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Essays on Kant Henry E. Allison 1
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com www.ebook777.com 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries # in this volume Henry E. Allison 2012 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2012 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN 978 0 19 964703 3 (Hbk) ISBN 978 0 19 964702 6 (Pbk) Printed in Great Britain by MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King s Lynn Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
To the memory of my father, John P. Allison
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Contents Acknowledgments Note on sources and key to abbreviations and translations ix xi Introduction 1 Part I 1. Commentary on Section Nine of the Antinomy of Pure Reason 15 2. Where Have all the Categories Gone? Reflections on Longuenesse s Reading of Kant s Transcendental Deduction 31 A Response to a Response: An Addendum to Where Have all the Categories Gone? 43 3. Kant and the Two Dogmas of Rationalism 49 4. Transcendental Realism, Empirical Realism, and Transcendental Idealism 67 Part II 5. We Can Act Only Under the Idea of Freedom 87 6. On the Very Idea of a Propensity to Evil 99 7. Kant s Practical Justification of Freedom 110 8. The Singleness of the Categorical Imperative 124 9. Kant on Freedom of the Will 137 Part III 10. Is the Critique of Judgment Post-Critical? 165 11. Reflective Judgment and the Application of Logic to Nature: Kant s Deduction of the Principle of Purposiveness as an Answer to Hume 177 12. The Critique of Judgment as a True Apology for Leibniz 189 13. Kant s Antinomy of Teleological Judgment 201
viii CONTENTS Part IV 14. The Gulf between Nature and Freedom and Nature s Guarantee of Perpetual Peace 217 15. Kant s Conception of Aufklärung 229 16. Teleology and History in Kant: The Critical Foundations of Kant s Philosophy of History 236 17. Reason, Revelation, and History in Lessing and Kant 254 Bibliography 274 Index 283
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com www.ebook777.com Acknowledgments I wish to thank the editors and publishers for their permission to reprint the following essays: Commentary on Section Nine of the Antinomy of Pure Reason, Kritik der reinen Vernunft: Ein kooperativer Kommentar, ed. M. Willaschek and J. Mohr, Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann (1998), 465 90, reprinted with the kind permission of Akademie Verlag. Where Have all the Categories Gone? Reflections on Longuenesse s Reading of Kant s Transcendental Deduction, Inquiry, 43 (2000), 67 80, reprinted with the kind permission of Taylor & Francis Group. Kant and the Two Dogmas of Rationalism, in A Companion to Rationalism, ed. Alan Nelson, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing (2005), 343 59, reprinted with the kind permission of John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Transcendental Realism, Empirical Realism and Transcendental Idealism, Kantian Review, 11 (2006), 1 28. We Can Act Only Under the Idea of Freedom, (Presidential Address), The Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 71 (1997), 39 50. The Very Idea of a Propensity to Evil, Journal of Value Inquiry, 36 (2002), 337 48, reprinted with the kind permission of Springer Science + Business Media B.V. Kant s Practical Justification of Freedom, forthcoming in Kant on Practical Justification, ed. Sorin Baiasu and Mark Timmons. The Singleness of the Categorical Imperative, Proceedings of the Eleventh International Kant Congress, Pisa 2010, ed. Stefano Bacin, Alfredo Ferrarin, Claudio La Rocca, and Margit Ruffing, New York: Walter de Gruyter (2012). Kant on Freedom of the Will, in The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy, ed. Paul Guyer, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2006), 381 415. Is the Critique of Judgment Post-Critical?, in The Reception of Kant s Critical Philosophy: Fichte, Schelling, & Hegel, ed. Sally Sedgwick, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2000), 78 92. The Critique of Judgment as a True Apology for Leibniz, in Kant und die Berliner Aufklärung, Akten des IX. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, ed. V. Gerhardt, R.-P. Horstmann, and R. Schumacher, New York: Walter de Gruyter (2001), 286 99. Reflective Judgement and the Application of Logic to Nature: Kant s Deduction of the Principle of Purposiveness as an Answer to Hume, in Strawson and Kant, ed. Hans- Johann Glock, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2003), 169 83.
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Kant s Antinomy of Teleological Judgment, The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 30 Supplement (1991), 25 42. The Gulf between Nature and Freedom and Nature s Guarantee of Perpetual Peace, in Proceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress Memphis 1995, ed. Hoke Robinson, Milwaukee: Marquette University Press (1996), 37 49. Kant s Conception of Aufklärung, in The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, Modern Philosophy, Volume 7, ed. Mark D. Gedney, Philosophy Documentation Center, Bowling Green State University (2000), 35 44. Teleology and History in Kant: The Critical Foundations of Kant s Philosophy of History, in Kant s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim: A Critical Guide, ed. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty and James Schmidt, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2009), 24 45. Reason, Revelation, and History in Lessing and Kant, Internationales Jahrbuch des Deutschen Idealismus (2009), 35 57. In addition, I wish to thank Greg Taylor for the preparation of the index.
Note on sources and key to abbreviations and translations Apart from the Critique of Pure Reason, where references are to the standard A and B pagination, all references to Kant are to the volume and page of Kant s gesammelte Schriften (KGS), herausgegeben von der Deutschen (formerly Könliglichen Preuissischen) Akademie der Wissenschaften, 29 volumes [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter (and predecessors), 1902ff.] and second (where applicable) to the volume and pagination in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. A Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht [KGS 7, 177 33] Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, translated by Robert B. Louden in Anthropology, History and Education (231 429), The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, edited by Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2007). AF Anthropologie Friedländer [KGS 25, 469 728]. BA Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung [KGS 8, 33 42] An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? translated by Mary Gregor, Practical Philosophy (16 22), The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1996). Br Kant s Briefwechsel [KGS 10 12] Correspondence, translated and edited by Arnulf Zweig, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1999). EE Erste Einleitung in die Kritik der Urteilskraft [KGS 20] First Introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgment, translated by Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews, in Critique of the Power of Judgment, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant (3 51), edited by Paul Guyer, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2000). EF Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philosopischer Entwurf [KGS 8, 341 86] Toward Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Project, translated by Mary J. Gregor in Practical Philosophy (317 51), The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, edited by Mary J. Gregor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1996). GMS Grundlugung zur Metaphysik der Sitten [KGS 4, 385 463] Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. GTP Über den Gebrauch teleologischer Principien in der Philosophie [KGS 8, 157 84] On the use of teleological principles in philosophy, translated by Günter Zöller, in Anthropology, History and Education (192 218), The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant (107 20), edited by Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2007).
xii NOTE ON SOURCES AND KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS AND TRANSLATIONS IAG Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht [KGS 8, 15 31] Idea of a universal history from a cosmopolitan point of view, translated by Allen Wood, in Anthropology, History and Education, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant (107 20), edited by Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2007). ID JL KpV KrV KU De Mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et Principiis [KGS 2, 385 419] Concerning the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World (The Inaugural Dissertation) in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, Theoretical Philosophy, 1755 1770 (377 426), translated and edited by David Walford and Ralf Meerbote, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1992). Jäsche Logik [KGS 9, 1 150] The Jäsche Logic, translated by J. Michael Young, in Lectures on Logic, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, edited by J. Michael Young (527 640), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1992). Kritik der praktischen Vernunft [KGS 5, 1 163] Critique of Practical Reason, translated by Mary J. Gregor, in Practical Philosophy, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant (139 271), edited by Mary J. Gregor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1996). Kritik der reinen Vernunft [KGS 3 4] Critique of Pure Reason, translated and edited by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1998). Kritik der Urtheilskraft [KGS 5, 165 485] Critique of the Power of Judgment, translated by Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, edited by Paul Guyer, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2000). MAM Muthsmasslicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte [KGS 8, 107 23] Conjectural beginning of human history, translated by Allen Wood, in Anthropology, History and Education, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant (163 75), edited by Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2007). MAN ML 1 Met M Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft [KGS 4, 465 565] Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, translated by Michael Freedman, in Theoretical Philosophy after 1781, 183 270, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, edited by Henry Allison and Peter Heath, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, (2002). Metaphysik L 1, [KGS 28, 195 301] partially translated by Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon, in Lectures on Metaphysics, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant (42 106), edited by Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, (1997). Metaphysik Mrongovius [KGS 29, 745 940], translated by Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon, in Lectures on Metaphysics, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant (109 286), edited by Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1997). Moral M2 Moral Mrongovius II [KGS 29, 595 642].
NOTE ON SOURCES AND KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS AND TRANSLATIONS xiii MPC Moralphilosophie Collins [KGS 27, 241 471] translated by Peter Heath in Lectures on Ethics (41 222), The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, edited by Peter Heath and J. B. Schneewind, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1997). MS Metaphysik der Sitten [KGS 6, 202 493] The Metaphysics of Morals (365 603), translated by Mary J. Gregor in Practical Philosophy, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant (365 603), edited by Mary J. Gregor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1996). ND Principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio [KGS 1, 385 46], New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Cognition, Theoretical Philosophy, 1775 1770, (1 45) translated by David Walford in collaboration with Ralf Meerbote, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1992). PRO Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik, die als Wissenschaft wird aufterten können [KGS 4, 253 383], Prolegomena to any future metaphysics that will be able to come forward as science, translated by Gary Hatfield, in Theoretical Philosophy after 1781 (53 169), The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, edited by Henry Allison and Peter Heath, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2002). R Reflexionen [KGS 15 19]. RGV Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft [KGS 6, 57 215] Religion within the boundaries of mere reason, translated by Allen Wood and George Di Giovani in Religion and Rational Theology (55 213), edited by Allen Wood and George Di Giovani, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1996). RSV Recension von Schulz s Versuch einer Anleitung zur Sittenlehre für alle Menschen, ohne Unterschied der Religion, nebst einem Anhange von den Todesstraffen [KGS 8, 9 15] Review of Schulz s Attempt at an introduction to a doctrine of morals for all human beings regardless of different religions, translated by Mary J. Gregor in Practical Philosophy (7 10), The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, edited by Mary J. Gregor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1996). SF Der Streit der Facultäten [KGS 7: 5 116] The Conflict of the Faculties, translated and edited by Allen Wood and George Di Giovani in Religion and Rational Theology (237 327), edited by Allen Wood and George Di Giovani, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1996). TP Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis [KGS 8, 273 313] On the common saying: That may be correct in theory, but it is of no use in practice, translated by Mary J. Gregor in Practical Philosophy (279 309), The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, edited by Mary J. Gregor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1996). UE Über eine Entdeckung, nach der alle neue Kritik der reinen Vernunft durch eine ältere entbehrlich gemacht warden soll [KGS 8, 185 251] On a discovery whereby any new critique of pure reason is to be made superfluous by an older one, translated by Henry Allison in Theoretical Philosophy after 1781 (283 336), The Cambridge Edition of the
xiv NOTE ON SOURCES AND KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS AND TRANSLATIONS VEF VMS WHD Works of Immanuel Kant, edited by Henry Allison and Peter Heath, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2002). Vorarbeiten zum ewigen Frieden [KGS 23, 152 92] Preliminaries to Perpetual Peace. Vorarbeiten zu Die Metaphysik der Sitten [KGS 23, 207 330] Preliminaries to the Metaphysics of Morals. Was heisst: Sich im Denken orientiren? [KGS 8, 131 47] What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking? translated by Allen Wood, in Religion and Rational Theology (1 18), The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1996).
Introduction This volume contains a collection of seventeen of my essays on various aspects of Kant s philosophy, all but one of which were written or published after 1996. 1 Each of these essays has been edited and revised for this volume. In most cases the revisions are relatively minor, consisting mainly in the addition of notes and modest stylistic changes. In others, the changes are more substantive and are aimed at removing or at least lessening unclarity in the original version. In the most important of these I have flagged the changes in a note so that a reader who wishes to can compare the revised with the original version. I have, however, resisted the temptation to rewrite or radically change any of the essays, since that would defeat the aim of providing a record of my work in the shape that it has taken over the past fifteen plus years. Nevertheless, there is one completely new item, namely, an addendum to my critical reflections on Béatrice Longuenesse s important book (Kant and the Capacity to Judge)in which I respond to her previously published response to my original critique. Although these essays cover the full range of my work on Kant, most of them revolve around three themes: the nature of transcendental idealism, freedom of the will, and the purposiveness of nature, which, not coincidentally, I regard as the three fundamental conceptions in Kant s critical philosophy. The first two of these have been the central foci of my work on Kant since its inception and were the subject matter of my first two systematic books on Kant and collection of essays. 2 While I have not radically altered my views on either issue, I believe that the essays in this volume dealing with them contain a significant development or at least clarification of these views. In some of them this takes the form of an attempt to place Kant s views in a broader historical context by means of a comparison with those of other thinkers ranging from Leibniz, Wolff, Crusius, and Hume to Kant s idealistic successors. The third of these themes is central to the third Critique and has been a major concern of my more recent work, which found its systematic expression in Kant s Theory of Taste (2001a). But whereas that book is concerned primarily with Kant s aesthetics, the essays 1 This was the year of the publication of my previous collection of essays on Kant (1996a). The exception is my Kant s Antinomy of Teleological Judgment (1991a). Despite its earlier date I have decided to include it in this collection because it is the only writing of mine devoted to this topic and it complements a number of the other essays dealing with various aspects of Kant s views on teleology. 2 These are Allison (1983) [revised and enlarged edition (2004)] and (1990).
2 ESSAYS ON KANT in this collection dealing with purposiveness and the reflective power of judgment are all concerned with the extra-aesthetic dimensions of these conceptions, which includes Kant s accounts of empirical concepts, induction, and teleology. The essays are divided into four parts and, with one exception, are ordered chronologically within each part. 3 The first part, which consists of four essays and the abovementioned addendum, is concerned with topics in Kant s theoretical philosophy, specifically, the first Critique. The second is made up of five essays dealing with Kant s practical philosophy, with an emphasis on the concept of freedom. The third is composed of four essays involving topics from the third Critique. The final part contains four essays that discuss a variety of topics, including Kant s political philosophy, his philosophy of history, and philosophy of religion. These are likewise related, if sometimes indirectly, to the third Critique, inasmuch as they involve in various ways Kant s conception of the purposiveness of nature (including human nature). In what follows I discuss each of the essays in turn. I The first essay dealing with Kant s theoretical philosophy, Commentary on Section Nine of the Antinomy of Pure Reason, was originally intended as a chapter covering this section in a co-operative commentary on the first Critique. Since Kant s aim in this section is to provide a critical resolution of each of the four antinomies, his argument is extremely complex, and following the ground rules of the commentary, I endeavor to cover the account as a whole. But inasmuch as Kant s main interest is with the resolution of the third antinomy, this receives the bulk of attention. Kant s concern in the portion of the text devoted to the resolution of the third antinomy is to demonstrate the implications of this resolution for the free will problem. As part of a conflict between cosmological claims regarding the sensible world as a whole, the antinomy proper concerns the apparent conflict between the demand of reason for completeness in the explanation of phenomena, which is affirmed in the thesis and requires the postulation of an absolute beginning, and the claim of the antithesis that there can be no such beginning because every cause must itself have its antecedent cause, ad infinitum. Kant s resolution consists in the assertion that these claims are compatible, since the denial of unconditioned causality applies only within the course of nature, leaving conceptual space for an intelligible cause that meets the demand of the thesis. 4 Although at first glance the connection between this issue and the free will problem seems contrived, Kant argues for their connection by claiming that the practical concept of freedom, which is that of free will as ordinarily understood, includes the notion of absolute spontaneity, which is also the content of the transcendental idea of 3 The exception is essay 13, which for thematic reasons is grouped last in Part III. 4 For my fullest and most recent analysis of this antinomy see Allison (2004), 376 84.
INTRODUCTION 3 freedom that was appealed to in the thesis of the antinomy. Kant further claims that, because of this inclusion, the free will problem requires a transcendental rather than a psychological (or physiological) resolution. I analyze this claim, which involves the denial of the adequacy of an entirely naturalistic approach to the question of free will, and argue that Kant is best read as offering a conceptual thesis regarding what is built into the thought of rational agency rather than a metaphysical thesis regarding an inaccessible noumenal self. The second essay in the first part, Where Have all the Categories Gone? Reflections on Longuenesse s Reading of Kant s Transcendental Deduction, contains my critique of Béatrice Longuenesse s interpretation of the B-Deduction in Kant and the Capacity to Judge and was originally presented at an author meets critic session of the Western Division of the American Philosophical Association in New Orleans in 1999. I have attempted to attain (at least for the time being) the last word on the matter by including an addendum in which I respond to Longuenesse s initial response to my critique. 5 I wish to emphasize, however, that this is a friendly critique, since her remarkable book has been an important influence on my own work and she has done me the honor of stating that my interpretation of the B-Deduction in the original version of Kant s Transcendental Idealism (1983) was the closest to hers in the literature. This relatively wide area of agreement has, however, led me to attach especial importance to our disagreement, particularly since the latter involves something as central to Kant s thought as the Transcendental Deduction. As I argue in my critique, despite the many virtues of Longuenesse s interpretation, I do not think that she has provided a satisfactory account of how Kant argues for the necessity of the categories in the two parts of the B-Deduction and how the two parts were intended to yield a single proof. And, as I note in my addendum, this remains the case after her response to my original critique. The third essay of this part: Kant and the Two Dogmas of Rationalism, was written for a collection of essays on classical rationalism. 6 I used the occasion to give a systematic expression to a line of thought that was suggested to me by Philip Kitcher s remark that in the first Critique Kant came close to anticipating the central thesis of Quine s Two Dogmas of Empiricism. Taking this as my point of departure, I argue that Kant actually came closer to providing a critique of what may be called the two dogmas of rationalism. These are the propositions that in every true proposition the predicate is contained in the concept of the subject and that sensible cognition is reducible in principle (if not for the human understanding) to purely conceptual or intellectual cognition. The former is often referred to as the predicate-in-notion principle and I have termed the latter the reducibility principle. I claim not only that they are mirror images of Quine s more famous dogmas and that they reciprocally imply one another, but that Kant s critique of these dogmas provides an invaluable 5 For Longuenesse s response, see Longuenesse (2000). 6 Allison (2005).
4 ESSAYS ON KANT framework for understanding the fundamental differences between his critical philosophy and classical rationalism (including but not limited to the philosophy of Leibniz). In particular, it shows that the fundamental issue for Kant is not how synthetic judgments are possible a priori but how they are possible at all. The final essay of the first part, Transcendental Realism, Empirical Realism, and Transcendental Idealism, is an attempt to clarify my views on the nature of Kant s transcendental idealism and to respond to some of my critics. Although its central claim, namely, that the key to understanding Kant s idealism is to view it in contrast to the transcendental realism to which he opposes it and that this leads to a recognition of the methodological or meta-philosophical (as opposed to metaphysical) nature of this idealism is not new, I believe that the discussion goes beyond my earlier treatments of this topic in at least four respects. First, it develops a line of thought that I introduced in the revised version of Kant s Transcendental Idealism (2004), according to which transcendental realism is identified with any view that regards the proper objects of human cognition as things or objects in general. This appears to conflict with Kant s own tendency to characterize such realism in terms of its identification of mere appearances, that is, objects of possible experience, with things in themselves; but by examining the largely unexplored relationship between the concept of an object in general, that is, an object as such or qua object, and a thing (or object) considered as it is in itself, I argue that there is no conflict and that this way of framing the issue leads to a better understanding of what Kant is really up to with his limitation of cognition to objects of possible experience. Second, I analyze Kant s empirical realism more carefully than I had in the past and argue that, far from being a form of phenomenalism or subjective idealism, as some critics continue to maintain, it is in fact a robust form of realism that is quite adequate to our cognitive needs and that avoids the excesses of a transcendental realism that Kant exposes in the Transcendental Dialectic. Third, I argue that the familiar objections to transcendental idealism rest upon an implicit commitment to transcendental realism and therefore beg the question against this idealism. Finally, I attempt to turn the tables on those interpreters who purport to defend significant portions of Kant s account of experience, while disparaging his transcendental idealism, by calling upon them to explain why they think that an empirical realism is not sufficient, but a transcendental realism is required. Underlying this challenge is an analysis of the latter according to which it holds that space, time, and the categories apply to objects in general or as such rather than merely to objects of any experience that is possible for beings with our forms of cognition. I maintain that this is the true form in which the issue should be posed and that when it is posed in this way the case for transcendental idealism becomes compelling. II The first essay in the part of this volume devoted to Kant s practical philosophy, We Can Act Only Under the Idea of Freedom, was initially delivered as a presidential
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.com www.ebook777.com INTRODUCTION 5 address to the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association in Berkeley California in 1997. 7 Accordingly, it was written with a general philosophical audience in mind rather than one composed of Kantians or even philosophers with a strong interest in Kant. I chose as my text this famous passage from the Groundwork because Daniel Dennett had helped himself to the phrase Acting under the Idea of Freedom as the title for a central chapter in his influential book Elbow Room, which deals with the free will problem from an uncompromisingly naturalistic perspective. In addition to making my views accessible to such an audience, the essay has a twofold aim. One is to query Dennett s approach to the issue, which leads him to construe the necessity of acting under the idea of freedom as reducible to a deliberator s unavoidable ignorance regarding the outcome of a proposed course of action. Against this, I argue that Kant s account of rational agency makes a persuasive case for attributing to an agent, at least from a first-person perspective, a genuine spontaneity which eludes the naturalistic framework that is assumed by Dennett and many others to be all-encompassing. The other is to counter John McDowell s dismissive treatment of Kant s idealism in Man and World. Although such a treatment is quite common in the literature, I focus on McDowell because he is virtually alone in taking an essentially Kantian view of spontaneity seriously and rejecting a bald naturalism, of the kind proposed by Dennett. In light of this, I question McDowell s understanding of transcendental idealism, which he seems to have taken over whole cloth from Strawson, and suggest that his own account rests ultimately on an idealistic commitment of a methodological sort. The second essay in this part, On the Very Idea of a Propensity to Evil, was written for a special issue of the Journal of Value Inquiry devoted to Kant s moral philosophy. 8 Like my previous treatments of this topic, it emphasizes the still not always appreciated fact that by radical evil Kant understood the root or condition of the possibility of all moral evil, rather than very great evil, and it seeks to ground this conception in Kant s account of rational agency. 9 It differs from my other treatments, however, in two respects. First, it contains a response to Allen Wood s attempt to anthropologize radical evil by identifying it with unsociable sociability. While I acknowledge that the connection between moral evil (in all forms) and unsociable sociability is an important dimension of Kant s thought, I deny that it is the whole story. Second, I argue that the part of the story that eludes Wood s anthropological and therefore naturalistic account is conceptual rather than metaphysical in nature. More specifically, I argue that Kant s account is grounded in a conceptual analysis of the conditions of imputation, that is to say, what must be presupposed if one takes moral evil seriously. As such, it shares with the previous essay an attempt to find a third way 7 It was first published as Allison (1997a). 8 Allison (2002). 9 These include Allison (1990), 146 61, (1991b), and (1996a), 169 82.
6 ESSAYS ON KANT between an impoverished naturalistic and an objectionable metaphysical approach to Kant s conception of freedom. The third essay in the second part of this volume, Kant s Practical Justification of Freedom, was written for a collection of essays on practical justification in Kant and has two aims. 10 First, it provides a brief account of what Kant understands by a practical justification and the various types of such justification found in his writings. Second, it examines the different ways in which Kant attempts to provide a practical justification of freedom in various texts, chiefly the Groundwork and the second Critique. Its main focus is on the tension between Kant s attempt in the former work to ground the necessity of presupposing freedom in our conception of ourselves as rational agents and therefore independently of any specifically moral considerations ( We can act only under the idea of freedom ) and his view in the latter that, [H]ad not the moral law already been distinctly thought in our reason, we should never consider ourselves justified in assuming such a thing as freedom (KpV 5: 4n). I resolve the tension by linking the former with freedom as spontaneity and the latter with freedom as autonomy. In other words, while the conception of ourselves as rational agents, that is, as beings with the capacity to determine ourselves to act on the basis of reasons (including but not limited to moral reasons), suffices to show the necessity of presupposing freedom in the sense of spontaneity, it is only the consciousness of standing under the moral law (as a fact of reason ) that brings with it an awareness of our moral autonomy, understood as a capacity to determine oneself to act on the basis of purely moral considerations, independently of any desires and needs we have as beings with a sensuous as well as a rational nature. And, in this context, I introduce the controversial but to my mind fundamental claim, which I have also argued for elsewhere, that the reason why the critical Kant eschews a theoretical proof of freedom is not merely that such a proof is beyond our cognitive capacity, but also because transcendental idealism, properly understood, precludes the assumption that there is some fact of the matter regarding freedom (whether empirical or noumenal) that could be established theoretically if we had the capacity. The fourth essay in this part, The Singleness of the Categorical Imperative, was initially presented at the Eleventh International Kant Congress at Pisa in 2010. Its concern is with the concept of the categorical imperative and its aim is to lay the foundation for a defense of Kant s thesis that this imperative is only a single one (GMS 4: 421). This thesis needs a defense because in Groundwork 2 Kant presents a number of formulations of this imperative (the precise number itself being a subject of dispute), which, to say the least, are not obviously equivalent. My strategy for this defense is to try to show that these formulations are the result of Kant s attempt to provide a complete construction of the concept of the categorical imperative by linking them with various steps in a progressive account of finite rational 10 Allison (forthcoming).
INTRODUCTION 7 agency that constitutes the organizing principle of Groundwork 2. By the complete construction of the concept I understand an account of the necessary and sufficient conditions of the possibility of the categorical imperative. I term Kant s analysis of the conception of rational agency progressive because each step, which is correlated with a distinct formula, adds a fresh dimension to the conception of such agency. My claim is that this makes it possible to view these formulas as extensionally but not intentionally equivalent, that is to say, as yielding the same results when applied to the same cases, though not for the same reasons. In so doing, I occupy a middle ground between the views of Wood, who denies that these formulations are equivalent in any meaningful way, and Onora O Neill, who maintains that they are intensionally as well as extensionally equivalent. The final essay in this part, Kant on Freedom of the Will, provides an overview of Kant s accounts of freedom from the 1770s through the critical period. 11 It discusses the various conceptions of freedom to be found in the Kantian texts, analyzes the connection between these conceptions and Kant s moral theory, explores the contrast between the empirical and the intelligible character of the will as contained in the first Critique, and examines Kant s controversial views on the relation between freedom and causal determinism. The distinctive feature of this essay, however, is its attempt to frame Kant s account of free will historically in relation to the views of both his immediate predecessors, who exerted the most influence on him, and his idealistic successors, whose views he greatly influenced. The former group is composed of Leibniz, Wolff, and Crusius and the latter of Fichte, Hegel, and Schopenhauer. III The four essays in the third part of this volume are concerned with the third Critique. They discuss the place of this work in Kant s critical philosophy as a whole, the import of the conception of the logical or formal purposiveness of nature, which appears in both versions of the Introduction as the a priori principle pertaining to the power of judgment, and the antinomy of the teleological power of judgment. The first of these, Is the Critique of Judgment Post-Critical? was initially presented at a conference devoted to The Idea of a System of Transcendental Idealism in Kant, Fichte, Schelling, which was held at Dartmouth College in August 1995. 12 The essay is largely a response to Burkhard Tuschling s provocative thesis that the later Kant abandoned his original critical view as expressed in the first Critique and related writings in favor of a speculative approach and that this is evident not only in the fragmentary Opus postumum, which is the main focus of Tuschling s Kant-interpretation, but already in the third Critique. My quarrel is not with his account of Kant s views in the Opus postumum, about which I remain skeptical but undecided, but rather 11 Allison (2006b). 12 Allison (2000c).
8 ESSAYS ON KANT with his further claim that an abandonment of critical principles is to be found in the third Critique. Against this I maintain that, while it is certainly true that, by giving a central place to the reflective power of judgment, the third Critique contains a significant development of Kant s previous thought, this involves a deepening rather than an abandonment of critical principles. More specifically I argue not only against Tuschling but against Guyer, Horstmann, and others as well, that Kant s account of the principle of logical or formal purposiveness contains a line of thought that was already in place in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic in the first Critique. Finally, in support of the critical nature of Kant s position in the third Critique, I contrast Kant s conception of and appeal to the concept of an intuitive intellect with that of the young Hegel to which Tuschling refers. The next two essays in the third part are Reflective Judgement and the Application of Logic to Nature: Kant s Deduction of the Principle of Purposiveness as an Answer to Hume and The Critique of Judgment as a True Apology for Leibniz. The former was initially delivered at a conference on Strawson and Kant at Reading, UK in September of 1999. 13 The latter was presented at the Ninth International Kant Congress in Berlin in March of 2000. 14 Its title expresses my view that Kant s somewhat ironical remark at the end of his response to Eberhard that the Critique of Pure Reason might well be the true apology for Leibniz (UE 8: 250) is also applicable (without any irony) to the third Critique. Even though one of these essays is concerned with Kant s relation to Hume and the other with his relation to Leibniz, they are companion pieces, closely related in both time of composition and content. As a result, they contain a partial overlap in their treatments of Kant s transcendental deduction of the principle of logical or formal purposiveness. Nevertheless, I have included both essays in this volume because I believe that they illustrate how a single line of argument can be seen as having two quite distinct targets or, colloquially expressed, as killing two birds with one stone. Specifically, they jointly show how the view articulated in the deduction of this principle and, more generally, in Kant s account of the logical or formal purposiveness of nature, provides the basis for both a critical reformulation of the argument for presupposing the existence of natural kinds mounted by Leibniz against Locke in his New Essays on Human Understanding and a powerful response to Hume s skeptical challenge to the rational grounding of induction. And for this reason I argue that this account must be placed at the center rather than the periphery of Kantian epistemology, which reinforces the point made in response to Tuschling regarding the critical status of the third Critique. The final essay in this part, Kant s Antinomy of Teleological Judgment, was initially presented at the tenth Spindel Conference at the University of Memphis in October 1991 on the topic of System and Teleology in Kant s Critique of 13 Allison (2003). 14 Allison (2001b).
INTRODUCTION 9 Judgment. 15 It attempts to unravel Kant s perplexing claims that there is the appearance of an antinomy between the mechanistic and teleological principles and that this appearance stems from the confusion of a principle of reflective with one of the determinative power of judgment (KU 5: 389). These claims are perplexing because they raise at least three fundamental questions with which the essay endeavors to deal. (1) What does Kant understand by the principle of mechanism and how does it differ from the causal principle of the first Critique? (2) Given Kant s views on the requirements for an antinomy, how could he have thought that the power of judgment is the source of the appearance of one? This is a problem because this power in its determinative capacity does not have any principles of its own capable of generating even the appearance of an antinomy, while the conflict between regulative principles or maxims of the reflective power of judgment that Kant describes, seems to yield an actual antinomy rather than merely the appearance of one. (3) What is the relation between Kant s claim that, as pertaining to the reflective rather than the determinative power of judgment, the opposing principles of mechanism and teleology are merely regulative rather than constitutive and the resolution of the antinomy? This is perhaps the most fundamental question because if, as the initial formulation suggests and many interpretations assume to be the case, the resolution consists merely in showing that these principles are regulative, then, in addition to the seldom noticed fact that this generates rather than resolves an antinomy, the vast bulk of Kant s account, which includes a discussion of some of the most suggestive yet obscure conceptions in the third Critique, including the concept of an intuitive intellect, is irrelevant to the task. By focusing on these aporia of Kant s account, the essay attempts to provide a plausible reading of the antinomy, which I believe to be essential to an understanding of Kant s complex views regarding the reflective power of judgment as a whole. IV Although the four essays constituting the fourth part of this collection deal with a variety of topics, each of them involves in some way a consideration of Kant s philosophy of history and therefore a relation to the third Critique, where we find the critical foundations of this aspect of Kant s thought. The first of these, The Gulf between Nature and Freedom and Nature s Guarantee of Perpetual Peace, was presented in a symposium on Kant s conception of perpetual peace at the Eighth International Kant Congress in Memphis in March 1995. 16 It focuses on the relation between Kant s famous essay on the topic and the nature freedom problem as posed in the published Introduction to the third Critique. The problem is central to Kant s philosophy of history and as formulated in the third Critique it concerns the immense 15 See note 1. 16 Allison (1996b).
10 ESSAYS ON KANT gulf [grosse Kluft], which separates the supersensible from appearances and which seems to stand in the way of their influencing one another (KU 5: 175). This gulf, which concerns our ways of conceptualizing the domains of nature and freedom, arises because the ends set by the laws of freedom, that is to say, the various aspects of the highest good, ought to be realized in the sensible world, while this world is supposedly governed by mechanistic laws of nature that are indifferent to any such ends. After spelling out Kant s general approach to the problem and its connection with his conception of the reflective power of judgment, I apply this analysis to his account in Toward Perpetual Peace of how human nature may, apart from any moral considerations, be thought to lead humankind to a form of political organization that will involve the institution of republican governments and peaceful relations between states. The second essay in this part, Kant s Conception of Aufklärung, was presented at a session of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy in Boston in August of 1998. 17 It analyses Kant s conception of enlightenment as it is contained not only in his essay: An answer to the question: What is enlightenment? (1784), but also in his comparatively neglected discussions of the topic in What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking? (1786) and the third Critique, as well as a related discussion in the Anthropology. It argues that, contrary to the view of Mendelssohn and many of his contemporaries for whom enlightenment consists essentially in the acquisition of basic truths regarding the human condition, Kant viewed it in more negative and practical terms as the escape from a condition of Unmündigkeit, understood as an incapacity to use one s understanding without the direction of others. As such, enlightenment for Kant is best expressed in the motto Sapere aude (Dare to think for yourself or use your own understanding) and involves the will as well as the intellect. This connection of enlightenment with the will is affirmed in Kant s controversial claim that this condition of Unmündigkeit is self-incurred and therefore something for which the individual is responsible. This has been criticized in both Kant s time and our own and I defend Kant against this criticism, suggesting a comparison with Dostoevsky s Grand Inquisitor. In addition, I argue that, properly understood, Kant s conception of enlightenment provides the basis for a powerful response to Gadamer s well-known critique of enlightenment as a prejudice against prejudice, which denies the importance of tradition. The third essay in this part, Teleology and History in Kant: The Critical Foundations of Kant s Philosophy of History, was written for a co-operative commentary on Kant s essay: The Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim. 18 My assigned text for this commentary was the first proposition: All natural predispositions of a creature are determined sometime to develop themselves completely and purposively (IAG 8: 18). By exploring the connection between this principle, which Kant applies in the 17 Allison (2000a). 18 Allison (2009a).
INTRODUCTION 11 remaining eight propositions to human nature and the history of humankind, and the central ideas of the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment, I argue that Kant s philosophy of history is fully critical rather than being, as is sometimes maintained, merely an exercise in a somewhat whimsical and dogmatic speculation, which is reserved for occasional pieces. Since the view of history that Kant sketches in this essay is for the most part the same as the one provided eleven years later in Toward Perpetual Peace, regarding republican forms of government and an enduring peace between states as the outcome of an historical process to which humankind is led against its collective will by what has aptly been referred to as the cunning of nature, my discussion covers some of the same ground as the essay devoted to that work. It differs from it, however, in two respects. First, it devotes much more attention to the details of Kant s account of teleology in the third Critique, including his conception of an organism, which is the central conception in his philosophy of biology, and the distinction between an intrinsic and an extrinsic purposiveness. Second, it considers the trans-political aim of history to which Kant alludes in the earlier essay but which lies outside the scope of the later one, namely, the suggestion that history has as its ultimate goal not simply the above-mentioned political ends, but also the collective realization (by humankind as a whole) of the highest good. It is this goal, which in the third Critique Kant refers to as the final end of creation, that constitutes the link between Kant s philosophy of history and philosophy of religion, a topic which I explore in the final essay. This essay, Reason, Revelation, and History in Lessing and Kant, was written for a volume devoted to the topic of faith and reason. 19 I added history to the assigned topic and used the occasion to contrast the views of Lessing and Kant on these issues. This reflects my long-held belief that what made Lessing and Kant the two most important religious-philosophical thinkers of the Aufklärung is that they both not only sharply distinguished between the question of the truth of the Christian religion and the facticity of the historical events in which it originated, arguing that Christianity possesses an inner truth that is logically independent of its historical foundations, but in the process proposed an historical understanding of revealed religion in general and Christianity in particular, which effectively merges the philosophy of religion into the philosophy of history. Although this historicization is most evident in Lessing s The Education of the Human Race, in which he sketches in broad strokes a view of religious history as composed of three stages: the religion of the ancient Hebrews, Christianity, and a still awaited eternal Gospel, I argue that it also plays an important, albeit more subterranean role in Kant s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. I further argue, however, that, despite this commonality, which includes a relatively conservative stance toward aspects of traditional Christianity, such as original sin, the doctrine of 19 Allison (2009b).