Wag the Tail

In his critic of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, as Henry Allison informs us in his account, Eberhard sets out to “recover [us] from the stupor induced by the Critique of Pure Reason” (Allison 16). He attempts to do so by providing a clear critique of the publication, which he mostly develops around on Leibnizian arguments. Allison outlines his arguments into four clearly delineated parts. Eberhard firsts critics Kant’s work on the limits of knowledge; secondly, he provides the justification of knowledge derived from non-sensible conditions; he then critics Kant’s argument about the nature of sensible conditions, namely space and time; and lastly, he questions the originality of Kant’s work as he likens it to a lesser version of Leibniz’s philosophy (Allison 16). In his first argument, Eberhard claims knowledge cannot be simply limited to sensible conditions as intuitive knowledge. In other words, there is another “purely, rational non-intuitive knowledge about […] things in themselves” (Allison 17). This, of course, Kant argued against, for, according to him, we can only have knowledge about things as they are given to us in experience within the sensible conditions of space and time. Any claims about anything else outside of experience equate to stretching the bounds of our understanding beyond its grasp. Eberhard explains that this limitation cannot be carried out since we can make claims about super-sensible things that are consistent with themselves but also comply with the nature of reality. He asserts the Leibnizian argument that as compliant with the basic human principles, namely sufficient reason and the principle of non-contradiction, the “transcendental validity” (which would equate to Kant’s term, “objective reality”) of such claims stands (Allison 17). As such, anything “that follows logically from these principles” (Allison 17) contains truth. The validity of claims is dependent only on the parameters of these principles, not dependent on their pertaining to the sensible conditions of knowledge. From this view, he argues that doubting any claims made by reason would lead to skepticism. Truth, for Eberhard, is “ the agreement […] with the necessary laws of reason and the understanding” (Allison 18). Under this definition, doubting claims made by reason outside of the sensible conditions would deprive us of any certain truth. For Eberhard, as long as something complies with the principle of non-contradiction and providing sufficient reason can provide logical knowledge outside of sensible conditions. Yet, Kant is not leading us into skepticism. He is not challenging the logic of such principle, if anything he asserts within experience. What he is challenging is the extension of these principles beyond their realm. His critique of Leibnizian rationalism derives from its presupposed “erroneous identification of our concepts of things with the things themselves” (Allison 21). Eberhard seems to ignore this and simply makes the same claim that principles that coincide with the nature of things as we experience them must hold validity outside of experience for the very same reason that they hold validity with experience. Simply because we cannot think of anything within our experience that could not escape the principle of non-contradiction does it mean that we can extend this principle to things outside of experience. Regardless of whether Kant succeeds in his quest to evaluate the validity of reason and its claims, Eberhard simply regresses from any progress Kant made by simply brushing off any challenges made to the presupposed validity of reason with the same justification that Kant challenges.