As is well-known, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) wrote two very famous works that seem to give very different results. Like many who have studied philosophy, I have spent considerable time in the texts of both his First and Second Critiques, but never seriously in his Third.
Of course, I have known for a very long time what is in his 1790 Die Kritik der Urtheilskraft. It is, after all, famous for its position on the subjective universality of aesthetic judgments; its development of the concept of beauty with its "four moments" that include disinterestedness, universality, necessity, and feeling; and his development of teleology and highlighting of purpose. One can read parts of the work and be alternately convinced and puzzled by Kant's arguments. I have known also that Kant thought that somehow his Third Critique could address the putative fissure between the results of his first two tomes, though I have not hitherto tried to examine carefully the specific arguments by which he tries to establish this. What I write below is my first step in trying to correct this deficiency.
The Kritik der reinen Vernunft from 1781 (first edition) and 1787 (second edition) argued persuasively that all empirical objects, properties, relations and events are constituted by the Understanding (Der Verstand), that is, that the pure and empirical concepts of the understanding ultimately work to "synthesize the manifold of sensation" such that the denizens of the empirical domain can be known in their universality and necessity. While Kant speaks of the Ding an sich (thing-in-itself), he realizes we have no epistemic access to it. But while the nomenal realm of the things-in-themselves cannot be known, the phenomenal realm of things-as-they-are-for-us -- things as they have been constituted by, and given to consciousness -- is epistemically accessible. We can know the latter, but not the former. What we know is a domain whose inhabitants are connected by strict causal laws. There are, accordingly, no uncaused events in this domain. All that happens is a result of other things that have happened. Accordingly, a mechanical determinism characterizes the phenomenal order of the Ding fuer uns ("thing-for-us").
The Kritik der praktischen Vernunft from 1788 argued persuasively that human beings are immediately confronted by duty, and that in the face of this duty they are free: The fact that one ought to do X presupposes that one is free to do X. Ought implies the freedom to do; ought implies can. (Try to think of a situation where it can meaningfully said that something ought to be done when there is no ability for what has not been done to have been other than it is.) Famously, Kant argues that we are confronted with a categorical imperative that while empty of content, formally gives conditions of universality, impartiality, and necessity. His subjective maxims of the categorical imperative are these: 1) So act such that in your act, your act can become a universal law of humanity, 2) So act always to treat the other as an end-in-itself and not as a means to one's own end. But this action requires freedom, a conclusion seemingly incompatible with the results of the First Critique.
Palpably, if there is one or more free acts in the universe, then the mechanistic determinism of the First Critique is wrong. Conversely, if all events are determined in accordance with strict natural laws, as Kantian universality and necessity seem to imply, then the freedom of the Second Critique is incorrect. How might this tension be mitigated?
In his Kritik der Urtheilskraft, Kant takes up this issue, particularly in Section IX of his second Introduction that deals with how judgment can connect the legislations of the understanding and reason. There is a footnote in this section where Kant explains how it is that the results of the first two Critiques are not in opposition with each other. Because of the difficulty of the argument, I shall often quote it in the original German, offer my own translation of relevant portions, and analyze what it is the Kant is attempting to do. It is hard enough to understand exactly what Kant means when he is writing in his own language employing his own technical vocabulary. I believe that the task only becomes more challenging when trying to read him in translation where the attempt to render him intelligible in English has sometimes occluded the precision of that vocabulary. Here is the footnote:
"Einer von den verschiedenen vermeinten Widersprüchen in dieser gänzlichen Unterscheidung der Naturcausalität von der durch Freiheit ist der, da man ihr den Vorwurf macht: daß, wenn ich von Hindernissen, die die Natur der Causalität nach Freiheitsgesetzen (den moralischen) legt, oder ihre Beförderung durch dieselbe rede, ich doch der ersteren auf die letztere einen Einfluß einräume. Aber wenn man das Gesagte nur verstehen will, so ist die Mißdeutung sehr leicht zu verhüten. Der Widerstand, oder die Beförderung ist nicht zwischen der Natur und der Freiheit, sondern der ersteren als Erscheinung und den Wirkungen der letztern als Erscheinungen in der Sinnenwelt; und selbst die Causalität der Freiheit (der reinen und praktischen Vernunft) ist die Causalität einer jener untergeordneten Naturursache (des Subjekts, als Mensch, folglich als Erscheinung betrachtet), von deren Bestimmung das Intelligible, welches unter der Freiheit gedacht wird, auf eine übrigens (eben so wie eben dasselbe, was das übersinnliche Substrat der Natur ausmacht) unerklärliche Art den Grund enthält" (Kritik der Urteilskraft, S. 195, fn.)
Kant points out here one of the objections to his finding no contradiction between the causality of nature and freedom is this: "When I speak about obstacles that nature lays in the way of the laws of freedom (moral laws), or the furthering of the same, I thus concede that the former has an influence on the latter." Kant says, however, that this is a misinterpretation of his position, a misunderstanding that is easy to avoid it. He continues, "The resistance (Widerstand) or furtherance (Befoerderung) is not between nature and freedom, but between the former as an appearance and the effects of the latter as an appearance in the world of sense (Sinnenwelt)." Kant is clearly explaining that this is not a situation of nature and freedom in conflict. Rather, the apparent conflict occurs between appearances, i.e., between the appearance that is nature and the appearance of the effects of freedom.
Kant then declares that "the causality of freedom (of pure and practical reason) is the causality of that subsumed natural cause -- the subject, as a human being, thus considered as an appearance." He further explains that in the determination (Bestimmung) of this natural cause, "the intelligible, which is thought under [the concept] of freedom, contains a ground (Grund) in an unexplained way -- even as the same comprises the supersensible substrate of nature."
Kant is claiming that freedom and nature do not conflict because in some sense both are appearances of an underlying reality which, though it itself cannot be explicated, nonetheless grounds the intelligible, that is, a reflective judgment of freedom, a judgment that humans can think, and in that thinking locate the perspective by which freedom and nature do not conflict.
But can we become clearer on what Kant is saying? How does this all cohere with Kant's examination of both aesthetic and teleological judgments that comprise most of the Kritik der Urtheilskraft?
In light of the footnote above, I want to read closely Section IX of Kant's second Introduction to the Kritik. While it does not provide a detailed explanation of how the intelligibility of the judgment linking the domains of nature and freedom connects to the ground of the supersensible, it does nicely lay out the direction in which an explanation might take us. Kant begins the section by distinguishing the understanding and reason. Because the German is straightforward, I quote Werner Pluhar's translation as follows:
"The understanding legislates a priori for nature, as object of sense, in order to give rise to theoretical cognition of nature in a possible experience. Reason legislates a prior for freedom and for freedom's own causality, in other words, for the supersensible in the subject, in order to give rise to unconditioned practical cognition" (Pluhar, Critique of Judgment, p. 35/Kritik, S. 195:4-8).
This statement of the results of the First and Second Critiques is followed by what I shall call Kant's independence axiom:
"The concept of freedom determines nothing with regard to our theoretical cognition of nature, just as the concept of nature determines nothing with regard to the practical laws of freedom: and to this extent it is not possible to throw a bridge from one domain to the other (eine Bruecke von einem Gebiete zu dem anderen hinueberzuschlagen) (Critique, p. 35-6/Kritik, S. 195:13-16).
But he then qualifies this statement of independence with this startling assertion that I must quote in the original German:
"Allein wenn die Bestimmungsgründe der Causalitaet nach dem Freiheitbegriffe . . . gleich nicht in der Natur belegen sind, und das Sinnliche das Übersinnliche im Subjekte nicht bestimmen kann: so ist dieses doch umgekehrt . . . möglich and schon in dem Begriffe eine Causalitaet durch Freiheit enthalten, deren Wirkung diesen ihren formalen Gesetzen Gemäß in der Welt geschehen soll . . .(Kritik, S. 195:17-24)."
Kant declares that "even though the grounds of the determination of causality according to the concept of freedom do not lie in nature, and the sensible cannot thus determine the supersensible
in the subject, the converse is possible, and already in this concept, a causality through freedom is contained, [a causality] whose effect must happen in the world according to its [freedom's] formal laws." Clearly, Kant is saying that the supersensible can somehow determine the sensible in conformity with the formal laws of freedom. This is a bold claim for the one who wrote persuasively in his Kritik der reined Vernunft that metaphysics has been shipwrecked on the shores on reason's antinomies. The "supersensible" clearly smacks of metaphysics, does it not? But Kant is not done:
" . . . obzwar das Wort Ursache, von dem Übersinnlichen gebraucht, nur dem Grund bedeutet, die Causalitaet der Naturdinge zu einer Wirkung gemäß ihren eigen Naturgesetzen, zugleich aber doch auch mit dem formalen Princip der Vernunftgesetze einhellig zu bestimmen, . . . (Kritik, S. 195:24-27).
Kant is pointing out that when the word 'cause' is used with respect to the supersensible, we mean only the ground (Grund) determining the causality of natural things to bring about an effect according to their own laws of nature, and at the same time to do so in conformity with the formal principle of the laws of reason. By qualifying his assertion in this way, Kant seeks to avoid a metaphysical claim. 'Cause' used here is not a usage according to the pure concepts of the understanding or the pure ideas of reason, but instead points to a basis or ground in the noumenal by which casual connections can be drawn in the phenomenal, a basis or ground that at the same time can allow these causal connections to obtain in a way consistent with the laws of reason in the moral order. It is a use that is possible for reflective judgment, not for the theoretical judgments of the First Critique. It is a use that nonetheless allows for the fact that we have no insight into how this is possible (wovon die Moeglichkeit zwar night eingesehen).
It is important to recall at this point Kant's distinction between determinative and reflective judgments. While the theoretical exercise of pure reason and the practical use of pure practical reason employ the former, the second type of judgment is saved mostly for the kinds of concerns Kant examines in the Third Critique, e.g., aesthetics and teleology. In a determinative judgment, the universal is that which is known and which determines the particular in accordance with it. In a reflective judgment, however, it is the particular which is known and one is allowed thereby freely to think a universal (identifies a universal) under which the particular might fall.
It is in such a judgment that Kant then connects this supersensible ground to the concept of purpose. It is through a final cause that freedom and the world of nature in which it is advanced must exist. In lines that clearly suggest the development of Fichte that will soon follow, Kant writes:
"Die Wirkung nach dem Freiheitsbegriffe ist der Endzweck, der (oder dessen Erscheinung in der Sinnenwelt) existieren soll, wozu die Bedingung der Möglichkeit desselben in der Natur (des Subjects als Sinnenwesens, nämlich als Mensch) vorausgesetzt wird" (Kritik, S. 195:30 - 196:3).
Purpose is the effect according to the concept of freedom, which must exist in the sensible world, and which is presupposed by the condition for the possibility in nature of human beings, subjects that are denizens of the sensible. He continues:
" . . . die Urteilskraft giebt den vermittelnden Begriff zwischen den Naturbegriffen und dem Freiheitsbegriffe, der die Übergang von der reinen theoretischen zur der praktischen, von der Geseztsmaessigkeit nach der ersten zum Endzwecke nach dem letzten möglich macht, in dem Begriff einer Zweckmässigkeit der Natur an der Hand; Den dadurch wird die Möglichkeit des Endzwecks, der allein in der Natur und mit Einstimmung ihrer Gesetze wirklich werden kann, erkannt" (Kritik, S. 196:4-11).
The power of judgment provides a mediating concept between the concepts of nature and freedom. It is the concept of the purposiveness of nature that makes possible a transition from the theoretical to the practical, from the lawfulness of nature to the purpose of the practical. We can know only through the possibility of a final purpose (Endzwecks) how freedom is actualizable in accordance with the laws of nature. The understanding which determines the phenomenal order leaves the supersensible substrate of nature undetermined. While reason in its practical use according to the moral laws does determine this substrate, it cannot point to how freedom might be thought actualizable in nature. Kant declares:
"Die Urteilskraft verschafft durch ihr Princip a priori die Beurteilung der Natur nach möglichen besonderen Gesetzen derselben ihrem übersinnlichen Substrat (in uns sowohl als ausser uns) Bestimmbarkeit durch das intellektuelle Vermögen. Die Vernunft aber giebt eben demselben durch ihr praktisches Gesetz a priori die Bestimmung; und so macht die Urteilskraft den Übergang von Gebiete des Naturbegriffs zu dem Freiheitsbegriffs möglich" (Kritik, S. 196:15-22).
It is the power of judgment that, through its own a priori principle, judges nature according to its possible particular laws, and accordingly possesses the intellectual capability (intellektuelle Vermoegen) to give the supersensible substrate determinability (Bestimmbarkeit). This determinability of the supersensible substrate links to the determination (Bestimmung) by practical reason of that same supersensible substate. Judgment thus allows the transition from the domain of the concept of freedom to that of the concept of nature.
What Kant is saying is that judgment is free to think the notion of a final purpose under which both moral freedom and the determinism of nature might fall. One can conceive of a ground -- though not articulate its structure -- under which its determination of nature, and its determinability by practical reason is possible. The intelligibility of this ground in uns sowohl als ausser uns is found in the final purpose for which nature and freedom exist. Our permission contemplatively to think nature as purposeful allows us to think how it is that a purposeful moral agent might exercise freedom in the domain of nature. Ultimately, it is only the appearance of nature that stands in opposition to the life of the moral subject. In reality, the deepest nature of that nature is consonant with our moral strivings.
How could it be that the fissure between freedom and nature is overcome? It is simply that we must penetrate beyond the mere appearance of their opposition and grasp the identity of their ground in the seeming disparate difference of their domains. With this move, Kant, and not Fichte, palpably becomes the true father of German Idealism.
To achieve more clarity on the nature of purpose and teleology for his program of finding an underlying unity between nature and freedom, however, demands that we examine carefully relevant selections of pertinent texts in Part II of the Kritik der Urtheilskraft on teleology. I shall return to this task in a later post.
In light of the footnote above, I want to read closely Section IX of Kant's second Introduction to the Kritik. While it does not provide a detailed explanation of how the intelligibility of the judgment linking the domains of nature and freedom connects to the ground of the supersensible, it does nicely lay out the direction in which an explanation might take us. Kant begins the section by distinguishing the understanding and reason. Because the German is straightforward, I quote Werner Pluhar's translation as follows:
"The understanding legislates a priori for nature, as object of sense, in order to give rise to theoretical cognition of nature in a possible experience. Reason legislates a prior for freedom and for freedom's own causality, in other words, for the supersensible in the subject, in order to give rise to unconditioned practical cognition" (Pluhar, Critique of Judgment, p. 35/Kritik, S. 195:4-8).
This statement of the results of the First and Second Critiques is followed by what I shall call Kant's independence axiom:
"The concept of freedom determines nothing with regard to our theoretical cognition of nature, just as the concept of nature determines nothing with regard to the practical laws of freedom: and to this extent it is not possible to throw a bridge from one domain to the other (eine Bruecke von einem Gebiete zu dem anderen hinueberzuschlagen) (Critique, p. 35-6/Kritik, S. 195:13-16).
But he then qualifies this statement of independence with this startling assertion that I must quote in the original German:
"Allein wenn die Bestimmungsgründe der Causalitaet nach dem Freiheitbegriffe . . . gleich nicht in der Natur belegen sind, und das Sinnliche das Übersinnliche im Subjekte nicht bestimmen kann: so ist dieses doch umgekehrt . . . möglich and schon in dem Begriffe eine Causalitaet durch Freiheit enthalten, deren Wirkung diesen ihren formalen Gesetzen Gemäß in der Welt geschehen soll . . .(Kritik, S. 195:17-24)."
Kant declares that "even though the grounds of the determination of causality according to the concept of freedom do not lie in nature, and the sensible cannot thus determine the supersensible
in the subject, the converse is possible, and already in this concept, a causality through freedom is contained, [a causality] whose effect must happen in the world according to its [freedom's] formal laws." Clearly, Kant is saying that the supersensible can somehow determine the sensible in conformity with the formal laws of freedom. This is a bold claim for the one who wrote persuasively in his Kritik der reined Vernunft that metaphysics has been shipwrecked on the shores on reason's antinomies. The "supersensible" clearly smacks of metaphysics, does it not? But Kant is not done:
" . . . obzwar das Wort Ursache, von dem Übersinnlichen gebraucht, nur dem Grund bedeutet, die Causalitaet der Naturdinge zu einer Wirkung gemäß ihren eigen Naturgesetzen, zugleich aber doch auch mit dem formalen Princip der Vernunftgesetze einhellig zu bestimmen, . . . (Kritik, S. 195:24-27).
Kant is pointing out that when the word 'cause' is used with respect to the supersensible, we mean only the ground (Grund) determining the causality of natural things to bring about an effect according to their own laws of nature, and at the same time to do so in conformity with the formal principle of the laws of reason. By qualifying his assertion in this way, Kant seeks to avoid a metaphysical claim. 'Cause' used here is not a usage according to the pure concepts of the understanding or the pure ideas of reason, but instead points to a basis or ground in the noumenal by which casual connections can be drawn in the phenomenal, a basis or ground that at the same time can allow these causal connections to obtain in a way consistent with the laws of reason in the moral order. It is a use that is possible for reflective judgment, not for the theoretical judgments of the First Critique. It is a use that nonetheless allows for the fact that we have no insight into how this is possible (wovon die Moeglichkeit zwar night eingesehen).
It is important to recall at this point Kant's distinction between determinative and reflective judgments. While the theoretical exercise of pure reason and the practical use of pure practical reason employ the former, the second type of judgment is saved mostly for the kinds of concerns Kant examines in the Third Critique, e.g., aesthetics and teleology. In a determinative judgment, the universal is that which is known and which determines the particular in accordance with it. In a reflective judgment, however, it is the particular which is known and one is allowed thereby freely to think a universal (identifies a universal) under which the particular might fall.
It is in such a judgment that Kant then connects this supersensible ground to the concept of purpose. It is through a final cause that freedom and the world of nature in which it is advanced must exist. In lines that clearly suggest the development of Fichte that will soon follow, Kant writes:
"Die Wirkung nach dem Freiheitsbegriffe ist der Endzweck, der (oder dessen Erscheinung in der Sinnenwelt) existieren soll, wozu die Bedingung der Möglichkeit desselben in der Natur (des Subjects als Sinnenwesens, nämlich als Mensch) vorausgesetzt wird" (Kritik, S. 195:30 - 196:3).
Purpose is the effect according to the concept of freedom, which must exist in the sensible world, and which is presupposed by the condition for the possibility in nature of human beings, subjects that are denizens of the sensible. He continues:
" . . . die Urteilskraft giebt den vermittelnden Begriff zwischen den Naturbegriffen und dem Freiheitsbegriffe, der die Übergang von der reinen theoretischen zur der praktischen, von der Geseztsmaessigkeit nach der ersten zum Endzwecke nach dem letzten möglich macht, in dem Begriff einer Zweckmässigkeit der Natur an der Hand; Den dadurch wird die Möglichkeit des Endzwecks, der allein in der Natur und mit Einstimmung ihrer Gesetze wirklich werden kann, erkannt" (Kritik, S. 196:4-11).
The power of judgment provides a mediating concept between the concepts of nature and freedom. It is the concept of the purposiveness of nature that makes possible a transition from the theoretical to the practical, from the lawfulness of nature to the purpose of the practical. We can know only through the possibility of a final purpose (Endzwecks) how freedom is actualizable in accordance with the laws of nature. The understanding which determines the phenomenal order leaves the supersensible substrate of nature undetermined. While reason in its practical use according to the moral laws does determine this substrate, it cannot point to how freedom might be thought actualizable in nature. Kant declares:
"Die Urteilskraft verschafft durch ihr Princip a priori die Beurteilung der Natur nach möglichen besonderen Gesetzen derselben ihrem übersinnlichen Substrat (in uns sowohl als ausser uns) Bestimmbarkeit durch das intellektuelle Vermögen. Die Vernunft aber giebt eben demselben durch ihr praktisches Gesetz a priori die Bestimmung; und so macht die Urteilskraft den Übergang von Gebiete des Naturbegriffs zu dem Freiheitsbegriffs möglich" (Kritik, S. 196:15-22).
It is the power of judgment that, through its own a priori principle, judges nature according to its possible particular laws, and accordingly possesses the intellectual capability (intellektuelle Vermoegen) to give the supersensible substrate determinability (Bestimmbarkeit). This determinability of the supersensible substrate links to the determination (Bestimmung) by practical reason of that same supersensible substate. Judgment thus allows the transition from the domain of the concept of freedom to that of the concept of nature.
What Kant is saying is that judgment is free to think the notion of a final purpose under which both moral freedom and the determinism of nature might fall. One can conceive of a ground -- though not articulate its structure -- under which its determination of nature, and its determinability by practical reason is possible. The intelligibility of this ground in uns sowohl als ausser uns is found in the final purpose for which nature and freedom exist. Our permission contemplatively to think nature as purposeful allows us to think how it is that a purposeful moral agent might exercise freedom in the domain of nature. Ultimately, it is only the appearance of nature that stands in opposition to the life of the moral subject. In reality, the deepest nature of that nature is consonant with our moral strivings.
How could it be that the fissure between freedom and nature is overcome? It is simply that we must penetrate beyond the mere appearance of their opposition and grasp the identity of their ground in the seeming disparate difference of their domains. With this move, Kant, and not Fichte, palpably becomes the true father of German Idealism.
To achieve more clarity on the nature of purpose and teleology for his program of finding an underlying unity between nature and freedom, however, demands that we examine carefully relevant selections of pertinent texts in Part II of the Kritik der Urtheilskraft on teleology. I shall return to this task in a later post.
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