Reinhold: Continuous Chain of Intellectual History

The Reinhold letters lend a great insight into the historical and intellectual context that Kant was immersed in. Opening with a long extracted passage, it seems as though everyone is intellectually at odds with reason, as it is “being accused ever more loudly as a disturber of the peace in the most important affair of humankind.” (Reinhold, 3)
The passage claims how the whole world is “driving reason into a corner.” (Reinhold, 4) The social religious and despotic orders want to suppress the “voice of their enemy,” which is reason of course, to maintain their current status quos. Reinhold maintains a dissenting view from the passage and challenges the writer to understand how any religious or secular faction is always utilizing reason to a certain extent. In fact, when one observes an isolated group or faction, it may seem frightening, but when viewed in a larger historical context, “as a whole in their connection with one another” the viewer can witness the “far-reaching and beneficent revolutions” that are continuously occurring (Reinhold, 4).
Reinhold does not believe the world of ideas to be stagnant or at odds with reason, but rather that it is in a constant state of flux. No single opinion or metaphysical answer is ever permanently sound, but rather there is an “ever-growing inadequacy of every answer offered to date.” (Reinhold, 7)
He then goes into great length of how various groups will latch reason to their beliefs, but how diametrically opposed groups will tear each other apart, “The deist drives pantheism out from all fortifications, while the pantheist tears down the bastions of deism.” (Reinhold, 8) All outdated modes of dogmatic thought are squabbling to assert their own belief structure but are at constant odds with one another. Reinhold, however, is glad that the current epoch has arrived. With a greater extent of intellectual freedom, there does not have to be any particular metaphysical universals, rather a limitless field of inquiry and potential for investigation can foster and develop.
Reinhold certainly seems to express a very far-reaching and broad-minded view of intellectual history and its development. No idea is capable of being a permanent fixture, but rather it is continuous chains of ideas, which are perpetually being altered or further developed to suit the needs of a particular era.

The Super Best Friends

I couldn’t think of a title, and I just watched South Park, so that’s the best I could do.

In rejecting the possibility of apodictic proofs as well as blind faith providing for God’s existence, Reinhold is enamored with Kant’s faith through practical reason. He holds that Kant manages to combine the best of both worlds, as he uses both doctrines for grounds in his argumentation. More importantly, Reinhold argues that a proper balance is stricken between reason and faith. While both are necessary, they cannot be allowed to encroach upon one another. Practical reason leads to the necessity of faith, not to its elimination.

Despite all this adoration, Reinhold doesn’t actually spend too much time in this letter actually discussing what Kant has proved, so I had to cheat and look at what Kant says. Kant argues that through reason, one can neither prove God’s existence, nor his non-existence. Instead, he classifies God as the faultless ideal, something that can never be proven yet never refuted (B669 589). Due to the transcendental qualities we ascribe to God (infinity, unity, omnipresence, omnipotence, etc.), only a transcendental theology could explain them. And as we are incapable of producing such a theology, we can never empirically prove or disprove God’s existence. Conversely, Kant also ascribes the concept of God to morality. Specifically, the idea of God is necessary when trying to conceptualize the highest idea of good. In this sense, one cannot separate the idea of God from the idea of supreme happiness. Thus, the ideal of the highest good is a necessary part of the moral world, which is seen as a consequence of the sensible world (A811 680). Therefore, God is a necessary idea behind the motivations of the good and morality.

Reinhold seems to encapsulate this when he argues that both wise sages and common men seem to accept the idea that there is some future rewarder or judge that will either approve or condemn one’s actions. Thus, Reinhold argues the best part of Kant’s proof is that it grounds the cognition of God’s existence, while still allowing for faith.

Ultimately, the problem I have with this is the effort Kant goes to explain the abilities and boundaries of pure reason, only to determine that it is unable to provide a definitive answer to God’s existence. And then to say that some idea of God is necessary for morality almost seems contradictory to me. If we cannot prove the existence of God, yet God is linked to the prime motivation of morality, then what’s the real point behind morality? I’m not saying this is a call to start rioting in the streets, just that there’s a bridge of faith in Kant’s reasoning that I’m uncomfortable with. I’m accepting of the symbiotic relationship between faith and reason in determining the idea of God, but not the subsequent inference into the reason for morality.

There's no such thing as a free and necessary lunch

In keeping with his distinction between "world" (mathematical) and "nature" (dynamic) (465-466), Kant calls the first two conflicts of the antithetic of pure reason (the finitude or infinitude of the world with regard to space and time and the existence of simple parts) "world-concepts in a narrower sense" (466), dealing with the composition and divisions of the world. The last two are "transcendent concepts of nature" (467).
The third conflict is over freedom: whether, in addition to the laws of nature, freedom causes certain appearances of the world, or it is simply the laws of nature that do so. According to the former position (the thesis), if there were no freedom (i.e., if there were no unconditioned causes), but only caused causes (i.e., the laws of nature), then there could be no beginning of things and the chain of causality would extend infinitely into the past. This, for Kant, is unacceptable, for "nothing happens without a cause sufficiently determined a priori" (484). The antithesis asserts that freedom leaves causation in an invalid in-between place, violating the law of causality (485).
It seems that tension might exist between freedom and necessity, both of which Kant attributes to the unconditioned (A419/B447). So, under this conception, the unconditioned is both free (i.e., without cause by anything else and the absolute beginning of a series of events) and necessary. But that which must occur (the necessary) seems to be conditioned by that necessity; it occurs because it cannot not occur. This contradicts with the free, which has no condition, no prior cause. How can Kant call the unconditioned both free and necessary What is the relationship between freedom and necessity?
The fourth conflict is concerned with the existence of a necessary being. It is interesting to note the connection between the thesis here (there exists a necessary being) and the thesis of the third conflict (freedom causes certain things). Kant writes that that which is conditioned "presupposes, in respect of its existence, a complete series of conditions up to the unconditioned,,," (A452/B480). This idea assumes that unconditioned causes indeed exist, which the thesis of the third conflict asserts and the antithesis denies. It is necessary to consider these four conflicts not only individually but also collectively.

William Wallace and Kant Would Not Get Along

In the Antithetic of Pure Reason Kant sets up the four transcendental ideas of cosmology and the conflict that results from them. Before he even begins to set up the four conflicts he seems to indicate his opinion that "their dispute is nugatory" (CPR 468). Kant really seems to like the word nugatory.

A brief note of interest before Kant explores the transcendental ideas is his distinction between a skeptical method and skepticism. The latter is defined as "a principle of artful and scientific ignorance that undermines the foundations of all cognition" (CPR 468), whereas the skeptical method ultimately seeks to determine what the certain limits of cognition are. This is one of those myriad examples of Kant's influence from Descartes. While Descartes aimed at a skeptical method, Kant believes its only result was actual skepticism.

The first two ideas that Kant considers are the conflicts over the spatial and temporal boundaries of the world, as well as the extent to which substances in the world can be divided. The third idea, which would seem to have far more wide-ranging practical implications, is the conflict between the laws of nature and causal necessity versus freedom. The thesis argues that freedom is necessary to explain the initiation of causal progression, whereas the antithesis claims that freedom would negate the lawful progression of natural causes.

Each thesis or antithesis of the conflicts attempts to be proven using reductio ad absurdam arguments, which would seem to move the argument nowhere other than claiming that the opposite position is absurd. This is perhaps part of the reason why the conflict seems so insoluble.

At their heart, Kant seems to reject the solutions offered to the antimonies of pure reason because they seek to apply the category of causality beyond the boundaries of appearances. This implies that causality has some sort of transcendental status, which Kant would not be willing to grant. However, the debate seems to be a necessary one nontheless, because freedom is a necessary element in moral decisions.

Kant seems willing to grant the necessary status of freedom for practical philosophy, but is certainly not willing to grant its place in speculation. If one assumes that freedom exists, Kant claims one must grant "a first mover for the explanation of motions of the world" (CPR 488), which seems to be an interesting inversion of the cosmological argument. However, if one rejects freedom, Kant concludes that "it is...not necessary for you to seek for something dynamically first as far as causality is concerned" (CPR 487). So either one assumes there is moral freedom, and a first cause follows, or there is no freedom, and the universe has no temporal beginning. No wonder Kant wanted to dodge the whole question.

An Alternate Ending?

April 6: 409-444, The Paralogisms
         9: 460-496 (484-490), 532-546, The Antinomies
       13: Garve/Feder reviews
       16: Reinhold’s Letters on the Kantian Philosophy
       20: Henry Allison’s summary of Eberhard’s critique
       23: G.E. Schulze, “Aenesidemus, or …”
       27: J.G. Fichte, “Review of Aenesidemus”
       30: S. Maimon, “Letters of Philaletes to Aenesidemus”
 May 4: CPR, 672-690, 702-704

Kant's got soul, and it's super bad.

Disclaimer: For those of you who don’t get the reference, please listen to James Brown. It’s for your own good.

So Kant, in a pretty unexpected move, decides to talk about the immortal soul or, as he calls it, the physiology of inner sense. I figured the whole immortal soul thing kind of fell under the category of those blasted dogmatic thinkers that Kant seems to dislike so much, but I guess Kant has to face the music at some point.

Basically, he mentions the doctrine of the soul and the doctrine of bodies as opposites, with the soul concerning inner sense and bodies concerning objects of outer sense, which are basically anything that exists in space. So that leaves time as the only thing governing our souls, which doesn’t seem to make too much of any kind of sense. Unfortunately for Kant, he digs himself even deeper by saying that all of our a priori concepts can only be found in the doctrine of bodies, since the doctrine of the soul has “in it nothing abiding” (A381 pg432). With no a priori concepts to fall back on how can Kant give any account of the soul at all, since it clearly isn’t something we can observe.

All that is really left to the soul is its possession of some type of “I,” or sense of self-identity, which ties together some constant flux of the soul with no manifold to unite. So it seems that Kant believes a soul must exist somehow, although he doesn’t give it much credit. He seems to at least think that the observer needs to have this thing to tie everything together and be able to synthesize experience. I think he kind of gives up on the soul here, and just begins to focus on exploring whatever the I is, since that only turns out to be some presupposed intuition with no meaning at all.

I guess in Kant’s view, the soul doesn’t have too much of a purpose then, which would, in a way, accomplish his goal of vanquishing the dogmatics and their penchant for eternal life. However, he establishes a thinking Self, which I suppose is a piece of the soul, and the purpose of its study. He says that study of the soul helps us “remain within the limit of those questions that do not go beyond that whose content can be provided by possibly inner experience” (A382 pg433), which is a fancy way of saying that we should limit our treatment of inferences as facts. This inner sense which is so important for the soul and the thinking Self again asserts out need to synthesize experience with a priori synthetic concepts and all of that fun, transcendental idealist method.

So even though Kant doesn’t place as much importance on the soul as most other philosophers do, he takes his own view that falls in line with his usual doctrine of synthesis of experience. He still said it loud, he’s a transcendental idealist and he’s proud.

Grow Up! Get Over Your (Empirical) Idealism

In his criticism of the fourth paralogism, Kant once again visits the debate between realism and idealism and concludes that empirical idealism can't work. Mind you, the transcendental dialectic is based about errors in logic, but the error made by empirical idealism is too big. But first, let's define what Kant means by an idealist: "someone who … does not admit that [external objects are] cognized through immediate perception and infers from this that we can never be fully certain of their reality from any possible experience” (CPR p.426 A369 ). Kant goes on to illustrate the difficulty faces by empirical idealist since he believes that they are also transcendental realist (CPR p.427 A372). If this is the case, however, the issue is confused because it “must always remain doubtful whether the cause [of our perception of objects] is in us or outside of us” since the idealist would claim that the cause is in us and the realist would claim that it is outside of us (CPR 427).

The correct position according to Kant should be that of transcendental idealism where all objects (outside of ourselves) are just “mere representations” (CPR 426). Furthermore, this position is better because it makes an object’s reality “immediately perceived” that doesn’t need to “be inferred” (CPR 427). Instead of doubting the actual reality of the objects in the world (empirical idealism), we should realize the limits of our reason: this is the task that Kant has set out to accomplish in the transcendental dialectic. In the transcendental analytic he established that we can’t know anything about things in themselves and that we only interact with the appearance of things (CPR 424). Due to this fact, we can only work with the perception we have, objects “cannot be actual [read ‘real’] in any other way” and that is precisely what the transcendental idealism states (CPR 429).

But overall, empirical idealism doesn’t make sense because, as Hume thought, we can’t really believe it. We wouldn’t be able to function if we truly thought the world was a figment of our imagination. Nevertheless, this type of idealism was a precursor to what Kant is suggesting with his transcendental critique. In other words, the empirical idealist claim is true in as far as our ability to describe outside objects; just wrong in doubting that they are really there. But doesn’t it seem logical to doubt the existence of something you know you can’t say anything about? Shouldn’t the standard for existence be that we can say something positive about the object? Not if you’re Kant. He is only interested in setting out the bounds reason. Existence is based around what must be the case to have the possibility of experience, not on what we can exhaustibly describe.