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Section Three: Recent German Philosophy B.
Kant.
The philosophy of Kant, which we have now
more parcularly to consider, made its appearance
at the same time as the above. While Descartes
asserted certainty to be the unity of thought
and Being, we now have the consciousness
of thought in its subjectivity, i. e. in
the first place, as determinateness in contrast
with objectivity, and then as finitude and
progression in finite determinations. Abstract
thought, as personal conviction is that which
is maintained as certain; its contents are
experience, but the methods adopted by experience
are once more formal thought and argument.
Kant turns back to the standpoint of Socrates;
we see in him the freedom of the subject
as we saw it with the Stoics, but the task
in respect of content is now placed on a
higher level. An endless aiming at the concrete
is required for thought, a filling up in
accordance with the rule which completion
prescribes, which signifies that the content
is itself the Idea as the unity of the Notion
and reality. With Jacobi thought, demonstration,
does not in the first place reach beyond
the finite and conditioned, and in the Second
place, even when God is likewise the metaphysical
object, the demonstration is really the making
Him conditioned and finite; in the third
place the unconditioned, what is then immediately
certain, only exists in faith, a subjectively
fixed point of view but an unknowable one,
that is to say an undetermined, indeterminable,
and consequently an unfruitful one. The standpoint
of the philosophy of Kant, on the contrary,
is in the first place to be found in the
fact that thought has through its reasoning
got so far as to grasp itself not as contingent
but rather as in itself the absolute ultimate.
In the finite, in connection with the finite,
an absolute standpoint is raised which acts
as a connecting bond; it binds together the
finite and leads up to the infinite. Thought
grasped itself as all in all, as absolute
in judgment; for it nothing external is authoritative,
since all authority can receive validity
only through thought. This thought, determining
itself within itself and concrete, is, however,
in the second place, grasped as subjective,
and this aspect of subjectivity is the form
which from Jacobi’s point of view is predominant;
the fact that thought is concrete Jacobi
has on the other hand for the most part set
aside. Both standpoints remain philosophies
of subjectivity; since thought is subjective,
the capacity of knowing the absolute is denied
to it. To Kant God cannot on the one hand
be found in experience; He can neither be
found in outward experience — as Lalande
discovered when he swept the whole heavens
and found no God — nor can He be discovered
within; though no doubt mystics and enthusiasts
can experience many things in themselves,
and amongst these God, i. e. the Infinite.
On the other hand Kant argues to prove the
existence of God, who is to him an hypothesis
necessary for the explanation of things,
a postulate of practical reason. But in this
connection another French astronomer made
the following reply to the Emperor Napoleon:
“Je n’ai pas eu besoin de cette hypothèse.”
According to this the truth underlying the
Kantian philosophy is the recognition of
freedom. Even Rousseau represented the absolute
to be found in freedom; Kant has the same
principle, but taken rather from the theoretic
side. The French regard it from the side
of will, which is represented in their proverb:
"Il a la tête près du bonnet.” France
possesses the sense of actuality, of promptitude;
because in that country conception passes
more immediately into action, men have there
applied themselves more practically to the
affairs of actuality. But however much freedom
may be in itself concrete, it was as undeveloped
and in its abstraction that it was there
applied to actuality; and to make abstractions
hold good in actuality means to destroy actuality.
The fanaticism which characterized the freedom
which was put into the hands of the people
was frightful. In Germany the same principle
asserted the rights of consciousness on its
own account, but it has been worked out in
a merely theoretic way. We have commotions
of every kind within us and around us, but
through them all the German head quietly
keeps its nightcap on and silently carries
on its operations beneath it.
Immanuel Kant was born at Königsberg in 1724,
and there studied theology to begin with;
in the year 1755 he entered upon his work
as an academic teacher; in 1770 he became
professor of logic, and in 1801 he died at
Königsberg on the 12th of February, having
almost attained his eightieth year (Tennemann’s
Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie
by Wendt, § 380, pp. 465, 466), without ever
having left his native town.
While to Wolff thought as thought was merely
positive self-identity and grasped itself
as such, we saw the negative self-moving
thought, the absolute Notion, appear in all
its power in France; and in the Aufklärung
it likewise made its way to Germany in such
a manner that all existence, all action,
was called upon to serve a useful purpose,
i. e. the implicit was done away with and
everything had to be for another; and that
for which everything had to be is man, self-consciousness,
taken, however, as signifying all men generally.
The consciousness of this action in abstract
form is the Kantian philosophy. It is thus
the self-thinking absolute Notion that passes
into itself which we see making its appearance
in Germany through this philosophy, in such
a way that all reality falls within self-consciousness;
it is the idealism which vindicates all moments
of the implicit to self-consciousness, but
which at first itself remains subject to
a contradiction, inasmuch as it still separates
this implicit from itself. In other words
the Kantian philosophy no doubt leads reality
back to self-consciousness, but it can supply
no reality to this essence of self-consciousness,
or to this pure self-consciousness, nor can
it demonstrate Being in the same. It apprehends
simple thought as having difference in itself,
but does not yet apprehend that all reality
rests on this difference; it does not know
how to obtain mastery over the individuality
of self-consciousness, and although it describes
reason very well, it does this in an unthinking
empiric way which again robs it of the truth
it has. Theoretically the Kantian philosophy
is the “Illumination” or Aufklärung reduced
to method; it states that nothing true can
be known, but only the phenomenal; it leads
knowledge into consciousness and self-consciousness,
but from this standpoint maintains it to
be a subjective and finite knowledge. Thus
although it deals with the infinite Idea,
expressing its formal categories and arriving
at its concrete claims, it yet again denies
this to be the truth, making it a simple
subjective, because it has once for all accepted
finite knowledge as the fixed and ultimate
standpoint. This philosophy made an end of
the metaphysic of the understanding as an
objective dogmatism, but in fact it merely
transformed it into a subjective dogmatism,
i. e. into a consciousness in which these
same finite determinations of the understanding
persist, and the question of what is true
in and for itself has been abandoned. Its
study is made difficult by its diffuseness
and prolixity, and by the peculiar terminology
found in it. Nevertheless this diffuseness
has one advantage, that inasmuch as the same
thing is often repeated, the main points
are kept before us, and those cannot easily
be lost from view.
We shall endeavour to trace the lines which
Kant pursued. The philosophy of Kant has
in the first place a direct relation to that
of Hume as stated above (p. 370). That is
to say, the significance of the Kantian philosophy,
generally expressed, is from the very beginning
to allow that determinations such as those
of universality and necessity are not to
be met with in perception, and this Hume
has already shown in relation to Locke. But
while Hume attacks the universality and necessity
of the categories generally, and Jacobi their
finitude, Kant merely argues against their
objectivity in so far as they are present
in external things themselves, while maintaining
them to be objective in the sense of holding
good as universal and necessary, as they
do, for instance, in mathematics and natural
science.(1) The fact that we crave for universality
and necessity as that which first constitutes
the objective, Kant thus undoubtedly allows.
But if universality and necessity do not
exist in external things, the question arises
“Where are they to be found?” To this Kant,
as against Hume, maintains that they must
be a priori, i. e. that they must rest on
reason itself, and on thought as self-conscious
reason; their source is the subject, “I”
in my self-consciousness.(2) This, simply
expressed, is the main point in the Kantian
philosophy.
In the second place the philosophy of Kant
is likewise called a critical philosophy
because its aim, says Kant, is first of all
to supply a criticism of our faculties of
knowledge; for before obtaining knowledge
we must inquire into the faculties of knowledge.
To the healthy human understanding that is
plausible, and to it this has been a great
discovery. Knowledge is thereby represented
as an instrument, as a method and means whereby
we endeavour to possess ourselves of the
truth. Thus before men can make their way
to the truth itself they must know the nature
and function of their instrument. They must
see whether it is capable of supplying what
is demanded of it — of seizing upon the object;
they must know what the alterations it makes
in the object are, in order that these alterations
may not be mixed up with the determinations
of the object itself.(3) This would appear
as though men could set forth upon the search
for truth with spears and staves. And a further
claim is made when it is said that we must
know the faculty of knowledge before we can
know. For to investigate the faculties of
knowledge means to know them; but how we
are to know without knowing, how we are to
apprehend the truth before the truth, it
is impossible to say. It is the old story
of the who would not go into the water till
he could swim. Thus since the investigation
of the faculties of knowledge is itself knowing,
it cannot in Kant attain to what it aims
at because it is that already — it cannot
come to itself because it is already with
itself; the same thing happens as happened
with the Jews, the Spirit passes through
the midst of them and they know it not. At
the same time the step taken by Kant is a
great and important one — that is, the fact
that he has made knowledge the subject of
his consideration.
On the one hand this critique of knowledge
applies to the empirical knowledge of Locke,
which asserts itself to be grounded on experience,
and, on the other hand, it also deals with
what claims to be on the whole a more metaphysical
kind of philosophy — the Wolffian and German
— which had also taken up the line of proceeding
on the more empiric method which has been
depicted. But this last has at the same time
kept itself separate from the merely empiric
method, inasmuch as its main efforts have
been directed towards making such categories
of thought as those of potentiality, actuality,
God, &c., have as their foundation categories
of the understanding, and then reasoning
from them. The Kantian philosophy is in the
first instance directed against both. Kant
takes away the objective significance of
the determinations of the Wolffian metaphysics,
and shows how they must be ascribed to subjective
thought alone. At the same time Jacobi likewise
declared himself against this metaphysic,
but since he started more especially from
the standpoint of the French and Germans,
his point of view was different: he asserts
that our finite thought can set forth finite
determinations alone, and thus can only consider
God and Spirit in accordance with finite
relationships. On the practical side there
reigned at that time the so-called happiness
theory, since man’s inherent Notion and the
way to realize this Notion was apprehended
in morality as a satisfaction of his desires.
As against this Kant has very rightly shown
that it involves a heteronomy and not an
autonomy of reason — a determination through
nature and consequently an absence of freedom.
But because the rational principle of Kant
was formal, and his successors could not
make any further progress with reason, and
yet morality had to receive a content, Fries
and others must still be called Hedonists
though they avoid giving themselves the name.
In the third place, as regards the relation
of the categories to the material which is
given through experience, there is according
to Kant already inherent in the subjective
determinations of thought, e. g. in those
of cause and effect, the capacity of themselves
to bind together the differences which are
present in that material. Kant considers
thought as in great measure a synthetic activity,
and hence he represents the main question
of Philosophy to be this, “How are synthetic
judgments a priori possible?”(4) Judgment
signifies the combination of thought-determinations
as subject and predicate. Synthetic judgments
a priori are nothing else than a connection
of opposites through themselves, or the absolute
Notion, i. e. the relations of different
determinations such as those of cause and
effect, given not through experience but
through thought. Space and time likewise
form the connecting element; they are thus
a priori, i. e. in self-consciousness. Since
Kant shows that thought has synthetic judgments
a priori which are not derived from perception,
he shows that thought is so to speak concrete
in itself. The idea which is present here
is a great one, but, on the other hand, quite
an ordinary signification is given it, for
it is worked out from points of view which
are inherently rude and empirical, and a
scientific form is the last thing that can
be claimed for it. In the presentation of
it there is a lack of philosophical abstraction,
and it is expressed in the most commonplace
way; to say nothing more of the barbarous
terminology, Kant remains restricted and
confined by his psychological point of view
and empirical methods.
To mention one example only of big barbarous
expressions, Kant calls his philosophy (Kritik
der reinen Vernunft, p. 19) a Transcendental
philosophy, i. e. a system of principles
of pure reason which demonstrate the universal
and necessary elements in the self-conscious
understanding, without occupying themselves
with objects or inquiring what universality
and necessity are; this last would be transcendent.
Transcendent and transcendental have accordingly
to be clearly distinguished. Transcendent
mathematics signifies the mathematics in
which the determination of infinitude is
made use of in a preeminent degree: in this
sphere of mathematics we say, for instance,
that the circle consists of an infinitude
of straight lines; the periphery is represented
as straight, and since the curve is represented
as straight this passes beyond the geometric
category and is consequently transcendent.
Kant, on the contrary, defines the transcendental
philosophy as not a philosophy which by means
of categories passes beyond its own sphere,
but one which points out in subjective thought,
in consciousness, the sources of what may
become transcendent. Thought would thus be
transcendent if the categories of universality,
of cause and effect, were predicated of the
object, for in this way men would from the
subjective element ‘transcend’ into another
sphere. We are not justified in so doing
as regards the result nor even to begin with,
since we merely contemplate thought within
thought itself. Thus we do not desire to
consider the categories in their objective
sense, but in so far as thought is the source
of such synthetic relationships; the necessary
and universal thus here receive the significance
of resting in our faculties of knowledge.
But from this faculty of knowledge Kant still
separates the implicit, the thing-in-itself,
so that the universality and necessity are
all the time a subjective conditionment of
knowledge merely, and reason with its universality
and necessity does not attain to a knowledge
of the truth.(5) For it requires perception
and experience, a material empirically given
in order, as subjectivity, to attain to knowledge.
As Kant says, these form its “constituent
parts”; one part it has in itself, but the
other is empirically given.(6) When reason
desires to be independent, to exist in itself
and to derive truth from itself, it becomes
transcendent; it transcends experience because
it lacks the other constituent, and then
creates mere hallucinations of the brain.
It is hence not constitutive in knowledge
but only regulative; it is the unity and
rule for the sensuous manifold. But this
unity on its own account is the unconditioned,
which, transcending experience, merely arrives
at contradictions. In the practical sphere
alone is reason constitutive. The critique
of reason is consequently not the knowing
of objects, but of knowledge and its principles,
its range and limitations, so that it does
not become transcendent.(7) This is an extremely
general account of what we shall now consider
in its separate details.
In dealing with this matter Kant adopts the
plan of first considering theoretic reason,
the knowledge which relates to outward objects.
In the second place he investigates the will
as self-actualization; and, in the third
place, the faculty of judgment, the special
consideration of the unity of the universal
and individual; how far he gets in this matter
we shall likewise see. But the critique of
the faculty of knowledge is the matter of
main importance.
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