key to understanding his critique. For by the standards of the new natural sciences, metaphysics could be seen as an exercise in futility. In one way this confirmed Luther, but in another way it was new, for the mathematical sciences did not exist in Luther’s day. Thus, although metaphysics remained for Kant a threat to faith, he did not see scientific knowledge in this light. For scientific knowledge simply did not bear on religion and faith. Kant wanted to make science safe from religious scepticism, and to make religion safe from scientific scepticism. Of course, the development of the individual sciences was not by this time in doubt, they could look after themselves. But a philosophical as well as a religious judgement on the sciences was necessary. To some degree they were still in conflict, as could be verified (for example) by the controversies engendered by Lessing’s publication of the Reimarus fragments. Religion, while still wedded to theological metaphysics, could not remain indifferent to the scientific world-view, while science, if it regarded itself as a self-sufficient body of wisdom, would lead to the collapse of religion.

226. Kant’s Critique of Metaphysics. Two things about metaphysics are in this context noteworthy. Firstly, as mentioned, it made the claim to scientific-logical-rational understanding, precisely the kind of understanding required in the natural sciences, albeit under certain modifications. Secondly, metaphysics claimed to reveal ‘ultimate reality’, to provide ‘absolute’ knowledge and truth. Metaphysics was the queen of the sciences already in Aristotle: the thinking of metaphysical truths was the highest activity of man and his greatest happiness, and of course it was ‘divine’ in the sense given to this by Aristotle. Metaphysics understood the whole, but not in a summary way, rather by revealing first principles. The desire for ‘absolute’ truth and knowledge became synonymous with the desire for metaphysical knowledge and truth. If therefore metaphysics became questionable the possibility of attaining this was cast into doubt. There had been for two thousand years the alternatives between metaphysical knowledge and faith; even when they were reconciled the boundary between the two, the absolute demarcation remained in force. But one effect of the Christian tradition was that every kind of non-metaphysical access to truth was immediately assimilated with faith. As regards the absolute, there were no alternatives besides metaphysics and Christian faith. Under these circumstances, it was natural that when the claim to absoluteness of metaphysics was questioned, this must transfer immediately to faith. There were indeed traditions and types of writing which could not be assimilated without further ado into metaphysics, but the latter was the site of the definition of truth and knowledge. If one raises the question of truth and knowledge one is immediately in the terrain of metaphysics, this indeed was the founding act of metaphysics. When therefore the definitions of truth given in metaphysics were scrutinized, and found to be incompatible with knowledge of the absolute, the edifice must fall. This incompatibility could only emerge however after the development of the modern sciences. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant interpreted the sciences in terms of Aristotelian definitions of reality and being: the categories, the primacy of the judgement re. truth. Methodologically, the natural sciences were informed by Aristotelian criteria of reality, suitably modified by Kant. It was as if the Aristotelian ontology had taken two thousand years to reveal itself in its essential meaning, as the ontology of the natural world revealed by the modern mathematical sciences. If Kant had said that natural science can only know the things that it knows then this would have rightly been taken as a tautology. But his argument was that knowing must make use of categories which as it turns out are just the categories used by natural science. Kant’s categories are derived from Aristotelian logic, and as such they are meant to define the limits of truth itself. The transcendental deduction of the categories is tailored to natural scientific ‘consciousness’ in the first place, since ‘experience’ is defined in a manner consonant with the natural sciences. The categories in Kant follow the categories that Aristotle himself uses for his ‘physics’, thus ‘truth’ and ‘experience’ are linked with physical reality. Physical reality, in the sense of the reality of bodies in motion, thus has primacy for Kant as for Aristotle. The latter’s subsequent argument for the ‘prime mover’ would thus be refuted by Kant in terms of the antinomies. Aristotle was not prepared for a thoroughgoing ‘physicalism’, but if his arguments for the prime mover do not work, then this is what he is left with, the metaphysics then consisting of an ontology of physical reality. In this sense the presuppositions of Kant are not strictly speaking given just by the modern mathematical physical sciences but go back to Aristotle. And just as Plotinus and the Neoplatonists regarded Aristotle are adequate only for physical reality, not for metaphysics, so Kant could recognize the limits of physical knowledge as far as metaphysical aspirations were concerned. For Kant, however, the way that Neoplatonism went beyond physics was unacceptable, for it involved the continuation of what were basically physical categories, only misapplied.

227. The Effect of Kant. One of the most remarkable things about the effect of Kant is the consensus that he ended traditional metaphysics, at least a certain kind thereof, what Hegel calls ‘Verstandesmetaphysik’. Even Hegel with some reservations admits this. In place of this there arose a subjectivism. The appeal of this needs to be explained. Hegel interprets it in terms of relativism and slackness. Kant seemed to have demonstrated that in regard to certain questions it was useless to speculate. Evidently the idea of limits to knowledge was timely. But the paradox is that Kant did not just dismiss these speculative questions, but retained them, or transferred them to practical reason. The difference between Kant and the positivists of the twentieth century: Kant did not just dismiss metaphysical questions as meaningless because ‘unverifiable’. Thus the ambiguity which led to the actual revival of metaphysics, a new road for metaphysics departing from the spirit if not the letter of Kant – Fichte, Schelling, Hegel. From the Kantian point of departure, there were two roads: one towards a new metaphysics, the other towards positivism. Even Schopenhauer and Nietzsche could in a way be regarded as a new metaphysics, certainly the idealists were metaphysicians. Neo-Kantianism was a kind of compromise: it did not wish to engage in speculation but saw positivism as too narrow. But Kant’s subjectivism can also be understood differently, as a reassertion of the primacy of logic (transcendental logic – synthetic a priori). The subjectivity of knowledge can be understood simply as the necessary logical form of thinking, or indeed as the necessary logical form of reality itself, i.e. that reality which is the subject matter of science. Hegel recognizes Kant’s importance in relation to the analysis of knowledge – but the basic elements of this were already in Plato and Aristotle. The influential-popular side of Kant was the sophistical side, taken up by positivism and partly by Neo-Kantianism, the genuine side taken up by Fichte and Hegel.

 

228. Kant and Traditional Metaphysics. ‘Die transcendentale Aesthetik und transcendentale Analytik sind die neue und erste eigentliche Bestimmung der Metaphysica generalis (Ontologie), die transcendentale Dialektik die der Metaphysica specialis’ (Heidegger: GA27, 250). Since metaphysics concerns beings as a whole, Kant asks after the conditions of knowledge of beings. He departs from the fact of knowledge above all in the mathematical natural sciences, i.e. physics. It is the beings of nature, phusis, that are given ontological prominence right from the start, and indeed as an assumption. In this regard Kant is traditional, for this was also Aristotle’s procedure, and it is significant that the fundamental concepts of Kant’s ‘ontology’, i.e. the categories, are taken from Aristotle without argument. ‘Subjective’ and ‘objective’ aspects of the Kantian a priori: the categories as ‘in the subject’ or ‘in consciousness’ on the one hand, or the categories as presupposed ontological concepts, necessary characteristics or structures of reality. The results of Kant’s metaphysica generalis are everywhere presupposed in his discussion of the metaphysica specialis (dialectic).

229. Kant and Truth. Kant restricts truth entirely to logic in the broad sense. Only judgements can be true or false, and judgements are possible only through the logical faculty of understanding. This is the strength of Kant’s philosophy, but also its limit and weakness. It was soon seen that those areas of philosophy which Kant had disconnected from truth – freedom and morality in the first place – were thereby devalued. Hegel thus attempted to extend the concept of truth to these, but he also followed Kant in seeing this project as an extension of the logical. The other alternative was taken up by the Lebensphilosophen, for example Nietzsche, to some degree Schopenhauer, in saying that truth was by no means limited to logic. The Neo-Kantians were more closely related to Hegel in so far as they too sought to restrict philosophy and truth to the ‘objective’, even where they understood this more broadly than Kant. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche believed that Kantianism had demonstrated the limits of logic, i.e. precisely that logic could not penetrate to the ultimate nature of reality. The alternatives became one the one hand turning away from questions about ‘ultimate reality’ in favour of what could be handled by logic, or on the other hand going beyond logic into this sphere. The first risked irrelevance (Nietzsche’s verdict), the latter risked undisciplined thinking. Hegel tried to overcome this by extending logic to the ultimate limit – this had the advantage of consistency. Kant’s extra-logical dimension, however, was itself governed by ‘reason’ and thus rightly accused by Hegel of inconsistency. There was also the question of what this extra-logical sphere was. Nietzsche could not assent to its essential moral character. What is it that logic cannot get to? Kant said ‘morality’, but the Lebensphilosophen said ‘life’ or the sphere of the ‘primordial’. To say this, however, inevitably means that the logical concept of truth must be exploded. It is impossible to speak of revealing the primordial unless some kind of truth attaches to this revealing, yet this truth does not have the character of conceptual-logical truth.

230. Philosopher and Philodex. ‘Der Vernunftkünstler, oder, wie Sokrates ihn nennt, der Philodex, strebt bloß nach spekulativen Wissen, ohne darauf zu sehen, wie viel das Wissen zum letzten Zwecke der menschlichen Vernunft beitrage; er gibt Regeln für den Gebrauch der Venunft zu allerlei beliebigen Zwecken. Der praktische Philosoph, der Lehrer der Weisheit durch Lehre und Beispiel, ist der eigenliche Philosoph. Denn Philosophie ist die Idee einer vollkommenen Weisheit, die uns die letzten Zwecke der menschlichen Vernunft zeigt.’ (Kant: Logik/Insel: 447; Eng: 28) [see KrV B267] It is not just a question of what other motivations may be possessed by the Philodex. It is more decisively the question of what motivations are absent. It is the absence of an orientation to the ‘ultimate ends of reason’ that is decisive. And it is not just that, happening to have other motivations, the Philodex is forgetful of ultimate ends, that among the various ends that are chooseable he happens not to choose the ‘ultimate ends’. The point is that the eschewing of ‘ultimate ends’ is his original and constitutive act, albeit not one that need be consciously reflected. ‘All kinds of ends’ are in principle available for choosing, except just one category thereof, namely the ‘ultimate ends’. Philosophy in the proper sense is oriented to the ‘ultimate ends of human reason’. But these ultimate ends consist in the fulfilment of the moral essence of man. The Philodex is not concerned with these ends, which is not to say that he is unconcerned with any ‘ends’ at all. He looks away from, or altogether denies, the ends of reason as Kant understands these. But when he loses himself in the sciences he does not thereby cut himself off from the sphere of practice and ‘interest’ as such. Rather, as Kant says, he places himself at the disposal of ‘allerlei beliebigen Zwecken’. What is the motive of the Philodex? He might say, perhaps, that he values ‘knowledge for its own sake’. But this is precisely where Kant will insist on further explanation. Is knowledge something that can be valued ‘for its own sake’? Is it not the case that knowledge always serves a purpose? In his early career, Kant himself had valued ‘knowledge for its own sake’. But he came to see that this was an untenable position. What calls itself the valuing of knowledge for its own sake is in fact, whether subjectively apprehended or not, the valuing of knowledge for some purpose or other. Now there is in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason no account of what the purpose of theoretical reason is. To ‘know’ the world of appearances is just to know what is given to man to ‘know’ and nothing else. The transcendental inquiry into the nature and possibility of theoretical cognition does, to be sure, have a purpose, namely the negative purpose indicated by Kant of protecting practical reason from the misconceived intrusion of pseudo-theoretical concepts. But what is the purpose of theoretical knowledge as embodied in the modern mathematical-physical sciences? This receives no explicit answer from Kant, but the implicit answer is clear: it can be no other than the purpose set for it by Bacon, the purpose of ‘relieving man’s estate’. And this is precisely the way that Schopenhauer understood Kant when he said that knowledge of the ‘world of representation’ had essentially an instrumental purpose. The Philodex, therefore, whether consciously or otherwise, in fact serves this purpose. Of course other personal motivations may be present. He may desire, by advancing the sciences, to advance himself. The point is, however, that the ultimate ends of reason are not in view. This means that the Philodex is not a lover of wisdom and not a philosopher in the proper sense. How does Kant’s conception of philosophy compare with that of Plato, or with the literal meaning of the term as ‘love of wisdom’. There is a strong correspondence when one holds to the proper Kantian conception of philosophy as practical. Being a philosopher ‘through teaching and example’ is to actually will according to the law of practical reason. Just as with Plato philosophy is a relationship, except that Kant explicitly identifies it as a relationship of willing. For Plato it is a striving, of a sort which, like Kantian willing, is not determined by any other factors, no other ‘attractions’ than that which is striven for. One could say that the Platonic concept is wider in so far as love of wisdom is also the love for deepened understanding, which is not so obvious from the Kantian formulation. But implicitly, Kantian willing does involve a strive for understanding, as can be seen in the production of the critical philosophy itself. The transcendental understanding of reason is part of the purification process which thwarts false ideals of wisdom, interfering with pure willing. Neither for Plato nor for Kant does philosophy consist in a determinate ‘content’. In both cases it is a practical relationship to something transcendent, namely the Good or truth with Plato, or in Kant the law of practical reason. Strictly it must be said here that Plato’s version is superior, at least in so far as truth plays a role, whereas for Kant, truth is disconnected. This is the great weakness in Kant’s system which was rightly criticized by Hegel. On the other hand, Hegel’s polemics against Kant are not entirely fair in as much as he does not give sufficient weight to the absolute status that practical reason has in Kant, but focuses on the subjectivism as the level of theoretical knowledge.

 

231. Kant’s Concept of Reason. Kant’s idea of philosophy as ‘transcendental philosophy’ depends on the all-embracing concept of reason, which, as Kant stresses, is primarily practical. The usual formulation, namely that Kant’s philosophy does not concern knowledge as such but its conditions of possibility, can be misleading, even though given by Kant himself. Firstly, this does not actually distinguish Kant from his classical predecessors such as Plato and Aristotle. But secondly, the transcendental is actually presupposed in Kant. Reason is presupposed as given. The will is presupposed as given, and as transcendental. This is what Fichte recognized. The Kantian ‘I’ is presupposed. It is this which not only knows in the theoretical sense but which also wills. It is clear therefore that Kant does not attribute a value or disvalue to scientific knowledge on its own account, as detached from any other kind of knowledge or ‘interest’. The ‘value’ of natural scientific knowledge cannot be stated except by bringing it into relation with the ‘world concept’ of philosophy. It is philosophy, in the sense of an orientation to the ultimate ends of human reason, that gives value to natural science, or rather, proper authentic value. Natural science has ‘value’ in relation to the ‘relief of man’s estate’ but not even this value can by properly justified except in terms of its relation to the ultimate ends of reason. In other words, the relief of man’s estate is indeed a genuine goal but can never be an ultimate one, and in so far as the sciences are pursued for this end alone they represent an unworthy attitude. From the perspective of philosophy, the relief of man’s estate is a worthy relative goal, but if pursued as an absolute goal it is utterly unworthy. Philosophy gives ‘value’ to all other kinds of knowledge, as Kant says. He does not say, of course, that all other kinds of knowledge are derived from philosophy as a foundational discipline. The natural sciences, to be sure, presuppose, from a logical point of view, the metaphysics of nature, which itself depends of the clarification achieved in the transcendental inquiry into all knowledge whatever.

 

232. Kant and the Natural Sciences. The natural sciences are defined by Kant in the broadest possible sense, as knowledge of that which is given to the senses. They therefore relate to the ‘interests’ of man as a creature of sense. This interest can be nothing else than what Bacon calls the ‘relief of man’s estate’, for as a creature of sense man is ‘needy’ of relief. The natural sciences do not themselves deny that man has other needs, but a philosophy which identified wisdom with the natural sciences would at least implicitly have to assert this. In other words, a philosophical naturalism would have to proceed from a certain picture of the nature of man. This picture, naturalism says, is itself obtained from the natural sciences. So the whole procedure is circular. The idea of man as a purely natural being is taken as absolute, de facto at least through the privileged position accorded to the natural sciences. But Kant also admits ‘inner sense’ as the domain of the psychological natural sciences. This is also admitted by positivism.

 

233. Kant’s First Critique. Already in the Preface to the first edition (1781) of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant expressed his conviction that this work would change the discipline of metaphysics once and for all. Notwithstanding the easily demonstrable continuities between Kant and his predecessors, there is much truth in this judgement. After a few years in which the learned world stood uncomprehendingly before this bulky and intricate book, Kant’s ‘critical philosophy’ became generally acknowledged as the inevitable point of reference for all up-to-date thinking on metaphysical topics. By the end of the decade Kant had become so fashionable that Johann August Eberhard, a leading philosopher of the old school, founded a philosophical periodical to combat his influence. But this and all other attempts to turn back the tide of Kantianism were to no avail. In the 1820’s Hegel remarked, in his Berlin lectures on the philosophy of religion, that it had now become a breach of politeness to mention the traditional proofs of the existence of God. If this was so it was due to Kant. But even Hegel, who regularly inveighed against the vulgar Kantianism of his time as against Kant’s own failure of philosophical nerve, recognized Kant’s achievements as the indispensable foundation for what he saw as his own consummation of metaphysics. To be sure, the positive implications of Kantianism were far from clear, with all kinds of conflicting philosophies claiming a basis in Kant. By the late 1790’s it seemed that the torch of Kantianism had passed to Fichte, this despite the elderly Kant’s repudiation of Fichte’s claim to represent the genuine ‘spirit of Kant’. In some ways the whole development of German idealism from Fichte through Schelling to Hegel can appear as the antithesis of Kant’s strictures against ‘speculation’. It remains true, however, that these thinkers never returned to metaphysics in the old style.

 

234. Kantianism. Following the breakdown of German idealism in the 1840’s Kant’s philosophy also languished, being represented principally by Schopenhauer, who, however, was out of sympathy with the positivistic and materialistic spirit of the period. Schopenhauer rejected the German idealists in the name of Kant, but then he used Kant’s demonstration of the limits of knowledge to support a kind of mysticism focusing on precisely that ‘thing-in-itself’ which Kant had said was unknowable. For Schopenhauer, the Kantian critique of speculative metaphysics had to be supplemented by the recognition, implicit in Kant, that the empirical sciences, while valid in their own domain, were irrelevant to philosophy. This was definitely not the view of the Neo-Kantians, who in the last three decades of the nineteenth century were responsible for a great resurgence of Kantianism, to such a degree that they became the dominant school of German university philosophy until the 1920’s. The Neo-Kantians took the empirical sciences as the benchmark of truth, seeing the task of philosophy as the analysis of scientific knowledge. In this they regarded themselves as the true disciples of Kant, as the genuine inheritors of Kant’s method of transcendental philosophy.

 

235. Nietzsche and Dionysian Life. At the beginning, in The Birth of Tragedy, Dionysus was the answer to the problem of the death of God. Nietzsche had wandered around Leipzig for several years as a nihilistic university student, professionally occupied with hoary questions about the correct editions of Greek texts. By profession he was one of those who touch up the tiny but repulsive blemishes on great works of the human spirit – hardly able to see their greatness, hardly able to enter into them. Or at least, this was what he was supposed to be. He was not supposed, qua philologist, to be interested in life itself. But this – the questions ‘what is life?’, ‘what is the value of life?’ was precisely what occupied him day and night. Having lost his Christian faith, having lost the hook on which he could attach his ‘life-seriousness’, he had had to struggle against an insistent sensation of emptiness. In Schopenhauer he had at least found a philosopher who was aware of the question, but Schopenhauer’s answer, that life was actually valueless, that it ‘would be better not to be’, was a counsel of despair. What the Birth of Tragedy represented was an answer to Schopenhauer. For the Greeks of the tragic age, so Nietzsche found, had confronted the same thing as Schopenhauer: they had broken away from the consolations of religion in order to look directly into the meaningless abyss of Being. However, they had not fallen into despair. While firmly repudiating any transcendental justification of existence, that is, any ‘higher world’ which could redeem the actually existing world, the tragic Greeks had found this life worthy of affirmation. They had done so by representing the ‘indestructibly powerful and pleasurable quality of life’ in their art, above all in the tragic art of Aesychlus and Sophocles. Life was recognized as tragic, but redeemed by being experienced in an aesthetic mode.

 

236. Kant a Modern Thinker. Kant’s two Prefaces, to the first and second editions of the Critique of Pure Reason, have a distinctly modern feel about them. When Kant says, for instance, that his task is ‘to alter the procedure which has hitherto prevailed in metaphysics, by completely revolutionizing it in accordance with the example set by the geometers and physicists’, one cannot help thinking of the positivism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, whose ambition it was (and remains, for positivism is not dead) to bring the same methodological rigour to philosophical inquiry as has long been the norm in the mathematical natural sciences. One detects in these Prefaces that impatience with unverifiable speculation which is often found among those who are scientifically trained. Metaphysics appears as a ‘battle-ground of endless controversies’ wherein, despite over two thousand years of effort, no significant progress has been made. Originally acknowledged as queen of the sciences, metaphysics has fallen, since the revolutionary scientific achievements of Galileo and Newton, more and more into disrepute. Comparing itself to the solid advances of the modern natural sciences, metaphysics cannot help but feel embarrassed at the paucity of its results. The task, therefore, is to re-examine the principles upon which metaphysics has hitherto proceeded, and to see whether it is has not, perhaps, asked the impossible of itself. It does not follow, from the mere fact that a question can be verbally formulated, that it can also be satisfactorily answered, indeed it does not follow that it is even a meaningful question. Perhaps human reason became confused about its own capacities, perhaps it sought to go beyond the limits of its proper employment, and, as a consequence, became entangled in difficulties from which it was unable to extricate itself. In the light of these suspicions, a critique of pure reason will ‘institute a tribunal which will assure to reason its lawful claims, and dismiss all groundless pretensions’.

 

237. The Fundamental Ambiguity in Kant. There is, however, an ambiguity to Kant’s project which appears in the very first sentence of the Preface to the first edition. Human reason, says Kant, is burdened by questions which ‘it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer’. Depending on how one understands this ‘not able to ignore’, very different interpretations of the Kantian philosophy will result. The positivist interpretation, which is as influential today as it was in Kant’s own life-time, takes ‘not able to ignore’ in a psychological sense, as referring to the difficulty human beings experience in disciplining their thinking through the canons of rationality. Although the rational thinker will always feel the enticements of speculation on extra-rational questions, and will always have to be on guard lest he is unwittingly lured onto this terrain, such questions will have no further significance for him. If one concentrates on the first half of the Critique of Pure Reason, it is just possible to read this meaning into Kant. One then has to say that the second half of the book, and more particularly the other books thereafter published by Kant, represent a progressive back-tracking and failure to face up to the consequences of his original, austerely scientifically, position. On the other hand, if one takes into account the totality of Kant’s critical writings (or even just the second half of the Critique of Pure Reason) one will have to understand ‘not able to ignore’ in a philosophical sense. These unanswerable questions, these questions which transcend the powers of reason, will be unavoidable not just because they constantly insinuate themselves into human consciousness, but because they are in some sense real questions. Yet – and it is precisely this paradox which the positivist critics cannot get around – how can questions be real if they are beyond the province of reason to decide upon? In the ‘transcendental dialectic’ of the first Critique, in the second and third Critiques, in the Religion book, and in virtually all the shorter works of his critical period, Kant elevates these supposedly unanswerable questions (concerning, essentially, God, freedom, and immortality) to the front rank of philosophical questions. How can they possess this status if they are indeed unanswerable? Is Kantianism a counsel of despair, teaching that just the most significant questions are inaccessible to human reason? But if that is so, how could these questions be recognized in the first place?

 

238. The Range of Reason. It must be stressed that, when Kant speaks of questions transcending the power of reason, he is alluding strictly to principles, and not at all to the practical unfeasibility of obtaining certain sorts of knowledge. There are, of course, some questions concerning nature, relating for example to distant galaxies or events billions of years in the past, which, in all probability, the natural sciences will never be able to settle. These, however, are questions which reason is in principle capable of answering, perhaps given a million generations of scientific and technological advance. On the other hand, the unanswerable questions which reason is ‘not able to ignore’ are unanswerable because we do not even know what would count as an answer, because we lack criteria through which to judge the ‘objective validity’ of answers, because in this area we lack any methodology which could assure us of progress. Kant takes the natural sciences to be the measuring stick on answerability: since Galileo and Newton we know what answerability is, we can see it in action, we can observe its tangible results. Although controversies are not absent from the natural sciences, there are generally recognized methodologies for resolving them. Nothing has a place in natural science, no thesis is put forward, no concept proffered, unless it is capable of intersubjective comprehension and assessment. In contrast to metaphysics, there is no room for the charlatan in natural science, for competence is there defined by professional norms and subject to public validation, there is no room for pretentiousness, no room for claims of incommunicable or inspired insight. As for those unanswerable questions which reason is ‘not able to ignore’, Kant sometimes (especially in connection with the idea of freedom) calls them ‘unresearchable’ (unerforschbar). Not only are these questions unanswerable, but it is in some way misconceived to inquire into them. It is all the more puzzling, therefore, when the bulk of Kant’s critical philosophy turns out to be just such an inquiry.

 

239. Practical and Theoretical Reason. Kant’s solution to this paradox is to distinguish the ‘practical’ from the ‘theoretical’ employment of pure reason: it is the former which addresses the unanswerable questions, but when it understands itself correctly, it does not dream of attaining ‘knowledge’ (Erkenntnis) in this area. This idea, that the exercise of reason is not limited to the acquisition of theoretical knowledge, determines the whole structure of the critical philosophy. On the other hand, because many critics have found it difficult to accept that reason can really be reason if it does not depend on knowledge, the status of Kantian ‘practical reason’ has always been problematic. Thus, while Kant himself wanted his critique of knowledge to ‘make room for faith’, many have taken it differently, as showing that, whatever faith may be, it is in any case not knowledge, and therefore is not reasonable, not philosophically acceptable. Depending on one’s views about what Kant called ‘faith’, one will read the Critique of Pure Reason in different ways. If one’s attitude is sceptical, one will likely see Kant’s analytic of scientific knowledge as the most important part of the book, providing materials of possible value (concerning e.g. space, time, mathematics, concept-formation in physics) for modern epistemology and philosophy of science. If, however, one’s attitude is closer to Kant’s, one will appreciate his admission, in the Preface to the second edition, that the whole ‘critique of theoretical reason’ (both transcendental analytic and transcendental dialectic) has a fundamentally negative significance. Strangely enough, if one reads the first Critique according to Kant’s own indications, one will have to conclude, at the end of the book, that the most important philosophical questions are still outstanding. As Kant stresses, however, negative results can be of great significance, in this case by securing the sphere of practical reason against the corrupting intrusion of pseudo-knowledge. To obtain an accurate picture of the Critique of Pure Reason, one should bear in mind that Kant originally intended to treat theoretical and practical reason together in one volume. Only when the first part of this project had already taken on vast literary dimensions did he decide to defer his treatment of practical reason for separate publication.

 

240. Unanswerable Questions. In order that room be vouchsafed for the unanswerable questions addressed by practical reason, Kant had to show the limits of theoretical knowledge. This he does, in the Critique of Pure Reason, by reference to a priori structures of human subjectivity. Kant maintains that all knowledge (as mentioned, the paradigm is natural science) is theoretical in so far as it depends on conceptuality, but that knowledge must also have an empirical basis: there must be a passive, receptive dimension to cognition, which, when combined with the active dimension of concept-formation, yields a specific cognitive claim. Both the passive and active dimensions are governed by a priori structures (‘forms’ and ‘categories’ respectively) which are inherent in reason, and do not at all pertain to the way the world is ‘in-itself’ independently of cognition. Through this account, Kant considers, the classical epistemological problem of how knowledge can be ‘objective’, is overcome, for the very concept of knowledge is seen to be applicable only to ‘appearances’ made possible by the structures of subjectivity. Speculations concerning the ‘Thing-in-itself’ (Ding-an-sich) are in principle misconceived, for theoretical reason has no competence in this area. As far as theoretical reason is concerned, ‘reality’ is nothing more than ‘appearance’ as determined by the laws of subjectivity, and knowledge is ‘objective’ when it is in accordance with these laws. Further, theoretical reason understands by ‘truth’ nothing else but the agreement of a judgement with an object defined at the level of ‘appearance’.

 

241. The In-Itself. From this perspective, Kant pronounces as futile the ambitions of traditional metaphysics. From Plato to Wolff, metaphysicians have wrongly presupposed the possibility of theoretical knowledge of the Thing-in-itself (Being-in-itself), and further, they have presumed themselves able ‘to make progress with pure knowledge, according to principles, from concepts alone’, whereas the Kantian critique shows that only when concepts combine with sensory input, itself pre-structured according to a priori forms, is knowledge at all attainable. Now of course, Kant is not wrong in claiming that metaphysics has taken the ‘in-itself’ of reality as its basic theme and aspiration, but whether this has invariably been sought ‘through concepts alone’ is another matter. There are some examples, discussed by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason, of speculative metaphysics drawing conclusions (about God, the soul, the origin of the world) from the mere analysis of concepts, but these are not entirely typical of metaphysics and do not justify Kant’s generalization. To make the same polemical point, Kant sometimes employs another formulation: he says that metaphysicians theorize ‘beyond the limits of possible experience’. Again, with some exceptions, metaphysicians have not understood themselves in this way, but Kant’s charge depends on the particular meaning he gives – in the Critique of Pure Reason – to ‘experience’. Since Kant defines ‘experience’ by reference to the experimental methods of natural science, what metaphysics has understood under ‘experience’ (something different, to be sure) is in his view null and void, simply a mistake, so that metaphysics is left with nothing else but free-floating concepts, lacking a proper context of application. In the so-called ‘transcendental aesthetic’ of the first Critique, Kant identifies the two basic forms of sensibility as space and time, both understood on the model of mathematical physics. This means that any genuine item of theoretical knowledge will have implicit reference to spatio-temporal determinations. If metaphysicians call upon any kind of ‘experience’ which is not bound by such determinations, this, for Kant, can only be pseudo-experience and confusion.

 

242. Kant and Relativism. Not only ‘experience’, but ‘reality’, ‘objectivity’, and ‘truth’ are defined by Kant within his ‘critique of theoretical reason’. Since all these concepts pertain to ‘appearance’, and not to the theoretically inaccessible Thing-in-itself, many commentators, from Kant’s own day until the present, have concluded that Kant opposes all ‘absolutism’ in philosophy, and indeed, that he provides some kind of justification for a position of ‘relativism’. Now of course, Kant does see the a priori structures of subjectivity as ‘relative’ in the sense that they do not pertain to a sphere of ‘absolute Being’; on the other hand, they are absolutely necessary structures. Only by first taking Kant’s essential thesis to be ‘phenomenalism’, and then, contra Kant, rejecting any a priori lawfulness at the level of phenomena, could one understand him as a relativist. However, the fact that the Kantian philosophy is so easily ‘popularized’ as a form of relativism (Hegel, as we shall later observe, did not spare his acerbic tongue on this subject) does highlight Kant’s problematic decision to treat traditional ontological concepts at a level which, on his own account, is only preparatory (in the aforementioned sense of possessing negative value) to the most fundamental philosophical problems. In fact, Kant himself has some difficulty in carrying through this decision, for when he goes over to those ‘unanswerable questions’ which reason is ‘not able to ignore’, he not infrequently equivocates. These questions, says Kant, cannot issue in any ‘knowledge’, but they can nevertheless be ‘thought’ by means of what he calls ‘ideas of pure reason’ or ‘transcendental ideas’. Such ideas, since they go beyond the limits of experience, cannot determine an ‘object’ and therefore cannot be employed in ‘true’ judgements, but Kant is nevertheless prepared to attribute ‘objective validity’ to them. That Kant speaks in this way, perforce borrowing from the conceptuality of theoretical reason, is enough to distinguish him from relativism, but it also casts doubt on the tenability of Kant’s delimitation of theoretical reason. Indeed, it is precisely because such concepts as being, reality and truth do not easily lend themselves to compartmentalization within just one species of reason that it has been so tempting to understand Kant as if practical reason (where these concepts are lacking) does not exist.

 

243. Why Kant Limits Theoretical Knowledge. Kant’s basic motivation for limiting the scope of theoretical reason is given in the Critique of Pure Reason itself, especially in the two Prefaces and towards the end of the book. It is that, unless it is so limited, it will insinuate itself into the proper province of practical reason and corrupt thinking about the unanswerable questions. Moral faith will be made subservient to metaphysical speculation and ecclesiastical dogma, whereas it should be (and in truth is) independent of any positive theoretical beliefs. On the other hand, because the Critique of Pure Reason is such a large, complex book, and because the meaning of practical reason is here only intimated by Kant rather than concretely developed, many readers notice only Kant’s demarcation – which is in fact the main theme of the work – between genuinely scientific knowledge and the pseudo-knowledge of metaphysical speculation. For Kant, two things must be distinguished from theoretical reason. One of them – metaphysical speculation – is worthless (or near enough so), while the other – practical reason – is of the highest possible value. Hitherto, Kant considers, due to the absence of a critique of pure reason, all three have been jumbled together, and now it is his task to untangle them. The first step is to distinguish theoretical reason from metaphysics, and only when this is achieved can the autonomy of practical reason also be comprehended. If this further step is ignored or minimized, then Kant is distorted along positivist lines, as a mere spokesman for the natural sciences and opponent of metaphysics.

 

244. The Transcendental Ideas. In the Critique of Pure Reason, the transcendental ideas reduce in the end to one: the idea of the Unconditioned. This, however, is the same as the idea of the Thing-in-itself. Kant often speaks in the plural, of unknowable ‘things-in-themselves’, but since unity and plurality are among the categories of theoretical understanding, it would seem that both modes of expression are strictly inappropriate. Indeed, even the term ‘thing’ seems highly dubious, for it has connotations of ‘substance’, which is included in Kant’s table of categories. Kant also employs the terms ‘noumenon’, ‘noumena’, and ‘the noumenal world’ for what lies behind the realm of phenomena. As technical terms, and as thus less likely to mislead (though the distinction between singular and plural remains suspect) these are perhaps the most suitable for Kant’s purposes. In any case, it is predominantly this terminology with which Kant persists in the Critique of Practical Reason. In the Preface to this work, Kant explains that the most notable shortcoming of his first Critique, namely that noumenal reality was characterized in a purely negative way, will now be made good. Naturally this cannot mean that noumenal reality will receive a theoretical explanation. It means that the specific reality of the noumenal realm will be indicated in its necessary relation to human freedom. Since the noumenal realm in no sense consists of objects to be described and explained, this is nothing else but to establish the reality of freedom, as revealed through the practical employment of reason.

 

245. The Concept of Knowledge. One might wonder whether, since Kant says that the ‘objective reality’ of freedom is to be revealed, this should not count as ‘knowledge’, and indeed, relating as it does to the Unconditioned, it should not be recognized as ‘absolute knowledge’, the very thing that metaphysics has always wanted. We have already seen, however, that Kant will not admit this, because of the particular restrictions he puts on the concept ‘knowledge’. Of course, when practical reason establishes the reality of freedom, this involves a certain kind of awareness or insight, but Kant’s point is that this is so different from theoretical understanding that the same concept cannot be used for both; nevertheless, he maintains that both are employments of reason because they both proceed from universal a priori principles.

 

246. Two Types of Reason. This dichotomization of reason (as theoretical and practical) and thus of reality (as phenomenal and noumenal) is one of the most problematical aspects of the Kantian philosophy, which most of his successors, in different ways, will try to overcome. Kant makes practical reason the basis of religion, so that the latter becomes divorced not only from ‘cosmology’ in the broad sense (the theoretical understanding of the world) but also from every kind of ecclesiastical doctrine or ‘belief’.

 

247. The Moral Law. Kant holds that the most enduring and obstinate error in previous thinking about morality has been the failure to distinguish between the empirical determinations of human action and the pure moral determination which he calls the ‘moral law’. Among the things which have both a phenomenal and noumenal side are human beings themselves. On the one hand humans are natural entities subject to causal laws: this yields the concept of the empirical self, with all its emotions, interests and desires. On the other hand, as subject to the moral law, humans inhabit supra-sensible noumenal reality: this yields the concept of the noumenal self. The latter is already to be found in the Critique of Pure Reason, where, however, it is characterized only in its function as the ‘I think’ implicitly accompanying all theoretical representations. The self which can be ‘known’ (to myself and others) in Kant’s strict sense is the empirical or phenomenal self, whereas the transcendental or noumenal self, like all transcendental ideas, can only be ‘thought’. In the Critique of Practical Reason it turns out that this noumenal self is the moral self.

 

248. Kant Did Not Go to Church. It is reported that, at the University of Königsberg, Kant regularly left the academic procession at the entrance to the church, and in the Religion book there is some suggestion that church-going may even be against the true spirit of religion. Although he had a good knowledge of, and great respect for, the New Testament, this, like his study of theological dogmatics, was always subject to his fundamental philosophical outlook.

 

249. The Character of Kant. The outstanding features of Kant’s character are its sobriety and unwavering moral earnestness. He had a constitutional aversion for pretence, fanaticism, and that kind of ‘enthusiasm’ (Schwärmerei) often associated with Pietism and other forms of mystical religiosity. Kant’s suspicion of everything which smacked of ‘emotionalism’ in philosophy and religion could sometimes go to extremes, leading to his alienation from such other eminent thinkers as Herder (Kant’s student at Königsberg 1762-64,) Jacobi, and Hamman, the latter charging that Kant had himself fallen victim to a ‘fanaticism of reason’. We shall see, however, that Kant in no sense stood for a narrowly intellectualist philosophy. As a man of the Enlightenment, he wanted two things: to be a man of science and to be a moral man. At the conclusion of the Critique of Practical Reason, in one of the few expressions of elevated sentiment Kant ever permitted himself, he confessed it was ‘the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me’ which filled his mind ‘with ever new and increasing admiration and awe’. The reconciliation of morality (thus also of religion) and science within a unitary concept of ‘pure reason’ became his guiding project. His taste for simplicity, together with his moral seriousness, made him impatient with everything which, in his view, showed laxity of thought or will, with everything evasive, superfluous, and self-indulgently grandiloquent. While he never travelled he was a man of the world, possessing a stock of up-to-date anthropological and geographical knowledge exceeded by few contemporaries. By all reports he was, especially in his earlier years, a lively and inspiring teacher, not speaking down to his students, but also not flattering or pandering to them. Although not unaware of what he called the ‘radical evil’ in human nature, he did not fall into misanthropism. Around 1762 he wrote that, while in his early career he had, out of intellectual vanity, felt contempt for the ‘rabble’, Rousseau had taught him better, so that now he would feel ‘more useless than a common worker’ if he were not convinced that philosophy served the ‘rights of mankind’. Kant never married, nor did he form (as far as is known) any romantic liaisons, but he was no recluse, his wit and convivial temper winning him a welcome place at the hotel tables where he dined every day, until, at the age of 63, he finally employed a cook in his own house. His friends tended to come more from the commercial circles of Königsberg than from the academic world. Kant’s parsimony in intellectual matters was reflected in his life-style and domestic arrangements. His house was sparsely and simply furnished. In his study, the only decorative item was a portrait of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on the wall.

 

250. Rational Psychology. The theological interest of rational psychology consists above all its attempt to demonstrate the existence of an immortal soul. Since experience cannot know such a supra-natural thing, the proof must proceed solely by ratiocination, through pure concepts. The first concept, the basis of the entire enterprise, is the ‘I’ as subject of thought. That there is such an ‘I’ is assumed as self-evident, and the first step is taken towards the desired conclusion by inferring that this is a ‘substance’. The justification for this step is the rational (a priori) truth that ‘Whatever cannot be thought otherwise than as a subject does not exist otherwise than as subject, and is therefore substance’ Kant does not have any quarrel with the latter as a rational truth, nor with the initial assumption of the ‘I’. He rejects the inference, however, because the ‘I’ is subject in quite a different sense to the meaning of ‘subject’ in the quoted rational truth. For Kant, the self-evident ‘I’ is just the transcendental ego which is the unitary subject of all representations, and not at all an object of empirical intuition. Since only the latter can be subjects in the sense of ‘substance’ (a category of theoretical understanding) the basic argument of rational psychology is fallacious. But then all the further conclusions on the soul (simplicity, incorruptibility, personality, and finally, immortality) are dependent on this basic logical error. So rational psychology is in principle a misconceived enterprise, and its supposed theological relevance illusory.

 

251. Rational Cosmology. As the name indicates, this branch of metaphysics concerns ‘the world as a whole’, and in its Leibnizian-Wolffian conception is governed by broad theological desiderata. That the world has a beginning in time and is limited in space, that every composite substance consists of simple parts, that freedom is a mode of causality, that there exists an absolutely necessary being: all these doctrines (which are the ones Kant picks out for discussion) are meant to fit neatly with rational psychology and rational theology in an essentially Christian world-view. It is not necessary to here enter into the laborious way (through the so-called ‘antinomies’) that Kant criticizes these doctrines. In essence, Kant argues that when categories of theoretical reason (and the concepts of rational cosmology are just these) are employed in a transcendent manner (the world as a whole is not a possible object of experience) the result will be contradictions. This means that not only rational cosmology, but also empiricist cosmology is misconceived, because the latter, limiting itself to observable phenomena, cannot really be cosmology at all: however comprehensive, it can never grasp the whole. As a transcendental idea, the concept ‘world’ admits only of regulative employment. It follows that rational cosmology cannot establish anything of theoretical relevance for theology, for it cannot arrive at genuine theoretical conclusions at all.

 

252. Rational Theology. Kant’s discussion of rational theology (philosophical theology in the narrow sense) concentrates on arguments for the existence of God. There are, says Kant, only three possible arguments. The first, which he calls ‘physico-theological’ or ‘teleological’, proceeds from the specific character of the sensible world, in particular its order and apparent design, arguing that there must be an ultimate designer, which is God. The second, which Kant calls ‘cosmological’, starts from the bare fact of empirical existence (of everything in the world, or, at the very least, of I myself), and argues that there must be some cause of this fact, which is God. The third, ‘ontological’ argument, proceeds simply from the idea of God, claiming to be able to deduce the actual existence of God from this. Kant remarks that, in the course of its natural development, reason moves from the first of these arguments to the third. However, because it is the only one which is strictly an a priori argument, Kant begins with the third. This, in Kant’s view, is the fundamental argument, to which the others ultimately have recourse.

 

253. God as the Perfect Being. The concept of God upon which the ontological argument depends is that of the ‘most perfect being’: from the possibility of this concept, the actual existence of such a being is deduced, for otherwise, lacking existence, this being would not be conceived as perfect. It is argued, in other words, that since the concept of a perfect being which does not exist is self-contradictory, such a being must exist. Now Kant first of all expresses some doubt as to whether this concept is in fact possible, for, as he points out, a mere verbal formula does not make it so. He is, however, prepared to leave this difficulty aside, for, he maintains, it is in any case wrong to include ‘existence’ in the concept of anything. There are only two alternatives. Either we already think of something as existing, in which case to add that it exists is mere repetition, a miserable tautology. Or we think of something in its mere possibility, in which case the statement of its existence is a contingent proposition, dependent on experience. Since contingent propositions cannot be self-contradictory, the ontological argument fails. Moreover, to think of something as existing is not to treat ‘existence’ as a ‘predicate’ in the way required by the ontological argument. ‘Existence’, says Kant, does not add anything to the concept of a thing, but is ‘merely the positing of a thing, or of certain determinations, as existing in themselves’. To say that God ‘exists’ is just to ‘posit the subject in itself with all its predicates, and indeed posit is as being an object that stands in relation to my concept’. Kant is here relying on a concept of existence consonant with his critique of theoretical reason: to exist is just to be a possible ‘object’ of knowledge. May not philosophical theology then reply that what applies at the level of sensible reality does not hold true in the case of God? This point was pressed by Hegel. At this stage it is sufficient to note that, throughout the transcendental dialectic, Kant relies on the main results of the preceding transcendental analytic. In this sense, his verdict on rational theology (as on psychology and cosmology), whatever his precise method of argumentation, is a foregone conclusion.

 

254. The Cosmological Argument. Kant’s formulation of the cosmological argument is as follows: ‘If anything exists, an absolutely necessary being must also exist. Now I, at least, exist. Therefore an absolutely necessary being exists’. Kant’s line of criticism flows directly from the results of the transcendental analytic, where it has been established that the causal principle is limited to the sensible world. The cosmological argument misuses this principle to go beyond the world of phenomena. From the fact of my existence, so the argument runs, it can be inferred that something caused my existence, and whatever this something may be, it too must be caused. The desired conclusion that a necessary being exists depends on the impossibility of an infinite series of causes. But, Kant counters, such an impossibility cannot even be demonstrated of the sensible world, let alone for a reality beyond this. Furthermore, even if the cosmological argument were to establish the existence of a necessary being, this would not be enough to satisfy the requirements of philosophical theology; it must also be shown that the concept of God can be derived from that of a necessary being. But, Kant says, the concept of a necessary being is indeterminate, so that nothing of the sort can be derived. In order then that the required derivation should become possible, the concept of a necessary being must be (in what is essentially an arbitrary postulation) equated with the concept of an ens realissimum, a most real or perfect being. In this way the cosmological argument depends on the ontological argument for its completion.

 

255. The Physico-Theological Argument. Although Kant likewise rejects the physico-theological argument, he has more sympathy for it than for the other two. This argument, he says, ‘always deserves to be mentioned with respect’: as ‘the oldest, the clearest, and the most accordant with the common reason of mankind’, it would ‘not only be uncomforting but utterly vain to attempt to diminish in any way the authority of this argument’. Nevertheless, this is precisely what Kant does, at least as an argument for the existence of God. Kant is prepared to extend a certain leniency to reason when it argues, by analogy with human artefacts, from the apparent design and purposefulness of nature to the existence of a wise architect. Although this mode of argument ‘could not perhaps withstand a searching transcendental criticism’ (because knowledge of design in nature cannot be accounted for within Kant’s critique of scientific reason) it is at least based on common experience, providing what seems the only intelligible explanation of ‘finality’ in the physical world. On the other hand, this argument does not prove what it purports to prove: at best, all it can establish is the existence of a grand architect, by no means the existence of a creator, let alone an absolutely necessary being, let alone an ens realissimum, let alone God. The physico-theological argument must therefore fall back upon the cosmological argument, which itself depends on the ontological argument. Since the latter is fallacious, Kant concludes that ‘all attempts to employ reason in theology in any merely speculative manner are altogether fruitless and by their very nature null and void’.

 

256. Philosophical Theology. However, although it initially appears that Kant has ruled out any possibility of philosophical theology, this proves not to be the case. His critique is directed at any kind of theology which is 1) based on sensible experience, or 2) based on pure a priori analysis of concepts. The first is impossible because God is by definition a supra-sensible being, and human reason lacks any faculty for proceeding from the sensible to the supra-sensible; the second is impossible because the non-existence of God is not a contradiction. What further alternatives can there be? In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant gives only preliminary indications of the ‘moral theology’ which he will later defend in his two other Critiques and in Religion. ‘As will be shown’, he says towards the end of his first Critique, ‘reason has, in respect of its practical employment, the right to postulate what in the field of mere speculation it can have no kind of right to assume without sufficient proof’. In addition it turns out that in the Critique of Judgement Kant gives some credence to the physico-theological argument, though he links this in a particular way with the primacy of practical reason. As far as Kant’s critique of speculative theology is concerned, he sees this as possessing in one sense a negative value, by exposing the errors of theoretical reason when it trespasses beyond the bounds of experience, in another sense a positive value, by securing the autonomy of moral theology. For although the existence of God cannot be proved through speculative theology, neither, according to Kant’s critique, can it be disproved. This, in Kant’s view, is a most important result, for moral theology can anticipate being assailed by objections of a theoretical nature.

 

257. The Impact of Kant. A few decades after the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant’s criticism of the traditional arguments of metaphysical theology had become so widely accepted that, as Hegel comments, it was now shameful to mention them in good philosophical company. More fundamentally, however, it was Kant’s thesis of the impossibility of ‘theoretical’ knowledge of God which won almost universal assent. Although for Kant himself the limits of theoretical reason were amply compensated by practical reason, this did not necessarily apply for his followers, many of whom saw only the negative side of his enterprise and thus felt released for any arbitrary subjectivism. Moreover – and this was Hegel’s essential point – such a slide into subjectivism could hardly be avoided when, as happens in Kant’s critique, knowledge, along with being, reality, truth, objectivity etc., are defined at a level which is inadequate for the metaphysical questions which, as Kant says, reason is ‘not able to ignore’. For Hegel, the diminished after-life which Kant allowed for metaphysics in the ‘regulative’ employment of ‘transcendental ideas’ was only laughable, and the idea of a practical reason which does not issue in knowledge and truth an admission of defeat. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant does not dispose of the questions of metaphysics but relocates them, to a place, however, about which only scanty information is provided. The Critique of Practical Reason, understood against the background of the first Critique, is the principle site of Kant’s positive reinterpretation of metaphysics: any failure here, any unsoundness of foundations, will threaten the coherence of Kantianism as a whole.

 

258. Kant and the Moral Self. As completely autonomous, the moral self is unmoved by anything relating to the empirical self, especially anything relating to the latter’s happiness, which Kant understands as an empirical state. For Kant, there is only one question relevant to the morality of a given action, namely in what degree it is determined by the moral law. Although this may not be possible to ascertain with certainty in any particular case, only if an action proceeds from a ‘good will’ is it good in an unqualified sense. The goodness of actions cannot be measured by their external conformity to moral maxims, for this may be due to chance or considerations of prudence, but solely by whether they proceed from obedience to the law. Accordingly, moral philosophy is not concerned to show which kinds of empirically definable actions are good or bad, but to clarify the a priori principles which determine this: the important thing is not to know if a particular action is good, but rather, what would make it so if it is. There may always be doubt about particular moral judgements, but no doubt is possible in respect of principles. Since all human beings implicitly understand the noumenal self in its autonomy from the empirical self, they implicitly understand themselves as moral beings ‘under’ the law.

 

259. The Categorical Imperative. What then is the ‘moral law’? In the Critique of Practical Reason it is stated ‘So act that the maxim of your will could always hold at the same time as a principle establishing universal law’. This also occurs in Kant’s somewhat earlier Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, together with the formulation ‘Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end’. These are formulations (the second is merely a concretization of the first) of what Kant calls the ‘categorical imperative’, to be distinguished from every kind of hypothetical imperative and imperative of prudence. Expressed in whatever way, there is only one categorical imperative, only one moral law, which constitutes the singular duty of all human beings. Obviously there is a close resemblance between the categorical imperative and the ‘golden rule’ of the New Testament, but Kant denies any dependency on Christianity or other religions. The situation is the reverse, for, in Kant’s view, only to the extent that their practical maxims are determined by duty can people be regarded as genuinely religious. However, before pursuing this question of religion, Kant’s concept of moral law must be more precisely indicated. The moral law does not have the same kind of necessity as an empirical law, it does not say what will invariably happen but what should happen, with this ‘should’ pertaining not to empirical events but to the will belonging to noumenal reality. This will, Kant says, is a ‘causa noumenon’ and generally goes under the name of ‘freedom’. Consciousness of noumenal determination is, at one and the same time, consciousness that one should obey the moral law, but that one is also free to disobey it. That one can obey it follows from the moral law itself, for a categorical ‘should’ implies ‘can’; that one can also disobey it follows from the fact that the will is a noumenal rather than an empirical cause. Now obedience to the moral law would be an easy thing if it were not for the circumstance that there are other determinations of the will, grounded in man’s empirical nature.

 

260. Experience of Morality. The conflict between the demands of morality on the one hand, and the pleasure or happiness to be obtained by deviating from morality on the other hand, is a common experience. Moreover, Kant contends, the rationalization which almost invariably accompanies such deviation from the law finds expression at the philosophical level, corrupting the very concept of morality. This happens when concepts like ‘virtue’ and ‘the good’ are defined through certain kinds of ‘higher’ happiness. In this connection Kant frequently mentions Epicurus, who, because of the sublime intellectual pleasures it brings, took philosophical contemplation as the highest virtue. But it is necessary, Kant insists, to distinguish morality (i.e. genuine virtue) from refinement. However cultivated the various spiritual pleasures may be, they are still pleasures, and, as far as morality is concerned, all pleasures are on a par. As Kant puts it, ‘the principle of one’s own happiness, however much reason and understanding may be used in it, contains no other determinations of the will than those which belong to the lower faculty of desire’. Although this seems at first an austere view of morality, it is, Kant believes, implicit in common sense thinking. Everyone knows how to distinguish spiritual and other kinds of accomplishments which may in themselves be admirable and beneficial to society, from the authentically moral disposition: ‘What, it will be said, does it all avail, that this man has so much talent, that he is even so active in its employment and thus exerts a useful influence upon social and public life, and that he possesses, therefore, considerable worth alike in relation to his own state of happiness and in relation to what is good for others, if he has not a good will?’. As for how human beings are aware of the moral law, Kant says ‘The consciousness of this fundamental law may be called a fact of reason, since one cannot ferret it out from antecedent data of reason’. The law is an a priori principle of reason, and as such simply present to consciousness. What is interesting, however, is the specific way Kant explains this, namely through a ‘feeling of respect’ (Gefühl der Achtung). In general, Kant treats feelings and emotions as belonging to the phenomenal world, so that their introduction into moral questions results only in corruption. Respect, it seems, is the solitary exception: ‘this feeling is the only one which we can know a priori and the necessity of which we can discern’. Moreover, ‘respect for the law is not the incentive to morality; it is morality itself’.

 

261. Concept of Respect. Much of Kant’s analysis in the Critique of Practical Reason, as well as in the Groundwork and Religion book, flows from this concept of respect. For instance, respect applies only to persons, hence the second formulation of the categorical imperative quoted above, which says that one should always treat human beings as persons. Moral respect pertains to the noumenal reality of human beings, who are the only creatures under the law and the only who are ends in themselves, whose being is of infinite value. The feeling of respect engenders a certain modesty, even ‘humiliation’, vis-a-vis one’s empirical personality, which, Kant stresses, ‘is nothing without accordance with the moral law’. Respect also involves a sense of ‘awe’ for the ‘solemn majesty’ of the law, and ‘places before our eyes the sublimity of our own nature’. In the Groundwork, Kant speaks of ‘reverence’ (Ehrfurcht) for the law: ‘An action done from duty has to set aside altogether the influence of inclination, and along with inclination every object of the will; so there is nothing left able to determine the will except objectively the law and subjectively pure reverence for this practical law’.

 

262. Morality Leads to Religion. As far as the subjective side of religion is concerned, that is to say the religious attitude, stance, or orientation to the world, Kant does not think anything essential need be added to his account of the moral disposition. Kant recognizes, of course, that the historical religions understand themselves to include very much more than morality, but, in his view, everything which goes beyond morality is either superfluous or (more likely) positively harmful for a philosophical concept of religion. Does this mean that religion and morality are, or should be, identical? If so, what becomes of the concept of God? Since Kant is generally most insistent that the autonomy of the moral law excludes dependence on this concept, it comes as a surprise when he tells us, in the Critique of Practical Reason and in Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, that morality ‘leads to religion’, in a sense which includes belief not only in the existence of God, but in the immortality of the soul. Kant arrives at this view through arguments which seem curiously at odds with his basic position on morality. According to the latter, a genuinely moral disposition is free from all empirical determinations of the will, but now Kant states that virtue, as the fulfilment of the moral law, is ‘worthiness to be happy’, and further, that it would be contrary to reason were such worthiness not to issue in actual happiness. Virtue, says Kant, is certainly the supreme good, but is not on that account ‘the entire and perfect good as the object of the faculty of desire of rational finite being. For this, happiness is also required’. Since a rational being cannot make as sole determinant of its will something which would not necessarily result in happiness, it is, Kant maintains, a ‘postulate of pure practical reason’, that God must exist as ‘a cause adequate to this effect’. From the moral law itself, there are no grounds for assuming that happiness will always be proportionate to virtue, but because such proportionality is rationally necessary, ‘the existence is postulated of a cause of the whole of nature, itself distinct from nature, which contains the ground of the exact coincidence of happiness with morality’.

 

263. Virtue and Happiness. Kant realizes that this argument appears to be contradicted by the factual lack of proportionality, in this world, between virtue and happiness. However, he believes that Christianity, with its idea of the ‘Kingdom of God’, shows the way out of this difficulty. Although in the empirico-phenomenal world, the necessary proportionality can never obtain, this can be achieved in the Kingdom of God ‘in which nature and morality come into a harmony, which is foreign to each as such, through a holy Author of the world’. Kant does not explicitly say whether the Kingdom of God pertains only to an after-life, but in any case his solution seems confused. If (as suggested by Kant’s approval of the Christian view of happiness as only an object of hope) it pertains to an after-life, then one must wonder what kind of nature can be brought into harmony here. On the other hand, if the Kingdom of God is possible in this life, then, unless humans can divest themselves of their empirical side and exist, as it were, as disembodied noumenal beings (in which case, once again, there would be no nature to bring into harmony), then it must fall short of the ‘entire and perfect good’ which Kant deems necessary. Moreover, Kant’s claim that a rational being cannot be content with willing the moral law alone, irrespective of consequences for happiness, is an odd concession to vulgar (empirical) motivations, and as such simply out of kilter with his general viewpoint. It is not too hard to think of examples of such pure moral willing, which we would not wish to degrade by reference to implicit assumptions of ultimate happiness. The dignity of morality, we would like to think, does not permit despair at the absence of rewards.
264. Immortality of the Soul. Kant’s postulate of the immortality of the soul is beset with related difficulties. ‘Complete fitness of the will to the moral law’, Kant says, ‘is holiness, which is a perfection of which no rational being in the world of sense is at any time capable’. But the moral law demands such fitness, which demand is intelligible ‘only under the assumption of an infinitely enduring existence and personality of the same rational being; this is called the immortality of the soul’. There are many problems with this reasoning. To begin with, even if it be granted that the moral law commands holiness, it is not clear that this must actually be possible. It seems more reasonable to regard holiness as an ideal, which every effort should be made to realize. Kant maintains that, unless the attainability of perfection is assumed, ‘the moral law is completely degraded from its holiness, by being made out as lenient (indulgent) and thus compliant to our convenience’. But this seems to involve a misunderstanding of ideals, which do not imply ‘leniency’ so much as a realistic recognition of human limitations. To demand the attainability of holiness as a condition for submitting to the moral law seems undignified, pretentious, and resentful, as if the idea of our own necessary imperfection were intolerable. Further, what kind of progress does Kant conceive as possible, when, after death, because man now lacks an empirical self, there would seem to be no longer any obstacles to perfection? Are ‘progress’ and ‘infinitely enduring existence’ concepts which apply in the supra-sensible realm? To judge by the yardstick of the Critique of Pure Reason, the answer is surely no.

 

265. Primacy of the Moral Law in Religion. Given the weakness of Kant’s arguments for these postulates of practical reason, how does it stand with his contention that ‘morality leads to religion’? This depends on whether one takes the existence of God and the immortality of the soul as necessary for religion. Kant himself makes this assumption, but on the other hand he insists that, because these beliefs are morally rather than theoretically necessary, on no account can they take precedence over the moral law. One gains the distinct impression that, in Kant’s opinion, someone who bound himself wholeheartedly to the moral law, but refused to accept either the existence of God or the immortality of the soul, would be guilty of no significant omission; at most a logical error would be involved. The reverse situation, however, brings forth Kant’s unqualified condemnation, for, as he never tires of repeating, it is not only useless, but actually blameworthy, to acknowledge God and immortality at a theoretical level while taking lightly the moral law. As becomes plain in Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, Kant does not see the moral acceptance of God and immortality as requiring traditional religious practices. It is not necessary to align oneself with any of the established churches, nor to engage in religious rituals, nor to pray, nor, though this may be beneficial if done in the right way (i.e. from a moral standpoint, with a view to moral interpretation), is it necessary to read the scriptures. Since, in addition, belief in God and immortality cannot be employed in speculative science (for the theoretical explanation of the world) one wonders whether, in the last resort, these are not vacuous beliefs. Kant seems to think that, in the absence of these practical postulates, the moral law will not appear in its requisite ‘majesty’. Yet for the most part he presents the moral law as sufficiently majestic on its own account.

 

266. Motivations of the Critical Philosophy. Let us return for a moment to Kant’s fundamental motivations in his critical philosophy. In traditional metaphysics he saw a great deal of abstract speculation which, for lack of any tangible progress, was largely idle, but more importantly, which illegitimately assumed for itself the mantle of ‘service of God’. Alongside metaphysics, existing in tenuous relation with it, was ecclesiastical doctrine, more directly dedicated to propositions about God. Then there was the concrete life of the churches, with their observances and rituals. Although, within the churches, the idea of the moral law was not wholly absent, this was so overlaid by metaphysico-ecclesiastical doctrine and superstitious ritualism that it was almost invariably corrupted. In addition, both within the churches and outside of them, there existed various movements of what Kant called ‘enthusiasm’ (Schwärmerei) which sought to ground the religious life in vaguely defined ‘feelings’. Finally, in marked contrast with all the foregoing as regards intellectual integrity and proven results, there were the modern physico-mathematical sciences. These latter were in no need of defence, but as for everything else, there was in Kant’s view only one thing worth saving, and this was the moral law itself. To show this meant steering between the scientific materialists who could allow no room for the moral law, and the metaphysico-religious moralists who, although overtly concerned to retain the moral law, distorted and undermined it through improper use of speculation. Kant’s solution was to distinguish between theoretical and practical employments of reason, thus preserving the intellectual integrity of the sciences while accommodating the moral law as strictly a matter of the will.

 

267. The Two Employments of Reason. As Kant discovered, however, to keep these two employments of reason separate from one another is easier said than done. The chief difficulty is that practical reason wishes to explain itself, that it cannot be content with itself (as Hegel put it) as an ‘undigested lump in the stomach’. (III: 369) And must not such explanation have recourse to ‘theory’ in the broad sense? It is all very well for Kant to say that, when practical reason understands itself, it deals not in theoretical knowledge but rather in ideas of pure reason and problematical concepts. Traditional metaphysics could perhaps concede this, for, it may very well ask, whoever imagined that knowledge of God, or of the Unconditioned (Being), or of the soul, would be the same kind of knowledge as that to be found in the natural sciences? The crucial question is whether ideas of reason are nevertheless still knowledge, and Kant’s problem is that, in the last resort, he cannot avoid treating them as such himself. Thus, although the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are but postulates of practical reason, they still have ‘objective reality’. (Beck:140) Kant clearly regards his own philosophy as knowledge (of the most important kind), yet it does not resemble the theories of natural science. Kant’s equivocations over the concept of knowledge mean that it is not possible to give a straightforward answer to the question of whether he ‘really’ believes in God and immortality. In one sense he does not, and in another sense he does. He does not believe in an anthropomorphically defined deity, nor in a ‘soul substance’. He regards as worthless the vast majority of metaphysical speculations and ecclesiastical declarations on these subjects. On the other hand, he thinks that morally grounded concepts of God and soul are necessary to avoid falling into ‘materialism’. Perhaps the moral law alone would have been sufficient for this purpose, but since Kant believes otherwise, we shall leave this, for the time being, as an open question.

 

268. Transcendental Dialectic. The mainly negative purpose of a critique of theoretical reason is confirmed by Kant’s lengthy considerations, in the second half of the Critique of Pure Reason, on what he calls ‘transcendental dialectic’. Under this heading Kant understands the logic of those ‘transcendental illusions’ whereby, misled by imagination, theoretical reason goes beyond the limits of its proper employment. Kant undertakes to expose the illusions of metaphysics by showing that, when theoretical reason tries to extend itself to subjects such as God, world, and soul, it falls victim to fallacious arguments and contradictions. However – and it is this which gives the whole Critique of Pure Reason its ambiguous character – Kant also, in the transcendental dialectic, vindicates something rather like metaphysics, namely those transcendental ideas already mentioned. On the one hand, theoretical reason is in error when it adopts categories which have application only at the level of appearance and employs them to say something about supra-sensible reality. On the other hand, as long as one realizes that the transcendental ideas provide no objective knowledge (no genuine cognition), not only is it possible to ‘think’ them, but it is necessary to do so, and not just for practical reason (which Kant does not consider in this first Critique), but for theoretical reason as well. The transcendental ideas are necessary for theoretical reason as ‘regulative’ principles. For, says Kant, theoretical reason must of necessity seek systematicity and ultimate unity, it must strive after causal contextures which are ever more encompassing, after conditions which are ever more conditioning, after truth which is ever more simple and comprehensive. In the end, all the transcendental ideas reduce to one: the idea of ‘the Unconditioned’ (das Unbedingte). Although the Unconditioned cannot be an ‘object’ of theoretical reason (it cannot ‘appear’, for, precisely as unconditioned, it is not determinable through ‘categories’, nor is it bound by ‘forms’ of space and time) the idea is indispensable for regulative purposes, and is in this sense valid, even, as the condition of the possibility of all conditioned knowledge, ‘objectively valid’. The transcendental dialectic attempts to refute in detail the ways in which speculative metaphysics makes improper use of transcendental ideas to establish what is purportedly objective knowledge about soul, world, and God. Within the Leibnizian-Wolffian system there were three special branches of metaphysics (metaphysica specialis): rational psychology (doctrine of soul), rational cosmology (doctrine of world) and rational theology (doctrine of God). Kant takes these in order and argues that, in each case, they offend against the principles set forth in the first part of the Critique of Pure Reason, in particular, against the distinction between appearance and Being-in-itself. Rational psychology, which proceeds from the (transcendental) idea of the soul as subject, tries to prove that such a thing actually exists and to determine its precise nature. Rational cosmology, which proceeds from the idea of world as totality, tries to press forward to specific theoretical conclusions about time, space, causation etc. Rational theology, which proceeds from the idea of a being which is most perfect (ens perfectissimum) and most real (ens realissimum), again tries to demonstrate that such a being does exist, with such and such attributes. All three enterprises are intended to serve a fundamentally theological purpose. For Kant, however, because in passing beyond experience they make constitutive what can only be regulative, each falls victim to transcendental illusions.

 

269. Teleology and the Dignity of Man. Kant, in the Critique of Pure Reason, despite a distinct affection for the physico-theological (teleological) argument, rejects this as an argument for the existence of God. The problem with this argument is that, even if teleology is admitted as regulative for theoretical reason, it can at best establish the existence of a world-designer, not a world-author in the sense required by theology. In the second Critique Kant gives what he regards as the genuine ‘practical’ proof of God’s existence, with no reliance on physico-theology. There is, to be sure, a teleological aspect to this proof, for God is required as the designer who ensures the necessary harmony between nature and the moral law, but this is quite different to having recourse to God as the fundamental principle of physical explanation: in the moral proof, the moral law is a premise, whereas this is not so in the physico-theological argument. On the other hand, in the Critique of Judgement (1790), Kant comes back to physico-theology, not as an argument for the existence of God, but as a mode of reflection subsequent to the moral proof. Strictly speaking, this transforms physico-theology into what Kant calls ‘ethico-theology’ as an ethically based teleology of nature. Ethico-theology departs from the conviction ‘that all the manifold forms of life, co-ordinated though they may be with the greatest art and concatenated with the utmost variety of final adaptations, and even the entire complex which embraces their numerous systems, incorrectly called worlds, would exist for nothing, if man, or rational beings of some sort, were not to be found in their midst’. (Meredith:180) Since the existence of God has been established on moral grounds, it now becomes permissible (for strictly regulative, not constitutive purposes) to conceive God as the designer/author of a world in which human beings, as the only creatures capable of moral self-determination, are the final goal. Just as the moral law does not depend on but rather leads to religion, so does this same law not depend on but lead to teleology, indeed to a form of teleology which has obvious resemblances to ‘orthodox’ metaphysical and ecclesiastical doctrine.

 

270. Moral Teleology. This moral teleology applies not just to nature, but equally to human history. For it is not as a physical being that man attains to morality; this occurs through a process of historical development, through acquisition of the culture and civilization which raise man above the animals. On the surface, the historico-cultural life of human beings, dominated as it is by greed, self-aggrandizement and lust for power, seems anything but moral. Yet behind this proximate immorality, Kant contends, there is a logic working towards moral perfection. The baser desires of human beings can only be fulfilled through cultivation of the mind, which, although not good in itself, prepares for the genuine moral standpoint. Rousseau’s thesis of the corrupting effect of the arts and sciences would be valid if it were not for this cunning logic of moral teleology: civilized man is certainly more capable of evil than is the savage, civilization without morality is certainly more repugnant than barbarism without morality, but it is only by means of civilization that morality becomes possible. (Meredith: 96/7) Just as the physical universe, with all its suns and galaxies, would be meaningless in the absence of moral man, so would history be meaningless unless morality ultimately wins through. Since the standpoint of morality does not permit despair, we are justified in assuming that morality must indeed win through, and, since neither mechanical causality nor the efforts of individual human beings can ensure this, we are justified in concluding that there must be a wise author of the world who can and does.

 

271. What Kant Deduces From the Moral Law. From the a priori necessity of the moral law, Kant deduces a great deal: by the end of the third Critique he has the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, man as the final end of creation, and history as the story of man’s moral perfection. This is not a bad outcome for a philosopher with a reputation as the ‘all-destroyer’. On the other hand, how could Kant have gained this reputation if it were not for a general recognition that his retention of these traditional doctrines was, to say the least, equivocal? It is not hard to see that, once the distinction between strictly theoretical and regulative employments of reason is granted, Kant can have virtually anything he wants in philosophy, at the same time adeptly covering himself from criticism. All comers can be satisfied, for to the scientific sceptics Kant can acknowledge that teleology nowhere functions in a genuinely explanatory (theoretical) way, while to the metaphysicians and theologians he can point out that teleology is permissible in a regulative sense and from the standpoint of morality. Kant insists, in the third Critique no less than in the first, that no theoretical knowledge of nature is possible except that which conforms to the mechanistic principles of Newtonian physics. While he draws attention to the inner ‘purposefulness’ (Zweckmäßigkeit) of nature, particularly of biological phenomena, he is unwilling to concede to teleology a constitutive role in any of the natural sciences, maintaining instead that mechanistic explanation must be pushed as far as possible. On the one hand, the idea of a supreme architect ‘does not further our knowledge of nature one whit’, on the other hand this same idea ‘is a heuristic principle for the investigation of particular laws of nature’. (Meredith:67/8) But the actual heuristic principle, in biology as elsewhere in natural science, is simply that the phenomena evince inner systematic connections, in other words, that nature is orderly or law-governed. The inference to a grand designer is an anthropomorphism which adds nothing to the said principle. If from another source (practical reason) the deity is already postulated, it may be tempting to link the ‘teleology’ of nature to the will of God, but this cannot be sanctioned by reason.

 

272. Dignity. That the moral law confers finality on man is already implied in the second formulation of the categorical imperative given in the Groundwork, which states that one must always act towards human beings as ends in themselves and never merely as means. Kant does not regard this as an exhortation to act ‘as if’: in his view, human beings really are ends in themselves, but only in their moral being, only as self-determining through the moral law. Human beings alone can be ends in themselves, for, as Kant writes in the famous opening passage of the Groundwork, ‘it is impossible to conceive anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be taken as good without qualification, except a good will’. (Paton:59) It follows that only human beings can possess ‘dignity’ (Würde). (Paton:96) There would be no dignity in the world if it were not for the existence of human beings as moral agents: ‘Without man, the whole of creation would be a mere wilderness, a thing in vain, and have no final end’. (Meredith:108) For Kant, no matter what kind of sublime order the universe may display, no matter how fascinating the workings of nature may be to the theoretically curious mind, no matter what pleasures the world may harbour, no matter what cultural and aesthetic refinements human beings have developed, all this, in the absence of morality, would not make the world an admirable place. Kant would not want to live in such a world, or, more accurately, in such an un-moral world there would, in his view, be no basis for a rational decision either to live or not: one would ‘want to live’ perhaps, but like an animal, out of instinct, without purpose and without dignity. But even if we grant all this to Kant, why is it necessary to go further and link the dignity of the moral law with the workings of nature? The difficulty here is the obscure relation between the phenomenal and the noumenal sides of human beings. It would seem that the necessity of a teleological structure for nature arises from the fact that humans must first be present as phenomenal entities before they can be noumenal entities. On the other hand, as we have seen, Kant considers that noumenal beings (souls) can continue to exist after their phenomenal ‘shell’ has ceased to exist. Is nature then a kind of instrument for the production of noumenal beings? Perhaps more pertinently, is nature a place of ‘trial’ to determine whether the noumenal side of humans will win out over their phenomenal side? Kant does not provide any way of answering these questions, for the ontological bifurcation of phenomena/noumena appears too absolute to conceive of implications from one side to the other. It may be that one would not want to live in a mechanistic world, but the fact of morality already means that one inhabits ‘as well’ a completely non-mechanistic noumenal world. To transpose the non-mechanistic character of the noumenal world over to a natural world which has already been defined mechanistically is simply a contradiction, and not one which can be circumvented by adding that it is only a matter of ‘regulative’ principles.

 

273. Kant’s Negative Theology. Kant’s reclaiming of physico-theology (albeit as part of ethico-theology) allows him to make his way back to certain traditional attributes of God, who must now be conceived as ‘acting’ to ensure harmony between nature and morality. God, Kant says, is ‘the Sovereign Head legislating in a moral Kingdom of Ends’, possessing such traditionally ascribed attributes as omniscience, omnipotence, benevolence, justice, eternity and omnipresence. (Meredith:110/11) On the other hand, Kant warns that these attributes ‘can only be conceived by us on analogy’ and that ‘objectively used, involve a latent anthropomorphism’. (Meredith:126/7;223) Given the strictures of the Critique of Pure Reason, it would seem difficult to say anything at all about the supreme being, yet, Kant claims, ‘we are obliged to conceive it as a cause of things that is distinct from nature, for the sole purpose of expressing the relation in which this being that transcends all our cognitive faculties stands to the object of our practical reason’. (Meredith:130/31) At the same time, ‘we do not mean on that account to ascribe to this being theoretically the only causality of this kind familiar to us, namely an understanding and a will’. (Theology Lectures 51f) Kant’s treatment of the divine attributes thus amounts to a kind of negative theology, with all the paradoxes therein implied. It seems that ethico-theology must arm itself with a negative transcendental theology in order to refute, point by point, the positive assertions of dogmatic theology. For ‘if any boast is permitted of light upon the existence and constitution of the divine nature, its intelligence and will, and the laws of both these and the attributes which issue therefrom and influence the world’, the result will be that ‘all the defects of our insight into the divine nature must spread to the ethical code, and religion in this way will be divorced from morality and perverted’ (Meredith:130/31). All the same, one can wonder what purpose is served by running through the traditional attributes of God, pointing out in each case that they should not be understood anthropomorphically or according to the laws of theoretical reason. (Theology Lectures: 50)

 

274. God’s Attributes. Apart from the reference to analogy, Kant does not explain how to arrive at a legitimate interpretation of God’s attributes. Moreover, the Critique of Pure Reason views it as doubtful whether God can be admitted as a ‘being’ of any kind, supreme or otherwise: there are no guidelines for distinguishing a ‘being’ from an ‘object’ determinable through theoretical reason, which latter God certainly is not. Since only ‘objects’ can ‘exist’ according to Kant’s definition (‘existence’, it will be recalled, is ‘merely the positing of a thing’) it is unclear what ‘the existence of God’ can mean. Under these circumstances one may reasonably ask why Kant does not include, among those things which pervert morality, the belief in God itself, in other words, why he does not carry through a more full-blooded reduction of religion to morality: in that case there would be no need for a transcendental negative theology, for the pretentions of dogmatism could be thwarted by recourse to the main results of the first and second Critiques (with deletion of the postulates of practical reason). However, the reason that Kant shrinks back from this radical solution has been hinted at earlier, namely that such basic ontological concepts as being and objectivity are not readily amenable to compartmentalization, so they ‘yearn’, as it were, for application in the forbidden territory of practical reason. Kant is aware of this, but the solution he adopts, admitting the regulative employment of transcendental ideas, is an artificial compromise, and as such suffers from the defects of all half-hearted measures.

 

275. One True Religion. If religion is essentially morality, then, as Kant says in Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, ‘there is only one (true) religion’. (Religion:98) Although the various ecclesiastical faiths occupy the foreground of religion, Kant discerns a general deep-seated awareness that these are in some sense secondary. For example, we do not easily approve of someone’s public change of religion, because ‘amid the uncertainty which every man feels within himself as to which among the historical faiths is the right one, while the moral faith is everywhere the same, it seems highly unnecessary to create a stir about the matter’. (Religion:123) Of course in Kant’s time there were still plenty of people prepared to make a stir over ecclesiastical allegiances; nevertheless, the idea of ‘one true religion’ was very much in the spirit of Lessing and the German Enlightenment. What is interesting about Kant’s Religion book is not the idea of ‘one true religion’ as such, nor even the moral interpretation of religion (which had already been presented in the second and third Critiques), but rather Kant’s analysis, from the point of view of morality, of the historical religions. This text makes explicit what had earlier been merely implicit concerning the deformation and corruption of ‘true religion’ within the organized historical faiths. At the same time, however, the Religion text indicates the limits, for Kant himself, of ‘religion within the limits of reason’, not in a sense which would vindicate any of the historical religions, but by introducing concepts which stand in tenuous relation with the problematic of critical philosophy. Although Religion proceeds within the same general framework as the three Critiques, Kant allows himself in this work, more than in any other written after 1781, considerable freedom from the strict exigencies of his system.

 

276. Kant and Christianity. Of the historical religions, Christianity is naturally at the centre of Kant’s attention. Kant was by no means ignorant of the other world religions. By the standards of his time, he was particularly well informed about the Eastern religions, which he regularly discussed in his lectures on ‘geography’ at Königsberg. No doubt Kant’s acquaintance with the religions of the East aided him in the historical contextualization and ‘relativization’ of the Christian religion, but as an influence on his thinking it cannot compare with his insider knowledge of Christianity. Kant’s upbringing in Protestant Pietism left him with a good feel for a certain form of Christian religiosity. As one would expect given his thesis of ‘one true religion’, Kant does not accept the historical ‘revelation’ of Christianity as providing anything essential to religion. Nevertheless, Kant regards Christianity as superior to the other ‘public religions’ because only it, in its original teachings, is genuinely moral. The other religions are and always have been merely ‘statutory ecclesiastical faiths’ or ‘religions of divine worship’, whereas Christianity, although it has taken on statutory aspects, and has become dominated by these in its public life, was originally moral. In Kant’s view, the New Testament contains ‘along with its statutes, or laws of faith, the purest moral doctrine of religion in its completeness’. One may question, of course, whether Kant should not have extended his charity to the other religions, and recognized in the Judaic scriptures, in the Koran, and in the holy writings of the East, elements of ‘pure moral doctrine’. This, however, is a matter of marginal significance for Kant’s overall aims in Religion. Kant is by no means concerned to vindicate Christianity in this book, indeed his criticisms of Christianity are so comprehensive and hard-hitting that the King of Prussia felt compelled to warn him of ‘unpleasant consequences’ if he continued to publish in the same vein. Few aspects of public Christianity escape Kant’s censure. The very idea of a faith based on statutes and taken on authority is antithetical to moral freedom. Such a faith does not liberate, but enslaves man, providing no determining grounds for moral action. The exclusivity of statutory religion, based on an historical revelation testified to by a restricted body of literature and interpreted by privileged officers of the Church, is objectionable, for it contradicts the universality of morality. For Kant, everything in Christianity which goes beyond the pure moral disposition is at worst deplorable, at best regrettable. It is deplorable when observances, rituals, supplications, prayers etc., are substituted for the moral law: at bottom this is simply superstition. And it is regrettable when these things are required as the vehicle for consolidating the moral law in the hearts of human beings.

 

277. Philosophical and Popular Religion. The distinction between ‘philosophical’ and ‘popular’ religion, the latter retaining the former’s rational kernel in an outer shell of mythology and mystification, has a long history, and seems to be accepted by Kant, albeit reluctantly. ‘By reason of a peculiar weakness of human nature’, he writes, ‘pure faith can never be relied on as much as it deserves’, so there arises ‘the concept of a religion of divine worship instead of the concept of a religion purely moral’. Kant sometimes shows a certain grudging tolerance for the popular trappings of the Christian Church (although on other occasions inveighing against them heavily) only because of the ‘pure moral doctrine’ in original Christianity. Scattered through Religion are the rudiments of a ‘demythologizing’ interpretation of the New Testament. Jesus (who, incidentally, is never referred to by name) is presented as a moral teacher who attacks the statutory faith of the Jews: ‘The teacher of the Gospel revealed to his disciples the kingdom of God on earth only in its glorious, soul-elevating moral aspect, namely, in terms of the value of citizenship in a divine state’. Jesus is not the founder of ‘a religion’ (for there is only one religion, which is ‘engraved in all men’s hearts’) but of the first ‘true church’. This, however, is a ‘visible church’, which is preceded (logically, if not historically) by the ‘invisible church’ as ‘an ethical commonwealth under divine moral legislation’.

 

278. Church. The necessity of a church is given in the moral law itself, for, says Kant, ‘the sovereignty of the good principle is attainable, so far as men can work toward it, only through the establishment and spread of a society in accordance with, and for the sake of, the laws of virtue, a society whose task and duty it is rationally to impress these laws upon the entire human race’. Religion, Kant fervently believes, is not a private matter, not something to be ‘enjoyed’ by an individual in isolation, but demands the realization of the good principle on a social scale. It is a matter for regret that the actually existing churches, which should be dedicated to this principle alone, have become corrupted by statutory religion, but this is no reason to despair. In fact, Kant is optimistic that his own historical period is the most propitious thus far for the growth of a genuinely moral church, because ‘reason has freed itself, in matters which by their nature ought to be moral and soul-improving, from the weight of a faith forever dependent upon the arbitrary will of the expositors’.

 

279. Historical Revelation. Kant rejects historical revelation as the source of anything essential to religion. However, his views on the subject are more complex than this statement suggests. It would, after all, be difficult for Kant to give any credence whatever to the visible church if he could not in some way accommodate historical revelation. In the Preface to the second edition of Religion, indirectly alluding to his recent problems with the Prussian censorship, Kant attempts to clarify his position. ‘Revelation’, he says, ‘can certainly embrace the pure religion of reason, while, conversely, the second cannot include what is historical in the first’. It is the philosopher’s task, Kant explains, to determine whether an alleged revelation ‘leads back’ to the purely moral concept of religion. This idea is not easy to understand, for the principles of Kant’s critical philosophy do not seem to permit any such relation between the historical and the moral: these two spheres are literally ‘worlds apart’. Nor is the situation entirely clarified when, in Book Four of the text, Kant asserts that religion can be, at one and the same time, ‘objectively natural’ and ‘subjectively revealed’. This is possible, Kant says, when a religion ‘is so constituted that men could and ought to have discovered it of themselves merely through the use of their reason, although they would not have come upon it so early, or over so wide an area, as is required’. On the face of it, this seems to be a kind of sophistry on Kant’s part. If all Kant can offer to proponents of revelation is the concession that particular historical events may be the occasion for summoning up awareness of a law lying dormant in human reason, he is still refusing them the main thing. It may be that certain events in Palestine two thousand years ago had an exemplary moral impact on those who witnessed or soon thereafter learned of them, and that they continue to have such an impact on many who, even today, read and hear of them. This, however, can be of no comfort to Christian theologians of revelation, for whom it is the actual content of these events (just these, and no others) which is the essential core of religion.

 

280. Moral Religion and Revelation. However, perhaps it is not really the theologians which matter. Perhaps Kant wanted, for reasons of prudence (the censorship at least, but more generally the intellectual climate of the time) not to be too confrontational with the theologians, to protect himself as it were, by deliberate obfuscation. Perhaps it was wise, in a book which says outright that virtually the whole gamut of traditional Christian observances are against the spirit of true religion, to have an escape route, so that these same observances can be sanctioned (at least not condemned) from a philosophically undiscussable ‘standpoint of revelation’. In any case, Kant sees moral religion as concerning human beings in general, not just professional theologians. The question is, therefore, whether moral religion by itself can have ‘power over human hearts’ or whether, in addition, revelation is required. Now Kant understands very well that, for the majority of human beings, moral education will have to consist of something other than a study of the Critique of Practical Reason and the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Indeed, Kant does not even intend his moral writings to play any essential role in bringing people to morality, no more than his writings on aesthetics are intended to make people artistic.

 

281. Social Expression of the Moral Law. Yet although the moral law is in Kant’s view intrinsic to human reason, he also recognizes that, for its consolidation and greater efficacy, some kind of ongoing social expression is necessary. The moral values of peoples have traditionally been embodied in literature, in their myths, legends, heroic sagas and poetry. In most cases these myths, legends etc. are not regarded as literally true, certainly not as ‘revelations’ in the sense attributed to the New Testament by Christian theology. Is their moral power, their significance for moral education, on that account diminished? Would it be possible for Christianity, which Kant sees as the only moral religion, to be somewhat more modest about the New Testament, to delete talk of revelation altogether and acknowledge that, whatever the factual status of the events recounted in the Gospels, these events have an exemplary rather than a constitutive meaning for religion? On this latter question, no clear view can be found in Kant. Take, for example, his statement that ‘it is possible that the union of men into one religion cannot feasibly be brought about or made abiding without a holy book and an ecclesiastical faith based upon it’. As ecclesiastical faith is normally understood (by Kant also), namely as involving an immodest claim to revelation, this statement appears incoherent. Precisely what distinguishes any ecclesiastical faith from moral religion is that the former bases itself on an historical (‘special’) revelation, and is thus exclusivist vis-a-vis other such faiths, whereas moral religion is based only on the ‘general’ revelation of reason, binding itself to no restricted body of scripture. One would expect that Kant, proceeding from the point of view of morality, should say the opposite of what the above statement says, that he should say that ‘the union of men into one religion’ requires the overcoming of every ecclesiastical faith, or, which amounts to the same thing, that it requires the relativization of every such faith through the denial of every special revelation.

 

282. Ecclesiastical Faith. Of course, the overcoming of all ecclesiastical faiths does not imply that the various holy writings connected therewith will no longer be of interest. They may be of very great interest, and not just historically, but primarily for morality itself. However, it would be disingenuous to maintain that the purely moral interpretation of holy scriptures is consistent with ecclesiastical faith. Kant also says that ‘since the sacred narrative, which is employed solely on behalf of the ecclesiastical faith, can have and, taken by itself, ought to have absolutely no influence upon the adoption of moral maxims, and since it is given to ecclesiastical faith only for the vivid presentation of its true object (virtue striving toward holiness), it follows that this narrative must at all times be taught and expounded in the interest of morality’. This can mean only that ecclesiastical faith must be given up, for expounding a narrative ‘in the interest of morality’ is something quite different to employing it ‘solely on behalf of ecclesiastic faith’.

 

283. Truth Dressed Up as Lies. The peculiar notion can often be encountered in the history of theology that the genuine truths of religion, so as to be more comprehensible to the uneducated public, must be (to use a formulation of Schopenhauer, who, however, opposed this idea) ‘dressed up as lies’. Such ‘salutary lies’ are in the first instance the sacred narratives through which revelation speaks. Now if the various special revelations, if not actually lies, are at least not known to be true, there was already by Kant’s time plenty of evidence about whether, in the final analysis, they have or have not been salutary. The verdict of the Enlightenment of this question was quite clear: far from being salutary they have been pernicious in the highest degree, justifying religious wars and other unspeakable cruelties. Nor does it count against this verdict that many morally upright individuals have been proponents of revelation, for one can reply that, if only if it were not for the salutary lies, their number would have been much greater. Just how lies could ever be morally salutary is itself a mystery, though it is not difficult to see how they could be politically advantageous.

 

284. Politics and Theology. The French Enlightenment was particularly conscious of the political significance of theological doctrine, for which reason it held ecclesiastical faith in low esteem. Kant could not have gotten away with a Voltaire-like attack on ecclesiastical faith, but it is doubtful if he is any better disposed towards it than Voltaire. Moreover, someone with such a profound faith in reason as Kant, someone who believes so passionately in the dawning of the true age of criticism, could hardly give credence to the idea of salutary lies. Despite that ‘peculiar weakness of human nature’ which makes it difficult to come to a purely moral understanding of religion, Kant sees it as the task of his own age to overcome this weakness: ‘Dare to know! Have courage to use your own reason!’ – that is the motto of enlightenment’.

 

285. After Revelation. As for what, once ecclesiastical faith and special revelation are overcome, will take the place of the sacred narratives, Kant gives no definite indication. Will the expression of the moral law now be diffused through various genres of literature? Will it be left to novelists, poets, dramatists, journalists, or indeed philosophers, to consolidate the moral law in the hearts of human beings? Here it is well to remember that Kantian moral religion, although purged of everything historical and doctrinal, does not dispense with God, or with immortality of the soul: these remain as postulates of practical reason. If the moral law is the seat of human dignity, if religion is the ‘recognition of all duties as divine commands’, will moral religion always require specific institutional expression and representation? As noted, Kant does maintain that a visible church is needed to work towards the ideal of an ethical commonwealth. The organizational structure of such a church must be different to that of all previous churches and ‘could be likened to that of a household (family) under a common, though invisible, moral Father’. Yet, although this new kind of visible church may have ‘no motivating forces other than moral ones’, it also ‘requires a public covenant, a certain ecclesiastical form dependent upon the conditions of experience’. When Kant adds that ‘it remains true once for all 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’, one can only wonder whether it is an altogether coherent conception which is being presented. If this is subterfuge on Kant’s part, then it is also overkill, but more likely Kant was genuinely confused. Quite simply, X cannot be a ‘vehicle’ for Y if X runs counter to the essential nature of Y, which Kant claims to be the case in regard to ecclesiastical faith and moral religion respectively.

 

286. Christian Scriptures. Kant is confused, seemingly, because he is reluctant to part with the idea of the Christian scriptures (frequently quoted in Religion) as morally paradigmatic, or perhaps more generally, because he cannot envisage any social institution devoted to morality which is not also ecclesiastical and thus based on a definite sacred canon. No doubt in Kant’s time there were many people who remained in the Christian Church ‘for the sake of morality’ without having any serious ecclesiastical commitments, no doubt this is also true today. If the ‘holiness’ of the moral law requires institutional embodiment, can this take some non-ecclesiastical form? History shows that this is very difficult, and that the main tendency is towards the dispersal of moral discourse. Such dispersal may leave the matter of morality very much to chance, but on the other hand, one would think that, in the ethical commonwealth which Kant wants, no separate institution of morality would be required: morality would simply be all-pervasive. In the meantime, it would be counter-productive to work towards this ethical commonwealth by means of ecclesiastical faith; rather, the genuine moral elements of various ecclesiastical faiths and holy writings should be freed from their dependency on special revelation and affirmed on their own account. The spirit of enlightenment should allow no subterfuge here, no stratagems for the sake of human weakness, no salutary lies, but merely a strong resolve, which presupposes, of course, realism and patience.

 

287. Radical Evil. From the foregoing considerations it would seem that, for Kant, ‘religion within the limits of reason alone’ is entirely restricted to the moral law and in no need of special revelation. On the other hand, there are elements (left out of account in the above discussion) in Kant’s Religion book which, on his own admission, are outside the scope of reason. At the end of Book One, Kant indicates that there are certain matters which ‘are, as it were, parerga to religion within the limits of pure reason; they do not belong within it but border upon it’. These parerga are ideas which reason ‘simply cannot adopt into her maxims of thought and action’, but which, nevertheless, are ‘available to her good will’. For the most part, these ideas relate to the problem which occupies Kant in the first two Books of Religion and which is in fact the main thematic novelty of this work, namely the problem of ‘radical evil’ in human nature. Kant’s decision to introduce his philosophy of religion through just this problem testifies to his undogmatic common-sense approach, for it is a problem which does not first of all need to be constructed, which does not originally arise from any philosophical system or theological doctrine, but is self-evident for any thinking person. However, the motif of radical evil is also employed by Kant for a definite systematic purpose, as another prong to his argument from the moral law to religion. Lest it be thought that Kant’s previous moral philosophy can in the main be accepted without taking the leap into religion, lest it be thought that, in the final analysis, the concept of religion is redundant in critical philosophy, the problem of evil – so Kant believes – will show otherwise. Although the new argument from evil (more precisely, from the necessity of overcoming evil) is beset by similar difficulties as those which surround the postulates of practical reason, the difference is that Kant now calls upon the additional resource of the parerga. Whether this can this lead to anything other than a Pyrrhic victory is, as we shall see, very dubious, for (unsurprisingly) the parerga look suspiciously like elements from special revelation.

 

288. Hope and Grace. Kant does not present his considerations on evil explicitly as an argument for the existence of God, which is basically assumed in Religion, as having already been established in the second Critique. But the phenomenon of radical evil is a further confirmation of God, whose denial (so Kant contends) would involve the absurdum practicum that it is irrational to obey the moral law. More specifically, what leads to the absurdum practicum is the denial of a loving and forgiving God as the dispenser of ‘grace’ (Gnade). Human beings, Kant argues, have a propensity to radical evil which is not within their own powers to overcome: however earnest their efforts, they will always remain morally defective and blameworthy under the law. Since it is irrational to bind oneself to something one cannot fulfil, the only way to escape moral despair is to ‘hope’ that what one is unable to achieve through one’s own endeavours will be made good through an act of grace, which can come only from God. The situation in respect of this hope is highly paradoxical. It cannot be a mere pious wish, but must in some sense be reasonable. Yet Kant insists that reason can say nothing whatever about it: ‘this idea is wholly transcendent; and it is even salutary to hold it, as a sacred thing, at a respectful distance, lest, under the illusion of performing miracles ourselves or observing miracles within us, we render ourselves unfit for all use of reason’. To imagine one knows anything about means of grace leads, in Kant’s view, to religious superstition, with an attendant slackening of moral effort. Instead, one should proceed, morally speaking, as if no divine assistance were to be relied upon, but with this hope that one’s inevitable shortcomings will be ‘forgiven’. It is not difficult to see the resemblances between Kant’s argument for grace in Religion, and his arguments for God and immortality in the second Critique. In all these cases it is the absurdum practicum of moral despair which is decisive. One would despair if moral purity did not hold out the promise of happiness, thus God must exist to ensure the harmony of nature and morality requisite to happiness. One would despair if, on account of the brevity of life, one does not have time to make infinite progress towards perfection, thus the soul must be immortal to vouchsafe infinite time. Finally, one would despair over one’s own innate propensity to evil if one could not hope for the grace of God. The formal structure of all these arguments is identical, and can be presented as follows: Premise 1: If X did not exist, there would be despair; Premise 2: Despair is impossible (absurd); Conclusion: X exists. The second premise, as it applies in all three arguments, itself poses difficulties. Since some human beings do in fact despair, it cannot be maintained that despair is literally impossible, while the claim that it is necessarily irrational is hardly self-evident. As for absurdity, some people profess to accept this, and even to make it into the foundation of a philosophical outlook. But let us leave these problems aside, for it is the first premise which is most obviously disputable. That the lack of any guarantee of happiness, and of the attainability of moral perfection, does not necessarily lead to despair, has already been argued in Section 4 above, and there is no need to add anything to that discussion. It would seem, however, that if Kant’s thesis of radical evil is accepted, this would strengthen the premise that ‘if it were not for grace there would be despair’. As Kant understands it, radical evil is not just a shortcoming, but a positive counter-force to morality, which as such constitutes the ‘foul taint of our race’ (faulen Fleck unserer Gattung). Radical evil puts human beings in radical need of salvation. And from where can salvation come if not from the grace of God?

 

289. Evil and Sin. What then is radical evil? Kant makes no secret that, in essence, it is the same as what the New Testament understands as sin, freed from residual mythological elements and from any dependency on special revelation. Kant quotes freely from the New Testament, but the key passage is the one from Ephesians VI, 12, which Kant gives as ‘We wrestle not against flesh and blood (the natural inclinations) but against principalities and powers – against evil spirits’. Demythologized, Kant takes this to mean that evil is itself spiritual, that is, a function of human freedom rather than of man’s sensible nature. Kant had not seen this clearly in his earlier ethical writings, where unmoral action had been grounded in the desires and inclinations. In the meantime he has come to see that ‘the source of evil cannot lie in an object determining the will through inclination, nor yet in a natural impulse; it can lie only in a rule made by the will for the use of its freedom, that is, in a maxim’. The source of evil cannot reside in man’s sensible nature because no one can be held responsible for what happens according to natural laws: the animals, whose behaviour is entirely governed by natural determinations, are universally regarded as incapable of either good or evil. The evil disposition must know very well where its duty lies, for to be rational is precisely to know this, but it freely chooses to act contrary to duty, it freely chooses to give precedence, in its practical maxims, to desires and inclinations. This evil is radical, Kant says, because it ‘corrupts the ground of all maxims’, and further, because it is ‘inextirpable by human powers, since extirpation could occur only through good maxims, and cannot take place when the ultimate subjective ground is postulated as corrupt’. It does not follow that radical evil is a ‘devilish’ will, that is a will for which evil (as departure from the law) is itself the positive incentive. Kant does not believe that the latter is applicable to human beings. Rather, radical evil is the propensity to subordinate the moral law to the incentive of happiness, a propensity which is universal and ever-present. People may be prepared to obey the moral law for the most part, but given a strong enough incentive to depart from it they will be inclined to do so: this inclination stems from radical evil. Man bears an ‘innate guilt’. Not through any kind of gradual reformation, only through a genuine revolution, by a kind of ‘rebirth’, is there any hope of lifting this burden from him. The possibility of such a rebirth may be a mystery, yet it must be accepted, for duty prescribes it, and duty never demands what cannot be done. Divine assistance may be hoped for, but only on condition that effort does not slacken. Referring to the teachings of the ‘only moral religion’, Kant says: ‘only when man has not buried his inborn talent but has made use of his original predisposition to good in order to become better, can he hope that what is not within his power will be supplied through cooperation from above’. As indicated, Kant defines radical evil in such a way (‘inextirpable by human powers’) as to make divine grace necessary for its overcoming. Since the concept of grace belongs to the parerga of pure rational religion, so must the concept of radical evil. Taken in this strict sense, the doctrine of radical evil cannot provide any additional evidence for the existence of God, for the latter is already assumed. We can still ask whether the actual phenomenon of evil Kant describes in Religion is such that, in the absence of divine grace, it would warrant despair. This, however, does not seem to be the case, unless, that is, the condition of finitude itself justifies despair.

 

290. Spirituality of Evil. One can acknowledge that what Kant says about the ‘spirituality’ of evil is an important, indeed vital, corrective to his earlier position. One can admit that there is an ever-present propensity in human beings to subordinate morality to inclination. It does not follow (Kant does not even claim it does) that substantial moral progress is not possible. Moreover, it would seem that the kind of rebirth which Kant associates with grace must do away with the necessary struggle of morality: the absence of any propensity to decide in favour of the inclinations (human beings would now be like angels) must undercut the value of obedience to the law. Kant appears to think that radical neediness for grace is the only alternative to human self-conceit, but this is not obvious. The idea that moral deficiency and fragility are the same as moral wretchedness (or that man qua finite being is nothing) may be commonplace in the history of Christian theology, but Kant does not show how it can be justified from the standpoint of reason. If grace can be affirmed only on the basis of ‘special’ rather than ‘general’ revelation, Kant has not shown that God is necessary for morality, and in this sense his general claim that ‘morality leads to religion’ is still wanting in support.

 

291. Pietism. Kant’s philosophy of religion is governed by two closely linked theses, on the surface not novel to Kant. The first, that religion is neither itself knowledge nor does it rest on knowledge, was characteristic of the Pietist Christianity in which Kant was raised. Pietism revolted against the development of Lutheranism into a new doctrinal ecclesiasticism, emphasizing instead (which it saw as a return to the true Luther) the immediate relation to God in Christian love. As a religion of ‘the heart’, Pietism had no use for the refinements of either ecclesiastical dogmatics or philosophical theology; what it sought was the cultivation of a spiritual community whose members would be bound together by inner rebirth rather than by outward formulas, and who would relate to one another as equals rather than through hierarchical ordering. The construction of a philosophical theory to account for their negative attitude towards dogma is not something which would have occurred to the vast majority of Pietists. In the case of Kant, however, whose original Pietism became overlaid by Enlightenment rationalism at an early age, this problem of philosophical justification was unavoidable. Kant did not remain an orthodox Pietist, and his philosophy is certainly not a direct attempt to validate the religion of his youth. But it is clear, already in the Critique of Pure Reason, more so in the Critique of Practical Reason and especially in Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, that Kant wanted to save the essence of Pietism, which he saw as the essence of religion itself. In this sense, Kant’s critical philosophy is a product of Pietism as much as of Enlightenment rationalism: it can be seen as a synthesis of these two outlooks, as a continuation of the Königsbergian rationalist Pietism founded by Kant’s teachers Franz Albert Schultz and Martin Knutzen. Kant would not necessarily have been put on the track of his second thesis, namely that religion is essentially morality, from the kind of Pietism which prevailed in other parts of Germany. We shall see in a later chapter that Friedrich Schleiermacher, schooled in the Herrnhuter Pietism of southeastern Saxony, could accept that religion was something other than knowledge, but insisted, against Kant, that this was not morality, rather ‘feeling’ of a certain sort. In general, the subjectivistic orientation to religion characteristic of Pietism easily went over to the kind of quasi-mystical ‘enthusiasm’ which was anathema to Kant and against which he regularly warned. On the other hand, Königsbergian Pietism had by the time of Kant’s youth been much attenuated by the Wolffian rationalist Schultz (and Knutzen), himself a prominent churchman and director of the Collegium Fredericianum attended by Kant. Pietism and rationalism came to a general reconciliation in Prussia after Frederick the Great, in 1740, recalled Wolff to the University of Halle, from where he had be driven by Pietist zealotry. It did not, therefore, go against the grain for Kant, a convinced Wolffian until the 1760’s, to reject the excesses of Pietism and seek in it just what was consistent with reason. In the end, this came down to morality, a result entirely in keeping with Enlightenment rationalism.

 

292. The Wolffians. In the Transcendental Dialectic of the first Critique, Kant examines a very specific tradition of philosophical theology, then generalizes his adverse verdict to cover every kind of theoretical inquiry into God, soul, and world. Not only does Kant present no grounds for such a generalization, but his arguments against the Wolffians depend on the analysis of knowledge given earlier in the Critique, an analysis they would not necessarily feel compelled to accept. Only if the Wolffians are interpreted as applying categories of theoretical reason (in the specific sense of the transcendental analytic) for understanding God and the religious life, is Kant’s critique at all applicable to them. How can it be demonstrated that the Wolffians do in fact proceed in this way? The whole Wolffian school inherited from Leibniz an essentially Aristotelian ontology in which ‘categoriality’ was the basic concept. Kant himself took over this concept, restricting it however to the realm of ‘appearance’. From his own standpoint, it was thus easy for Kant to convict the Wolffians (for example Mendelssohn, in his argument for the immortality of the soul) of transgressing, with their Aristotelian categories (now more strictly understood by Kant as Newtonian categories), the proper sphere of their employment. At the same time, there is a certain hastiness and lack of charity in Kant’s taking the implicit Aristotelian (categorial) ontology of the Wolffians as the essence of their philosophical position, for it may be that the former is in some degree ill-suited to the latter: in that case, Kant’s critique would only be effective against the ‘outward form’ of Wolffianism.

 

293. Random Groping? If religion is not grounded in knowledge, if philosophical theology along with church dogmatics are in fact pseudo-enterprises, what does Kant say about the long tradition of religious and theological literature? What does he say about the long tradition of metaphysical literature, which to all intents and purposes he assimilates with theology? There is only one thing he can say, which is what he actually does say in the Preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, namely that all this amounts in the end to a ‘process of merely random groping’. Is there not a little Enlightenment smugness in this attitude? Does it not evince a certain historical naivety and dogmatism? Kant had little knowledge of, or interest in, the history of philosophy. His philosophical reading was overwhelmingly in the recent Wolffian tradition, and when he became critical of Wolffianism, when he ‘refuted’ this in the first Critique, he took his argument to apply to the whole history of metaphysics. For example, Kant could acknowledge certain suggestive ideas in Plato and Aristotle (particularly the latter’s logic) but basically he regarded them as ‘speculative philosophers’ who were now discredited along with the Wolffians. Scholasticism, needless to say, Kant viewed with contempt, for it was ‘occupied with nothing but abstractions’. Among the modern philosophers, Kant admired those who contributed to the emerging scientific outlook, either directly as mathematicians/physicists, or as providing epistemological materials relevant to his own critique of knowledge: Bacon, Locke, Hume, Descartes and Leibniz were all valued on this score. As for Spinoza, Kant did not study his works, although this did not prevent him making an adverse judgement on ‘Spinozism’ (as a ‘speculative philosophy’, naturally) in the Critique of Judgement. Kant took little interest in the religious literature of Christianity, and one can only assume he regarded it as uniformly tainted with dogmatism. The Church Fathers, Christian Neoplatonism, medieval mysticism, and the Christian humanism of the Renaissance are unworthy of comment. It seems that, for the composition of Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, Kant did make a study of recent Protestant dogmatics, and it may be that (as with his critique of Wolffian metaphysics) he generalized his conclusions retrospectively over the whole history of theology. But this was already at a late date, and Kant had settled on his general attitude towards the theological tradition much earlier. In this attitude Kant was much a man of his time, a man definitively of the Enlightenment, a man of science for whom reason can now ‘wipe the slate clean’ and begin history anew, at the level of genuine intellectual adulthood.

 

294. Kant and the New Testament. However, Kant has a weakness for one particular body of religious literature, the New Testament. He wants to demythologize this of course, but on the other hand he thinks that mythological narrative is not altogether inappropriate for conveying a purely moral message. It is a question, in other words, of reading the text from a moral point of view, without getting caught up in speculations about the supernatural, miracles, prophecies and so forth. Now according to Kant’s own standpoint, thinking about morality, which clearly occurs in the New Testament texts, is the business of reason in its practical employment, and so the New Testament authors (especially Paul, quoted most often by Kant) must be in some sense philosophers. It may be that these authors fell into what Kant calls ‘transcendental illusions’, but, since Kant also tells us that such illusions are almost inevitable, they can hardly be blamed for that. The essential point must be that, in ‘thinking’ the ‘transcendental ideas’, and particularly by grasping the essential moral relevance of the latter, Paul and others were undertaking the work of reason, even its most important work. But then, has not such work also been undertaken by other authors in the history of Christian theology? Moreover, should we not expect that, in certain respects, subsequent authors have been able to convey the morality of the New Testament more effectively? Is it not likely that erudite writers disciplined by Greek philosophy were able to make some progress in ‘thinking’ the relevant ‘ideas’ of the scriptures? Are these ideas not susceptible to expansion and refinement, and should not they be conveyed (as occurs in the New Testament) in a manner corresponding to historical circumstances, with a view to the prevailing culture of the day? Consequently, is it plausible to extol the New Testament as a moral text, while giving no credibility to people like Augustine, Eckhart, Aquinas, Erasmus and Luther? Since Kant does not explain his attitude on this matter, his veneration for the New Testament smacks a little of superstition, no doubt deriving from the Bible-based Pietism of his youth. Perhaps Kant would say that original ‘authentic’ Christianity was immediately corrupted under the influence of Greek dogmatic metaphysics, but this would be an arbitrary postulate, especially as Kant dispenses with an independent examination of the Greeks.

 

295. Kantian Justification for Theology? Since the vast majority of Christian theologico-religious literature cannot without serious distortion be pressed into the straightjacket of Wolffianism, it does not fall victim to Kant’s arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason. Could it be that, on the contrary, Kant’s theory of transcendental ideas provides a new philosophical justification for this literature? As previously noted, Kant was received in just this way at the theological school of Tübingen from the late 1780’s. Casting off all pretentions to ‘categorial’ knowledge, theologians like Storr concluded from Kant that revelation, as a different kind of ‘supra-natural’ knowledge, could now be legitimized. Hegel and Schelling, students at Tübingen at this time, turned their backs on the orthodox Storr, but they still saw Kantianism as a positive force for religion. For them, there could be no question, after Kant, of returning to ecclesiastical doctrine, but on the other hand the distinction between theoretical-categorial ‘knowledge’ and the ‘ideas of reason’ made possible a long-overdue purification of religion. How Hegel and Schelling conceived of such purification is a matter for discussion in later chapters, but the general point is that the transcendental ideas and practical reason held out the possibility of regaining part of what had been forfeited within the austere parameters of categorial knowledge. To point out that religious discourse is made up of ‘ideas’ rather than ‘knowledge’ might then appear as a verbal quibble. Moreover, since the ‘ideas’ are defined negatively, as beyond theoretical reason, there was scope for reading much more into them than Kant himself, who had still been under the influence of the restrictive schemata of Wolffianism (the trichotomy of soul, world, and God, corresponding to the three divisions of metaphysica specialis).

 

296. Religion, Doctrine, Morality. Behind Kant’s attack on philosophical theology lies his conviction that highly abstract speculations are unnecessary for the religious life: to have ‘true religion’ does not imply being a theologian, but merely to bind oneself, with sincerity of heart, to the moral law. However, the theologians themselves did not necessarily think otherwise. There were times, of course, when the Christian Church demanded acknowledgement of this or that item of dogma as necessary for salvation, but this was rarely the attitude of leading theologians, certainly not of rational theology in the Wolffian style. Broadly speaking, theology understood itself as reflecting on the meaning and conditions of faith, by no means as leading to or requisite for faith. Such reflection is in the first place possible only because faith itself, simple though it may be, involves a certain kind of knowledge or awareness. Kant himself does not deny this, and his own grounding of faith in a ‘feeling of respect’ for the moral law is not so heterodox as he thinks. In any case, after having proclaimed that philosophical theologies are in principle impossible, Kant promptly constructs one, and his calling it ‘moral’ rather than ‘speculative’ theology does not change the fact of its rationality. Nor is the relation between Kantian moral theology and faith very different to that between ‘traditional’ theology and faith: clearly, Kant does not consider that faith depends on comprehension of and agreement with his own religio-moral writings, for in that case only a handful of people could be counted as faithful. Indeed, something similar may be said about the relation between rationality as such and Kant’s critical philosophy. Kant recognizes that human beings did not have to wait until the Critique of Pure Reason before they were able to be rational, and that, even after the Critique, the exercise of reason does not depend on grasping the intricacies of this book. If speculative theology is to be dismissed as unnecessary for faith, why should not transcendental criticism be dismissed as unnecessary for rationality? Kant may say that, without a transcendental critique of knowledge, reason falls prey to illusions, but theology can make the same claim about faith. Is it not evident that purely moral faith is constantly threatened by corruption, that it is, for example, in constant danger of going over to superstition? Does not the preservation and proper employment of faith require a process of self-reflection just as surely as the preservation and proper employment of theoretical reason requires this? Again, Kant may say that theology has not in fact undertaken a genuine self-reflection of faith, and instead has been a force for its corruption. But this would be a sweeping claim, hardly to be established a priori. From his Enlightenment perspective, Kant appears to know beforehand that nothing of value can be found in theology. But this is the limitation of the Enlightenment, this is simply its prejudice.

 

297. Religion Tacked On? A further set of problems pertains to Kant’s moral interpretation of religion. As we have seen, Kant’s two favoured formulas for this are that ‘morality leads to religion’ and that religion is the ‘recognition of all duties as divine commands’. The second formula is not particularly helpful, for it suggests the primacy of divinity over morality, which is something denied by Kant. Superstitious Christianity will certainly recognize all genuine duties as divine commands, but is not on that account ‘true religion’. As for the first formula, it does not say anything unorthodox: traditional theology has always maintained that morality, along with other things (e.g. experience of beauty, study of the natural world) leads to religion. However, perhaps it is advisable to read the formula as ‘only morality leads to religion’. The difficulty now is knowing how the content of religion exceeds that of morality. Presumably the formula would have no point if there were no difference here, but on the other hand too much difference would seem to undermine Kant’s view of morality. If the moral law is autonomous and binding without qualification it cannot ‘lead to’ anything which would have supremacy over it, but then if religion is not to have such supremacy it seems redundant. The view that religion is something ‘tacked on’ to morality so as to make it more appealing to the masses can hardly be Kant’s meaning. Either one takes religion as something of the first importance, or, quite frankly, one rejects the concept of religion. But Kant states that what is of the first importance is the moral law itself, in which there is no reference to God. To be sure, the existence of God is supposedly established as a postulate of practical reason, but this depends on some highly questionable assumptions (concerning happiness) at variance with the whole spirit of Kantian morality.

 

298. Replacing Religion. Should a distinction be made between a moral interpretation of religion on the one hand, and the replacement of religion by morality on the other hand? When Kant in the Critique of Judgement speaks of God as the ‘moral author’ of the world, he seems to intend the former. We have seen, however, that Kant insists God’s ‘authorship’ of the world does not have any practical consequences beyond the moral law itself, permitting only the curious quasi-theoretical enterprises of transcendental negative theology and regulative teleology (of nature and history). Moreover, although God is supposedly necessary so that we do not despair over our unhappiness, imperfections, and inclination to evil, Kant does not show that such despair is warranted; he also concedes that a person holding to the moral law while denying the existence of God would in no way be blameworthy. Under these circumstances we might reasonably conclude that Kant should have openly proclaimed his aim as that of replacing religion by morality, or at least, that this is the objective tendency of his thought. In view of the political situation of his time, such a bare-faced stance would probably have brought Kant’s academic career to an abrupt halt (as we shall see in the next chapter, this actually happened to Fichte). But there are reasons other than political prudence behind Kant’s reluctance to dispense with the concepts of God and religion. What does it mean to ‘replace religion by morality’. This formula can mean very different things depending on how its two basic terms are interpreted. For example, religion may be identified with superstition, and morality with utilitarianism; nineteenth century positivism wanted to ‘replace religion by morality’ under these presuppositions. Kant sees the matter very differently, and, from the standpoint of positivism, very inadequately. For two centuries, positivist opinion has been that, since Kant compromises his moral theory with ideas taken from religion, his morality offers no genuine alternative to religion. How would Kant reply to this criticism? Supposing that he holds fast to the idea of substituting morality for religion, he would undoubtedly say that it is only the moral element in religion which he relies upon, and that he is quite prepared to dispense with everything else. Of course, this response could not satisfy positivism, which would insist on distinguishing religious from secular morality, to the detriment of the former. Kant in turn would reject this distinction, but would have to admit that, unlike positivism, he looks to religion, particularly to the Christian religion, for his paradigm of morality.

 

299. Christianity and Morality. For Kant in other words, Christianity, notwithstanding its various corruptions and superstitions, has been the main historical vehicle for exemplifying morality, and great care must be taken, in any ‘secularization’ of Christian morality, not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. In Kant’s view, the positivists (materialists) of his own time invariably did this, evincing thereby their own spiritual poverty. Understood in this way, Kant’s position can be variously described as the substitution of morality for religion, as the reinterpretation of religion, or as the reinterpretation of morality from the viewpoint of religion: the differences between these formulations are largely verbal. It is not hard to see that much of what Kant includes under a purely moral attitude conforms to traditional Christian conceptions of the pious life. Unqualified obedience to the moral law means universal love, humility, gratitude, a feeling of awesome reverence for the God within as for the starry skies above, and a strict relativization of everything which has not to do with the spiritual (moral) side of man. Just as the Christian Fathers accused Greek philosophy of ‘arrogantly’ overvaluing the intellect, so does Kant insist that all the achievements of theoretical reason are worth nothing, do not even elevate man above the animals, unless reason is ultimately in the service of the good principle and its victory over evil. At the same time, some features of traditional piety are rejected by Kant, as contrary to the moral standpoint. Everything to do with fear, or with an attitude of timorous supplication, he dismisses as superstitious and inconsistent with the dignity of man. Since humility and dignity are not opposites, but fundamentally the same, there is no place in morality for self-prostration and self-loathing.

 

300. Hope. ‘Hope’ does pose some ticklish problems for Kant. Moral man will be constantly hopeful that his innate tendency to evil may be forgiven, but will not on that account slacken his own efforts towards moral perfection. Those who see Kant’s moral theory as backtracking from the rigorous standpoint of the first Critique may find, in Kant’s flirtation with the Christian concept of grace, their worst suspicions confirmed. It is not certain, however, that this concept is necessary to Kant’s broad position on morality. In any case, those other aspects of Christian piety just mentioned, which Kant takes over for his own interpretation of morality, have also been recognized by many secular theorists, and have a clear resonance in the popular morality of today. It is hardly disputable that, as a matter of historical fact, the moral concepts of the Western world have been forged largely under the influence of Christianity. In this sense Kant’s choice of Christian piety as a moral paradigm is not unreasonable.

 

301. Problems of Ontology. Ultimately, however, it is difficult to decide on the status of Kantian morality vis-a-vis religion because of the problems surrounding Kant’s basic ontological concepts. The fundamental characteristic of the whole critical philosophy, namely its bifurcation of reason into two compartments, one theoretical and one practical, is also its fundamental weakness, for a reason so divided, neither one side of it nor the other, cannot stand. Kant sees that theoretical reason wants and needs to be practical, just as practical reason wants and needs to be theoretical, but he accommodates this through artificial devices such as ‘transcendental ideas’, ‘problematical concepts’, and ‘postulates of practical reason’, which only lead to paradoxes and obscurities. Foremost among these paradoxes is that theoretical reason, which Kant credits with the greatest ontological weight, where indeed every ontological concept is defined and every ontological question settled, is also the least significant side of reason. For Kant, practical reason defines the end (telos) of man, nature, and history. It is practical reason which confers dignity on man. Practical reason is the site of the only ‘absolute’ in philosophy, the moral law itself. Lack of theoretical knowledge in a person of genuine moral disposition is a mere shortcoming, while the reverse situation is disastrous and reprehensible. Under these circumstances is it not strange that being, truth, and reality are all denied to practical reason? Is it at all plausible that this sphere of absolute value and significance should be allowed just ‘problematical’ ontological accreditation? This is not a matter of mere words. What it means is that morality cannot be grounded, cannot be philosophically reflected, and cannot be brought into relation with nature and the empirical side of human beings. Those characteristics of Christian piety which Kant incorporates in his own concept of morality cannot be explained or justified, and so must take on the appearance of arbitrariness, perhaps of Kant’s nostalgia for his own Pietist roots. Despite Kant’s stated opposition to the subjectivism of Schwärmerei, morality is grounded on nothing else but a ‘feeling’ void of any theoretical determination. Whether one describes morality in the language of Pietism, or in some other way, then becomes a matter of choice, for every description whatsoever is ‘problematical’ and thus insusceptible of rational defence.

 

302. Kant’s Attitude to Metaphysics. Kant does not simply ‘reject metaphysics’, but asks after its nature, in order to create, or lay the foundations for, a new concept of metaphysics as critique of reason. What precisely is metaphysics as Kant understands it? The critique of reason will serve whatever legitimate task attaching to the traditional metaphysical question of being qua being or beings as a whole. Kant introduces certain distinctions here which are the key to his new concept, e.g. between appearance and noumena. The question of totality is still present in Kant’s “idea” of world.

 

303. Morality as Supreme Goal of Reason. ‘So ist die letzte Absicht der weislich uns versorgenden Natur, bei der Einrichtung unserer Vernunft, eigentlich nur aufs Moralische gestellt’ (KrV B 829). This latter quotation indicates what is decisive for Kant, namely morality as the supreme goal of reason. However, morality is not known in the manner of theoretical cognition. Instead, it is directly intuited in the freedom of the will, as awareness of the categorical imperative. The whole of philosophy takes on a negative character. On the one side the critique of theoretical reason preserves sciences from metaphysical excesses. This is actually the least important part of it, for the sciences, as Kant himself acknowledges, can take care of themselves. On the other side, which is the really important one, philosophy preserves morality from the intrusion and thus contamination of metaphysics. In a sense, therefore, Kant leaves everything as it is: science and morality. Philosophy come along afterwards and analyses both of these: thus Neo-Kantianism. This is the intention. But from the point of view e.g. of Heidegger and Fink, what Kant does is actually provide a philosophical interpretation of the ‘beingness of beings’. To get to the bottom of Kant, one must ask what this is, this acceptance of science and morality: behind this there is a definite metaphysical tendency. Certain decisions are taken in regard to what truth is. It is not hard to verify that Kant ultimately held to the idea of philosophy as the most dignified task of man. So how does Kant ground or attempt to ground his decisions? What is it which lends science authority as ‘knowledge’, or, put in ontological terms, what gives scientific objects their leading role in the definition of beings, thus of truth, thus of knowledge? And what justifies the realm of the ‘noumena’ interpreted as a sphere of morality? The problem of science and freedom, the objectivity of objects and the freedom of the will. It is known that Kant did not succeed in unifying these two problem-spheres. Where do Kant’s limitations in ‘overcoming metaphysics’ show themselves in this context? What aspect of Kant points beyond metaphysics, and where are his limits observable? This will depend on the definition of metaphysics. If understood as ‘absolute knowledge’, the limit will be seen in the fact that Kant retains the transcendental ideas and the thing-in-itself (both devoid of truth).

 

304. Heidegger and Kant. From the viewpoint of Heidegger the problem resides in Kant’s failure to question the Aristotelian ontological system: thus truth as propositional truth, Being as beings (things). The overcoming of metaphysics is a reform of metaphysics, basically a staying within metaphysics. But the evidence that metaphysics is inadequate for Kant’s problem is present, i.e. he brings phenomena forward, and attempts to deal with them within metaphysical terms, understanding this however as the ‘elimination of metaphysics’: the phenomena of the finitude of human knowledge and of human freedom. The greatness of Kant as a philosopher is precisely that these phenomena are brought to light, that the problems implicit in them are worked through. All the while to be kept in mind is the first sentence of the Preface to the first edition, which refers to questions which “cannot be ignored”. Everything in Kant must be brought back to and tested against these questions, which are precisely the philosophical questions, the questions which then get expressed as metaphysics (as Kant thinks) and misrepresented and mishandled. Questions of what can I know, what can I hope for, what should I do, the questions of the soul, immortality, freedom, god, and world. To understand how Kant views these questions the most important source is the transcendental dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason. There the necessity of the questions is established, there their mishandling within metaphysics is demonstrated, and their correct interpretation is indicated. Of course all this occurs against the background of the ontology as outlined in the analytic. Implicitly then, Kant’s response to these questions is already present in the analytic, which is what he believes himself. The task must thus be to examine the questions as set forth in the transcendental dialectic, and to establish or verify their necessity and their relation to the traditional questions of metaphysics. It will not be possible to problematize the results of Kant in the dialectic without also doing this in regard to the analytic, for the latter is foundational for definitional purposes.

 

305. Divisions of Metaphysics. The questions of metaphysics, to which there correspond the ‘ideas’, are divided into three classes according to the traditional schema: the absolute (unconditioned) unity of the thinking subject, the absolute unity of the series of conditions in appearance, and the absolute unity of the condition of all objects of thought whatever. These correspond to rational psychology, cosmology, and theology. (B391). Heidegger makes the further correlation with the questions: 1. What shall I do?, i.e. question re. the self and freedom, psychology; 2. What can I know?, i.e. question of world, cosmology; 3. What may I hope, i.e. question of God, theology. Heidegger points out that Kant himself says that all three questions are expressed by a fourth ‘what is man’? This makes Kant ‘anthropological’ in Heidegger’s view (GA27).
306. Kant’s Assumptions. But Kant’s criticism of metaphysics was in another way entirely new: it was intended as essentially an immanent critique, showing that even in its own terms metaphysics was impossible. This was Kant’s intention, but his critique contains various assumptions which are questionable. On the other hand, in so far as metaphysics of the Leibnizian/Wollfian school claimed to be scientific and logical, it was not an unreasonable attitude on Kant’s part. Wolff himself had been a mathematician, as had Leibniz. The standards and definitions of truth accepted by metaphysics were not regarded by these thinkers as different from those pertaining in the natural sciences. This is what laid metaphysics open to the Kantian attack, and indeed this applies to the Aristotelian tradition of metaphysics quite generally. Thus it was the resemblances and continuities between metaphysics which made this critique possible. Two things about metaphysics are in this context noteworthy. Firstly, as mentioned, it made the claim to scientific logical rational understanding, precisely the kind of understanding required in the natural sciences, albeit under certain modifications. Secondly, metaphysics claimed to reveal ‘ultimate reality’, to provide ‘absolute’ knowledge and truth. Metaphysics was the queen of the sciences already in Aristotle: the thinking of metaphysical truths was the highest activity of man and his greatest happiness, and of course it was ‘divine’ in the sense given to this by Aristotle. Metaphysics understood the whole, but not in a summary way, rather by revealing first principles. The desire for ‘absolute’ truth and knowledge became synonymous with the desire for metaphysical knowledge and truth. If therefore metaphysics became questionable the possibility of attaining this was cast into doubt. There had been for two thousand years only the alternatives between metaphysical knowledge and faith, even when they were reconciled the boundary between the two, the absolute demarcation remained in force.

 

307. Kant’s Ontology. If Kant’s transcendental logic is looked at in an ‘objective’ way it may be seen as a continuation of logos philosophy, i.e. ontology. What then is its novelty? The determination of the beings as appearances (categories) derived from synthesis of Anschauung and Denken. The former receptive and constitutive for experience. The empiricist thrust, the unification of empiricism and rationalism. Or as Heidegger says, the finitude of Anschauung is all important for the idea of limits. Even the idea of the subjectivity of knowledge – the I-ness, the problematic of consciousness – is secondary to the Anschauung/Denken division. Looked at as a system of categories, Kant’s philosophy seems traditional. What is novel is the restrictions he placed on the employment of the categories. This is why he called previous metaphysics uncritical, i.e.it paid no attention to the limits of the categories. These limits are arrived at through Kant’s transcendental logic, which depends on the interconnection between the faculties of intuition and the understanding. Now Kant maintained that the categories were valid only for experience, that they depended on the synthesis with sensibility. Thus when the metaphysicians talk, they use categories, and do so illegitimately. In a sense, therefore, Kant’s thesis can be seen as one concerning the limits of intelligible language, and appeals as such to the anti-metaphysicians (Strawson). The question is therefore whether the categories are indeed limited to experience in the manner indicated by Kant. It is not just experience as such, but a specific type of experience, namely that of mathematical natural science. It is therefore necessary to establish Kant’s attitude to moral literature, including the Bible. Dogmatic or speculative metaphysics does not examine the question of the limits of possible knowledge. Kant sometimes expresses this by saying that dogmatic metaphysics does not examine the tools with which it knows, and the limits of these tools. Hegel holds this against him, as implying that one can learn to swim without going into the water. But the same essential point can be put less subjectively, i.e.by saying that dogmatic metaphysics did not engage in a preliminary ontological examination of the structure of all possible truth, i.e. as categorial truth or the truth of formal logic. However, the reason for the relevance of the subjective way of putting it remains, at least in so far as the limits of knowledge are arrived at by paying attention to the finitude of the observer, thus to the essence of the human being. For the first time in a clear way Kant addresses ontological questions and thus the whole of metaphysics from the viewpoint of the problem of human essence. This essence is in a sense human ‘subjectivity’, including for Kant the faculties of theoretical understanding, reason, and will. But then Plato, with his doctrine of the parts of the soul, also addressed the problem of the essence of human being. So indeed did Aristotle, and in connection with precisely ontological questions. So the difference must be that for Kant, but not for Plato and Aristotle, the essence of human being is understood from human finitude. But then Plato and Aristotle both pay attention to this topic. So the question must reside in the particular way that Kant understood finitude.

 

308. The Particular Consequences of Kantianism. 1. That all truth is located either in a) the sciences, or b) formal logic, or c) transcendental logic, or d) critique of reason. All branches of the metaphysica specialis are to be removed from the edifice of knowledge and replaced by science. Truth attaches only to categorial assertions and logical validities, definitions. Practice, wherein the absolute (morality) is located, is not a realm of truth, thus is subjective. This result is unstable, but is symptomatic of the instability of modern Kantianism and much modern philosophy in general, including positivism. The question of whether Kant overcomes metaphysics must examine this principally in regard to the transcendental logic, for this also governs the practical philosophy. But in the transcendental logic Kant presents a transcendental understanding of subjectivity which is essentially meta-physical, indeed more essentially so, than his predecessors. For Fink, what is revolutionary about Kant is the redefinition of subject. This was developed by German idealism. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, first published in 1781, is recognized as a turning point in the history of metaphysics. Kant was himself of the view that this work represented a revolution in metaphysics which would change the discipline radically. This judgement is surely correct, notwithstanding the easily demonstrable continuities between Kant and his predecessors. For what Kant did was to put an end, at least relatively speaking, to the naivety of metaphysics. Previously, metaphysics had proceeded without adequate scrutiny of its own intrinsic competence to answer the questions it addressed, for example the question of the nature of God and the human soul. Kant raised the question of the limits of human knowledge in a more thoroughgoing way than had ever been done before, and found that traditional metaphysics overstepped these limits, resulting in something which was not really ‘knowledge’ at all. After Kant, all attempts at metaphysics would have to take account of the arguments of the Critique of Pure Reason, either by broadly accepting them within various kinds of Kantian metaphysics, or by discovering the flaws within them for a genuine overcoming of Kant.

 

309. Kant believed that his Critique of Pure Reason represented a ‘Copernican Revolution’ in metaphysics which would change the discipline once and for all, in particular by putting an end to the ‘dogmatic method’ of metaphysics. This view has found many supporters from Kant’s time until our own. In Kant, metaphysics becomes essentially the self-reflection or critique of reason. Instead of theorizing about meta-physical entities such as God and soul, reason occupies itself with itself, investigating the limits of its competence as well as its own tendencies to stray beyond these limits. Since Kant found that knowledge in the proper sense is confined to the objects of scientific experience, it can seem that much of the content of traditional metaphysics, indeed practically everything of significance, is lost. After the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason, philosophers of the older generation, for example Moses Mendelssohn, regarded Kant as the ‘all-destroyer’, that is to say as a kind of metaphysical pessimist who burst the aspirations of the tradition coming down from Plato and Aristotle. The younger generation, to be sure, particularly Fichte, saw things differently, positively instead of negatively. It is often considered a paradox that the period of German philosophy following on from Kant was marked not by a collapse of metaphysics but by a resurgence of hitherto unparalleled proportions. The philosophy of Fichte, who saw himself as a Kantian pure and simple, is worlds apart from what became the orthodox (anti-metaphysical, quasi-positivist) understanding of Kant in the mid-nineteenth century. But this situation reflects the complexity and ambiguity of Kant’s argument in the Critique of Pure Reason. In fundamental ways, not only Fichte but also Schelling and Hegel, are just as removed from pre-Kantian metaphysics as those who simply ‘reject metaphysics’ in the name of Kant. The burning question, after Kant, was whether metaphysics could be put on a new footing or must be abandoned altogether in favour of a theory of scientific knowledge. The German idealists sought a new metaphysical foundation, while those of a positivist orientation considered that science could stand firm in and of itself.

 

310. The Context of Kant. The idea of the limits of knowledge had a special resonance in Kant’s time, and continues to do so in our own, for those of a severely scientific temperament. Kant’s two Prefaces to the Critique of Pure Reason (to the first and second editions of 1781 and 1787) appeal in the first place to the mentality of scientific enlightenment. ‘Our age’, says Kant, ‘is the genuine age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected’. Mathematics and natural science are indicated as the paradigms of human knowledge, and the standards of proof belonging to these disciplines, the canons of criticism which make them possible, are to be employed in assessing traditional metaphysics. The verdict, namely that metaphysical knowledge is really pseudo-knowledge and mystification, could not but confirm the suspicion of those who looked askance at the ‘endless disputations’ of metaphysics, especially by contrast with the solid progress of the scientific disciplines. Kant’s finding that ‘the Unconditioned cannot be thought without contradiction’ meant that the very enterprise of metaphysics, as traditionally understood, was a mistake. If this was disappointing to some, it was a salutary disappointment from the point of view of critical reason, just the necessary demystification which belonged to intellectual maturity. It was the end of dreaming and a bracing of the mind for reality, a sobering up as an expression of human dignity.

 

311. Making Room for Faith. But Kant’s concern with the limits of knowledge has another dimension which, if overlooked, necessarily leads to a complete miscomprehension of his intentions and of his philosophy quite generally. This further dimension is indicated in Kant’s famous statement, in the Preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, that he ‘had to deny knowledge to make room for faith’. By ‘faith’ (Glaube) here Kant means ‘morality’, and as he explains both in this Preface and towards the end of the work, he sees the main value of his critique of reason to be its protection of morality from metaphysical contamination. The modern sciences need no such protection, for they have made their inexorable advances simply by ignoring metaphysics. On the other hand, morality suffers from the corrupting influence of metaphysics because of the link between morality and religion, and in particular because the latter has itself been understood in a metaphysical way. Religious discourse makes reference to certain ‘transcendent’ entities which, as existing beyond the limits of experience, cannot be objects of scientific knowledge. Metaphysics then presumes to speak ‘rationally’ about these entities. Thus, when religion becomes the foundation for morality, the pseudo-knowledge of metaphysics interferes with the purity of moral consciousness. Since morality requires purity above all else, metaphysics has a morally deleterious effect. Kant makes it abundantly clear that the main purpose of his philosophical critique of reason is to remedy this situation.

 

312. Metaphysics as Critique of Reason. Is a philosopher who ‘denies knowledge to make room for faith’ properly called the ‘all destroyer’? Would not ‘all protector’ be a more appropriate label for someone who makes safe a sphere (morality) possessing ‘absolute’ value as the sole seat of human dignity and worth? To be sure, within this sphere there is no possibility, according to Kant, of the kind of knowledge aspired to by traditional metaphysics. Nor, as can be seen from Kant’s Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, published in 1793, is traditional theology, that is Christian ecclesiastical doctrine, any better off in this regard: it too seeks knowledge of the highest good and it too founders on the limits of reason as demonstrated in the Critique of Pure Reason. Nevertheless, in 1785 Kant published his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, following this up in 1787 with the Critique of Practical Reason and then in 1797 the Metaphysics of Morals. What is contained in these works if not knowledge of morality? Indeed Kant even admits as much, but with the qualification that it is ‘transcendental’ rather than ‘theoretical’ knowledge. Metaphysics as ‘transcendental philosophy’ is possible after all. And it is possible not only in the negative function which predominates in the Critique of Pure Reason, the demarcation of the knowable from the unknowable, but in the positive function of addressing the ‘nature of morality’. Kant’s critique of metaphysics is a critique of a certain kind of theoretical metaphysics. It is precisely not a critique of the aspiration to know about that which has absolute value and worth, providing this knowledge is ‘transcendental’ and clearly understands its difference from theoretical knowledge. Metaphysics is to be vindicated in the context of a critique of reason.

 

313. Kant and Wolffian Metaphysics. An understanding of Kant’s critique of metaphysics depends on clarifying his interpretation of such fundamental concepts as truth, being, logic, reality and knowledge, naturally in their interconnections and in respect of Kant’s attitude to the previous metaphysical tradition. The Critique of Pure Reason has a certain scholastic appearance due to the fact that Kant sets out his problems within the context of the school metaphysics deriving from Christian Wolff, the great systematizer of Leibniz who between 1713 and 1725 published a series of treatises covering all parts of metaphysics. Wolff’s system was then itself simplified by Alexander Baumgarten in his Metaphysica (1739), a text which Kant routinely used in his lectures at the University of Königsberg. On Baumgarten’s conception, which is mirrored in the structure of the Critique of Pure Reason, metaphysics consists of two basic divisions, metaphysica generalis, which is otherwise called ‘ontology’, and metaphysica specialis in its three subdivisions of rational cosmology, rational psychology, and rational theology. As ontology, the metaphysica generalis sets out the universal concepts in which it is possible to think and speak of ‘being’: in essence it is a kind of logic, covering such problems as the nature of predication, possibility and necessity, unity, truth, reality, wholeness, sameness and difference. The three branches of metaphysica specialis then deal with the problems of world as totality (cosmology), the human soul (psychology), and God (theology). Kant’s critique of metaphysics in the Transcendental Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason is explicitly directed against the possibility of each branch of the metaphysica specialis. But this critique is itself grounded in Kant’s reform of metaphysica generalis as undertaken in the preceding Transcendental Analytic of the book. Kant’s critique of metaphysics is grounded in a new conception of ontology: ‘the honourable name of an ontology, which presumes to give synthetic a priori knowledge of all things whatsoever in a systematic doctrine, must give way to something more modest, a mere analytic of the pure understanding’.

 

314. Things and Appearances. Kant has reservations about using the term ‘ontology’ for his own transcendental philosophy, but this is because of the radical novelty of his own ontological conceptions. If ontology is ‘the science of all things in general’, its validity depends, for Kant, on what is meant by ‘things’. If this means things in themselves, as they are independently of their being given in experience, then, Kant considers, ontology is entirely misconceived, an impossible self-contradictory idea which was nevertheless the operative idea of all previous metaphysics, including in Leibniz, Wolff, and Baumgarten. But if ‘things’ means ‘appearances’, namely the total field of whatever can present itself to experience, then Kant’s transcendental analytic is indeed ontology and nothing but this. Here a certain obstacle to understanding can arise if talk of ‘appearances’ is taken to imply not ontology but epistemology. Heidegger in particular has stressed the fallaciousness of epistemological interpretations of the Critique of Pure Reason. This is not to deny that ‘knowledge’ is an issue for Kant. The point is that in Kant knowledge takes on an ontological function and that precisely in this does his novelty and his transformation of metaphysics consist. It is not wrong to think that there is theory of knowledge in Kant. What would be wrong would be to think that such a thing could exist independently of an ontology, or that anything else but an ontology could be the foundation of Kant’s new conception of metaphysics. Kant develops an ontology because he realizes that everything else in philosophy rests on ontological presuppositions. The position of ontology (metaphysica generalis) in Wolffian scholasticism reflects this same realization, which goes back to Aristotle in his treatises on ‘first philosophy’.

 

315. Metaphysics and Logic. In the Wolffian system ontology is a kind of logic. The first instalment of Wolff’s own series of metaphysical treatises, his version of the metaphysica generalis, bears the title Rational Thoughts on the Powers of Human Understanding (1713) and was more commonly known just as ‘the German Logic’. In fact the full title of Wolff’s book would have been entirely suitable for Kant’s transcendental analytic, which concerns the ‘understanding’ (Verstand) considered as a ‘faculty’ of human knowledge. Already with Wolff ontology was linked with the theory of knowledge and thus with logic as the universal form of knowledge. Again, this goes back to Aristotle and does not represent anything new in philosophy. What is new in Kant is the way in which theory of knowledge is brought into ontology. Kant’s ontology, his metaphysica generalis, is also a logic, but it is distinguished from earlier conceptions of logic by being ‘transcendental’. Actually the terminology and structure of the Critique of Pure Reason are not altogether perspicacious. The Transcendental Logic, occupying the bulk of the book, incorporates both the Transcendental Analytic, where basic ontological principles are set forth, and the Transcendental Dialectic, where these principles are applied for a critique of the three branches of metaphysica specialis. But basic ontological principles are also set forth in the brief Transcendental Aesthetic at the beginning of the book. Kant’s ontology, therefore, consists of the ‘logic’ developed in both the Transcendental Aesthetic and Transcendental Analytic. While this structural separation in the book may be misleading, it is an important clue to the novelty of Kant’s logic as ontology. For, as Heidegger among others has pertinently stressed, Kant’s revolution in metaphysics depends above all on his insights in the Transcendental Aesthetic. This is because the Transcendental Aesthetic thematizes the finitude, thus the limits, of human knowledge. For Wolff and Baumgarten, the logic which functions as metaphysica generalis (ontology) encompasses more than mere ‘formal’ logic, that is the rules of valid inference.  It is the study of the most general features of human understanding. That this takes the form of logic, focusing above all on the structure of judgement, is of course a non-trivial fact. Just why ontology, as the study of the universal characteristics of being, should resolve itself into the study of understanding as logical judgement, is a fundamental question which prior to Heidegger was hardly raised in the history of metaphysics. Wolff and Baumgarten do not raise this question, and neither does Kant. In presupposing that ontology must be prosecuted as logic Kant is therefore traditional. Even as regards Kant’s specific treatment of logic, his reliance on tradition is outwardly obvious from his dependence, in the Transcendental Analytic, on Aristotle’s table of judgements. Nevertheless, within this context of broad continuity, Kant does make a radical break from tradition in the way he interprets judgement. ‘I have never’, says Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason, ‘been able to accept the interpretation which logicians give of judgement in general’. Kant’s revision of the received doctrine of judgement is the key to the difference between the traditional logic of the metaphysica generalis and Kant’s own Transcendental Logic. This revision itself proceeds from the recognition, in the Transcendental Aesthetic, of the ‘passive’ dimension of human knowledge, that is to say its ‘sensory’ dimension, which means also its finitude, therefore its limits.

 

316. Finitude, Subjectivity and Idealism. Wolffian school metaphysics is the proximate intellectual context of Kant’s critique of metaphysics. This context will appear as restrictive, however, and Kant’s critique will seem of dubious general relevance, unless the Wolffian conception is itself understood as rooted in a long tradition stretching back, by way of Leibniz, to the founding of metaphysics in Plato and Aristotle. The doctrine of judgement is of central significance in this regard, for it is here that basic decisions are made as to the meaning of ‘truth’ and ‘being’. It is well known that Kant’s great innovation in the doctrine of judgement is his distinction between analytic and synthetic judgements. Precisely here the aforementioned passive dimension of knowledge is Kant’s operative idea. ‘Analytical judgements are those in which the connection of the subject to the predicate is thought through identity; those in which this connection is thought without identity should be entitled synthetic’. In Kant’s own examples, the judgement ‘all bodies are extended’ is analytic because the concept ‘extended’ is already included in (is identical with) the concept ‘body’, while the judgement ‘all bodies are heavy’ is synthetic because ‘heavy’ adds something to, thus is not identical with, the previously given concept. What this ‘adding’ of something means, however, is that in synthetic judgements the object itself, and not just the concept, must be in view. By contrast, through the mere analysis of a concept there can be no ‘adding’ because nothing is in view except the concept. It is clear, therefore, that Kant’s doctrine of judgement requires the possibility of ‘having an object in view’, that is to say the ‘givenness of an object’. Moreover it is precisely this desideratum which is missing in the received doctrine of judgement lying at the foundations of all previous metaphysics. On the traditional conception, for example in Wolff and Baumgarten, a judgement consists in a ‘relation between concepts’. This meant that metaphysical ‘knowledge’ could be generated by analysis of concepts, without reference to the givenness of objects. The result, as Kant sees it, was a web of abstractions which purported to be more than it was, that is, more than a set of definitions, for traditional metaphysics certainly believed it was ‘adding’ to human knowledge. But for Kant, it is not just that traditional metaphysics fails to see that all synthetic judgements require objects as well as concepts. More fundamentally still, what it fails to see is that concepts themselves require at least possible objects. In other words, a concept is intelligible or genuine only on condition that it is the concept of a possible object. ‘Concepts without intuitions are empty’ says Kant, and ‘intuitions without concepts are blind’. It not just that concepts await the ‘addition’ of intuition (i.e. sensory intuition, the faculty through which objects are given) in order that they should ‘gain’ meaning. Instead, intuition already plays a constitutive role in the formation of concepts. A concept with no relation to intuition is only a pseudo-concept. So not only does traditional metaphysics go astray in thinking it can widen knowledge simply by analysis of concepts, it compounds this error by using, and attempting to analyse, pseudo-concepts. Such is the situation, for example, in regard to the concept of soul in rational psychology, the first branch of metaphysica specialis criticized by Kant in the transcendental dialectic. Soul is a pseudo-concept because no object can be thought by means of it, thus rational psychology consists of nothing but pseudo-knowledge. Other examples of pseudo-concepts are ‘world’ (rational cosmology) and ‘the Unconditioned’ (rational theology).

 

317. The Ideal and the Real. Finitude. For Kant, then, the problem with traditional metaphysics is that it fails to recognise the necessary role of the object as sensorily given (thus intuition) in accounting for concepts and judgements. It is just this emphasis on the passive dimension of knowledge which is the genuine meaning of Kant’s Copernican revolution in metaphysics. The widespread view that Kant’s ‘subjectivism’ consists in his thesis that knowable reality is already categorized is a fundamental misconception, because this does not at all distinguish Kant from his metaphysical predecessors beginning with Plato and Aristotle. To be sure, Kant insists on the gulf between knowable reality (which he calls ‘appearance’) and things-in-themselves. But this gulf has nothing to do with an ‘idealism’ which would oppose itself to ‘realism’. Already in Plato the ideal is the real. Traditional metaphysics did not need to bridge the gulf between knowable reality and things-in-themselves, because the condition for seeing any gulf here was lacking. Only when the passive element of knowledge is brought to the forefront, the element which depends on the particular character of human sense organs, can any gulf be acknowledged. It is not enough to point out that the categories of knowable reality find their application only in human consciousness or that they depict reality only in the way ‘we’ think of it. For these categories themselves rely, in their very formation, on the passive element. Kant undermines the Greek metaphysical identity (or homology) between being-in-itself and the logos by attending to the fact that human knowledge is dependent, that humans are finite beings who can know nothing except through their contingently constituted sense organs. For the Greeks, by contrast, and then for the whole metaphysical tradition up to Kant, whatever the sense organs can ‘know’ is always less than ‘true reality’. How could it be that, in the history of metaphysics, the fact of human finitude was overlooked? Or more precisely, why were the consequences of this finitude not recognized? For in Greek and then in Scholastic metaphysics it was never denied that there were limits to knowledge: these limits were just placed ‘farther out’ than is the case with Kant. In one sense Kant’s argument in the Critique of Pure Reason reduces to the simple point that since knowledge depends on experience, it cannot relate to anything which transcends experience. Why then, for Kant, was the experiential character of all knowledge not acknowledged from the very beginning? Why were the theories of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and other metaphysicians, able to gain any credibility at all?

 

318. Errors of Reason. Kant’s answer is that people were mislead by ‘errors of reason’, that is errors [intrinsic] to reason itself. The error of metaphysics, the idea that one can have knowledge of what lies beyond experience, is in Kant’s view a “natural inclination” of human thinking. Nor is it a completely unadulterated error, for Kant himself does not want to abolish metaphysics. He wants to reform it, and to set it for the first time on a secure foundation. The way he does this, moreover, involves reference to something independent of experience, namely the a priori principles which make experience in the first place possible. Kant does not reject metaphysics in the manner of empiricism or materialism. He does not maintain that the only thing which can count as knowledge is naturalistic science. His own critique of reason is intended as knowledge of an especially fundamental sort, for only through this critique, he considers, can scientific knowledge receive its ultimate validation. Accordingly, the crucial distinction within Kant’s critique of metaphysics is between knowledge relating to a priori principles and knowledge relating to (transcendent) objects. The characteristic error of metaphysics occurs when this distinction is not with all proper vigilance observed. Kant’s attitude to Plato and Aristotle is particularly revealing in this regard. In the Critique of Pure Reason he states: ‘Plato made use of the expression “idea” in such a way as quite evidently to have meant by it something which not only can never be borrowed from the senses but far surpasses even the concepts of understanding (with which Aristotle occupied himself) inasmuch as in experience nothing is ever to be met with that is congruent with it. For Plato ideas are archetypes of the things themselves and not, in the manner of the categories, merely keys to possible experience’. For Kant, Plato belongs to ‘traditional metaphysics’ because he takes the ideas as ‘archetypes of the things themselves’ rather than, in Aristotelian fashion, as ‘keys to possible experience’. Not only does Kant adopt Aristotle’s term ‘categories’ for the a priori principles of human understanding identified in the transcendental analytic, but he holds to the very same table of categories as Aristotle. In a sense, therefore, Kant sees a critique of metaphysics already in Aristotle, although he clearly regards this as having been inadequately carried through. Later Kantians, notably the Neo-Kantian Paul Natorp, thought that Kant (indeed Aristotle too) went seriously astray in the interpretation of Plato. For Natorp, the Platonic ‘ideas’ are in fact what Kant takes the Aristotelian categories to be, namely a priori principles pertaining to the ‘possibility of experience’; accordingly, Plato should be recognized as the founder of the ‘transcendental idealism’ which was finally set on a rigorous footing by Kant and Neo-Kantianism. Natorp more or less reverses Kant’s estimation of Plato and Aristotle. But what is important in the present context is the distinction between a metaphysics which would theorize about transcendent objects and a metaphysics which inquires into the ideal, that is to say the a priori, structure of experience itself. As Kant says in his ‘Metaphysics’ lectures of 1782-83: ‘One should not have divided things into intelligibles and sensibles or noumena and phenomena, but rather said that our cognition is twofold (first intellectual and second sensitive), which would have prevented the coming about of a mystical concept of the intellectual which distances itself from the logical and through which metaphysics deteriorated into wild fantasy. They should not have divided philosophy in terms of objects’. The origin of traditional or ‘speculative’ metaphysics is the tendency of reason itself to confuse knowledge of ideal principles with knowledge of ideal objects. In denying the latter, Kant wishes to bring metaphysics back from ‘a mystical concept of the intellectual’ to ‘the logical’. This involves showing the way in which judgement, as the unquestioned vehicle of truth, relies on the givenness of objects: precisely the task of Kant’s ontology (metaphysica generalis, logic) in the Transcendental Aesthetic and Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason.

 

319. Metaphysics and the Transcendental Ideas. In the very first sentence of the Preface to the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant states that human reason ‘is burdened by questions which it is not able to ignore, for they are given by the nature of reason itself, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer’. These are the questions concerning soul, world, and God, exposed by Kant as pseudo-questions in the transcendental dialectic. They are pseudo-questions because they proceed from pseudo-concepts which infringe against the a priori conditions for concept formation, namely the possible givenness of an object in experience. But then, if they are ‘given by the nature of reason itself’, can they really be pseudo-questions? Kant maintains that reason has a natural inclination to confuse knowledge of principles with knowledge of objects, being thus led to believe in the possibility of knowing transcendent objects. Does this mean that, once this natural inclination is understood, and corrected by making the required distinction between transcendental principles and transcendent objects, the questions will disappear? In one sense this is so, for these questions will no longer be posed in their hitherto existing form. In another sense, however, not only will these questions not disappear, but they will, owing to the fact that they at last receive their fitting expression, become more unavoidable than ever. That this is so in Kant’s philosophy should be firmly borne in mind, especially in view of Kant’s strictures on what can count as knowledge. For if the questions belonging to the various branches of the metaphysica specialis are such that reason is not able to answer them, that no knowledge is attainable in this area, then one wonders why, according to Kant, philosophy should occupy itself with them at all. In fact, Kant’s view is that the questions of the metaphysica specialis are indeed discredited as ‘theoretical’ questions, but can attain their rightful status if reformulated as questions of ‘practical’ reason. Thus these questions are answerable after all, although in a different sense to theoretical questions. However, before looking at the problems attaching to this division of reason, so central to Kant’s philosophy as a whole, there are some conspicuous difficulties to consider in regard to theoretical reason itself. These difficulties pertain to the natural tendency of reason to transgress its proper limits, more particularly to think that knowledge can be obtained of objects which lie beyond all possible experience. Now for Kant, notwithstanding the fact that this natural inclination almost inevitably leads to illusion, it is by no means just a foreign body within reason or a disturbing influence on it; rather, there must be some rational function corresponding to this inclination. Kant assigns this function to what he calls ‘transcendental ideas’. The latter are not concepts, they cannot apply to any object given in experience, but they nonetheless perform a necessary ‘regulative’ function within theoretical reason. They have a legitimate and necessary ‘immanent’ employment within the sphere of experience, but their extension beyond this sphere is the characteristic error of all metaphysics hitherto. The transcendental ideas are first introduced at the beginning of the transcendental dialectic and in a sense constitute the basic subject matter of this part of the Critique of Pure Reason. There are three classes of transcendental ideas, corresponding to the three branches of metaphysica specialis: rational psychology is governed by the idea of the unity of the thinking subject, but errs in taking this unity as an object, namely the soul; rational cosmology is governed by the idea of the unity of all ‘appearances’ (objects of experience) in their serial order, but errs is taking this unity as itself an object, namely a ‘first cause’; rational theology is governed by the idea of the unity of all things, but errs in taking this as a kind of existing being, namely God.

 

320. The Residue of Metaphysics. The transcendental ideas are of pivotal importance in Kant’s philosophical system because they are essentially the ‘residue’ of traditional metaphysics. Soul, world, and God, are the ideas which sum up the concerns of metaphysics since Plato, reflecting that overarching interest in unity and totality indicated by Kant. For Kant, these ideas can no longer be regarded as concepts suitable for employment within complexes of theoretical knowledge: soul, world, and God cannot be the ‘subject matter’ of the branches of metaphysica specialis as traditionally conceived. So precisely what function do the transcendental ideas perform? Kant says they are ‘regulative’ within theoretical knowledge. In the scientific (theoretical) study of nature, for example, it is always necessary to broaden out the context of causal connections without limit. However comprehensive a causal schema may be, it is implicitly comprehended as incomplete because the ‘appearances’ with which it deals are only part of a totality; this totality can never be known as an object but must nevertheless be assumed as an ‘idea’ in the conduct of research. Similarly, Kant says, the idea of the soul has a regulative function in (empirical) psychology because it is necessary to understand all mental phenomena ‘as if’ they were grounded in a simple substance defined by immutability and personal identity. Finally, ‘in respect of theology’ (as Kant puts it), it is necessary to understand the whole realm of experience (appearances, theoretically knowable objects) by reference to an unconditioned ground. Kant’s ‘in respect of theology’ is clearly a problem, for theology is not on his account a theoretical science. But obscurities also attach to the supposedly ‘regulative’ function of the ideas in empirical psychology and cosmology (physics). Kant does not develop any concrete demonstration of such a function. In fact, these sciences need the transcendental ideas neither as concepts nor as specific methodological tools, for which reason they receive no mention in psychological or physical treatises. Of course, it may be that the ideas are in some sense presupposed by the theoretical sciences, in which case they could have a status akin to the a priori categories treated in the Transcendental Analytic. Kant’s criticism of the ‘hypostasizing’ of the ideas could then be understood by analogy with the point he makes against Plato in respect of the categories, namely that Plato treats as ‘objects’ what are really ‘keys to experience’. To be sure, the categorial structure of appearance is concretely exemplified in every item of empirical knowledge, whereas the manner in which the transcendental ideas are presupposed is rather different. Yet at bottom Kant does maintain that every experience of a particular object relates to soul, world, and the Unconditioned. In regard to soul, he maintains this in the Transcendental Analytic, where all knowledge is grounded in the pure ‘I’ of apperception. In the Transcendental Dialectic Kant’s point seems to be that all knowledge of particular objects must comprehend these as ‘in the world’. And in regard to the Unconditioned, Kant’s retention of the thing-in-itself testifies to his conviction that knowable reality is in some sense ontologically dependent.

 

321. Kant’s Reform of Metaphysics. The Critique of Pure Reason casts the transcendental ideas in a mainly negative light despite the fact that Kant asserts their necessity as ‘regulative’ principles. The whole weight of the transcendental dialectic is directed against the misapplication of these ideas, while their positive significance is alluded to rather than actually demonstrated. The overall impression can easily be that, correctly understood, the transcendental ideas are just harmless, perhaps altogether dispensable. From a systematic point of view, however, this is not a satisfactory way of interpreting Kant. The status of the transcendental ideas cannot be glossed over for it is precisely this which decides the fate of metaphysics as Kant sees it. In particular, the circumstance cannot be overlooked that Kant introduces the transcendental ideas right at the beginning of the Transcendental Dialectic, prior to his lengthy criticisms of the three branches of the metaphysica specialis. The transcendental ideas are presented as the fundamental ‘ideas’ of metaphysics, then Kant immediately goes over to criticize the way in which Wolffian school metaphysics applies these ideas within its various disciplines. Kant is perfectly aware that metaphysics is not equivalent to Wolffianism. He is further aware that neither is metaphysics equivalent to belief in knowledge of transcendent objects whether in Wolffianism or elsewhere. Soul, world, and the Unconditioned, are for Kant, and quite explicitly, metaphysical ideas which survive the criticism of hypostatization given in the transcendental dialectic. Kant’s reform of metaphysics by no means expunges these ideas in favour of a priori categories and forms, even within the realm of theoretical knowledge. Despite being left hanging in the Critique of Pure Reason, their very presence in this work indicates that Kant’s relation to previous metaphysics is not entirely discontinuous. Early on in the transcendental dialectic Kant states that ‘no objective deduction of the transcendental ideas, such as we could provide for the categories, is possible’, for the reason that they ‘have no relation to any object which could be congruent to them’. Owing to this circumstance, the transcendental ideas are of no help in understanding the inner structure of any particular item of empirical knowledge. To the extent that Kant’s new concept of metaphysics is equated with a theory of scientific knowledge the transcendental ideas will seem irrelevant, at best a speculative adjunct to his analysis of synthetic a priori judgements. It is unclear what philosophical program or ‘task’ could be associated with the transcendental ideas. If metaphysics after Kant is to remain oriented to knowledge, albeit no longer knowledge of transcendent objects but of the a priori conditions of empirical knowledge, the transcendental ideas can seemingly be ignored. This however is not Kant’s own attitude even within the Critique of Pure Reason itself, more especially within his wider system.

 

322. Neo-Kantian and Positivist Errors. It is a fundamentally unsound procedure, characteristic of Neo-Kantian and positivist interpretations, to treat the Critique of Pure Reason as a self-contained text, giving almost exclusive attention to the Transcendental Aesthetic and Analytic. To obtain an accurate picture of the Critique of Pure Reason, one should bear in mind that Kant originally intended to treat theoretical and practical reason together in one volume. Only when the first part of this project had already taken on vast dimensions did he decide to defer his treatment of practical reason for separate publication. For Kant himself, metaphysics is not primarily about theoretical knowledge, neither obtaining it in the first place nor analysing it post facto. To be sure, metaphysics is about reason, but this includes the transcendental ideas, which find their principle application in practical reason, the sphere of human freedom. On the other hand the transcendental ideas are also relevant to theoretical reason in a more fundamental sense than Kant explicitly acknowledges. If understood without hypostatization, the transcendental ideas can be said to determine Kant’s version of the metaphysica generalis, meaning the ontology or logic developed within the Transcendental Aesthetic and Analytic. Ontology itself is an enterprise responding to the idea of world totality. The pure ‘I’ of apperception, for Kant the ground of all cognitive synthesis, is an idea of soul not as a particular object but as in some sense coterminous with all reality. The ‘transcendental object’, unknowable X or thing-in-itself, is the idea of something utterly unconditioned. All these are operative ideas not only in the second but also in the first half of the Critique of Pure Reason, which is the part of the book most admired by Neo-Kantian and positivist critics of metaphysics. What interpretation of Kant must these critics adopt? The answer is clear: they must ‘demystify’ Kant by showing these metaphysical ideas to be not only inessential but disastrously misleading for the genuinely Kantian project. This they do by taking Kant’s ontology as a theory of scientific knowledge, and then, rejecting his ‘subjectivism’, abolishing both the apperceptive ‘I’ and the Thing-in-Itself. Concerning this procedure it may be remarked that there is a difference between failing to recognise the necessity of metaphysics in Kant and philosophically overcoming Kant’s metaphysics. It is not a matter of remaining true to the letter of Kant. Fichte, for example, saw the spirit of Kant as leading in a direction that Kant himself found repugnant, but his ideas were fruitful precisely because he saw the irreducibly metaphysical dimension of the Critique of Pure Reason. Fichte confirms the centrality of the transcendental ideas by reducing them to one, the idea of soul or ‘Absolute Ego’, making this the foundation of a new system (the Wissenschaftslehre) of ‘Kantian’ philosophy.  Such was the beginning of a line of thinking which led to Hegel’s supreme metaphysical idea of ‘Absolute Spirit’.

 

323. The Approach to Kant. What does it say about the Kantian philosophy that the first half of the Critique of Pure Reason – the Transcendental Analytic – which is least directly concerned with religious questions has also been the most influential of Kant’s writings? Despite the fact that the second half of this first Critique, as well as most of what Kant published thereafter, displays a distinct religious interest, his reputation over the past two centuries has rested mainly on the Transcendental Analytic which, with its rejection of speculative metaphysics and speculative theology is taken to support an attitude of scientific scepticism on religious questions. Although, of course, the Critique of Practical Reason, the Critique of Judgement, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, as well as Kant’s other writings of the 1780’s and 1790’s, have all received attention from Kant scholars, it remains true that when one today hears of a ‘Kantian’ outlook in philosophy this most likely refers to a standpoint inspired by Kant’s ‘Copernican revolution’ in the theory of knowledge, a revolution in which ‘objective reality’ is defined through pre-existing a priori structures of subjectivity conforming to the conceptuality of natural science. On the other hand, however incomplete a picture of Kant results from a one-sided focus on the Transcendental Analytic, there is a certain justification in seeing the latter as the systematic centre and foundation of the Kantian philosophy, especially as Kant takes this attitude himself. In all his writings subsequent to the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant recapitulates the fundamental standpoint of his critique of knowledge, and takes pains to show how his views on morality, religion, art, history and politics, are determined by that standpoint. Now it is quite possible for an author to misjudge the consequences of his fundamental philosophical position, particularly in respect of views which have their origins in extra-philosophical influences. If this occurs – as has been alleged of Kant’s treatment of morality and religion – then the possible implications of the fundamental philosophical position will have to be independently assessed. It will be necessary to distinguish between the real but implicit (inadequately developed) consequences of a fundamental standpoint, and the interpretation explicitly offered by the philosopher. In the case of Kant, this might mean that the Kantian ‘philosophy of religion’, properly and consistently understood according to the principles of the transcendental analytic, is something quite different from what we find in the texts directly concerned with this subject. Or it might mean that these texts go beyond what is strictly admissible on Kantian criteria, and must be pruned back, as it were, to discover a genuinely Kantian interpretation of religion.

 

324. Kant’s Philosophy of Religion. Kant himself is under no illusion that a ‘philosophy of religion’ is the same as a collection of ideas and opinions on religious subjects. As mentioned, he makes every effort to set his teachings on religion within the framework of his ‘critical’ philosophical standpoint, and he does not lack forthrightness in rejecting what he takes as incompatible with this standpoint in contemporary religious culture. It is not difficult to understand that Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone encountered problems with the Prussian censorship, with no less a personage than William Frederick II accusing Kant of misusing his philosophy ‘to undermine and debase many of the most important and fundamental doctrines of the Holy Scriptures and Christianity’. The irony was that by 1793, when Kant’s Religion book was published, the Protestant theologian Gottlob Christian Storr had for some years been teaching a kind of ‘Kantian’ (‘supranaturalistic’) theology at Tübingen University, based however on the Critique of Pure Reason. Storr, and other theologians of similar tendency, could not accept Kant’s book on religion because of its hostility to ecclesiastical doctrine, but they argued that Kant’s critique of knowledge, just because it showed that ‘noumenal’ reality is beyond the sphere of scientific understanding, provided a justification for ‘revelation’. If Kant himself would tolerate no such thing, it could be pointed out that there are aspects of Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone which, on his own admission in the text, go beyond the limits of reason. At this time in Germany, it seemed that just about every possible standpoint from scientific agnosticism to orthodox ecclesiastical dogmatism was somewhere calling itself ‘Kantian’ and attempting thereby to enhance its credentials. What then was the true Kantian position on religion? An overly ‘purist’ or ‘formalist’ approach to Kant’s philosophy of religion would restrict itself to an examination of the principles set forth in the Critique of Pure Reason in their possible application to religious questions. As far as Kant’s writings on religion are concerned, it would investigate to what extent these are consistent with the basic standpoint of the critical philosophy, and to what extent new fundamental principles are introduced. Opinions on religion expressed by Kant, or attitudes evinced by him, would be of no particular interest in themselves, but only in so far as they related to the basic standpoint. An overly ‘empirical’ approach, on the other hand, would merely document such opinions and attitudes. Neither approach is adequate, because the first exaggerates, while the second under-rates, the significance of Kant’s systematic conceptions. While it is certainly true that the system of the Critique of Pure Reason governs all Kant’s subsequent writings, it may be that, at various points and perhaps especially with regard to religion, this system takes on more the character of an external scaffolding than of a productive, energizing ground. Further, that Kant was able to subsume all his basic philosophical intuitions within the system of the first Critique is a most unreasonable assumption. It is arguable that Kant was too attached to his system, but he was not so subservient to it that he was unwilling to stretch it, even to burst it (though he never admits to this) when the occasion demands. If this is so, and if we are interested not so much in Kant’s overt system as in the underlying unity of his thought, we shall not be justified in overlooking any of his writings, however much they appear to be disconnected from, or in contradiction with, the principles of his system. Indeed, it is likely that such writings would inform us of where and why Kant found his system insufficient, and that they would therefore direct us to his original guiding ideas. To be sure, one can only speak of a strict ‘Kantian’ philosophy by appeal to the system, and one cannot meaningfully examine Kant’s thought independently of his system, but to do justice to Kant as a philosopher one must also get behind the surface conceptuality to an intuitive grasp of his problems. As we shall see, these problems have much to with religion.

 

325. Life of Kant. Born in Königsberg in 1724, Kant was brought up within the Pietist Christianity of the area, attending, from 1732 till 1740, the Collegium Fridericianum, then under the directorship of the influential moderate (‘rationalistic’) Pietist scholar and churchman Franz Albert Schultz. Enrolling at the University of Königsberg in 1740, Kant pursued scientific and philosophical studies, becoming particularly attracted to the Wolffian (and Pietistic) rationalism of Martin Knutzen. After leaving the university he worked for some years as a house-tutor (the much lamented fate of so many leading thinkers, including Fichte and Hegel), but in 1755 obtained the position of Privatdozent at the University of Königsberg, where he gained a brilliant reputation teaching logic, metaphysics, and various subjects in natural science. It was another fifteen years before he attained a full professorship at Königsberg. Kant’s earliest publications concerned mainly scientific topics (especially contentious issues around Newtonian physics), but from around 1755 there began his so-called ‘pre-critical’ period, where, although adhering basically to the then dominant Wolffian-Leibnizian philosophy, he makes his way, very gradually, to his mature outlook. About 1766 the first glimmerings of the critical standpoint started to appear in Kant’s writings, but he was still a long way from adequate clarity. After obtaining his professorship in 1770, Kant ceased publication for eleven years, during which time he developed, and worked on a comprehensive statement of, his new philosophical position. The Critique of Pure Reason, published in 1781, is this statement, and ushers in a period of extraordinary productivity resulting in his two other Critiques, his books on the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of religion, and many shorter works. Although the first Critique was initially greeted with incomprehension, when Kant died in 1804 he had been, for some ten years, the most famous philosopher in the world. Resident his whole life in the cosmopolitan city of Königsberg or its immediate environs, Kant became, well before attaining his critical standpoint, thoroughly imbued with the outlook of the German Enlightenment. This meant, as far as religion was concerned, that no compromises could be made with reason. Up until the late 1760’s it also meant, for Kant, the traditional project, most eminently represented in the Leibnizian philosophy of Christian Wolff, of a ‘natural’ or ‘rational’ theology. About this time, however, Kant began to consider the possibility that the rational justification of religion (more precisely, of belief in God) might be distinguished from the reconciliation of the religious attitude, as the ‘feeling’ for the good, with the principles of scientific rationality. This idea, which was influenced by Kant’s Pietist upbringing as well as by his study of the British moralists and Rousseau, eventually led to his famous statement, in the Preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, that he had found it necessary ‘to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith’. What Kant meant by ‘faith’ was only partially indicated in the Critique of Pure Reason itself, but in later works, especially the Critique of Practical Reason and the Religion book, it emerged that, on his conception, faith was in one sense very much less, in another sense very much more, than it was commonly taken to be: very much less in its complete independence of ecclesiastical doctrine, including all references to ‘revelation’, and very much more in its purity and autonomy, in the uncompromising character of what he called the ‘categorical imperative’. Whether Kant was really, as is sometimes maintained, ‘genuinely religious’, is a question which has little meaning in itself, for what he attempted was a reinterpretation of the concept ‘religion’. It is reported that, at the University of Königsberg, Kant regularly left the academic procession at the entrance to the church, and in the Religion book there is some suggestion that church-going may even be against the true spirit of religion. Although he had a good knowledge of and great respect for the New Testament, this, like his study of theological dogmatics, was always subject to his fundamental philosophical outlook.

 

326. Fichte and the Atheism Controversy. Kant’s 1792 dispute with the Prussian censorship was a minor affair, known only to a few people in Germany. The matter was handled by Kant in a characteristically conciliatory fashion: he assured the authorities that in no way did he intend to undermine the state religion, and that, in any case, he would refrain from further comment on religious matters either in lectures or in print. How different was the controversy, only six years later in 1798-99, around the alleged ‘atheism’ of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the protégé of Kant and holder of the Kantian chair of philosophy at Jena, Germany’s leading university. Fichte had become famous overnight in 1792 when Kant revealed that not he himself, but Fichte, was the author of a recently published anonymous work Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation. This book, in the brief interval between publication and Kant’s declaration, had been widely taken as Kant’s long-awaited study of religion (which would actually appear in the following year) and had been hailed by leading Kantians (most notably Karl Reinhold) as itself a revelation. When Kant made the real author known, at the same time making approving comments on the work, Fichte’s reputation was immediately established. Appointed to the Kantian chair at Jena after Reinhold’s departure in 1794, Fichte taught to overflowing lecture halls, a circumstance, however, which was due more to two provocative political articles from 1793 (on freedom of thought in Europe, and on the French Revolution) than to his Revelation book. Over the next five years, by radicalizing Kantianism in his so-called Wissenschaftslehre, Fichte became the most fashionable philosopher in Germany, attracting leading young thinkers (for example Schelling and Hölderlin) to his cause. Yet the spirit which had called Kant to order was by no means dead. What became famous as the ‘atheism controversy’ erupted in October 1798 when Fichte published two articles, one by himself and the other by a certain Karl Forberg, in his own Philosophical Journal. Almost immediately thereafter there came into circulation an anonymous pamphlet (signed only with the initial ‘G’, the author is still not known to the present day) entitled ‘Letter of a Father to His Studying Son Concerning the Fichtean and Forbergian Atheism’. Prompted by this pamphlet and other innuendos from religious conservatives, the government of Saxony issued in November a rescript condemning the two controversial articles, and ordering the confiscation of the offending number of the journal. If Fichte had reacted as had Kant in 1792, the affair would undoubtedly have blown over, but for the ‘fiery Fichte’, possessor of a completely different temperament to that of the Königsbergian philosopher, the thought of compromise could not be entertained. Instead, in the first months of 1799, he published two lengthy pamphlets virulently attacking his accusers and indignantly demanding that his reputation be restored. Moreover, he wrote to the government authorities not only refusing to accept any guilt, but threatening to resign from the university in the event of any further official censure. The government took this as in fact a resignation and accepted it forthwith. By the middle of 1799, Fichte was living in Berlin. Although the atheism controversy lasted for just a little over six months, it had a lasting impact on German intellectual life. While the controversy raged, the whole of educated Germany looked on as polemical literature, pro and contra Fichte, flooded the market. In the main, Fichte emerged from the affair (despite alienating himself from some supporters, among them Jacobi, Lavater, and the ageing Kant) in a better light than his opponents, indeed as kind of philosophical martyr. The chief documents of the controversy reveal that basically the Kantian ‘moral interpretation’ of religion was at issue. It was a dispute which could have taken place around Kant himself in 1792, if he had not nipped this possibility in the bud. However, not only was Fichte a younger and more combative man, but he professed a more uncompromising Kantianism than Kant himself, a purified and consistent Kantianism as he saw it, or, as he also liked to say, a philosophy which was truly in ‘the spirit’, while superseding ‘the letter’, of Kant. The atheism controversy sharpened the contours of German philosophical debate around religion, and reinstalled the ‘question of God’ to a central place in philosophy as such. It is significant that, in the years immediately preceding the controversy, when Fichte was developing and propounding his Wissenschaftslehre, this question had fallen somewhat into limbo. Whether Fichte’s philosophy of the ‘absolute ego’ and its ‘productive acts’ was something which would substitute for religion, whether Fichte had not yet gotten around to this latter subject, or whether he would leave it out of account altogether as insusceptible of philosophical treatment (the status of his Revelation book vis-a-vis the Wissenschaftslehre was problematic), all this remained unclear. It was predictable that those religious conservatives who were suspicious of Fichte’s political radicalism and baffled by the Wissenschaftslehre would seize the opportunity, when in 1798 he at last did express himself on religious matters, to argue that ‘after all’ this new-fangled and well-nigh incomprehensible philosophy amounted to atheism. Fichte rejected the charge, but from this time the question of God and the religious life took on new prominence in his thought. The philosophical justification of religion remained as the dominant theme of his subsequent literary endeavours.

 

327. Fichte and Absolute Idealism. Fichte is generally recognized as the founder of German ‘absolute idealism’. Like his successors Schelling and Hegel, his original interests were more directly theological than was the case with Kant. Born in 1762 of a poor family in Rammenau, Saxony, his precocious intellect (demonstrated, so the story goes, by his ability to repeat church sermons verbatim) won him the patronage of a local nobleman, and, in 1774, a place at the famous Pforta school, later attended by Nietzsche. When he began theological studies at the University of Jena in 1780, Fichte had already imbibed the spirit of the German Aufklärung, which in religious questions meant the spirit of Lessing and in particular of Lessing’s Antigoeze, that great polemical tract which still fortified Fichte during the atheism imbroglio. After studying for a time also at Wittenberg and Leipzig, by 1784 Fichte was forced by financial circumstances (his degree would never be completed) into various positions as house-tutor. Fichte produced no writings of substance in the years 1784-1790, indeed there is nothing at all to presage his future achievements. In 1789 he was still hoping to obtain ordination as a country pastor, but even this plan did not come to fruition, and he was forced to continue with private lessons to earn a living. The transformation came in 1790, when, in order to give some lessons on Kant, Fichte immersed himself in the second Critique. ‘I have been living in a new world ever since reading the Critique of Practical Reason’ he confided to a correspondent, ‘Propositions which I thought could never be overturned have been overturned for me. Things have been proved to me which I never thought could be proven – e.g. the concept of absolute freedom, the concept of duty etc. – and I feel all the happier for it’. This new fervour for Kantianism led Fichte in 1791 to Königsberg for an interview with the man himself, and then to the hasty composition of Attempt at a Critique of all Revelation, the publication of which in 1792 was expedited by Kant. Fichte was appointed Reinhold’s successor in Jena two years later, enjoying a short but brilliant career before moving to Berlin in the wake of the atheism controversy. Apart from brief periods in Erlangen and Königsberg, he spent the rest of his life in Berlin, initially living from his literary activities and public lectures, later (from 1810) as professor of philosophy at the newly established University of Berlin. He died in 1814. Although Fichte’s fame and influence rest squarely with the publications of his Jena years, his later works are also of great interest, especially as regards philosophy of religion. This subject became the focus of Fichte’s thought after leaving Jena: in both his public lectures and more technical philosophical expositions (which continued to be ever new presentations and reformulations of the original Wissenschaftslehre) he was concerned to show that all philosophical questions lead back to God as the primal creative reality. Some commentators have seen this religio-theological emphasis after 1800 as a revision or even complete transformation of his Jena philosophy of the ‘absolute ego’, but Fichte himself did not see the matter in this way. To understand the relation between the Jena and the Berlin Fichte, one must bear in mind the pre-Jena Fichte, the student of theology, prospective Protestant pastor, and author of Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation. At Jena Fichte developed what remained thereafter his basic philosophical framework, while in Berlin he returned more to his origins, in order to reaffirm the fundamental religious orientation of his thought. Fichte’s 1805-6 lectures on The Way to the Blessed Life constitute one of the most important documents of German idealism, the first truly idealist philosophy of religion.

 

328. The Critique of Revelation. In his Revelation book Fichte is not yet truly Fichte. The framework of the study is essentially ‘orthodox’ Kantianism, and the internal tensions of Kantianism observed in the previous chapter can once again be seen. Indeed, these internal tensions are in considerable degree accentuated in Fichte’s book, which makes it particularly instructive for understanding the limits of Kantianism as well as Fichte’s transformation of Kantianism a few years later. The ‘orthodoxy’ of Revelation consists above all in Fichte’s adherence to Kantian dualism, the ontological distinction between sensible and noumenal spheres. We saw earlier that, although Kant gives noumenal reality a kind of priority over sensible reality, the two remain ultimately independent and irreducible spheres, lacking a clear unitary principle. In his later Wissenschaftslehre, Fichte set out to rectify this situation, by swallowing up the sensible entirely within the noumenal, but in 1791-92 he had not yet come to this standpoint. Instead, the concept of revelation defended by the pre-Fichtean Fichte depends upon Kantian dualism, at the same time implicitly indicating the incompatibility of this with a purely ‘moral’ interpretation of religion. The basic line of argument in Revelation parallels Kant’s reasoning concerning the practical postulates: the a priori givenness of the moral law is taken as an unproblematic starting point, and then questions are raised about the consequences of this vis-a-vis man’s sensible nature. On one point, however, Fichte goes beyond Kant, in that he holds the very representation of God (as moral law-giver) to be a concession to the sensible side of man. While the moral law is autonomous and commands unconditionally, it may not, says Fichte, always on its own be efficacious in determining the will of concrete human beings. The representation of God adds a certain ‘gravity’ to the moral law, in certain cases making obedience to it more likely. If the moral law is commanded by God, then disobedience is not only irrational, but ‘the highest foolishness’. Now of course, the question here is whether the additional motivation provided by the representation of God is itself purely moral, whether it is empirical, or some mixture of the two. The first alternative seems impossible, for, by hypothesis, this representation is required when purely moral motivations prove insufficient to determine the will. On the other hand, if it were an empirical motivation this would be heteronomy of will, and thus undercut the Kantian position on morality. Finally, no mixture of the two kinds of motivations seems possible from a Kantian standpoint. In what sense is it the highest foolishness to disobey God? Fichte indicates clearly enough that any idea of God as dispenser of punishment is (in line with Kant’s purely moral conception of divinity) philosophically unacceptable: at bottom it would simply be superstition to fear the consequences of disobeying the law of God. Yet if the foolishness alluded to by Fichte is purely moral in nature, namely the folly of allowing oneself to become morally corrupt, then it would seem that no representation of God is necessary. All this follows simply from the logic of Kantianism. However, Fichte also sees, albeit without complete clarity, that this logic is deficient. For is not the whole human being the actual willing subject? Implicitly at least, Fichte subverts Kantian dualism by insinuating moral determinations into the empirical sphere. The fact that Fichte does not openly acknowledge this as a fundamental revision of Kantianism results in the Revelation book taking on a vacillating, even contradictory appearance. That the same hesitations and inconsistencies are (as noted in the previous chapter) also characteristic of Kant’s Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, confirms the limitations of the Kantian standpoint.

 

329. Fichte’s Concept of God. Since Fichte endorses Kant’s idea of God as a ‘postulate of practical reason’, he is ultimately indecisive as to whether the representation of God is a concession to human sensibility. Or rather, Fichte distinguishes between those determinations of God given ‘wholly and alone by the moral law’ and those which ‘belong to him in relation to the possibility of finite moral beings’. Whereas the first set of determinations present God only as ‘the ideal of all moral perfection’, the second ‘present him as the supreme world sovereign according to moral laws, as judge of all rational spirits’. It is this second set of determinations which are efficacious in the world of sense, lending additional ‘gravity’ to the moral law. Now the specific mechanism of this efficaciousness, its condition of possibility, is what Fichte understands by ‘revelation’. For Fichte, in other words, revelation is a ‘special appearance in the world of sense’ which is (or may be) efficacious for the highest demands of morality. His task in Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation is to demonstrate the bare possibility of revelation in this sense. Fichte stresses himself the minimalist character of his enterprise. He does not set out to show that any particular revelation is true or in any way privileged, nor to establish that there have, in the course of history, been any genuine revelations. He does not even assert – indeed he asserts the contrary – that revelation is necessary for genuine religious consciousness. Fichte gives various criteria for the authenticity of revelations, but on the other hand acknowledges that no one except God is in a position to judge whether, in particular cases of purported revelation, these are fully met. Although negative judgements on this matter are possible, so that various kinds of purported revelations can be rationally dismissed, a degree of uncertainty will always attach to positive judgements. In the final analysis, Fichte ‘saves’ or ‘justifies’ the concept of revelation only in the sense that proponents of revealed religion may under certain circumstances be able to rationally assert the possibility that they are not in error. If it seems that this provides little succour to the orthodox Christian theologian, one should remember that much can be made of little. Fichte is content to leave the door open, albeit ever so slightly.

 

330. Moral Content of Revelation. The primary criterion for a genuine revelation is that its content be purely moral. If a revelation purports to provide any kind of theoretical knowledge, or anything at all beyond a purely moral message, then it cannot be from God and cannot be genuine. Morality is an expression of freedom, so any purported revelation which translates into coercion, persecution, or blind ritualism will be inauthentic. A revelation, says Fichte, gives sensuous representation to the (Kantian) ideas of God, freedom, and immortality, but can only be genuine in so far as these representations are given ‘not as objectively, but only as subjectively valid’. Fichte further indicates that he is not necessarily opposed to what are called the ‘dogmatics’ of religion, as long as the content thereof is accorded merely ‘subjective validity’, and as long as ‘inferences’ are not drawn from dogmatic propositions. It would seem, for example, that a sensuous representation of God as ‘judge of all rational spirits’ would be a possible authentic revelation, and that doctrines concerning God’s judging activity might possibly be acceptable, so long as it is recognized that God is not ‘objectively’ a judge and that doctrines concerning his judging have no ‘objective’ implications. However, as we have already seen in respect of Kant, it is not obvious that such suggestions are intelligible. Because there are no clear limits on the kinds of sensuous representations which can be taken as ‘subjectively valid’, anything at all is seemingly a candidate for revelation. To be sure, Fichte makes harmony with the moral law necessary for authentic revelation, but this does not really help, for it is arguable that even the representation of God as judge (dispenser of rewards and punishments) contradicts the spirit of pure morality. The fact that Fichte’s whole discussion proceeds at a high level of abstraction, with no analysis of historical examples of purported revelation, reinforces the suspicion that his criteria of authenticity (which ultimately reduce to one, namely moral purity) cannot perform the discriminating task required of them. Fichte is not unaware of the difficulty of his basic position. He admits, for example, that because rational acceptance of a revelation presupposes the complete development of moral feeling, ‘the divine authority on which a given revelation could be based appears to lose its entire utility as soon as it becomes possible to acknowledge it.’ He further concedes that ‘it would be far more honourable for mankind if natural [i.e. purely moral] religion were always sufficient to determine men in every case to obedience of the moral law’, and that ‘from a rational point of view a faith is not possible in any teaching that is possible only through revelation’. After applying the criteria, says Fichte, ‘it becomes merely problematic that anything at all could be a revelation’, though, he adds, ‘this problematic judgment is also completely certain.’ Indeed, Fichte goes so far as to say that ‘acceptance of a certain appearance as divine revelation is based on nothing more than a wish’, and that ‘faith in revelation not only cannot be forced but also cannot even be expected or required of everyone’. This may still leave some narrow scope for revelation, but the status of the idea is drastically reduced from that which it enjoys in orthodox theology. At best, a revelation can be nothing more than an auxiliary aid or prompt from the world of sense, which reinforces, for those who regrettably need such reinforcement, pre- existing moral convictions. It cannot first of all awaken the moral feeling, nor can it substitute for morality, nor can it add anything essential to morality. Under these circumstances, one may wonder why Fichte does not simply abolish it as a concept. As we shall presently see, this is, in effect, the option he takes a few years later after his turn to the Wissenschaftslehre. However, the fact that Fichte cannot, while still in this early Kantian stage, dispense with the concept altogether, indicates something more than a lingering sentimentality for the doctrines of the Lutheran Church. As already mentioned, at a more profound level it shows Fichte’s awareness of the untenability of Kantian dualism. If morality is locked up in a noumenal realm, if empirical determinations of the will are external to the moral subject, then it does not seem possible to in any way account for the ‘reality’ and ‘efficacy’ of the moral law. What wills morally is something of merely ‘spiritual’ status, while what wills ‘objectively’ (in Kant’s sense of ‘objective reality’) is something which can never be moral. Fichte’s solution in Wissenschaftslehre is to replace dualism with a thorough-going spiritual monism.

 

331. The Radicalization of Kantianism in Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre. On the surface, Fichte’s programme of a Wissenschaftslehre, as presented in the main writings of his Jena period, does not directly relate to questions in the philosophy of religion. This appearance, however, is deceptive. The actual situation with respect to the Wissenschaftslehre is analogous to the situation with Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Neither did this latter book seem, to its initial readers, to be directly occupied with religious questions. But when the Critique of Practical Reason appeared, and when in the Preface to the second edition of the first Critique Kant described his project as ‘denying knowledge to make room for faith’, things looked different. By the time Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone was published in 1793, it could easily seem that the first Critique was really a long and complicated prelude to Kant’s main concern, namely the defence of a ‘purely moral’ conception of religion. That the topic of religion (or theology) must be preceded by and situated within an overarching philosophical framework had been recognized in Wolffian school metaphysics, where philosophical theology, as a branch of metaphysica specialis, was subordinated to metaphysical generalis as universal ontology. Like Kant’s ‘transcendental analytic’, Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre is a kind of metaphysica generalis. The problems it sets itself are already implicit in the difficulties Fichte encountered in his Revelation study. As observed, what stood in the way of the full realization of moral will, what made the efficacy of the moral law so problematic, was the independent existence (on orthodox Kantian premises) of an independent ‘phenomenal’ or ‘sensible’ sphere, which by its very nature could not admit the intrusion of moral causality. In the years 1793-94, Fichte comes to see that, if morality (and therefore religion) were to be justified, this external barrier must be done away with. This could only be accomplished by transforming Kantianism into a thoroughgoing ‘idealism’. Yet Fichte does not understand his project as actually overturning Kantianism. Instead, he distinguishes between the ‘spirit’ and the ‘letter’ of Kant, insisting that only in the Wissenschaftslehre does the former attain proper fulfilment. For Fichte, Kant’s decisive achievement was to have recognized, albeit incompletely, the creative power of the transcendental subject: the ‘Copernican revolution’ in philosophy meant that it was possible to understand the apparent ‘external world’ as a product of the knowing subject. At the same time, however, Kant compromised this standpoint through his concept of the Thing-in-itself, which, supposedly, stood stubbornly outside the reach of subjective determination. This led, in Fichte’s view, to a myriad of obscurities and contradictions in Kant’s system. In particular, Kant assimilated this Thing-in-itself to the noumenal realm, the kind of being enjoyed by the transcendental subject, and set this over against the phenomenal realm created by this subject. There could be no empirical determinations in the noumenal realm, and no noumenal determinations in the empirical-phenomenal world. Man himself was split in two, with no clear way of understanding the interaction between his two sides, and possessing no principle of unity. Fichte seeks to cut through these difficulties by doing away entirely with the Thing-in-itself and thus with any ontologically fundamental distinction between noumena and phenomena. The transcendental subject, or what Fichte calls the ‘absolute ego’, now becomes the first principle of reality, the creative force behind everything whatsoever in the world.

 

332. Idealism and Ordinary Understanding. Fichte is not the least bit disturbed by the conflict of idealism with ordinary understanding. The ‘dogmatic’ standpoint, which assumes the existence of things independently of consciousness, is natural to unreflective human beings, and even philosophers (for example Kant with his Thing-in-Itself) have difficulty overcoming it. Idealism cannot ‘prove’ itself to dogmatism, because as a basic philosophical standpoint it is self-certifying. First principles cannot be proved, but can only be intuited in their self-evidence. Every human being is aware of two sets of representations: those accompanied by a feeling of necessity, and those accompanied by a feeling of freedom. These two sets of representations are in opposition, and a resolution must be made one way or another. Dogmatism gives priority to the first set, idealism to the second. While dogmatists see themselves as determined by things outside of them, idealists see these same things as determined by their own subjective activity. Neither side can establish itself against the other, for each, says Fichte, is ultimately the expression of a distinctive type of personality. The dogmatists are those who ‘have not yet raised themselves to full consciousness of their freedom and absolute independence’ and, as a consequence, ‘have only that dispersed self-consciousness which attaches to objects’, while the idealist is one ‘who becomes conscious of his self-sufficiency and independence of everything outside himself’ and who ‘does not need things for the support of himself, and cannot use them, because they destroy that self-sufficiency’. Of course, Fichte does not mean that in the dispute between dogmatism and idealism there is no truth of the matter. What he means is that no intersubjective standpoint exists which can force dogmatism to yield to idealism. The truth of idealism is given in unmediated ‘intellectual intuition’, in consciousness of one’s free subjectivity as the source of all certainty. This intuition is pre-conceptual, and as such can be neither communicated nor authenticated to someone who does not already possess it. If dogmatists assert that they have no notion of what intellectual intuition could be, and that they have no idea of how the independent existence of things could be denied, then, quite simply, nothing can be done for them. At best, one can await their ‘awakening’ to the standpoint of idealism, at which point discussion can begin. It is a matter of logic that first principles cannot be demonstrated and it is a matter of empirical fact that not everyone grasps first principles. In taking self-consciousness as the first principle of philosophy Fichte does not see himself as propounding anything novel: this had been done by Descartes, the British empiricists, and Kant. But in Fichte’s view all previous systems of subjectivism (idealism) had been half-hearted, ultimately coming to some kind of compromise with dogmatism. The Wissenschaftslehre would be the first absolutely consistent system of idealist philosophy.

 

333. Intellectual Intuition. For Fichte, although the idealist standpoint itself, thus the ontological character of the absolute ego as the source of all reality, can be grasped only through intellectual intuition and remains strictly unconceptualizable, its creative activity is governed by a priori laws which are open to conceptual investigation. The explanatory value of the absolute ego must be demonstrated through a ‘descending dialectic’ (precisely the Wissenchaftslehre) yielding the entire system of experience. As a first step, Fichte deduces, from the character of the ego as ‘act’, the existence of the non-ego. In its nature as free activity, the ego affirms or ‘posits’ itself, but it can only do so by setting something over against itself, by distinguishing itself from what is other than ego. This non-ego embraces the whole sphere of what Kant called ‘phenomena’, i.e. the realm of objectivities susceptible of theoretical cognition. Fichte differs from Kant, however, in that he recognizes no Thing-in-itself lying outside the sphere of subjective determination. Nor, in Fichte’s system, is there any ontological gulf between phenomenal reality and the noumenal being of the ego. Instead of two hermetically sealed ontological domains, governed by two fundamentally different kinds of causality, it is a matter, for Fichte, of different levels of the absolute ego’s self-expression. The difficulty of orthodox Kantianism noticed in the foregoing discussion of Fichte’s Revelation book, namely that the efficacy of moral willing is blocked by the impenetrable otherness of the empirical self, is thus overcome, for the latter is just another aspect of the non-ego as posited by the absolute ego itself. Fichte’s position is intelligible only if the ethical character of his idealism is firmly borne in mind. The absolute ego is ‘act’ in the sense of free moral self-determination. Theoretical cognition occurs only in and through the activity of the ego. It is by no means Fichte’s thesis that the world is a system of theoretical representations. Rather, what Fichte originally found in Kant, and what will remain determinative for Fichte’s whole philosophical career, is the idea that reason, as revealed in the will of the rational subject, is essentially practical. However, whereas in orthodox Kantianism the moral subject ‘encounters’ an objective world (‘caused’ by the Thing-in-itself as much as ‘formed’ by subjectivity), for Fichte this world is just the product, or posit, of the absolute ego. The objective world is posited as the field for the ego’s moral activity: because the ego can only realize its essential moral nature through concrete actions in the world, it posits the world. Here again it is necessary, if Fichte’s standpoint is not to be dismissed as utterly bizarre, to attend precisely to his meaning. It would of course be nonsense to suggest that the individual finite ego ‘produces’ the objective world for the convenience of its own finite aims. But the absolute ego is not at all the individual finite ego, no more than the Kantian transcendental self is the same as the empirical self. For Fichte, the absolute ego has the status of first ontological principle: it is the ground of all reality and as such supra-individual. As we shall observe, in later writings Fichte adopts the terms ‘Being’ and ‘Life’ to convey the same basic meaning. Kant did not go quite this far with his own concept of the transcendental self, but only, Fichte considers, because he was held back by the lingering dogmatic postulate of the Thing-in-itself. Once this postulate is excised from Kantianism, logic dictates, for Fichte at any rate, the position of the Wissenschaftslehre. The reason that Fichte initially calls his primary ontological principle ‘ego’ is simply that it possesses egological characteristics: it is free, it acts, it seeks to realize itself, and further, just as with the finite ego, there is no ‘it’, no ‘self’, over and above activity. Notwithstanding his later variations in terminology, Fichte’s ontological first principle will always remain egological in this sense.

 

334. Religious Character of Fichte’s Idealism. It is not clear how, within Fichte’s system of idealism, a ‘question of God’ can arise, and indeed it does not arise in the original version of the Wissenschaftslehre published in 1794. In particular, there is no need to assume the existence of God as a ‘postulate of practical reason’, because there is no disharmony between the moral will and ‘external’ nature. If the Kantian formula for religion as the ‘recognition of all duties as divine commands’ still has validity for Fichte, it can only be through equating God with the absolute ego itself. This seems to be Fichte’s implicit position already in 1794, but it does not come out into the open until his writings of the atheism controversy and more especially his post-Jena writings. However, even without an explicit concept of God, the religious overtones of Fichte’s idealism are unmistakable. Individuals approach the truth in the degree to which they assimilate the idealist standpoint, in the degree to which they affirm themselves as finite expressions of the absolute ego as supra-personal moral will. This means recognizing ‘objective’ or ‘sensory’ reality as mere material for the fulfilment of a moral purpose. The analogue of ‘sin’ in Fichtean idealism is ‘dogmatism’: the standpoint wherein individuals, alienated from their essential moral nature, interpret their being from external things. For Fichte, this is actually the general condition of human beings not only in modern society, but in all periods of history. Philosophy, in its attempt to bring individuals into possession of their true vocation, must always contend with the stubborn resistance of the dogmatic standpoint. Whether philosophy succeeds in particular cases depends on the degree to which individuals have closed themselves off from the well-springs of truth in their own finite egos. Just how, and under what conditions, the spirit can awaken to itself, Fichte does not say. He seems to think this is ultimately a mystery, an opinion, however, which would hardly make him a solitary in the history of philosophy.

 

335. Atheism and the Moral World Order. The atheism controversy is one of those cases in intellectual history where a crude and uninformed intervention has contributed to advancing, at the very least clarifying, the state of discussion. The order of rescription from the Saxony authorities was itself, we may suppose, a crude act, and was certainly taken as such by Fichte. The anonymous ‘Letter of a Father to His Studying Son’, which became the major document of indictment, and upon which Fichte focuses in his polemical tracts of early 1799, is a correspondingly crude and bigoted piece of writing. Although not entirely innocent of philosophical learning, the author is so obviously unsophisticated that a conservative theologian Dr. Gabler was outraged when in some quarters he was taken to be ‘G’. Eminent orthodox theologians would never have written in the manner of ‘G’, but then again, they could never have forced Fichte to so bluntly clarify his position. In the ‘Appeal to the Public’ and ‘Juridical Declarations’ pamphlets of 1799, Fichte turns the charge of atheism back upon his accusers. This is informative, for, to judge by the ‘Letter of a Father’, his accusers were people who submitted to the authority of the Christian Church and understood their religion in the customary manner. They were also people of conservative political persuasion, unappreciative of Fichte’s reputation as a democratic-republican pamphleteer. ‘G’ demanded to know whether Fichte recognized a God who is the creator of the sensible world. He wanted to know whether it was permissible and indeed necessary in Fichte’s view to ask about the origin of the world and the reason for its existence. To put it in Fichte’s terms, if there is a moral world-order then why is there one? Could it be a mere accident that a moral world-order exists? Fichte had stated, in his original article of 1798, that God is ‘nothing over and above’ the moral world-order, but, thinks ‘G’, it is absurd that a moral world-order should exist without a designer and creator. ‘G’ appeals to common-sense, which for Fichte is no argument at all, rather a counter-argument. Fichte sees the position of ‘G’ as the position of dogmatic Christianity in general, not just because it follows Church authority, but because it accords ontological authority to the sensible world: there is no way from the sensible world to the moral world-order, and once the standpoint of the moral world-order has been attained, it is meaningless to inquire into its reason for existence. What dogmatists worship as their God, a creature deduced from the sensible world, is for Fichte just an ‘idol’. Fichte concedes that the construction of anthropomorphic images of divinity is a natural consequence of the finitude of human understanding. Such images (e.g. the attribution to God of personality, wisdom, and power) do no harm as long as their deficiency is recognized. When, however, as happens in the case of ‘G’, they are made the standard of truth in religion, then not only is this not ‘true religion’, but it is ‘atheism’ in the proper sense of the word. People like ‘G’ cannot get beyond the proximal externality of the sense-world. Since they do not grasp it as the posit of the absolute ego, they attempt to live in the sense-world as if it were a self-contained reality. They understand themselves, their hopes, aspirations and happiness from the purportedly autonomous sense-world. It is natural that such people construct a concept of God similarly anchored in the sense-world, of a God whose being is attested to through sensible ‘effects’. But a life dominated by motives in the sense-world can make no progress towards the religious goal of ‘blessedness’ (Seligkeit). Frustrated without knowing why, people like ‘G’ lash out at whatever threatens to disturb the ‘props’ of their belief, that it, their external dogmas. Unfamiliar with moral freedom as the true ground of religion, they attempt to settle questions of faith through the effect of force, through censorship and confiscation.

 

336. Should and Can. In the 1798 article ‘On the Ground of Our Belief in a Divine World-Order’, Fichte states plainly: ‘It is not a matter of I should because I can, but of I can because I should. That I should, and what I should, is the first and most immediate. This needs no further explanation, justification, authorization; it is known on its own account and true in itself’. This is a decisive step beyond the orthodox Kantianism of Fichte’s earlier Revelation book, where the ‘can’ is only guaranteed through God’s assistance in the sense-world. At the same time, it is not implausible to see Fichte’s new position in the way he saw it himself, namely as a more consistent Kantianism. Fichte is convinced that a purely moral concept of religion presupposes a purely moral metaphysics, which is precisely what the Wissenschaftslehre is supposed to deliver. Thus, although Fichte still acknowledges that ‘in some cases’ (the vast majority, in fact) moral motivations are not sufficient to determine the will, he is no longer prepared to admit an obscure form of empirical causality as taking on a ‘reinforcing’ moral role. To the degree that the moral disposition is lacking, to that degree ‘true religion’ is lacking, a circumstance which no concessions to ‘human weakness’ can alter. This position, we may agree with Fichte, follows the ‘spirit’ of Kant, something which is not lost on ‘G’, who evidently regards Kantianism as the root cause of contemporary ‘impious’ philosophy. ‘We ask whether there is a God, and he speaks about a world-order’, complains ‘G’. Indeed, it seems that within customary ways of thinking about God a transfer of reverence to the ‘moral world-order’ lacks intuitive appeal. For Fichte, however, this just confirms the yawning gap between everyday consciousness and the required standpoint of moral idealism. It is no good arguing, Fichte insists, that the idea of a moral world-order is too abstract, and that people must be slowly coaxed into it through anthropomorphic conceptions of God. From sensory-dogmatic to moral understanding no gradual transition is possible, only a genuine ‘rebirth’ can succeed. This does not mean, as with Kant, that the world of sense (i.e. of thingly objectivity) and the moral world are ontologically distinct. Since the sense-world is actually created by the absolute ego, it is a matter of ‘levels’ of consciousness within one and the same reality. Those who remain at the level of sensory consciousness may have a dim awareness of their spiritual impoverishment, but their way of life is self-reinforcing and self-confirming. They would need to be given a reason for ascending to the moral standpoint, which reason would have to consist in various ‘advantages’ obtainable thereby. Such an attitude, however, would indicate a total lack of comprehension of morality. An atheist, says Fichte, is someone who acts out of the calculation of advantages. Because sensory consciousness is necessarily oriented to advantages, it can provide no rationale for moral blessedness. Those who find in God the greatest advantage of all are atheists, however much they might wrap themselves up in Church orthodoxy. The moral standpoint can only be attained by a genuine ‘change of heart’ wherein the motivational pull of advantages is thoroughly subordinated to morality. The moral individual ‘does not love the [sensory] world, but honours it on account of conscience’. The only ‘advantage’ attaching to the sensory world is that by acting through it and upon it one can perform one’s moral duty. One should eat and drink not in order to preserve one’s mere physical existence, as if this were valuable in itself, but because for finite individuals food and water are necessary to sustain moral activity. This does not mean, however, that the sensory world might just as well not exist. For in Fichte’s view, the absolute ego could not be what it is without creating the sense-world as the necessary field of application for morality.

 

337. General Revelation. In contrast to Fichte’s earlier position in the Revelation book, the requisite change of heart cannot occur through a ‘special revelation’ (appearance in the world of sense) but only through what we previously called (though Fichte does not use this term) a ‘general revelation’. This is nothing else but an act of ‘intellectual intuition’ wherein the finite ego comprehends its subsumption in the absolute ego. The change of heart is just the attainment of the idealist standpoint and is a ‘revelation’ in the sense that the moral world-order simply shows itself without need of grounds or reasons. What makes this different to some other (e.g. orthodox Christian) ideas of general revelation is the insusceptibility of its ‘content’ to conceptual elucidation. As previously observed, Fichte is insistent that intellectual intuition is not a conceptualizing act. When he says, therefore, that what shows itself is the ‘moral world-order’, he does not intend this latter phrase to convey any precise conceptual determinations. Although Fichte does not engage in any lengthy reflections on his use of language, he clearly believes that expressions like ‘moral world-order’ and ‘God’ are really ciphers: they are meaningful only to those who can go beyond the ‘letter’ to the ‘spirit’. It is thus logical that ‘G’, who urgently wishes to know more detail on the moral world-order, and who indignantly decries Fichte’s silence on the attributes of God, should confirm himself in Fichte’s eyes as an atheist, that is, as someone without spirit. ‘That living and acting moral order is itself God’, writes Fichte, ‘and we do not need, nor can we conceive, any other’. People like ‘G’ cannot accommodate themselves to such a view, because they are unfamiliar with their own latent powers of intuition. Those who cannot turn inward look outward, to traditional dogmas and determinations in the sense-world. For Fichte, however, ‘if you no longer pay attention to the demands of a worthless system, but question yourself in your very own inwardness, you will find that that world-order is the absolute first principle of all objective knowledge, just as your freedom and moral determination is the absolute first principle of all subjective knowledge’. In ‘Juridical Declarations’, Fichte devotes considerable space to what he sees as the real motivation of his accusers, their hostility to his democratic republicanism. It is to be expected, thinks Fichte, that those who stand for an authoritarian political system should veil their objectives in the pious language of religious orthodoxy: someone who does not bow to authority on theological questions is not likely to be any more acquiescent in politics, while the former is an easier terrain for venting moral indignation, especially with the French Revolution less than a decade old. Yet for Fichte, political dogmatism is itself an expression of the universal dogmatic standpoint of common-sense, the standpoint which takes the ‘objective’ world as the standard of reality. As long as dogmatism rules, no meaningful progress can be expected in either religion or politics, nor indeed in any sphere of life.

 

 

The Idea of Philosophy I

(Fragments)

(taken from EHS on Philosophy Document)

Ted Sadler

 

 

 

 

1. Age of Faith and Age of Reason. Standard accounts of the history of philosophy report that in the seventeenth century a transition was made from the ‘age of faith’ to the ‘age of reason’. Undoubtedly this was the propaganda of the time. There was much talk of beginning anew, of breaking the shackles of theological authority and reaching for the first time in human history a genuinely autonomous intellectual stance. Great hopes were held out for reason, not just in the advancement of science but in society and politics generally. Instead of ecclesiastical dogma there would be reason, instead of a society founded on irrational custom and arbitrary political authority there would be a society based on reason, that is on genuine knowledge – scientific knowledge – of the nature of man as a social and political animal. In all this talk of reason, however, it was never made clear how reason was supposed to apply outside that single context – science – where it had proved its credentials. The age of science it certainly was. Certainly the sciences were advancing and in important respects were changing the picture of the world. But there was a naïve belief that the steady accumulation of scientific knowledge could itself justify belief in a new ‘age of reason’. Francis Bacon had not been so carried away; he had wanted both faith and reason (science) because he saw that science itself could not provide ‘wisdom’. When subsequent thinkers wanted to do away with faith altogether, when they saw no room for faith in the age of reason, they were confronted with the problem of the values reason was supposed to serve. To this question reason itself gave no answer.

 

2. Philosophy, Wisdom, Science. The campaign against philosophy, more precisely against the old conception of philosophy which had reigned for two thousand years, began in earnest four hundred years ago. At that time Francis Bacon made a radical proposal for altering the meaning of ‘philosophy’. What Bacon proposed was that this Greek word ‘philosophy’, which literally means ‘love of wisdom’, should no longer be understood as having anything to do with wisdom. Instead, philosophy should henceforth mean a system of learning, especially scientific learning. As for wisdom, Bacon maintained that this belonged not in philosophy but in religion. In other words, Bacon’s thought was that wisdom was not capable of intellectual support, not capable of support through reason, nor was wisdom reason itself. Wisdom was simply faith, which for Bacon meant the Christian faith, in fact the Protestant Christian faith which was based on the Bible. In the seventeenth century people doing straightforward scientific work came to think of themselves as and were called ‘philosophers’. Galileo and Newton were ‘philosophers’. The Royal Society published its scientific papers in a periodical called ‘Philosophical Transactions’. There were some difficulties in this usage however. For while the spirit of the time very much approved of people giving up on the old philosophy and turning to science, there was nothing in science itself which sanctioned this attitude. There was, evidently, still a need for philosophy of a kind, namely for a philosophy which would license the rejection of the ‘old’ philosophy. The fact that science came suddenly on the scene and made such rapid strides in diverse areas was not itself enough to banish old ideas. Some people were under the impression that you could embrace the new sciences of the day while still clinging to the old philosophy. They did not see that the two were incompatible. So that this could be seen, John Locke, at the end of the seventeenth century, wrote his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. This book attempted to demonstrate that apart from what is known in science there is nothing else to know. This was so, according to Locke, because all knowledge comes from the senses, and it is science and nothing but science that has competence in dealing with sensory materials. Philosophy henceforth would be the ‘underlabourer of science’, content to clear away the obstructions to understanding which would otherwise inhibit the development of science. With Locke philosophy became the ‘theory of knowledge’, ‘knowledge’ being understood exclusively as scientific knowledge. Philosophy as a discipline became the study of why the previous tradition of philosophy was no longer credible.

 

3. Philosophy in Collapse. In contemporary Western culture philosophy is in a state of collapse. This does not mean that philosophy has altogether died and is incapable of resuscitation. If that were so, if philosophy were truly a thing of the past and had no future, then it would have been a mistake all along. At best philosophy would have had a faulty conception of itself by failing to understand that, in the end, it must be abolished, or must abolish itself, or must slowly fade from all relevance. To say that philosophy is in collapse today is to record a cultural fact, the fact that philosophy has been rejected. Philosophy is no longer a living force in culture. In modern and especially in postmodern culture the dominant attitude towards philosophy is one of incredulity. What philosophy historically maintained and what it ostensibly stood for is regarded as incredible, as impossible to believe and as impossible to enact. This is the way philosophy is regarded. But – and this is the point that so many contemporary critics fail to grasp – the rejection of philosophy is not the same thing as its refutation. Philosophy has been rejected but it has not been refuted.

 

4. What Does ‘Philosophy’ Mean? It will be objected that philosophy cannot possibly have been rejected when there are today so many academic philosophers in existence, so many intellectuals who are called philosophers, and so many books on philosophy. Yet if one has any experience of contemporary academic philosophy and intellectual culture one knows that the philosophers that now exist, and the books they write, almost uniformly argue against a ‘previous conception’ of philosophy which is none other than the classical idea of philosophy deriving from Plato. It is now widely accepted that this idea of philosophy is no longer viable, that it is necessary to abandon this idea. This process of abandonment has been under way for some four hundred years. In the early seventeenth century the classical idea of philosophy was abandoned by Francis Bacon and Descartes, in the middle of the same century by Hobbes, thereafter by the British empiricists Locke and Hume followed by the French philosophes of the Enlightenment, followed in turn by the utilitarians, positivists, and pragmatists, then in the twentieth century by the Marxists and postmodernists. The most influential thinkers and intellectual currents of the past four centuries have all been abandoning the classical conception of philosophy as out-dated, incredible, and undesirable. Yet these people still want something called ‘philosophy’. It is necessary to ask them why. How can it be that the thing they want is rightly called ‘philosophy’? Why have they not simply given up on philosophy and passed on to something else, as they have moved on from theology, astrology, and alchemy? What is the justification for the continuation of the word ‘philosophy’?

 

5. What Philosophers Do. If one looks at the positive work that philosophers do these days one finds a bewildering variety of things. Some of these people look like scientists, others like literary critics, others like political commentators and still others like historians. Often it seems that in order to qualify as a philosopher one need only speak at a sufficiently high level of abstraction and abstruseness – it hardly matters on what subject, if indeed a ‘subject’ is discernible at all in a tangled web of self-referential discourse. There is no clear positive definition of what philosophy is supposed to be these days, at least no generally agreed definition. Various schools and tendencies do what they do, and they may call what they do ‘philosophy’, but despite superficial polemics the attitude which prevails is one of live-and-let-live. It is only through its negative views that contemporary philosophy gains its identity. And all these negative views, all the No-saying of those who call themselves and are called ‘philosophers’, are focused on one point and one issue, which is the classical idea of philosophy. In contemporary culture the philosopher has become someone who contradicts, discredits, unmasks and undermines what philosophy formerly was. This is the all-pervasive message, the one matter of general agreement. Anybody outside this orbit of thinking is considered an oddity and part of the problem.

 

6. Dwelling on ‘Old Errors’. It is strange that after four hundred years it is still necessary to be contradicting an old line of thought; stranger still that a whole profession is necessary which agrees on nothing else except this contradiction. Contemporary philosophers admit that it is difficult to completely expunge the traces of an age-old tradition. But notwithstanding the worthy work of their predecessors from Francis Bacon to Wittgenstein and Heidegger, philosophers in the present day still find much expunging to do. Nothing, it seems, must be left to chance. It is not enough to simply state the errors of the classical idea of philosophy and pass on to something else. It is necessary to dwell on these errors in all their variations and to point out how they surreptitiously survive in modern-looking thought. Since the big names of the classical tradition will not go away, it is necessary to demonstrate, over and over again, that the admitted virtues of these authors are overlaid by and intermingled with characteristic pre-modern errors, above all that their idea of philosophy is unacceptable.

 

7. New Ideas of Philosophy? What new idea of philosophy is to be put in place of the old one? This is the question which not only remains unanswered but apparently needs no answer. Indeed it seems that to even attempt an answer here would be to fall back into an old discredited way of thinking. Modernity does not want to answer this question, and even less so does postmodernity. Instead of affirming a new concept of philosophy, the rejection of the old conception has become the hallmark of philosophical thinking. And despite appearances to the contrary, despite all stealthy ambiguity, it is the rejection that counts, and by no means the refutation. The world has moved on, culture has moved on, interests and enthusiasms have changed. It is sufficient to point to the fact that the old idea of philosophy no longer has currency; it is enough to endorse the predisposition to reject the old philosophy. To look for refutations, to attempt to prove the case, to offer reasons and arguments – all this is taken as itself a symptom of an out-dated philosophical state of mind. Philosophy in its old conception believed that it could prove things, but nowadays we are enlightened as to the impossibility of all proof, particularly (as it is said) any ‘final proof’. People are asked to look at the old idea of philosophy and to see whether it appeals to them. If they need assistance to make a judgement the professional philosopher will come forward. The classical idea of philosophy stood for proof, for truth, for the authority of reason, for a strict system of morality, for an ‘absolute’ standard of justice, for a ‘total’ view of the nature of reality, for a ‘universal’ definition of human nature. All this, it will be pointed out, is at variance with the spirit of the age. To revert to the old philosophy would be to make an exit from contemporary culture, to render oneself irrelevant, to stigmatize oneself as a fossil intellectually and morally. And if someone looking at the old philosophy were to still ask for proof, were to ask for a refutation rather than a mere rejection, this will be taken as a refutation of that person. For look, it will be said – cannot you see that the old philosophy believes in these absolute standards, these final judgements, this overarching authority of reason? Seeing this, can you really give any credibility to this old tradition?

 

8. Postmodernity and Philosophy. In the West we now live not just in modern but in what is called ‘postmodern’ culture. There is no point in protesting against this term, which has now become entrenched. The important thing to realize, however, is that postmodernity is not at all a negation or supersession of modernity. Postmodernity is just a late stage of modernity, its final or terminal stage. It is modernity taken to its conclusion, modernity that has become florid with its convictions, but it is also modernity in desperate throes of self-defence. Postmodernity is that stage of Western culture where the destructive implications of modernity become so evident that they can no longer be brushed aside with optimistic gestures towards the future, where instead one must make a decision for or against this destructiveness. As a style of thought postmodernism represents an acceptance, even a celebration, of the destructiveness of modernity. It differs from ‘modern’ thought in that it no longer pretends and hopes and half-believes that somehow, in some as yet unforseen way, the destructive effects of modernity can be avoided, that somehow modernity can be something positive and can provide something to believe in. Postmodernity does not believe in anything except its own disbelief. But it does not want to languish passively in disbelief. On the contrary, it asserts this disbelief with vehemence, proclaiming that, if only one can come to active belief in disbelief, to celebrating disbelief, to living disbelief, one will find that the destructiveness of modernity is not at all onerous but an ‘empowering’ condition. And so it is with philosophy. Postmodernism disbelieves in philosophy and this is precisely its ‘philosophical belief’. It disbelieves in truth, in reality, in justice, in morality, in meaning, and in reason So in this the postmodern age philosophy has collapsed.

 

9. Modesty and Arrogance in Philosophy. What a strange combination of modesty and arrogance does this our modern culture exhibit. We are modest, it seems, in no longer seeking to magnify ourselves through theology. We are modest in recognizing that we humans are not at the centre of the universe and that the earth does not exist for our benefit. We have turned away from everything grandiose and overblown. We have come of age, we humans, in modern secular culture, and as adults we have learned to stand on our own feet without the comforting delusions of childhood. We have come to terms with the world as it is and with ourselves as we are in fact. We no longer build for eternity, because we know that we are temporal and not eternal creatures. We no longer strive for saintliness, because we know that we are flesh and blood from top to bottom. And in all this knowing we also know how much we do not know. As we have become more knowledgeable so we have become sceptics about how far our knowledge can extend. We no longer believe the old philosophers who dreamed of ‘absolute knowledge’, for we no longer believe there is anything ‘absolute’ to know. We are thus modestly content with relative knowledge. We are also modestly content with relative values, for we realize that, by reaching out to heaven, we shall inevitably miss the mark – for there is nothing there – and so shall neglect our own finite selves. In modern culture we humans have gathered up the courage to face our finitude. This, the modesty of finitude acknowledged and celebrated, is held up as our dignity, a dignity represented by the new philosophy from Francis Bacon through to the present day. Yet behind all this modesty there is an unmistakable arrogance. For we who are tolerant, we moderns who nowadays give all cultures and past ages their due, we who acknowledge the integrity of every point of view and are constantly criticizing the arrogance of all pretensions to absolutism –  we do this precisely as all-knowers who have risen above all traditional perspectives. We already have the answers because we are aware of the unavailability of any ‘final’ answers; indeed this awareness is our answer of answers. From this standpoint we affect an openness towards everything, even towards the old tradition of philosophy, because we are convinced that nothing we meet up with can challenge us in any fundamental way. We are curious about all ages and cultures, we pile up ever more historical information, we display everything in museums for our enjoyment, we revive defeated cultures and extinct languages, and we take pride in the fact that it is we moderns who do all this and can do it on account of our liberated intellect. Our finitude, it is said, is admittedly a ‘lack’ ­– the lack of infinitude or godliness – but at least now, having recognized what we essentially are, we are in a position to ‘affirm the lack’. The old philosophy could not do this, for it dreamed of infinitude; so did Christianity, and so in one way or another did all previous culture. But now, modestly reconciled to finitude, we can take the world in hand; we can even, through the instrument of modern science, conquer the world. We, the most modest humans that the sun has ever seen, are now lording it over the earth. Have we really become too modest for the old philosophy? Or are we, on the contrary, too arrogant for it?

 

10. What Can Philosophy Be? What can philosophy be today? What can philosophy be in this our modern culture after four hundred years of science and enlightenment and secularization? Someone of a genuinely modern mentality may be forgiven for thinking that philosophy is by now revealed as a lost cause which will go the same way as theology. For who believes in theology nowadays? And was not philosophy, from the beginning of its history in the Greeks, ultimately a kind of theology? Was this not the reason that Christian theology found Greek philosophy so congenial? Do not theology and philosophy have in common the superseded idea of transcendental reality? Was it not necessary, for the human mind to come of age, to renounce this idea, thus breaking the shackles of both philosophy and theology? Was this not already achieved in the seventeenth century, by such eminent thinkers as Bacon and Galileo and Descartes and Hobbes? Must not the impossibility of philosophy be, henceforth, the presupposition of all serious intellectual endeavour?

 

11. Philosophy and Modern Culture. This culture of ours, this culture which is now so needy of philosophy, is something we ourselves have created. And the way we have created it, the way we have created ourselves as cultural beings, is such that we now find ourselves with a deficit of philosophy. We have created a non-philosophical culture and have become beings of this culture. And yet, if this is so, what is it in us that calls out for philosophy? Is it something that has escaped the processes of cultural formation? If so, can it be the origin of a genuine need? Can we in modern culture possibly admit that modern culture is not itself the criterion of everything genuine?

 

12. Finishing With Philosophy. Philosophy’s strongest tendency in our own time is the tendency to have finished with philosophy. But that which wishes to have finished and thinks itself actually to have finished with philosophy also wishes to call itself philosophy and understands itself as such. This has been the situation for the best part of four hundred years. And if there is such a thing as the new philosophy, and if this has in some sense superseded the old philosophy, we are entitled to ask what the underlying meaning of philosophy is that the two have in common. It is one thing to maintain that, in the modern period, philosophy has been replaced by something else, say by science, quite another to assert that philosophy continues in a new form. In this regard one may compare philosophy and theology. For it is the uniform opinion of the new philosophers that whatever novel forms theology has taken on in since about 1600 these still remain tainted by irreducibly ‘theological’ assumptions; these new philosophers, therefore, will not countenance any kind of theology, old or new. Why is this not the situation also in respect of philosophy? Especially given that the old philosophy, from its beginnings in Pythagoreanism and Platonism, was irreducibly ‘theological’, why has the concept of philosophy not been altogether given up?

 

13. Uncovering Philosophy. Philosophy is covered up; it is therefore a matter of uncovering it. To get to philosophy we must first remove and clear away the covers. Philosophy, especially in the present age, is buried down deep; there are many obstacles, many layers of rubble that obstruct our access to it, much dead weight that has been laid down on top of it. That this does not necessarily seem to be the situation, that philosophy can seem to be readily open to view and easily accessible, is the effect and purpose of the covering. Something is most effectively covered up when it appears not to be; this is the present situation in regard to philosophy. Something else, something that is not philosophy, currently covers for philosophy, such that it is mostly not even suspected that the real thing can only be found underneath. Why should one dig when the thing lies handily on the surface? Why should one dig, especially when there is inscribed on the coverings of philosophy the directive not to dig? What currently covers for philosophy and mostly seems to be philosophy recognizes nothing except surfaces; philosophy is covered up all the more effectively by a cover-philosophy that teaches that ‘all things are covers’. But philosophy can be uncovered, for the reason that the digging instinct – the desire for depth, which is the truly philosophical instinct of human beings – cannot be eradicated, not by cover-philosophies, nor by anything else.

 

14. Digging for Philosophy. Let us therefore start digging, aware, of course, that what we shall first encounter are the covers and not the thing itself we want to discover. Indeed let us initially forbear saying anything too precise about what this thing is we are searching for. It is, to be sure, philosophy itself that is our goal, and we must have some general idea of it before going to the trouble of digging it out. Since any account of philosophy must inevitably start from what philosophy seems to be, we must begin with the covers and work our way downwards. There is a difficulty here that is irremovable, that only after we have arrived at our goal, only after we have dug right down and discovered the nature of philosophy, can we properly identify the covers as covers. All we can do to begin with is describe the covers, in such a way that they may be removed at least provisionally, and our descent made possible.
15. Philosophy Must Be Dug Out. But it is not the case that philosophy is covered up only by cover-philosophies; these latter are not at all primary but are strictly speaking effects. The reason that philosophy gets covered up has to do, at bottom, with the nature of philosophy itself. It is not an accident of history that philosophy is covered up today. Philosophy has been covered up in varying degrees throughout all the ages of history. In the age of Plato philosophy was covered up; Plato’s greatest exertions were directed precisely towards uncovering it. Philosophy never lies on the surface but must always be dug up and dug out; this is because of what philosophy is. For us in modern Western culture philosophy is especially difficult of access. This is because we live in a culture of surfaces and appearances. Modern culture does not validate the desire for depth but proclaims it to be an error. All the major schools of contemporary academic philosophy hold that the idea of depth belongs to a superseded tradition; they all teach that ‘there is no depth’, and provide, by way of compensation, ever greater complexity on the surface. This means that the latent instinct for depth is always disappointed, something academic philosophers have to deal with in respect of their students. The outstanding contemporary example of this campaign against depth occurs in postmodernism. But the campaign itself is not a recent phenomenon; modern philosophy as a whole has been campaigning against depth for about four hundred years, from the time of Francis Bacon. The spirit of modern philosophy is the spirit of the surface; it takes the desire for depth to be an objection. There is a distinct moral tone in contemporary warning away from the depths: to dig leads one away from the surface and thus away from our common dwelling place, away from our fellows, away from practical concerns, away from everything that gives sustenance and support to surface-dwellers. If one digs for too long one may become invisible; one may entirely disappear under the surface and become irrelevant. Especially when one takes into account that the digger is after some kind of treasure, a treasure that cannot be brought up and out but that can be enjoyed only down there in the depths, especially then can the digger seem offensive, a standing insult to those who prefer to live, as they say, in the light of day.
16. Why Philosophy is Covered Up. Philosophy is covered up because of what lies down there in the depths. The thing down there, this thing which is a challenge on human beings, is desired and also not desired. It is distinctive of modern culture and of the cover-philosophies which represent it that just one side of this ambivalence gets validated. Unreceptiveness to philosophy receives confirmation on a grand scale, by culture at large and then – how unremitting it is – by the profession of academic philosophy. By the same token the desire for philosophy gets ‘treated’. It is admitted that the desire is there, but then it is thought that by suitable adjustments it can be redirected to the surface. This is what a university education in philosophy generally means nowadays: an immunization against philosophy. Hardly anyone is less challenged by philosophy, hardly anyone is more cured of the digging instinct, than those who have been through an academic education in philosophy, the academics themselves most of all. This has to do with the content of the cover-philosophies that form, at the institutional level of university philosophy, the most external covering of philosophy. The campaign against depth, the denial of depth and affirmation of the surface, just is the common content of these cover-philosophies.. This disbelief in depth, however, although it wears the mantle of philosophy, is in truth an expression of the ‘repulsive’ power of philosophy; it is not so much ‘disbelief’ in depth as a defensive stance towards depth.
17. Philosophical Masquerade. Many academic disciplines are nowadays involved in philosophical masquerade. Especially in the social sciences is the philosophical masquerade running wild. Already in Comte ‘sociology’ was the crown of philosophy, the proper successor to the old philosophy. It is not necessary, however, for a discipline to objectively masquerade as philosophy, that it should subjectively intend to do so. As long as it implicitly takes itself (together, perhaps, with other disciplines) to occupy the place formerly assumed by philosophy, the masquerade is the objective effect. This is the general situation today. Philosophy is covered up because it is assumed that it is present in and represented by the whole complex of disciplines that belong to modern ‘learning’.
18. The Old and the New Philosophy. For Francis Bacon in the early seventeenth century the day was dawning when Western civilization could start seriously attending to the ‘relief of man’s estate’, meaning the betterment of man’s material and social circumstances. The old philosophy, he considered, had not properly sighted this task, or to the degree that it had, employed faulty instruments for the purpose, it had, for example, been captive to fallacious pre-scientific models of knowledge. There had not been any tangible progress in the old philosophy, which had become instead a field for abstract hair-splitting and contentiousness. After the initial breakthroughs in physics and astronomy, by the middle of the seventeenth century Thomas Hobbes was trying to demonstrate that the same advances in knowledge could also occur in human studies. Physical science was the model, and it was a matter of discovering the principles which had led to such startling advances in this area. The relief of man’s estate would be secured through the progressive extension of scientific principles into all domains, so that the traditional idea of philosophy as universal knowledge, the idea that had been merely a pious wish within the old philosophy, would be vindicated. But there were many aspects of the old philosophy which could no longer, on this way of thinking, be given any credibility at all. Foremost among these was the idea that philosophy studied ‘supersensible’ reality and could even make contact with a higher sphere of ‘divine’ truth. This belief, so the new philosophy considered, was the result of a failure to understand the nature and limits of human knowledge: in essence it was a superstition. After two thousand years of the old tradition, it could not be expected that its ideas would die out overnight. But an unequivocal rejection of lingering associations from the past would henceforth be the index of a truly modern understanding of philosophy.

 

19. The New Philosophy and the Sciences. The ‘new philosophy’ took its lead and inspiration from the new sciences of the seventeenth century, as these sciences developed into increasingly specialized disciplines it became clear that no single one of them, nor all of them together, could really be identified with philosophy. What philosophy was left with was the method, the universal method as it was taken to be, of these sciences. At the end of the seventeenth century the matter was famously put by John Locke when he said that philosophy must forget its former speculative dreams and content itself with being the ‘underlabourer of science’. However, even this modest assignment for philosophy was not convincing, for as soon as any one of the sciences reached a moderately advanced state of development it invariably declared itself willing to dispense with the services of an outside underlabourer; it was, evidently, better able to do such work itself. Having disconnected itself from the old tradition by affirming the superiority of modern science, the new philosophy found itself without any distinct domain of investigation to call its own. It could limp along behind the new sciences and describe their methods, but such post-facto analysis by non-specialists was of little use to the sciences themselves. What remained was not so much the job of underlabourer as that of representative or standard-bearer. The new philosophy was to ride on the back of the sciences, analyse their methods after the event, and hold high the standard of science. But is it not incredible that such a miserable undertaking could establish itself as the proper work of philosophy?
20. Bitterness of the New Philosophy. The one thing that all variants of the new philosophy have in common is their opposition to the old philosophy. Why are they so bitter? It is because the old philosophy, both on its own account and in its alliance with Christianity, held out such grandiose promises for humanity. Instead of the realizable goal of bettering material circumstances, the old philosophy, absurdly and pretentiously, promised participation in the divine, eternal absolute truth, and salvation of the soul. Such arrogance, such presumption – so the new philosophy feels – is an insult to modern culture and a dangerous distraction from the real tasks of today.
21. The Rearguard Campaign. Rearguard campaigns are conducted in order to advance or consolidate on another front. What then, in the case of the new philosophy, is this other front? As stated, it is the front of the sciences, of all the sciences together, of the physical and chemical and biological and social and political and economic sciences as they have developed since the time of Francis Bacon. But the new philosophy does not so much carry out positive scientific work as ‘represent’ the spirit of science within modern intellectual culture. Since such representation mainly takes the form of a rearguard campaign the charter of the new philosophy is in essence negative: its job is to keep the old philosophy at bay, to limit its opportunities, to suppress the instinct for it and to discredit it. That this is the situation, that the new philosophy has taken it upon itself to be the policeman of modern intellectuality, is shown by the fact that it has no results to call its own: it is the sciences themselves that produce results. Ask the new philosophers what, after all this time – it has been four hundred years –  they themselves have come up with, and you will be told that they have demonstrated more definitively, more comprehensively, more incontrovertibly, that the old philosophy is untenable.

 

22. The New Philosophy as Endless ‘Refuting’. If the classical conception of philosophy is judged to be flawed, then there are two alternatives: either one can declare the very idea of philosophy to be a mistake (like astrology or alchemy), or one can attempt to justify a new conception of philosophy. But after four hundred years a new concept of philosophy has not been forthcoming. Instead, entitlement to the term ‘philosophy’ has continued to depend on the critique of the classical tradition, as if to be a ‘philosopher’ in the modern period is to be occupied, seemingly without end, with the refutation of previous errors. All the mainstream tendencies of modern philosophy, for a period of about four hundred years, have been tending toward the dissolution of philosophy. This sounds paradoxical, that a discipline would focus so much on its own negation, and of course the matter gets described in other ways. It is said, for example, that only a previous conception of philosophy is negated, and that, as a matter of fact, it is only in the modern period that a genuine idea of philosophy comes to displace the pseudo-philosophies of former ages. It is said that we in the modern world are simply ‘incredulous’ about any pre-modern concept of philosophy. It is said that ‘God is dead’ and that the untenability of previous philosophy, in particular what may be called the ‘classical’ tradition of philosophy deriving from Plato and lasting through all the centuries of Christendom to the Renaissance, follows from this fact. The problem, however, is that those who seek to build a philosophy on the death of God, just because of their vehement rejection of so many defining features of classical philosophy, have great trouble justifying their use of the term ‘philosophy’. Indeed a fair degree of embarrassment on this issue can be observed among contemporary academic philosophers, many of whom prefer other labels to ‘philosopher’ or who at least use this latter term is a loose non-binding sense, as more or less equivalent to ‘theorist’. Entitlement to the term ‘philosophy’ has continued to depend on the critique of the classical tradition, as if to be a ‘philosopher’ in the modern period is to be occupied, seemingly without end, with the refutation of previous errors. In their positive work, modern philosophers may be called scientists, theorists, intellectuals, historians, sociologists (it hardly matters what), but it is precisely in their negative work, in their critique of the tradition, that they gain their identity as philosophers. So it has come about that modern philosophy is in an essential sense an anti-philosophy.
23. Modern Philosophy as Anti-Philosophy. In their positive work, modern philosophers may be called scientists, theorists, intellectuals, historians, sociologists (it hardly matters what), but it is precisely in their negative work, in their critique of the tradition, that they gain their identity as philosophers. So it has come about that modern philosophy is in essence anti-philosophy.
24. Science Masquerading as Philosophy. A thing is what it is and not another thing. Science is what it is and not another thing, in particular it is not philosophy. Now science does not as such claim to be philosophy or even to substitute for philosophy; these are the claims of the new philosophers. It is frequently insinuated by the new philosophers, sometimes even by scientists themselves, that the old philosophy is in some way at odds with science. This cannot be the situation, for the two inhabit altogether different realms with different objects and objectives. What philosophy is at odds with is not science as such but science masquerading as philosophy. Quite naturally, philosophy is against anything that masquerades as philosophy, but what it is against is precisely the masquerading and not the thing itself minus the masquerade. If the masquerade becomes part of the thing, an essential aspect of the thing, even the main purpose of the thing, then philosophy will be at odds with it; this is why philosophy must be at odds with positivism and postmodernism.
25. The Campaign Against ‘Nostalgia’. As for when enlightenment on this particular matter was properly attained, there are different opinions. The general tendency has been for each successive philosophical tendency to claim that only with its own distinctive insights has the genuine breakthrough and ‘breakout’ from traditional philosophy occurred. Rival schools contend with one another about whether old prejudices have really been overcome, about how much from the tradition must be jettisoned and about what precisely (if anything at all) is worth salvaging. Philosophy is continually being put on a new footing by an ever more ‘critical’ searching out of ‘nostalgic’ residues and an ever more ‘resolute’ facing up to the ‘genuine challenges’ of today.
26. Philosophy in Dissolution. The widespread disavowal of ‘previous philosophy’, together with the vehement rejection of all pretentions to ‘first philosophy’, has left academic philosophers with no clear field of inquiry to call their own. At the same time as academic philosophers have striven to establish their professional credentials and as philosophy itself has become increasingly a field of specialization worthy of representation alongside other specialized studies, the identity of philosophy has become ever more doubtful. In this sense the ‘current state of philosophy’ is a state of disintegration, a state of floundering ad hoc defensiveness, where academics attempt to shore up a discipline they are unable to define, with a history they are unwilling to defend.
27. Philosophy in an Unphilosophical Age. What I have been maintaining is that all the mainstream tendencies of philosophy during the modern period, the most influential tendencies which reflect and represent the ‘spirit of the age’, have turned right away from the original Greek conception of the discipline of philosophy as this had survived intact until the late Renaissance, albeit for a millennium in the guise of ‘handmaiden of theology’. And I have also maintained that this turning away is not at all what it is made out to be by the mainstream tendencies themselves – namely the rejection of an obsolete tradition in favour of genuine philosophy  –  but is on the contrary the abrogation of genuine philosophy is favour of a pseudo-philosophy oriented to the ‘relief of man’s estate’ and governed by a truncated (scientific) concept of reason. All this does not amount to the eclipse of philosophy itself. For firstly, philosophy is primarily a practice whose locus is the individual soul and as such it remains a permanent possibility. The cultural validation of materialistic values and of the ‘relief of man’s estate’ as the grand project for humanity into which philosophy is absorbed, does not prevent individual human beings from actualizing their ‘love of wisdom’ and ‘caring for the soul’. Philosophy does not cease to exist in the modern age but continues as ‘philosophy in the unphilosophical age’. This is the situation on the whole. It is even the overwhelmingly dominant tendency. In this the unphilosophical age, philosophy is for the most part misunderstood and unrecognized, while that which is not philosophy, that which is pseudo-philosophy and in a certain sense even anti-philosophy, is baptized ‘philosophy’ and presented to the public as such.  That this is so does not reflect any kind of conspiracy. What it reflects is the culture of modernity, which is founded on the rejection of philosophical values. Modern culture suffers from this rejection. In particular do individuals, the souls of individuals, suffer from the suppression of philosophy. But modern culture, convinced as it is of its evaluative choices, especially of its rejection of any transcendent reference point which could provide an alternative foundation for values, looks anywhere but to philosophy to cure its woes. Instead, it looks to more of itself.
28. Philosophy and Pseudo-Philosophy. This much stated, let me now add that this modern philosophy which I have called pseudo-philosophy does contain much that genuine philosophy has an obligation to ponder. Philosophy, as the love of wisdom, is insatiable in its desire to learn and in its eagerness to identify something worth learning. The modern sciences for example, are not philosophy, and yet they give much for philosophy to understand, much that can contribute to philosophy’s self-understanding. And even when these sciences are misunderstood and misrepresented as philosophy itself, even in scientific philosophy (a type of pseudo-philosophy) there is much grist for the mill of philosophy. For philosophy learns from everywhere, not indiscriminately of course, but guided by its mission to ‘know thyself’, meaning knowing reason ever more profoundly and comprehensively. Philosophy is not insular; it does not want to ‘avoid the world’. Philosophy is the most open of all human activities. But this does not change the fact that philosophy wants above all itself, and is very strict in evaluating everything from this point of view. In modern times, due to the collapse of the concept of philosophy, things are approached differently. Everybody acknowledges and appreciates the ‘contributions’ of everybody else in this or that area, but nobody asks any searching questions about what all these add up to. Genuine philosophy is very strict in insisting on just these searching questions. It is not content to register that X (perhaps a so-called ‘philosopher’) has produced a ‘valuable study’ of Y, but wants to establish whether the work of X serves philosophy. Contemporary taste finds this an arrogant attitude, but then, seriousness has always been misunderstood in this way. Socrates, we might remember, was put to death for his ‘arrogance’.
29. Incredulity Towards ‘Meta-Narratives’. An influential contemporary author, Jean-François Lyotard, has defined the present postmodern era in terms of ‘incredulity towards meta-narratives’. Philosophy in its Platonic conception is for Lyotard the exemplary ‘meta-narrative’. Human beings in all ages and cultures have told stories to themselves, but philosophy wants to be the story of stories. We can no longer believe in such a glorified story. Instead, we wish to retain many and diverse stories, we are ‘incredulous’ at the suggestion that any single story should be authoritative. It is not just postmodernism in the narrow sense that takes this attitude. Rather, postmodernism is just the outcome of four centuries during which, often under the name of philosophy, the very possibility of philosophy has been indignantly denied. Ever since the beginning of the seventeenth century we have been becoming progressively more ‘incredulous’ towards philosophy.
30. Incredulity Towards Philosophy. What then is the reason for this contemporary ‘incredulity’ towards philosophy? In addressing this question the first thing to be noted is the ambiguity of the word ‘reason’. Does it mean ‘cause’, or does it refer to intellectual grounds? What are the arguments here? What are the insights? What discoveries took place early in the seventeenth century which showed that philosophy was untenable? What intellectual advances have since occurred to confirm this view? We must ask these questions, for when all is said and done, incredulity alone just means non-acceptance, unwillingness to accept, resistance to acceptance. But we are asking about the reasons and grounds for non-acceptance. What does modern and postmodern philosophy have to say on this score?
31. What the ‘Incredulous’ Ones Say. Just here, however, right at the beginning of our questioning, we encounter a peculiar obstacle. For in asking about reasons and grounds we are appealing, so we are told by the ‘incredulous’ ones, to the very ‘meta-narrative’ that is in dispute. Incredulity towards philosophy includes incredulity towards final reasons and grounds. We may of course ask for opinions as to why philosophy is unacceptable today, but to weigh these opinions according to philosophical standards of reason is to impose an authority where none can be recognized. Any call for reasons and grounds, for explanation of arguments and discoveries and insights, meets with no response. We are presented instead with facts. In the seventeenth century, Bacon and Hobbes put forward the fact of modern science, which fact became, and remains to the present day, the foundation of every version of positivism. Postmodernism presents different facts, for example the interests of sundry social groups. Incredulity towards philosophy is founded on attachment to these facts. Bacon asserted that modern science existed for ‘the relief of man’s estate’ and that this was a purpose to which traditional (Platonic) philosophy could make no conceivable contribution. He therefore redefined philosophy to mean modern science. Postmodernism asserts that ‘theory’ exists for the advancement for socio-political interests and that traditional philosophy is useless in this area; it therefore redefines philosophy to mean ‘theory’. But more than this, both the positivists (proceeding faithfully from Bacon) and the postmodernists claim that philosophy in its traditional form actually inhibits their goals, that it is ‘the greatest danger’. Thus the mainstream tendencies of modern ‘philosophy’, while positively pursuing their programs, while energetically building up scientific knowledge or fervently advancing political causes, also have to fight on a defensive front, constantly having to fend off and discredit the ‘vestiges’ of a now ‘superseded’ philosophy. And in truth, it often seems that this defensive front is even the main area of campaign.
32. Reasons and Grounds for Philosophy. Of course, the opponents of philosophy can easily turn the tables, demanding that philosophy itself give reasons and grounds for turning human life upside down. One thing is sure, however, which is that any reasons proffered will not be acceptable to those who are ‘incredulous’ to begin with. At this point, strangely enough, our positivists and postmodernists suddenly become very ‘rigorous’, pointing out that philosophy is incapable of doing anything else except restating its own convictions. And in the end, philosophy must admit it. For how is it possible to give grounds and reasons for insisting on grounds and reasons? Further, how is it possible to give reasons for the value philosophy places on truth, justice, and goodness? Philosophy must admit that it cannot justify itself except through itself, that it cannot tolerate anything external to philosophy being brought forward either to defend philosophy or to criticize it. But philosophy will not acknowledge any foundational weakness on that account. If philosophy wishes to turn human life upside down, if it does in reality turn human life upside down, this is not because, from some other perspective, such a thing is advantageous. On the contrary, such an overturning, such a reversal of magnetic polarities, is not ‘advantageous’ at all for those who are outside of philosophy and will always be seen by the likes of Lyotard as an ‘incredible’ idea. About twenty-two hundred years after Socrates, another philosopher would speak in similar language. Philosophy, said the Platonist Hegel, is an ‘inverted world’, where the south pole becomes the north pole and vice-versa. The two poles, self-interest and justice, exert equal and opposite magnetic attractions on the individual human being. Outside of philosophy, the pointer of the soul is directed with iron necessity towards the pole of self-interest, while within philosophy it is the pole of justice which exerts an irresistible force. It is no good, of course, trying to persuade a magnetic needle around to its opposite pole, for its abhors nothing so much as this single point. Only through a magnetic reversal can the pointer of the soul turn right around to its opposite pole, an unnatural happening we might suppose, even a ‘supernatural’ and thus impossible happening.
33. The Fuss About Philosophy. It is a strange thing, but when one asserts that a particular discipline, or a particular school of thought, or a particular theorist, is not doing philosophy, the reply is most commonly that they are nevertheless doing something worthy and beneficial. There is a miscomprehension here that is indicative of the low level of philosophical consciousness in modern culture. People do not know what all the fuss is about. They are producing theories, they are building up knowledge, they are producing useful instruments for diverse purposes, they are ‘advancing the discussion’ of various problems. But all this is not the issue. The question is whether they are doing philosophy or something else, a question that can only seem irrelevant once the real meaning of philosophy has sunk out of sight.
34. The Call for Philosophy. On the one hand, then, we have this call for philosophy coming from somewhere within contemporary culture, a call made for the most part by people unacquainted with professional academic philosophy. On the other hand we have the institutional edifice of philosophy that replies with assurances that philosophy does indeed exist, that those making the call may familiarize themselves with this philosophy at least in its popular presentations, and that beyond this, if the callers remain unsatisfied, they should perhaps more rigorously examine why they are this, to see if they are wanting something belonging to the past. It would seem that the callers, the dissatisfied ones, are presumptuous, for they are ignorant not only of professional philosophy as it exists today, but, we may assume, of the whole history of philosophy. The professionals are well informed, can anticipate what the uneducated callers will say on all relevant matters and have at hand numerous remedies to quieten the call. How could it be suggested that the callers are in the right when they say that philosophy is lacking and that the professionals are in the wrong when they point to their own imposing institution of learning? How could the ignorant be right and the learned wrong? But such is in fact the case. From a philosophical point of view the inarticulate call for philosophy is in the right and the assurances coming down from on high are in the wrong.
35. The Call for Reasons and Grounds. Let us look a little more closely at this call for philosophy. It is not a call made by the learned and so does not express itself in learned terminology; precisely for this reason is it so easily ‘refuted’ by professional philosophers. The call for philosophy is invariably a call for guidance on questions fundamental to human existence. That these questions are felt, irrespective of the precise manner of their articulation, to be primary questions, is what occasions the call. It is not idle curiosity that prompts these questions. They are questions of practical life and may be summed up in Socrates’ question ‘How should I live?’. The lives of human beings, in a way not true of non-human animals, depend on decisions; at both an individual and collective level humans are constantly confronted by valuational choices. The call for philosophy comes from the feeling that these choices should not be arbitrary but must in some way be grounded. To where can one turn for guidance on these choices, so asks the caller, other than to philosophy?
36. Deflecting the Call for Philosophy. Now it may be suggested that these questions concerning value and meaning are religious questions, and that anyone calling on philosophy for guidance in this area is really asking philosophy to perform the function of religion. This kind of response is characteristic of a certain type of professional philosopher. But religion is for many people today no longer a possible resource for answering the questions that most deeply concern them, which is why they call for philosophy instead. The professional philosopher may make this very point, taking it to prove that there is something wrong with the typical questions about value and meaning. That such questions are really religious in character, he may say, just goes to prove that they are superseded. If religion has been discredited, then surely philosophy should not be lumbered with its misconceptions and false promises. Does this mean that the professional philosopher will just reject the call for guidance, saying that no such thing is to be had in religion, philosophy, or anywhere else? This, admittedly, is not exactly what happens. The professional will likely say that questions of value and meaning must be reformulated, that the expectation of ‘absolute’ answers must be overcome, and that, provided that the necessary reorientation towards such questions is achieved, the inquirer, the caller for philosophy, will indeed find many useful resources in contemporary academic theory. That there can be no ‘ultimate’ answers only indicates that, after considering all the available resources, individuals will have to make their own personal decisions. This does not mean, our professional will add, that philosophy is now something less than it used to be. After all, to cast off pretensions is not to be diminished. Philosophy, he will say, now promises less but by way of compensation can achieve more. For is not a little of reality worth more than a lot of illusion?
37. Common Meaning of ‘Philosophy’. Our caller for philosophy, we are assuming, is asking for guidance about fundamental questions of value and meaning. He does not wish, let us further assume, to turn to religion for guidance. Why does he think that philosophy can help? What leads him to put his questions and problems and doubts precisely to philosophy, perhaps with all the ‘unreal expectations’ regretted by contemporary professional philosophers? What does the layman, unacquainted with academic philosophy as it exists today, understand by the word ‘philosophy’? To be sure, this word has somewhat vague connotations in everyday speech. Perhaps its most common occurrence is in such expressions as ‘he reacted philosophically’, meaning that he took bad news with composure and self-control. Political parties speak of their ‘philosophies’, alluding to the system of ‘values’ they represent. The layman will be hard put to define the concept of philosophy, but will understand that, traditionally, philosophy is associated with questions of fundamental import for human life, questions which are not resolvable in a straightforward or technical way. This is the reason that the layman calls for philosophy rather than for something else. He knows that the questions that disturb him most fundamentally are unlike the various mundane questions of life. Further, the layman knows the difference between the questions he brings to philosophy, the questions for which he seeks some guidance from philosophy, and other questions whose answers he may seek in the sciences or in some other area of specialized expertise. He knows all this merely from his own experience and from the everyday meaning of ‘philosophy’. And he knows this despite the fact that philosophy as it presently exists in academic institutions would prefer not to admit the genuineness of his questions, would prefer to fob him off in fact, would prefer to explain in a long-winded way that he has unreal expectations of philosophy and that he would be better to adjust his questions to the ‘current state of philosophy’.
38. Nullifying the Call for Philosophy. From the perspective of contemporary academic philosophy the layman’s call for philosophy is an error. Of course, it would be nice to have the layman calling for what one is already doing and what one can readily provide. But no one, the academic philosopher least of all, is under any misapprehension that the layman is calling for academic philosophy. It already exists: there is no need to ‘call for’ it. The layman is complaining about a lack of philosophy but there is no lack of academic philosophy. For the professional philosopher, then, the layman must be in error. But we said that the layman calls for philosophy because of the ordinary connotations of the word ‘philosophy’ and because he understands that philosophy has traditionally dealt with just those questions about which he seeks guidance. If the layman’s call falls on deaf ears within the academy, this must be because academic philosophy recognizes neither the authority of these linguistic connotations nor the authority of the historical tradition of philosophy. Academic philosophy cannot cater to the layman’s call for philosophy but can only attempt to nullify it. Instead of the questions the layman has in mind, academic philosophy will put forth other questions, attempting to refocus the layman’s attention on these. For there are many intriguing questions in life, are there not? Let the layman leave his unenlightened questions behind and become a student of academic philosophy. Then he will be in a position to explain to laymen that their call for philosophy is a misunderstanding.
39. Philosophy in the University. Ever since their formation in the twelfth and thirteen centuries the universities have consisted of a number of special faculties or departments. Originally there were three faculties: theology, medicine, and law. Philosophy was absent as a discipline in its own right and remained so until the eighteenth century; in fact it was not until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that philosophy gained widespread recognition as a university subject. Back in the days of the three faculties philosophy was regarded as a ‘handmaiden’, especially to theology. Only after the hegemony of theology in the medieval universities was broken as a result of the new sciences and the attendant cultural secularization of the seventeenth century did philosophy begin to emerge as a distinct academic discipline, but its progress was slow.. The curious thing is that by the time chairs in philosophy began to proliferate nobody knew what philosophy as a special discipline was supposed to be. As conceived by Christian Wolff, who founded German academic philosophy from the University of Halle in the early eighteenth century, philosophy was the system of all human knowledge whatsoever, crowned by theology but also consisting of mathematics, ethics, jurisprudence, and all the natural sciences. On this view, philosophy was a regal discipline, always threatening to step on the toes of other disciplines within the university. Wolff himself overstepped the mark with respect to theology and was promptly expelled. Other professors might be more circumspect, but the underlying problem was that this idea of philosophy as ‘universal knowledge’ was in the end difficult to gainsay; indeed it had been, more or less, the conception of Aristotle himself. Either philosophy is a universal discipline, in which case how can it be realistically situated alongside other university subjects? Or it is, like medicine and law and everything else, a special discipline, in which case its particular subject matter should be specifiable. But specifiable it was not, neither in Wolff’s time nor in the time of Kant (who received a letter from the King of Prussia warning him off theological territory) nor in the succeeding centuries. Nobody was able to say what particular region of reality philosophy had to do with, yet everyone agreed that philosophy must be represented in universities. The solution adopted was perforce an administrative one: philosophy was simply placed alongside other university disciplines, with the problems posed by disciplinary boundaries being left for ad hoc resolution. This is the way things have stood for some three centuries now.
40. Philosophy as a University Discipline. Whether philosophy should be a university discipline is an open question. Some philosophers have thought it should not – Arthur Schopenhauer for example, who considered that philosophy of all subjects must not be institutionalized. But one can agree with Schopenhauer’s general sentiments without coming to his conclusion. In regard to the health or otherwise of philosophy it is not so much a question of whether philosophy is represented as a distinct discipline at university as of whether its administratively imposed status is mistaken for its natural or genuine status. It is one thing to say that philosophy can be a university discipline, another thing to say that it is in essence such. The latter is the position that academic philosophers themselves tend to take, implicitly and notwithstanding their vagueness about the actual subject matter of philosophy. Institutions take on a life of their own; so it is with regard to philosophy in academia. Edifices of theory grow up which are spread around the world and count as the ‘current state of philosophy’. The language of these theories is for the most part recondite and inaccessible to outsiders. Academic philosophers come to think of themselves and be seen as experts similar in kind to those in other disciplines; an education in philosophy comes to be understood as a matter of acquiring expertise just as one does in other departments of knowledge. Again I am not suggesting that the concepts of expert and expertise have no place in philosophy; only that, when identified with a region of special expertise, philosophy forfeits its authentic function and its genuinely universal character, becoming something other than true philosophy, becoming in fact what I have called cover-philosophy.
41. How the Rearguard Campaign Works. If the supersession of the old philosophy is the main doctrine presently taught to university students of philosophy in the Western world, it is noticeable that students do not appear to have fully imbibed this message prior to their encounter with the academy. From the connotations of ‘philosophy’ in everyday speech, connotations which reflect the old tradition, their teachers often find a hankering after something rather more ‘grandiose’ than what philosophy currently is, that is to say the new philosophy. In their first lectures students will begin to be disabused of the ‘inflated’ conception of philosophy which belongs to the past. It will be explained that philosophy was formerly connected with religion but that this is no longer the case; instead there is at best ‘philosophy of religion’, where people who happen to be ‘interested in religion’ can look at it from the point of view of the new philosophy. Students will be told that the claim of the old philosophy to possess some ‘privileged’ vantage point on human existence and the world as a whole, some kind of authoritative truth which would judge all claims to knowledge, has not stood the test of time and is now uniformly rejected by modern thinkers. As their studies progress, students will encounter this same lesson over and over again in ever more complicated forms. They will be introduced to a series of new philosophers who are exemplary critics of the typical errors made by the old philosophy. Mixed in with this will be a little social science, which will demonstrate how it is possible to proceed once one has overcome the old philosophy. Students will be instructed as to the existence of reactive tendencies in culture which would like to roll back the advances made by the new philosophy; they will be trained to spot the characteristic marks of the reactive mind and will be equipped with techniques for discrediting reactive arguments. All this will be the foundation of their education in philosophy. Upon graduating, they will go out into the world as ‘carriers’ of this attitude, or will proceed further along a professional path, to take their places among the full-time discreditors and demystifiers.
42. Academic Philosophy Losing its Identity. At the present time there is an unmistakable tendency for philosophy to lose its identity as a distinct academic discipline, dissolving into one another of the social sciences, or into all of them together under such general rubrics as ‘cultural studies’ and ‘critical studies’. But it has also turned out that all the branches of the humanities are in need of reformation through the new philosophy, so that the rearguard action, the defensive campaign against the old philosophy, can now be found in all of them. For is it not obvious that, until modern times, literature and art and historiography and much else besides, were under the spell of the old philosophy? Must not every cultural artefact from the past be in some degree under suspicion on this score? Must not historians and art critics and literary critics, as well as their colleagues in the newer branches of social science, also in part be philosophers? Do they not at least require the guidance and advice of philosophers? But then, who precisely is to be called a ‘philosopher’ rather than, for example, a ‘critical theorist’ or ‘cultural critic’? At first the new philosophy, having renounced the ambition of the old philosophy to be queen of the sciences, became just one academic field among many. But so pervasive has the spirit of the new philosophy become in modern intellectual culture that academic philosophy now has trouble distinguishing itself from the other disciplines. This indeed is the logical outcome of whole tendency of the new philosophy, namely to disappear into the multifarious enterprises oriented to the relief of man’s estate. Was it not, perhaps, originally a mistake to call the new philosophy ‘philosophy’?

 Within the academic mainstream today, the term ‘philosophy’ has no clear meaning. It is true, of course, that the concept of philosophy is inherently contentious. For the most part, however, the lack of clarity about what philosophy is does not reflect this contentiousness. Instead, it reflects the absence of contending, the tacit decision not to contend, the decision to let things ride and ‘tolerate’ conflicting conceptions of philosophy, whatever they may happen to be, as long as they are at variance with the old philosophy. The concept of philosophy is unclear not because it is a live and contentious issue, but because, implicitly, decisions have already been made about what philosophy can, but especially about what it cannot, be. The will to question the nature of philosophy is lacking. This lack of will to philosophy, this unwantedness of philosophy, is a fundamental feature of contemporary Western culture.