On Pluhar's Solution to Certain Problems of Uniting the Three Kantian Critiques: Part III

 III

Kant presupposes that both aesthetic and teleological judgments are legitimately made by reasonable men and women, and he is motivated to write the Critique of Judgment in part to justify these judgments. His claim that reflecting judgment (reflectierend Urteil) can mediate between understanding and reason is prefigured by two other mediations, one in the Critique of Pure Reason and the other in the Critique of Practical Reason. In the former, the schema mediates between the pure concepts of the understanding and the imagination and intuition. In the latter, the typus mediates between the moral law of reason and the understanding. 

In the Third Critique, Kant identifies feeling as that which mediates between the cognitive power of the understanding and the power of desire of pure practical reason. Feeling mediates by connecting pleasure with nature. It links the lower will as determined by sense and the higher will as determined by the moral law. While understanding legislates in the domain of nature and reason legislates in the domain of freedom, reflecting judgments -- legislating with respect to pleasure and displeasure -- link these two legislations.  

For Kant, the feeling of pleasure undergirds the universal subjective validity of judgments of taste. This feeling is not directed to something in particular. Instead, as Pluhar writes, it is directed toward the conditions of empirical judgment in general, i.e., to the "harmony of imagination and understanding," to conditions "presupposed to be the same for everyone" (Pluhar, Lxxxviii).  The power of judgment "with its indeterminate concept of nature's subjective purposiveness" governs or legislates to feeling" (CJ, lxxxvii).  Simply put, the power of judgment governs feeling through its employment of an indeterminate concept of the subjective purposiveness of nature.  

Pluhar, in his Introduction to the Critique of Judgment, points out that for Kant, the systematicity of the mental powers -- for instance, judgment mediating between understanding and reason -- mirrors the systematicity of the "worlds with which these mental powers deal" (Pluhar, Lxxxvii).  

Clearly, Kant supposes there are three levels of consideration in each Critique: the level of the supersensible, the realm of appearances, and the powers which legislate the realms. In the Critique of Pure Reason, the supersensible is indeterminate, application of the understanding produces lawfulness giving empirical nature, and the result is cognition.  In the Critique of Practical Reason, the supersensible is practically determined, reason uses final purpose producing freedom, and the result is the specification of the power of desire. In the Critique of Judgment, the supersensible is practically determinable, judgment employs purposiveness with respect to art, and the result is the feeling of pleasure and displeasure (CJ., 38). 

Kant seeks to give accounts of the mediation between understanding and reason at multiple levels. Since his account of aesthetic and teleological judgment involve the supersensible, he must give an account of how the supersensible in judgment, relates to the supersensibles of understanding and reason. Pluhar explains: 

Now understanding and the (theoretical) cognitive power deal with the "world" of appearance as it is but tell us nothing about the "world" underlying it, the supersensible "world" in itself, except that it is logically possible. Reason and the (higher) power of desire deal with the "world" of appearance as it ought to be and also tell us about the supersensible conditions of making it so: supersensible freedom, immortality of the soul, and God. As Kant sees it, he has not (fully) justified his claims about the supersensible, and the three Critiques cannot form a system (and thus be scientific), unless not only the mental powers but also those "worlds," especially as there are in themselves, are show to form a system.  That is why it is especially important for Kant to show not only that the power of judgment, just like understanding and reason, also points to a supersensible, viz., the supersensible basis of nature's subjective purposiveness, but also that this supersensbile mediates between the other "two" supersensibles and thus unites the "three" supersensibles in one (Pluhar, lxxxviii).  

While what Pluhar is trying to say may be clear enough, his way of expressing it could cause confusion.  Talk of "one," "two," or "three" supersensibles seems to presuppose there would be some way to individuate supersensibles, but what could this be? Just as regions of space "fall within" other regions, it would seem that supersensibles would do the same. Clearly, other than freedom, immortality and God, there are no discernible supersensible objects that might be classed into different sets. Only these three supersensible beings, the result of reason's practical postulates, give any determinacy to the supersensible. Pluhar is simply pointing out that the indeterminate supersensible underlying nature and its laws, the determinate supersensible underlying morality and its laws, and the determinable supersensible underlying beauty and its laws are one and the same. They together just are the supersensible. 

Pluhar believes that the key to successfully mediating the supersensibles of the understanding and reason is the "supersensible basis of nature's subjective purposiveness." What, however, warrants talk about this latter supersensible basis? The First Problem to which Pluhar attends is this: Given that the three supersensible must be united, on what basis does this unification happen? The solution, he thinks, is Kant's identification of "judgment's indeterminate concept of nature's subjective purposiveess and the indeterminate concept of the supersensible basis of that same purposiveness" (Pluhar, lxxxviii).  Specification of the solution involves solving the problem of the conflict in the Antinomy of Teleological Judgment. 

Problem I: Solving the Conflict in the Antimony of Teleological Judgment 

There is an apparent conflict in the Antinomy of Teleological Judgment between these two maxims: 

• All material objects and their forms must be judged as possible only in terms of mechanical laws.
• Some material objects cannot be judged possible merely on the basis of mechanical laws, but require laws appealing to the category of final cause. 

Is this conflict one of judgment between the necessity of mechanism and the contingency of purposiveness? Are we then only dealing with two kinds of regulative principles, the first which thinks X rationally in accordance with deterministic efficient causality, and the second construing X rationally in accordance with teleological final causality?  

After citing in an extended footnote Kant scholars who do understand the Antinomy of Teleological Judgment in terms of two different rational regulative principles, Pluhar assures us that Kant is not reneging on the results he established in the First Critique: "The universal laws of nature -- in particular, the principle of necessary efficient (mechanical) causality -- are legislated to nature by our understanding and hence are constitutive and determinative, not regulative" (Pluhar, xc).  The Antinomies are not merely a matter of two regulative uses of reason, but rather they point to the need to buttress mechanical explanations by appeal to another principle. The mechanism of the First Critique is insufficient for judging the totality of natural objects and natural law.  

Pluhar argues that Kant wants to reconcile mechanical and teleological explanation objectively (AK, 413).  In order to do this, the "necessity" of mechanical explanation cannot be an all-encompassing necessity, and the "contingency" of teleological explanation an all-encompassing contingency. But how is this possible? It is possible if we are not dealing with concepts here, but with the things themselves.  Pluhar explains: 

Kant says "objectively," rather than "determinatively," because for the same object or the same causal connection to be determined as both necessary and contingent would imply that they in fact are both necessary and contingent, which would indeed by contradictory and hence would not be possible (Pluhar, xci, fn. 94). 

Pluhar believes that Kant's appeal to objectivity requires an appeal to the supersensible itself.  He writes: 

Kant solves the antinomy between the necessary mechanism and the contingent teleological principle as he solves all his antinomies: by invoking the supersensible. . . Our understanding, Kant argues, has the peculiarity of being discursive, conceptual; and all concepts abstract (to some extent) from the particular: hence our understanding does not determine (legislate) the particular, but determines only the universal leaving the particular contingent.  As for our a priori intuitions, they too cannot determine all the particular that understanding leaves contingent (Pluhar, xci).

In order for the "maxims" of mechanistic and teleological judgment to be applied consistently to material objects, there must be some basis in the supersensible that would allow this. This basis in the supersensible concerns particulars. The particularity of biological organisms can neither be thought conceptually through application of the pure concepts of the understanding nor can such organisms be constituted out of intuitions conforming to the pure a priori forms of sensibility: space and time. So what is their basis? 

Pluhar believes that Kant here makes an appeal to intellectual intuition. 

[Implied is] the idea of a possible different understanding, an understanding that is not discursive (i.e., does not omit the particular in its legislation) but is intuitive. Such an understanding would legislate a "synthetic" universal, i.e., a undersell in the sense of a whole that includes determination of the particular in that whole.  An intuitive understanding would thus be an understanding that simply determines, and hence would be an understating "in the most general sense," for, while any understanding requires intuition (to supply the particular needed for cognition), we are not entitled to assume that any understanding must have, as ours does, an intuition which is separate from it and through which the particular is merely given (empirically) rather than legislated along with the universal. . . Such an understanding's intuition would thus not be a mere receptivity (which is passive), and hence not a sensibility as our own intuition is, but would be an intellectual intuition, a complete spontaneity (i.e., it would be completely active): it would determine objects completely (Pluhar, xcii). 

This type of intuition would not need sensible intuition and imagination for cognition, but "would determine objects in terms of the harmony within this understanding itself" (Pluhar, xcii).  Since intellectual intuition would not require that the particular be provide outside of or to the understanding, the particular could be present along with the universal. If this were the case, however, objects would be constituted as "complete, as things in themselves, no as mere appearances" (Pluhar, xcii).  What is the significance of this? 

If one grants intellectual intuition, then things in themselves would have a particularity in themselves.  Pluhar explains: 

Nature in itself would simply be the intellectual (supersensible) intuition of the intuitive understanding, just as our world of experience simply is the experience that consists of our empirical intuition as structured in harmony with our categories (Pluhar, xcii).  

Has Kant found God theoretically according to Pluhar?  Not quite: 

By the same token, such a supersensible understanding with its supersensible intuitions cannot be called God; rather, the idea of it is utterly inderminate, negative, the mere idea of an understanding that "is not discursive."

 But what Pluhar has found, he believes is enough to solve the antinomy of teleology judgment.  

With this mere idea of an "intuitive understanding," Kant can now solve the antinomy of teleological judgment.  As an intuitive understanding would necessitate even the particular, the mere idea of such an understanding permits us to think of the "contingency" of the particular as being only a seeming contingency, a "contingency for" our understanding with its peculiarity, but as in fact being a necessity.  A merely seeming contingency that is in fact a necessity does not conflict with the necessity implicit in mechanism. Hence "objectively too" it is at least possible to reconcile the mechanistic principle with the teleological, for it is at least possible that the causal connections that we have to judge in terms of purposes and hence as contingent are in fact legislated theoretically and are therefore necessary. The laws covering those necessary but yet particular causal connections would then either have the same basis as mechanism (viz., the intellectual intuition of that intuitive understating) or would perhaps even be identical with the mechanism familiar to us -- identical in the sense of forming part, along with the mechanism familiar to us, of some ideal mechanism, in which case even organisms would be possible on this (ideal) mechanism alone (Pluhar, xciii). 

The solution that Pluhar finds in Kant is that there may be mechanism within the supersensible, one to which human beings have no epistemic access, a mechanism that a "higher understanding" might nonetheless access and legislate. The antinomy of teleological judgment is thus solved because it is possible that a being with intellectual intuition could have access to this mechanism, a mechanism which objectively would allow for our judgments of purposiveness. There is some state of supersensible affairs on the basis of which the thesis and antithesis of the Antinomy of Teleological Judgment can both be asserted without contradiction. That is to say, both assertions are consistent with the supersensible, "objective" existence of such an "ideal mechanism" which would allow for purpose as it appears to us. Pluhar claims that this supersensible state of affairs would allow for both objective and subjective purposiveness. 

. . . the antinomy of "teleological" judgment and its solution apply just as much to the subjective purposiveness of nature which is claimed in the principle of reflective judgment itself, for this purposiveness too is clearly contingent in terms of mechanism and yet is a purposiveness of nature and as such is subject to nature's necessity.  Hence it too can be thought without contradiction only if we think of the "contingency" it implies as in fact being a necessity legislated by an intuitive understanding with its intellectual intuition (Pluhar, xciii). 

Prima facie, this seems consistent with this famous passage from Kant:

Since universal natural laws have their basis in our understanding . . . the particular empirical laws must . . be viewed in terms of such a unity as [they would have] if they too had been given by an understanding (even though not ours) so as to assist our cognitive powers . . ." (Ak, 180, 181, 184).  

Because the "solution" to the Antinomy of Teleological Judgment applies both to objective and subjective purposiveness of nature, it applies "to nature's subject purposiveness as judge aesthetically, i.e., to nature's purposiveness without a purpose" (Pluhar, xciv).  Since this purposiveness has both contingency and necessity, it can "be thought without contradiction only if we have recourse to the idea of a supersensible intuition as necessitating the particular" (Ibid.). It is on this basis that Kant can claim that the antinomy of aesthetic judgment and the antinomy of teleological judgment are merely manifestations of one antinomy.  

We are now in a position to understand Pluhar's statement of the "solution" to Problem I concerning the unity of the supersensible.  Pluhar writes: 

Nature's subjective purposiveness is the indeterminate form (or "lawfulness," i.e., regularity or order) that nature has in the particular; and the indeterminate concept of this purposiveness is the indeterminate concept of that form of the particular. But this concept is contradictory (because of the antinomy) unless we think of this purposive form as necessitated (a priori) by an intellectual intuition.  Moreover, just as our a priori concepts and intuitions are the forms that we give to all objects of appearance, so the purposive form that would be necessitated by this intellectual intuition would simply be that intuition. . . Hence, according to our indeterminate concept of this supersensible intuition, the world in itself would be the completely determinate form which that intellectual intuition is (Pluhar, xcv). 

Pluhar further speculates in a footnote that the "purposive form of nature's particular might be only part of the form that the intellectual intuition is." It may be that the intuitive understanding legislates through the same intuition "in terms of the mechanism familiar to us, or in terms of laws pertaining to both the purposive and the mechanistic forms in nature, in nature outside and within us" (Pluhar, xcv, fn 99). Pluhar claims that if the purposive form of nature's particulars were but part of the form of the intellectual intuition, it would "still be necessitated by, and hence would still be based on and (in that part) be, that intellectual intuition" (Ibid.).  

Pluhar is thus arguing that the notion of an intellectual intuition, long held by the majority of Kant scholars as something that the philosopher robustly dismisses, does play an important role in Kant's philosophy after all.  As it turns out, "in order to think of nature's subjective purposiveness without contradicting ourselves we must think of this form as being identical with the form that such an intellectual intuition would be" (Ibid.).  Because the intellectual intuition can be thought of as the supersensible basis of nature's subjective purposiveness, the concept of nature's subjective purposiveness is equivalent to the concept of the supersensible basis of that purposiveness. Pluhar wants to clarify: While the concepts are not synonymous, they have the same extension in that the forms to which they refer are identical.  Pluhar explains: 

In order for us to judge, without contradiction, an object as beautiful, this judgment must be taken to imply (noncognitively) that the object has the kind of form that only a supersensible understanding could have given it through its intellectual intuition (Pluhar, xcvi). 

Since the concept of nature's subjective purposiveness is indeterminate, the concept of the supersensible ground of that purposiveness must be indeterminate as well. Moreover, our concept of the form that the intellectual intuition would be and have is also indeterminate. In so far as we contemplate subjective purposiveness, the concepts must be wholly indeterminate, but objective purposiveness does demand some determinacy of concepts, and thus Pluhar believes that "determinate concepts of purposes . . . must be included as details in the otherwise indeterminate concept of [an] intellectual intuition" (Pluhar, xcvii). 

With this, Pluhar believes he has stated and solved Problem I. The question had to do with the universalizability of aesthetic judgments. In response, Kant claims that an indeterminate concept of the supersensible must underly nature's purposiveness if there is going to be any universalizability of judgment. The solution is that one can justifiably treat as equivalent the indeterminate concept of nature's purposiveness for our cognitive power with the indeterminate concept of the of the supersensible basis of that same purposiveness.  

Problem II: The Derminability of the Supersensible

Pluhar's second problem is this: "How can the concept of the supersensible basis of nature's subjective purposiveness make determinable the concept of the supersensible that is contained practically in the idea of freedom, and thus help make the supersensible cognizable practically, even though the concept of the supersensible as a basis of nature's subjective purposiveness in indeterminate?" (Pluhar, xcvii).  How can this supersensible mediate between the other two so that the "three supersensbiles turn out to be one and the same?" (Ibid.). 

Pluhar gives the following argument: 

1. The concept of the supersensible nature of nature's subjective purposiveness is equivalent to the concept of nature's subjective purposiveness.  
2. The concept of nature's subjective purposiveness belongs to the power of judgment. 
3. The power of judgment is a function of the understanding. 
4. Thus, our understanding must be able to think not only the concept of nature's subjective purposiveness, but also the concept of the supersensible basis of that purposiveness.  

But can the understanding do this?  Is it not of the very nature of the supersensible that there be no epistemic access to it?  Again an appeal to intellectual intuition is needed.  Reason can think such an supersensible, but the understanding cannot know it.  

Our understanding is discursive and thus not intuitive.  Intuitions must be given to it through the sensibility.  Because of the limitation of the structure of our understanding, we cannot conceive how an intuitive understanding would be possible. What would be the nature of such an understanding?  Unlike ours, it could legislate not merely the universal, but the particular as well.  It would be able to legislate a "synthetic" universal -- a whole that would make possible the character and combination of the parts -- something we cannot do.  While we can conceive the character and combination of the parts determining the whole mechanically, as it were, we can't understand how the whole could determine the parts.  

This is not to say that we can't have an idea of a whole making possible the character and the combination of its parts.  We have an idea of this, after all; it is called purpose.  We can think of another understanding as causing the particular and determining its form, but we can only conceive this practically.  We have no epistemic access to how it could legislate theoretically the particular.  Our understanding cannot think the particular in any other way than through the category of purpose.  In fact, when we think in terms of purpose, we do so by analogy with our own technically practical ability to produce objects through art by our understanding and reason (Pluhar, xcviii - xcvix). When our understanding thinks by means of judgment's concept of the purposiveness of nature in particular, it thinks the other understanding as an intelligent cause of the world in terms of purpose (Pluhar, xcix). The point is this: Although the concept of supersensible basis of nature's purposiveness remains indeterminate, through an analogy with our technically practical ability, it becomes determinable.  

Kant discusses all of this. By subordinating mechanism to purposive causality, our understanding can conceive of a world whose purposiveness if caused by some intelligence. "It can go on to conceive of this intelligent cause as using mechanism, just as we humans do, as the means to the purposes it pursues (Ak. 414,390), 'as an instrument, as it were' (Ak. 422)" (Pluhar, xcix).  

In subordinating mechanism to purposiveness, understanding does not resolve the antinomy. We cannot think such a subordination.  However, reason can appeal to the notion of an intellectual understanding using intellectual intuition. Understanding and its judgment cannot think the apparent purposive order in nature's particularity as involving necessity, but reason can think of an intellectual intuition that could resolve that antinomy at its supersensible basis. 

The point is that the indeterminate concept of the supersensible underlying nature in the Critique of Pure Reason is now a determinable concept of the supersensible.  How is this?  It is determinable practically, i.e., morally by reason. Pluhar explains: 

While we could not intelligibly have described a mere (utterly indeterminate) "supersensible basis of nature" in moral terms, viz., as being a "nature in itself created, in terms of the final purpose, by a God having all the divine perfections," we certainly can intelligibly describe in such terms a nature in itself created, as an intentional purpose, bu an intelligent cause.  In other words, we can now think of this cause as moral author of the world by reference to the final purpose, and hence we can almost think of nature as being forced by this moral author to cooperate with our attempt to achieve the final purpose" (Pluhar, ci).  

The solution is upon us.  As we have seen in the first problem, the antinomy of teleological (and aesthetic) judgment could only be solved by appeal to the supersensible basis of nature's subject and objective purposiveness.  But the concept of the supersensible basis for nature's purposiveness is at the same time the concept of the intuitive understanding with its intellectual intuition. But since our discursive understanding cannot think the intuitive understanding, it thinks instead the supersensible basis of nature's purposiveness as an intelligent cause of the world, a designer. This concept, now determinable, "mediates" between the indeterminate concept of the supersensible in the Critique of Pure Reason, and the determinate concept of the supersensible in the Critique of Practical Reason.  Simply put, through the mediation of judgment's concept of the supersensible basis of nature's purposiveness, the three supersensibles are united in one.  Pluhar declares, "the substrate of nature was merely made determinate enough to be nature in itself as the purpose brought about by an intelligent cause, and then to be nature in itself as cause by a moral author, a God" (Pluhar, cii). 

Problem III: Mediation and the Spontaneity in the Play of the Cognitive Powers

Kant claimed that nature's purposiveness is "suitable" for mediation because it involves a "spontaneity in the play of the cognitive powers, whose harmony with each other contains the basis of [the] pleasure [that we feel in judging the beautiful" (Ak. 197). Pluhar points out that Kant also claimed that the "essential" part of the Critique of Judgment is the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (Pluhar, cii).  Unlike teleological judgment which appeals to reason with its determinate concepts of purposes, judgments of taste are grounded only in the power of judgment (Ibid.).  Why are judgments of taste more suitable for mediation than judgments involving reason and its determinate concepts of purpose? 

Pluhar gives a number of reasons why these judgments are more suitable. Although the mediation involves supersensibles, this mediation is paralleled by a mediation within our the higher cognitive powers, a  mediation of our legislative powers. In fact, there are three levels in which judgment mediates: 1) A mediation among our cognitive powers, 2) a mediation among the worlds of appearance, and 3) a mediation among supersensibles. The power of judgment is to mediate nature and freedom at these three different levels. Subjective purposiveness, that is a purposiveness without a purpose, constitutes the domain of the aesthetic, and this purposiveness "is 'analogous' to or 'symbolic' of the supersensible form that the moral law enjoins us to impose on nature"(Pluhar, ciii). Pluhar explains: 

What makes this purposiveness analogous to supersensible (moral) form is that, since it involves no determinate concept of a natural purpose with its objective with its objective . . . purposiveness, it is a purely formal and free purposiveness. It is formal, as the moral law is formal; it is free, as our will is free to obey or disobey the moral law . . .  Moreover, the 'play' in which our cognitive powers are when we judge subjective purposiveness aesthetically is 'spontaneous': i.e., this play is 'active' inasmuch as it sustains itself . . . and in this respect it is again similar to our will's freedom, which is active by being a special causality  (Pluhar, ciii). 

The role of aesthetic judgment is displayed in consciousness. In judgments of taste we are nonconceptually conscious "of the free harmonious play of imagination and understanding", and this nonconceptual consciousness just is that feeling of pleasure we have in judgments of taste (Pluhar, ciii).  Because there is a connection between this pleasure and the moral law and its freedom, the pleasure presented in judgments of tase our linked to moral feeling, that is, respect for the moral law and our own freedom in performing it. Because of this "spontaneity in the play of the cognitive powers, as accompanied by our awareness of it, can lead to moral feeling" (Pluhar, civ).  

A Problem Not Solved

So there are the three problems and their solutions. But are all things solved?  Pluhar points out that they are not, for the solutions of the Antinomy of Teleological Judgment in the Critique of Judgment conflicts with the solution of the Third Antinomy in the Critique of Pure Reason.  

The problem is that in "solving" the Antinomy of Teleological Judgment, Kant has "pushed" the supersensible in the direction of necessity and has seemingly abandoned freedom. If a non-discursive, intellectual intuition could understand how nature works without appealing to purpose, then the ground upon which the concepts of subjective and objective purposiveness rests, a ground indeterminate but now determinable, seems unable to allow for freedom as it is in itself with regard to the practical reasoning of the Critique of Practical Reason.  

On the other hand, if one were to take very seriously practical reason's declaration that there really is freedom, then the categories of the Critique of Pure Reason which legislate mechanistic determinism fall wholly within in the realm of appearance, and this appearance brings illusion. We human knowers will always understand every event to have a cause, but the causality involved in human action is real. Cognition involves reflection through concepts, and it is with reflection that mechanism arises. But human freedom is real, and ultimately human beings in their moral autonomy escape the fate of the natural. Thus, Kant is solidly a Romantic after all!   

So the mediation proffered by judgment may not be ultimately successful to overcome the Kantian dualism.  Either the determinability at judgment's supersensible is a higher-level mechanism, and no freedom is possible, or there is real freedom, and the mediation by judgment in the direction of such a mechanism is itself only an appearance.  

Overcoming dualism is difficult for the connection between the two domains generally falls into one domain or the other.  It seems to have happened here as well.