Pantheism Controversy
• Lessing as a prominent Protestant minister was
supposed to be a theist.
• On his deathbed he confessed (to Jacobi) to being
a pantheistic Spinozist, which meant being an
atheist.
• Some (Mendelsohn) denied this deathbed
confession, many condemned Spinoza for it, some
(Romantics like Herder) upheld pantheistic heresy
as true. Kant rejected the debate because it
presupposed the possibility of dogmatic
metaphysics.
Kant and the Pantheism
Controversy
• Kant rejected theism and pantheism as different
forms of a false metaphysical dogmatism.
• Dogmatism claimed to have certain knowledge of
reality, which Kant as a metaphysical skeptic
denied.
• Many dogmatic systems had existed. Kant was the
first in history to make skepticism into a system.
Kant’s Three Skeptical Critiques
• 1. The Critique of Pure Reason.
• Pure reason seeks to know reality as it is in itself, as
distinct from what it appears to be for us.
• 2. The Critique of Practical Reason.
• Pure reason is really practical reason. Instead of receiving
into itself the true forms of reality, it imposes the forms of
the human mind on reality.
• 3.The Critique of Judgment. Instead of imposing the forms
of the human mind on reality, in the experience of beauty
and life it finds in the other an other equal to itself. This
third critique denies knowledge of reality, but leads to a
feeling of what it is. It feels the world to be identical with
itself.
Kant’s Copernican Revolution in
his Concept of Knowledge
Before the knower revolved around the object
known.
Now the object known is seen as revolving around
the knower.
The knower manufactures the object known.
Instead of conforming to the object known, the
knower makes the object conform to its own
internal structure.
Theoretical reason is an illusion replaced by practical
reasons.
Concept of Knowledge (1)
• Knowledge is the application of the
categories/concepts of the human understanding to
what is given in sensory intuition.
• Hence what lies beyond sensory experience cannot
be known.
• What is given in sensory intuition is structured by
space and time, the two forms of sensibility
internal to the human knower.
• Two types of proposition:
– analytic propositions and synthetic propositions
• Two types of knowledge:
– a posteriori knowledge, a priori knowledge
• More precisely, four types of knowledge:
• A posteriori knowledge of synthetic propositions
• A posteriori knowledge of analytic propositions (?)
• A priori knowledge of analytic propositions
• A priori knowledge of synthetic propositions
Synthetic A Priori Knowledge
• It is necessary and universal knowledge.
• Examples:
– ―All events are caused.‖
– ―All red things are extended in space.‖
• Such knowledge is not possible by making
propositions conform as a posteriori
empirical knowledge to the object known.
• Such knowledge is possible only by making
the object known conform to the structure
of our knowledge. Knowing in information
processing.
Space and Time
• Space is the form of external sensibility, of
simultaneous objects side by side.
• Time is the for of internal sensibility, of
objects in succession.
• Each totality of objects side by side is
before or after another such totality.
• Hence time is a more comprehensive form
of sensibility than space.
The Concept of Knowledge (2)
• Sensory experience is passive, it depends on the
future knower being acted upon by things in
themselves outside the knower.
• Knowledge depends on subjecting sensory objects
to information processing. The thing in itself is
responsible for sensory inputs in the knower, who
then transforms such inputs into spatio-temporal
object and finally objects of knowledge
understood as the outputs of information
processing.
The Transcendental vs the
Transcendent
• The categories of the understanding are innate,
transcendental.
• Objects of no possible sensory experience—God,
the soul, the world—are transcendent.
• What is transcendent lies beyond experience, what
is transcendental underlies experience.
• Unlike empirical concepts, the categories are
universal and necessary concepts.
Categories Derived from
Judgments
• Universal and necessary categories are
derived from the table of universal and
necessary judgments.
• Hence the categories used in knowledge are
derived from the types of judgment
necessarily used in logic.
• Judgments are classified qualitatively,
quantitative, reflectively, and modally.
The Three Categories of Quality
1. Qualitative judgments are positive,
negative, or indefinite. Corresponding
categories are quality (e.g., green), definite
negation (the grass as not green), and
indeterminate negation (Monday as not
green).
The Three Categories of Quantity
• 1. From singular judgments (―One man is
bald‖) we derive the category of oneness.
• 2. From particular judgments (―Some men
are bald‖) we derive the category of some
or plurality.
• 3. From singular judgments (―This man is
bald‖) we derive the category of totality, the
whole, or singularity.
Three Categories of Reflection
1. From subject-predicate categorical judgment
(e.g., ―John is successful‖) we get the category
of substance.
2. From if-then hypothetical judgment (―If John is
successful he works hard‖) we get the category
of causality.
3. From either-or alternative judgment (―Either
John is not successful or he works hard‖) we get
the category of reciprocal interaction (between
success and hard work.)
Three Categories of Modality
1. From assertoric judments that assert without any
modal qualification to the assertion (―It is a fact
that‖) we get the category of factuality.
2. From problematic judgments made with possibility
as the mode of the assertion (―It is possible that…‖)
we get the category of possibility.
3. From apodictic judgments with necessity as the
mode of the assertion (―It is necessary that…‖), we
get the category of necessity.
Metaphysics
• Application of categories of the understanding to
objects of no possible experience. DIALECTIC
• Hence there is no metaphysical knowledge, only
metaphysical ideas.
• Three objects of no possible experience: God, the soul,
and the world.
• Three branches of special metaphysics: rational
theology, rational psychology, and rational cosmology
• General metaphysics: ontology
Regulatory Ideas
• Metaphysical ideas serve in a practical or
regulatory function.
• The idea of the world regulates the endless
extension of knowledge.
• The idea of God regulates our search for
perfection.
• The idea of the soul and its free will regulates our
assumption of moral responsibility.
Rational Theology
• Rational theology applies the category of
causality to God, creator of the world, an
object of no possible experience.
• Rational theology attributes the category of
existence to God, but existence is not an
attribute.
• Rational theology attributes purposefulness
to God, but purposefulness is a regulatory
idea, not a category of the understanding
and of knowledge.
Rational Cosmology
• Rational Cosmology cannot decide between
viewing the world as infinitely extended in
space and time (since everything is caused and
causal) and as finite (since if the world is
infinite it contains points from which the
present cannot be reached). ANTINOMY I
• Rational cosmology cannot decide between
viewing world as 19collection of indivisible
atoms and as infinitely divisible. ANTINOMY
II
Rational Psychology
1. Rational Psychology attributes the
category of oneness to the soul, an object
of no possible experience.
2. Rational Psychology attributes free will to
the soul, whereas every object of
knowledge is governed by the law of
universal causality.
Criticism of Kant (Jacobi)
• In asserting things in themselves as external
conditions of the possibility of our sensory
experience of the world, Kant himself
engages in the metaphysics he finds
impossible.
• He applies categories of factuality, oneness,
and causality to things in themselves,
objects of no possible experience.
From Theoretical to Practical
Reason
• The preceding critique of pure reason by
Kant is a critique of knowledge as
theoretical reason.
• Theoretical reason puts the object in
conformity with the subject or knower.
• The critique of theoretical reason is that it is
really practical reason.
• Practical reason puts the object in
conformity with the subject or agent.
• Practical reason, as distinct from practical
activity generally, is moral reason.
• Theoretical reason has revealed itself to be
practical reason, moral reason, in disguise.
• Theoretical reason establishes the character
of the known world of interacting objects in
which practical reason must act (Fichte)
Critique Practical Reason
Inclination vs. duty.
Categorical vs. hypothetical imperative
Three versions of the categorical imperative.
1. logical possibility of the generalization of
the maxim of one’s action to all.
2. treating persons as ends in themselves, each
with his or her own self-assigned agenda.
3. Be autonomous as a rational being, not
heteronomous.
Three postulates of practical reason: freedom
of the soul, immortality, and possibility of
justice.
Critique of Judgment
• The critique of pure reason critiques the
pretension of judging sense objects by the
categories to be knowledge or conformity the
object.
• The critique of judgment critiques the pretension
of teleological judgment to be knowledge,
conformity to the object.
• In teleological judgment we suspend the
categories by knowledge by which the world is a
collection of deterministically (mechanically)
interacting things. The object is not externally
determined but now exists as an end in itself.
Four Types of Teleological Judgment
1. Teleological judgment of that we exist as
persons, each as an end in him or herself, as an
example of internal rather than external
teleology.
2. Teleological judgment that we have an affinity
with all biological organisms, which are also
ends in themselves.
3. Aesthetic teleological judgment that that a work
of art exists as an end in itself.
4. Teleological judgment of the world is that it is a
complete self-determined totality, so that science
that leaves anything unexplained is incomplete.
• Judgments of internal teleology are not
knowledge, since they suspend the category of
universal causality.
• But such judgments anticipate human self-
realization in the world. Ego meets ego, like meets
like.
• Theoretical reason would be dominated by the
world. Practical reason would dominate it. Both
exclude self-realization. Teleological judgment
makes it possible by anticipating equality between
us and the world.