Transcendental illusion and transcendental realism in Kant's second antinomy

British Journal for the History of Philosophy

Volumn 6, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 47-70

  Grier, Michelle ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO   (United States)

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EID: 61249485963     PISSN: 09608788     EISSN: 14693526     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09608789808570981     Document Type: Article

References (23)

1. Sadik Al-Azm argues, as we shall see, that the two positions are traceable back to the debate between Leibniz and Clarke (The Origins of Kant's Arguments in the Antinomies, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1972). Although I shall take issue with Al-Azm's particular reading, it is clear that the antinomial arguments do represent historical positions. Thus, Martin correctly notes the recurrence of such conflicts throughout the history of philosophy (cf. Kant's Metaphysics and Theory of Science, trans. P. G. Lucas, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1955, pp. 42-64). More recently, Guyer has noted that the problems of the antinomies were under con- sideration by Bayle and Hume as well (Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, Cambridge, Cam- bridge University Press, 1987, p. 385). This issue will be discussed in what follows
2. H. Heimsoeth, Tranzendentale Dialektik. Ein Commentar zu Kants Kritik d. reinen Vernunft, II (Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 1967), p. 199. Gottfried Martin similarly maintains that each of the antinomies is a manifestation of an underlying singular difficulty. According to him, the essential problem of the antinomy concerns the epistemological predicament which results from the denial of the theocentric model of knowledge. See Martin, Kant's Meta- physics and Theory of Science, esp. pp. 62-4
3. Jonathan Bennett, Kant's Dialectic (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1974), pp. 114-15. Bennett's criticism ultimately reduces to a complaint about Kant's doctrine of illu- sion and the associated inevitability thesis. Although he finds it objectionable, Bennett cor- rectly sees that Kant's claims about the unity of the different antinomial errors are ultimately tied up with this theory
4. Bennett is not alone. Similar complaints have been launched by Kemp-Smith, and Patricia Kitcher. See Norman Kemp-Smith, A Commentary to Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason' (2nd edition, revised and enlarged. New York, Humanities Press, 1962), p. 457; Patricia Kitcher, Kant's Transcendental Psychology (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 185
5. For further discussion of this see my 'Illusion and Fallacy in Kant's First Paralogism', Kant- Studien Heft 3 1993, pp. 257-82
6. See Kemp-Smith, Commentary, pp. 481-3; Walsh, Kant's Criticisms of Metaphysics (Edin- burgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1975) pp. 207-14; Strawson, The Bounds of Sense, (London, Methuen, 1966) pp. 156-61. See also Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, pp. 385-412. In all of the above works, it seems to me that there is a tendency to reject or otherwise misinterpret both the distinction and the connection between transcendental illu- sion and transcendental realism. This is also the case with Henry Allison, who traces tran- scendental illusion back to the adoption of the methodological standpoint of the transcendental realist. See Kant's Transcendental Idealism (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1983), pp. 35-61. Essentially this same view is presented in his Kant's Theory of Freedom (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990), esp. p. 12
7. In the first antinomy the dispute concerns the relation between the world and space-time as well. For a discussion of this point, see Henry Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism, p. 39
8. As Guyer notes, the argument seems to turn on a 'thought experiment', i.e. the possibility of removing composition in thought. In order to establish the falsity of the antithesis, Guyer claims, the argument must assume 1) that the process of decomposition in thought is necess- arily a process which reaches a termination, and 2) that this process necessarily 'represents an actual state of affairs'. See Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, p. 410. Thus, according to Guyer, the argument really turns on an epistemological assumption (Guyer, p. 409). The fact that the argument moves from considerations of conceivability to metaphysical conclusions should not be surprising, however, given Kant's attempt to represent a dogmatic, meta- physical position. After all, the recurrent criticism of metaphysics is that it attempts to deduce truths about actuality (actual objects) from general or formal considerations. Even so, Guyer's suggestion that the argument assumes that the conceptual process of decompo- sition must terminate might mislead us. For one thing, he seems to understand by 'decom- position' not the intellectual act of abstracting from all composition, but rather an actual psychological process of reaching the end of all division in the things themselves. Although Guyer is not explicit on this point, he suggests that the real problem with an irreducible com- posite is, for the dogmatic metaphysician, that its infinite divisibility cannot be confirmed by the senses. As such, Guyer suggests that the thesis argument can only set limits on what is empirically decidable (p. 410). I do not think this is either Kant's point or the concern of the dogmatic metaphysician whose position is expressed in the thesis argument. More specific- ally, the problem with an irreducible composite is not that the existence of the simple could not be verified empirically. The proponent of the thesis argument readily admits this! The problem is rather that the very concept of a composite Being commits us to the existence of the simple
9. Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea vol. II, trans, by R. B. Haldane and John Kemp, p. 110
10. See, for example, James Van Cleve, 'Reflections on Kant's Second Antinomy', Synthese 47 (1981) pp. 481-94. Also Al-Azm, who argues that the thesis 'deals only with the composi- tion of space-occupying matter'. (The Origin of Kant's Arguments in the Antinomies, op. cit., p. 50.) Although Al-Azm makes this point in order to emphasize that the argument is about substance in space and not space itself, we shall see that it leads to a number of difficulties in his position
11. Al-Azm, The Origin of Kant's Arguments in the Antinomies (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 52
12. Jonathan Bennett also emphasizes the 'rationalistic' conception of substance at issue in the second antinomy. See Bennett, Kant's Dialectic, 164-7
13. More specifically, he argues that the thesis is designed to prove the existence of elementary particles of matter Al-Azm, op. cit., pp. 46-58. See also Walsh, Kant's Criticisms of Meta- physics, pp. 197-206
14. See Clarke's Fourth Reply in the Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, ed. by H. G. Alexander (New York, Manchester University Press, 1956), esp. pp. 53-4
15. Kant explicitly states this view in his 'On a Discovery According to which Any New Critique of Pure Reason Has Been Made Superfluous by an Earlier One'. See H. Allison, The Kant- Eberhard Controversy (Baltimore and London, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), p. 118
16. This criticism is traceable back to Kant's precritical writings, especially the Dilucidatio and the Dreams of a Spirit Seer. In the Dilucidatio of 1755, Kant argues against the metaphysi- cian's attempt to deduce objective truths from formal, 'negative' principles, such as the prin- ciple of contradiction. See Nova Dilucidatio, 1:384-91. In the Dreams of A Spirit-Seer, Kant explicitly argues that sensible experience alone provides us with the data requisite for know- ledge of reality. See Träume eines Geistsehers, erläutert durch Träume der Metaphysik (1766), 2: 315-73. In the Critique this kind of 'anti-rationalist' argument is forcefully deployed against Leibniz
17. Leibniz, Monadology and Other Philosophical Essays (trans, by Paul Schrecker and Anne Martin Schrecker (Bobs-Merrill, 1965), p. 148
18. Again, see the Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, nb to Clarke's fourth letter, p. 54
19. See Allison, The Kant-Eberhard Controversy, p. 121
20. For a good discussion of this issue see Alison Laywine, Kant's Early Metaphysics and The Origins of the Critical Philosophy, North American Kant Society Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 3 (Atascadero, CA, Ridgeview Publishing Company, 1993), esp. pp. 25-54
21. See Physical Monadology, 1: All. The English here is from The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, Theoretical Philosophy, ed. and trans, by David Walford (in col- laboration with R. Meerbote) (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 53
22. For a discussion on this and related issues, see Michael Friedman, Kant and the Exact Sci- ences, pp. 1-34
23. See Kant's discussion of the fallacy of subreption in Section 5 of the Inaugural Dissertation, 2: 411-14