Kant and the Continental Tradition: Sensibility, Nature, and Religion (Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Philosophy) 9781138503748, 9781315145501, 1138503746

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Kant and the Continental Tradition

Immanuel Kant’s work continues to be a main focus of attention in almost all areas of philosophy. The significance of Kant’s work for the so-called Continental philosophy cannot be exaggerated, although work in this area is relatively scant. The book includes eight chapters, a substantial introduction and a postscript, all newly written by an international cast of well-known authors. Each chapter focuses on particular aspects of a fundamental problem in Kant’s and post-Kantian philosophy, the problem of the relation between the world and transcendence. Chapters fall thematically into three parts: sensibility, nature and religion. Each part starts with a more interpretative chapter focusing on Kant’s relevant work and continues with comparative chapters which stage dialogues between Kant and post-Kantian philosophers, including Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Jean-François Lyotard, Luce Irigaray and Jacques Derrida. A special feature of this volume is the engagement of each chapter with the work of the late British philosopher Gary Banham. The postscript offers a subtle and erudite analysis of his intellectual trajectory, philosophy and mode of working. The volume is dedicated to his memory. Sorin Baiasu is Professor of Philosophy at Keele University, Director of the Keele-Oxford-St Andrews Kantian (KOSAK) Research Centre and Co-convenor of the Kantian Standing Group of the European Consortium for Political Research. He published Kant and Sartre: Re-Discovering Critical Ethics (2011), edited several collections on Kant and published articles in, among others, Kant-Studien, Kantian Review and Studi Kantiani. Alberto Vanzo is an independent scholar. He has published a monograph on Kant’s views on concept formation (Kant e la formazione dei concetti, 2012) and essays on Kant’s philosophy, early modern natural philosophy and the history of philosophical historiography.

Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Philosophy

Kant and the Reorientation of Aesthetics Finding the World Joseph J. Tinguely Hume’s Science of Human Nature Scientific Realism, Reason, and Substantial Explanation David Landy Hume’s Moral Philosophy and Contemporary Psychology Edited by Philip A. Reed and Rico Vitz Kant and the Problem of Self-Knowledge Luca Forgione Kant on Intuition Western and Asian Perspectives on Transcendental Idealism Edited by Stephen R. Palmquist Hume on Art, Emotions, and Superstition A Critical Study of the Four Dissertations Amyas Merivale A Guide to Kant’s Psychologism via Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Wittgenstein Wayne Waxman Kant and the Continental Tradition Sensibility, Nature and Religion Edited by Sorin Baiasu and Alberto Vanzo For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Studies-in-Eighteenth-Century-Philosophy/book-series/SE0391

Kant and the Continental Tradition Sensibility, Nature and Religion Edited by Sorin Baiasu and Alberto Vanzo

First published 2020 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Taylor & Francis The right of Sorin Baiasu and Alberto Vanzo to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Baiasu, Sorin, editor. | Vanzo, Alberto, editor. Title: Kant and the continental tradition : sensibility, nature, and   religion / edited by Sorin Baiasu and Alberto Vanzo. Description: New York : Routledge, 2020. | Series: Routledge   studies in eighteenth century philosophy | Includes   bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019051574 (print) | LCCN 2019051575   (ebook) | ISBN 9781138503748 (hardback) |   ISBN 9781315145501 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Kant, Immanuel, 1724–1804. | Continental   philosophy. | Banham, Gary, 1965– Classification: LCC B2798 .K222725 2020 (print) | LCC B2798   (ebook) | DDC 193—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019051574 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019051575 ISBN: 978-1-138-50374-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-14550-1 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Acknowledgementsvii PART I

Introduction1   1 Kant and the Continental Tradition

3

SORIN BAIASU AND ALBERTO VANZO

PART II

Sensibility21   2 Kant on Intuition

23

DERMOT MORAN

  3 Heidegger’s Interpretation of Kant’s Transcendental Schematism

61

ROXANA BAIASU

  4 On Affective Universality: Kant, Arendt and Lyotard on Sensus Communis

79

ANDREA REHBERG

PART III

Nature99   5 The Role of Regulative Principles and Their Relation to Reflective Judgement CHRISTIAN ONOF

101

vi  Contents   6 Disputing Critique: Lyotard’s Kantian Differend

131

KEITH CROME

  7 Kant, Hegel and Irigaray: From ‘Chemism’ to the Elemental

146

RACHEL JONES

PART IV

Religion171   8 The Schematism of Analogy and the Figure of Christ: Bridging Two Types of Hypotyposis

173

NICOLA J. GRAYSON

  9 The ‘Proper’ Tone of Critical Philosophy: Kant and Derrida on Metaphilosophy and the Use of Religious Tropes

194

DENNIS SCHULTING

PART V

Postscript223 10 Remembering Gary Banham: Genealogy, Teleology, Conceptuality

225

JOANNA HODGE

Contributors239 Index240

Acknowledgements

Some of the chapters in this volume have been specially commissioned. Others were originally delivered at the workshop ‘Themes from the Work of Gary Banham’, held at Manchester Metropolitan University on 20 March 2014 thanks to a grant from the Department of Politics and Philosophy and the Institute of Humanities and Social Science Research of Manchester Metropolitan University. The editors acknowledge their support with gratitude and thank all contributors for their patience. The editors would also like to thank Alexandra Simmons (Editorial Assistant), Andrew Weckenmann (Editor) and Tony Bruce (Senior Publisher) at Routledge for their help throughout the publication process. For the final editorial work, we are particularly grateful to Aruna Rajendran (Project Manager at Apex CoVantage Ltd) for her excellent work and support.

Part I

Introduction

1 Kant and the Continental Tradition Sorin Baiasu and Alberto Vanzo

1. Introduction The influence of Kant’s philosophy on the so-called Continental tradition has been immense.1 While Kant’s influence on modern philosophy more generally is extremely significant, it would not be very contentious to say that Continental philosophy cannot be conceived of without Kant. The current volume focuses precisely on several themes in this area, in particular on the importance of Kant for relatively recent Continental philosophy, a topic which remains still underexplored.2 Apart from this introduction and a postscript, the present volume includes eight original essays, which focus on three central themes in Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy, namely, sensibility, nature and religion. The collection combines essays on Kant’s philosophy and postKantian thinking, with a focus on Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray and Jean-François Lyotard. The essays discuss thorny exegetical issues in Kant scholarship, such as the character of intuition, the unity of nature and the constitution of symbolic representation in religion, as well as ways in which post-Kantian, Continental thinkers have engaged with Kant’s views on these topics. The collection employs insights from post-Kantian philosophy to shed light on Kant’s views, and it discusses the relevance of Kant’s ideas to current philosophical debates. What follows in this introductory chapter is a discussion of the contributions and the ways they relate to each other, with particular emphasis on the unity of the volume and the significance of the various arguments advanced in the essays of this volume, including the postscript.

2.  The Volume’s Structural Unity Some of the chapters in the collection (namely, Chapter 2, by Dermot Moran; Chapter 5, by Christian Onof and Chapter 8, by Nicola J. Grayson) focus specifically on Kant’s philosophy and have a primarily interpretative focus. They aim to disentangle complex exegetical knots that

4  Sorin Baiasu and Alberto Vanzo emerge in the interpretation of Kant’s own views of sensibility, nature and religion. Apart from the postscript, the remaining chapters (Chapter 3, by Roxana Baiasu; Chapter 4, by Andrea Rehberg; Chapter 6, by Keith Crome; Chapter 7, by Rachel Jones and Chapter 9, by Dennis Schulting) turn to the interactions that arise, in those three thematic areas, between Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy. All chapters in the volume engage with, or refer to, Gary Banham’s work, to whose memory this volume is dedicated. Joanna Hodge’s postscript (Chapter 10) provides an account of a journey through the main works and themes of Banham’s philosophy with a specific focus on genealogy, teleology and conceptuality, a journey exploring Banham’s engagement with, among others, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy. A brief overview of the more comparative contributions can be structured around the three main parts of the volume, Parts II, III and IV. In Part II, Roxana Baiasu focuses on the significance of Kant’s schematism for the way Heidegger reconceives of metaphysics (in particular, space and time, as the fundamental structures of sensibility) as part of a more basic and adequate ontological view of our being. Rehberg’s chapter examines the role Kant’s work plays in what she regards as the long and slow process of rediscovery of the significance of sensibility and affective life for the judging subject, with particular emphasis on an examination of the contributions of Arendt and Lyotard. In Part III, Crome brings to the fore deep tensions in Kant’s views on nature and sensibility by interpreting them in the light of Lyotard’s notion of différend, not so much by a reconsideration of Lyotard’s reading of the Critique of Judgement but by focusing on Lyotard’s appeal to the Critique of Pure Reason. Jones discusses whether Kant’s views on sensibility and nature can be fruitfully brought to bear on recent discussions within post-Kantian philosophy, specifically on feminist thinking as developed by Irigaray. In Part IV, Schulting evaluates Derrida’s critique of Kant’s polemic against religious or quasi-religious talk in philosophy both by responding to Derrida’s objection that Kant’s polemic is not neutral and by presenting Kant’s own reasons for this objection to religious talk in philosophy. The unity within the diversity of the contributions is not only thematic but also structural. The thematic unity will be discussed in more detail in the next section. In this section, the focus will be on structural unity. Each of the three main parts of the volume starts with an interpretative chapter, which sets the conceptual framework of the discussion, and each part continues and concludes with more evaluative and critical essays, which examine the Kantian legacy and the way it has been appropriated and transformed by recent (mostly twentieth-century) Continental thinkers. Part II, for instance, begins with Moran’s comprehensive investigation of Kant’s crucial notion of intuition. It starts with a discussion of the sources of Kant’s conception of intuition and the way Kant’s thinking

Kant and the Continental Tradition 5 breaks away from the philosophical contexts at the time; it continues with an overview and critical reflection on Kant’s discussion of intuition from the Inaugural Dissertation to the Critical period and even some aspects in the Opus Postumum; finally, it focuses on specific vexing issues, such as the significance of the characteristics of singularity and immediacy for Kant’s conception of intuition or the distinctions between form and content of intuition, pure and empirical intuitions or forms of intuition and formal intuitions. While these discussions are significant by themselves, they also provide the background and starting points for the following comparative chapters in this part.3 For instance, in the discussion of Kant’s sources for the notion of intuition, Moran examines the relation between Kant’s and Leibniz’s views of intuition and the particular way this is understood by Eberhard.4 Thus, one interesting aspect is that Eberhard argues that Kant has not gone beyond Leibniz’s distinction between intuitive and symbolic knowledge. Moran notes that Kant’s notion of intuition is in the process of being rethought by Kant and, in the Critique of Judgement, Kant places the symbolic under the intuitive mode of representation, to be distinguished from the schematic mode of representation. Schemata are introduced by Moran as direct presentations of concepts, but he notes a further discussion of schemata goes beyond the scope of his text. Yet this is precisely the focus of the third essay in the volume, namely Roxana Baiasu’s ‘Heidegger’s Interpretation of Kant’s Transcendental Schematism’. Roxana Baiasu’s contention is that Heidegger’s objections to Kant’s conception of schematism make evident a limited conception of space in Kant, a conception which undermines Kant’s temporal schematism; moreover, by offering a new understanding of space and time, as structures of sensibility, Heidegger’s discussion of the schematism is a confirmation of his project of fundamental ontology. Moran’s discussion of the tension concerning the nature of intuition in the Dissertation and the Critique of Pure Reason, as well as Kant’s significant rethinking of the concept of intuition in the Critique of Judgement, direct us to the fourth chapter of this volume, Andrea Rehberg’s ‘On Affective Universality: Kant, Arendt and Lyotard on Sensus Communis’. Rehberg notes that Kant is standardly assumed to be completely in agreement with the Western philosophical tradition’s rejection of the entire nexus comprising the body, the senses, emotions and desires, a tradition emerging from its influential Platonic-Christian conceptual and ideatic background. She argues, however, that it is precisely in Kant’s Third Critique, the Critique of Judgement, that it becomes evident that Kant foreshadows, if not even prepares, a move towards the reconsideration of affective life as playing a major role in our experience. The essay by Onof begins the third part of the volume, this time dedicated to nature. According to Onof, in the Transcendental Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason, at stake is the unity of nature. Here the ideas

6  Sorin Baiasu and Alberto Vanzo of reason are not constitutive of experience but play merely a regulative role. Yet, in the Transcendental Analytic of the first Critique, dynamic principles play also a regulative role, in this context, however, regulative for the unity of experience. Moreover, in the Critique of Judgement, the term ‘regulative’ is presented through the concept of purposiveness, which plays a significant role in the reflective use of the faculty of judgement. From this starting point, several questions are then discussed in the chapter, including the relation between the notions of ‘regulative’, particularly as applied to the dynamic principles of the understanding in the Analytic and to the regulative principles of reason in the Dialectic, as well as the status of these principles of reason, in particular whether we should regard them as merely heuristic or as having some kind of ‘realist’ status. As Onof notes in his chapter, the theme which connects these questions is that of unity, and his contribution is to the central question that exercised scholars investigating the regulative use of the ideas of pure reason and the status of the systematic unity of nature. Whether we regard the systematic unity of nature as a merely heuristic principle or as a principle which is active within nature, interpretative problems arise for Kant, since each alternative is in tension with some of Kant’s claims in the Critique of Pure Reason. The solution Onof, following Banham, defends in his chapter acknowledges that the systematic unity of nature is more than a merely heuristic principle, while at the same time rejecting its status as a principle of the possibility of experience. Instead, it is considered a transcendental principle. The question, then, concerns the relation between this principle of the systematic unity of nature and the principle of purposiveness for reflective judgement, which Kant introduces in the Critique of Judgement. On some accounts, Kant’s principle of purposiveness provides a distinct answer to the problem that the systematic unity of nature tried to solve in the Critique of Pure Reason. This answer, commentators claim, is not only distinct from, but it is in fact in tension with, the solution in the first Critique. By contrast, Onof argues that the principles have complementary functions. The principle of the systematic unity of nature is a transcendental principle but not a constitutive one: it is objectively valid (in the sense that it is about the world of appearances) but hypothetical. By contrast, the principle of the purposive organisation of nature is subjective. As noted by Onof, Kant introduces the notion of a regulative principle of reason in his resolution of the Antinomies in the Critique of Pure Reason. In his chapter, Crome identifies precisely the Antinomies as the source of Lyotard’s idea of a différend, as a conflict that cannot be resolved by reference to a rule of judgement applicable to both arguments. Crome formulates his project against standard readings of Lyotard as concerned mainly with ethico-political conflicts and as developed primarily in relation to Kant’s Critique of Judgement. While the

Kant and the Continental Tradition 7 significance of Kant’s Third Critique for Lyotard cannot be exaggerated, Crome’s reading regards Lyotard’s The Différend from the perspective of Kant’s First Critique as a tribunal in which philosophical reason investigates its limits and legitimacy. In his project, however, Crome identifies a différend between Kant and Lyotard concerning the concept of nature. From the perspective of Lyotard’s thought, Kant’s account of subjectivity entails a blindness to nature, which favours the technological domination of the natural world. Lyotard’s appeal to Kant’s Third Critique is an attempt to resist precisely this limiting perspective on nature. As we have seen, Onof’s focus is on the status of the principle of the systematic unity of nature, a principle which accounts for nature mechanically. To investigate the nature of this principle, he clarifies its regulative character by a discussion of the dynamic principles of the understanding and the principle of purposiveness (which accounts for nature teleologically), both of which are also regulative. In her essay, Jones finds in Kant’s Third Critique a number of implicit instances of chemism, a third principle in addition to those of mechanism and teleology. Jones identifies in these implicit instances of chemism the starting point of a reconsideration of the relation between sexes. While Kant’s account is still seen as dependent on a gendered hylomorphism and a reproductive telos, she thinks that Irigaray’s conception of the elemental can make chemism more amenable not only to sexual difference but also to a fluidity of differences, including those between human and non-human life or between non-human life and inorganic matter. Grayson’s chapter marks the beginning of the fourth part of this volume and the transition to the theme of religion. Her focus is on Kant’s notion of hypotyposis, as the process through which concepts are inspected, illustrated and granted reality. Kant’s notion of hypotyposis is presented in the Third Critique (§59), and discussions in the literature are based on this text, as well as on the Schematism of the Pure Concepts of Understanding in the First Critique; however, this leads to a mistaken understanding of hypotypsis as the only means of granting reality to an idea. Grayson’s intention is to correct this trend by considering as an important part of the discussion Kant’s analysis of the realisation of both the theoretical ideas, in the Architectonic of Pure Reason of the First Critique, and practical ideas, in the Typic of the Pure Practical Power of Judgement in the Second Critique. In this way, the distinction between these two types of hypotyposis is made clear. Grayson also notes Kant’s discussion of a schematism of analogy in Religion Within the Bounds of Mere Reason. Through this schematism of analogy, practical ideas are realised indirectly (in the way in which symbolisation grants reality to ideas). At the same time, as a form of schematism, there is also a sense of direct exhibition of ideas in the schematism of analogy. The example offered is Christ, who indirectly embodies human aspects (such as the capacity to suffer and be tempted) but also

8  Sorin Baiasu and Alberto Vanzo realises directly and schematically the idea of God. The schematism of analogy appears in this way as a bridge between the two types of hypotyposis, the schematic and symbolic. Grayson’s chapter focuses on the process of exhibition, of making a concept sensible. She notes that Kant’s distinction between schematic and symbolic exhibition or hypotyposis in the Critique of Judgement gives the wrong impression that ideas of reason can only be exhibited symbolically. Whereas schematic exhibition gives intuition a priori to a concept of the understanding, symbolic exhibition is supposed to supply an intuition to a concept which only reason can think (an idea of reason), a process which is treated as merely analogous to that of schematism.5 As we have seen, questions remain concerning Kant’s discussion, in the Critique of Practical Reason, of a process similar to schematism for ideas of reason,6 as well as his mention, in Religion, of a schematism of analogy.7 This raises a more general question concerning the presentation of the ideas of reason, in particular of religious ideas, as well as the relation between philosophy and religion. This is the topic of Schulting’s chapter. As Schulting notes, this metaphilosophical question has been of central concern to Kant, beginning with his pre-Critical work, including, among others, Religion (which resulted in an imperial rescript from October 1794, which prevented him from publishing on religious affairs) and culminating with the 1796 essay ‘Of a Recently Adopted Exalted Tone in Philosophy’, which is the focus of Schulting’s chapter. Schulting discusses not only this Kantian essay but also an oblique commentary Jacques Derrida wrote in 1983: ‘On a Recently Adopted Apocalyptic Tone in Philosophy’. According to Derrida, no absolute distinction is possible between the rationality of philosophy and the ‘irrationality’ of religion. Hence, to privilege, with Kant, the dictating voice of reason over the emotive resonance of the non-discursive voice of religion is an arbitrary decision. On Derrida’s account (according to Schulting’s reading), Kant relies on a non-rational ground, a ‘mystery’ or ‘secret’, which cannot subsequently be vindicated by reason. Hence, whether this is interpreted by the fanatic religious believer or by the agent who obeys the Categorical Imperative, the normative force of the ensuing interpretations is the same. Yet this relativisation of the normativity of claims is self-undermining for Derrida’s own claims and raises questions about his critique of Kant. So far, we have seen illustrations of the volume’s structural unity: apart from the introduction and postscript, each of the three middle parts of the volume has an interpretative chapter focused on Kant, which opens up avenues of research, primarily to be pursued in the following, more comparative chapters of the respective section. However, the interpretative texts in this volume do not simply pave the way for the discussions in the subsequent comparative essays in their respective sections; there is also significant cross-reference and dialogue across sections.

Kant and the Continental Tradition 9 For instance, as we have seen, Moran’s discussion of the distinction between the schematic and the symbolic modes of representation, as parts of intuition and as hypotyposes, connects directly with Nicola Grayson’s essay on ‘The Schematism of Analogy and the Figure of Christ: Bridging Two Types of Hypotyposis’. In her text, Grayson takes as starting point Kant’s distinction, in the Critique of Judgement, between schematic and symbolic modes of representation. The problem she identifies is that Kant’s reference to a ‘schematism of analogy’ in Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason seems to be a reference to neither form of representation. Similar cross-references can also easily be noticed between the chapters by Roxana Baiasu and Crome (in the attempt to argue for a broadening of Kant’s limited perspective on sensibility and nature by twentieth-century Kantian philosophers) or the essays by Rehberg and Jones (in the way Kant’s philosophy is interpreted as a starting point for a reconsideration of the philosophical significance of sensibility and the unity of nature). In the next section, some further illustrations of the unity of content of the various parts and chapters will be provided.

3.  The Volume’s Thematic Unity In the previous section, we have seen that the three middle parts of this volume display structural similarities which give it significant formal unity. The thematic unity of the volume was illustrated at the end of the section through some of the cross-references between the chapters of the various parts. In addition, each of the three middle parts has a particular focus on one of the three inter-related themes of the volume: sensibility, nature and religion. What is more, each of the three middle parts of the volume problematises aspects of the fundamental relation in Kant between appearances and things in themselves, a relation which Kant only saw himself as having solved in the Critique of Judgement and then in the Opus Postumum. Part II focuses on the relation between sensibility and reason, Part III focuses on the relation between nature and freedom, whereas Part IV examines the relation between philosophy and religion. The first focal point of the collection is sensibility and the relation between sensibility and reason broadly understood. Concerning the focus on sensibility, as we have seen, Moran’s chapter separates some of the threads that run together in Kant’s discussions of sensibility and intuition. He focuses on Kant’s notion of intuition and highlights the tensions among some of these threads. Starting from Heidegger’s interpretation of the Kantian schematism, Roxana Baiasu examines Heidegger’s evaluation of this—for Heidegger, crucial—part of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and makes clear the significance of the schematism for Heidegger’s ontological ground-laying. Rehberg’s chapter turns to the role of ­sensibility—more specifically, the notion of sensus communis—within

10  Sorin Baiasu and Alberto Vanzo the Third Critique, with the aim of reconsidering the role of affectivity in philosophy and understanding the nature of political community. Concerning the focus on the relation between sensibility and reason, we have already seen that Moran takes a broad look at Kant’s doctrine of sensibility. He concludes that ‘Kant’s understanding of intuition is too diverse to provide a single coherent doctrine’. Kant’s sources provide an incoherent starting point, and his terminology fails to overcome several key ambiguities. First, Kant wavers between conceiving of sensations as mere theoretical postulates and as the actual building blocks of intuitions. Second, Kant presents sensible intuitions and intellectual concepts as the two sources of knowledge, but he ‘never gives an account of how this two-fold nature of the mind comes about’. His ambiguity on whether all intuitions are subsumed under concepts complicates matters further. Third, Kant regards space as the form of outer intuitions. It is unclear how this spatiality can arise, given that neither sensations nor intuiting acts are spatial. Fourth, pace Hintikka, the essence of intuition includes far more than singularity, especially givenness and immediacy. But Kant’s notion of immediacy is unclear and elusive. All these objections to Kant’s account of sensibility, and in particular of intuition, test the coherence of the picture provided by Kant. The requirement of coherence is a precondition of the unity and systematicity which Kant regarded as essential for philosophy and which he thought reason had as role to pursue. Bringing the manifold under unity was a process which Kant identified both in the relation between intuition and the understanding and also in the relation between the understanding and reason. In this sense, Moran’s chapter can be seen as an investigation into the relation between Kant’s account of sensibility and the unity and systematicity of his philosophy. In the third chapter, Roxana Baiasu provides a reading of Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant’s schematism in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. She presents Heidegger’s main implicit criticisms of the schematism, in particular the notion of sensible presentation of the rules of intelligibility, the formality of the schematism (connected with an ontological indefiniteness of the relation between subject and object) and a metaphysical cut between inner and outer. These problems are related to Heidegger’s critical view of the role of space in the schematism. The schematism involves a presentational formation of time images, but space is required for the presentational formation of the possibilities of objectivity. Space, as specific to sheer presence, is involved in the metaphysical cut between the inside and the outside. It is for this reason that Heidegger regards as ontologically inadequate a schematism which involves space specific to sheer presence. Heidegger thinks that it is possible to reappropriate the Kantian project by eliminating the space of sheer presence. The focus here is not only on sensibility, with its two intuitions (space and time), but also on their relation to the understanding through the

Kant and the Continental Tradition 11 schematism, more exactly, on their roles in the sensible presentation of the rules of intelligibility. The chapter shows how Heidegger’s objections to the Kantian schematism attempt to revalue the Kantian project by overcoming the difficulties introduced by Kant’s limited conception of space. Heidegger regards this process as part of his project of fundamental ontology, and the focus is on a reconsideration of the Kantian relation between space and time, on the one hand, and, on the other, the rules of intelligibility. Rehberg’s ‘On Affective Universality’ turns to an expression of sensibility that takes centre stage in the Third Critique, namely the notion of sensus communis. Sensus communis is not only the affective basis for the universality of aesthetic taste, but it also grants us affective, pre-­ conceptual access to a universal community of judging subjects. The political implications of this idea have attracted the attention of interpreters working in the Continental tradition, most notably Hannah Arendt and Jean-François Lyotard. After providing an interpretation of sensus communis, Rehberg argues that an approach to its political implications based on Lyotard’s insights is far superior to Arendt’s approach. Arendt presents the community to which sensus communis gives us access as a community of empirical subjects, which is an object of actual experience. By contrast, on the Lyotardian approach developed by Rehberg, sensus communis discloses a pre-conscious, non-empirical, transcendental commonalty that is a ‘silent condition of possibility of all empirical community’, ‘without being in any way reducible to it’. Its political potential lies in ‘opening up the possibility of a human existence in dialogue with the beautiful’, freed from any telos and utilitarian regime. Rehberg’s discussion of sensibility and affectivity is presented in the context of the nineteenth-century shift from regarding affectivity as an obstacle to the pursuit of truth, knowledge and the good to a consideration of the significance of pre-conscious, pre-cognitive and pre-­ theoretical aspects of human existence. In this context, sensibility and affectivity start to gain significance and to be considered as important elements of our epistemic activities. Kant is discussed by Rehberg as a crucial eighteenth-century precursor of this shift in our views of affectivity, and the focus on the relation between sensibility and judgement takes centre stage in her chapter. In the next part of the volume, the focus is expanded from sensibility to nature in general and the relation between the domain of nature and that of freedom, including the preconditions for an understanding of nature and its unity. As we have seen, Onof’s chapter examines the possibility of nature’s unity and, in particular, the status of the principle of the systematic unity of nature, which has preoccupied and continues to exert Kant scholars. Crome focuses on Kant’s view of nature and identifies an irreconcilable conflict between this view and Lyotard’s account, favouring the latter as better able to give nature its due. Jones explores an alternative

12  Sorin Baiasu and Alberto Vanzo principle of the unity of nature, a principle which is formulated by Hegel but has its implicit source in Kant and which is also better able to account for the relations between sexes and even species. As we have seen, Onof’s chapter discusses the thorny issue of nature’s unity. In the first Critique, Kant introduces three regulative principles that guide the extension of our knowledge through the search for farther spatial regions, further causes for known events and so on. This extension of our knowledge presupposes the principle of the unity of nature, that is, the assumption that nature is systematically organised in a single all-encompassing system of genera and species. There is a long-standing debate about the status that Kant ascribes to the principle of the unity of nature. Interpretations range from the view that this unity is a mere fiction that cognising subjects project onto the world in their search for knowledge, to the view that systematic unity is an objective, necessary feature of nature. Onof defends a version of the objective reading. He carefully specifies in what sense the principle of the unity of nature is objective, and he distinguishes it from the weaker, subjective version of that principle that can be found in the third Critique. His focus is, therefore, on nature and on a particular aspect of the relation between appearances and things in themselves, namely the relation between our view of nature and the idea of a totality to which the systematic unity of nature refers. The principle of the systematic unity of nature is not regarded as constitutive, although it is not considered merely heuristic either. Instead, the principle is deemed transcendental but with a hypothetical character. Crome’s chapter interprets both the unity of nature and Kant’s notion of intuition as instances of a Lyotardian différend between the objective and the subjective. As we have seen, a différend is a conflict where both sides have a claim to legitimacy and no rule of judgement can adjudicate in favour of one side. As Lyotard notes, the matter of intuition points to ‘whatever it is that’ produces ‘the sensible impression’ upon the subject. Yet a subjective spatio-temporal form is at once imposed upon that matter without ever asking to what extent that form might be ‘appropriate to the “that” to which it refers’. Crome argues that this results in the risk of not hearing the suit of nature and of opening an unbridgeable gulf between the subjective, phenomenal realm and the objective, noumenal realm. In this chapter, again, the focus is on nature but also on the appropriate relation between nature and freedom, between the phenomenal and noumenal realms. A conception of subjectivity which is blind to nature, as Lyotard views Kant’s conception of the transcendental subject, runs the risk of generating this gap between the phenomenal and noumenal realms but also of providing an inadequate image of nature. It is this image which encourages the technological domination of nature, and the question raised in this chapter through Lyotard concerns the possibility of a more adequate view.

Kant and the Continental Tradition 13 Jones focuses on a mediating structure that appears in Kant’s philosophy of nature and is fleshed out by Hegel. This is what Hegel calls chemism. Chemism is found when distinct items presuppose a common element that makes their subsistence, communication and—in a broad sense—reproduction possible. Instances of chemism can be found, for instance, in Kant’s discussion of the category of reciprocal action and his biological theory of the perpetuation of life. Jones compares chemism with Luce Irigaray’s notion of the elemental, understood as ‘the fluid material elements that pass between beings to constitute and sustain life and becoming’. Jones concludes that, unlike Irigaray’s elemental, Kantian and Hegelian chemism is embedded in an outlook that ascribes ontological primacy to the male vis-à-vis the female, reduces the female body to a tool for reproduction and fails to contemplate a non-reproductive relation between the sexes. The emphasis here is again on nature and on the relation between nature and the principles which make its unity possible. Chemism is supposed to be an alternative to mechanism and teleology, and Jones identifies the origins of this principle in Kant. Further developed by Hegel, the principle presupposes an ontological primacy of the male over female and is unable to account appropriately for the relation between the sexes. Irigaray’s elemental provides an avenue for addressing these problems. The third focal point of the collection, in Part IV, is religion and the relation between religion and philosophy. Grayson’s focus is on a peculiar mediating structure, a link between our mental contents and the world. The idea of God is problematic in this regard. It lacks a schema or symbol in the proper, technical sense that Kant ascribes to these terms, yet Kant denies that it is fictitious. While Kant ascribes an important moral role to the idea of God, he denies that we can appeal to divine revelation as a source of justification for our claims, including philosophical claims. With a distinctively reflexive move, Kantian reason takes centre stage in vindicating both specific philosophical claims and the legitimacy of philosophical practice as such. The last chapter—Schulting’s—assesses Jacques Derrida’s defence of religion against this Kantian outlook. As is well known, Kant stresses the importance of showing that our mental contents are not fictitious but have an anchorage in the world. According to Kant, two kinds of representations can provide this anchorage: schemata and symbols. Grayson argues that, within Kant’s philosophy, it is the figure of Christ that provides the required link between God—more specifically, its moral aspect—and the sensible world in which we live. Christ ‘embodies and presents the goodness of God’, giving it ‘human form to bring the otherwise impossibly transcendental within our realms of possibility’. By doing this, Christ plays the role of a sui generis schema of the idea of God. Grayson sheds light on the working of this ‘schematism of analogy’, which shares certain traits with schemata and symbols but differs from both.

14  Sorin Baiasu and Alberto Vanzo The focus is here again on a particular aspect of the relation between appearances and things in themselves, between nature or the world and the idea of God. Kant’s solution of a schematism of analogy is interpreted as embodied by Christ, who mediates what would otherwise appear as an unbridgeable gap between a merely fictitious idea and our world. The ‘reality’ the idea of God acquires in this way is not theoretical or scientific but practical or moral. Kant intimates that reason depends on a ‘non-rational exogenous ground, a mystery, a secret’, which Derrida presents as the religious ground of reason. The religious nature of this ground is expressed by a cautious, watchful attitude that is pre-eminent in apocalyptic discourse and that results in a reserve about any ‘presumed coagulated formality in philosophical speech’. Against Derrida’s view that reason is grounded in religion, Schulting argues for the primacy of reason with the justification that only reason can set the parameters that decide what counts as religious watchfulness. He also notes a striking parallel between Kant’s and Derrida’s modes of argument. Kant employs reason in the justification of philosophical claims, which are reason’s own claims. Similarly, Derrida applies the cautious reserve that is the hallmark of religion to his own discourse about religion. Derrida’s religious defence of the religious ground of reason exhibits the same distinctly Kantian form of reflexivity and self-determination that can be found in Kant’s rational defence of reason’s claims. In this final chapter, before Hodge’s postscript, the topic is a new instantiation of the relation which, we have argued, is at the centre of this volume. The question of the status of religious claims and their relations to philosophy is particularly significant given Derrida’s challenge to Kant’s epistemic priority of philosophy over religion. Schulting’s point is not simply that Kant can be defended against Derrida’s objections but also that there is a similarity between the argumentative structures in Kant and Derrida. So far in this section, we have presented several aspects of the thematic unity of the volume. We have seen that the central parts of the volume focus on the related themes of sensibility, nature and religion, but each chapter is an elaboration of specific aspects of the more general question of the relation between appearances/phenomena/world and things in themselves/noumena/transcendence. There is, in addition, another significant unifying theme, which will be discussed in the next section, particularly in relation to the volume’s postscript.

4.  A Further Unifying Element This volume is dedicated to the memory of Gary Banham. Each of the texts in the collection makes reference to Banham and his important work on Kant and post-Kantian philosophy. Before concluding, we will

Kant and the Continental Tradition 15 present these various references and bring out what is sometimes implicit with the help of Hodge’s excellent and very useful postscript. What will emerge more clearly, we hope, is the breadth of Banham’s scholarship and the significance of his work. Moran’s essay, dedicated to the memory of Gary Banham, makes reference to Banham in the first footnote of the text, acknowledging his comments on the chapter. From the perspective of Hodge’s chapter, it is easier to guess what shape those comments might have taken. As noted by Hodge, Banham’s commitment to Kantian critique and transcendental grounding was ‘enhanced by his willing self-exposure’ to Nietzsche and Derrida. For instance, Hodge notes that, in the discussion of the Analogies of Experience in the First Critique, the three determinations of time (permanence, succession and coexistence) are ‘subverted by a Derridean plus or minus one, in a fourth determination as lapsus’. Moreover, according to Hodge, Banham’s research on Heidegger and on Heidegger’s critique of Kant is the likely reason for his conviction of the ‘as yet unexhausted potential for a renewal of transcendental philosophy’. This renewal would start from the idea of a transcendental sensibility, in which intuitions and concepts mutually inform one another. Moran’s critical discussion of Kant’s account of intuition would have received a sympathetic reaction from Banham and very likely also comments both on the particular points concerning Kant’s account and on ways in which the discussion could go beyond a standard reading of Kant’s account of intuition towards readings influenced not only by Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derrida, but also Husserl.8 Banham’s engagement with Heidegger’s work is also discussed in Roxana Baiasu’s chapter. She notes that Banham is one of the few Kant scholars to discuss in detail Heidegger’s examination of Kant’s schematism. On Banham’s reading of Heidegger, the fundamental meaning of schematism is given by the schema-image.9 Yet Kant seems to deny precisely this point when he claims that the schema of a pure concept of the understanding ‘can never be brought to an image at all’.10 One first step in the discussion of this issue is the introduction of Heidegger’s threefold distinction between three meanings of the notion of ‘image’: as immediate empirical intuition of something individual, as presentation of a likeness (e.g., by a photograph) and as the image of something general (conceptual representation). The schema-image refers to the third meaning. According to Roxana Baiasu, for Heidegger, schematism has two structural moments: the schema and its corresponding schema-image. The schema is a general rule for the sensible presentation of concepts. The schema-image is a possible presentation of the rule of presentation represented in the schema. The pure concept is not brought to an empirical or general image, but to a pure schema-image of time. These are ‘figurations of time’, a term she borrows from Banham, rather than empirical intuitions or presentations of likeness. These figurations of time indicate a significant

16  Sorin Baiasu and Alberto Vanzo point on which Roxana Baiasu’s analysis relies, namely the necessity in schematism of representing time spatially. This leads to the fundamental claim of her chapter, namely, that the relation between space and transcendental schematism is a central one in Heidegger, as shown by what he regards as the three types of limitation of Kant’s transcendental idealism. Banham’s discussion of the concept of end, in his Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics, is presented in Rehberg’s chapter.11 On Rehberg’s reading, Banham distinguishes between three senses of end: as limit, as purpose and as conclusion or destination. This distinction, Rehberg notes, allows Banham to present a reading of Kant’s Third Critique which provides a new sense of unity to the Critical project. Rehberg’s chapter, however, does not focus on this issue as such; by contrast, it discusses the ‘affective wellspring of not just reflective, but also, implicitly, constitutive judgement’. This is an aspect of Kant’s thought which is not often discussed and which may even be controversial. Banham takes into consideration another important reader of Kant who emphasised this significance of affectivity, namely, Lyotard. However, this is not an aspect of Kant’s Third Critique which Banham develops in Kant and the Ends of the Aesthetics. Where Rehberg differs from Banham is in their views of the coherence of the Critical system. On Rehberg’s account, the claim to this coherence is problematic and perhaps even unwarranted, not as a result of any mistakes on Kant’s part but because this coherence is necessarily illusory, since it is ‘based on a prior model of reality which omits to take account of the hiatuses and lacunae that co-constitute it’. She argues for a displacement of the concern for systematicity through a ‘post-modern insight into the essentially fragmented’. In this way, she also believes that the focus is shifted to the central concern of her chapter, namely affectivity. Onof’s text is among those in this volume which engage in a substantial way with Banham’s work. He takes as a starting point Banham’s discussion of the various notions of regulative in the First and Third Critiques. As we have seen, Onof presents first the notion of the regulative in the Transcendental Analytic of the First Critique, this being a notion which refers to the role played, for the unity of experience, by the dynamical principles. In the Transcendental Dialectic, the regulative role of the ideas of reason refers to the projected unity of nature. Onof makes reference not only to this discussion of the notion of the regulative, which can be found in Banham, he actually focuses his chapter on a problem Banham, together with other Kant scholars, considers central for Kant’s philosophy, namely the question of the status of the regulative principles of the Dialectic. Furthermore, Onof develops and further clarifies an answer to this problem, which Banham has suggested in ‘Regulative Principles and Regulative Ideas’.12 Banham suggests that the regulative principles, and in particular the principle of the systematic unity of nature, are objective—that is, required for the cognition of objects.

Kant and the Continental Tradition 17 In his essay, Crome makes reference to the formative influence Banham had on him, in particular on his reading of Lyotard (a connection we have seen Rehberg mentions, too). Whereas Lyotard’s reception in the 1990s was marked by the success of The Postmodern Condition, this led to the overlooking of his other works or to their misinterpretation from the perspective of this occasional study. It is, for instance, forgotten that Lyotard is a serious interpreter of Kant, who had a lasting influence on his later work. Banham had access to aspects of Lyotard’s work which were usually overlooked—not only an appreciation of his work on Kant but also of Lyotard as an authority on fine arts and of his political background in Marxism. In her postscript, Hodge notes Banham’s interest in the work of Gillian Rose, particularly her study The Melancholy Science: An Introduction to the Thought of Theodor W. Adorno. Banham’s interest in the context of this work concerned not only the reference in the title to Nietzsche’s Gay Science but also the further references to the ‘dismal science’ of Malthus’s political economy, criticised by Marx in Capital: Critique of Political Economy. Hodge also mentions the programme of work for Banham’s post-doctoral position at the Manchester Metropolitan University between 1994 and 1996, a programme entitled ‘The Teleology Project’, which included the revisiting of the challenges raised to Kantian and Hegelian accounts of teleology not only by Nietzschean and Derridean approaches, but also by the Marxist critique. Another substantial explicit discussion of Banham’s work can be found in Jones’s chapter. She notes Banham’s discussion of chemism as an alternative to the principles of mechanism and teleology.13 We find in Banham, Jones notes, a discussion of Hegel’s account of chemism as a principle that also ‘persists in animal beings as the basis of the sex relation, and that translates into spiritual form as the “formal basis” of love and friendship’. The Hegelian version of this principle, however, reflects a logic which affirms a domination of the symbolically male over the symbolically female. At the same time, the logic of chemism allows a change in this pattern of domination through the diversity of material elements which can constitute natural objects and, moreover, through an open space for the formation of relations between the sexes. Banham’s discussion of chemism, Jones notes, suggests the possibility of a reading of Hegel through an Irigarayan lens but ‘also opens the possibility of reading Irigaray through the lens of chemism’. By reading chemism through Irigaray, and Irigaray through chemism, an alternative to the Kantian and Hegelian logic of domination can be found for an account of nature, which can also respond to some of the problems in Irigaray’s thought. The suggestion, as we have seen in the previous discussions of Jones’s work, is for an elemental, connective materiality, which allows for a ‘fluidity of differences’.

18  Sorin Baiasu and Alberto Vanzo Another aspect of Banham’s work, which is well presented in this volume, is apparent in Grayson’s chapter. Her focus is on the realisation of ideatic structures, and she begins with a discussion of Kant’s distinction between the realisation of pure sensible concepts, empirical concepts and pure concepts of the understanding. The first type of concept needs a monogram generated by the a priori imagination; the second, a monogram generated by reproductive imagination; the third one needs time as an element homogenous with both concept and intuition. Now, the schematic exhibition of theoretical ideas does not involve imagination. Given the distance between ideas of reason and intuition, ideas of reason need systems for their realisation. Ideas guide the way parts are devised and connected towards an end or aim. Grayson notes at this point Banham’s term for this mode of realisation: a final end schema. The schema is based on a monogram, which is a product of reason. Ideas of reason become realised through their regulative function. Banham’s work on the realisation of practical ideas is also discussed in Grayson’s chapter. She refers to Banham’s discussion of the typic and notes the affiliation he establishes between the typic and the final end schema. Banham’s work on the typic is one of the few discussions of the role of schema in practical philosophy. As we have seen in the previous discussion of Grayson’s chapter, Banham’s accounts of the typic and of the final end schema are useful for the clarification of Kant’s notion of a schematism of analogy, which is the focus of Grayson’s chapter. Nevertheless, the account of the schematism of analogy, which is made possible in this way, Grayson notes, ‘risks the anthropomorphism that Kant warned us against’. Moreover, Banham does not address the role of the figure of Christ in the realisation of the idea of the highest good. This is the avenue pursued by Grayson, an avenue which, as we have seen, leads also to Schulting’s essay. Schulting’s chapter, too, is dedicated to the memory of Banham and starts by acknowledging (in the first footnote of the text) his research on Kant and Derrida. Banham’s research on Derrida is, however, very well presented in Hodge’s rich postscript. Particularly relevant for the theme of this part of the volume (Part IV, Religion) is the discussion of the special issue of Derrida Today edited by Banham on the topic ‘Jean-Luc Nancy and the “Deconstruction of Christianity” ’. In his essay for this special issue, as noted by Hodge, Banham discusses the critical tension between Nancy’s project of the ‘Deconstruction of Christianity’ and Derrida’s reservations. On Hodge’s reading, Banham notes that Nancy’s claim that a deconstruction of Christianity is itself a Christian project is complicated by a plurality of deconstructions. The Christian tradition, for Banham, constitutes an ‘opening for a negotiation between philosophy and its Christian inheritance’ and takes, in Nancy, the form of a deconstruction of Christianity. This theme is particularly relevant for

Kant and the Continental Tradition 19 Schulting’s discussion of the relation between philosophy and religion. By contrast, Hodge distances herself in general from monotheistic traditions. Hodge contrasts Banham’s and her reaction to Nancy’s deconstruction of Christianity. On her reading, Nancy re-affirms the Nietzschean death of God and the Heideggerian destruction of onto-theology. His response, through a reading of Husserl and Heidegger, is a reconfiguration of a new materialism. On Hodge’s reading, Nancy opens the way to a thinking of the loss of meaning and ‘rubbishing (l’immonde) of the world, in technical practices, exemplified in trolling and plastic waste’. Banham’s route, by contrast, goes back to the Kantian Critical project, through the encounter with Nancy and Derrida, ‘into the context of twenty-first century concerns’. Hodge’s essay offers a subtle and erudite discussion of Banham’s work, from a trajectory of his thinking (with the three phases focusing on genealogy, teleology and conceptuality), to the three distinctive features of Banham’s mode of working (specifically, his mode of writing, his excellence as an interlocutor and the balance between a ‘playful disruptiveness, and a rigorous respect for the order of the concept’), to the revaluation of the Kantian Critical project and, finally, to the differences between his and her projects. A further feature of Banham’s work, which is mentioned by Hodge, is his mode of Critical retrieval in the discussion of other philosophers’ works. In this respect, however, Hodge resembles Banham, as is visible in her critical retrieval of Banham’s projects, works and life.

5. Conclusion The main aim of this introductory piece has been to present the unity of this edited volume. We have discussed this unity from three perspectives: structural, thematic and critical. We have seen that the volume has a recurrent structure, which can be found in each of the three main parts of the volume: each part starts with an interpretative essay focused on Kant’s work and continues with comparative chapters which set Kant’s work in dialogue with the works of recent post-Kantian continental philosophers. Thematically, the volume focuses on three themes, one for each of the three main parts of the book. Moreover, each chapter approaches aspects of the same general but fundamental problem of Kant’s philosophy and of the Kantian critical project more generally: the problem of the relation between appearances/phenomena/world and things in themselves/­ noumena/transcendence. Finally, critically, each chapter engages more or less explicitly with themes from the work of Gary Banham, whose trajectory of thinking, mode of working, focal themes and projects are aptly and affectionately remembered in the postscript. This volume is dedicated to his memory.

20  Sorin Baiasu and Alberto Vanzo

Notes 1 For an excellent study, see Marguerite LaCaze, ‘Kant and Contemporary Kantians: The “Continental” Tradition’, in The Kantian Mind, ed. Sorin Baiasu and Mark Timmons (London: Routledge, 2020). 2 For some recent studies, see the essays in Kant, Kantianism, and Idealism: The Origins of Continental Philosophy, ed. Thomas Nenon, vol. 1 of The History of Continental Philosophy (8 vols.), ed. Alan D. Schrift (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). 3 Some of the comments in this chapter also connect with issues discussed in the following parts of the volume. 4 This is presented mainly in Section 3 of Moran’s paper. 5 References to Kant’s work will cite the volume and page number of the Akademie edition (Immanuel Kant, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Königlich Preußische (Deutsche) Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: Reimer [later: de Gruyter], 1900–) with the exception of the First Critique, which will be referred to, as usually, by citing the page numbers of the first and second editions. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1997), vol. 5: 351. 6 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2002), vol. 5: 67–71. 7 Immanuel Kant, Religion Within the Bounds of Bare Reason, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2009), vol. 6: 65. 8 Hodge notes Banham’s research and teaching interests in Husserl’s work and also mentions that he presented work on Husserl at the meetings of the Husserl Circle, including that at University College Dublin, a meeting hosted by Dermot Moran. 9 Gary Banham, Kant’s Transcendental Imagination (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 162. 10 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. W. S. Pluhar (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000), A142/B181. 11 Gary Banham, Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000). 12 Gary Banham, ‘Regulative Principles and Regulative Ideas’, in Kant und die Philosophie in weltbürgerlicher Absicht: Akten des XI. Kant-Kongresses 2010, ed. Stefano Bacin, Alfredo Ferrarin, Claudio La Rocca and Margit Ruffing (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), vol. 2, 15–24. 13 Gary Banham, ‘Chemism, Epigenesis and Community’, in Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), 165–179.

Part II

Sensibility

2 Kant on Intuition1 Dermot Moran

In memory of Gary Banham

It is well known to the point of being commonplace that, for Immanuel Kant, intuitions are the entry point and the lynchpin of the epistemological process. They account for the encounter with singularity, with the sensuous and with what Kant calls ‘the real’ [das Reale].2 Intuitions, famously, also act as limits, providing constraints on the cognitive task of thinking objects, placing limits on ‘knowledge’ or ‘cognition’ [Erkenntnis] in Kant’s specific sense. Kant approaches the problem of intuition both from above and below. At the bottom, there is what is ‘given’ [gegeben] in human experience, that is, sensuous intuition; such passive, sensible intuitions distinguish human knowledge from its putative divine counterpart. Theoretically, for Kant (as, traditionally, for Christian theology), at least in the case of a pure intellect such as that theorised to belong to the infinite divine being, intuition counts as the highest form of knowing and not just the first step in knowing. God knows immediately and comprehensively the object of thought because He knows his own will; His intuition is ‘original’, not ‘derivative’—intuitus originarius (B72). Furthermore, consideration of the overall nature and role of intuition forms a central part in the distinction between critical and dogmatic metaphysics, as Kant conceives of this distinction. Kant’s account of intuition is many-sided, and it has been seen as providing an account of singular terms, a theory of direct reference,3 a theory of meaning and a theory of intentionality (whereby the objects of intuition are intentional objects).4 In addition, intuition is, of course, central to Kant’s account of the transcendental nature of space and time and plays a crucial but controversial role in his account of the nature of mathematics.5 Intuitions, however, prove to be a very problematic starting point for Kant, raising questions of the consistency between his accounts of intuition in the Transcendental Aesthetic and in the Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason and epistemological and metaphysical questions concerning the nature of the given, the structure of reference to the object and the

24  Dermot Moran problematic issue of whether Kant is a direct or a representative realist. In introducing intuitions, Kant is, as the American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars rightly puts it, ‘fighting his way towards a clarity of structure which he never achieves’.6 And the distinguished Kant commentator William Henry Walsh, for instance, has even raised the question as to whether the notion of intuition can be made at all intelligible in Kant.7 In Kant’s discussions of intuition, there is a curious mixing of the empirical psychological, the phenomenological, the epistemological, the logical and even the metaphysical (following on from the tradition of Wolff). It is therefore necessary to attempt to disentangle these strands in order to clarify the notion. In order to do this, I shall begin by sketching briefly the emergence of intuition in rationalist philosophy. In particular, I shall focus on the following problems: First, how are we to understand the defining characteristics of intuition in general, namely immediacy and singularity, and, furthermore, the characteristics of human intuition in particular, namely givenness, passivity and receptivity? • Second, what, precisely, is given immediately in intuition? Is it merely private sensations and inner representations, sense data, or is it (and in what sense) the empirical object as understood in naïve discussion? Or, indeed, is it the ‘thing in itself’ as it appears to us? • Third, in Kant’s distinction between form and content, how can the pure forms of intuition (space and time) be themselves intuitions?

•

We do not propose to resolve all issues but simply to articulate clearly Kant’s account of intuitions to the fullest degree possible and thereby expose the complexities, ambiguities and fissures in his central conception.

1. Kant and His Sources: The Different Senses of Intuition in the Tradition Kant’s technical terminology, notoriously, is not stable and, indeed, might be termed systematically ambiguous. Not only do most of his technical terms have a variety of meanings in different contexts, but the terms are relational: the meaning of each is qualified by its relations with other terms about it. It is thus difficult to single out the meaning of an individual term without taking into account more holistic considerations. To further complicate matters, Kant uses a combination of both Latin Scholastic and German technical terms. Intuition [Anschauung, intuitus] is related to at least the following terms: ‘impression’ [Eindrück], ­‘sensation’ [Empfindung], ‘appearance’ [Erscheinung],8 ‘receptivity’ [Rezeptivität, A19/B33; Empfänglichkeit, B129], ‘experience’ [Erfahrung], ‘perception’ [Wahrnehmung, Perzeption], ‘sensibility’ [Sinnlichkeit], ‘phenomenon’9 and ‘representation’ [Vorstellung, repraesentatio]. We must further

Kant on Intuition 25 recognise that Kant employs the one term ‘intuition’ variously to mean the act of intuiting (not quite a propositional attitude, because intuiting that p is ‘blind’ on its own, and Kant speaks of intuiting an object as presenting a particular),10 the content of that act, the form of the act and the intentional object intuited.11 Of course, Kant had not quite extricated himself from the complex nature of the ‘idea’ as found in modern Scholastic philosophy (and as used by Descartes, Leibniz, Wolff and others)—its formal reality, objective reality, material reality and so on, although his broadside against the prevailing use of the term ‘idea’ shows how uncomfortable Kant was with the inherited metaphysical and epistemological traditions.12 Norman Kemp Smith claims that the German term Anschauung is, from its etymology, a generalization of the notion of visual sensation (schauen means ‘to watch’, ‘to look at’),13 just as the Latin intuitus is related to the verb intuĕre, ‘to see’. He further claims that Kant introduces this term in place of the more usual ‘sensation’ because he wants to be able to call the formal intuitions of space and time intuitions rather than sensations.14 Of course, space and time are, for Kant, the forms of intuition, but they can still be intuited in themselves and thus count as ‘formal intuitions’, as he explains in a famous footnote in the Transcendental Aesthetic (B160–161). More generally, intuitions are a sub-species of the general field of ‘representation’,15 and in the ­Leibnizian-Wolffian-Baumgartenian view, which Kant inherited and modified, the soul is characterized by having representations (either of the world or of itself). Whenever a cognizing subject has experiences, she or he has ‘representations’, among which are sensuous intuitions. According to the standard account of Kant, which, mirabile dictu, receives considerable support from Kant’s own writings, impressions [Eindrücke] are the ‘effect’ [Wirkung] of objects on the senses, producing sensations, which are the ‘matter’ or ‘stuff’ [Materie, Stoff] of intuitions. The term Eindrück has been used to translate Hume’s ‘impression’, and certainly Kant associates the term with Hume.16 It is noteworthy that in rewriting the Introduction of the first Critique for the B-edition, Kant replaces the phrase in the A-edition, ‘the raw material of sensible sensations’ [der rohe Stoff sinnlicher Empfindungen, A1], with the phrase ‘the raw material of sensible impressions’ [der rohe Stoff sinnlicher Eindrücke, B1], to use the translation of Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. This distinction is not maintained by Kemp Smith, since the latter translates both phrases as ‘the raw material of sensible impressions’, presumably because the phrase ‘sensible sensations’ would have seemed to him redundant. Let us address a basic confusion. Are impressions, for Kant, sensations tout court or do impressions cause sensations? Kant is unclear. In any case, our sensory faculty, sensibility, must be affected or modified in some way. It seems that intuitions can occur on their own, as modalities of the receptive faculty (noises, itches, sensory irritations), but, accompanied by the right intentional consciousness, they are called by Kant

26  Dermot Moran ‘perceptions’, and when united in an orderly connection of perceptions, the whole is entitled ‘experience’ [Erfahrung, A110, B161]. Sensations, on this account, are mere undergoings without any objectifying referentiality. According to Kant, impressions supply the first ‘occasion’ [Anlaß, Gelegenheit, A86/B118]17 for knowledge, and he refers favourably to Locke in this regard, arguing, however, that this origin provides no justification for the use of concepts, though it does explain the occasions of their production. Something must awaken the understanding; in this sense, impressions knock on the door, but the impressions themselves have no normative force. On this account, knowledge is constructed on the basis of passively received sensations. Paton, for instance, endorses this picture: The simplest interpretation is to suppose that Kant is speaking at the commonsense level. The object may be taken to be a body, such as a chair. It is given to us so far as it affects our minds through the senseorgans and produces, for example, a sensation of colour. [. . .] If we speak strictly, even the phenomenal object is given only as regards its matter. What is given to us is, for example, a colour. We think that it is the colour of a chair. Without thought, although we might see a colour, we could not know that it was the colour of a chair, or indeed of anything.18 In support of the view of sensations as pure experiences, we might cite the A-Deduction, where Kant talks of intuitions on their own, which he calls appearances, as ‘crowding in upon the soul’.19 In fact, however, Kant explicitly states that such a play of representations on its own never gives rise to experience that might be considered epistemic: The appearances might, indeed, constitute intuition without thought [gedankenlose Anschauung], but not knowledge; and consequently would be for us as good as nothing. (A111) Even as modifications of our sensibility, the sensations must be ordered under the ‘mode’ [Art] of the form of sensibility, Kant’s version of the Scholastic principle that whatever is received is received according to the mode of the receiver [receptum est in recipiente per modum recipientis].20 The pure form of intuition, the a priori structure of sensibility, supplies spatial location and temporal ordering to the manifold of sensations. Already in his Dissertation (1770), Kant explains why the form of sensation may be called sensitive even though it is devoid of sensory matter: Thus there belong to sensory cognition [sensualis cognitio] both matter, which is sensation and in virtue of which cognitions are called

Kant on Intuition 27 sensory [sensuales], and form, in virtue of which, even if it were to be found free from all sensation, representations are called sensitive [sensitivae]. (D 393) The form of intuition provides a minimum organization, ‘an accidental order’ (B219), which must then be taken up and undergo a combination through understanding: The manifold of representations can be given in an intuition which is purely sensible, that is, nothing but receptivity, and the form of this intuition can lie a priori in our faculty of representation, without being anything more than the mode [als die Art] in which the subject is affected [wie das Subjekt affiziert wird]. But the combination [die Verbindung, conjunctio] of a manifold in general can never come to us through the senses, and cannot, therefore, be contained in the pure form of sensible intuition. (B129) In agreement with Aristotle (and against Husserl, for whom there is already a passive synthesis at the level of perception), for Kant, combination is always an act of the understanding, ‘an act of its [the understanding’s] self-activity’ [ein Aktus seiner Selbststätigkeit],21 and combination already requires as a condition a higher ‘unity’ [Einheit] that comes from the subject itself. For this reason, in one of his Reflexionen, Kant calls the concept of what happens, or the concept of an event, ‘a determination of sensibility’ [eine Bestimmung der Sinnlichkeit].22 There is a strong temptation to read this standard account as, at its base, an acceptance of Lockean empiricism, whereby the sensations themselves provide some kind of intelligible ‘raw material’ (Kant’s roher Stoff) from which conceptual knowledge is somehow abstracted and the concepts thereby gained are somehow re-imposed on the flow of experience. This view, however, fails to acknowledge the full complexities and radicality of Kant’s unique epistemological position. On the standard account, Kant would be a modified Lockean, an empiricist with a constructivist account of conceptual knowledge. However, it is, I maintain, precisely Kant’s intention to overcome Locke and Leibniz by introducing a new notion: intuitions as a separate ‘source of knowledge’ [Erkenntnisquelle].

2. Revisiting Kant’s Distinction Between Intuitions and Concepts Beginning with the Dissertation of 1770, where Kant struggles with the distinction, and thereafter throughout his critical period, Kant distinguishes sharply between two separate faculties—sensibility [Sinnlichkeit]

28  Dermot Moran and understanding [Verstand].23 As is well known, these two faculties provide two distinct ‘sources of knowledge’ (A260/B316). Kant later rightly regarded this distinction as the cornerstone of his critical philosophy, serving to distinguish it both from dogmatic Wolffian rationalism that (following Descartes) placed sense and thought on a continuum (according to which sensations are confused thoughts) and from ‘physiological’ Lockean empiricism, which made ideas into pale reflections of the more vivacious ‘lively’ impressions. In the Dissertation, Kant explicitly accuses Wolff of having misunderstood this distinction and hence misunderstanding the difference between noumena and phenomena (D 395). As it would turn out, this distinction would also mark out Kant from later German Idealism.24 Kant, however, never gives an account of how this twofold nature of the mind comes about, although at one stage he claims that the Transcendental Aesthetic has ‘shown’ that all our intuition is sensible (B146), when in fact he has simply proclaimed it. It is simply a contingent fact about human nature (e.g., B146). Kant always refers to the distinction as occurring ‘in us’ [bei uns], ‘at least in human beings’ [uns Menschen wenigstens, B33], ‘in humans’ [beim Menschen].25 Although merely human understanding can generate concepts, it can propose no object to itself; the objects about which it thinks must always be given in advance, and that wherein they are given is sensibility. Similarly, human understanding is constrained to think discursively (B93) rather than in some kind of intellectually intuitive fashion and then about something not of its own making. Without sensuous input, the engine of the mind would, to paraphrase Wittgenstein, simply be idling.

3. The Break With Rationalism and the Rejection of Sensations as ‘Confused Thoughts’ As we noted previously, Kant introduces the distinction between intuitions and concepts as a way of separating himself from the Leibnizian-­ Cartesian heritage where sensations were considered ‘confused thoughts’.26 As is well known, Descartes problematically placed sensation and imagination at the end of his list of ‘thinking’ activities in the Second Meditation.27 They featured at the end because, although they were mental acts, they require the presence of the body and are linked to the body in an essential manner (as later becomes clear in the Sixth Meditation). Sensing [sentire], Descartes explicitly says, is a ‘special mode of thinking’.28 Whereas purely mentally entertained thoughts (e.g., of a priori laws) could be clear and distinct, no thought emanating from the senses could be more than obscure, confused and limited. As Descartes regarded the mind as a single, indivisible unity, sensation and thought had in some sense to be identified as belonging to the one faculty, or, as Kant repeatedly says, there is only a ‘logical distinction’ (D 395) and not a real distinction between them. In the Regulae, Descartes defines

Kant on Intuition 29 intuitions in a manner which makes them sound like what Kant would later (D 397) call ‘intellectual intuition’ or ‘divine intuition’: By intuition I do not mean the fluctuating testimony of the senses, or the deceptive judgment of the imagination as it botches things together, but the conception of a clear and unclouded mind which is so easy and distinct that there can be no room for doubt about what we are understanding [. . .] intuition is the conception of a clear and attentive mind which proceeds solely from the light of reason [. . .] thus everyone can mentally intuit that he exists.29 Leibniz, by and large, follows Descartes’s account of sensation and intellection but places it under the general category of perception and representation (and distinguishes between perceptions and apperceptions). Leibniz proposes that every monad is distinguished from every other by its own inner perceptions.30 Perceptions, for Leibniz, are views of the world, albeit mostly confused.31 For Leibniz, a representation is clear if it can be used to recognize an object. But, furthermore, a clear representation can itself be confused or distinct, depending on the number of ‘marks’ or ‘characteristics’ [notae] the representation picks out in the object. Leibniz writes: Knowledge is clear when I have the means for recognizing the thing represented. Clear knowledge, again, is either confused or distinct. It is confused when I cannot enumerate one by one marks sufficient for differentiating one thing from others, even though the thing indeed does have such marks and requisites into which its notion can be resolved. [. . .] But a distinct notion is like the notion an assayer has of gold, that is, a notion connected with marks and tests sufficient to distinguish a thing from all other similar bodies.32 A distinct notion on this account is an insight into essence, similar to what Descartes meant when he said that to grasp a thing as thinking or as extended is to grasp it essentially. Again, for Leibniz, aside from being confused and distinct, distinct perceptions themselves can be ‘adequate’ (all the marks are known) or ‘inadequate’ (a sufficient number of marks are known). Clarity and confusion are thus the distinguishing features between thought and sensation, since all involve the apprehension of qualities of an object. Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, in his Metaphysica, on which Kant lectured through most of his teaching career, develops the view of perception and representation which he found in Leibniz. Baumgarten, in agreement with Leibniz, sees sensations and thoughts as species of representation. He summarizes the Cartesian-Leibnizian ‘sensations are confused thoughts’ view when he formally defines a confused representation

30  Dermot Moran as sensible: repraesentatio non distincta sensitiva vocatur.33 At the same time, Baumgarten recognizes that all changes in perception mirror changes in the world, either distinctly or confusedly. For him, representations can be either immediate or mediate. A sensation is a representation of my present state and is always of something singular (Metaphysica, §561). Internal sense represents the present state of my mind (Metaphysica, §535); external sense represents the present state of my body. The law of sensation, Baumgarten says, is that As the states of the world and the states of myself follow one another, so must the representation of their presences follow one another. (Metaphysica, §541) The relation between representation and the world seems to be direct. Kant will challenge this general picture. While accepting that sensation is of singulars and concepts as containing marks, he disagrees completely with Baumgarten’s assumption that the subjective order of my states should mirror the objective order of states of the world or the ‘objective’ states of myself. Baumgarten’s view that the subjective order mirrors the objective order is somewhat ambiguous in the Latin text. It is not clear whether he is claiming that the subjective order actually mirrors the objective or that it should mirror it (in order to gain truth). The former reading would make error impossible. It is undoubtedly true that Kant, even in his critical phase, retains some aspects of the standard Cartesian-Leibnizian picture. From one point of view, thoughts ‘materially speaking’ (materialiter, as Descartes says) are modes or modifications of the mind; they are temporal distortions of the thinking activity (B63). They are ‘states’ [Zustände, status] or ‘determinations’ [Bestimmungen, A362] of the mind,34 although we must be careful not to equate the Kantian unified consciousness under an ‘I think’ with a Cartesian substance. In a note dating from the 1750s, Kant writes: Representation is an inner determination of the mind, which refers to certain things that differ from it, that is, representations. It is a determination of the soul, which refers itself to other things. [Repraesentatio est determinatio mentis interna, quatenus ad res quasdam ab ipsa nempe repraesentationes diversas refertur. Ist diejenige Bestimmung der Seele, die sich auf andere Dinge beziehet.]35 Kant, however, rejects the Leibnizian-Wolffian account whereby all thoughts or ideas represent something; for Kant, there are non-referring thoughts. Kant distinguishes between every sensation having a cause and every sensation having an object.36 Furthermore, he departs from Leibniz by emphasizing that referring thoughts represent appearances only—not things as they are in themselves. Nevertheless, both agree that the real (as

Kant on Intuition 31 opposed to the logical) function of thoughts is to be representative. For Kant, furthermore, both understanding and the senses can be clear or confused. So there is some continuity between Kant and the Leibnizian tradition. In the Transcendental Aesthetic, Kant explicitly criticizes the Leibnizian-Wolffian account of sensibility, whereby our sensibility ‘is ­ nothing but a confused representation of things’ by which we do actually grasp things in themselves but only partially and confusedly: The concept of sensibility and of appearance would be falsified and our whole teaching in regard to them would be rendered empty and useless, if we were to accept the view that our entire sensibility is nothing but a confused representation of things [nichts als die verworrene Vorstellung der Dinge sei], containing only what belongs to them in themselves, but doing so under an aggregation of characters [Zusammenhäufung von Merkmalen] and partial representations that we do not consciously distinguish. (A44/B61–62) For Kant, Leibniz had treated sense and thought as having the same content and differing only in their logical form (A44/B62), whereas he thinks the two have different origins and different contents (A44/B62), repeating the view of the Dissertation. For Kant, we do not apprehend things in themselves in any way in our intuition; it is thus not the case that we apprehend them confusedly. As Kant defines his understanding of intuition here: The representation of a body in intuition [. . .] contains nothing that can belong to an object in itself, but merely the appearance of something, and the mode in which we are affected by that something; and this receptivity of our faculty of knowledge is termed sensibility. (A44/B61) Kant repeats this criticism of Leibniz in the Amphibolies (A270/B326): Leibniz mistook appearances as the appearances of knowable things in themselves (e.g., a rainbow signifies rain, B63), whereas, for Kant, the sensory form of intuiting provides a different array of qualities than does the intellectual contemplation of things. Kant famously remarks that ‘Leibniz intellectualized all appearances’ (A271/B327), whereas Lockean empiricists had sensualised concepts of the understanding. The Lockean tradition—as exemplified by Hume—tended to treat ideas as pale reflections of sensations or impressions. The mistake is to treat impressions and concepts as belonging to the one faculty on a continuum of confusedness or distinctness (vividness or liveliness in Hume’s language). In his refutation of his contemporary critic Johann August Eberhard,

32  Dermot Moran who accused Kant of being a Leibnizian dogmatist, Kant claims that the ­Leibniz-Wolffian concept of intuition attributes obscurity to the confusedness of the manifold of the representations in the intuition but still holds that it represents things in themselves, ‘the clear knowledge of which, however, must come from the understanding (which recognizes the simple parts in that intuition)’.37 Sensory intuition is not merely the confused version of a clear intellectual intuition. For Kant, the ground of intuition is the receptivity of the human mind, ‘whereby it receives representations in accordance with its subjective constitution, when affected by something (in sensation)’.38 It is noteworthy, however, that in discussing repraesentationes, the term intuition [intuitus] does not appear in either Leibniz or Baumgarten. Intuitus is a rare occurrence in Leibniz’s writings. The locus classicus is in the short 1684 article, Meditations on Knowledge, Truth and Ideas,39 where Leibniz distinguishes intuitive from ‘blind or symbolic’ knowledge. We have intuitive knowledge if the object is fully and clearly given in itself, which is the case only with simples. We have symbolic knowledge when we are blind to the object and have instead only a sign of the object. Most of our knowledge (not just mathematical knowledge) is symbolic (as Husserl will also assert). Intuitive knowledge is not possible when the object is very complex; indeed, we have intuitive knowledge only of ‘distinct primitive ideas’. Similarly, although much of Kant’s other terminology comes from Baumgarten,40 the term intuitus is used in Baumgarten’s Acroasis logica to mean a singular concept,41 whereas it appears only once in Baumgarten’s Metaphysica, and, as in Leibniz, it occurs in a discussion of the facultas characteristica, which is the faculty which understands things through pointing them out, exhibiting or designating them through their marks:42 If, in perceiving, the sign is joined to the signified, and the perception of the sign is greater than that of the signified, this is called a cognitio symbolica, if the representation of the signified is greater than that of the sign, it will be cognitio intuitiva (intuitus). For whichever form of the characteristic faculty the law is: the perception of one shall be the medium for the knowledge of the existence of the other.43 Later, Eberhard, attempting to argue that Kant had not gone beyond Leibniz, takes up this same distinction but misinterprets Leibniz’s intention. According to Eberhard’s version, we have intuitive knowledge of the sensible and symbolic knowledge of the supersensible (rather than no knowledge of it).44 Eberhard was arguing that Kant was right about the limitations on sensory knowledge but neglected that we also have intellectual knowledge of a priori truths. This Leibnizian distinction between the intuitive and the symbolic (retrieved in Husserl) survives in Kant’s earlier writings, although it has lost most of its force. Thus, in

Kant on Intuition 33 the 1770 Dissertation, Kant offers a distinction between intuitive and symbolic cognition that is halfway between the old Leibnizian and the new critical view: There is (for man) no intuition of what belongs to the understanding, but only a symbolic cognition, and thinking is only possible for us by means of universal concepts in the abstract, not by means of a singular concept in the concrete. For all our intuition is bound to a certain principle of form, and it is only under this form that anything can be apprehended by the mind immediately or as a singular, and not merely conceived discursively or by means of general concepts.45 The notion of symbolic knowledge is still thoroughly Leibnizian, but the notion of intuition is in the process of being rethought. Intuition is now linked in Kant with the idea of entertaining a singular concept, but Kant explicitly goes on to deny that humans can know in this way. Later, in the fully critical period, in Critique of Judgment, Kant rethinks the distinction and includes the symbolic under the intuitive: Notwithstanding the adoption of the word symbolic by modern logicians in a sense opposed to an intuitive mode of representation, it is a wrong use of the word and subversive of its true meaning: for the symbolic is only a mode of the intuitive. The intuitive mode of representation is, in fact, divisible into the schematic and the symbolic. Both are hypotyposes, i.e., presentations [exhibitiones], not mere marks. Marks are merely designations of concepts by the aid of accompanying sensible signs devoid of any intrinsic connection with the intuition of the object.46 Concepts, according to Kant in the Critique of Judgment, are exhibited by intuitions. Intuitions that fill in concepts in an intuitive way are called ‘schemata’ and are direct presentations of concepts, whereas symbols are indirect presentations of concepts. Our knowledge of God, for example, Kant says, is ‘symbolic’.47 Kant’s mature rethinking of the symbolic as a mode of the intuitive helps to highlight the nature of intuition in this account—intuitions are direct exhibitions or presentations (be it of objects or concepts). In this discussion, regrettably, I must forgo further discussion of the nature of schemata that, in a sense, are sensible instances of the concept. To summarize, Kant accepts from the Leibnizian inheritance that: • • •

intuitions and concepts are two species of representation; intuitions are ‘singular representations’; concepts are general and are grasped by means of ‘marks’.48

34  Dermot Moran Kant rejects: • •

the view that sensation is confused thought (i.e., sensation and thinking are on a continuum); the view that intuition is in direct contact with ‘things in themselves’.

Kant’s mature position is the view that: • •

sensibility and understanding are two distinct faculties; intuition grasps appearances only.

4.  What About Putative Intellectual Intuition? Another important feature of Kant’s departure from the Scholastic and rationalist tradition is his rejection of intellectual intuition, of the immediate apprehension of singular objects by intellect without the mediation of sensibility.49 Divine knowledge, which is a knowledge without aspects or profiles, does not passively undergo experiences and does not need to ‘receive’ or ‘grasp’ objects in an apprehension for Kant; rather, it creates the objects through its will. It has intellectual, creative intuition, intuitus originarius (B72). No such intuition is available to humans, who have only intuitus derivativus (B72), though Kant does not think the concept is intrinsically absurd. The importance of this point is to realize that, as a genus, intuitions are characterized not only by singularity but also by immediacy. In intellectual intuition, givenness, understood as givenness from without, and sensuality both drop out, but for humans, intuitions are intrinsically both ‘given’ and ‘sensibly filled’.50 Givenness ‘from without’ is understood as passivity. In other words, our intuition is dependent on the prior or contemporaneous existence of the object. Divine intuition, on the other hand, has, as it were, givenness from within, givenness produced by self-conscious willing, whereby the object is dependent for its existence on the act of intuition itself (D 397), and here intellectual intuition merges with the faculty of spontaneity. Kant writes: An understanding in which through self-consciousness all the manifold would eo ipso be given, would be intuitive; our understanding can only think, and for intuition must look to the senses. (B135) In fact, then, givenness and immediacy have to be understood as ultimately the same thing; that is, givenness is immediate for sensory intuition. For divine intuition, however, immediacy is achieved through spontaneity (which Kant defines as ‘the mind’s power of producing representations from itself’, A51/B75).

Kant on Intuition 35 Intuition, as it appears in the writings of Descartes, is immediate in contrast to the mediated, discursive nature of deductive reasoning. In the Regulae, Descartes allows for pure intuitions that contain nothing but intellectual, apodictic knowledge. Descartes connects intuition with the natural light, but Wolff’s follower Heinrich A. Meissner, in his Philosophisches Lexicon (1737), records that Wolff freed the notion of intuition from the natural light of reason and retained it for the notion of an immediate judgement.51 Immediacy is a central feature of the Cartesian concept of intuition, and here Kant follows Descartes. Kant, however, links specifically human intuition to sensibility, whereas, for Descartes, as we have seen, thinking need have no sensory or imagistic component. Descartes distinguished between thinking and sensory imaging: we can think about a chiliagon though we cannot imagine one, and we can have a positive idea or concept of infinity which transcends all sensory experience. Eberhard, in his criticism of Kant as a confused and incomplete Leibnizian, mentions these examples to refute Kant’s view that mathematics requires sensory intuition. Kant argues that all geometrical demonstrations, for example, drawing a 96-sided figure inside a circle, require intuition, and he denies Eberhard’s gradation between the sensible and the supersensible.52 In rejecting this whole rationalist way of thinking about sensation, Kant is, in fact, to some extent reviving the Aristotelian-Scholastic formulations of the notion of intuition, acknowledging that sense provides immediate contact with singulars.53 Aristotle had stated that the particular can only be grasped by sense (Posterior Analytics I, 18, 81b7) and that each sense has its own proper object (the ‘proper sensibles’). Sensible objects are different from intellectual objects, as sensory forms are different from intellectual forms. Furthermore, following the Scholastics, Kant acknowledges that there must already be some kind of synthesis or apprehension at the level of sense [simplex apprehensio]. Here his influences are Wolff and Tetens, but the tradition is one more associated with Scotist rather than Thomist scholasticism, Wolff being an avid reader of Suarez.54 The difference between Thomism and Scotism lies largely in the possibility of the reception of forms of individuals, the ability to understand and conceive haecceitas.55 Duns Scotus speaks of a cognitio intuitiva whereby an object is immediately given, independently of its relation to other things: cognitio autem intuitiva est objecti ut objectum est praesens in existentia actuali.56 Kant could have given exactly the same definition, except that for Scotus, the object is given sicut et in se, whereas for Kant, it is given only as appearance.57 For Scotus, intuitive cognition is essentially a part of intellectual cognition, and Richard A. Smyth has interpreted Kant as making the same claim: Intuitive cognitions are intellectual representations or representations by the understanding (of which sensibility and understanding are parts) and these representations are representations of an object that are based on the presence of this object here and now.58

36  Dermot Moran While this goes too far in bringing intuition under the understanding, the point is well taken that for Kant, knowledge requires the understanding operating on intuition, and talk of intuitions as independent sensations is misleading in the extreme.

5. Intuition in the Inaugural Dissertation: On the Cusp of Critique Perhaps paralleling the rarity of usage of the term intuitus in the ­Leibnizian-Baumgartenian school, the term intuitus appears rarely in Kant’s early writings and emerges first in a significant way in the 1770 Dissertation.59 When it is first introduced, it more or less coincides with the articulation of the sensible limitation on human understanding. In line with Baumgarten, in the Dissertation (397), Kant calls intuition a ‘singular concept’, as distinct from a ‘universal’ or ‘general’ concept. An intuition, on this account, somewhat confusingly, is a special kind of concept, one that contains its objects within it as opposed to under it, a view that is repeated in the Aesthetic. We represent a concept to ourselves by means of an intuition in the concrete (D 387). When all the composition of the understanding is removed, what is left is simple (D 387) and is arrived at by analysis, whereas the whole is arrived at by synthesis. The nature of intuition is here understood in terms of the part/whole relation. Kant mentions the laws of intuitive cognition. The matter supplied consists of simples, whereas space and time are the forms of this world. According to the Dissertation, the intuition of space and time is such that we can only tell different parts of time or space apart by intuition and not by any characteristic marks they might present to the understanding.60 Thus, the left and right hands can be identical in terms of the space they occupy and the relations between the parts, but that they are distinct and incongruent can only be reached by intuition. Kant takes this as proof of the purity of our intuition of space. He repeats this argument in the Prolegomena (§13), but, curiously, this argument is left out of the Critique. This is unfortunate because the incongruent counterparts example expresses something irreducible about intuition—its irreducibility to a conceptual analysis in a standard conceptual account. Akin to the idea of space, the concept of time, Kant concludes in 1770, is ‘primitive and originary [primitivus et originarius]’.61 The Dissertation and the later Transcendental Aesthetic of the Critique of Pure Reason both carry an unresolved tension regarding the nature of intuition. One of the classic Scottish commentators, Edward Caird, makes a telling point when he explains the difference of emphasis between the accounts of intuition as a feature of Kant’s lecturing style, according to which he would introduce general principles that are subsequently modified.62 As Caird says, the story in the Aesthetic is necessary in order to make intelligible the discussion in the Analytic.63 Thus, in the Aesthetic, Kant makes no mention of the role of imagination and

Kant on Intuition 37 conceptuality in intuition, although these emerge as features in the Analytic. Caird writes: In short, he [Kant] seems in the Aesthetic only to revive the view of the Dissertation, according to which all that is necessary to produce experience is that the understanding in its formal use should generalize the ideas of perception. Sensibility is presented as a receptivity, not merely of impressions and sensations but of perceptions, as if perceptions could be received without any activity of the consciousness that receives them. And from these perceptions we are supposed to be able to read off at once the characters of individual objects presented in them, provided we are careful not to make any assertions which go beyond these individual objects.64 This is taken to be a claim that there can be no observation statements that are not already theory laden.65 Kant, however, does say that we can in fact have intuitions without concepts: ‘appearances can certainly be given in intuition independently of the functions of the understanding’ (A90/B122), but such appearances ‘would be for us as good as nothing’ (A111). Similarly, at B145, he claims that ‘the manifold to be intuited must be given prior to the synthesis of the understanding, and independently of it’. In order to have meaningful experiences, we have to have, in true Kantian mode, conceptuality or rules for ordering and unifying representations under higher representations, but there is a sense in which the sensory given remains entirely independent and occurs at the local corporeal level. The Transcendental Aesthetic talks as if the sensory domain constituted a separate epistemological domain and certainly endorses the notion that there are pure intuitions that are not conceptual. It is perhaps best to see the Aesthetic as revealing only one half of the story to be told, introducing elements that must later be gone over and taken up to get their place in the whole story. Kant discovers or postulates the domains of sensation, impression and their formal organisation in intuitions. They are arrived at by a transcendental argument, according to Wilfrid Sellars; they are theoretical constructs.66 Intuitions with no conceptual overlay do not yield knowing, erkennen, recognition or objective reference but only subjective modifications of the sensory faculty that can go on just because we are embodied living sensitive beings.

6.  Intuition in the Critical Period Following the Dissertation and throughout the critical period, the concept of intuition moves to an anchoring role in the whole system. The concept of intuition is significantly rethought to a certain extent in the Critique of Judgment (1790); nevertheless, it continues to appear in a r­ecognizable form in the late lectures on Logic (so-called Jäsche Logic, 1800)67 and in the Anthropology from the Pragmatic Point of View (where Kant discusses

38  Dermot Moran the relation between the five senses and intuition), and Kant continues to invoke the distinction between intuition and concepts as a given fact of human Erkenntnis. The starting point for Kant’s mature analysis continues to be that both intuitions and concepts are species of representation. Intuitions and concepts are two ways in which the mind represents things to itself. In the Dissertation, the dualism of sense and intellect led to a twoworld theory,68 a world of phenomena and a world of noumena. By the time of the Critique, this has disappeared. Now there is only one world to cognise, and this cognition requires both intuition and conception: Intuition and concepts constitute, therefore, the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts can yield knowledge. (A50/B74) Intuitions without concepts are blind, or non-referring;69 concepts without intuitions are empty. Hegel and others had read this as an admission of the essentially inescapable belonging together of sensibility and understanding, such that Kant’s positing of them as two separate sources of knowledge is fundamentally mistaken.70 Kant, however, believes the decision to keep them apart answers many of the epistemological problems of earlier philosophy, both rationalist and empiricist. Kant’s examples of intuitions are often misleading. Sometimes he seems to be referring to the matter of intuition, namely sensation, sometimes to the form, sometimes to examples that help to illuminate a concept and sometimes to empirical objects. It is often thought that intuitions consist of sensations, that is, of some cluster of sense data, whereas, in the ­Critique, Kant refers to the intuition of a house, by which he clearly means a set of sensory experiences organized such that an object is given. Of course, these alternatives are not incompatible, but Kant’s language is loose. Elsewhere, Kant’s Logic distinguishes between a savage who sees a house and does not know what it is and a person who does know what a house is.71 Both have the same intuition; indeed, ‘the same object’ is before both, but the house-knower also has the concept of house. He has ‘intuition and concept at the same time’ (AA 9:33). Kant returns to this example several times. Kant’s Wiener Logic (AA 24:905) offers a different but related example of the person (Adam?) who saw the first tree, without being able to categorize it. Here intuition stands for the whole, unified, discriminated, sensory given. Kant says the savage has ‘mere intuition’, and the example is used to explain the distinction between matter and form. It is not clear from the passage whether Kant thinks the savage is having an intentional representation of something or just a set of non-referring representations. The language is deeply ambiguous. But it is clear he thinks the savage sees something. The same section of the

Kant on Intuition 39 Logic gives as an example of intuition: ‘we see a cottage in the distance’. Although we see it as having windows and other features, ‘we are not conscious of this presentation of the manifold of the parts, and our presentation of the said object is therefore an indistinct presentation’.72 This is very close to a passage in the sensualist Étienne Bonnot de Condillac at the beginning of his Logic.73 It is clear that intuitions are our perceptions of objects in the world. Intuitions, like concepts, can be clear or confused, distinct or indistinct. As we have seen, at various times in the Dissertation, in the Logic lectures and elsewhere, Kant states that intuitions are individual concepts or concepts of individuals, but it is better to say that they are representations of individuals.74 An intuition is an immediate, singular representation. In the Transcendental Aesthetic, Kant denies that space and time are ‘empirical’ (B38) or ‘discursive or general’ (B39) concepts. Rather, they are pure intuitions (A24/B39). However, both in the Dissertation and the Transcendental Aesthetic, he also refers to the ‘concept of space’ and even offers a metaphysical exposition of the concept of space (B38). Indeed, he even inserts the word ‘concept’ into the phrase ‘the exposition of space’ in the A-edition. So space and time are not just pure intuitions but also concepts. Now if an intuition is only a singular concept, then we need worry no further about this slippage—an intuition just is a concept. As we shall see, I do not believe that singularity is the sole defining characteristic of an intuition, although Kant does indeed argue that space and time are intuitions by arguing that they are singular entities whose totalities come before the parts. I consider immediacy also to be central to the notion of an intuition. I suggest that we can explain the fluctuation in Kant’s language here (calling space and time both intuitions and concepts) as, in a way, invoking the notion of ‘concept’ that will appear later in the Analytic. Space and time are given to us as pure intuitions; that is, there is an irreducible experience of their unity and givenness. In order to discuss them, we must already have conceptualized them, but the concept of an intuition is that it is an intuition. Let us briefly review the main terms characterizing the difference between intuitions and concepts:

Intuitions

Concepts

singular blind single concrete given immediate relation to object receptivity of impressions affection ––

universal/general Empty Unitary Abstract constructed/discursive mediate spontaneity of thought function rule bound

40  Dermot Moran Intuitions stand in immediate relation to objects (A68/B93). What objects are involved? How is immediacy to be understood here? Immediacy has been understood as the intuition pointing to an object directly and not by means of ‘marks’;75 to intuit is to represent a ‘this’, in Aristotelian terms. This notion of pure ‘immediacy’ was subjected to intense critique by Fichte and Hegel, for whom all immediacy resolves into mediacy. According to Sellars, the notion of immediacy is itself ambiguous: it could refer to the causal impact of impressions on our sensibility or to the fact that the intuition is not mediated though concepts.76 For Sellars, immediacy can be construed on the model of the demonstrative ‘this’.77 Sellars gives this a special interpretation. In his account, an intuition (at least as synthesized by the productive imagination) is a representation of this-such, ‘this cube’78 (where ‘cube’ is not a general term at all), before we can have an explicit judgement in the explicitly propositional form: ‘this is a cube’ (what Kant calls a judgement of experience). In the intuition, we represent this as a cube.79 This is in line with Kant’s distinction between judgements of experience and judgements of perception in the Prolegomena (§17). A judgement of perception (‘the room is warm, sugar sweet and wormwood bitter’) is merely ‘subjectively valid’,80 expressing a relation between two sensations in a subject and then only at present. A judgement of experience is objective and has necessary universality. The judgement of experience is close to the notion of the experiencing of a sensuous intuition. The experience this-such does not, at this level, involve the occurrence of cube as a general concept. As Sellars says, Kant, like Aristotle, is requiring this-such to be limited in its content to what is perceptible (the ‘proper sensibles’).81 Sellars sees the sensory manifold not as a part of the concept but as a non-conceptual element which constrains the concept ‘from without’.82 Yet it is Hegel who, in his critique of Kant, argues that the notion of a content outside thought is itself the product of thought. Kantian intuitions, then, have a content that is produced from within. Hegel’s aim is to reunite receptivity and spontaneity. For Sellars, an intuition contains ‘non-spatial complexes of unextended and uncoloured impressions’ and ‘intuitive (but conceptual) representations of extended structures located in space’.83 Why must intuitions always involve the givenness of the object? Even late in the Critique of Judgment (§57, Remark 1), Kant suggests that we cannot know if an object is perceivable unless it is actually perceived in sensory intuition. We can contemplate or theorize a possible object, but we cannot know a priori if it is a possible object of perception. Concepts of the understanding can only be given in intuitions; for example, the concept of cause is actually intuited in the impact of bodies. The answer is that, for us, intuitions can never be other than sensible; they contain ‘only the mode in which we are affected by objects’ (B75). For humans, givenness is in the form of passive receptivity. The whole contact with the real, with

Kant on Intuition 41 existence, comes from this receptivity, as Kant puts it in the Critique of Pure Reason: For that the concept precedes the perception signifies the concept’s mere possibility; the perception which supplies the content to the concept is the sole mark of its actuality. (A225/B273) It is the task of understanding, however, to structure this given into the experience of objects. The only time when an intuition does not have an object before it is when we are experiencing the pure form of intuition (aside from the instances when our understanding can run in advance of perceptions through the use of analogies, e.g., from iron filings to magnetic matter, B273): Therefore in one way only can my intuition anticipate the actuality of the object, and be a cognition a priori, namely: if my intuition contains nothing but the form of sensibility, antedating in the subject all the actual impressions through which I am affected by objects. (Prolegomena, §9) In mathematical knowledge, the understanding operates on purely a priori intuitions. But if there are pure intuitions, that is, intuitions containing no empirical element, what is the relation between intuition and its matter, that is, sensation?

7.  Sensation, Sensibility and the Manifold Kant states that sensation may be called the ‘material’ of sensible knowledge.84 On the other hand, receptivity in general is characterized by sensibility: ‘the receptivity of our mind, its power of receiving representations in so far as it is in any wise affected, is to be entitled sensibility’.85 Similarly, in the Dissertation, Kant defines sensibility as follows: Sensibility [Sensualitas] is the receptivity of a subject in virtue of which it is possible for the subject’s own representative state to be affected in a definite way by the presence of some object. (D 392) Sellars claims Kant’s notion of receptivity is not transparent and the connection between intuition and receptivity is more complex than it first appears, because there are some intuitions that seem to be processed by the understanding.86 This should perhaps be understood phenomenologically. We experience the world (and the flow of temporality) as a whole, as

42  Dermot Moran given to us in the manner that we are passive receivers. We have no sense that we control the flow of time or the expanse of space or the appearances that invade the senses. However, this in no sense implies that we are in fact merely passive receivers. Sensibility is the general characterization of our experience as having the raw feel of receptivity, for example, I open my eyes and am invaded by the world. But surely Kant wants to say more. He wants to acknowledge a bedrock connection between our sensory apparatus and something in the world, the givenness of the given. There is an overlap between the definitions of sensibility and the definition of sensation in the first Critique: The effect of an object [Die Wirkung eines Gegenstandes] upon the faculty of representation [die Vorstellungsfähigkeit], so far as we are affected by it, is sensation. (A19/B34) Sensibility is the capacity to be affected; sensation is also the ‘effect’ of the object on that faculty. Elsewhere, Kant gives slightly a different definition of sensation, one that connects sensation with the subjective state of the perceiver rather than with the object: A perception [Perception] which relates solely to the subject as the modification of its state [als die Modification seines Bestandes] is sensation [sensatio]. (A320/B376–377) According to some of the Reflexionen, Kant took sensations to be merely subjective87 and to be private states that cannot be compared with those of another subject: Since sensation cannot be communicated (either through understanding or through participation) [. . .] sensation does not allow of any touchstone; concerning sensation everyone is right before himself.88 And, again: ‘concerning colour everyone has his own type of sensation’ (Reflexion 6355, AA 18:681). Kant says similar things in the A-­Deduction of the Critique of Pure Reason: ‘what is first given to us is appearance [Erscheinung]. When combined with consciousness it is a perception [Wahrnehmung]’ (A119–120), and ‘appearances, as such, cannot exist outside us—they exist only in our sensibility’ (A127). Walsh believes that such statements are more common in the A- than in the B-edition, and that Kant is more of a Lockean in the earlier edition but that he corrects this tendency in the second edition. As a result of statements like these, Kant is often assumed to have held a kind of sensationalism or

Kant on Intuition 43 phenomenalism.89 Kant’s examples of sensations, for example, the taste of wine, colour, sound, warmth, pain, seem to confirm their phenomenal character.90 Sensation, moreover, is that element in the appearance that can never be known a priori (A167) and hence cannot be anticipated (in the Epicurean sense of prolepsis, A167). Walsh has suggested that a Kantian sensible intuition is only ‘proleptically’ the awareness of a p ­ articular—that is, a sensation in combination with a concept in a judgement enables us to experience particular objects.91 What we can understand are the relations between sensations rather than the sensations themselves. For Kant, moreover, the apprehensions of sensations do not take up any time; they are instantaneous. Sensations similarly are not extended or located in space; they have ‘no extensive magnitude’ (A167/B209). They are not, then, to be identified with the Lockean or Humean atomistic impressions. Sensations are not the atoms of experience in Kant. Rather, sensations are the matter and not the object of our experience. Edmund Husserl, in the Logical Investigations, holds exactly the same view, and derives it from Kant: I see a thing, e.g., this box, but I do not see my sensations. I always see one and the same box, however it may be turned and tilted. I have always the same ‘content of consciousness’—if I care to call the perceived object a content of consciousness. But each turn yields a new ‘content of consciousness’, if I call experienced contents ‘contents of consciousness’, in a much more appropriate use of words. Very different contents are therefore experienced, though the same object is perceived. The experienced content, generally speaking, is not the perceived object.92 And again: Sensations, and the acts ‘interpreting’ them or apperceiving them, are alike experienced, but they do not appear as objects: they are not seen, heard or perceived by any sense. Objects on the other hand, appear and are perceived, but they are not experienced.93 For Kant, ‘sensation’ is a theoretical item that we think about when thinking of the object of our sensing. Taken on its own, which is taking it purely hypothetically, it would be merely a modification of the subject and would represent nothing.94 However, Kant appears to deny that sensation is in itself an experience of an object. At A166/B208, he states that ‘sensation is not in itself an objective representation [keine objektive Vorstellung]’. And at A190/B235, he distinguishes between the appearance as itself an object and the object which is referred to [bezeichnet] by the representation. Walsh has made a strong argument for not considering

44  Dermot Moran sensible intuition to be anything like the empiricist’s experience of sensory particulars, that is, nothing like knowledge by acquaintance: sensation is not strictly a form of awareness, since it has no true objects, but a mode of experience sui generis, without it experience of particulars would be impossible, though it is false to describe it as presenting particulars for description. Sensory content—‘intuitions’, as Kant calls them—are not objects of any sort, public or private.95 When intuitions are brought under concepts, they facilitate the concept in referring to particulars, but they do not in themselves have objects.96 Sensation, for Kant, at the very minimum, requires two elements: (a) immediate presence of the object (through its effects), (b) passive change in state of the subject. Kant insists on the necessity of the presence of something or other in sensation. Intuition is ‘the immediate relation of cognition to its object’ (A19/B33). The emphasis on the presence of the object is of course meant to distinguish sensation from imagination. Kant is never troubled by the problem of how we know we are not dreaming, of whether we can distinguish sensory intuitions from imaginary experiences of the same intensity and apparent representationality. This is the gist of the famous footnote added to the B-Preface to the first Critique: For outer sense is already in itself a relation of intuition to something actual outside me, and the reality of outer sense, in its distinction from imagination, rests simply on that which is here found to take place, namely, its being inseparably bound up with inner experience, as the condition of its possibility. (B xl) We can distinguish imaginary experiences from real ones only by paying attention to the rules by which they are formed and assuming a backdrop of real experiences. But we do have a degree of intensity of the sensation that we then ascribe to the object. The quality of a sensation is always merely empirical (A175/B217) and wholly subjective: Sensation (here external) also agrees in expressing a merely subjective side of our representations of external things, but one which is properly their matter (through which we are given something with real existence), just as space is the mere a priori form of the possibility of their intuition; and so sensation is, nonetheless, also employed in the cognition of external objects.97 Sensation is employed in the cognition of external objects—not that sensation is itself the cognition of external objects. Perhaps sensation is the

Kant on Intuition 45 condition for the cognition of objects but does not in fact play a constitutive role in that cognition. Finally, Kant says that sensation is in us what corresponds to ‘the real’. Kant uses a number of terms—Dasein, Sein, Realität, das Reale—to characterize this element in his analysis of the cognitive process. The ‘real’ (a term derived from the Latin res, meaning ‘thing’ and corresponding to the genuinely possible or the conceptual essence of something) or sensation in general does have intensity. This property of possessing a degree can be known a priori. Sensation is always the consciousness that the subject is affected to a certain degree. Real objects, for Kant, are largely dynamic pieces of extension, fields of force, but they differ from Descartes’s objects in that they are of varying degrees of density and hence have intensive magnitude as well as extensive magnitude; moreover, they consist entirely of relations, and we know them because they have forces that they exert on us. Kant is a modified Cartesian in his concept of the physical object— it is largely a piece of extension, not resolvable into atoms but produced by a play of forces of attraction and repulsion.98 Nevertheless, it is the concept filled out by intuition that for us encounters this reality. Sensations, furthermore, are never isolated but are always given to us in a manifold, a variety, a diversity, something multifarious. What is a manifold? In Kant’s writings, mannigfaltig is used both as an adjective and a noun. According to Gerhard Wahrig’s Deutscher Wörterbuch, the German adjective ‘mannigfaltig’ most often qualifies nouns such as Erlebnisse, Erfahrungen, Eindrücke.99 Kant also uses it as a noun: ‘the manifold of sensation’ [das Mannigfaltige der Empfindung]. But does it mean a chaotic buzzing, blooming confusion or an ordered variety? Condillac has a passage in which he describes opening the windows onto a scene and taking in everything in one view, and yet, unless one goes through the landscape detail by detail, one could not give an account of what one has just seen.100 Similarly, Leibniz distinguishes between the ‘little perception’ and the overall apprehension. The manifold of intuition must be gone through successively and ordered. This is done by the synthesis of apprehension or the figurative synthesis. Intuition presents us with a manifold but not with the representation of a manifold as a manifold. On many occasions in the Critique, Kant tells us that, without objectifying concepts or categories, all we would have is the blind play of representations, a rhapsody of perceptions, a mere figment in the brain, ‘nothing for us’ (A102, A112, B195, B196). Unfortunately even here, the language of sensation is crossing over into the language of perception; the language of modifications of inner states is mingled with the language of being affected directly by outside objects. In the Anthropology, Kant writes that the senses themselves do not confuse: We cannot say of a person who grasps, but has not yet ordered, a given manifold, that he confuses it. Perceptions of the senses can only

46  Dermot Moran be called inner phenomena. Only the understanding, which joins perceptions and combines them under a rule of thought, by introducing order into the manifold, establishes them as empirical cognition, that is, experience.101 Kant fully accepted the view expressed in the Scholastics (and also by Descartes and Baumgarten) that the senses do not deceive but only the understanding, when it judges, for instance, the tower in the distance to be round. Such a person mistakes appearance for experience.102 For Kant, a pure ‘rhapsody’ of sensations is a theoretical postulate of what would be the case, were it not for the synthesizing powers of the understanding working through the application of the imagination to our sensory given.

8.  More on Singularity and Immediacy There are problems relating the notions of singularity, immediacy and non-discursivity. Some philosophers have challenged either the immediacy condition or the particularity or singularity condition as a way of trying to make sense of Kant’s doctrine. The late Finnish philosopher Jaakko Hintikka states boldly: ‘Intuitivity means simply individuality’103 and argues that there is no logical connection between intuitivity and sensibility; this is merely a contingent feature of human experience. Furthermore, non-empirical intuitions must be understood to be singulars rather than sensibles.104 For Hintikka, an intuition is equivalent to a singular term.105 It is certainly true that, in his lectures, Kant invokes the notion of singular concept [conceptus singularis], for example, Socrates, Caesar and the moon, all examples taken from his Logic.106 In the Dissertation of 1770, as later, in the 1800 Jäsche Logic, intuition is a representatio or conceptus singularis, in contrast with concepts which are general and known through common characteristics [representatio per notas communas]: All cognitions, that is all representations consciously referred to an object, are either intuitions or concepts. Intuition is a singular representation (repraesentatio singularis), the concept is a general (repraesentatio per notas communes) or reflective representation (repraesentatio discursiva). (Logic, §1) At A320/B376, Kant writes that an intuition ‘relates immediately to its object and is single’ [bezieht sich unmittelbar auf den Gegenstand und ist einzeln]. Singularity is clearly a defining characteristic of Kantian intuition in general.107 Hintikka has been accused of misunderstanding the immediacy criterion by Charles Parsons, among others.108 For Parsons, intuitions are

Kant on Intuition 47 not to be understood as equivalent to singular terms in logic. There are universal concepts which can be applied singularly, for example, definite descriptions (Kant says ‘the black man’ is such a concept).109 As Parsons points out, Kant does refer to a concept being used in a singular way in the lectures on logic, for example, ‘this house is being cleaned in such and such a way’110 or ‘this world is the best’.111 In classical logic, the singular judgement [judicium singulare] was treated as not different from the universal judgement [judicia communia, A71/B96] in form, though it does differ in quantity. For Kant, it is obvious that all concepts are general, and it is mistaken to divide them into singular, particular and general; only their use makes them such. A concept is singular only in a specific employment or application. Hintikka has replied to Parsons that he never denies that immediacy belongs to the Kantian notion of intuition, but immediacy is just ‘a corollary of the singularity condition’.112 Hintikka explains immediacy by contrast with concepts. In concepts, the ‘marks’ or characteristics intervene between the concepts and their objects, whereas in singular intuitions, there is no intervening of marks. Parsons has a stronger concept of immediacy whereby it yields immediate or direct knowledge of objects, and Parsons invokes the case of intuitions such as those of incongruous counterparts. Hintikka objects that this understanding would make the concept of a priori intuition problematic, that is, intuitions where the object is by no means present to mind. Hintikka quotes the Prolegomena (§9), where Kant writes that pure intuition can, as it were, ‘anticipate the actuality of the object’, and refers to similar passages in the Aesthetic, where Kant says we can have intuitions without the presence of objects (B40–41). For Hintikka, it is not ‘the immediacy of intuitions that enables them to yield knowledge, but their ideality’.113 In stressing singularity above immediacy, Hintikka seems to be ignoring the irreducible nature of the given in intuition.114 Parsons correctly identifies that incongruent counterparts are a given in intuition; that is, they cannot be conceptualized and yet they are present. Hintikka takes this to prove that they are particulars, confirming his view that intuition is pre-eminently a singular representation. In a recent paper, Parsons gives the example of the visualizing of sets or groups, for example, ‘IIII’ as opposed to ‘III I’ or ‘II’. There is no rule for determining conceptually how close the fourth stroke has to be to count as a set of four and not a three and a one. Yet we do actually immediately read this off from our experience. This illustrates that irreducible givenness is something more than singularity per se. These discussions show the need for a much deeper phenomenological exploration of the nature of intuitive givenness, one which directs discussion toward Husserl, who navigated these very issues in a subtle manner which he thought went beyond Kant (unfortunately outside the scope of this paper).

48  Dermot Moran Kant distinguishes between the singularity of intuitions and the multiple instantiability of concepts (B376–377). Similarly, Kant alternates in the Dissertation and in the Aesthetic between talking of intuitions of space and time and concepts of space and time. This can be adequately explained: Kant’s talk of intuitions as singular concepts can be seen as slipshod usage—a survival of pre-Critical thought. The notion of an intuition is indeed strongly connected with singularity, as Hintikka noted, but there is more to an intuition, and, as we have seen, Parsons argues that singularity is broader than immediacy.115 Sometimes Kant seems to treat these as mutually implicating. But something could be cognised as an individual and yet not intuited; indeed, the ideas of God are singular but at the same time purely ideal or rational and not sensible.116 Perhaps Kant recanted on this, because in the Opus Postumum, he calls the ideas of God, soul and so on intuitions and not concepts: ‘Ideas are not concepts, but on the contrary, pure intuitions, for there is only one such object’.117 Alternatively, something’s being given is quite different from its being singular. Immediacy relates to the epistemological concept of givenness, whereas singularity is a logical notion. Immediacy might be something like Russell’s knowledge by acquaintance. There is still tension between the view that intuition is of singulars and the view that it provides a sensory manifold. One way to understand singularity is to relate it to Kant’s discussion of parts and wholes.118 For universal concepts, the parts are under the whole; for intuitions, the parts are within the whole. This can be difficult to understand, and Kant has only explicated with regard to a specific aspect of intuition—the forms of intuition, space and time. A concept has an extension; it ranges over an infinite number of possible individual objects, but a concept is also made up of a potentially infinite number of partial concepts, and there are no infimae species. In the Dissertatio, Kant maintains there can be no intuition of the infinitely small or of the very large. What is given in intuition is always a set of relations (B66–67). Some of these relations (e.g., right to left, above and below) cannot be made intelligible in any concept (Prolegomena, §13). Sensations are immediate. Intuitions immediately relate objects (both Kant and Descartes agree), and in the Refutation of Idealism, Kant claims that ‘outer experience is really immediate’ (B276). How are we to understand immediacy? According to Parsons, immediacy means at the very least that an intuition ‘does not refer to an object by means of marks’.119 As we saw earlier, Sellars sees it as having a number of possible meanings, including a causal meaning or being unmediated by conceptual marks or characteristics. Is this immediate relation the causal impacting of ‘impressions’ on our sensibility? According to Kant, what is immediately given in intuition is a singular representation that is sensible (made up of sensations). These sensations are in turn the result, at least on one plausible reading of Kant, of the impact of things in themselves

Kant on Intuition 49 on our receptivity. What is immediately given, then, is a set of sensations; we have a passive experience of undergoing a manifold of sensations. But how, then, is sensibility in immediate relation with objectivity at all? Surely we are now only in immediate relation with our own experiences, and who would deny that? Aren’t we in immediate relation with our own conscious experiences—including our mental acts? Receptivity starts to merge with spontaneity. Now if what is immediately given is our own inner sensations, passively received, how can Kant’s refutation of idealism work at all? Because the refutation of idealism argues that our flow of inner modifications requires an immediate contact with something permanent, namely the object. According to Kant, idealism ‘assumed that the only immediate experience is inner experience’ (B276), and the challenge of idealism was that the causes of these representations might be in us. Kant’s answer is that we must presuppose outer experience, which is immediate; indeed, he adds in a note that the ‘immediate consciousness of the existence of outer things’ is proved, not presupposed (B277 n.) Inner experience is possible only through the mediation of outer experience, which itself must be immediate. But with what is outer experience immediately related? With spatiotemporal material objects? With properties of objects? With the effects of those objects on the senses? Furthermore, if with objects, what are the objects in question here? Are they spatio-temporal appearances or things in themselves? Do all sensations have objects? In one sense, everything apprehended in whatever way is called an object by Kant in the Second Analogy: ‘everything, every representation even, in so far as we are conscious of it, may be entitled object’ (A189/B234). Kant distinguishes between the representation taken as an object itself and that object which it represents [bezeichnet, A190/B235]. Sensations only actually refer to objects if we bring in conceptualization and the acts of synthesis. This is the famous problem of ‘double affection’ in Kant. The things in themselves act on us and so do the empirical objects. Clearly we cannot resolve this issue, only show how the very notion of immediacy is implicated in this problematic.

9. Another Way of Slicing Intuitions: Form and Matter (Content) Kant distinguishes between the form and matter of intuition in the Aesthetic and relies on this distinction in the Axioms of Intuition and the Anticipations of Perception.120 As early as the Dissertation, Kant argues that the form of sensation is supplied by the subject: for Kant, objects do not strike the senses in virtue of their form or specificity, going directly against the Scholastic inheritance whereby it is specifically through the form that something acts on the senses. For the Scholastic tradition, it is

50  Dermot Moran the form and not the matter that is transmitted from object to subject. Kant reverses this in one bold and unexplained move (as early as the Dissertation). But Kant’s argument that space and time belong to the form of intuition is meant to prove that space and time are ‘subjective’ or, better, objectifying structures based in the subject. His argument for the claim that space and time are not, in the first instance, concepts is meant to show they are intuitions. They are not concepts because they are singular: the whole comes before the parts and the parts do not make up the whole. Space is a totum, not a compositum. Space and time are original totalities; they are the one case where human knowledge is like the divine—creative of and grounding its object rather than grounded by it; hence Kant’s use of the term intuitus originarius for time in Dissertation. In the Transcendental Aesthetic (A20–21/B35), we arrive at the form of intuition by a mental act of stripping away (abstraction). Take any empirical intuition and abstract all that belongs to the intellectual consideration of it (substance, force, divisibility) and also everything that belongs to the sensory experience (impenetrability, hardness, colour), and we are left with something, namely extension and figure, the pure form of the intuition—spatial locatedness, the mere form of sensibility. This is presented as a thought experiment, as something we can actually psychologically perform. Patricia Kitcher calls it ‘the method of isolation’.121 At B132, Kant says: ‘that representation which can be given prior to all thought is entitled intuition’. This seems to imply that we can have a pure intuition without either sensations or categorial concepts and that it is still a ‘presentation’ [Vorstellung, repraesentatio], that is, that something is being presented. Furthermore, what is grasped in the act of abstraction is not just a form of intuition but is itself a pure a priori intuition (A20/B34). As we have already seen, sensation is the matter of intuition; space and time are the forms of intuition. Kant defines form as That which so determines the manifold of appearance that it allows of being ordered in certain relations, I term the form of appearance. (A20/B34) But how can space be the form of outer intuition? According to Kant’s customary account, what we actually receive are impressions that produce sensations in us. We have seen that the impressions are not spatial, nor can the intuiting acts be spatial. So how can the form of intuition be spatial at all? Sellars thinks the notion is incoherent.122

10.  Pure and Empirical Intuition But Kant also makes a distinction between pure and empirical intuition. We have to be careful in distinguishing between an intuition in which

Kant on Intuition 51 no conceptual element is present and an intuition in which no sensory (and hence a posteriori) element is present. It is the latter that Kant calls pure intuition. A pure intuition according to his usual definition of ‘pure’ contains no admixture of the empirical; it is purely possible a priori: ‘Pure intuition, therefore, contains only the form under which something is intuited’ (A51/B75). As we saw earlier, in the Dissertation, Kant characterizes this pure intuition as ‘sensitive’ [sensitiva], even when it is explicitly ‘devoid of sensation’ (D 397). Pure intuition is a ‘singular concept’ that provides something special—‘originary intuitions’ (D 398). How can we make sense of originary intuitions? Space as a pure intuition cannot mean that we have an intuition of empty space or time, and in the Aesthetic, Kant argues that we indeed do have these pure intuitions. In the Analytic, Kant explicitly denies that we have an intuition of time on its own. At A196/B241, he says that we can abstract ‘clear concepts’ [klare Begriffe] of space and time from experience only because we have put them there. Ian White has argued that we can understand what a pure intuition means by attending to the discussion of the anticipation of perception in the Analytic. Imagine standing on a train and being able to see out of both opposite windows at once. We would see two landscapes and know they are spatially related, although we could not see the space relating them.123 This is an experience (intuition) of space but not an experience of empty space.124 The Anticipations of Perception suggest that the form of outer intuition includes more than spatial organization—there is also recognition that qualities will have intensity. The variation consists in the degree of variability of sensibility itself. This is a principle of all perception (A166). Kant says it is surprising, but nonetheless true, that we can anticipate regarding the matter of intuition and not just regarding the form (A167/ B209). We can have an instantaneous sensation, given in the blink of an eye [Augenblick, A167/B209], that nevertheless has a relational aspect— a magnitude. This cannot be an extensive magnitude, as this would mean a successive synthesis of parts, and hence can only be an intensive magnitude, an a priori anticipation. Colour, heat and so on always have a degree. This is mainly employed in a transcendental argument to the effect that different equal regions of space do not contain equal quantities of matter, but there can be differences of degree, for example, different degrees of radiated heat can still occupy the same space (A174/B216).

11.  Forms of Intuition and Formal Intuitions Kant introduces another notorious distinction in a footnote in the B-Deduction (B160): form of intuition [die Form der Anschauung] and formal intuitions [die formale Anschauung] are distinguished. Much has been made of this distinction.125 Not only are space and time the forms of intuition, but they are also themselves intuitions containing a manifold

52  Dermot Moran within them (presumably the manifold of individual places and times). A formal intuition is a unified representation of space or of time (independent of its content). Here Kant goes over the area of the Aesthetic from a different perspective in the Transcendental Logic. In the Transcendental Deduction, the aim of the synthesis is to combine and to unite. These are two separate acts. Verbindung is a separate act from the act of Vereinigung. We now see that even for there to be a manifold of sensation, a unifying or synthesizing act must already be happening. This unifying act gathers the material together before it can be thought under the concept and the category. Kant explicitly says that the figurative or transcendental synthesis of the imagination belongs to sensibility (B151). Yet he also says that ‘synthesis is an expression of spontaneity’ (B152). Imagination determines sensibility a priori. In this B-account, imagination is the manner in which the intellect (spontaneity) acts when it is thinking the category through the schema. It is generating a figure or an image. In the B-edition, imagination is part of the activity of the understanding. In the A-edition, there appears to be room for a synopsis and combination at the level of sense. Appearances are given to us in intuition (A90/B122), but these are ‘as good as nothing’ (A111) unless they are ‘run through’ and connected. If this is the case, however, we now cannot talk of intuitions on their own prior to concepts (though this may be why Kant oscillates between referring to concepts and intuitions of space and time). Kant says that space and time are concepts that contain an infinity within them, whereas other concepts contain a potential infinity of denotata under them.

Conclusion Having traversed the rich and varied terminology and multiplex characterizations of intuition in Kant, how can we conclude? What, finally, are intuitions for Kant? In interpreting intuitions in relation to mathematics, the standard view articulated by Russell is that they are mental images and pictures, for example, we need to draw lines in our heads to intuit what a line is. There is no doubt that there are many passages where Kant talks in just this manner. We must accept that in at least one of its meanings, an intuition merely means a sensible example, an illustration, a sensory envisaging of something (e.g., time as a flowing stream). But arguably, in mathematics, the notion of constructing a concept and ‘exhibiting’ [expositio] the intuition that corresponds to it (related to the German darstellen) means something much more precise and determined, as Charles Parsons shows. Geometry and arithmetic proceed by the construction of concepts in intuition. Hintikka takes this to mean that mathematics studies special cases of general concepts, namely particular representatives, and hence Kant can see algebra as dealing with

Kant on Intuition 53 intuitions.126 Finally, let us consider the relation between intuitions and sense. Kant explicitly connects sensuous intuition with the sense-giving component of our experience. Without intuition, there is neither sense nor reference. This has led to the identification of intuitions with Sinn in Frege’s sense, with intentional objects. Several critics have proposed that intuitions offer something like an intentional object. A central claim is that intuitions are singular representations. As we have seen, although Kant persisted in these formulations throughout his teaching career, and specifically in his logic lectures, in fact, human intuitions, at least, require much more than singularity. We must also take into account the irreducible non-conceptualisable givenness of intuitions (as exemplified by incongruent counterparts) and the character of immediacy. We should also take seriously the idea that intuitions on their own are more of a theoretical postulate than any part of lived experience. Furthermore, the sensory manifold in intuition is to be understood as a kind of limit constraining the nature of the concept rather than being either the object or the content of the intuition. On Kant’s theory, the form of the intuition is itself intuitable, and I think this is a necessary part of his doctrine in the Aesthetic. The changed account in the Analytic is not a new and incompatible doctrine, as Norman Kemp Smith believes, but rather a change in emphasis. In the end, this review of meanings of intuition in Kant shows, I believe, that the various accounts of intuition in Kant are too diverse to be melded into a single coherent doctrine. Kant’s sources for the notion are diverse, and this diversity is mirrored in his own account, and his own language fails to clarify whether intuitions convey private sensations to the mind or formed objects. Edmund Husserl saw himself as bringing new clarity and rigor to the notion of intuition, overcoming the inconsistencies he diagnosed in Kant.

Notes 1 An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Second Annual Conference of the UK Kant Society in Manchester in 1995. I am grateful to Graham Bird, Gary Banham, James O’Shea, Cynthia McDonald and other members of the audience at that time for their comments. References to the Critique of Pure Reason appeal to the 1st and 2nd edition pagination (A and B). Quotations are from Norman Kemp Smith’s translation (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965), supplemented by reference to Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood’s translation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). The following abbreviations have been used: AA = Immanuel Kant, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Königlich Preußische (Deutsche) Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: Reimer [later: de Gruyter], 1900–); D = ‘On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World’, in Immanuel Kant, Theoretical Philosophy, 1755–1770, ed. David Walford and Ralf Meerbote (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), cited with page numbers of the Akademie edition (AA 2:385–416).

54  Dermot Moran 2 Kant writes: ‘Objects are therefore given to us by means of sensibility, and it alone affords us intuitions [. . .] there is no other way in which objects can be given to us’ except through intuition (B33). ‘For in the appearances of objects, indeed even properties that we attribute to them, are always regarded as something really given, only insofar as that property depends only upon the kind of intuition of the subject’ (B69). See also B146; A218/B266; A244; A376–380. 3 Robert Howell, ‘Intuition, Synthesis and Individuation in the Critique of Pure Reason’, Nous, 7 (1973), 207–232; Richard A. Smyth, Forms of Intuition: An Historical Introduction to the Transcendental Aesthetic (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1978), 139. 4 See Richard E. Aquila, ‘Intentional Objects and Kantian Appearances’, Philosophical Topics, 12 (1981), 9–37, and Hoke Robinson, ‘Kantian Appearances and Intentional Objects’, Kant-Studien, 87 (1996), 448–454. See also Colin Marshall, ‘Kant’s Appearances and Things in Themselves as Qua-Objects’, Philosophical Quarterly, 63 (2013), 520–545. 5 See Alfredo Ferrarin, ‘Construction and Mathematical Schematism: Kant on the Exhibition of a Concept in Intuition’, Kant-Studien, 86 (1995), 131–174, and Michael Friedman, ‘Kant on Geometry and Spatial Intuition’, Synthese, 186 (2012), 231–255. 6 Wilfrid Sellars, ‘Kant on Sensibility and Understanding’, in Kant Studies Today, ed. Lewis White Beck (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1969), 182. 7 W. H. Walsh, Kant’s Criticism of Metaphysics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 13. 8 Appearance is what is first given to us (A119). But appearance is also the object of our perceptions when combined with concepts (A120). 9 D 397: ‘whatever, as object, relates to our senses is a phenomenon’. 10 See Charles Parsons, ‘On Some Difficulties Concerning Intuition and Intuitive Knowledge’, Mind, 102 (1993), 233–246, esp. 233, where Parsons refers to intuiting as a propositional attitude. Parsons acknowledges that, for Kant, intuition is concerned with objects, whereas judgements are concerned with propositions. Intuition, then, ‘is a component of or at least gives rise to propositional knowledge’. 11 Henry E. Allison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 68. I have complicated his threefold division by adding in the form of intuition, which Kant also calls ‘pure intuition’. 12 See also his discussion of Plato’s conception of ideas at A313/B370. On the complexity of ideas in Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Kant, see Wayne Waxman, Kant and the Empiricists: Understanding Understanding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 13 In fact, it first appears among the German mystics, for example, Jacob Boehme, who use it as a term for a mystical apprehension. See Smyth, Forms of Intuition, 145, quoting Friedrich Kluge, Etymologisches Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1957). Jaakko Hintikka repeats the connection between Anschauung and schauen in his ‘On Kant’s Notion of Intuition (Anschauung)’, in The First Critique, ed. Terence Penelhum and J. J. Macintosh (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1969), 38. He also connects the term with Boehme (40). Although Kemp Smith translates Anschauung as ‘intuition’, others including Weldon have translated it as ‘perception’. See Hans H. Rudnick, ‘Translation and Kant’s Anschauung, Verstand and Vernunft’, in Interpreting Kant, ed. Moltke S. Gram (Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 1982), 99–114. 14 Norman Kemp Smith, A Commentary to Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’, 2nd edition (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1923), 79.

Kant on Intuition 55 15 See A320/B376–377 and Andrew Janiak, ‘Kant’s Views on Space and Time’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2016 Edition, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/kant-­ spacetime/, archived at www.webcitation.org/6sss2W7KP. 16 See Marco Sgarbi, ‘Hume’s Source of the “Impression-Idea” Distinction’, Anales del Seminario de Historia de la Filosofía, 29 (2012), 561–576; Wolfgang Hermann Müller, ‘Eindruck’, in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, ed. Joachim Ritter (Basel: Schwabe, 1972), vol. 4, 4681–4684. Kant had access to the German translation by G. A. Pistorius of Hume’s Enquiry and refers to it in his Logic lectures of 1770. Kant began to use the term ‘Eindrück’ in his Reflexionen from around 1771 (see, inter alia, Reflexion 4473, AA 17:564). 17 Kant’s terms Anlaß and Gelegenheit can be translated as ‘stimulus’ rather than ‘occasion’, but Kant in general is neutral between an occasionalist and a causal interactionist account. I thank Alberto Vanzo for pointing this out. 18 H. J. Paton, Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience (London: Allen and Unwin, 1936), vol. 1, 95–96. 19 A111, Kemp Smith’s translation. Guyer and Wood speak of a ‘swarm of appearances’ filling up the soul, without giving rise to experience. 20 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae (Cinisello Balsamo: San Paolo, 1999), 1.84.1. See Francis O’Farrell, ‘Intuition in Kant’s Theory of Knowledge’, Gregorianum, 60 (1979), 481–511, esp. 504. 21 B130. Smyth, Forms of Intuition, 159, notes that Aktus is not a usual term used by eighteenth-century German philosophers to refer to a mental act and was in fact a legal term. 22 Reflexion 4682, AA 17:668–669. 23 See Logic, trans. Robert S. Hartman and Wolfgang Schwarz (New York: Dover, 1988), Introduction, §1, p. 13. 24 Jacobi, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel all criticized Kant’s sharp separation between sensibility from understanding. See, for example, George di Giovanni, ‘The First Twenty Years of Critique’, in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 417–448. 25 See, for example, Reflexion 220, AA 15:84. 26 D 394: ‘From this one can see that the sensitive is poorly defined as that which is more confusedly cognized, and that which belongs to the understanding as that of which there is a more distinct cognition’. 27 See Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, rev. Joseph Beaude, Pierre Costabel, Alan Gabbey and Bernard Rochot (Paris: Vrin, 1996), vol. 7, 28; John Cottingham, Descartes (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 122–127. Cottingham concludes that sensation does not fit comfortably into either res cogitans or res extensa for Descartes, and, of course, it is true that sensation requires embodiment and hence the union of mind and body. 28 Oeuvres de Descartes, vol. 7, 78, trans. in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, ed. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), vol. 2, 54. 29 Oeuvres de Descartes, vol. 10, 368, trans. in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 1, 14. 30 See A267/B323: ‘Leibniz first assumed things (monads) and within them a power of representation’. 31 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, ‘Monadology’, in Philosophischen Schriften, ed. C. I. Gerhardt (Berlin, 1875–1890), vol. 6, 607–623, trans. in Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Philosophical Essays, ed. Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1989), 213–225, §60, see §19: ‘the nature of the

56  Dermot Moran monad is representative’ and nothing can limit it to represent only parts; it therefore represents the whole of reality but confusedly (as opposed to distinctly). For Kant’s critique of this view, see A267/B323. 32 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, ‘Meditations on Knowledge, Truths, and Ideas’, in Philosophischen Schriften, vol. 4, 422–426, trans. in Philosophical Essays, 23–27. 33 Alexander Gottlob Baumgarten, Metaphysica, 7th edition (Halle: Hemmerde, 1779), §521; trans. Courtney D. Fugate and John Hymers as Metaphysics: A Critical Translation with Kant’s Elucidations, Selected Notes, and Related Materials (London: Bloomsbury, 2013). 34 See, however, the footnote at A364, where Kant, employing the analogy of colliding elastic balls striking each other in a straight line and communicating their motions to one another without loss, postulates that minds could pass their ‘states’ from one to the other, so that the same state would be present in different substances such that the last would possess all the states of the others as well as its own. Here the contents of the state pass from one to the other together with the ‘consciousness’ of that state. 35 Reflexion 1676, AA 16:76. See Smyth, Forms of Intuition, 153. 36 Reflexion 695, AA 15:308–309: ‘Leibniz takes all sensations (that stem from) certain objects as cognitions of them. But beings who are not the cause of the object through their representations must in the first instance be affected in a certain way so that they can arrive at a cognition of the object’s presence. Hence sensation must be the condition of outer representation but not identical with it [. . .] Hence cognition is objective, sensation subjective’. As translated in Rolf George, ‘Vorstellung and Erkenntnis in Kant’, in Interpreting Kant, 33. 37 Immanuel Kant, On a Discovery According to Which Any New Critique of Pure Reason Has Been Made Superfluous by an Earlier One, trans. Henry E. Allison in The Kant-Eberhard Controversy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 132. 38 Ibid., 136. 39 See also ‘Monadology’, §§60–63. 40 See Otfried Höffe, Immanuel Kant, trans. Marshall Farrier (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994), 54. 41 Baumgarten, Acroasis Logica, 2nd edition (Halle: Hemmerde, 1773), §§556, 561. See also §§49–51, 444. 42 Leibniz called this the ars characteristica. See Kant, Theoretical Philosophy, 417n4. 43 Baumgarten, Metaphysica, §620, my translation. 44 Allison, The Kant-Eberhard Controversy, 22. 45 D 396. This Leibnizian distinction appeared in Johann Christoph Adelung’s Grammatisch-Kritisch Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart (Leipzig: Breitkopf, 1793–1801), a work to which Kant had access, which states: ‘in philosophy one takes as intuitive each piece of knowledge which is acquired by means of the senses, or by representing to ourselves the thing or its picture; that is, representative knowledge, or sensible knowledge, as opposed to symbolic knowledge, in which we think of things in terms of words and other symbols’ (trans. in Hintikka, ‘On Kant’s Notion of Intuition (Anschauung)’, 41–42). 46 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. James Creed Meredith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), §59, p. 222. Kant introduces the term ‘hypotyposis’ (which normally means ‘vivid description’) to cover two kinds of ­presentations—the schematic (illustrated by an intuition) and the symbolic (which only reason can think). On the types of hypotyposis, see Nicola

Kant on Intuition 57 Crosby, ‘The Schematism of Analogy and the Figure of Christ: Bridging Two Types of Hypotyposis’, in this volume. 47 Kant, Critique of Judgment, §59, p. 223. 48 See Houston Smit, ‘Kant on Marks and the Immediacy of Intuition’, Philosophical Review, 109 (2000), 235–266. 49 On Kant’s theory of intellectual intuition, see Francis O’Farrell, ‘Intuition in Kant’s Theory of Knowledge, Part Two: Intellectual Intuition in Kant’s Theory’, Gregorianum, 60 (1979), 725–746; Yolanda Estes, ‘Intellectual Intuition: Reconsidering Continuity in Kant, Fichte, and Schelling’, in Fichte, German Idealism, and Early Romanticism, ed. Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010), 165–178. 50 In fact, Gottlob Frege noted that the definition of intuition in Kant contains no reference to sensibility. See Gottlob Frege, The Foundations of Arithmetic: A Logico-Mathematical Enquiry into the Concept of Number, trans. J. L. Austin, rev. edition (New York: Harper, 1960), 19. 51 Heinrich Meissner, Philosophisches Lexicon (1737), cited in Smyth, Forms of Intuition, 150. Indeed, Meissner speaks of ‘lautere Vernunft’, which is perhaps the inspiration for Kant’s ‘reine Vernunft’. On the other hand, Wolff and his disciples commonly used the notions of pure reason and pure cognition (for cognitions obtained through inference, rather than through experience), so it seems likely that Kant found his notion of pure reason directly in Wolff rather than from Meissner’s lautere Vernunft. 52 Kant, On a Discovery, 127. 53 See O’Farrell, ‘Intuition in Kant’s Theory of Knowledge, Part Two’, 732. 54 See Giorgio Tonelli, ‘Das Wiederaufleben der deutschen-aristoteliscen Terminologie bei Kant während der Entstehung der Kritik der reinen Vernunft’, Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte, 9 (1964), 233–242. 55 See John Boler, ‘Intuitive and Abstractive Cognition’, in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, ed. Anthony Kenny, Jan Pinborg and Norman Kretzmann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 460–478. 56 Cited in Smyth, Forms of Intuition, 146. The same definition of intuitive cognition is to be found in Rudolph Goclenius, Lexicon Philosophorum (Frankfurt a.M., 1613) s.v. notitia. See Smyth, Forms of Intuition, 149. 57 See ibid., 148–149. 58 Ibid., 149. 59 See Hans-Georg Juchem, ‘On the Development of the Term “Intuition” in the Pre-Critical Writings of Kant, and Its Significance for Kant’s Aesthetics with Particular Reference to the “Wortindex zu Kants gesammelte Schriften” ’, in Proceedings of the Third International Kant Congress, ed. Lewis White Beck (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1972), 685–692; Charles Parsons, ‘The Transcendental Aesthetic’, in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, 92n14. 60 The Dissertation treats of time before it treats of space, reversing the order of the treatment in the Transcendental Aesthetic. 61 D 402. The notion of an intuitus originarius, as we saw, was connected with the intellectual divine intuition which generated its own object. Does Kant mean here that the form of intuition generates temporal objects in some way? This seems unlikely, although intuition could bestow a temporal order on the flow itself. Kant contrasts intuitus originarius with intuitus derivativus. Although the notion of intuitus originarius is connected with the divine intuition, which does indeed generate its objects, this divine intuition does not generate its objects in virtue of being originarius but in virtue of being archetypus. However, Kant’s meaning is not entirely clear in this text. 62 Edward Caird, The Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant (Glasgow: Maclehose and Sons, 1889), vol. 1, 282–283.

58  Dermot Moran 63 Ibid., 283. 64 Ibid., 282. 65 Höffe, Immanuel Kant, 55, and Wilfrid Sellars, Science and Metaphysics: Variations on Kantian Themes (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968), 15, agree on this. 66 Sellars, Science and Metaphysics, 17. 67 Immanuel Kant, Logic, trans. Robert S. Hartman and Wolfgang Schwarz (New York: Dover, 1988). The dating of the lectures on logic is difficult precisely because they were lectures that were delivered over a long period of time and regularly reworked. To be precise, the Jäsche Logic is a combination of passages derived from Kant’s Reflexionen, lecture transcripts and additions by Jäsche. The example of the savage mentioned below, for instance, can be found in the Logic Pölitz, AA 24:510, and, in a partly different context, in the main text of the Logic Bauch, in Immanuel Kant, Logik-Vorlesung: Unveröffentlichte Nachschriften, ed. Tillman Pinder (Hamburg: Meiner, 1998), vol. 1, 44. The Logic Bauch is a combination of materials from different years, including materials from the 1770s and maybe even from the 1760s. 68 See Lorne Falkenstein, ‘Kant’s Account of Intuition’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 21 (1991), 179. 69 See Rolf George, ‘Kant’s Sensationalism’, Synthese, 47 (1981), 229–255, esp. 243. 70 See Sally Sedgwick, Hegel’s Critique of Kant: From Dichotomy to Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 71 Kant, Logic, Introduction, §V, pp. 37–38. This passage also appears in the Logic Pölitz, AA 24:510. 72 Kant, Logic, Introduction, §V, p. 38. 73 Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, Logique, Part 1, ch. 2, quoted in Joseph Moreau, ‘Intuition et appréhension’, Kant-Studien, 71 (1980), 282. It cannot be shown that Kant had actual knowledge of this passage. 74 Sellars agrees (‘Kant on Sensibility and Understanding’, 182). 75 See, however, Houston Smit, who argues that intuitions have marks. Houston Smit, ‘Kant on Marks and the Immediacy of Intuition’, Philosophical Review, 109 (2000), 235–266. 76 Sellars, Science and Metaphysics, 3. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid., 5. 79 Ibid. 80 Prolegomena, §19. 81 Sellars, Science and Metaphysics, 7. 82 Ibid., 16. 83 Ibid., 28. 84 A50/B74. See Lorne Falkenstein, ‘Kant’s Account of Sensation’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 20 (1990), 63–88; George, ‘Kant’s Sensationalism’; but see also Tim Jankowiak, ‘Sensations as Representations in Kant’, British Journal of the History of Philosophy, 22 (2014), 492–513, who argues that sensations can be construed as representing external objects in Kant. 85 A51/B75, see B1, A19/B33. 86 Sellars, Science and Metaphysics, 4. 87 See, e.g., Reflexion 695, AA 15:309: ‘cognition is objective, sensation is subjective’. 88 Reflexion 755, AA 15:330, as translated in George, ‘Kant’s Sensationalism’, 239. 89 See George, ‘Kant’s Sensationalism’, passim. 90 Ibid., 239. 91 Walsh, Kant’s Criticism of Metaphysics, 15, 95–96.

Kant on Intuition 59 92 Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, trans. John N. Findlay, ed. and rev. with a new introduction by Dermot Moran and new preface by Michael Dummett (London: Routledge, 2001), vol. 2, 104. 93 Ibid., 105. 94 As Rolf George states, the mental states initially induced are ‘non-­intentional or non-referential’ (‘Kant’s Sensationalism’, 229). 95 Walsh, Kant’s Criticism of Metaphysics, 14. 96 Allison supports this interpretation in general, although he acknowledges that it does not resolve all the ambiguities. See Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, 67–68. 97 Kant, Critique of Judgment, Introduction, §VII, p. 29. 98 See Rae Langton, ‘Receptivity and Kantian Humility’, Australasian Society for the History of Philosophy Yearbook (1994), 15. 99 Gerhart Wahrig, ed., Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1978), 522. I am told that it is etymologically related to the folding over of a quilt. The verb falten is to fold, and the noun die Falte indicates a fold or a wrinkle, a crease, a pleat. See also the entry ‘Manifold’, in Howard Caygill, A Kant Dictionary, 284. ‘Manifold’ is applied by Kant to intuitions, to representations and to sensibility in general. 100 See n. 77 previously. 101 Immanuel Kant, Anthropology From the Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Victor Dowdall, ed. Hans Rudnick (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978), §9, p. 29. 102 Ibid., 31. 103 Jaakko Hintikka, ‘Kant on the Mathematical Method’, in Beck, Kant Studies Today, 120. Hintikka quotes D 396 and A320/B376–377. 104 Hintikka, ‘On Kant’s Notion of Intuition (Anschauung)’, 42–43. 105 Ibid., 43. 106 George, ‘Kant’s Sensationalism’, 244. 107 Sellars sees this: ‘it is clear that Kant thinks of intuitions as representations of individuals, this would mean they are conceptual representations of individuals rather than conceptual representations of attributes or kinds’ (Science and Metaphysics, 3). 108 See Charles Parsons, ‘Kant’s Philosophy of Arithmetic’, in Kant on Pure Reason, ed. Ralph Walker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 13–40; Kirk Dallas Wilson, ‘Kant on Intuition’, Philosophical Quarterly, 25 (1975), 247–265. Hintikka replies to Parsons in ‘Kantian Intuitions’, Inquiry, 15 (1972), 341–345. 109 Letter to Jacob Sigismund Beck, 3 July 1992, AA 11:347. 110 Wiener Logik, AA 24:909, quoted in Parsons, ‘The Transcendental Aesthetic’, 64. 111 Philosophische Religionshlehre Pölitz, AA 28:1098. 112 Hintikka, ‘Kantian Intuitions’, 342. 113 Ibid., 344. 114 Hintikka in an appendix to his article, ‘On Kant’s Notion of Intuition (Anschauung)’, 52–53, actually claims that the discussion of counterparts supports his view. He points out that Kant uses the example to prove diametrically opposed conclusions in 1768 and 1770. In his 1768 Ground of the Distinction of the Different Regions of Space, it proves the absoluteness of space; in 1770, it proves the subjectivity and intuitivity of space. 115 See Parsons, ‘Kant’s Philosophy of Arithmetic’; Parsons, ‘On Some Difficulties Concerning Intuition and Intuitive Knowledge’, Mind, 102 (1993), 233–246; Hintikka, ‘Kantian Intuitions’, 341–345.

60  Dermot Moran 116 See William Blattner, ‘The Non-Synthetic Unity of the Forms of Intuition in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason’, in Proceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress, ed. Hoke Robinson (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1995), vol. 2.1, 170. 117 Immanuel Kant, Opus postumum, AA 21:79, as translated in Smyth, Forms of Intuition, 143. 118 This is the strategy of Wilson, ‘Kant on Intuition’, 254–256. 119 Parsons, ‘The Transcendental Aesthetic’, 64. 120 See Ian White, ‘Kant on Forms of Intuition’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 79 (1978), 123–135. 121 Patricia Kitcher, Kant’s Transcendental Psychology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 39–40. 122 Sellars, Science and Metaphysics, 8. 123 This example is stimulated by Ian White’s example of a creature with eyes on opposite sides of the head where two different landscapes are seen at once with no overlap. See Ian White, ‘Kant on Forms of Intuition’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 130–131. The image is reminiscent of Merleau-Ponty’s suggestion that if humans had eyes on either side of their heads, like birds do, they might have a completely different conception of the nature of physical objects. 124 Jonathan Bennett, Kant’s Analytic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), 175, denies that we could have a sensation = 0 which is still a sensation. For him, it is a ‘failure of sensation’, that is, no sensation at all. But it could mean we are confronted by a space without having any sensory evidence of that space. On the other hand, we commonly report that we are not experiencing a sensation, so it seems possible to sense having no sensation, for example, I am not in pain now. 125 See Christian Onof and Dennis Schulting, ‘Space as Form of Intuition and as Formal Intuition: On the Note to B160 in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason’, Philosophical Review, 124 (2015), 1–58. 126 C. D. Broad had argued that Kant cannot fit algebra or arithmetic into his account of an intuitive basis of mathematics. See C. D. Broad, ‘Kant’s Theory of Mathematical and Philosophical Reasoning’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 42 (1941–1942), 1–24.

3 Heidegger’s Interpretation of Kant’s Transcendental Schematism Roxana Baiasu

Kant’s chapter on the schematism is notoriously obscure and Heidegger’s reading of Kant notoriously contentious.1 But the significance of Kant’s schematism chapter for Heidegger’s philosophy and for the tradition of phenomenology should not be underestimated. It can be argued, as Heidegger and Ricoeur do, that the Kantian schematism anticipates phenomenological accounts of that which lies at the heart of intentionality, of our embeddedness in the world and our being. My contribution to this volume offers a close reading of Heidegger’s interpretation of the Kantian schematism as the climax of a turning point in the history of philosophy, of a major shift from a limited deficient metaphysics of subjectivity to a more basic and adequate ontological conception of our being. I spell out central features of Heidegger’s reading of the schematism in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, and in relation to this engage with Banham’s discussion of the schematism in Kant’s Transcendental Imagination. I lay out Heidegger’s main implicit criticisms of the schematism and argue that these criticisms point to a limited conception of space which undermines Kant’s temporal schematism. The argument can shed new light on the ways in which Heidegger sought to reconceive of the ‘schematism’ which lies at the heart of our being in terms of a renewed understanding of space and time. Heidegger’s interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason is meant to offer a confirmation of his project of fundamental ontology. The main task of this project is to work out the essential relation between Being and time through an analysis of the Being characteristic of the human. Heidegger acknowledges that his interpretation of Kant is marked by a certain form of ‘violence’.2 As Otto Pöggeler points out, Heidegger develops the question as to ‘how transcendental philosophy is ontology’ by discussing not Husserl but Kant.3 Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant attempts to make explicit important issues that remained implicit or unsaid in Kant’s work. These issues concern the connection between subjectivity and time.4 Perhaps following Heidegger, Paul Ricoeur points out that Kant’s philosophy contains an implicit phenomenology of

62  Roxana Baiasu subjectivity, in the context of which the transcendental schematism plays a central role.5 Heidegger planned to develop an interpretation of the first Critique and, in particular, of the schematism in Part II of Being and Time, which has never been published as such. As designed by Heidegger, Division One of this part should have been devoted to ‘Kant’s doctrine of schematism and time, as a preliminary stage in a problematic of Temporality’.6 However, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, which was published two years after Being and Time, serves, as Heidegger says, ‘as a fitting supplement’7 and ‘as a “historical” introduction of sorts to clarify the problematic treated in the first half of Being and Time’. It must be noted here that Heidegger favours the first edition of the Critique. Some of the main reasons for this will become clear later. However, it is important to note from the outset that, in general terms, an important difference between the two editions, for Heidegger, is this: while the second edition does not allow for what he calls an ontologically more ‘original’ interpretation of Kant’s ‘ground-laying of metaphysics’, the first edition makes possible both a reading of an ontologically limited, deficient ground-­ laying and also a more original interpretation. In the Kant book, Heidegger is mainly concerned with the more original interpretation of Kant’s metaphysical project, an interpretation which is meant to function as a confirmation of his own ontological project. By contrast, this chapter attempts to reconstruct what Heidegger saw as major limitations of Kant’s project and, in particular, of his transcendental schematism, which he sought to overcome in his ontological project. This provides a contrasting background which is useful to understand Heidegger’s ontology. The discussion begins with an account of Heidegger’s view of the extraordinary significance of Kant’s schematism in the context of his transcendental philosophy. This is followed by a more detailed analysis of Heidegger’s interpretation of the schematism which spells out its structural elements. This, finally, makes it possible to shed light on what, for Heidegger, were the major limitations of the Kantian schematism, understood as the core of the Kantian project.

1.  The Centrality of the Schematism In Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Heidegger argues for the fundamental role of the transcendental schematism and time by discussing key stages of Kant’s account of the possibility of metaphysics. These are stages of what Heidegger calls the ‘laying of the ground for metaphysics’, that is, the working out of the possibility of the ontological knowledge which makes it possible to encounter objects within the world. Heidegger uses the term ‘transcendence’ to refer to this possibility. More broadly understood, transcendence consists, for Heidegger, of the possibility of being oriented towards things and making sense of them. Stressing the relation

Heidegger and Kant’s Schematism 63 between his project and Kantian transcendental philosophy, Heidegger notes that the analysis of transcendence is ‘a pure phenomenology of the subjectivity of the subject’ (KM 62, H 87). He characterises the specific transcendence of ontological knowledge in terms of the ‘play-space’ of the ‘turning toward . . . which lets-[something]-stand-in-opposition’ in relation to the knowing subject (KM 50, H 71). In Heidegger’s reading, the problem of the possibility of metaphysics requires the determination of ontological knowledge in its unified structure and possibility (KM 8, H 12). For Heidegger, the transcendental doctrine of elements constitutes the first stage of Kant’s ground-laying of metaphysics which offers an account of the two essential items of pure knowledge: pure intuition and pure thinking. According to Heidegger, the Transcendental Aesthetic indicates, in a provisional manner, the privileged role of the pure intuition of time as an essential element of ­subjectivity.8 Heidegger points out that ‘time has a pre-eminence over space’ due to the universality of its scope, since time is a condition of ­possibility for both external appearances and internal representations (KM 34, H 49). The understanding is the faculty of pure thinking, which is constituted by the categories. In Heidegger’s reading, these are formal ‘notions’, ‘ontological predicates’ (KM 39, H 55), ‘possible ways of unification’9 of that which intuition brings forth. In Heidegger’s reading, the Transcendental Analytic shows how imagination and time gradually come to the fore as central to the constitution of possible experience in general (KM 34, H 49). In his interpretation, the Analytic is concerned with the connection of pure thinking to the pure intuition of time, that is, with the unity of the two elements of ontological knowledge. The second stage of the ground-laying of metaphysics is taken to reveal, in a provisional manner, imagination understood as the faculty of synthesis, which determines the unity of pure understanding and pure intuition as constitutive of the unity of possible experience. The account of the possibility of such a necessary structural unity as an ‘elucidation’ of the constitution of transcendence, that is, of the orientation towards objects, is, for Heidegger, the main concern of the Transcendental Deduction, which constitutes the third stage of Kant’s project (KM 53, H 76). The Deduction offers ‘the proof for the possibility of the a priori ability of pure concepts to refer to objects’ (KM 60, H 86) through the pure synthesis of imagination; it thus reveals the unity of transcendence as that which makes possible the discovery of things as objects.10 Characterised by Heidegger as ‘the occurrence of transcendence at its innermost [level]’, the transcendental schematism is taken to mark the final stage of the ground-laying of metaphysics: the transcendental schematism constitutes the ‘essential ground’ of transcendence through its temporal formation (KM 71, H 101; see KM 80, H 113). As mentioned previously, in Heidegger’s reading, the essential relation between pure understanding and universal pure intuition (time) has been already

64  Roxana Baiasu demonstrated by the Deduction; the task of the transcendental schematism is then to reveal the constitution of this relation which is effected by the imagination (KM 73, H 103). Heidegger points out that the main result of this still-preliminary interpretation of Kant’s metaphysical project is an understanding of time as the fundamental condition of the possibility of ontological knowledge or, in other words, of subjectivity as oriented towards the horizon of possible experience of objects. Let me note briefly here the significance of this result for what Heidegger takes to be a provisional or preliminary interpretation of Kant’s project. For him, this result makes a more original interpretation of Kant’s thinking possible, an interpretation that Heidegger presents in Part III of the Kant book. This original interpretation develops the claim of the fundamental role of imagination in the constitution of transcendence. An important implication of this original interpretation is Heidegger’s construal of the understanding as pure imagining through the schematism. Heidegger’s interpretation of the understanding in terms of imagination prepares Heidegger’s move from categorial understanding [Verstand] to existential understanding [Verstehen].11 Furthermore, in Part III of the Kant book, Heidegger argues for an ‘original’ understanding of primordial temporality as the ground of imagination12 and transcendence. This is meant to support his claim that ‘the original ground which becomes manifest in the ground-laying is time’.13 Heidegger suggests that his original interpretation of Kant’s metaphysical project paves the way for the exposition, in the last part of the Kant book, of his ‘retrieval’ of the Kantian ground-laying of metaphysics through a reinterpretation of subjectivity and its transcendence in terms of the analytic of Dasein.14 Heidegger’s retrieval involves what Sallis calls ‘the effacement of imagination’15 for the sake of Dasein’s temporality and understanding of Being. For Heidegger, Imagination becomes an inappropriate name to designate the condition of possibility of the understanding of Being.

2.  Schema and Schema-Image In the chapter on ‘The Fourth Stage of the Ground-Laying: The Ground for the Inner Possibility of Ontological Knowledge’, Heidegger gives an account of Kant’s transcendental schematism as ‘the goal of the groundlaying’ (KM 80, H 113). As we have seen, for Heidegger, the problematic of the transcendental schematism is of the highest significance for the elaboration, in terms of time, of the possibility of ontological knowledge, which precedes experience and makes it possible. This section spells out significant moments of the structure of the Kantian schematism as interpreted by Heidegger. According to Heidegger’s interpretation, for something to be encountered, it is necessary that the horizon of its objective encounterability

Heidegger and Kant’s Schematism 65 offer itself in a sensible yet pure manner. This pure look is formed by the transcendental power of imagination. Heidegger interprets Kant’s transcendental schematism as the pure making-sensible [Versinnlichung] of the categories.16 Let us look more closely at what he means by this. For Kant, ‘a concept is always, as regards its form, something universal which serves as a rule’ (CPR A106); it is a universal formal rule of unification. The conceptual rule of the understanding requires a schematism which makes the concept sensible and makes possible its connection to what is encountered in experience. In Heidegger’s view, this can be achieved only insofar as the schematism provides the concept with a peculiar ‘look’ [Anblick] or ‘image’ [Bild]. This image, which makes the concept sensible and enables it to determine the constitution of experience, is provided by the power of imagination. The transcendental imagination combines the spontaneity of the rule of unification represented in the concept with the receptivity of intuition. Heidegger’s notion of the ‘schema-image’ is central to his interpretation of the transcendental schematism of the pure concepts of the understanding. Gary Banham, one of the few Kant scholars who engage in some depth with Heidegger’s discussion of the schematism, points out that Heidegger argues that the schema-image constitutes ‘the fundamental meaning of schematism’.17 Heidegger’s interpretation of the schematism might appear to be puzzling if we take into consideration Kant’s statement that ‘[t]he schema of a pure concept of the understanding [. . .] is something that can never be brought to an image at all’ (CPR A142/ B181). Is Heidegger guilty of an exegetical error in this context, as Kant scholars like Banham seem to suggest? Heidegger starts his discussion of the schematism with an account of the schematism of empirical and mathematical concepts. I do not present this account in much detail but only mention some of its central points. Heidegger distinguishes between three meanings of the notion of ‘image’ and, correspondingly, three types of making-sensible. First, ‘image’ can mean the immediate empirical intuition of something individual. Second, it can refer to the presentation of a likeness [Abbild], for example, the one provided by a photograph. Finally, it can mean the image of something general, that is, of a conceptual representation. In this case, the making-sensible is effected by the power of imagination which provides a schema and therewith an image for a concept. Heidegger uses the example of the empirical perception of a particular house. Such an empirical perception makes manifest the representation of our concept of house. In relation to the perceiving of a house, the schema which ‘regulates’ [regelt] the possible appearing of something like a house makes possible, through a possible look, the representation of a concept in its unifying rule character: ‘in the empirical look it is precisely the rule which makes its appearance in the manner of its regulation [Regelung]’ (KM 67, H 96). The term ‘regulation’ must be understood

66  Roxana Baiasu in connection with the Kantian definition of concepts as rules. In Heidegger’s reading, the schematised concept necessarily involves a peculiar kind of image, which is different from an empirical image. For instance, the schematic image of the concept ‘house’ is something different from the direct, empirical look of a particular house: ‘what is thematically represented in the making-sensible is neither the empirical look nor the isolated concept, but is rather the “listing” of the rule governing the providing of the image’ (KM 68, H 96). Heidegger quotes Kant’s definition of the schema, which Kant offers in the context of the discussion of the schematism of mathematical concepts: ‘This representation of a general procedure of the power of imagination in providing an image for a concept I entitle the schema of this concept’.18 But, as Banham notes, Kant further explains that ‘it is not images of objects but schemata that ground our pure sensible concepts. No image of a triangle would ever be adequate to the concept of it’ (CPR A141/ B140). It might seem that Kant is equivocal about the role of images in the schematism and unclear about the very issue as to whether the schematism involves an image. However, it can be argued that Heidegger’s distinction between different types of images could perhaps help clarify Kant’s account and, in particular, his equivocation in the use of the term ‘image’ in the Schematism chapter. In order to distinguish the peculiar kind of image belonging to the schematism from an empirical look and from the presentation of a likeness, Heidegger calls it ‘the schema-image’ (KM 68, H 97). Heidegger’s interpretation of the Kantian schematism, as ‘the formation of the schema [Schemabildung] in its fulfilment as the manner of making the concept sensible’ (KM 68, H 97), indicates that the schematism is constituted by two structural moments: the schema and its corresponding image aspect or the schema-image. For Heidegger, the schema is itself a general rule for the sensible presentation of concepts or, as Kant puts it, ‘a method for representing a rule in an image’ (CPR A140/B180). The schema-image is ‘the true look which belongs structurally to the schema’, ‘a possible presentation of the rule of presentation represented in the schema’.19 In Heidegger’s interpretation, the schema has a double role with regard to the sensibilisation of the concept. On the one hand, as ‘the representing of the rule’ (KM 69, H 98), that is, of the concept, the schema has a rule character. The schema is a universal rule which, ‘as schema in general [. . .] represents unities, representing them as rules which impart themselves to a possible look’ (KM 73, H 104). On the other hand, insofar as it is a product of imagination, the schema forms an image or a look out of itself. Accordingly, the schema-image is not an immediate empirical intuition, but its look is governed by the schema which provides a rule of presentation. That which the schema-image makes sensible is the ‘regulative unity of the concept’, the rule ‘in the “how” of its regulating’ (KM 68, H 96). As such, the image has a determinate,

Heidegger and Kant’s Schematism 67 discernible character which makes the generality of the concept intuitable.20 Banham, however, contends that this might be the case with regard to empirical and mathematical concepts but not with regard to the categories of the understanding.21 To adequately engage with Banham’s contention, let us look more closely at Heidegger’s argument for the necessity of a schema-image in the transcendental schematism of the categories of the understanding. Heidegger points out that the transcendental schematism does not bring the pure concept to an empirical image or a general image. However, it makes the pure concept sensible, and thus applicable to experience, by means of its sensible presentation in a pure schema-image of time. By distinguishing the pure schema-image from empirical images and from general images of pure mathematical concepts, and by conceiving of it as a ‘horizon’ of objectivity, that is, as a sensible prefiguration of possibilities of objective knowledge, Heidegger’s interpretation seems to disambiguate Kant’s talk of images in the Schematism chapter. Furthermore, it offers an account of the sensibilisation of the categories of understanding in terms of what could be called ‘figurations of time’, a term that I borrow from Banham and to which I come back later. On this account, it would be impossible for the pure concept understood as a rule of intelligibility to be made sensible and thus connected to experience without a schema-image insofar as the schema of the concept has also a rule character. A sensible, pure prefiguration of the pure concepts is required for them to be formed as constitutive of experience. In Heidegger’s reading, in the case of the transcendental schematism of the pure, most fundamental concepts, which are the rules of objectivity in general, the schema and the schema-image must operate in a basic formative manner: If these are the true ‘primal concepts’ [die echten ‘Urbegriffe’], however, then the Transcendental Schematism is the original and authentic concept-formation [Begriffsbildung] as such. (KM 78, H 110) Original concept formation requires that the horizon of objectivity be given in a fundamental preliminary view which forms this horizon as a priori intuitable. Since the pure concepts are ‘those rules in which objectivity in general as preliminary horizon for the possible encountering of all objects is formed’ (KM 73, H 103), their pure schematisation by the transcendental imagination must occur in a peculiar pure look, a universal a priori image. According to Heidegger, the schema-image of the pure concept can no longer be the image of something in general, as is the case with the schematism of empirical concepts or that of the pure sensible, mathematical concepts. Only a pure universal intuition can offer the pure look for the rules of objectivity in general. Heidegger points

68  Roxana Baiasu out in his interpretation of the Aesthetic that time is the universal form of sensibility. As we have seen, in his view, the Deduction demonstrates the necessary connection between time and the pure concepts. Hence, only time as pure intuition can provide the pure schema-image for the pure concepts. Heidegger argues that, because time is, as Kant defines it, a ‘unique object’,22 ‘time is not only the necessary pure image of the schemata of the pure concepts of the understanding, but also their sole possibility of having a certain look’ (KM 73–74, H 104). Hence, according to Heidegger, the schemata of the pure concepts of the understanding must be, as Kant defines them, ‘a priori determinations of time according to rules’, which transform the unitary intuition of time into a multiplicity of temporal images corresponding to the categories. Let us note here a significant feature of the temporal schema of the pure concept as this emerges from Heidegger’s analysis. If the schema is the representation of the pure concept as a rule, the schema must have a universal rule character with regard to the a priori constitution of experience. The rule character of the transcendental schema can be understood as twofold. First, the transcendental schema regulates the a priori sensible presentation of the pure concept in the image of time.23 Second, the schema functions as a rule for the determination of a pure temporal image which makes the horizon of objectivity perceivable (KM 76, H 108). These two aspects of the schematism are essentially correlated in the formation of transcendence and, more specifically, of the possibility of encountering objects.24

3.  Heidegger’s Critique of the Schematism As mentioned previously, Heidegger’s interpretation in the Kant book is guided by an attempt to introduce his own ontological project by means of a positive reconstruction of the Kantian project, developed in his own terms. He only implicitly suggests certain limitations of the Kantian project. Heidegger’s criticisms of Kant are more explicit in Being and Time. I therefore refer to some relevant passages from this work.25 As we have seen, Heidegger defines the ontological formation of the possibility of objectivity that is produced by the transcendental schematism in terms of pure sensible presentation and time images. Heidegger characterises the transcendental imagination [Einbildungskraft] as ‘a faculty of forming’ [Vermögen des Bildens]26 or the ‘formative centre of ontological knowledge’.27 The ‘productivity’ [Produktivität] of imagination is manifest in the schematism, which shows in a far more original sense the ‘creative’ [schöpferische] essence of the power of imagination. Indeed, it is not ontically ‘creative’ at all, but [is creative] as a free forming of images. [. . .] In the Transcendental

Heidegger and Kant’s Schematism 69 Schematism, however, the power of imagination is originally pictorial [darstellend] in the pure image of time. (BT 93, H 132) Thus, according to Heidegger, the schematism forms the articulation of objectivity in a presentational manner through pure images of time. This presentational formation determines the scope of that which is formed as the scope of the possibility of appearances or representations. As Kant says, ‘appearances are not things in themselves, but rather the mere play of our representations, which in the end emerge from determinations of inner sense’.28 Heidegger suggests that, from the perspective of the ontology of Dasein, the scope of the Kantian ground-laying of metaphysics is narrow and not delineated in a fundamental way. This is still the case even if this citation is interpreted more originally in terms of the a priori play-space of transcendence, wherein ‘pure representations of objectivity as such have played up to one another’ (KM 138, H 198). The reason for this is that, for Heidegger, the original possibilities of transcendence exceed the sensible formation of objectivity. Heidegger’s view that the scope of Kantian metaphysics is ontologically narrow is also suggested by another structural feature of the Kantian ground-laying of metaphysics and, in particular, of the schematism, namely their formal character. Heidegger notes that the pure concepts of the understanding are conceived of not only as abstract notions but also as universal rules of thinking (judging) which rigidly determine representations and their play-space. In order to clarify this view of a restrictive, formal character of the transcendental schematism, let me begin by briefly considering Heidegger’s critique of Kant’s account of the Self as the ‘I think’ in Section 64 of Being and Time. Here Heidegger claims that, although Kant’s conception of the transcendental apperception goes beyond an ontical explanation, it does not raise the existential-­ ontological problem of Selfhood.29 In this context, Heidegger points out that the Kantian Self of the ‘I think’ is understood as the ‘logical subject’ and ‘the form of representation’, ‘the subject of the logical behaviour, of binding together: “I think” means “I bind together” ’ (BT 367, H 319). According to Heidegger, notwithstanding Kant’s rejection of the substantiality of the ‘I’ and ‘the genuine phenomenal starting-point’ of the ‘I think’’, Kant ‘has to fall back on the “subject”—that is to say, something substantial’ (BT 367, H 320). The reason for this is Kant’s failure to fully understand the ‘I think’ as an ‘I think something’. Heidegger argues that, although Kant emphasises the correlation between the ‘I think’ and appearances, he does not work out the ontology of the terms involved in this correlation. The ‘I think’, the ‘something’ and the relation between them remain ‘ontologically indefinite’. Kant did not see these items as belonging to an articulated whole which can be adequately understood

70  Roxana Baiasu only in terms of its existential-ontological framework and, in particular, in terms of our embeddedness in the world.30 In Heidegger’s reading, the ontological indefiniteness mentioned previously is a levelling off of Being. Heidegger refers to such a restrictive, formal approach in a different context with regard to the thesis that every subject is what it is only for an Object, and vice versa. But in this formal approach the terms thus correlated—like the correlation itself—remain ontologically indefinite. At the bottom, however, the whole correlation gets thought of as ‘somehow’ being, and must therefore be thought of with regard to some definite idea of Being. Of course, if the existential-ontological basis has been made secure beforehand by exhibiting Being-in-the-world, then this correlation is one that we can know later as a formalized relation, ontologically undifferentiated.31 Heidegger’s critique points out the narrow, formal, indefinite character of the Kantian conception of the ‘I think something’ and its failure to properly distinguish between different modes of Being. This critique is made from the perspective of the ontology of Dasein, the being whose basic state is that of Being-in-the-world, and which, as such, is defined by its factic, concrete existence which gets covered up by the notion of an ‘ideal subject’.32 Is not such a subject a fanciful idealisation? With such a conception have we not missed precisely the a priori character of that merely ‘factual’ subject, Dasein? [. . .] The ideas of a ‘pure I’ and of ‘consciousness in general’ are so far from including the a priori character of ‘actual’ subjectivity that the ontological character of Dasein’s facticity and its state of Being are either passed over or not seen at all. (BT 272, H 230) In relation to the transcendental schematism, the following question can now be addressed: if the formal framework of the ‘I think something’ delineates the scope of that which is formed in the schematism, how can the ontological indefiniteness and formalism that Heidegger assigns to the Kantian ‘I think something’ be revealed in a more basic manner at the level of the schematism of the universal rules of the understanding (thinking)? We have seen that, in Heidegger’s reading, the universal concepts of thinking cannot become operative unless they are made sensible through temporal schemata. Heidegger points out that the schemata, understood as a priori time determinations, arise from the form of time in accordance with the categories. Kant defines the schemata in accordance with the Table of Notions, which he presents by starting from the Table of

Heidegger and Kant’s Schematism 71 Judgements. In relation to this aspect of the transcendental schematism, Heidegger points to a limitation of Kant’s account of temporal schemata and their images: According to the four moments of the division of the categories (Quantity, Quality, Relation, Modality), the pure look of time must exhibit four possibilities of formability as ‘time-series, time-content, time-order, and time-inclusiveness’. These characters of time are not so much developed systematically through and out of an analysis of time itself, but instead are fixed in it ‘according to the order of the categories’.33 In Heidegger’s reading, the multiplicity of the formal schemata emerges from time, understood as a unique pure intuition, and in accordance with the categories, conceived of as the rules of objectivity in general. The transcendental schemata remain ontologically indefinite because Kant did not elaborate what Heidegger takes to be an original conception of time.34 On this account, the ontological indefiniteness of Kant’s project is ultimately understood in terms of temporal indefiniteness. In Heidegger’s view, Kant’s conception of time is deficient in the sense that it fails to grasp a fundamental, rich temporality and its multiple possibilities of self-temporalising which are characteristic of our mode of Being. From this perspective, the transcendental schemata, understood as determinations of time which are rules for the sensibilisation of the categories, are seen as temporally indefinite. In Heidegger’s view, the scope and originality of Kant’s ground-laying which is constituted by the schematism are not sufficiently inclusive and fundamental. The formation of the possibilities of the understanding is shaped by an indefinite, formal time characterised by an undifferentiated ‘temporalising’. The possibility of representations is formed through universal, formal schematic rules which constitute indefinite time determinations. These schematic rules prescribe in a strict way the pictorial sensibilisation of notions through temporal schema-images. The scope of the Kantian ground-laying of metaphysics appears to be abstract, formally delimited and restrictive. It is taken to miss the rich lived temporality of human existence. Heidegger’s criticism concerning the formality of the transcendental schematism is connected to another criticism he puts forward in relation to Kant’s conception of the transcendental schematism. This criticism is concerned with the issue of a metaphysical cut between the inner and the outer and the problem of the priority of the inner. As we have seen, Heidegger notes that the fixed multiplicity of the transcendental schemata emerges from time as a pure intuition. In the Transcendental Aesthetic, Kant defines the pure intuition of time as the form of inner sense. Heidegger questions this definition of time. He points out that, although

72  Roxana Baiasu Kant articulates it in terms of the universality of the scope of time, it presupposes a certain privilege of the inner. For Kant, as Heidegger notes, time as pure intuition is the immediate condition of possibility for inner appearances, and only in a mediate manner is it the sensible form of outer appearances, namely insofar as they are given to us as representations in the inner sense.35 In Being and Time, Heidegger offers a phenomenological critique of Kant’s ‘Refutation of Idealism’ which, in his view, is meant to offer a proof of the reality of the external world. Kant argues that consciousness of representations ‘in me’ establishes the reality of objects in space ‘outside me’, since consciousness of the changes of representations in me requires something permanent to be posited outside me.36 Heidegger writes that Kant develops his proof by starting with the empirically given changes ‘in me’. For only ‘in me’ is ‘time’ experienced, and time carries the burden of the proof. Time provides the basis for leaping off into what is ‘outside of me’ in the course of the proof. (BT 248, H 204) For Heidegger, Kant’s error is not that he makes a distinction between the ‘in me’ and the ‘outside me’.37 Heidegger indicates that a positive aspect of Kant’s discussion is that he thinks that the correlation between the ‘in me’ and the ‘outside me’ is to be approached in terms of time. As Heidegger sees it, Kant’s error begins with the ontological assumption of the priority, over the outer, of an isolated inner and of its temporal determination (BT 248, H 204). Heidegger argues that, because of the presupposition of a worldless subject which covers up Being-in-the-world, Kant holds an inadequate ontological conception of ‘the whole distinction between the “inside” and the “outside” and the whole connection between them’ (BT 249, H 205), and therefore he is ‘incorrect’ about them ‘from the standpoint of the tendency of his proof’38 as a proof of the reality of external world. Heidegger claims that Kant’s proof does not succeed in proving the ontological relation between subject and object, and the connection between the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’, but merely shows the necessary joint presence of the changing and the permanent: What Kant proves—if we may suppose that his proof is correct and correctly based—is that entities which are changing and entities which are permanent are necessarily present-at-hand together. But when two things which are present-at-hand are thus put on the same level, this does not as yet mean that subject and Object are present-at-hand together. (KM 248, H 204)

Heidegger and Kant’s Schematism 73 But if this proof is carried through ‘when one takes time as one’s clue’, the question of the correct basis for such a proof, to which Heidegger refers between dashes in the previous quote, has to be more fundamentally raised with regard to Kant’s conception of time. And, as Heidegger indicates, Kant talks here about the time of changing entities, the time of the succession of representations in an empirical consciousness. In the Kant book, Heidegger points out that Kant did not elaborate the problematic of time in an original manner, but he understood it in an ontologically derived way as a succession of nows. Heidegger notes that this formal, indefinite conception of time is based on a spatial model, the model of the space specific to sheer presence of objects, or what Heidegger calls ‘presence-at-hand’. Moreover, as Heidegger says, ‘space in a certain sense is always and necessarily equivalent to time so understood’.39 Such claims are more emphatically held by Heidegger in relation to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. Heidegger refers to Kant’s indication in a ‘General Note on the System of Principles’, a text added in the second edition, that space has a role to play in the transcendental schematism. In relation to this text, Heidegger makes a radical claim, namely that the inclusion of space undermines the ontological significance of the transcendental schematism, given the association of space with sheer presence. Heidegger also suggests that, despite the possibility of a more original interpretation of the first edition, even in this edition, the transcendental schematism can be read as involving space in the sense indicated above. In Kant’s Transcendental Imagination, Banham points out that the Transcendental Aesthetic already ‘show[s] the need to represent time spatially’40 in order for the experience of outer appearances to be possible. In a section on ‘Space and the Schematism’, Banham argues that the necessity of representing time spatially is reflected in the Schematism chapter. Interestingly, he notes that ‘the figuration of time in space’ would ‘threaten to resurrect Heidegger’s notion of a “schema-image” ’.41 Such an interpretation offers a way of making sense of Heidegger’s identification of a schema-image within the transcendental schematism as part of a critical engagement with Kant’s schematism. Banham’s reading of the schematism is not as critical of Heidegger’s interpretation as it might first appear. There are some important points of agreement between them, such as a claim concerning the important role of imagination. Also, they both agree that space is implicitly required by the transcendental schematism and is manifest in the ‘figuration of time in space’. For Heidegger, the problem of the relation between space and the transcendental schematism is not a peripheral one. This is suggested by Heidegger’s view of the three types of limitations of the transcendental schematism, which I have spelled out in this section. First, the spatial is manifest in the way in which the transcendental schematism involves a

74  Roxana Baiasu presentational formation of time images. More exactly, space shapes the sensible, presentational formation of the possibilities of objectivity and the scope of representations. Second, the space specific to sheer presence is involved in the reoccurrence of a metaphysical cut between the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’. This reinscription may be traced back to the priority of an ontological inner within the structure of time and subjectivity. These considerations can shed some light on Heidegger’s claim that, if the transcendental schematism involves the space specific to sheer presence, the schematism is ontologically inadequate. To sum up, the analysis has started by pointing out the centrality of the schematism in Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant. The problem of the transcendental schematism is, for Heidegger, the turning point from a reading of an ontologically deficient ground-laying of the possibility of metaphysics towards a more original interpretation oriented towards the project of fundamental ontology. The discussion offered here has, however, taken the opposite direction of interpreting and reconstructing certain aspects of Heidegger’s critical reading of Kant’s transcendental schematism. The main points of this critical reading concern first the notion of sensible presentation of the rules of intelligibility; second, the formality of the schematism, which, as we have seen, is connected with an ontological indefiniteness of the relation between subject and object, which is taken to be grounded in an undifferentiated notion of time; and third, a metaphysical cut between inner and outer. Heidegger’s identification of the limitations of Kant’s schematism in these terms is ultimately connected to his critical view of the role of space in the schematism. From this perspective, it can be said that, for Heidegger, the ontological significance of the schematism hinges on the elimination of references to the space characteristic of sheer presence; to the extent that the thinking of time and of the schematism involves spatial and representational articulations, the scope of the ontological ground-laying has not been thought through in an adequate manner. For Heidegger, a positive reappropriation of possibilities already sketched out in the Kantian project should overcome the difficulties and limitations of the transcendental schematism and thus reveal the ground of ontology in a primordial manner. This is what the project of fundamental ontology is set to undertake.

Notes 1 The following abbreviations have been used: BT = Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997); CPR = Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003; cited with the original pagination of the two editions, A and B); KM = Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. James Spencer Churchill (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997); Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Hermann (Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 1950; cited with the page numbers of the English edition, followed by the abbreviation ‘H’ and the page numbers of the original German edition).

Heidegger and Kant’s Schematism 75 2 KM xx, H xvii. See ibid., prefaces to the second and fourth editions. As Macann notes, ‘it was his intention to subject the Critical philosophy to an interpretative procedure which would make it possible for him to bring to light structures which match and reflect the fundamental structures of Being and Time’. However, Macann also makes a more contentious claim. He contends that Heidegger ‘never really acknowledges that this is what he is doing’ and that Heidegger would suggest that the ‘violence’ of his interpretation is legitimated by revealing ‘what Kant “intended to say” ’. See Christopher Macann, ‘Heidegger’s Kant Interpretation’, in Critical Heidegger, ed. Christopher Macann (London: Routledge, 1996), 103. See also Maria Villela-Petit, ‘Heidegger’s Conception of Space’, ibid., 137–138. 3 Otto Pöggeler, Martin Heidegger’s Path of Thinking, trans. Daniel Magurshak and Sigmund Barber (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1991), 62. 4 From this perspective, as William Richardson notes, ‘Heidegger’s problematic is nothing else than a re-trieve of Kant’s’ and, ‘because so profoundly a complement’ to Being and Time, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics ‘is therefore the best propaedeutic to it’. See William John Richardson, Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1963), 29. For the significance of Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics in relation to Being and Time and the comparison between Heidegger’s and Husserl’s phenomenologies in relation to Kant’s transcendental philosophy, see Richard Palmer, ‘Husserl’s Debate with Heidegger in the Margins of Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics’, Man and World, 30 (1997), n. 1, 5–33, esp. 8ff. This article was initially intended as an introduction to Palmer’s translation of Husserl’s marginal remarks on Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Husserl read Heidegger’s book on Kant a few weeks after its publication. His marginal comments appeared only in 1994 in the Husserl Studies and were published in English in Psychological and Transcendental Phenomenology and the Confrontation with Heidegger: The Encyclopaedia Britannica Article, The Amsterdam Lectures, ‘Phenomenology and Anthropology’, and Husserl’s Marginal Notes in ‘Being and Time’ and ‘Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics’, ed. Thomas Sheehan and Richard Palmer (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997). 5 Paul Ricoeur, A l’école de la phénoménologie (Paris: Vrin, 1987). 6 BT 64, H 40. See also ibid., Section 6 (‘The Task of Destroying the History of Ontology’), and Heidegger’s Preface to the first edition of Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. As Eva Schaper notes, Heidegger offers a radical development of Kant’s insight in the schematism, namely that ‘human nature includes temporality’. See Eva Schaper, ‘Kant’s Schematism Reconsidered’, Review of Metaphysics, 18 (1964), 281. 7 KM xix, H xvi. Richardson notes that, although the Kant book was published after Being and Time, it ‘was conceived beforehand (1925) and intended as the first section of Sein und Zeit, Part II’ (Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought, 28). However, Heidegger indicates that the articulation of the interpretation in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics is different from the initial plan of interpretation designed for Being and Time. As Heidegger notes in the Preface to the first edition, his ‘interpretation of the Critique of the Pure Reason arose in connection with a first working-out of Part Two of Being and Time. [. . .] In Part Two of Being and Time, the theme of the following investigation was treated on the basis of a more comprehensive manner of questioning. By contrast, a progressive interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason was rejected there’ (KM xix, H xvi). 8 KM 35–36, H 50–51. As Sherover points out, Heidegger insists that the Aesthetic ‘can only be regarded as an introductory statement, that it cannot be taken as a self-contained discussion legitimately examined by itself’, although the interpretation of the Aesthetic guides Heidegger’s analysis. See Charles

76  Roxana Baiasu Sherover, Heidegger, Kant and Time (Washington, DC: Centre for Advanced Research in Phenomenology and University Press of America, 1988), 52. 9 According to Heidegger, ‘the finitude of thinking intuition is therefore a knowing through concepts; pure knowing is pure intuition through pure concepts’ (KM 36, H 51–52). Heidegger emphasises the distinctive active character of the pure concepts conceived of as pure notions, namely the act of ‘reflecting unifying’ (KM 36 ff., H 54ff). According to Heidegger, the understanding of pure concepts as notions reveals only part of the essence of the pure concepts. What is decisive is their relation to pure intuition, which is established in the schematism. 10 See Alphonse de Waelhens and Walter Biemel, ‘Introduction’, in Martin Heidegger, Kant et le problème de la métaphysique, trans. Alphonse de Waelhens and Walter Biemel (Paris: Gallimard, 1953), 27. 11 ‘[T]his pure schematism, which is grounded in the pure power of imagination, constitutes precisely the original Being of the understanding, the “I think substance”, etc. As representing which forms spontaneously, the apparent achievement of the pure understanding in the thinking of the unities is a pure basic act of the transcendental power of imagination. [. . .] Now if Kant calls this pure, self-orienting, self-relating-to . . ., “our thought”, then ‘thinking’ this thought is no longer called judging, but is thinking in the sense of the free forming, and projecting (although not arbitrary) “conceiving” of something. This original “thinking” is pure imagining’ (KM 106, H 151). 12 See ibid., Section 33, where Heidegger argues that the ontological synthesis of imagination is rooted in primordial temporality, which is also the condition of possibility of time, as Kant would have understood it. 13 KM 141, H 202. Heidegger contends that since temporality also determines the transcendental Self, this shows in a decisive manner that temporality is, in the most fundamental sense, constitutive for the structure of subjectivity. Hence, according to Heidegger’s original interpretation, ontological knowledge, the Being of the Self and their essential relation are made possible by temporality. 14 See Macann, ‘Heidegger’s Kant Interpretation’, 108. 15 See John Sallis, Echoes: After Heidegger (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 109. Philipse also indicates that ‘in Heidegger’s hands, Kant’s transcendental imagination becomes Dasein’s projective understanding’. See Herman Philipse, Heidegger’s Philosophy of Being: A Critical Interpretation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 124. As Heidegger writes, ‘in the end, what has hitherto been known as the transcendental power of imagination is broken up into more original ‘possibilities’ so that by itself the designation ‘power of imagination’ becomes inadequate’ (KM 98, H 140). Sallis draws attention to this inadequacy of the Kantian notion for Heidegger’s ontological project (Echoes, 108–109, 111). However, Sallis suggests the possibility of a delimitation in relation to fundamental ontology, a delimitation which involves a ‘reinscription of imagination’. 16 ‘Transcendence is formed in the making-sensible of pure concepts. [. . .] The pure making-sensible occurs as “Schematism” ’ (KM 64, H 91). 17 Gary Banham, Kant’s Transcendental Imagination (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 162. 18 CPR A140/B179, quoted in KM 68, H 97. 19 Ibid. In the context of his interpretation of the schematism of mathematical concepts, Heidegger writes: ‘This schema-image, then, within its restriction comes closer to the unity of the concept; with this greater breadth it comes closer to the universality of this unity. But as always, the image still has the appearance of an individual, while the schema has the unity of a

Heidegger and Kant’s Schematism 77 universal rule governing many possible presentations “as its intention” ’ (KM 70, H 99). 20 For the distinction between schema and schema-image in relation to the schematism of empirical concepts, see KM 69, H 97–98; in relation to the schematism of pure sensible, mathematical concepts, see KM 70, H 99; and in relation to the transcendental schematism, see KM 73, H 103. 21 Banham, Kant’s Transcendental Imagination, 162. 22 CPR A31/B47, quoted in KM 73, H 104. 23 ‘The schematism of the pure concepts of the understanding, therefore, must necessarily regulate these [concepts] internally in time’ (KM 73, H 104). 24 ‘This schematism forms transcendence a priori and hence is called “transcendental schematism” ’ (KM 74, H 105). 25 As has been noted previously, in Being and Time, Heidegger notes that the task of his destruction of Kant’s doctrine of the schematism is undertaken from the perspective of the problematic of the Temporality of Being. He indicates that such a task involves a demonstration of ‘why this area is one which had to remain closed off to him [Kant] in its real dimensions and its central ontological function. Kant himself was aware that he was venturing into an area of obscurity’ (BT 45, H 23). 26 BT 91, H 129. See also BT 64, H 90. 27 See ibid., Section 26, entitled ‘The Formative Centre of Ontological Knowledge as Transcendental Power of Imagination’ [Die bildende Mitte der ontologischen Erkenntnis als transzendentale Einbildungskraft]. 28 CPR A101, quoted in KM 138, H 198. Heidegger gives this quotation in the context of his original interpretation of Kant’s ground-laying in Part Three of the Kant book in order to show how the Kantian ground-laying in its originality is made possible by fundamental ontology. As I have indicated previously, the analysis developed here does not take this direction of Heidegger’s positive progressive interpretation, but moves regressively towards Heidegger’s provisional reading of Kant. 29 See BT, Section 64 (‘Care and Selfhood’). In note xvi, Heidegger refers to Part Three of the Kant book. As Robinson and Macquarrie indicate, this note replaces the following note in the earlier editions, referring to the unpublished analysis of Kant’s schematism in Being and Time: ‘The first division of the second part of this treatise will bring the concrete ­phenomenologico-critical analysis of transcendental apperception and its ontological significance’ (BT 496). In Part Three of the book on Kant, Heidegger reconstructs the Self as apperception in terms of time understood in an original, existential manner. See esp. KM, Section 34. Since this account belongs to what Heidegger takes to be his original interpretation of the Kantian ground-­laying, the critical dimension of Heidegger’s reading of the problematic of the ‘I think’ is, in this context, overcome for the sake of the re-articulation of the Self from the perspective of the radical thinking of fundamental ontology. Therefore, a discussion of Heidegger’s account of the Self in the Kant book cannot provide a useful textual basis for the purpose of the current exposition. Instead, we can turn towards the critical analysis offered in Being and Time. However, as Richardson points out, even in the Kant book, Heidegger indicates that ‘time, as self-affection, and transcendental apperception are both called stehend und bleibend (stable and abiding)’. Richardson notes that the static character of the Kantian notion of the self is criticised in Being and Time as having Cartesian, ­present-at-hand determinations. See William Richardson, ‘Kant and the Late Heidegger’, in Phenomenology in America, ed. James Edie (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1967), 128.

78  Roxana Baiasu 30 With regard to Kant’s ‘ontologically indefinite’ conception of the ‘I think something’, of the relation between subject and appearances, Heidegger writes: ‘Even the “I think something” is not definite enough ontologically as a starting-point, because the something remains indefinite. [. . .] Kant did not see the phenomenon of the world, and was consistent enough to keep the “representations” apart from the a priori content of the “I think”. But as a consequence, the “I” was forced back to an isolated subject, accompanying representations in a way which is ontologically quite indefinite’ (BT 368, H 321). This can provide a clue to Heidegger’s claim concerning the two main reasons for the impossibility in the Critique of Pure Reason of an original conception of time and of the temporality of Being: ‘In the first place, he altogether neglected the problem of Being; and, in connection with this, he failed to provide an ontology with Dasein as its theme or (to put this in Kantian language) to give a preliminary ontological analytic of the subjectivity of the subject’ (BT 45, H 24, emphasis added). 31 BT 252, H 208. This passage appears in a subsection where Heidegger discusses Kant’s ‘Refutation of Idealism’. I come back to this discussion subsequently. 32 BT 272, H 231. In the context of his discussion of the conception of the truth of knowledge, on which I do not elaborate here, Heidegger raises the question of Dasein’s facticity in relation to the ‘philosophy’ of the a priori, and the ‘ideal subject’. Otto Pöggeler expresses some aspects of what I spell out here in terms of Heidegger’s perception of the restrictive formality of Kant’s thinking as follows: ‘Kant calls pure thinking, the I, “permanent” and “abiding”; he describes time in the same way. He thinks—like metaphysics in ­general—in terms of the permanent and abiding presence, but he does not think this presence in accordance with its complete temporal character [. . .]. Kant does not grasp the transcendental I as factical, essentially temporal existence’ (Martin Heidegger’s Path of Thinking, 65). 33 KM 74, H 105, with quotations from CPR A145/B184–185 and italics by Heidegger. 34 See KM 140, H 105; BT 45, H 24. 35 Heidegger suggests that this definition is problematic in KM 34, H 48–49. In Being and Time, he opposes it explicitly. See BT 471, H 419. 36 CPR B275, quoted in BT 247, H 203. Although from a different perspective, the significance of Kant’s ‘Refutation of Idealism’ for phenomenology is emphasised by Ricoeur. In relation to Kant’s passage at B275, Ricoeur states that this passage offers ‘a definition of intentionality avant la lettre’ (A l’école de la phénoménologie, 235). 37 ‘Kant presupposes both the distinction between the “in me” and the “outside me”, and also the connection between these; factically he is correct in doing so’ (BT 248, H 204). 38 BT 248, H 204. See also Pöggeler, Martin Heidegger’s Path of Thinking, 65. 39 BT 140, H 200. The relation between the concepts of space and time with regard to Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant’s schematism requires a more detailed treatment, which cannot be provided here. 40 Banham, Kant’s Transcendental Imagination, 163. 41 Ibid.

4 On Affective Universality Kant, Arendt and Lyotard on Sensus Communis Andrea Rehberg

Affectivity has generally been considered an obstacle to the pursuit of truth, knowledge and the good, both in the individual and in the community, throughout the history of Western philosophy. This is most starkly exemplified by what is arguably one of the founding texts of Western metaphysics, namely Plato’s Republic, in which affectivity, feeling and desire are portrayed as detrimental to the project of establishing a just individual in a just society, to such an extent that they should even be purged from the realm of art, just as the poets who overindulge in them should be banished from the kallipolis that is to be established. More generally, it is not just affectivity per se but the entire nexus comprising the body, the senses, emotions and desires that has tended to be defamed, disparaged and denigrated in the Western philosophical tradition understood as Platonism, thereby paving the way for the systematic vilification of this entire nexus by Christianity. In other words, affectivity, this essential dimension of human existence, has been not just sidelined but effectively excluded from what was considered the legitimate space of philosophy, dominated as it was by the belief in pure thought, pure reason and pure cognition. It is only with Schopenhauer, and above all with Nietzsche, that the slow, gradual rehabilitation of all aspects of bodily being in thought can be seen to get underway. Although Schopenhauer’s thought for the first time in modernity systematically takes the profound effects of our bodily being on our epistemological, existential and artistic projects into account, this is there still wedded to an entirely negative evaluative stance, according to which desiring equals suffering, such that one of the most basic assumptions of the Platonic-Christian tradition is clandestinely reaffirmed. It is only in the work of Nietzsche that the elision of all aspects of our bodily being from the space of thought is not only remedied (as it also is in Schopenhauer’s philosophy) but is at the same time and for the first time joined to a comprehensive re-evaluation of the respective values of the human cognitive and affective capacities. And it is only in this thoroughgoing re-evaluation that the philosophical rehabilitation of bodily being finds its culmination, from which there open up the multiple

80  Andrea Rehberg paths into psychoanalysis, feminism and all other philosophies of the body that distinguish twentieth-century thought from that of the earlier Western philosophical tradition, whilst also emerging from out of it to an extent. Put differently, in the thought of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and also—at least up to a point—Heidegger, despite the significant differences between them, the central importance of the pre-conscious, pre-cognitive and pre-theoretical aspects of human existence is being (re-)established. These developments have allowed us to become attuned to the undeniably central significance of the affective dimensions of our being and to the exigency of their reincorporation into the body of thought that both shapes and expresses our culture. So much for the historical context—at least in its broad and somewhat schematic strokes—within which the following reflections occur. But what is most remarkable, and what may perhaps be rather unexpected to anyone who is generally accustomed to hermeneutic orthodoxy, is that Kant can arguably be seen as an important precursor of this long, slow movement of the philosophical convalescence of our affective life and that it is in certain aspects of the Critique of Judgement1 that this is being foreshadowed, if not even prepared. More specifically, it is by according the feeling of pleasure or displeasure the status of a power or faculty of the soul (Gemütsvermögen) and thereby crediting it with a (broadly speaking) constitutive capacity for a certain type of judgement that Kant can be seen to contribute to the change of perspective charted previously. The reason this is remarkable and perhaps unexpected is of course that Kant is often depicted, if usually by non-specialists, as an arch-rationalist, that is, a thinker for whom reason is the highest and most central human capacity. Although it is undoubtedly the case that Kant did valorise theoretical and especially practical reason above all other human powers, this neither detracts from nor rules out the fact that Kant was not blind to the importance of, broadly speaking, non- or prerational factors and the way they can and do affect the judging subject. Apart from the general yet fundamental rediscovery of the (in the nontechnical sense) constitutive role played by affective life in the formation of the subject’s—facultatively predetermined—relations with its world, a number of concrete textual moments in the Critique of Judgement can be pointed to in which Kant specifically and in some detail discusses how this affectivity plays itself out. The key textual instances here are the second and fourth Moments of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement as well as the Deduction of Pure Aesthetic Judgements, all of which will be discussed in the following. The idea that Kant’s text moves towards, which eventually emerges in an explicit manner and which, it is my claim, acts as the main focal point of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement is that of sensus communis. This idea has given rise to a great deal of discussion in the literature, but the pinnacle of this discussion is, to my mind, to be found in the work of Lyotard. Hannah Arendt’s unearthing of this issue

On Affective Universality 81 also provides an important staging-post, so, despite the radical differences between her and Lyotard’s interpretations, it will also be considered. This foray into their work is necessitated by the fact that it opens up a vista for how Kant’s thought can be explored within and adapted to twentieth-century contexts and concerns, especially pertaining to the question of how the space of the political can be projected. As is only to be expected, there are a host of technical issues, questions and often thorny problems surrounding the Critique of Judgement, such as its role in Kant’s critical system, the relation between its parts, that is, the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement and the Critique of Teleological Judgement, the relevance of the categorial framework to the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement and so on. Here only one small segment of the text, namely the part played by aesthetic judgement in the life of the subject, and the implications of this for a thought of the political, will be discussed. Needless to say, the secondary literature on any aspect of the Critique of Judgement is vast and, for the most part, cannot be taken into consideration here for reasons of space. What will therefore be completely bracketed out are questions concerning the overall coherence of Kant’s critical system and the bridging function of the third Critique in it, since such questions would extend this chapter beyond all reasonable limits. Also, for the sake of thematic coherence and textual concision, the discussion will be restricted to judgements of taste on the beautiful, since the other articulation of judgements of taste, namely judgements of taste on the sublime, whilst important in their own right,2 would unnecessarily complicate the discussion and since the latter type of judgement does not immediately concern the issues under discussion here, that is, those related to the idea of sensus communis. By contrast, Gary Banham, in his first monograph, Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics, as the title clearly indicates, concentrates on the manifold senses of the concept of ‘end’ in the Critique of Judgement and at the same time teases out the political implications of this concept and relates it to a wide range of Kant’s texts, both critical and doctrinal. In addition, he shows how the third Critique fits into the critical system, and he does so by emphasising the role of what he calls an ‘overall’ or ‘general aesthetic’ (KEA 33) spanning the three Critiques and giving coherence to them. In this project, Banham is greatly served by his comprehensive knowledge of Kant’s texts and in particular by his in-depth understanding of the critical system. That he also takes important readers of Kant such as Lyotard into consideration only enhances the appeal of his text. To be more specific, Banham chisels out three senses of the term ‘end’ at work in the third Critique: first, as limit; second, as purpose and third, as conclusion or destination (KEA 2–9). This focus allows him to develop a reading of Kant which, as he says, ‘unites many otherwise disparate inquiries and which provides us with a new sense of the unity of the

82  Andrea Rehberg Critical endeavour’ (KEA 2) in terms of these teloi. This is, of course, an important contribution to Kant scholarship and helps both novice readers of Kant and more experienced interpreters to appreciate the complexity of Kant’s critical project. However, in this chapter, as already indicated, I would like to take up an issue on which Banham touches in Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics but which he does not choose to develop, namely the affective wellspring of not just reflective but also, implicitly, constitutive judgement. Admittedly, attention to this facet of Kant’s thought is neither interpretatively orthodox nor hermeneutically uncontroversial, but then careful readers of Kant such as Lyotard and Banham himself have more than gestured in this direction, so that this perhaps rather unorthodox approach might be understood as an extension of aspects of their thought. Moreover, and this is where I differ most sharply from Banham, perhaps Kant’s claim to the coherence of the critical system is at least problematic, if not altogether unwarranted, not of course due to any oversights or mistakes on Kant’s part, but simply because, in my view, the coherence said to attach to systematicity is always, necessarily and in principle illusory since it is based on a prior model of reality which omits taking account of the hiatuses and lacunae that co-constitute it. In other words, I share the conviction that the modern belief in conceptual systematicity as adequately reflecting reality (a belief to be found not only in Kant’s work but also in Hegel’s and that of the other German Idealists) must be displaced by the post-modern insight into the essentially fragmented, at bottom incoherent and ultimately abyssal nature of the real. This qualification of course in no way invalidates Kant’s critical work as a whole (or any text dealing with it) but merely shifts the emphasis from the aspect of it on which Banham focuses (its systematic coherence) to that which forms the topic of this chapter and which I thematise under the heading of affectivity, thereby foregrounding the chasms rather than the continuities in Kant’s critical thought.

1. Kant on Aesthetic Reflective Judgement on the Beautiful Each of the three Critiques on its own terrain (the theoretical, practical and aesthetic-teleological, respectively) is devoted to examining the question of how synthetic a priori judgements are possible and on which faculties and principles they are based in each case.3 In fact, it is this question which provides the motivation for each of the three Critiques,4 and so at the beginning of the Critique of Judgement, Kant asks—if somewhat rhetorically—whether ‘[the faculty of] judgement [. . .] also [has] a priori principles of its own’,5 a question which is only finally, explicitly resolved in the Deduction of Pure Aesthetic Judgements.6 Broadly speaking, a judgement is synthetic a priori if it combines material gleaned by

On Affective Universality 83 sensibility (itself structured according to the a priori forms of intuition, namely space and time) with conceptual forms organising this material according to a priori (necessary and universal) structures of thought. In other words, synthetic a priori judgements are expressions of the mind’s encounter with the world in accordance with certain of its, the mind’s, regularities common to all judging subjects.7 What is to be emphasised here is that, at least in the order of time, the judging subject must first of all be affected by aspects of the world before the formation of judgements about those aspects can proceed.8 The need for a Critique of Aesthetic Judgement on one level arises from the realisation on Kant’s part that theoretical and practical judgements do not exhaust the entire sphere of the human capacity to judge but that we also respond to certain givens in nature and art (that we deem beautiful) in necessary and universal ways, meaning that we also make synthetic a priori judgements on them. The first Book of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, concerned with the Analytic of the Beautiful, must therefore establish the a priori features of an aesthetic reflective judgement on the beautiful made by the judging subject in its9 encounter with those phenomena it regards as beautiful. It is one of Kant’s most fundamental insights that apriority rests with those features of the understanding, namely the categories, which both formally derive from10 and ultimately enable the formation of judgements (CPR A148/B187-A235/B294). This is why Kant—if not uncontroversially so11—uses the table of categories familiar from the first Critique to also structure the Analytic of the Beautiful according to the four Moments of, in this case, Quality, Quantity, Relation and Modality. But, as always, before the categories can be applied, their material has to be given, and so in this case, too, the singular, beautiful phenomenon must first be given or presented.12 But, and this is the first13 of several crucial differences between the application of the faculties to a given as described in the first and in the third Critique, in the latter the given of intuition as presented in imagination is not subsumed under a determinate concept of the understanding. Instead, both these faculties are said to be ‘in free play’, meaning that they interact in such a way that they ‘refer a given presentation to cognition in general’ (CJ §9, 62). They do so in a way that Kant describes in the following terms: ‘the mental state in this presentation must be a feeling, accompanying the given presentation, of a free play of the presentational powers directed to cognition in general’.14 This feeling is one of ‘pleasure in the harmony of the cognitive powers’ (imagination and understanding, CJ §9, 62), yet without issuing in a concept that would determine the given object and that would thereby terminate the free play stimulated by the object. This pleasure enhances the subject’s ‘feeling of life’ (CJ §1, 44) and registers a ‘quickening’ or animation [Belebung] of its faculties (CJ §9, 63). It is at bottom this pleasure which registers with the judging

84  Andrea Rehberg subject in such a way that it feels compelled to ascribe a, as it were, corresponding attribute to the given object, which is hence called beautiful. In other words, we attribute beauty to a given object as if it were an objectively determinable characteristic of the given phenomenon,15 when in fact all we do is register this intellectual, if very fundamental, pleasure in the joyfully free interaction of our presentational faculties. Parenthetically, it should be remarked that in Kant’s critical thought, ‘subjective’ can have two very different senses, namely either referring to the fundamental constitution of the faculties and their interaction in a judgement and what is therefore transcendental, hence to do with what is common to all judging subjects, or, on the other hand, to what concerns only my individual, private, empirical being, that is, what is commonly meant by ‘subjective’. We might speak of the transcendentally subjective and the privately subjective, respectively, a parlance that will be adopted throughout this chapter. In addition to the two previously mentioned fundamental features of aesthetic judgement, namely that it merely registers transcendentally subjective, facultative pleasure (rather than being objective) and that it is aesthetic and not cognitive (CJ §1, 44), that is, reflective and not determinative, subjectively and not objectively valid, such a judgement must also be free of interest, since this would mean its shading or even wholly turning into either a judgement on the agreeable or a judgement on the good. The former would be privately subjective, merely stating ultimately incommunicable preferences related to my particular sense organs, whereas the latter would involve the interests of practical reason and thereby also fall outside the realm of the aesthetic.16 Only an aesthetic reflective judgement free of all interest can elevate me above the narrow circumference of my private liking for this or that kind of material being. As Kant puts it in what is, for him, an unusually polemical tone: ‘Many things may be charming and agreeable to [the private individual]: no one cares about that. But if [the judging subject] proclaims something beautiful, then [it] requires the same liking from others; [it] then judges not just for [itself] but for everyone’.17 For the same reason, namely to ensure that the condition of—albeit non-conceptual—universalisability is fulfilled, the pleasure I take in the beautiful presentation must exclusively concern its form and must not be distracted by its matter or the charm and emotion it may exert on me in my privately subjective capacity (CJ §§13, 14, 31, 38). A crucial step in the Analytic of the Beautiful occurs in the second Moment (of Quantity), where Kant introduces the requirement of subjective universality. This may at first sight appear to be a contradiction in terms, since anything that is subjective—as long as we mean by this privately subjective—seems to militate against the attribution of universality to it. But precisely here is where the difference (which remains inexplicit in the Critique of Judgement) between the privately subjective and the

On Affective Universality 85 transcendentally subjective comes in. For it is, in fact, exclusively the latter which admits of universality, since it is only this transcendental constitution that is shared among all judging subjects, whereas the former from the beginning isolates me from all other judging subjects, in Kant’s view. A problem arises through a further requirement made of aesthetic reflective judgement on the beautiful, namely that (as already mentioned) it proceed without determinate concepts, which by definition grant objective universality to the judgements made using them. But, as Kant explains, if my judgement on the beautiful is free of all interest, this indicates that it is precisely not hampered by ‘any private conditions’, so that I ‘must regard it as based on what [I] can presuppose in everyone else as well’, namely the identical facultative constitution (CJ §6, 54). This is the reason I can ascribe subjective universality to my aesthetic judgements as long as they are genuinely free of interest, and so the quantity of (albeit only subjective) universality follows by necessity from the quality of the aesthetic judgement being without interest. If the free play of the faculties of cognition, imagination and understanding, in the encounter with a certain type of ‘beautiful’ presentation, marks the, in the order of importance, first step towards the idea of sensus communis in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, then this requirement of subjective universality marks the second step towards the same goal. And if I claim subjective universality for my aesthetic judgement, this means that I expect everyone else to feel the same pleasure (in the free play of the faculties) when confronted by the beautiful presentation that stirred the faculties into their free activity in this particular case that I have marked with my aesthetic reflective judgement. A key point to remember in this context is that it is not the case that everyone does always actually, empirically agree with my aesthetic reflective judgements on the beautiful but merely that I harbour the a priori expectation that they should. So, although empirically, agreement with my aesthetic reflective judgements is withheld often enough, Kant agrees that it is strange that ‘the taste of reflection should nonetheless find itself able [. . .] to conceive of judgements that can demand such agreement [. . .] from everyone for each of its judgements’ (CJ §8, 58). He solves this puzzle by reminding us that what is disputed (in the case of actual disagreement) is not whether this expectation is warranted (it always is) but how to apply it in a particular, that is, empirical case (CJ §8, 58). In this sense, the conundrum of application mirrors that of the faculty of judgement per se, which does not provide either form or material for judgements but merely shows how the former should be applied to the latter. What is also important to remember is the difference between judgements that are objectively universally valid and those that are only subjectively so, since the former imply the latter but not vice versa (CJ §8, 58). The key difference between them is that objectively universally valid judgements rest on the concept of the object, ‘considered in its entire

86  Andrea Rehberg logical sphere’ (CJ §8, 59), whereas subjectively universally valid judgements merely extend the predicate of beauty (without a concept) to the entire sphere of judging subjects, meaning we demand the same attribution of that predicate to that object of everyone. But if we were to extend this type of judgement to all objects of that kind (e.g., ‘all flowers are beautiful’), we would turn it from an aesthetic into a logical judgement based on an aesthetic one (CJ §8, 59). However, as Kant says in a noteworthy manner, as if he considered logical statements of a lesser kind than aesthetic reflective ones, ‘if we judge objects merely [bloß] in terms of concepts [. . .] we lose all presentation of beauty’.18 So no prior rule (on a par with the rule for subsumption expressed in a concept) and no abstract argument can compel me to find something beautiful. Only my own judgement, when confronted with the form of the singular object given to sensation, can lead to such an assessment (CJ §8, 59). And yet, says Kant in one of the, for us, most significant points in the text, ‘if [I] then call the object beautiful, [I] believe [I] have a universal voice, and lay claim to the agreement of everyone’.19 Now, this postulation20 of a universal voice (which is only an idea)21 that proceeds without being based on concepts constitutes the third key step towards the idea of sensus communis and in fact foreshadows it significantly, since it puts my aesthetic reflective judgement in relation to an abstract, non-empirical (and even empirically unrealisable) ideal community of judging subjects, for all of whom I claim to speak in my aesthetic reflective judgement. These reflections in the second Moment of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement culminate in the question of whether it is the universal communicability of, or the pleasure registered in, an aesthetic reflective judgement on the beautiful that has (logical) priority. Kant accords the solution to this problem such importance that he calls it ‘the key to the critique of taste’ (CJ §9, 61). If the pleasure in the judgement came first, it would be the kind of pleasure which exceeds all universalisability, but the only pleasure of that sort Kant allows for is the pleasure in the agreeableness (of the sensation, the matter) of the object, which, as we have already seen, in no way admits of universality, since it only concerns the privately subjective aspects of my existence. Hence it must be its universal communicability which precedes the pleasure in an aesthetic judgement and in fact contributes to this pleasure (CJ §9, 61). But what this universal communicability takes pleasure in communicating is ‘nothing other than the mental state [. . .] in the relation between the presentational powers insofar as they refer a given presentation to cognition in general’ (CJ §9, 61f.). In actual fact, then, it is not so much an either-or between universal communicability and pleasure as concerns their precedence but a certain circularity involving the free play of the two faculties and the communicability of this mental state,22 such that without the pleasure in the faculties’ free play, there is nothing to communicate, but without

On Affective Universality 87 the condition of communicability being fulfilled, there is no genuinely facultative pleasure. In this context, Kant makes the important point that all cognition (‘cognition in general’), including cognition proper or cognition in the narrow sense of the word (involving determinate concepts), is based on the harmonious interplay between imagination and understanding, or what he calls their ‘proportioned attunement [proportionierte Stimmung]’.23 As he puts it, ‘cognition always rests on that relation as its subjective condition’,24 a relation that, when felt without any conceptual overlay (such as occurs both in theoretical and practical judgements), gives rise to a considerable pleasure. What he thereby seems to imply is that in aesthetic reflective judgement, we, as it were, dig down to and, importantly, affectively get in touch with the most fundamental condition of all cognitive judgements, namely that which is fulfilled when imagination and understanding harmonise with each other before their free play is terminated by the imposition of a determinate concept. This impression is confirmed when Kant speaks of the feeling of the ‘quickening [Belebung]’25 of the two powers in their indeterminate interplay, which can be understood as a vitalising sensation that not only involves the two faculties concerned but the entire judging subject, intensifying its feeling of life. The wider implication of this is that aesthetic judgement is not, as might have been thought, some later, perhaps even slightly frivolous, adjunct or supplement to the serious business of (theoretical or practical) judgements but that it expresses their fundamental condition of possibility, namely the free relation between the two faculties or, more precisely, the universal communicability of the pleasure we take in the free play of imagination and understanding when faced with the form of a given object that incites them to this free play. Last, on this issue, it is the fact (or rather the founding assumption of Kant’s critical work) that the faculties and their manner of interaction are the same in all judging subjects that allow me to postulate the universal communicability of my aesthetic reflective judgement and to expect everyone’s assent with my judgements of this type, even though they are not based on determinate concepts and thus are not objectively universally valid. This train of thought is continued and in fact pursued to its (as I claim) ultimate ground, namely the sensus communis, in the fourth Moment of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement.26 This deals with the modality of an aesthetic reflective judgement and hence with the question of whether the modal status of the pleasure to which it gives voice is that of possibility, actuality or necessity. To emphasise, it is not the judgement itself whose modal status is being discussed but only that of the pleasure registered in it. Kant avers that any presentation may be connected with pleasure; aesthetic judgements of sense, that is, those on the agreeable, are actually connected with pleasure; but only in aesthetic reflective judgement is there necessarily pleasure (CJ §18, 85). However, this pleasure can

88  Andrea Rehberg certainly not lay claim to the same kind of binding necessity as does any cognitive, conceptually based judgement which can assert either theoretical or practical objective necessity. Instead, to it there attaches only ‘exemplary’ necessity (CJ §18, 85), meaning that its claim to necessity is merely grounded in the assent expected of every judging subject, to whose assent it appeals. Thus, as with universality, so with necessity: its scope is merely subjective, that is, concerning the entirety of judging subjects, and not objective, that is, based on concepts. Also, importantly, this necessity cannot be based on empirical factors, which in this case would be everyone’s actual agreement with my aesthetic reflective judgements, first because experience tells us that others’ agreement is not always forthcoming, but also simply because necessity can never be derived from merely empirical elements.27 Put differently, I demand that everyone ought to agree with my judgement, even though in fact they don’t always, and perhaps even never, do so (CJ §19, 86). Since this is one of the crucial points in Kant’s characterisation of aesthetic reflective judgement on the beautiful and also of central importance to this discussion, it is worth quoting how Kant introduces the idea of sensus communis: judgements of taste [. . .] must have a subjective principle, which determines only by feeling rather than by concepts, though nonetheless with universal validity, what is liked [. . .] Such a principle [. . .] could only be regarded as a common sense [. . .] [sensus communis] [. . .] Only under the presupposition [Voraussetzung] [. . .] that there is a common sense (by which [. . .] we [. . .] mean the effect arising from the free play of our cognitive powers) [. . .] can [reflective] judgements of taste be made.28 This, then, is the principle underlying all aesthetic reflective judgements into which Kant was rhetorically enquiring in the Preface to the Critique of Judgement and which now turns out to be the sensus communis. What he means by this, I believe, is that we must assume such a sense for a community of, literally, like-minded subjects, access to which community we only have affectively, by means of a feeling or a sensus communis, rather than cognitively, by means of concepts. I feel the pleasure in the harmonious interaction of the faculties and I feel that this must be the same for the entirety of judging subjects, to which plenum I feel myself to belong. To recap, the sensus communis is based on feeling, not on concepts; hence, it is only subjectively, not objectively, universal; it is not based on experience but postulates an ought (everyone ought to agree with my aesthetic reflective judgement); it does not claim to predict anything empirical (not: everyone will agree with my judgement); the necessity it expresses is exemplary, not objective. Finally, though, the sensus communis, like the universal voice that prefigures it, can only have the status of an idea (‘a mere ideal standard’)29 that we must presuppose to guide our

On Affective Universality 89 judgements of taste. At the end of the fourth Moment, Kant underlines the importance of the sensus communis by saying that his task in the Analytic of the Beautiful has been ‘to analyse the power of taste into its elements and to unite these ultimately [zuletzt] in the idea of a common sense’.30 In other words, all the features of the judgement of taste are finally united in the idea of a sensus communis, the idea of the universal communicability or universalisability of our (pre- or non-cognitive) aesthetic judgements, so that the sensus communis can be understood not just as the end-point but as the culmination and focal point of the Analytic of the Beautiful. Last in this section, we briefly turn to the Deduction of Pure Aesthetic Judgements (§§30–40), which, as previously mentioned, is necessitated by the fact that pure aesthetic reflective judgements claim to be synthetic a priori31 judgements and therefore universally valid, meaning they must be based on an a priori principle (CJ §30, 141). However, we only need to look at the Deduction quite briefly, since it merely reconfirms and states more explicitly what has already been said in the Analytic of the Beautiful.32 We might say that where the Analytic of the Beautiful focuses on the characteristics of judgements, on the objects with which they deal and how they do so, the Deduction, without adding much substantially new material, shifts the focus to the facultative constitution of the subject that makes such judgements. So it is not the case that the Deduction of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement goes much beyond the thoughts offered in the Analytic (as is the case in the first Critique) but merely that it re-examines them from the facultative side, thereby fulfilling the demands of the Copernican turn in the realm of aesthetics.33 In fact, as Kant states at the beginning of the Deduction, all that has to be established is the subjective universal validity of a singular aesthetic reflective judgement on the beautiful, that is, ‘how it is possible for everyone to be entitled to proclaim [their] liking as a rule for everyone else’.34 But the crucial qualification Kant immediately adds is that the subjective universal validity of a judgement of taste ‘is not to be established by gathering votes and asking other people what kind of sensation they are having’ (CJ §31, 144). Instead, the aesthetic judgement’s subjective universal validity must be shown to be based on the facultative ‘autonomy of the subject who is making a judgement about the feeling of pleasure (in the given presentation)’35 and who does so directly, in response to the given presentation, and not mediately, based on concepts, arguments or proofs.36 In essence, then, the argumentative steps in the Deduction exactly mirror those of the Analytic of the Beautiful, and so they need not be repeated here. And, like the Analytic, so the Deduction, too, culminates in the postulation of a sensus communis, which follows by necessity from all the other a priori features of a judgement of taste, namely that it is without interest, subjectively universal, not based on a determinate

90  Andrea Rehberg concept, addressing only the object’s form, subjectively necessary and so on. The pleasure we take in a beautiful presentation is that of mere reflection (i.e., neither of mere material enjoyment nor governed by ideas of reason)37 and so purely based on the free interaction of the faculties of imagination and understanding, which must be the same in every other judging subject, first, because this is the subjective condition of all cognition as such (CJ §39, 159), and second, if this wasn’t the same in all judging subjects, we could never communicate any of our cognitions, not even those based on determinate concepts (CJ §21, 88). In conclusion, Kant says that by sensus communis is meant ‘the idea of a communal [gemeinschaftlicher] sense, i.e., a faculty to judge [. . .] that in its reflection takes account in thought (a priori) of everyone else’s manner of presentation [Vorstellungsart]’38 and that it does so by reflecting not the actual but the possible judgements of taste of every other judging subject, such that we ‘put ourselves in the position of everyone else’ (CJ §40, 160) by abstracting from the limiting, privately subjective conditions of our aesthetic reflective judgements. It is important to remember that this access to an ideal, universal community of judging subjects is granted by means of liking and pleasure and is thus a purely affective ingress to subjective universality. When the aim of our reflections is to envisage or project how the Kantian idea of sensus communis can be adapted to a thought of the political, how it can become the basis of such a thought, we have two—diametrically opposed—models we can refer to, namely those of Arendt and Lyotard. We first turn to Arendt’s response to Kant’s idea of sensus communis to see how she understands it.

2. Arendt’s Discovery: Sensus Communis and a Political Community Although Hannah Arendt is generally credited with being the first to attempt to develop the Kantian notion of sensus communis for a political thought, we will see that the conceptual problems with her understanding of it outweigh its advantages. We might say that her work opens up a terrain of thought while at the same time immediately shutting it down again, due to the conceptual framework it imposes on this newly discovered space of thought. The locus classicus for this work are her Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy (first delivered in 1970), to which we now briefly turn.39 In this brief section, both the advantages and the limitations of the new vista on the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, opened up by these Lectures, will be briefly set out. Although it is undoubtedly the case that Arendt’s general observations on political philosophy in the Lectures are very insightful indeed and provide often surprising new points of view,40 many aspects of her more detailed interpretation of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement41 are, to my mind, nevertheless problematic when held up to the letter and spirit

On Affective Universality 91 of Kant’s text, and they are even, I would venture to say, unhelpful for a post-Kantian thought of the political, for the following reasons.42 In these lectures, Arendt again uses one of the key distinctions running through her work, namely that between the vita activa, here via the notion of the political actor, and the vita contemplativa, the philosophical life, here realised in the figure of the spectator. She adopts these notions from Kant’s post-critical, anthropological writings, above all from Perpetual Peace (1795) and The Conflict of the Faculties (1798). Unfortunately, she uses this fairly rigid and, I would say, ultimately philosophically spurious distinction between theory and practice to centrally organise her interpretation of Kant’s political thought. More importantly, though, I suspect that it is this distinction which leads her to overlook the infinitely more crucial Kantian distinction between the transcendental and the empirical, which is clearly the central concern of Kant’s critical works. I believe it is by mixing these two levels central to Kant’s critical thought and, as it were, redistributing them along the theory-practice axis that she sets up the main problem for her text. Arendt seeks to establish that, in principle, Kant can be read as saying that the communicability of any judgement, and thus the public to which it implicitly refers, are the conditions of all thought (LKPP 39f.). I have shown (in Section 1, previously) that this is true to the extent that the communicability of an aesthetic reflective judgement is indeed its key condition and that this type of judgement (due to the optimal attunement between the faculties of cognition found in it) provides the very model for all cognitive judgements. But Arendt substantially extends this as yet technically uncontroversial claim by saying that the same communicability of my judgement must also be the condition of ‘the very humanity of the human being’,43 which takes the claim out of the purely ­transcendental realm and squarely anchors it in the empirical. In the course of raising the key question of the status of this public (LKPP 60), she elaborates three instantiations of it that she finds throughout Kant’s oeuvre, from the reading public and scholars of ‘An Answer to the Question: “What is Enlightenment?”’ (1784), to the spectators of the French Revolution,44 via the for this discussion central one of the community of those who judge aesthetically, that is, those who have taste (LKPP 61–5). Arendt focuses on §41 of the Critique of Judgement, ‘On Empirical Interest in the Beautiful’—which Kant had dismissed by saying: ‘This interest [. . .] is [. . .] of no importance for us here, since we must concern ourselves only with what may have reference a priori [. . .] to a judgement of taste’45—and interweaves it with assorted remarks gleaned from Perpetual Peace. From these she extrapolates the most fundamental sense of community as being that of a ‘world citizen’, who is, according to her conceptual framework, at the same time a ‘world spectator’ (LKPP 76), whose ‘cosmopolitan existence’ is ultimately grounded in ‘the sheer fact of being human’ (LKPP 75). The problem here is, of course, that it is very

92  Andrea Rehberg far from clear what ‘being human’ in a philosophically rigorous sense might actually mean and whether it even has any determinate meaning at all. That is to say that any appeal to this nebulous category, which, moreover, is not further specified in her text, rather than clarifying this complex issue, ends up obscuring it even further. It also raises the question of whether we can be sure that by appeal to this vague concept as a basis for a political thought no detrimental effects ensue. One could merely mention the question of the moral and political status of non-human animals to indicate one sense in which this appeal might be problematic. To be fair, at the very point where Arendt invokes this world community held together by ‘the sheer fact of being human’, she also acknowledges that this is a mere idea, which should mean that it is not capable of being actualised. Unfortunately, this key insight is counteracted at points throughout the Lectures by innumerable references to a public, to ‘others’ and their judgements, as if it were a matter of empirical others and their empirical judgements.46 But, as Kant had already stressed and as Lyotard confirms, ‘the whole of all others, as a totality, is not a category for which there can be a corresponding intuition in experience. It cannot be a question of an intuitable ensemble. This whole is [merely] the object of an idea’.47 The answer to this question is, of course, the biggest bone of contention between those who follow Arendt and those who take their cue from Lyotard in their reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement: namely, what is the status of the community whose (perhaps de facto withheld) assent, according to Kant, my aesthetic judgement may legitimately demand, for which it speaks in a universal voice, to which it is referred by means of the sensus communis and to which I may therefore always already consider myself as belonging? Is it a community that may be realised or actualised? Is it an already existing or possible empirical community? Or, by contrast, must it be understood as a mere ideal, that is, a transcendent concept whose only function can be to guide me towards the political? What the import of these questions for a contemporary political thought may be is the topic of the third and final section, in which we turn to Lyotard’s understanding of this issue.

3.  Lyotard on Emergent Subjectivity Here, the key text to consider is Lyotard’s short essay ‘Sensus communis: The Subject in statu nascendi’,48 in which (contra Arendt, I suspect)49 he states categorically that ‘the community [of the sensus communis] [. . .] is certainly not to be observed in experience [. . .] It is certainly not what we call a “public”’.50 He identifies such an Arendtian reading as prone to what he calls ‘the anthropological temptation’, which must first of all be got rid of before ‘the true difficulty of understanding [. . .] the sensus communis’ can emerge (SC 226). Now, undoubtedly, an empirical

On Affective Universality 93 community could be much more easily conceived, would be much more accessible and efficacious than any of its possible alternatives and is perhaps even the object of a great longing for the fractured subjects in a fragmented society we are. But in order to be able to appreciate why Lyotard considers it so important to rule out the possibility of any empirical instantiation of the sensus communis, we must trace, at least in broad outline, the main points of his argument to the contrary, that is, in support of reading the sensus communis exclusively as a purely transcendental idea, in relation to which he even speaks of the ‘impermeability of [this] idea to experience’.51 In brief, Lyotard’s point is that, as we know, all cognition must have as its basis, as its transcendentally subjective condition, the free play or optimal attunement of the faculties of imagination and understanding, which registers purely as pleasure and hence only as a feeling.52 This is to say that all cognition must have a non- or pre-cognitive basis, one that is both, on the one side, inter-facultative and, since the facultative arrangement is the same for all judging subjects, cross-subjective. But, importantly, ‘cross-subjective’ does not mean ‘inter-subjective’, for the simple reason that, as Lyotard points out, the pleasure felt as a result of the mutual attunement of the faculties (when confronted by the form of an appearance which is called beautiful) is not ‘internal’ to an already fully constituted, ‘unified’ subject (SC 232). In terms of the first Critique, such a unified subject can only be said to have come into existence once the transcendental unity of apperception, the ‘I think’, has come on the scene and, according to the A-Deduction of the first Critique, this only happens once the threefold synthesis is complete, that is, once the given presentation has been subsumed under a determinate concept. But, as we saw, in a pure aesthetic judgement, this subsumption is precisely what does not happen and so the free play of the faculties is not interrupted by the imposition of a determinate concept on the given appearance. And as long as the pleasurable facultative free play (whose a priori communicability, based on a sensus communis, precisely motivates an aesthetic judgement) continues, no unified subject can be said to have emerged. In a sense, then, Lyotard stresses a point that is only implicit in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement and that is perhaps as such unthinkable for Kant, namely that, just as the aesthetic reflective judgement of taste is pre-conceptual and therefore, strictly, non- or pre-objective, so the judging is done in a ‘pre-subjective’ state by what is not yet a fully constituted subject that, as Lyotard puts it, is ‘à l’état naissant’,53 that is, always in a state or timeless process of being born, without this ever reaching completion, without subjectivity ever being fully actualised, at least as long as it only remains in the presence of the beautiful appearance. But what this obviously means for the sensus communis is that it cannot concern a community of already constituted, actual subjects but rather only one

94  Andrea Rehberg of emergent or virtual subjects, and thus it does not admit of empirical instantiation.54 How, then, is the community referred to in the sensus communis to be envisaged, and what is its significance for a political thought? By way of tentative characterisation,55 I would say that it would be that purely transcendental commonalty to which the emergent or ‘pre-subject’ always already belongs in its pre-cognitive, affective yet f­ acultatively-based aspects and into which ideal commonalty it is always already inserted, whether it is aware of this or not. As Lyotard puts it, ‘every [actual] community will forget and will have forgotten this sensus [communis]’,56 although it is the silent condition of possibility of all empirical community, the ubiquitous, distributed being-with that, without being in any way reducible to it, enables every particular human association. What we see here, then, is that not only on the level of the individually operative,57 but also on that of the communally inoperative (empirically unrealisable), a pre-conscious, affective force that had largely been eliminated from the space of thought is being retrieved in Kant’s text—as long as it is being read in rigorously transcendental, critical terms. Put differently, both on the facultative level and on the political, communal level to which it refers, this commonalty confirms the essential, irretrievably ecstatic character of that notional being, its a priori being beyond itself. And it is precisely the utterly irretrievable, inoperative character of it that leads to the final point to be made about this commonalty. Like the aesthetic judgement in relation to cognition, it issues in no determinate concept, content or substance. Being unrealisable, it has no telos and serves for nothing. Also, by lying outside the realm of my empirical interests (in the agreeable) and my practical interests (in the morally good), both the aesthetic judgement and the commonalty that sustains it cannot be co-opted into my plans, projects, aims and intrigues, and yet both are a priori. What is at stake, then, is to think (and only to think, the mere idea of) a transcendental community without any of the suffocating paraphernalia of identity, substance, subject and so on, or indeed without the detritus of empirical interests, and to celebrate its entirely useless, inoperative character, as it opens up the possibility of a human existence in dialogue with the beautiful, freed, if only at brief intervals, of the utilitarian regime, the tyranny of the telos.58

*** Obviously, this Lyotardian reading of sensus communis and the community it intimates are radically at odds with both the focus and the tenor of Banham’s reading of the third Critique. It is true that the ambitiousness and scope of Banham’s project—anchoring the third Critique in the

On Affective Universality 95 whole critical system, taking into consideration not only the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement but also the Critique of Teleological Judgement, giving equal weight to the Analytic of the Sublime, bringing Hegel’s thought into the discussion—perforce lead to a significantly different thematic orientation. But beyond this extensional issue, they also diverge significantly in their orientation—Banham’s text more towards a progressive, liberal-cosmopolitan,59 this chapter, I would claim, more towards a libidinal-materialist bent. This is so even though they begin and end at similar points, from the question of how Kant’s analysis of aesthetic judgement can be related to a thought of the political to that of the status of the community referred to by sensus communis. But rather than leading to a differend,60 I would say that these two approaches complement each other, both aiding in the wider project of a reconsideration of aspects of our contemporary situation in the terms suggested by Kant’s criticalaesthetic thought.

Notes 1 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement, trans. Werner Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), hereafter CJ. In addition, the following abbreviations have been used: CPR = Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1964); KEA = Gary Banham, Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics (Basingstoke and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000); LAS = Jean-François Lyotard, Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime, trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994); LKPP = Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, ed. Ronald Beiner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); SC = Jean-François Lyotard, ‘Sensus communis: The Subject in statu nascendi’, in Who Comes After the Subject?, ed. Eduardo Cadava, Peter Connor and Jean-Luc Nancy (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 217–235. 2 As witnessed by a number of important texts devoted to the topic of the sublime, above all LAS and Of the Sublime: Presence in Question, trans. Jeffrey Librett, ed. Jean-Luc Nancy (New York: SUNY Press, 1993). 3 CJ, Introduction, sec. II, 12–14 and §36, 153. 4 CJ, Preface, 5f. 5 CJ, Preface, 5. Pluhar’s elision of the difference between judgement and the faculty of judgement, whilst unproblematic for most of the text, does cause some confusion in this instance and demands to be remedied. 6 CJ §§30–40. As we know, and as Banham also discusses, there is some controversy about the question where exactly this deduction proper begins and ends, with candidates for the latter ranging from §38 to §40. Since this is not a central issue here and since §40 does contain material pertinent to my discussion, I will consider it part of the deduction proper, which will be discussed in the following. See KEA 96–102. 7 See also CJ, Introduction, sec. IV, where the problem is posed in terms of the particular (the material) and the universal (the form), which says much the same thing. For a discussion of this, see also Ernst Cassirer, Kant’s Life and Thought, trans. James Haden (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981), 275–279, 308–310.

96  Andrea Rehberg 8 Kant makes this very basic point, for instance, in the famous opening sentences of the Introduction to the first Critique, ‘[t]here can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience. For how should our faculty of knowledge be awakened into action did not objects affecting our senses partly of themselves produce representations, partly arouse the activity of our understanding [. . .] and with experience all our knowledge begins’ (CPR B1), and also when he later states, ‘all intuitions, as sensible, rest on affections [Affektionen]’ (CPR A68/B93). Being-affected provides the first impulse for cognition. 9 The Kantian transcendental subject is not gendered, so references to it in terms of gender (he, she) are illegitimate. For this reason, the personal pronoun used for the subject will be ‘it’ throughout, to reflect the fact that for Kant this is merely an otherwise undetermined facultative, notional ‘space’ or site. 10 As shown in the so-called metaphysical deduction (see CPR B159 for this appellation) of the categories (CPR A70/B95-A76/B101). 11 Derrida, for instance, raises substantial doubts about the applicability of the table of categories to aesthetic judgement. See Jacques Derrida, The Truth in Painting, trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1987), esp. 37–82. See also Banham’s brief reference to this (KEA 62–64). 12 CJ §8, ‘In their logical quantity all judgements of taste are singular judgements’, 59; in other words, the incomparable, unsubstitutable, individual object or phenomenon must first of all be given in order for the entire ‘machinery’ of aesthetic judgement to be initiated. 13 First not in the order of presentation in the text of CJ but first in the temporal order. 14 CJ §9, 62, emphasis added. 15 CJ §6, 54: ‘the judging person [. . .] will talk about the beautiful as if beauty were a characteristic of the object and the judgement were logical (namely, a cognition of the object through concepts of it), even though in fact the judgement is only aesthetic and refers the object’s presentation to the subject’. 16 Both of which lapses Kant discusses throughout the first Moment of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement. 17 CJ §7, 55, trans. modified, emphasis added. Kant calls the taste concerning the agreeable the taste of sense and the one concerning the beautiful the taste of reflection, although both issue in aesthetic judgements, albeit of radically different kinds (CJ §8, 57f.) 18 CJ §8, 59, emphasis added. 19 CJ §8, 59f., trans. modified, emphasis added. Where I have inserted the pronoun ‘I’, Kant has ‘we’, but ‘we’ don’t judge, ‘I’ do. 20 A postulate in general is an indemonstrable assumption posited as a basis for the discussion. Importantly, what is being postulated is only such a universal voice and not the actual agreement of everyone, since, as Kant says, only a logically, that is, objectively valid, universal judgement could do so (CJ §8, 60). 21 CJ §8, 60; ‘idea’, as a technical term in Kant’s thought, means a concept for which no corresponding object can be given in experience. In CJ, Kant reminds us that ‘[a] rational idea can never become cognition because it contains a concept (of the supersensible), for which no adequate intuition can ever be given’ (CJ §57, 215). 22 This is a state we like to prolong. As Kant writes, ‘we linger in the contemplation of the beautiful because this contemplation reinforces and reproduces itself’ (CJ §12, 68, trans. modified). 23 CJ §9, 64. See also later in CJ, where he states that this attunement ‘is the subjective condition of [the process of] cognition, and without it cognition

On Affective Universality 97 [in the sense of] the effect [of this process] could not arise’ (CJ §21, 88, Pluhar’s interpolations). There, he also says that, although the proportion of the attunement may change, depending on the given presentation (such that some objects ‘demand’ to be known, some ‘demand’ to be admired for their beauty), there must nonetheless be one attunement that is optimal for the interaction of the two faculties leading to cognition, yet this optimal attunement can be gauged only by feeling (CJ §21, 88). Needless to say, it is the singular, beautiful, given object which stimulates this optimal attunement. 24 CJ §9, 62, emphasis added. 25 ‘Belebung’ being a cognate of ‘Leben’, ‘life’. CJ §9, 63. 26 This follows upon the discussion of the ‘purposiveness without a purpose’, which, according to Kant, is thought in an aesthetic reflective judgement to attach to the presentation thus judged, namely to the beautiful object, as formally purposive for the free play of the two faculties which gives rise to a feeling of pleasure in the act of judging through its universal communicability (see esp. CJ §§11, 12). Given the focus of his text, Banham of necessity spends more time on a discussion of this type of ‘end’ than on the aspects of aesthetic reflective judgement I privilege in this section (see esp. KEA 69–74). 27 CJ §18, 85f. See also LAS 193. 28 CJ §20, 87, interpolations in square brackets and first emphasis added. 29 CJ §22, 89. See also note 18 previously. 30 CJ §22, 90, trans. modified, emphasis added. 31 We recall that necessity and universality are the markers of apriority, even if they are merely subjective; see CJ §31, 143. Kant discusses subjective universality in the second Moment (Quantity) and subjective necessity in the fourth Moment (Modality) of the Analytic of the Beautiful. 32 See also LAS 193. 33 See also CJ §34, 150, where Kant indicates this by claiming scientific status only for an investigation in the manner of a transcendental critique, that is, one that examines the work of the faculties rather than only their products. 34 CJ §31, 143f., trans. modified. 35 CJ §31, 144. See also CJ §32, 145, where Kant writes that, when a subject makes a judgement of taste, ‘we demand that [they] judge for [themselves]’ and not ‘grope about among other people’s judgements by means of experience’, since this would be heteronomous (CJ §32, 145, trans. modified). 36 CJ §34, 149. See also CJ §38, 154, where Kant stresses this point again by stating that ‘all judgements of taste are singular judgements, because they do not connect their predicate, the liking, with a concept but [. . .] with a singular empirical presentation that is given’ (emphasis added). 37 CJ §39, 158. 38 CJ §40, 160, trans. modified, emphasis added. 39 Although Arendt also developed these thoughts on the political import of the sensus communis in other texts (e.g., Between Past and Future: Six Essays in Political Thought [New York: Viking Press, 1968]), I will concentrate on LKPP here, not least because it is her most sustained effort in that direction. 40 See, for example, LKPP 26, 30, 32, 35f. Her observations there are often more in the nature of a history of ideas, which is where, in my view, her real forte lies. 41 Above all, CJ §§39–41. 42 The thirteen lectures divide into a preliminary part (lectures 1–5), a preparatory part (lectures 6–10) and a summative part (lectures 11–13). Arendt’s explicit attention to the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, and the set of problems attendant on it, does not begin until lecture 10.

98  Andrea Rehberg 43 LKPP 70, see also 74–76. Arendt’s text still uses ‘man’, ‘mankind’ etc., as generic terms to refer to a human being, humanity, humankind etc. I have adjusted her language to the contemporary, gender-neutral terms. 44 As discussed by Kant in LKPP, 61. 45 CJ §41, 164, emphasis added. 46 She does so (e.g., LKPP 40, 44, 67, 72–74), although Kant, as discussed in Section 1, previously, explicitly insists that the aesthetic judgement be autonomous (CJ §32, 146; see note 35 previously for the quotation). 47 SC 234, trans. modified, interpolation added. 48 Both Sections 1 and 2, previously, are also heavily indebted to LAS, esp. 193–197, 200–202, 218. 49 It is my belief that the Arendt of LKPP is the silent interlocutor of SC, which, while not explicitly addressing itself to her text or even mentioning it, seems in many of its points to be in implicit dialogue with Arendt’s text. She is being referring to at LAS 18. 50 SC 224. Lyotard further clarifies that ‘it is not a question of an historical and social community [. . .] It is not a question of “culture”, or pleasure shared in [. . .] culture’ (SC 221), the pleasure of art-lovers. 51 SC 230, interpolation added, spelling modified. Lyotard rather acerbically speaks of those who believe in this impossible transition as ‘all well-meaning people, philosophers, politicians, theoreticians of art’, who ‘joyously’ insert themselves into this non-passage (SC 230). 52 SC 226. See CJ §21, 88, and note 22 previously. 53 Jean-François Lyotard, ‘Sensus communis, le sujet à l’état naissant’, Cahiers Confrontation, 20 (1979): ‘Après le sujet qui vient’, 161–179. In this context, Lyotard speaks of a ‘pre-I, a pre-cogito’ (SC 233). 54 Lyotard keeps stressing this point, both in LAS and in SC, since to do otherwise indicates the profound technical error of confusing the transcendental and critical with the empirical, ‘anthropological’ level. See, for example, LAS 218–223. 55 This characterisation is based on, but in some particulars goes beyond, SC. 56 SC 217, interpolations added. 57 As discussed in the opening pages of this chapter. 58 The issues discussed here, and especially the perspective on them adopted in Sections 2 and 3, have been the topic of a number of conference presentations I have given, one of which was published by the Turkish journal Cogito, 74 (Summer 2013), 150–166. However, here, no doubt aided by consideration of Banham’s work, they are treated much more extensively and in much more depth and detail than before. 59 See, for instance, KEA 186f. 60 As is the case with Arendt’s and Lyotard’s approaches. Lyotard describes a differend as an irresolvable dispute amongst incompatible claimants. On the Kantian roots of Lyotard’s differend, see Keith Crome, ‘Disputing Critique: Lyotard’s Kantian Differend’, in this volume.

Part III

Nature

5 The Role of Regulative Principles and Their Relation to Reflective Judgement1 Christian Onof

This chapter takes cues from insightful views that Gary Banham formulates about the different notions of ‘regulative’ in the Critique of Pure Reason (CPR), as well as the notion of reflective judgement in the Critique of Judgement (CJ).2 The theme which connects these topics is that of unity. In the Transcendental Analytic of the CPR, the dynamical principles play a regulative role for the unity of experience. In the Transcendental Dialectic of the CPR, it is the projected unity of nature that is at stake, with the ideas of reason playing a regulative role by providing maxims for the employment of our understanding. In the CJ, this unity of nature is further characterised through the concept of purposiveness that guides the reflective use of the faculty of judgement.3 The following questions which Banham addresses in his writings are discussed in this chapter: how can the notion of regulative principle used to describe the Dynamical Principles in the Analytic inform our understanding of the regulative principles of the Dialectic? What is the transcendental status of the latter? How are these principles related to the account of reflective judgement Kant gives in the CJ? Given the scope of these questions, this chapter cannot claim to cover more than some aspects of the issues they raise, and the focus will be upon seeking a consistent account in which novel interpretative perspectives upon these questions are proposed.

1. The Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic: Logical, Weak and Strong Objective Principles In the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic, Kant discusses the ‘regulative use of the ideas of pure reason’ (A642/B670), which introduces a positive perspective on these ideas. The Dialectic had shown that the ideas of reason, when used in an ‘extravagant’ (A643/B671) way, give rise to paralogisms (about the soul), antinomies (about the world) or ungrounded knowledge claims about God. The source of the problem was the ‘transcendent’ use of the ideas whereby they were ‘taken for concepts of real things’ (ibid.). It is in his resolution of the Antinomies

102  Christian Onof that Kant first introduces the notion of the ‘regulative principle of reason’ (A508/B536). These regulative principles are directed at extending our knowledge by looking for further spatial regions, further causes for a given event and so on in all cases, with the aim of asymptotically approaching an unconditioned.4 This notion of regulative principle is at the heart of Kant’s identification of a positive role for the ideas of reason. Kant’s motivation for investigating the positive use of these ideas stems from his conviction that ‘[e]verything grounded in the nature of our powers must be purposive and consistent with their correct use [. . .] [so that] the transcendental ideas will presumably have a good and consequently immanent use’ (A642–643/B670–671). This claim of purposiveness is also present in Kant’s moral philosophy: for Kant, we take it as an axiom that ‘[i]n the natural constitution of an organized being [. . .] no organ will be found for any purpose which is not the fittest and best adapted to that purpose’.5 In both cases, the primary purpose of these claims is to guide the transcendental investigation. Kant thus considers the nature of the faculty of reason as a faculty of systematisation (A645/B673) and examines the ‘hypothetical use’ of reason (A647/B675) which assumes a systematic unity ‘of the manifold of the understanding’s cognition’ (A648/B676). That is, a unity of cognition is projected and a heuristic is defined around it to enable the project of systematisation to proceed. Kant identifies three heuristic principles: ‘a principle of sameness of kind in the manifold under higher genera, [. . .] a principle of the variety of what is same in kind under lower species, [. . .] another law of the affinity of all concepts, which offers a continuous transition from every species to every other’ (A657–658/ B685–686). 1. Kant’s first claim about these principles, which he characterises as regulative, is that they bring unity to the cognitions of the understanding ‘as far as possible and thereby approximating the rule to universality’ (A647/B675):6 in this role, these principles are essential to the progress of our cognition. This claim is generally considered fairly unproblematic, insofar as it reflects the positive role that projecting a unity of knowledge plays in the pursuit of knowledge. To illustrate this, Kant provides a good example at A686/B714, where the idea of God is seen to foster further investigation into the astronomical implications of the flattened shape of our planet.7 The systematic unity which is posited in this hypothetical use of reason is described by Kant as a ‘logical principle’ (A648/B676). 2. Kant then asks whether it is also a ‘transcendental principle of reason, which would make systematic unity not merely something subjectively and logically necessary, as method, but objectively necessary’ (ibid.) And Kant’s answer to that question will be positive. Kant uses an example to show that the systematic unity that reason presupposes holds in reality (A650/B678).

Regulative Principles and Judgement 103 Kant’s second claim is therefore that the systematic unity that is posited by these regulative principles is not merely logical but also objective. This defines a transcendental principle, the Systematic Unity of Nature (SUN; A650–651/B678–679). Kant does not offer much of an argument for this objective status but merely indicates that ‘it cannot even be seen how there could be a logical principle of rational unity among rules unless a transcendental principle is presupposed, through which such a systematic unity, as pertaining to the object itself, is assumed a priori as necessary’ (A650–651/B678–679). One might feel that this is not enough to achieve Kant’s aim here, which is to support the claim that the principle of the systematic unity of nature is a transcendental principle, that is, is objectively necessary. This is not overly convincing: what if reason found it useful, to advance knowledge, to posit some fictions? And, indeed, some of Kant’s language seems to endorse that possibility (A681/B709). One does get the impression that Kant himself is not convinced by the strength of the case he has made for this point, because he finds it necessary to refer to how widespread the endorsement of this principle has been in philosophy (A652–653/ B680–681). 3. Interestingly, Kant’s tactic is to support the second claim (which one might call the weak objective principle) by making a stronger one as to the purported transcendental function of such systematic unity. Kant’s third claim is thus that ‘the law of reason to seek unity is necessary, since without it we would have no reason, and without that, no coherent use of the understanding’ (A651/B679), or as he puts it, ‘without it no empirical concepts and hence no experience would be possible’ (A654/B682).8 This progression in the description of the function of this systematic unity lies at the heart of much controversy in Kantian scholarship. Following Abela, Banham describes the problem as the ‘central question that has bedevilled interpretation of Kant’s treatment of the regulative use of ideas of pure reason. Are these ideas to be understood only as heuristic or do they also have some kind of “realist” status?’9 If the first, then the problem lies in explaining Kant’s statements at A650ff/B678ff, where the principle of the unity of nature seems a requirement for cognition and therefore is seemingly assigned a ‘realist’ status. If the second, the problem arises from Kant’s earlier claim in the Introduction to the Transcendental Dialectic that such a principle ‘does not prescribe any law to objects, and does not contain the ground of possibility of cognising and determining them as such in general’ (A306/B362). And if a realist status is granted to SUN, the further claim that it is a necessary condition of objective knowledge would seem to clash with the completeness of the Transcendental Aesthetic and Transcendental Analytic which, culminating in the Principles of the Pure Understanding, provide all the transcendental conditions accounting for our cognition of objects (A21/B36, A148/B188, B198/A159).

104  Christian Onof There are two important strands in the literature which define the responses to these two problems. A first response involves endorsing the idea that this principle is more than a heuristic one, that is, that it is indeed a transcendental one but rejecting the stronger claim that it is a principle of the possibility of experience.10 This amounts to what one might call a weak interpretation of the notion of transcendental condition. This solution has little to offer to explain how it is that Kant clearly states that this principle is a ‘necessary law’ without which we would have ‘no coherent use of the understanding’ (A651/B679) and ‘no experience would be possible’ (A654/B682). A second response to this problem involves opting for an understanding of this principle as essentially heuristic and playing down any realist implications of the necessity it is endowed with.11 The problem this option encounters is that Kant explicitly distinguishes the regulative principles from a useful ‘device of reason’ (A653/B681) and further when he differentiates between ‘heuristic fictions’ and the regulative principles they serve to ground (A771/B799), as Banham points out.12 According to Banham, ‘[t]he advocates of a general heuristic approach to the regulative use of the ideas of pure reason must essentially reject the position that Kant states’13 when he says that without such regulative principles ‘no experience would be possible’ (A654/B682). In this chapter, I shall follow Banham in defending an interpretation which upholds a strong version of the transcendental principle, that is, the claim that SUN is an objective principle which is required for the cognition of objects. To do so, a detour via an analysis of the commonalities between the two senses of ‘regulative’ found in the Analytic and the Dialectic will help us understand the move to a strong version of SUN.

2.  Two Senses of the Regulative One interesting feature of Banham’s investigation into the notion of regulative principles is his attempt to draw out similarities and differences between two uses of the term ‘regulative’ in the CPR. Much as the notion of ‘regulative principle of reason’ is first introduced in the Antinomy (A508/B536), the term ‘regulative’ is first used by Kant in the chapter on the Principles of Pure Understanding. Kant distinguishes between the mathematical principles (Axioms of Intuition and Anticipations of Perception) in which the object is constructed and the dynamical principles (Analogies and Postulates of Empirical Thought), where it is not, as these ‘concern only the relation of existence’ (A179/B221–222). The latter are thereby called ‘regulative’ as opposed to the former, which are constitutive. Banham discusses the meaning of this contrast and takes issue with Guyer’s claim that what is at stake is the issue of indeterminacy.14 Guyer claims, for instance, that the Second Analogy tells us that there must be a causal relation explaining any event, but it does not provide us with

Regulative Principles and Judgement 105 a way of identifying the cause, so the latter is indeterminate. Banham wants to resist Guyer’s identification of the distinction between constitutive and regulative as one between determinacy and indeterminacy. What he is pointing at is the fact that although, indeed, Guyer is right to say that the Second Analogy does not provide a way of identifying the cause of a given event, that is, of determining this existence a priori, this is not the essential feature of the distinction. Rather, as Kant himself puts it, the issue is not that existence cannot be determined a priori but that ‘existence cannot be constructed’ (A179/B221). Banham sees this as defining an important difference from regulative principles of reason.15 He concurs with Guyer that it is the distinction between indeterminateness and determinateness that is at stake in distinguishing them from the principles of the understanding which are now all viewed as constitutive. Kant himself, however, explains this notion of ‘constitutive’ as that which is ‘for determining something in regard to its direct object’ (A680/ B708), from which the regulative principles of reason are distinguished insofar as they are for ‘furthering and strengthening the empirical use of reason’ (ibid.) For sure, as Banham claims, this amounts to a distinction between determinate and indeterminate, but it is not clear that this should be the defining feature. After all, one could refer to indeterminate principles of the understanding, as we just saw previously. It is indeterminate when I say that event E has a cause, but there are no regulative principles of reason involved here. So there are different notions of determinacy in play. But even if one could provide an account of the different senses of determinacy, Kant’s text does not suggest that it is determinacy/ indeterminacy as such that is definitive of the constitutive/regulative distinction in either the Analytic or the Dialectic. To get greater clarity here, we should refer to Kant’s own statements on the different uses of ‘regulative’ and ‘constitutive’, to which Banham alludes only briefly.16 Kant explains how the dynamical principles of the understanding are contrasted with the mathematical ones insofar as the former are ‘regulative principles of intuition’, while the latter are constitutive of it (A664/B692). Nevertheless, all these principles are ‘still constitutive in regard to experience since they make possible a priori the concepts without which there would be no experience’ (ibid.) So now we have distinctions between constitutive and regulative principles which are based upon whether these principles are a priori conditions for the possibility of representations, either intuitions (hereafter constitutiveI/regulativeI) or conceptually informed experience (hereafter constitutiveC/regulativeC). Kant is claiming that the a priori conditions of there being perception, that is, intuitions of objects,17 are the mathematical principles of the understanding, while the a priori conditions of there being experience, that is, concepts in addition to intuitions of objects, are all the principles of the understanding. What defines the

106  Christian Onof notion ‘constitutive’ is therefore that which is a priori necessary to constitute a representation, either intuition or concept. What, then, of regulative principles? Can we give more than a merely negative characterisation of it as the non-constitutive? If we consider an appearance, its intuition has a form that is defined by a constitutive principle and a matter that is a posteriori. But an intuition does not exist in isolation. The issue of how it relates to other intuitions and how it relates to the whole of my cognition therefore arises. RegulativeI principles provide an a priori form for such relations: the Analogies provide rules for relating intuitions to one another in their temporal relationships, and the Postulates of Empirical Thought define rules for the relation of intuitions to the whole of knowledge (A219/B266). ConstitutiveI  /RegulativeI Principles From the definition of constitutive principles, we can see that they can be derived by considering the conditions for constituting the type of representation in question. So, to constitute an intuition of an object, it is necessary to have principles guiding the construction of the intuitive representation: these are the mathematical principles of the understanding. But to derive regulativeI principles, we need to consider the way distinct intuitions are unified and what objective principles govern this. Syntheses of intuitions are unified under the transcendental unity of apperception (TUA) and thereby brought under a concept. It is conceptual unity which therefore provides the ‘meta-principle’ governing the derivation of regulativeI principles, that is, the dynamical principles which govern how intuitions of objects are related to one another and to our cognition. Let us briefly examine how the Analogies fulfil the first function. Since the relations between intuitions are temporal, we must distinguish the relations between intuitions of objects which are simultaneous from those which are consecutive. a. Simultaneous intuitions of objects can be brought under the category of community according to the Third Analogy. b. Successive intuitions of the same object can be brought under the category of substance according to the First Analogy. c. The Second Analogy then provides us with an account of how the successive intuitions of different objects can be unified, namely under the category of causality, thereby providing a unity of intuitions which extends beyond any actual discrete set of representations to the continuous evolution of these objects over time. We thus have three ways in which intuitions must be unified under concepts.

Regulative Principles and Judgement 107 ConstitutiveC  /RegulativeC Principles This brief investigation into the notion of regulativeI principles should help us understand how regulativeC principles arise. In line with the points we made previously, constitutiveC principles are those which are required to constitute conceptual representations of objects. This is no longer a construction as in the case of an intuition but an objective determination. And since any such determination involves all the categories, the dynamical principles of the understanding are also involved in this process. Analogously to the role of regulativeI principles, regulativeC principles are therefore those which define rules for the unification of distinct concepts. Since for regulativeI principles, the conditions of conceptual unity provide a ‘meta-principle’, as we saw previously, the question of the metaprinciple that might govern the derivation of regulativeC principles arises. But here, we have the problem that there is no higher principle of objective knowledge than the Synthetic Unity of Apperception (SUA), as Kant tells us (B136). And, indeed, ideas, which are the representations that Kant defines as being able to bring unity to our concepts, do not have objective reference. This is the key result of Kant’s investigation in the Transcendental Dialectic. It would therefore seem that the analogy with regulativeI principles breaks down. Kant nevertheless sees a positive role for such ideas, and he addresses the situation by introducing a hypothetical principle which fulfils the role of SUA but for unities of concepts: the idea of God in particular is used to define the principle of SUN, which plays the same role as SUA in uniting intuitions of objects. SUN functions exactly as SUA in providing rules for the unification of concepts but with the whole of our experience now at stake, rather than temporal relations of intuitions. Using the non-­schematised categories of relation but here applied to the relations between empirical concepts under SUN, a. The idea of the unity of nature defines a rule for bringing all concepts together under genera: that which inheres among a plurality of concepts defines the genus of which these concepts are species. This application of the category of substance defines the principle of homogeneity of forms. b. The unity of a particular object defines a rule for further conceptual determinations of the object which amount to identifying further species and sub-species of conceptual representations of this object: in this way, further differentiation springs from any conceptual determination in the same way that the whole system of concepts springs from the purposiveness of nature. This application of the category of causality and dependence defines the principle of specification of forms.18

108  Christian Onof c. The unity of nature defines, beyond the set of species defined by any discrete conceptual determinations, a rule for seeking further objects determined by concepts of species that lie in the continuum between any two such species: this is a search for further species that are in community with others under the same genus. This application of the category of community defines the principle of continuity of forms. Because the idea of the unity of nature does not refer to an object, these principles do not issue in a final set of unified concepts but rather define an endless process which is asymptotically directed to the unity defined by SUN.

3. Does Experience Require the Systematic Unity of Nature? We can now return to the question of the justification for Kant’s claims (2. and 3. in Section 1) about the objectivity of SUN. Looking first at regulativeI principles, their status as transcendental principles is never in doubt because they are, at the same time, constitutiveC principles. More precisely, these principles govern the determination of objects of experience, and in that function, they ensure that the intuitions which are thereby regulated do indeed refer to objects. Without these regulativeI principles, that is, the dynamical principles of the understanding, our intuitions would not be determined as referring to substances in causal interaction and in community with one another. This does not mean that one could not have intuitions that are not thus conceptually determined.19 But they would not be intuitions of empirical objects but rather disconnected intuitions: such intuitions would not make experience possible. Conceptualisation is therefore a necessary condition for intuitions being of empirical objects. When Kant explains that, with constitutiveC principles, we do not have sufficient conditions of truth (B83/A59), he is pointing to the fact that it is not enough to have a priori conditions governing the lawful connection of intuitions for us to actually have cognition. At first, the problem, as Kant presents it, is analogous to that of disconnected intuitions: reason’s role, with the introduction of the logical principle of SUN, is to create ‘unanimity among [the understanding’s] various rules under one principle (the systematic), and thereby interconnection’ (A648/B676). As with disconnected intuitions, the solution lies in principles that provide a structure to our empirical concepts so that they are indeed applicable to our experience, that is, so that they find more than one instantiation. This solution provides what Banham refers to as a ‘criterion of use’.20 Preserving the analogy with regulativeI principles, what plays the role of ‘meta-principle’ here is the logical principle of systematic unity with its appending three principles of homogeneity, specification and continuity of form, as explained previously.

Regulative Principles and Judgement 109 This does not yield a principle that can be called transcendental but merely a logical one, which has its use in the progression of our knowledge. Kant, however, wants us to consider the possibility of a transcendental principle, that is, a principle of the objective SUN, thus at first using the subjunctive mood: ‘that would be a transcendental principle of reason, which would make systematic unity not merely something subjectively and logically necessary, but objectively necessary’ (A648/B676). The problem is that, while regulativeI principles find their justification in that they are constitutiveC, that is, through them our experience of objects is constituted, there are no higher objects the experience of which would be constituted by regulativeC principles. This was the whole point of the negative part of the Transcendental Dialectic: the ideas of reason, which Kant is now examining for their ability to bring unity to the knowledge of the understanding, ‘are not concepts of real things’ (A643/ B671): they do not refer to real objects. RegulativeC principles are therefore not justified by being constitutive of transcendental ideas. If there is going to be any justification for such new principles, it can therefore only come from what is needed for our experience of objects, and this explains Kant’s apparently puzzling move of providing support for 2. by claiming 3 (see Section 1). For Kant, the additional condition that is required over and above SUA is a ‘sufficient mark of empirical truth’ (A651/B679). We can shed some light on this claim by again considering the analogy with regulativeI principles. What regulativeI principles deal with is ‘relations of existence’ between perceptions (A179/B221–222). Their regulative status is connected to the fact that ‘it cannot be said a priori which and how great this other perception is’ (A179/B222). These principles serve to provide a priori guidance to the understanding’s exploration of the a posteriori material it is provided with. The material is already grasped in terms of the constitutiveI principles, that is, in terms of quantity and quality, but these are merely rules enabling us to construct objective intuitions. Which objects are thereby represented is left completely indeterminate. How to go about bringing the required determinacy is what the regulativeI principles tell us: we should seek that which persists in time, we should seek regularity in alterations and so on. What Kant now draws our attention to is the fact that, while such regulativeI principles are well-grounded transcendental principles insofar as they are constitutiveC principles that are necessary for there to be experience of objects, that is, while their status as a priori principles of cognition is well established, there is nothing guaranteeing that the a posteriori material that is given to our sensibility will be amenable to our search for something that persists in time, for regularities in temporal successions and so on. Kant is thus drawing our attention to the worry that, when I seek to apply the categories to the manifold in intuition, I might fail to identify any empirical concept under which this manifold

110  Christian Onof can be subsumed.21 Indeed, Kant considers the extreme case where there would be a universal failure of the principle of genera: If among the appearances offering themselves to us, there were such a great variety—I will not say of form [. . .] but of content, i.e. regarding the manifoldness of existing beings—that even the most acute human understanding, through comparison of one with another, could not detect the least similarity [. . .], then the logical law of genera would not obtain at all, no concept of a genus, nor any other universal concept, indeed no understanding at all would obtain. (A654/B682)22 Existence and the A Priori That Kant expresses a solution to this worry in terms of identifying sufficient truth conditions is just another way of describing the problem as that of the irreducibility of existence to the a priori. Indeed, consider an empirical truth claim, such as: Planet Neptune causes planet Uranus to deviate from its predicted orbit.23 This claim can be put in the form: There exists an x such that x is a planet named Neptune and x causes Uranus to deviate from its predicted orbit. And therefore the truth of the claim depends upon the existence of such an x. RegulativeI principles tell us to look for an x that causes Uranus to deviate from its predicted orbit (Second Analogy). RegulativeC principles in their subjective logical function tell us to look preferentially for an x that is another natural celestial object rather than a magnetic field or an alien spaceship (principle of homogeneity). If, having looked for objects of the two most likely species (e.g., planets and asteroids), one finds an object that is not categorisable in either, although it shares many properties with each, one would seek to identify a new species that lies between these two species (principle of continuity). Because what we are looking for is a particular, once we have defined its species, we shall seek to further determine it, for example, by asking whether it is entirely solid, has an atmosphere and so on, thereby identifying sub-species it belongs to (principle of specification). This exemplifies how the logical regulativeC principles of reason define a structure for the use of the understanding in its attempt to grasp an existence. But now the question is whether any object x can be found that causes Uranus to deviate from its predicted orbit. And, clearly, this will

Regulative Principles and Judgement 111 indeed be the case if appearances are organised according to the same structure, that is, if these principles of reason are objective. This sheds light on why Kant states the issue in terms of truth conditions: ‘For the law of reason to seek unity is necessary, since without it we would have [. . .] no sufficient mark of empirical truth’ (A651/ B679). Truth for Kant is the ‘agreement of cognition with its object’ (B82/A58). So, if our cognition is organised by regulativeC principles and appearances are also structured in this way, then we do have a case of agreement. It is important to understand that this agreement concerns existence, that is, that which amounts to the a posteriori element of appearances, since it is already true that the a priori conditions of knowledge structure the world of appearances in a transcendentally idealistic framework. As a result, the objectivity of regulativeC principles provides sufficient material conditions for the possibility of true empirical cognition, which, in our example, means that they ensure that such an object x can be found. The RegulativeC Principles, Truth Conditions and the Use of the Understanding As we have seen, SUN and its regulativeC principles are required for empirical truth. But does this new requirement not clash with the Transcendental Analytic, in which the highest principle of knowledge is identified as SUA? The question then has to be: what is missing from the necessary conditions for knowledge identified in the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Transcendental Analytic for sufficiency as conditions of empirical truth? When identifying SUA as the highest principle of the understanding, what is at stake is the possibility of my taking my intuitive representations to refer to an object. And the principle states that it must be possible to accompany my representations (of the object) with an ‘I think’; that is, I must be able to synthesise manifolds of representations under the Transcendental Unity of Apperception. Kant does not suggest that such conditions are sufficient for empirical truth. When examining the further conditions for true cognition of objects, we must start with (possible) representations of these objects. From the principle of SUA, we have learnt that such representations are characterised by the possibility of including them in a synthetic unity under the TUA (B131–132). Second, if there is true cognition of an empirical object, such unities are conceptual determinations of this object.24 Without thereby questioning the status of the principle of SUA as the highest principle of the employment of the understanding, one must nevertheless ask the further question as to what must be the case for such synthetic unities to instantiate some (universal) empirical concept of an object, since there is nothing in the TUA which guarantees that such a unity is an instantiation of any empirical concept.

112  Christian Onof To examine what these further conditions might be, it is useful to distinguish two aspects of what is involved in having true cognitions involving empirical concepts: a. if the object is not specified, the issue is the possibility of true cognitions of nature in general: this will define transcendental conditions for the objects of our cognition to form a nature; b. when a particular object is considered, the issue is the possibility of true cognitions of this object: this defines transcendental conditions for the objects of our cognition to be particulars. In case (a), a condition that would ensure the possibility of synthetic unities being in agreement with objects forming a nature is that the empirical concepts which these unities are found to instantiate display some necessity, over and above the formal necessity of the synthesis under the TUA which defines the synthetic unity. Indeed, that would account for why any particular synthetic unity (i.e., an ‘empirical synthesis’, B140) might instantiate a universal feature of nature. Such necessity must involve an organisation of the plurality of empirical concepts which is not contingent. For Kant, such necessity can only be understood in purposive terms (A686/B714). With such a notion of purposiveness, we see all empirical concepts as springing from an original (unknown) unity, that is, that of the purpose.25 From this unity of all concepts, there is but one step to the principle of homogeneity, namely that it must be possible for empirical concepts to be subsumed under unities as species under genera, in an endless process converging asymptotically towards the systematic unity of nature. With such a systematic unity in place, the possibility of varying any particular determination of the object from a degree 0 to its full instantiation may be considered, so that concepts which are intermediate between any two similar concepts are possible. This principle of affinity enjoins us to seek species which lie between any two species that have already been identified. In case (b), we must ensure that a set of possible representations refer to a particular object. What this means is that these representations contain the basis for differentiating this object from any other object. For this to be possible, it must be possible to consider an endless process of further determination of the object, through which sub-species of any concept are defined through differentiation. The process is endless because universal determinations are always universal and never reach the particular. But the hierarchy of species and sub-species which thereby emerges is that of the principle of specification. We thus see how these regulative principles would provide sufficient conditions for the possibility of true knowledge of objects of nature, that is, for the employment of empirical concepts. However, these principles remain hypothetical.

Regulative Principles and Judgement 113 From Sufficiency to Necessity: A Hypothetical Transcendental Principle So far, we have shown that SUN and the regulativeC principles are sufficient for empirical concepts to find application. But this falls far short of establishing necessity, and while the need for SUN is defended by many commentators,26 others reject this necessity.27 Against it, one could construct a thought experiment: suppose that we live in a world in which some of the manifold in intuition can be brought under a certain set of empirical concepts (e.g., magnitudes) but with the following features: a. it might be the case that further determination of objects beyond the use of this fixed set of concepts is not possible: aside from instantiating these concepts, they would have no further determinable characteristics; b. it might additionally be the case that there are no common traits between these concepts which would enable them to be viewed as species of more generic concepts. This odd scenario would amount to an invalidation of the principles of homogeneity and specification.28 Such a thought experiment would be criticised by Kant for being merely logically possible. That is, the notion of a limited order in appearances, defined by the particular set of empirical concepts that do find applicability, has not been shown to be really possible. But as a rejoinder, it could be pointed out that neither has it been shown to be really impossible. A stronger Kantian response could involve pointing out that there is an explanatory deficiency here: a property cannot be instantiated, that is, a particular brought under a universal, without there being some ground for this, that is, without necessity. So, just as the strict universality of transcendental features of experience is grounded in the necessity of a priori transcendental structures (A2, B5), reason demands that there be an objectively necessary systematic unity that accounts for the instantiation of universal empirical concepts (A648/B676). If there is a necessary ground to the structure of appearances in terms of a set of empirical concepts, then these concepts are not independent of one another, but their applicability has a ground, and this implies that they can be ordered on the basis of this common ground. This order is therefore hierarchical in some at least minimal sense because of the unicity of the ground.29 Next, if, as we are supposing in this scenario, some determinations {Φ1, Φ2, . . . Φn} defined by empirical concepts, for example, concepts of magnitude, have a necessary ground, then if there are no further determinations of the objective world, for example, so that shape and other properties are in constant lawless flux, it would be a contingent matter as to what shape currently has a certain determination of magnitude. But

114  Christian Onof that is not consistent with the claim that there is a necessary ground to features {Φ1, Φ2, . . . Φn}, for example, magnitude features, of this world, because what happens to be Φ1 or Φ2 and so on at any point in time is a contingent matter. By reductio, it must therefore be possible to further determine any object, which means that the empirical concepts in question will have sub-species, and they, in turn, further sub-species. Finally, it is certainly possible that the necessary grounds of these empirical conceptual determinations should also ground other determinations which are intermediate between any two such determinations. In summary, the three regulativeC principles would have to be objective features of nature; that is, SUN would be an objective principle. While this does not establish the necessity of SUN, it does establish this necessity under two conditions: a. that we accept that universality must have a necessary ground, b. and that some empirical concepts find application to appearances. So, if SUN as an objective principle does indeed provide a sufficient condition of truth, it still remains only hypothetically necessary. But that should not necessarily be a problem. After all, the critical enterprise sets out to identify the conditions for the possibility of experience and knowledge. These must be necessary conditions, and as a whole provide a sufficient set of conditions, but in terms of its logical form, the whole enterprise can be understood as hypothetical, with the hypothesis being that we have objective experience.30 Nevertheless, there is a clear difference between the regulativeC principles and the constitutiveC principles because the latter do not presuppose anything more than the mere fact that we have spatio-temporal experience and are self-conscious. For the regulativeC principles, the truth of some empirical knowledge is a condition under which Kant claims that these principles are necessary. Does this require appealing to the existence of bodies of empirical knowledge, such as the sciences provide us with? No: all that is needed is that some empirical concepts do indeed apply to appearances. So, while it is correct that the CPR can be seen as applying to a range of bodies of knowledge, as Kant indicates in the Preface (B x—xiv), we have shown that, in fact, in order for the regulativeC principles to be necessary (under hypothesis 1), it suffices that some empirical concepts apply to appearances. The sceptic will find it much harder to challenge such a weak assumption as (b). Consequently, the issue must be the plausibility of hypothesis (a). Some of Kant’s texts can be understood precisely as addressing this. First, as I observed previously, he claims that ‘[e]verything grounded in the nature of our powers must be purposive and consistent with their correct use’ (A642/ B670). So Kant concludes that the transcendental ideas of reason will also

Regulative Principles and Judgement 115 have ‘good and consequently immanent use’ (A643/B671). One can see this not only as supporting some positive role for the ideas of reason but further as endorsing the view that reason’s universals, the ideas, and the appending regulativeC principles, will apply to nature because there exists some ground to this universality in nature, a ground that is presented in purposive terms. So Kant is saying, for reason’s universals, that (a) applies. Second, Kant draws upon the endorsement of the hypothesis of SUN by other philosophers (A652/B680), thereby giving support to both hypotheses but in particular to hypothesis (a), when he mentions the covert claim made by many scholastic philosophers that ‘systematic unity of all possible empirical concepts must be sought insofar as they can be derived from higher and more general ones’ (A652/B680). The use of ‘derived’ indicates that this is a search for necessary grounds for the universality of these empirical concepts. With (b) effectively endorsed and (a) given strong support, Kant need not be overly concerned about the possibility that the hypothetically necessary status of the principle of SUN might reduce the appeal of his enterprise. Status of Fiction A further property of regulativeC principles needs to be elucidated. That is that the regulative ideas are considered as if they referred to objects, namely the soul, the totality of the series of conditions for any conditioned in outer sense (‘the world’) and God. The status of the objects of these ideas31 is that they operate as fictions; that is, we proceed in our cognitive enquiries ‘as if’ there were a soul, a world and God: ‘this being of reason is [. . .] taken as a ground only problematically’ (A681/B709). How should we understand Kant’s claim about the necessity of adopting these fictions, for which Kant provides little in the manner of an explanation, stating simply that ‘reason cannot think this systematic unity in any other way than by giving its idea an object’ (A681/B709)? Prima facie, it might look as if the Critical enterprise is here reaching its limits insofar as reason cannot rid itself of the illusion that the transcendental ideas that were at the heart of traditional metaphysics refer to something real. While the CPR reveals that they do not thus refer, it is still necessary to proceed as in old metaphysics, as if they did. While it is certainly true to say that the CPR shows that metaphysics is thus inherent to the nature of reason, it would be wrong to view this as a limitation of the critical enterprise. Rather, we can shed light upon the need to treat regulative ideas as if they referred to real objects in critical terms. To do so, it is again useful to consider regulativeI principles. As discussed previously, these principles are objective insofar as they are constitutive of experience; that is, without them, it is not possible for our intuitions to refer to an empirical object. This connection between objective status and constitutive function is no residue of old metaphysics. On

116  Christian Onof the contrary, it is central to the critical stance and its transcendentally idealistic perspective according to which transcendental conditions are those conditions that are necessary for the very possibility of objective experience. It is therefore natural to ask what aspect of experience is being constituted by such conditions. This means regulative ideas can be viewed problematically as though they were each to have an object. By thus understanding the regulativeC principles as if they constituted the soul, world and God, their objective status can be understood by analogy with the status of regulativeI principles. The idea of God, however, plays a particular role in that Kant clearly shows that it is connected with the regulativeC principles of reason, for instance, by giving an explanation of how this idea leads the understanding to explore what impact the flattening of the Earth’s spherical shape has upon the Earth’s rotational pattern (A687/B715). There, Kant starts with the notion of a God that is a wise ‘world-author’ (ibid.) and shows through examples how considering such a ‘purposive unity of things’ (A686/B714) enables us to attain ‘to the greatest systematic unity’ in the field of experience. Conversely, it is possible to start from the regulativeC principles and show why, for Kant, an organisation of nature characterised by the three principles of homogeneity, continuity and specification is a purposive one. Why? According to these three principles, the empirical world is characterised in terms of a hierarchical structure which acts as a horizon from a standpoint (the highest genus) defining the unity of nature. Within this horizon, species which are represented as ‘a multiplicity of points must be able to be given to infinity, each of which in turn has its narrower field of view’ (A658/B686) within which sub-species are found—and so on to infinity towards the full determination of particulars. This structure is such that no part of it can be altered without altering the whole: if a node in this structure (a species) is altered, then there must be something different about the standpoint from which this point was found to lie in its horizon (an alteration of the genus of the species), and, of course, the horizon from this point will also be altered (an alteration of the sub-species). Therefore, one cannot account for the existence of any part of the structure independently of the whole. With our discursive intellect, we can therefore only make sense of the existence of such a structure as caused by a concept of it as a whole. This, for Kant, means that SUN can only be understood in purposive terms, since a purpose is that of which the concept precedes the actuality and is causally responsible for it (CJ 180). Importantly, of course, this understanding of SUN in purposive terms is one which characterises our discursive intellect and no conclusion can be drawn as to the actual design of nature by God. This purposive understanding of SUN calls for an examination of how the role Kant assigns to regulativeC principles coheres with what the CJ has to say about the role of purposes in our cognition. This is the question that Gary Banham examines in his Pisa Kant Kongress paper,32 and subsequently

Regulative Principles and Judgement 117 I present an interpretation of the CJ’s principle of purposiveness for reflective judgement that distinguishes it from the principle of SUN.

4.  RegulativeC Principles and Reflective Judgement Upon reading the section IV (CJ 179f) of the published introduction to the CJ,33 the first impression is that Kant is going over the same material as in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic. Thus, Horstmann34 talks of both passages as providing an answer to the ‘problem of how to account for the unity of empirical knowledge in view of the contingency of empirical laws concerning natural objects and processes for our faculty of knowledge’. Similarly, Guyer views the CJ as going over the same issues as the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic and reassigning what had there been explained in terms of regulativeC principles of the faculty of reason to the faculty of judgement and reflective judgement.35 And a number of scholars believe that the theory of reflective judgement that Kant proposes in the CJ is incompatible with the role of regulativeC judgements in the CPR. Thus, Horstmann’s verdict is that the answer that Kant provided in the CPR ‘is largely incompatible with the theory put forward in the Critique of Judgment’ (ibid.)36 Purposiveness: A First Examination It is important to note that those scholars who see Kant’s views in the CJ as contradicting his earlier statements in the CPR do so on the basis that the question that Kant is addressing is the same. This is an assumption that needs to be looked at carefully. And guidance for our examination of this issue is provided by Banham’s (2010:2) questioning whether the notion of purposiveness that is at the core of the theory of reflective judgement really is identical to the notion of purposiveness in the CPR. A closer look at Kant’s text suggests that it is not. First, in the published Introduction to the CJ, Kant discusses a purposiveness that is directed to our cognitive faculties. Kant uses the expression ‘principle of purposiveness for our cognitive power’ (CJ 184, 186), and he further explains that this involves nature making ‘its universal laws specific [. . .] in a way commensurate with the human understanding’ (CJ 186). That means that this purposiveness is at least partially determinate, insofar as a purpose of commensurability has been specified. In the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic, there is no such determinacy to the purposiveness that is introduced to make sense of the hypothesised SUN.37 Kant mentions the purposiveness of a ‘supreme intelligence’ (A687/B715), and the realisation of God’s purpose is directed to an aim that is suited to His wisdom: ‘as if this being, as the highest intelligence, were the cause of everything according to the wisest aim’ (A688/B716). Exactly to what end nature has been created is not at issue here.38

118  Christian Onof A second distinction between the uses made of the notion of purposiveness in the CPR and the CJ lies in the fact that the latter’s principle of purposive unity is ‘not a principle of reason and hence requires no intentionally operating cause’, as Brandt observes.39 Finally, the end to which nature has been created is not a topic that finds its proper place in the CPR, which is concerned with the conditions of cognition. It does, however, have a place in the CJ. It is a stated aim of this work to bring together the ends of freedom identified in the Critique of Practical Reason and the deterministic world of appearances whose constitution was analysed in the CPR to explain how it is possible that ‘the lawfulness in its [nature’s] form will harmonize with at least the possibility of [achieving] the purposes that we are to achieve in nature according to the laws of freedom’ (CJ 176). Insofar as the implementation of the moral law obviously requires our ability to grasp the natural world in which we live, a minimum condition for such harmony is that the empirical laws which specify the causality characterising the form of this nature should be such that they can easily be understood. This is so that we can evaluate what states of affairs our actions will bring about in the empirical world.40 So, in particular, the first difference flagged previously is a consequence of this broader conception of nature as purposively designed for the realisation of the moral law.41 These distinctions suggest a need to examine carefully the transcendental principles of these two texts to see how these differences are reflected in them.

5. The Different Transcendental Principles of the Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Judgement To bring out how the different notions of purposiveness at work in these two texts are reflected in different transcendental principles, we shall consider in turn the status, content, function and complementarity of these principles. Let us first remind ourselves what they are. The transcendental principle PCPR of the Appendix of the Dialectic of the CPR is SUN, which is the hypothesis that nature is systematically unified, that is, that it is the product of a wise creator (A686–687/B714–715). This systematic unity defines three regulativeC principles of reason which guide the cognitive activity of the understanding. The transcendental principle PCJ of the Introduction to the CJ is the principle of purposiveness according to which nature is organised purposively for our cognitive faculties (CJ 181–184). This principle governs the use of our power of judgement in its reflective mode. Status of These Principles As discussed previously, PCPR is an unusual transcendental principle insofar as no deduction of it is possible. Rather, it has a hypothetical status. This does not, however, prevent it from being objectively valid, that is, of being about the world of appearances (A651/B680).

Regulative Principles and Judgement 119 PCJ, on the other hand, is described by Kant as indeed being a transcendental principle but a subjective one (CJ 184). The subjectivity of PCJ clearly reflects the focus of the purposiveness in the CJ as directed to the subjective end of my cognition. This subjectivity is a key difference from PCPR which, like all principles of CPR, states conditions for knowing objects: PCJ defines conditions for the employment of our faculty of judgement. This difference is not immediately apparent when one considers the regulativeC principles as they are first introduced, namely as principles for the employment of the faculty of the understanding (A645/B673). It would seem that both principles have the same function, namely to provide guidance to the subject in her search for universal concepts under which to bring the manifold in intuition. But it is noteworthy that there is little mention of the manifold in the CJ text. What this means is that Kant is taking it as given that we have experience of objects, that is, that the manifold in intuition can be brought under the categories. Further evidence for this is to be found in Kant’s referring to a diversity of empirical laws (CJ 182): he therefore takes it for granted that at least some empirical laws have been identified (CJ 209), that is, that the analogies have been applied in identifying causal links.42 On the contrary, in the CPR, the question is what a priori conditions are required to account for our experience and knowledge of objects. What is at stake in the CJ text is how we will be able to find universal empirical concepts that might be appropriate, and since this task is distinct from the determination of objects, the principle PCJ governing it is not objective. Insofar as it is subjective, it does not make any claims about the empirical world but only about how we must view it: ‘the basis of that principle is a mere presupposition that judgment makes for its own use’ (CJ 210’). This differs from the hypothetical principle PCPR which posits this unity as an objective feature of appearances.43 While both principles are hypothetical, the subjectivity of PCJ means that judgement proceeds ‘as if’ (CJ 200’) nature were organised systematically so as to facilitate the acquisition of empirical knowledge. On the contrary, PCPR makes the assumption that nature is organised according to SUN, which is a necessary condition for empirical knowledge, but nature is thereby understood ‘as if it had sprouted from the intention of a highest reason’ (A686/B714). In that sense, it would be appropriate to state that PCJ posits a fiction while PCPR posits a hypothesis about objective reality, which hypothesis derives from an idea that has mere fictional status. Content of These Principles In the CPR, PCPR defines three principles ‘of the homogeneity, specification and continuity of forms’ (A658/B686). The first two characterise the organisation of species under genera and of sub-species under species, and the third indicates how one should assume that between any two species

120  Christian Onof of a genus, further ‘intermediate’ species can be found. In this hierarchy of species and genera, the key point is ‘that the several species must be treated only as various determinations of fewer genera, and the latter of still higher families’ (A651–652/B679–680). The key feature of this pyramidal structure is the fact that one moves from larger to smaller numbers of different species as one ascends towards ‘higher families’ (ibid.) The CJ’s principles, which spell out how to proceed in seeking a universal under which to bring the particular, are first presented by Kant as widespread in metaphysics: ‘Nature takes the shortest way [. . .] its great diversity in empirical laws is nevertheless a unity under few principles’ (CJ 182). What we notice in this formulation is that Kant no longer uses comparative forms (‘fewer’) but turns to the superlative (‘shortest’) and non-relational forms of adjectives (‘few’).44 This is because Kant is not describing a hypothesised unity of nature but considering what should obtain and indeed what would be optimal to facilitate our grasp of the order of nature.45 This is confirmed in the second formulation of the CJ’s principles which amounts to viewing nature as exhibiting a subordination graspable by us of species under genera; that genera in turn approach one another under some common principle so as to make possible a transition from one to another and so to a higher genus; that while initially it seems to our understanding unavoidable to assume as many different kinds of causality as there are specific differences among natural effects, they may nevertheless fall under a small number of principles which it is our task to discover, etc. (CJ 185, my italics) It is clear that these principles do not follow the tripartite structure of the regulativeC principles, all the more so as, with the ‘etc.’, Kant suggests that the list is not complete. The italicised clauses show that all these principles are subjective, and although they resemble the regulativeC principles, they are clearly distinct. That is, even though the first sentence in the last quote reminds us of the principle of genera, it contains a reference to our cognitive powers which is foreign to the CPR principle; but it does assume a species-genera structure.46 The principle of genera is given a further subjective twist in that the higher genera of which the current genera will turn out to be species can be identified by examining the similarities between these genera, that is, their ‘affinity’ (CJ 210). It therefore seems that, rather than producing a new version of the regulativeC principles in the CJ, Kant is taking over some of this structure and imposing new conditions upon it. So, while the regulativeC principles define a structure of nature that fulfils the criteria of use of empirical concepts, the principles of CJ identify how we are to take nature to be organised to facilitate the actual use of empirical concepts: ‘what is presupposed is that nature, even in its empirical laws, has adhered to a certain parsimony suitable for

Regulative Principles and Judgement 121 our judgment, and adhered to a uniformity we can grasp’ (CJ 213). What is at stake is no longer that which is in principle required of appearances for empirical concepts to be applicable to them but how we must think of these appearances if we are to manage to identify suitable empirical concepts for them. In the case of empirical laws, this is achieved by conceiving of nature as having a small number of such principles which cover the diversity of our empirical laws, and these principles have a certain affinity that makes it possible to understand how they are related as species of more general laws. So, the pyramidal structure of the principle of SUN is here characterised as being very flattened, since the number of genera decreases quickly as one ascends the pyramid, which makes it easy to ascend. The issue flagged previously, namely the focus of the content of PCJ upon empirical laws, must also be addressed.47 The rationale for this focus is explained in the First Introduction when Kant asks how we could hope to identify empirical concepts for appearances ‘if nature, because of the great variety of its empirical laws, had made these [natural] forms exceedingly heterogeneous’ (CJ 213). It would seem that Kant views our knowledge of nature as requiring that we have a grasp of empirical laws, through which we shall be able to bring unity to our knowledge, that is, to our empirical concepts, because it is according to these laws that nature’s products are created and transformed. This lends support to the claim that the issue at stake with PCJ is the subjective one of how we can actually go about acquiring empirical knowledge: the implication of the focus upon laws is that by discovering their systematic arrangement, we shall be provided with guidance as to how to organise empirical concepts in general. Function of These Principles The different status and content of PCJ as opposed to PCPR already imply different functions. To fully grasp these differences in function, it is useful to consider what Kant has to say about what would happen were such principles not to be applicable to the world of appearances. In the CJ, Kant considers a state of affairs in which the ‘specific differences in the empirical laws of nature [. . .] [are] so great that it would be impossible for our understanding to discover in nature an order it could grasp’ (CJ 185). This text is very reminiscent of the CPR text about what would happen ‘if among the appearances offering themselves to us there were such a great variety [. . .] that even the most accurate human understanding, through comparison of one with another, could not detect the least similarity’ (A653/B681). And if we look at the consequences of these hypothetical scenarios, they initially appear identical: (i) it would be ‘impossible for [our understanding] to divide nature’s products in genera and species’ (CJ 185); (ii) ‘then the logical law of genera would not obtain at all’ (A653/B681). And this similarity has led commentators to view these scenarios and their outcomes as identical.48

122  Christian Onof But, in fact, while the second quote refers to the law of genera and therefore to the possibility, among appearances, of bringing unity to species, the first refers to the same activity of the faculty of judgement but for nature’s products. By referring to nature’s products, Kant is already assuming empirical objects, as we pointed out previously: in the first scenario, Kant is not considering that there should be no determinate empirical objects featuring in our experience as a result of the principle of purposiveness not applying to nature, whereas he does in the case of the CPR text, a point which Horstmann49 overlooks because he avoids this part of the appendix as introducing additional unhelpful complications. And, indeed, looking at what Kant writes next in each case confirms this difference: (i) if the principle of purposiveness did not apply, it would be impossible for our understanding ‘to use the principles by which we explain and understand one product to explain and grasp another as well’ (CJ 185); (ii) without the regulativeC principle of genera, ‘no empirical concepts and hence no experience would be possible’ (A654/B682). What is at stake in the CJ is our ability to achieve ‘coherent experience’ (CJ 185), whereby Kant means to bring together the diverse parts of our cognition of laws of nature under a small number of principles. But it is assumed that some laws can be identified. Thus, Kant says that ‘though we might on occasion discover particular laws in terms of which we could connect some perception to [form] an experience, we could never bring these empirical laws themselves under a common principle’ (CJ 209). One can thus see the relation between the functions of PCPR and PCJ. The principle of purposiveness concerns a nature that we cognise according to the principles of CPR; the issue that CJ deals with is the subjective aspect of bringing order to our cognition, and it thereby not only requires that we take nature to be systematically organised (at least in terms of having species under genera) but it also defines further constraints upon this systematic organisation of nature: • it must be possible to infer the genera easily by comparing species (affinity); and • there must not be too many empirical laws that are the genera of the specific causal laws we identify when applying the Second Analogy (parsimony). So a failure of the principle of purposiveness due to one of these two constraints not being satisfied would not threaten our ability to identify some empirical concepts and laws that apply to the manifolds in intuition but would make it very difficult for us to bring unity to our cognition, even if nature were otherwise organised according to SUN. This would, for instance, be the case if the pyramid-like structure referred to earlier were difficult to ascend, because it is very steep, so that the number of species would only be reduced a little when moving up one notch, and/or if it were difficult to infer the genera by comparing similar species.

Regulative Principles and Judgement 123 Complementarity of These Principles While CJ takes over the theme of SUN in relation to reflective judgement, it does not follow that it rejects PCPR: CJ should not be seen to be taking SUN away from the domain of reason to assign it to reflective judgement. Indeed, importantly, Kant even refers in CJ to ‘reason and its principle concerning the possibility of a system’ (CJ 221). The roles of reflective judgement and reason should rather be viewed as complementary. As Kant puts it, while the understanding is described as the ability to ‘cognize the universal’, judgement is ‘the ability to subsume the particular under the universal’, while reason is ‘the ability to determine the particular through the universal’ (CJ 201). The interaction of these cognitive powers can therefore be understood to operate as follows: judgement seeks out a universal under which the particular, for example, an empirical law, can be subsumed. This universal will be a more general empirical law, and it can be cognised through the understanding. What reason adds to this is a grasp of the particular empirical law as a specification of the more general one according to a necessary unity of nature. Reason and judgement are both in the business of connecting the particular with the universal, and this explains the overlap of their cognitive principles.50 But their roles are distinct. To illustrate this, consider the development of electromagnetism. The conception of magnetism and of electricity as phenomena that belong to a common genus had already been voiced in the eighteenth century, for example, in Kant’s Danziger lectures on physics.51 After such exercises of the power of judgement, the laws of electromagnetism, that is, the work of the understanding, were discovered by a number of physicists in the first half of the nineteenth century (Ampère, Ørsted, Faraday, Lenz, . . .). But an understanding of how magnetic and electric phenomena could be seen as instantiations of the universal laws of electromagnetism, that is, the work of reason, had to wait until Maxwell produced his mathematical theory of electromagnetism in 1865. Both Kant and Maxwell were operating with the same conception of a system of laws of magnetism and electricity under a common denominator, the laws of electromagnetism. But for Kant, this was a judgement based upon ideas of affinity and parsimony, while Maxwell was aiming to uncover a further piece of the systematic unity of nature by mathematising the laws of electromagnetism; that is, he was aiming to determine the necessity inherent in the collection of laws discovered by Faraday and others.

6. Conclusion This chapter has sought to contribute to the understanding of Kant’s notion of regulative principles and their relation to the doctrine of reflective judgement in the Third Critique. By taking cues from Gary Banham’s work, it has aimed to clarify in what way the regulative principles discussed in the Transcendental Dialectic define SUN as a hypothetical

124  Christian Onof transcendental principle. This principle must be distinguished from the principle of purposiveness in CJ, which is a subjective transcendental principle governing reflective judgement. Kant’s statements are not always consistent between CPR and CJ, so that it is doubtless that more than one reading is possible. The proposed interpretation draws chiefly upon Kant’s statements in the published introduction to the CJ and aims to do justice to the different roles and features of these two principles.

Notes 1 Comments on earlier versions by Alberto Vanzo and Dennis Schulting are gratefully acknowledged. The following abbreviations have been used for Kant’s writings: AA = Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Königlich Preußische (Deutsche) Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: Reimer [later: de Gruyter], 1900–); CJ = Critique of Judgment, ed. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987); CPR = Critique of Pure Reason, ed. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 2 Gary Banham, ‘Regulative Principles and Reflective Judgment’, paper presented at the Seminar on Kant’s Kritik der Urteilskraft, Amsterdam, 2010, www.garybanham.net/PAPERS_files/Regulative Principles and Reflective Judgment.pdf, archived at www.webcitation.org/6qJRU25QQ; Gary Banham, ‘Regulative Principles and Regulative Ideas’, in Kant und die Philosophie in weltbürgerlicher Absicht: Akten des XI. Kant-Kongresses 2010, ed. Stefano Bacin, Alfredo Ferrarin, Claudio La Rocca and Margit Ruffing (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), vol. 2, 15–24. 3 For these three notions of unity, see, respectively, A180/B222, A680–681/ B708–709 and CJ 32. 4 This aim of extending our knowledge seems very compatible with that presented in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic, and Kant wants to subsume it under the ideal of systematicity that he presents in the Appendix. Paul Guyer (Kant’s System of Nature and Freedom: Selected Essays [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], 19) argues that this identification fails because, for instance, distinct regions of space need only be numerically distinct, not qualitatively distinct as species must. While Guyer correctly notes the role of the infinity of the form of intuition in enabling the requirement of reason to be satisfied (at least in the case of the mathematical antinomies), he does not see that the notion of a qualitative distinction between species is found in regions of this infinite space. In a sense, they are of course ‘just’ numerically different, but spatial relations provide the condition for this numerical difference (see Christian Onof and Dennis Schulting, ‘Space as Form of Intuition and as Formal Intuition: On the Note to B160 in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason’, Philosophical Review, 124 [2015], 1–58.) And these spatial relations define these regions as qualitatively distinct, in a pre-conceptual sense defined by their spatial characteristics: numerical difference could not be represented in intuition without this property of space (and similarly for time). It is therefore appropriate to view spatial regions located inside a larger space as different species. This interpretation also draws support from the notion of purposiveness (which I examine further): the hierarchy of the systematic unity of nature springs from a purposive unity whose relation to all the species under it is that of the unity of space to its parts: it precedes them. 5 Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, ed. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959), 395.

Regulative Principles and Judgement 125 6 We note also that this systematisation concerns not only our concepts but the beliefs that constitute our knowledge: as Briesen puts it, the projects of systematisation Kant discusses in the Appendix aim at a ‘complete and hierarchical organization of our empirical concepts and beliefs’. See Jochen Briesen, ‘Is Kant (W)right? On Kant’s Regulative Ideas and Wright’s Entitlements’, Kant Yearbook, 5 (2013), 1–32, at 6. 7 It is worth noting in passing that Kant is making some important points of interest to philosophy of science about the role of notions of unity in science, either within a scientific discipline (think of the importance of the concept of a theory of everything in physics), or between scientific disciplines (the breaking down of scientific barriers between disciplines is viewed as one of the drivers of progress in the sciences). 8 I take it that, when Kant refers to experience here, he refers to a sufficiently rich notion which implies determinate cognition of empirical objects. Indeed, Kant focuses upon the issue of true cognition in his discussion (A651/B679), and it can only be said that there is a true cognition of an empirical object if some determinate empirical concept is involved. This implicit reference to determinate empirical concepts at this point in the Critique implies that Kant’s claim that further conditions are required for the possibility of true cognition of empirical objects does not contradict his earlier claim that the general transcendental conditions of experience are found in the Transcendental Aesthetic and Transcendental Analytic (see Guyer, Kant’s System of Nature and Freedom, 29–34 on this issue in CJ). 9 Banham, ‘Regulative Principles and Regulative Ideas’, 21. See Paul Abela, Kant’s Empirical Realism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002). 10 See John D. McFarland, Kant’s Concept of Teleology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1970). 11 Rolf-Peter Horstmann, ‘Why Must There Be a Transcendental Deduction in Kant’s Critique of Judgment?’, in Kant’s Transcendental Deductions, ed. Eckart Förster (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), 157–176, at 167–168; Michelle Grier, Kant’s Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 288–294. 12 Banham, ‘Regulative Principles and Regulative Ideas’, 21. 13 Ibid., 22. 14 Banham, ‘Regulative Principles and Regulative Ideas’, 16–17. See Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 188. 15 Banham, ‘Regulative Principles and Regulative Ideas’, 19–20. 16 Ibid., 20. 17 I emphasise ‘intuitions of objects’, because one can in principle have intuitions that have not been brought under the TUA and therefore are not objective. See Onof and Schulting, ‘Space as Form of Intuition’; Christian Onof, ‘Is There Room for Nonconceptual Content in Kant’s Critical Philosophy?’, in Kantian Nonceptualism, ed. Dennis Schulting (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 199–226. 18 The idea here is that a species acts as ground for the identification of subspecies through further determination of this species. 19 These might for instance be intuitions that are brought under the TUA by applying the mathematical categories only to the manifold in space, as in geometry. See Onof and Schulting, ‘Space as Form of Intuition’. 20 Banham, ‘Regulative Principles and Regulative Ideas’, 23. This will therefore define sufficient conditions for empirical truth, that is, for the applicability of empirical concepts we might form. Note that this must be distinguished from the broader issue of a general criterion of truth, about which Kant clearly

126  Christian Onof states that ‘no general sign of the truth of the matter of cognition can be demanded, because it is self-contradictory’ (B83/A59). 21 Note that this does not mean that I could never synthesise a manifold, and therefore that transcendental self-consciousness would never be instantiated: for I can make judgements about objects which do not involve empirical concepts. Such judgements as ‘this is larger than that’, or ‘there is a curved shape’, which draw upon basic concepts of arithmetic and geometry, together with demonstratives, can be taken to refer to indeterminate objects of experience, and the unity of the syntheses they involve is the TUA. 22 The problem Kant raises here has in fact already been mentioned in the Transcendental Deduction in its A version. An important feature of the first part of this deduction (A98–A110) is that it presents the syntheses that are required for an empirical judgement to be made which involves subsumption of the manifold in intuition under the concept of an object. The synthesis of reproduction is seen to rely upon the imagination’s ability to detect features of appearances that are reproduced, something which it could not do ‘[i]f cinnabar were now red, now black, now light, now heavy’ (A100). However, here, Kant explains this affinity of appearances in terms of the transcendental affinity that is brought about through the TUA (A113–114). This is in tension with the claims in the Dialectic, and the reason why can easily be seen by looking at the different form taken by the TUA: when Kant talks of a ‘pure, original, unchanging consciousness’ (A107), he is viewing all possible representations as united under this single unity. This enables him to say, later, that ‘we ourselves bring into the appearances that order and regularity in them that we call nature, and moreover we would not be able to find it there if we, or the nature of our mind, had not originally put it there’ (A125), and further, ‘[t]he unity of apperception, however, is the transcendental ground of the necessary lawfulness of all appearances in an experience’ (A127). If all possible representations are viewed as relating to the one unity of apperception, then it makes sense to view this unity of apperception as the ground of all lawfulness in nature. Representations subsumed under distinct concepts can be viewed together as relating to the one unity of apperception, so that all concepts can be seen as belonging to one unified unity, that of nature. Clearly this is too strong and must be seen as conflicting with the claims in the Dialectic. Kant rectifies this with his B-deduction, which introduces the possibility of accompanying any manifold of representations with an ‘I think’: ‘all unification of representations requires unity of consciousness in the synthesis of them’ (B137). Kant then clarifies the scope of this principle with his distinction between natura formaliter spectata and natura materialiter spectata (B163–165): apperception is the ground of nature in a formal sense, and thus of the formal laws of nature but not of the empirical laws of nature. 23 This refers to the famous discovery by Le Verrier and Adams of the insufficiency of appealing to Saturn and Jupiter’s pull to explain the deviations of Uranus’s trajectory from a simple ellipse around the Sun. See Robert S. Ball, The Story of the Heavens (London: Cassell, 1886), 322f. The ‘predicted orbit’ therefore refers to Uranus’s orbit as computed based upon the Sun, Jupiter and Saturn only. 24 Note, as discussed in footnote 22, that the principle of the SUA does not require that all my representations be subsumable under a single synthetic unity, pace Pierre Keller, Kant and the Demands of Self-Consciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 72. Kant clearly states that there must be some synthetic unity for any representation that is to be something for me, that is, to represent an object (B136–137). 25 Note that there is no claim that there is actually a purpose at work, but purposiveness is the way in which we understand systematic organisation.

Regulative Principles and Judgement 127 26 See, for example, Reinhard Brandt, ‘The Deductions in the Critique of Judgment: Comments on Hampshire and Horstmann’, in Kant’s Transcendental Deductions, ed. Eckart Förster (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), 177–190; Gerd Buchdahl, Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969; Ido Geiger, ‘Is the Assumption of a Systematic Whole of Empirical Concepts a Necessary Condition of Knowledge?’, Kant Studien, 94 (2003), 273–298. 27 See, for example, Guyer, Kant’s System of Nature and Freedom, 24–28. 28 Guyer (Kant’s System of Nature and Freedom, 23) argues that the systematic order of nature cannot be necessary for concept application, but as we see below, Kant can counter such claims. 29 In the limit, this could be a one-level hierarchy: all concepts belong simply to one genus. 30 Exactly what this involves is a matter of debate: it might be anything from the most basic experience of objects to the knowledge contained in scientific theories, as a neo-Kantian interpretation would have it. 31 They will, of course, acquire another status in Kant’s practical philosophy. 32 Banham, ‘Regulative Principles and Regulative Ideas’. 33 I shall focus more upon the published introduction but occasionally refer to the First Introduction. More would need to be said about the problem of reconciling the notion of purposiveness in the Appendix to the Dialectic with that of the First Introduction (CJ 216’). 34 ‘Why Must There Be a Transcendental Deduction in Kant’s Critique of Judgment?’, 165. 35 See Guyer, Kant’s System of Nature and Freedom, ch. 1; see Banham, ‘Regulative Principles and Regulative Ideas’, 16. 36 Guyer finds a way of broadly reconciling the two texts but at the cost of rejecting Kant’s claim that the regulativeC principles provide conditions for the applicability of empirical concepts to appearances. 37 I therefore disagree with Brandt’s interpretation of this text as claiming that ‘nature is purposive for our knowledge’ (‘The Deductions in the Critique of Judgment’, 181). 38 It might be objected that any purposiveness that is manifested to me (such as that of SUN on the assumption of the objectivity of this unity of nature) is also purposive for my cognition. This follows because, insofar as I can grasp the purposive relation, it is indirectly purposive for me since this purposiveness makes a unity of what presents itself graspable by my cognitive faculties. While this establishes an important link between any manifest purposiveness of divine creation and what is purposive for my cognition, it does not enable them to be identified. Indeed, it remains the case that my cognition does not thereby become part of any purported purpose of the creative act: indeed, if A is done for purpose P, and I grasp (i.e., am able to cognise) that this A is purposive, this does not mean that P is or includes my ability to cognise. 39 See Brandt, ‘The Deductions in the Critique of Judgment’, 186. 40 Kant’s moral theory is, of course, not consequentialist, but it is a fallacy to believe that this entails that consequences are irrelevant to the evaluation of the morality of one’s actions. As Kant’s examples in the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals show, they are central to understanding the moral worth of an action because they make it possible to evaluate whether it is possible to will the universalisation of one’s maxim of action. See Christian Onof, ‘A Framework for the Derivation and Reconstruction of the Categorical Imperative’, Kant-Studien, 89 (1998), 410–427. 41 The requirement that we be able to get an understanding of nature that enables us to act in it also brings out a difference of emphasis between the CPR and the CJ: it is empirical laws that Kant chiefly focuses upon in the latter

128  Christian Onof work, as opposed to empirical concepts in general in the earlier text. As Alberto Vanzo helpfully points out, this is only a superficial difference since concept formation presupposes that nature is organized according to empirical laws (AA 20:211–212). 42 I take it that the Second Analogy, perhaps together with considerations about the nature of causality requires that irreversible changes can be brought under causal laws, which is a strong reading of this principle—see Eric Watkins, Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 286–291. There is no space to argue for this point here, but it is worth noting that proponents of a weak reading must explain why Kant assumes that it is unproblematic that empirical laws can already be identified: this would, on their reading, require more than simply applying the Second Analogy. 43 Here, I disagree with Banham’s (2010:8) equating the hypothetical status of the regulativeC principles with their being subjectively necessary. 44 This point is overlooked in the literature, and indeed, commentators view the claim that there are fewer genera than species below them as implying that there are few genera (e.g., Guyer, Kant’s System of Nature and Freedom, 17). But, while it is true that the number of genera is meant to converge asymptotically to one, it is not specified how fast or slow this convergence might be (i.e., how steep the pyramidal structure is). 45 Grier (Kant’s Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion, 294) shows how SUN itself, as a logical principle, does not make it easier to acquire knowledge of empirical laws. 46 We note also that Kant does not mention the principle of continuity in CJ. The second principle in the quoted passage might at first appear to be a formulation of a principle of continuity. But the point of the principle is different: the idea is that the closeness of genera will enable the identification of higher genera to which these belong as species. The principle of continuity on the other hand, enjoins the subject to look for further species under a given genus, which fill in the gaps between those species which have already been identified. From the notion of purposiveness of nature however, it is arguably possible to derive these conditions, along the lines proposed earlier when considering Kant’s notion of purposiveness in the CPR. As for the principle of specification, although Kant refers to ‘specification’ in the First Introduction (CJ 215’), he does not mean the principle of CPR as there is no mention of the possibility of finding further sub-species for any given species. 47 See Grier, Kant’s Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion, 289–290. 48 Horstmann, ‘Why Must There Be a Transcendental Deduction in Kant’s Critique of Judgment?’, 163–165. 49 Ibid., 166. 50 This is probably what makes it possible to examine the notion of systematicity in Kant’s critical work without addressing the issue of the respective roles of the power of judgement and the faculty of reason. See, for example, Gerd Buchdahl, ‘The Conception of Lawlikeness in Kant’s Philosophy of Science’, Synthese, 23 (1971), 24–46. 51 AA 29.1,1:91; see Christian Onof, ‘Kant’s Lectures on Physics and the Development of the Critical Philosophy’, in Reading Kant’s Lectures, ed. Robert R. Clewis (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015), 461–483.

Appendix: Limits and Completeness

The positive role of the ideas of reason brings about a major shift in CPR. The bulk of the Dialectic had focussed upon defining what was out of our cognition’s reach. As a result, the case for debarring the faculty of reason from pursuing its traditional metaphysical activities of enquiry into the nature of God, the soul and the world was overwhelmingly convincing. The faculty of understanding was apparently the great ‘winner’ at the tribunal of reason: the case for the prosecution, made first by thoroughly examining its first witness, the understanding, and using the results thereof to explain the inconsistencies and shortcomings of the claims made by the defendant, reason, was seemingly final. By putting what turns out to be the case for the defence in the Appendix, Kant is first of all indicating that the tribunal is not closed with the First Critique. But he is also providing the reader with an extraordinary twist in the tale. First, we are told that reason actually has a very good character: its role as a guide to the understanding is made forcefully. Second, Kant, now in the role of the defence lawyer, sets the stage for a fight back of the faculty of reason: it turns out that if it were not for reason’s postulated systematic unity, the understanding would be of no use. Of particular interest here is the notion that, while CPR defines limits to what we can know, it is also making the prima facie conflicting claim that the completeness of this knowledge must remain an unattainable ideal, because if it were complete, it would be transcendent knowledge. There is in fact no contradiction in these claims, since that which is limited in one sense (by the principles of the pure understanding) can very well be unlimited in another (by the overarching imperative of reason to extend our knowledge towards the unconditioned).1 At the end of the First Critique, we are therefore left with a cliffhanger of sorts as far as the role of reason in cognition is concerned, with the faculty of reason staging a fight back which leaves the outcome of the tribunal of reason undecided. What Kant has achieved is

130  Christian Onof to rehabilitate a faculty that was originally presented as a source of deception, thereby setting the scene for the Second Critique in which reason’s foremost function as an autonomous self-legislating faculty is identified. So it is left to the Third Critique to revisit the cliff-hanger of the First Critique and introduce a mediating faculty, judgement. This faculty, it turns out, is that which, in our cognitive practice, actually enables the understanding to go about its business. This is not to say that reason was wrongly attributed a key positive role towards the end of the First Critique. Rather, the examination of the faculty of judgement shows how the SUN that reason posited is ultimately a component/necessary condition of something higher, the Highest Good, which reason defines as the end of its primary function, to govern our practice by giving itself the moral law.

Note 1 On this issue, I disagree with Grier’s assessment that ‘The demand for completion in our exposition of concepts is essentially linked in the critical philosophy to the correlative demand for limits to the understanding’ (Kant’s Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion, 284).

6 Disputing Critique Lyotard’s Kantian Differend Keith Crome

In memory of Gary1

Along with Discourse, Figure and Libidinal Economy, Lyotard counted The Differend as one of his three ‘ “real” books’.2 Its concern is with argument, in the sense of dispute. The neologism differend is a straightforward transposition of the French différend, which denotes a disagreement, a quarrel or controversy, a difference of opinion. The English translation retains the French term in preference to any of its English equivalents in order to signal to the reader ‘the particular, technical sense’ that Lyotard gives to the term (D 194). Casting his definition in forensic terms, and contrasting a differend to a litigation, Lyotard writes that a differend is ‘a case of conflict, between (at least) two parties, that cannot be equitably resolved for lack of a rule of judgement applicable to both arguments’ (D xi). Observing that in the case of a differend, ‘one side’s legitimacy does not imply the other’s lack of legitimacy’, he continues by arguing that ‘applying a single rule of judgement to both in order to settle their differend as though it were merely a litigation would wrong (at least) one of them’ (D xi). A wrong arises when, in the case of conflict, one of the parties is divested of the means to argue and allow their argument to become known. In The Differend, Lyotard says his concern is ‘to examine cases of differend’ (D xiv). This terse declaration, issued by Lyotard in his prefatory remarks, which he says will serve to save the reader the trouble of reading the book, has legitimated, if not led to, a misunderstanding of the stakes of The Differend. Some have seen the examination of differends as an ethico-political enterprise—an enterprise devoted to the exposure of the ethical and political ‘wrongs’ that are occasioned by mistreating differends as injuries that can be litigated. The Differend is taken both as an example of this enterprise and as laying the ground for it by way of its exposition of the principle underlying—or, better, the regulative Idea guiding—its ethico-political judgements: the principle or Idea of dissensus. Certainly, the concept of the differend can be (and has been) used to expose a whole

132  Keith Crome variety of more or less contemporary injustices that are occasioned by the denial or suppression of the legitimacy of the complainant’s complaint and are incapable of recognition or resolution within established political jurisdictions.3 However, if the concept of the differend can be used in this way—and Lyotard made such use of it h ­ imself—the stakes of The Differend are different. Said by Lyotard to be his ‘philosophical’ book (D xiv), The Differend is bent towards inducing a crisis within the tradition to which Lyotard explicitly affiliates it, exposing the differends which that tradition has wrapped up and in which it has got itself all wrapped up. To ignore this, to conflate the ethico-­political application of the differend with the stakes of The Differend, would, to make use of Lyotard’s own term, produce something like a ‘wrong’. Reading The Differend in the way I am proposing means viewing it as a critical enterprise—as a tribunal in which philosophical reason calls itself to account. It is, in this sense, a repetition of the Kantian project. A full demonstration of this is not possible within the limits of this essay. Instead, and as my title taken in one of its senses suggests, what I should like to try to do is say something about the Kantian provenance of Lyotard’s concept of the differend. There is, I think, some merit to this undertaking in itself. For despite the obviousness of Lyotard’s relation to Kant, this particular debt to my knowledge has not in itself attracted much commentary or exegesis; Lyotard’s commentators have for the most part preferred to focus on what he says about Kant’s account of the sublime and the use he makes of it.4 However, if Lyotard draws on the funds of Kant’s philosophy, he also turns them back on to that philosophy and exposes a differend harboured in Kant’s critical project—a differend concerning the concept of nature. This differend is not simply one differend among others; rather, it is an historically fateful differend, a differend that is profoundly implicated in the history of the West. As my title taken in another sense indicates, I am also concerned in what follows with elaborating this differend between Lyotard and Kant.

1.  The Battlefield of Metaphysics The aim, the ambition, of the Critique of Pure Reason is to put an end to the controversies that have beset metaphysics. In his preface to the first edition of the Critique, Kant dramatises the situation that provoked his critical enterprise: the realm of Metaphysics, misgoverned since its inception, beset by intestine wars, has long since become a ‘battle-field’ (CPR A viii). The despotic rule of the dogmatists, which first prevailed, gave way to anarchy, and the sceptics, ‘a species of nomads, despising all modes of settled life’ (CPR A ix) repeatedly, if unsuccessfully, sought to break apart the polity. More recently, Kant observes, the right of Metaphysics to rule over all the sciences has been contested by the vulgar sedition of

Disputing Critique 133 the physiologists, but their challenge, made on false pretences, came to naught, and dogmatic despotism has re-established itself once more. The restoration of dogmatism has, Kant says, led to a ‘mood of weariness and complete indifferentism—the mother in all sciences, of chaos and night’ (CPR A x). However, this indifferentism is not final. Instead, surprisingly, it is a spur to further action and the prelude to reform. For, real or feigned, this indifference, affecting those sciences whose knowledge, if it could be attained, ‘we should least of all care to dispense with’ (CPR A x), is a sign, not of ‘levity’ but of ‘the matured judgement of the age’, which refuses to tolerate illusory knowledge. It is a call to criticism, a provocation that moves reason to undertake once more the age-old task of philosophy, the task of acquiring self-knowledge. The call that summons reason to its vocation is not a call to arms— or not in any simple sense, at least. Indeed, on one reading of the first Critique, the opposite would appear to be the case. Criticism does not embark on a final battle, a war to end all wars. Instead, reason’s intervention in the historic and internecine battles of metaphysics is judicial—the institution of a ‘tribunal which will assure to reason its lawful claims, and dismiss all groundless pretensions, not by despotic decrees, but in accordance with its own eternal and unalterable laws’ (CPR A xii). This tribunal, Kant adds, is ‘no other than the critique of pure reason’ (CPR A xii), and it effects a restoration of civility: the ‘battle-field’ of metaphysics is transformed into a courtroom, and antagonism and the fighting of the factions give way to the order of the law. In short, criticism puts an end to war, replacing it with ‘the peace of a legal order, in which our disputes have to be conducted solely by the recognised methods of legal action’ (CPR A752/B779). As Lyotard himself notes, the ‘theme of the war between doctrines has long been a rhetorical staple [. . .] of prefaces to philosophical works’ (JD 358n9). The example of this that Lyotard gives is that of Hume, whose own incursion into the territory of Metaphysics Kant credits with rousing him from his uncritical partisanship for dogmatism. In the introduction to A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume casts his procedure in opposite terms to Kant: whereas Kant brings the warring factions to prosecution, Hume abjures the ‘tribunal of reason’ and instead seeks to prosecute allout war. Having made advert to the disarray and confusion that is the current condition of the sciences, to the abundance of vexatious debates and disputes that testify to the nigh near-universal uncertainty which prevails in matters of the greatest moment, he declares that ‘the only expedient from which we can hope for success in our philosophical researches’ is ‘to march up directly to the capital or center of these sciences, to human nature itself’.5 Once having seized this chief citadel, it is then possible to hope everywhere else ‘for an easy victory’.6 If Kant can have such confidence in the tribunal of reason as he shows in the 1781 preface, if he can be confident that peaceful legislation can

134  Keith Crome replace the perpetual polemics that have previously been the lot of philosophy, it is because he is assured of the inherent lawfulness of reason in a way that Hume is not. The competing claims of the rival parties are ultimately settled not on the battlefield but in the court: force is transmuted into forensics and pacified by the binding power of reason’s rightfully recognised legality. But this confidence begs many questions; not least, as Lyotard notes, it leaves unexplained why criticism did not ‘come into play at the very beginning in order to spare thought the useless torment of dogmatic quarrels’ (JD 328). Reading into what Kant says, one might attribute the tardiness of critical reason’s intervention to its being initially indisposed to such critical activity. However, contrary to what one might think, this indisposition is not a consequence of the contentions that beset metaphysics, contentions that would have enfeebled the critical spirit, although it is perhaps their cause. The indisposition to criticism is the index of reason’s own immaturity, and the disputes over which criticism eventually rules (in the legal sense) are a necessary condition for its development: the critical disposition is a potentiality of reason’s combative nature, and it is roused from its slumbering state by polemic. Moreover, once stung into wakefulness, it requires the perpetual threat of a recurrence of war in order to remain alert. Thus, the prospect of perpetual peace, the serene progress in the sciences, promised by the institution of criticism, is, if not illusory, then at least complicated by its dependence on the maintenance of the combative disposition with which nature, according to Kant, has endowed reason. Lyotard detects this combative and critical disposition of reason in the exercise of judgement, which he opposes to the mere application of doctrine, and it is pre-eminently evidenced in the exercise of reflective judgement. Judgement in general is a way of ‘thinking the particular as contained under the universal’ (CJ §IV, p. 179), or, in the language of the tribunal, it is a way of finding a case for a rule or a rule for a case. Whilst determinant judgement is a mode of judgement that is procedural, in the sense that it is a subsumptive exercise, reflective judgement is inventive. It is exercised when ‘only the particular is given and the universal has to be found’ (CJ §IV, p. 179), and so it must discover its rule rather than presuppose its knowledge as a principle. However, to judge reflectively is not simply to invent or discover a rule for a case. In discovering the legitimate rule for a case, judgement is called on to discriminate, to divide, in the sense that it must reveal the incommensurability between different cases—or in some instances within the same case. It must intervene in order to settle disputes between rival claimants, and this it must do without having an established body of doctrine upon which to rely. With the differend, and in The Differend, Lyotard seeks to maintain this combative, critical spirit. The predicament posed in and by the differend requires the exercise of reflective judgement inasmuch as the particular case that provokes the differend demands the discovery of a new rule of judgement

Disputing Critique 135 capable of giving expression to it, that is, of recognising its claim to legitimacy and thereby preventing it from becoming or remaining a wrong.

2.  The Kantian Provenance of the Differend It is not only Kant’s critical spirit that sustains Lyotard’s recourse to judgement; the immediate inspiration for Lyotard’s idea of the differend derives from Kant’s critical intervention in the doctrinal controversies that beset metaphysics and that issued from the dialectical employment— or misemployment—of pure reason. Criticism is in a permanently armed state against this misemployment, and Kant addresses the controversies that arise from it in the second division of the second part of the Critique of Pure Reason, entitled the ‘Transcendental Dialectic’. Dialectic is itself a ‘logic of illusion’, since dialectical arguments have only the semblance of truth. They are sophisms, but they are not simply false arguments born from the desire to convince; they arise from the ‘natural and inevitable illusion’ of human reason (CPR A298/B354). ‘Human reason’, Kant says, ‘has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions, which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer’ (CPR A vii). Beginning with principles that it of necessity employs in the course of experience, and which experience justifies it in so employing, reason is nevertheless led beyond the bounds of experience to claim knowledge of objects that are never given in experience. In this way, it ‘precipitates itself into darkness and contradictions’ (CPR A viii), and whilst it is able to guess that these are due to errors of its own making, it is not able to detect them. It is the function of criticism to expose these illusions, although it cannot make them disappear, because they are ‘natural and inevitable’. Of particular interest to Lyotard is the incitement to criticism that arises from the ‘antinomies of pure reason’. Kant’s identification of the antinomies is a criticism of the conflicting doctrines of empiricism and rationalism concerning the ‘object’ of cosmology, one of the three definite branches of metaphysics. It is characteristic of cosmology, Kant says, that it attempts to achieve knowledge of the totality of all beings by means of concepts of reason—or, to be more exact, by means of freeing ‘a concept of the understanding from the unavoidable limitations of possible experience, and so to endeavour to extend it beyond the limits of the empirical’ (CPR A409/B435). However, in so doing, it lapses into conflict, developing two opposing propositions about the same object (or rather nonobject, since the totality of beings is not an object of experience but an Idea of reason) but in such a way that each is maintained with equal necessity. Because in each of the antinomies that it generates reason is brought to exceed the bounds of experience, it comes to a position where if none of its propositions can ‘hope for confirmation in experience’,

136  Keith Crome neither can they ‘fear refutation by it’ (CPR A421/B449). For each of the antinomies, it is possible to show ‘clear, evident and irresistible proofs’.7 It is consequently impossible to effect a resolution of the impasse that they occasion by denying the validity of either the thesis or the antithesis on merely logical grounds. Moreover, each thesis ‘is not only in itself free from contradiction, but finds the conditions of its necessity in the very nature of reason—only that, unfortunately, the assertion of the opposite has, on its side, grounds that are just as valid and necessary’ (CPR A421/ B449). The antinomies are not arbitrary, then. The desire of reason to exceed all conditions and to grasp the world itself in its unconditioned totality leads naturally to them. Experience never satisfies reason completely: every question posed to it, it answers only by referring us further back along an infinite chain of conditions and reasons and thus brings forth no final and ultimate conclusion. The dissatisfaction that experience occasions shows not the vanity of metaphysics in striving beyond the empirical but the insufficiency of all physical modes of explanation to answer to the higher faculty of reason. In each of the antinomies, reason has an interest in both the thesis and antithesis that renders their conflict unavoidable. On the side of the theses, the interest is threefold. First, reason has a certain practical interest: the arguments themselves forming the foundation of morality and religion. Second, it has a speculative interest: the postulation and employment of the Ideas concerning the world are such as to allow of a definitive completeness. Third, there is a popular interest: they satisfy commonsense insofar as ‘the common understanding finds not the least difficulty in the idea of an unconditioned beginning’ (CPR A467/B496). On the side of the antithesis, there is no immediate or obvious practical interest on the part of reason, since the ideas themselves appear deprived of all power and influence by the antithetical arguments: ‘If there is no primordial being distinct from the world, if the world is without beginning and therefore without an Author, if our will is not free, if the soul is divisible and perishable like matter, moral ideas and principles lose all validity’ (CPR A468/B496). However, if they have no obvious practical appeal, the antitheses offer a superior speculative interest. At least they do whilst the scope of their own arguments is limited to restricting the pretensions of the theses to extend their cognitive claims beyond what they can properly know, for then they have in themselves a critical validity. However, they too are susceptible of overstepping the mark and becoming dogmatic, confidently denying ‘whatever lies beyond the sphere of [their] intuitive knowledge’ (CPR A471/B499). In its pre-critical state, reason is tortured by these interests: by dint of them, the antinomies arise, but because of them, it is neither possible for this pre-critical reason to negate both sides of the antithetical conflict and so realise the impasse that it brings itself to, nor affirm both sides so that its impasse would not appear. In the conflict between the antinomies, it

Disputing Critique 137 is, then, as Kant says, the side who contrives ‘to make the last attack, and [is] not required to withstand a new onslaught from their opponents, [that] may always count on carrying off the laurels’ (CPR A423/B450). It is in order to ensure that victory is not secured in this antithetical field simply by virtue of speaking the last word—and since the last word can only truly be had through the use of force—that criticism is called on to intervene.8 The critic—the critical ‘watchman’ or ‘sentinel’ Lyotard says, reflecting the fact that criticism is always in a state of alertness, on guard, ‘in a permanently armed state’ (JD 328)—must adopt the ‘method of watching, or rather provoking, a conflict of assertions’ (CPR A423/B451). This he does not in order to decide for one or other side of the antinomies but to investigate ‘whether the object of controversy is not perhaps a deceptive appearance, which each vainly tries to grasp, and in regard to which, even if there were no opposition to be overcome, neither can arrive at any result’ (CPR A423/B451). In the first two antinomies, Kant argues that the opposing conclusions are false, whilst in the last two, the opposing conclusions may be true. What is at issue in all four antinomies is a procedure of regress from conditioned to condition. In the first two mathematical antinomies, the regression is always homogeneous: the conditioned and condition belong to the same spatio-temporal series, and since what is at stake is whether the series is finite or infinite, this homogeneity entails that the opposing claims are contradictories. The former, then, are not true differends in Lyotard’s sense, and their conflict is dispelled or dismissed by the intervention of the critical ‘watchman’. The case is different, however, when it comes to the latter dynamical antinomies. In the third antinomy, the dynamical antinomy par excellence, the opposition is between the thesis that causality accords with both the laws of nature and freedom and the antithetical claim that there is no free causality since ‘everything in the world takes place in accordance with laws of nature’ (CPR A445/B473). This opposition produces a conflict [Streit]. Or, to be more precise, it produces what Lyotard comes to call a differend, because, as he observes, the two conflicting sides ‘don’t speak in the same idiom, although they are talking about the same thing’ (JD 336). There is no contradiction between the thesis and the antithesis because, as critical philosophy shows, ‘nature [. . .] and freedom [. . .] can be attributed to the very same thing, but in different relations—on one side as a phenomenon, on the other as a thing in itself’.9 Consequently, both can be right. However, if the situation is such that ‘one side’s legitimacy does not imply the other’s lack of legitimacy’, it is nevertheless the case that when both parties are called to present evidence for their claims before the tribunal of cognition, a ‘mistrial’ will occur. Cognition is not competent to judge both cases. For although the advocate of determinism, who speaks in the idiom of the understanding, can bring forth demonstrable proofs of his thesis, the defender of

138  Keith Crome freedom is unable to demonstrate his claims in a way that is acceptable to the tribunal. No series of phenomena will ever provide evidence of spontaneous causality. Predisposed to favour one party, ‘applying a single rule of judgement to both in order to settle their differend as though it were merely a litigation’, the tribunal of cognition creates a wrong. Criticism is able to identify this wrong because it observes the distinction between phenomena and things-in-themselves; without it, the legitimacy of both thesis and antithesis could not be acknowledged and would instead collapse into a mere contradiction. But as well as admitting the possibility of the legitimacy of both thesis and antithesis, criticism is also called upon to institute a new tribunal—‘one that would be competent to pass judgement on freedom’s suit’ (JD 337). This tribunal takes the form of the Critique of Practical Reason. With it comes acknowledgement that ‘understanding and reason [. . .] have two distinct jurisdictions over one and the same territory of experience’ (CJ §II, p. 175). In this critical treatment of the third antinomy, Lyotard finds more than the formal anticipation of the idea of the differend—more, that is, than the possibility of ‘referring to one phenomenon in two (or indeed many) essentially different ways’.10 If in the Analytic Kant established the constitutive limits of the understanding—limits that are the condition for the possibility of cognition of the world—the Dialectic establishes, or at least ‘marks out’, a beyond to those limits. For Kant, that beyond is the space of freedom. Whilst an agitated scientism, committed to the understanding and so paradoxically unable to comprehend anything of its own limits, might want to deny the possibility of this freedom, on it depends (at least for Kant) the possibility of Enlightenment, which finds its fulfilment in the moral autonomy of the subject. Critical of humanism, Lyotard will refuse the solace offered to judgement by the idea of the autonomous subject, but, like Kant, he will equally refuse the selfinflation of the understanding and instead turn his critical attention to the differends that are marked out by the passage beyond the limits of the understanding. By way of this critical attention, by way of his refusal of humanism, Lyotard is moved to remark his own differend with Kant, a differend that concerns the Idea of nature.

3.  The Differend Concerning the Idea of Nature In his appeal to the Critique of Pure Reason, Lyotard gives priority to the Transcendental Dialectic. Before his discovery of the differend in the antinomies, Lyotard had made use of the concept of paralogism in The Postmodern Condition. For Lyotard, as for Kant, a paralogism violates accepted rules of argumentation. However, unlike Kant, Lyotard does not regard such a violation negatively; for him, paralogy is not something to guard against. Recasting and extending Kant’s insight that the paralogisms are inherent to reason, Lyotard conceives paralogy

Disputing Critique 139 positively as the principle of reason, identifying it as the driving force behind contemporary science and knowledge. Pointing to the fact that contemporary science recognises and accepts as legitimate propositions that challenge the rules and axioms of classical science and logic (for example, Gödel’s identification of the existence of a proposition within the system of arithmetic that is neither demonstrable nor refutable), he argues that postmodern knowledge progresses—and conceives itself as progressing, ­paralogistically—giving credence to utterances that destabilise the accepted order of scientific reason by instituting new rules for its language games. In a series of conversations with Jean-Luc Thébaud, published in English under the title Just Gaming, Lyotard makes positive appeal to the Ideas of reason, used regulatively, if paradoxically, to challenge or destabilise the sedimented ‘laws, [. . .] customs and [. . .] regularities’ by which a society passes judgement about ‘what is to be done’.11 As Dietmar Kövekar has argued, in privileging the ‘Dialectic’ over the ‘Analytic’, Lyotard proceeds in opposition to ‘the mainstream, or at least the prevalent tendency amongst analytic neo-Kantians to marginalise, if not totally neglect, the questions of the Transcendental Dialectic’.12 Like Hegel before him, who regarded Kant as having ‘resuscitated the name of Dialectic and restored it to its post of honour’,13 Lyotard sees in Kant’s account of the Dialectic a means of challenging the tendency to reduce the logos to logic and to recognise the wrong that proceeds from the hegemony accorded to the claims of cognition. However, Lyotard is not guided in his reading by a pretension to discover the systematic integrity of the first Critique. Instead, he applies his discovery of the differend to his reading of the Analytic, using it to decompose what Kant calls the immediacy of intuition. By virtue of this decomposition, Lyotard is able to discern in Kant’s account of intuition an order of activity at the level of the reception of the manifold. In this sense, the account of intuition as it is set out in the very first two pages of the Transcendental Aesthetics, which is itself the first part of the Transcendental Doctrine of Elements, reveals itself as the artery of the Analytic insofar as it oscillates between the poles of passivity and activity, receptivity and spontaneity, that govern the entire structure of the whole critical enterprise. Intuition, Kant says, is the ‘immediate relation’ (CPR A19/B33, my emphasis) of cognition to objects. It takes place ‘only in so far as the object is given to us’ (CPR A19/B33). Its being given presupposes a receptive capacity on the part of the subject: it ‘is only possible, to man at least, in so far as the mind is affected in a certain way’ (CPR A19/B33). This receptive capacity is entitled ‘sensibility’. The subject’s activity is exerted at the level of the understanding, judgement and reason. It is this activity which gives the given its sense. However, for Lyotard, the ‘immediacy’ of the given is not immediate—there is already an activity exerted at the level of the Aesthetic in the forms of intuition. In truth, the constitution of the given in sensibility supposes two moments. In the first moment

140  Keith Crome there is that which is presented to sensibility by means of sensation. Sensation ‘supplies only the matter of the phenomenon, which gives but the diverse or the singular’ (D 61). This ‘matter’, which Kant says is ‘that in the appearance which corresponds to sensation’ (CPR A20/B34), that is presented in sensibility, acts on the subject; it affects the subject, who is receptive to it. In the second moment, there is the active imprinting of the forms of space and time on this ‘matter’. Matter receives the forms of space and time, which turns it into a phenomenon. In the first moment, matter affects a subject who is susceptible to it (Lyotard will later say ‘passible’). However, this receptiveness on the part of the subject is limited. The subject knows only this—that she has been affected, touched. She knows nothing of what it is that affects her, what touches her. The ‘matter’ that affects her through sensation remains unknown to her in as much as the subject does not know to what the impression that affects it refers since in this first moment it is not endowed with a referential status. It has a conative sense only, not a denotive one, since it is registered at a sentimental level, and it relates only to the receptive subject. In the second moment, the situation is reversed: the subject passes to the active pole of the relation; it imprints the forms of space and time on the matter that affects it, and in doing so, it endows it with a reference. The referent is called the phenomenon. According to Lyotard’s description of Kant’s account of this second moment, the representation that appears results from the active capacity of the subject ‘to show the moment and place of whatever it is that by its matter produces the effect or the sensible impression upon [the subject]’ (D 62). He continues: ‘This is what we call the ostensive capacity: It’s over there, It was a little while ago. The second [moment], which applies deictic marks onto the ­impressions procured by sensation, is called in the Kantian lexicon, intuition’ (D 62). This constitution of the given by intuition entails a differend between the two active moments that together make up intuition, that is, between what gives itself in the first instance, namely ‘matter’, and that which endows that matter with its referentiality, namely the subject. The subject can only refer to the ‘that’ that gives itself in the first moment in spatiotemporal terms. But it does this without ever knowing if this is appropriate to the ‘that’ to which it refers. It is, Lyotard suggests, a differend on ‘the scale of the loss of the concept of nature’ (D 63). As Lyotard writes, ‘the question of the There is [il y a], momentarily evoked on the occasion of the sensible given, is quickly forgotten for the question of what there is’ (D 65). How is it possible to hear the suit of nature? It can be received at the level of sentiment, but in terms of the Aesthetic in being so received, it is immediately censured. It is accepted in the second part of the Critique of Judgement, the Critique of Teleological Judgement, but then it is only admitted as an Idea. It is the task of the Critique of Judgement to

Disputing Critique 141 overcome the division between the theoretical and the practical effected by the first two Critiques. In Lyotard’s terms, and as we have seen, Kant recognises the differend between freedom and necessity by acknowledging the different jurisdictions of reason and understanding. ‘Neither can interfere with the other’ insofar as ‘the concept of freedom just as little disturbs the legislation of nature, as the concept of nature influences legislation through the concept of freedom’ (CJ §II, p. 175). However, this supplementation of ‘right’s deficiencies in the area of freedom’ (JD 337) by this institution of the tribunal of the second Critique does not result in completeness. Instead, it opens up a severe division, a ‘great gulf’ (CJ §III, p. 176) between the theoretical and the practical, between nature and its necessity and freedom and its spontaneity, between the knowledge of objects according to the conditions of possible experience and the realisation of freedom under the unconditioned of the moral law. Still, Lyotard argues, for Kant, completeness is required not only in order to satisfy the idea—or Idea—of a philosophical system, but it is necessitated by the real differend between cognition and morality. Both make claims on the same object in as much as ‘the concept of freedom is meant to actualise in the sensible world the end proposed by its laws’ (CJ §2, p. 176). This task is fulfilled through the regulative Idea of a finality of nature, which is developed in the Critique of Teleological Judgement. This Idea forms the a priori principle by which judgement allows itself to think particular natural laws as forming a system of experience. In doing this, it answers to reason’s demand that the whole of nature should be systematised. As a principle for judging nature, it is regulative, not constitutive, since it is used to treat nature as if it formed, as a whole, a unity of experience. The regulative employment of this principle to orient judgement is taken as a sign of nature’s purposiveness which pursues its own ends through man, ‘the only being in the world that is not entirely conditioned’ (JD 339), thereby enacting the sought-for unity of freedom with nature. The regulative employment of the principle is authorised by being taken as an expression of nature’s purpose: it is ‘a means set to work by nature in order to prepare its final end’ (D 134). But one might suppose—and the principle would doubtless tolerate such a supposition since it is an expression of the unity of man and nature, freedom and necessity—that the employment of the principle is less an expression of nature working through the human than the human subject imposing itself on nature. And if that were indeed so, then we would be no nearer to discovering a tribunal that would be able to hear nature plead its case. Confirmation that this is indeed the case is given in Lyotard’s analysis of the sublime, which is perhaps not surprising given that in the sublime nature is, as Lyotard writes, ‘ “used”, “exploited” by the mind according to a purposiveness that is not nature’s, not even the purposiveness without purpose implied in the pleasure of the beautiful’ (IH 137). But, paradoxically, if not unsurprisingly, his analysis of the sublime, oriented

142  Keith Crome by a concern for the differend, also reveals in the sublime the capacity, the potential, for the subject to address nature otherwise, to address it in such a way that it is sensitive to it, that it opens itself otherwise to nature’s address. According to Lyotard, Kant’s analysis of the sublime ‘depends on the disaster suffered by the imagination in the sublime sentiment’ (IH 136). The feeling of the sublime is aroused by the incapacity of the faculty of imagination to comprehend the ‘absolutely great’—either the extensively great, that is, an absolutely large object like the desert, or a mountain or a pyramid, or the intensively great, that is, an absolutely powerful object like a storm at sea or a volcano erupting. The imagination cannot form an image adequate to the manifold of sensation. Thus, with the sublime, the mind suffers a shock in that it is constitutively unprepared to accommodate the manifold of sensation by which it is touched and of which it cannot therefore make representation. This failure of the imagination to make representation of the manifold of sensation that besets it gives rise to pain: it suffers because of its incapacity. There is a certain strength in this incapacity, nevertheless. It provides an opportunity to establish the primacy of reason. A sign of this primacy is found in the fact that at the same time as it causes pain, this failure also provokes pleasure since the impotence of the imagination directly reveals the potency of reason: it is a negative sign of the immense power of Ideas that the imagination is unable to make representation of them. As Lyotard puts it, ‘in the sublime “situation”, something like an Absolute, either of magnitude or of power, is made quasi-perceptible (the word is Kant’s) due to the very failing of the faculty of presentation. This Absolute is, in Kant’s terminology, the object of an Idea of Reason’ (IH 136). But this disaster of the imagination that is registered in the sublime feeling leaves no room for an aesthetic—not on account of the failure of the imagination to put into form the manifold of sensation but because the imagination finds itself and its ends subordinated to those of reason. In fact, the principal interest that Kant sees in the sublime sentiment is an interest proper to ethics. For Kant, the sentiment of the sublime is the aesthetic sign of reason assuming the vocation (perhaps one might say the sublime vocation) proper to it, namely its realisation of its own interest in its freedom. As Lyotard observes: Kant writes that the sublime is a Geistesgefühl, a sentiment of the mind, whereas the beautiful is a sentiment that proceeds from a ‘fit’ between nature and the mind [. . .] The Geistesgefühl, the sentiment of the mind, signifies that the mind is lacking in nature, that nature is lacking for it. It feels only itself. In this way the sublime is none other than the sacrificial announcement of the ethical in the aesthetic field. Sacrificial in that it requires that imaginative nature (inside and outside the mind) must be sacrificed in the interests of practical reason

Disputing Critique 143 [. . .] This heralds the end of an aesthetics, that of the beautiful, in the name of a final destination of the mind, which is freedom. (IH 137) Armed with the concept of the differend derived from his reading Kant, and with the advantage of having ‘at [his] disposal the experiments and essays of Western painters of musicians of the last 200 years’ (IH 138), experiments and essays which have had as their main concern ‘something which has to do with the sublime’ (IH 135), Lyotard is able to turn or twist the disjunction of matter and form revealed in the sublime to the advantage of nature. For if the failure of the imagination to synthesize matter—to gather up the manifold of sensation and present it in accord with the forms of intuition—is seized on by Kant as an opportunity for the mind to exercise its freedom, for Lyotard, sensitive to the differend, it becomes the occasion to become open to the invasion of matter, ‘passible’ to the pure ‘push’ of matter, which, as Lyotard observes, was known to the Greeks as phusis, ‘the power of phuein, to grow’ (IH 139). What is at stake in this matter without form that, according to Lyotard, the painters and musicians of the last two centuries have made it their business to approach (or perhaps it would be better to say that they have sought to allow to come to presence in their work)? It is undoubtedly always the case, as Lyotard remarks, that colour or sound can be determined by the exercise of the understanding in terms of ‘vibrations, specifying pitch, duration and frequency’ (IH 139). Yet grasped in this way, their affective presence is lost—and one might even say their truth, too (which would imply accepting that truth is more, or even other, than what is at stake in cognition), since both colour and sound are lost in being transformed into something other than themselves. But if the truth of colour and sound are swallowed up by the determination of the understanding, what escapes the determination of the understanding are timbre and nuance, which ‘are scarcely perceptible differences between sounds or colours which are otherwise identical in terms of the determination of their physical parameters’ (IH 140). As Lyotard notes, from the perspective of the understanding, or even from that of the receptivity of intuition, this aspect of matter is paradoxically immaterial: forms and concepts, to adopt the Kantian lexicon that we have been using here, are constitutive of objects—‘they produce data that can be grasped by sensibility and that are intelligible to the understanding’ (IH 140); the matter of nuance and timbre is immaterial in this sense ‘because it can only “take place” or find its occasion at the price of suspending these active powers of the mind [. . .] at least for an instant’ (IH 140). They are affective qualities or intensities that are intrinsically recalcitrant to the mastery of the intellect; they insist and resist the mind’s imposition of form on matter, an imposition instituted by philosophy and which has shaped the history of the West. It is in testifying to this immaterial matter—this brute ‘push’ of nature,

144  Keith Crome phusis—that Lyotard gives voice to his differend with Kant and with the philosophical tradition itself.

Notes 1 I first met Gary Banham in 1994, at Manchester Metropolitan University. I was a new PhD student doing some part-time teaching at the University, writing my doctorate on the work of Jean-François Lyotard. I was fortunate to find in Gary someone who knew Lyotard’s work well, and who over time became a good friend to me. At the time of our first meeting, appreciation of Lyotard’s work suffered from the success of The Postmodern Condition. Despite bringing Lyotard fame (or notoriety, depending on your perspective), this short, occasional study—superficially more ‘sociological’ than ­philosophical—cast a shadow over the rest of his work and doubtless provoked scorn among many who, sufficiently assured of their own power of judgement, deemed it unnecessary to read his writings before condemning them. There is more, however, to Lyotard’s work than the postmodern. Among the notable French philosophers of his generation, a significant number of whom wrote important works on Kant (most notably, Deleuze, Derrida and Foucault), Lyotard is distinguished not only by the number of books and articles he devoted to the great critical philosopher but also by the decisive influence that Kant had upon his own (later) work. Lyotard’s most important works on Kant are: Enthusiasm: The Kantian Critique of History, trans. George Van Den Abbeele (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009); Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime, trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004); ‘Judiciousness in Dispute, or Kant After Marx’, trans. Cecile Lindsay in The Lyotard Reader, ed. Andrew Benjamin (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 324–359. As an eminent Kant scholar, schooled in Continental philosophy, Gary acknowledged the importance of Lyotard’s writings on Kant. As an erudite intellectual with a political background in Marxism, which also exercised a formative influence on Lyotard, and a love of the fine arts, on which Lyotard was an authority (particularly painting), he had an interest in Lyotard’s work for its own sake. I was a beneficiary of this knowledge. I am grateful to be able to have the opportunity to acknowledge that debt here, and I would like to thank the editors for making this tribute to Gary possible. The following abbreviations have been used: CJ = Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgement, trans. James Creed Meredith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, [1952] 1986); CPR = Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, introduction Howard Caygill, bibliography Gary Banham (London: Palgrave Macmillan, [1929] 2007); D = Jean-François Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, trans. Georges Van Den Abbeele (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 193; IH = Jean-François Lyotard, The Inhuman: Reflections on Time, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991); JD = Lyotard, ‘Judiciousness in Dispute, or Kant After Marx’. 2 See Geoffrey Bennington, Lyotard: Writing the Event (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 2. 3 See, for example, Simon Malpas, Jean-François Lyotard (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 57–58. Malpas relates the story of a legal dispute in Australia between a group of aboriginal women and a construction company who wanted to build on an island that the women claimed was for them a holy site. Because of their beliefs, the women can only discuss the meaning of

Disputing Critique 145 the site between themselves; if it is discussed with people outside this group, it is profaned. Thus, the holiness of the site cannot be established in court without the site losing its holiness. Mohammed Ramdani, in his introduction to Lyotard’s La Guerre des Algériens: Écrits, 1956–1963 (Paris: Galilée, 1989), originally published anonymously for the Marxist group Socialisme ou barbarie, argues that these essays can retrospectively be seen as exposing a series of differends. 4 Notable exceptions to this include: Bennington, Lyotard; Richard Beardsworth, ‘On the Critical “Post”: Lyotard’s Agitated Judgement’, in Judging Lyotard, ed. Andrew Benjamin (London: Routledge, 1992), 43–80; and Dietmar Kövekar, ‘Le(s) temps du différend: Remarques sur la logique des énoncés temporels selon Jean-François Lyotard’, in Jean-François Lyotard: L’exercise du différend, ed. Dolores Lyotard et al. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2001), 223–239. 5 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, rev. Peter Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), xvi. 6 Ibid. 7 Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Can Qualify as a Science, trans. Paul Carus (Chicago: Open Court, 1993), §52. 8 For Lyotard, there is, properly speaking, no last word. For, as he points out, how could such a word ever be declared last without immediately refuting its pretension so to be. Nevertheless, it is possible, he says, to ensure one’s opponent cannot speak, or, if he can speak, that he is not heard. This former can occur by means of the threat of violence or through violence. But in the latter case—and this defines the efficacy of the strategy that turns a differend into a wrong—one can have the final word all the more successfully not by speaking last, nor for that matter by preventing one’s opponent from speaking, but by ensuring that what one’s opponent has said is understood in one’s own idiom and in a manner that confirms one’s own position and one’s own arguments. 9 Kant, Prolegomena, §52c. 10 Kövekar, ‘Le(s) temps du différend’, 232. 11 Jean-François Lyotard and Jean-Luc Thébaud, Just Gaming, trans. Wlad Godzich (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), 82. 12 Kövekar, ‘Le(s) temps du différend’, 236. 13 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel’s Logic: Being Part One of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, trans. W. Wallace (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), §81.

7 Kant, Hegel and Irigaray From ‘Chemism’ to the Elemental Rachel Jones

Nature is to be regarded as a system of stages, one arising necessarily from the other and being the proximate truth of the stage from which it results: but it is not generated naturally out of the other but only in the inner Idea which constitutes the ground of Nature. —Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, §2491 There is essentially Understanding in Nature. Nature’s formations are determinate, bounded, and enter as such into existence. So that even if the earth was once in a state where it had no living things but only the chemical process, and so on, yet the moment the lightning of life strikes into matter, at once there is present a determinate, complete creature, as Minerva fully armed springs forth from the head of Jupiter. —Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, §3392

The inner logic of nature, it seems, depends on a pregnant female body being swallowed whole, displacing the possibility of birth from a mother. Or at least, this is the implication of the reference to Minerva in the second epigraph for this chapter. In the original myth, the Titaness Metis is raped and impregnated by Jupiter (or Zeus, in the ancient Greek version) and then consumed by him as he attempts to evade a prophecy that she will one day bear him a son who will go on to overthrow him.3 The daughter that Metis is already carrying, Minerva (or Athena), is subsequently born into the world directly from her father’s head. Minerva’s more well-known appearance in Hegel’s writings is of course through her sacred animal, the owl, which functions as a symbol of philosophy itself.4 Yet it is this second, less well-known image that reveals the pattern of thought on which I wish to focus here. This pattern has been analyzed in depth by Alison Stone, who shows how the underlying logic of Hegel’s thought is shaped by a ‘sexuate symbolism’ in which matter is aligned with the female and conceptual form with the male, and the impotent materiality of nature is redeemed by becoming ever more concept-­permeated (MF 223–225). Hegel thereby repeats in his own way

Kant, Hegel and Irigaray 147 a gendered hylomorphism that, as Stone notes, has characterized the Western philosophical tradition since Plato (MF 212). It is this pattern of thought that is reflected in the image of Minerva from Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature cited previously: nature’s material formations are represented by an idealized feminine figure, while the ideas from which those forms spring (the ‘ground of Nature’) are symbolized by a divine male head. Nonetheless, given its original mythic context, the image of Minerva’s ‘birth’ carries with it a further, more disruptive implication, suggesting that the condition of this particular representation of nature is the prior consumption of a maternal body.5 Hegel’s invocation of Minerva would thus seem to support Luce Irigaray’s claim that the Western philosophical tradition depends on an originary yet disavowed matricide that silently structures the philosophical scene. As I will go on to discuss, the condition of viewing nature in terms of a gendered hylomorphism is the refusal of a generative maternal-materiality, a refusal that must itself remain invisible and unacknowledged, just as the story of Metis remains concealed behind Hegel’s reference to her daughter. Along with the maternal body and the messy, material kind of birth that human beings share with other animals, Hegel’s image also displaces the vulnerability of the newborn. Minerva emerges from her father’s head both fully formed and already armed. She is thus an appropriate figure to represent Hegel’s claim that when organic life appears, it does not evolve gradually out of inorganic matter but is fully determined from the start by the inner logic of the Idea that externalizes itself in (and as) Nature.6 Hence, Minerva’s organic form is contrasted with the natural formations produced by merely chemical processes: each represents a different stage in the progressive self-actualization of the Idea. And yet: an earth composed of merely chemical relations, while not yet supporting living beings, would not quite be the dead matter of mechanistic, postCartesian nature either. This is because the material relations produced through the chemical process find their grounding idea in a third principle, ‘chemism’, which, as Gary Banham shows in ‘Chemism, Epigenesis and Community’, stands somewhere in between mechanism and teleology. As both connective principle and material process, chemism foregrounds the constitutive role of those elements (such as water) that act as a medium through which objects can be connected and transformed. Such patterns of de- and re-composition exceed merely external causal connection without yet embodying the reproductive logic of the organism. Intriguingly, as Banham notes, Hegel also identifies chemism as a principle that persists in animate beings as the basis of the sex relation, and that translates into spiritual form as the ‘formal basis’ of love and friendship.7 In keeping with what Irigaray might describe as the specular relation between logic and nature in Hegel’s thinking, actual chemical processes are an externalization of the underlying Idea that gives them their form,

148  Rachel Jones imperfectly materializing the modes of being (or more specifically the modes of relation) articulated in the logical principle of chemism.8 To this extent, chemism continues to instantiate Hegel’s distinctive brand of hylomorphism, in which the Idea alienates itself in Nature only to master this (symbolically female) materiality by progressively imbuing it with (symbolically male) conceptual forms, until the Idea is returned to itself in the fully realized form of Geist.9 Nonetheless, the ‘schema’ of chemism10 seems to pull away from a hylomorphic logic to the extent that it allows diverse material elements to play a constitutive role in the formation of natural objects through the connective relations they make possible; at the same time, chemism also seems to hold open a space for relations between the sexes not yet governed by the reproductive logic that has so often been used to justify women’s social and political subordination to men. This dual emphasis—on the dependence of nature’s formations on a connective element, and on the sexes as exemplifying such ‘chemical’ relations—generates a further suggestive connection with the work of Irigaray. Although Irigaray contests Hegel’s philosophy via the lens of sexual difference,11 she too foregrounds an elemental materiality (air, breath, water, amniotic fluids) that mediates relations between beings while developing an account of the relation between the sexes that is no longer subordinated to a reproductive telos. My proposal in this chapter is that these unexpected connections are worth pursuing and that, in view of its emphasis on both a constitutive relationality and a non-­ reproductive principle of sexual relations, chemism can be seen as an unlikely but potentially generative ally for feminist thought. In what follows, I will briefly introduce chemism as a third principle between mechanism and teleology before turning to Kant’s account of nature as well as to Stone’s analysis of Hegel to show what might be appealing about such a principle from a feminist perspective. In Section 2, I will draw on Banham to outline both chemism and its feminist potential in more detail, before showing how, on Hegel’s account, chemism nonetheless remains too deeply enfolded within the gendering of his metaphysics to be entirely helpful to feminist ends. In the final section, I will explore how Irigaray’s reclamation of a generative maternal body opens onto an elemental materiality that can be read as twisting chemism free both from a gendered hylomorphism and from the reproductive telos of the organism. If Banham’s particular characterization of chemism suggests the possibility of reading Hegel back through a (somewhat irreverent) Irigarayan lens, it also opens the possibility of reading Irigaray through the lens of chemism. Doing so, I will suggest, helps avert some of the problems that arise in Irigaray’s own thought, where sexual difference too quickly solidifies into a model of ‘being two’ that (both ontologically and politically) re-prioritizes heterosexual relations and closes down the more radically

Kant, Hegel and Irigaray 149 fluid aspects of her work. By reading chemism through Irigaray, and Irigaray through chemism, it becomes possible to retrieve an account of elemental, connective materiality that provides a distinct alternative to both the Kantian and the Hegelian accounts of nature. This elemental materiality is not only hospitable to sexual difference but to a fluidity of differences, including the imbrication of human life with non-human and inorganic matters.

1.  Gendered Hylomorphism in Kant and Hegel On Hegel’s account, the chemical processes that are contrasted with Minerva’s organic form exceed the mere mechanism of efficient causality while still ‘fall[ing] short of what is required for life’.12 As the externalized correlate of the logical principle of chemism,13 the transitional status of chemical processes reflects the status of that principle insofar as it stands in between mechanism and teleology. In this way, as Banham notes, Hegel introduces an additional, third principle that exceeds the established Kantian division of nature and that serves as an ‘intermediary’ between ‘thinking in terms of efficient causes’ and ‘thinking in terms of purposes’.14 This third principle applies to ‘a state between the lifeless and the life-filled’ that is characterized by the ‘interaction between two objects through a third: this third state is that of being a chemical element. This element is the medium through which the objects cognized find common connection: it is their basis of interaction’ (CEC 166). Rather than being mechanically connected in ways that preserve their complete externality to one another, or teleologically organized in ways that involve the reciprocal dependency of parts and wholes, objects are understood via chemism as related through a common medium that provides a basis for connectedness and interaction (CEC 166–167), allowing new unities and objects to be formed. From the perspective of both Hegel’s Logic and his metaphysics of nature, there is nothing excessive about such a principle. It is introduced only because it is necessary for the full determination of the Idea that realizes itself in both thought and nature. Yet from a feminist perspective, the invocation of a third principle that exceeds the mechanism/teleology dyad is inviting, insofar as both of these ways of conceptualizing nature have been aligned with the devaluation of the female. On the one hand, the (broadly speaking) Cartesian image of nature as essentially ‘dead’ matter that operates on mechanical principles can be read as an attempt to remove all trace of generative female power and to render nature entirely penetrable by active masculine reason.15 On the other, the philosophical image of organic nature has typically been feminized in ways that implicitly or explicitly support patriarchal social relations by aligning women with the natural realm that has to be transcended so as to establish both civil society and individual autonomy.16 Insofar as

150  Rachel Jones women tend to be identified with the reproductive function on which the organism depends, and this is understood as both their natural purpose and their social duty, the logic of the organism typically becomes a trap for women. In fact, both the mechanistic ‘neutralization’ of nature17 and the feminized image of the organic have their roots in the older, more longstanding tradition referred to by Stone, in which passive or inert matter is typically seen as female, while active, form-giving principles are typically represented as male. When robbed of its generative capacities, a onceliving female matter becomes the dead ‘stuff’ of a mechanistic universe; when allied with essentially inert matter that needs to be given life by an animating principle, birth from a female body is reduced to a merely reproductive function, governed by formative powers that are defined by their transcendence of the female and the feminine. It is exactly these patterns of gendered hylomorphism that play out in the account of mechanism and teleology given in Kant’s third Critique. Given that, as Banham notes, chemism is designed to supplement this conceptual frame, it is worth outlining some features of Kant’s approach that help to show why this additional ‘third principle’ might hold some feminist appeal. According to Kant, judgements about nature in terms of mechanism, or efficient causes, need to be supplemented by teleological judgement that refers to final causes. This is because some natural products simply don’t make sense to us without our assuming them to be natural purposes; that is, we cannot explain the possibility of their existence or their form unless we judge them as if they came about through a causality ‘whose ability to act is determined by concepts’ and ‘regard the cause’s action as based on the idea of the effect’ (CJ 248, 244 [5:369, 367]). Such a causality is ‘added’ into nature (CJ 282 [5:399]) on the basis of an analogy—though only a ‘remote analogy’—with ourselves and, more specifically, with our own reason understood as a ‘practical power’ to determine our own ends (CJ 237, 255 [5:360–361, 375]). It is this capacity for practical reason and the autonomy it affords that is affirmed in aesthetic judgements of reflection, in particular, those of the sublime, where we ‘judge ourselves independent of nature’ and ‘regard nature’s might [. . .] as yet not having such dominance over us, as persons, that we should bow to it if our highest principles were at stake’. In parallel fashion, teleological judgements of reflection involve ‘regarding [nature’s] product as if it had come about through a causality that only reason can have’.18 If we did not judge in terms of final purposes, we would be unable to explain the specific character of those of nature’s products that appear to us as organized beings. More specifically, we would be unable to account for the three key features of an organism, summed up by John Zammito as ‘reproduction, internal growth and development, and reciprocal interdependence of parts’.19 The first two of these features—the continued life of the organism considered both as a species and as an individual

Kant, Hegel and Irigaray 151 being—depend on the third. For a product of nature to be seen as an organized being and hence a natural purpose, the parts must reciprocally determine one another to form the kind of whole in which a judging subject can discern an underlying concept, one that could have been the cause of this particular body being created as it was (CJ 252 [5:373]). Nonetheless, because experience provides neither direct observation of natural purposes nor proof that mechanism alone could not possibly be sufficient to produce the kinds of beings that we cognize as natural purposes, we cannot prove that such things necessarily are natural purposes (CJ 280–283 [5:398–400]): all that can be shown is that we human beings, given our specific cognitive faculties and (crucially) their limits, have to think of certain products of nature as natural purposes so as to be able to make sense of them. The concept of a natural purpose lacks the objective basis needed for determinative judgement; it is not constitutive but ‘merely regulative for reflective judgment’ (CJ 278 [5:396]), forming the basis for a subjective principle (or maxim) that guides our enquiries into nature and its empirical laws. From the fact that Kant describes natural purposes as not just organized but crucially ‘self-organizing’ (CJ 253 [5:374]), we should not conclude that he is breaking with a hylomorphic frame by allowing for the possibility of self-organizing matter. On the contrary, running through his account of teleological judgement (and his rejection of hylozoism) is a repeated emphasis on the essentially inert and lifeless nature of matter: ‘we cannot even think of living matter [. . .] as possible. (The [very] concept of it involves a contradiction, since the essential character of matter is lifelessness, inertia.)’20 So confident is Kant that to conceive of matter is to conceive of ‘lifeless material’ that even when ‘we speak of nature as if the purposiveness in it were intentional’, there cannot really be any room for misunderstanding: it is clear that this is just ‘a method’ for investigating nature, for ‘no one would attribute to lifeless material an intention in the proper sense of the term’. To turn nature into ‘an intelligent being [. . .] would be absurd’ (CJ 263 [5:383]). Indeed, it is because matter is thus conceived that, according to Kant, we have to supplement the laws of nature understood in terms of mechanical causality with a reflective principle that judges in terms of final purposes. On this approach, either nature is dead matter that operates like a ‘mere machine’ (CJ 253, 269 [5:374, 388]), or, if it is living and organic, the formative force that makes it such inheres in the imputed purpose that is thought of as acting as the cause of the organism’s form and existence and not in the bare matter that is formed into an organism by that cause. Thus, Kant praises Blumenbach for declaring it ‘contrary to reason [. . .] that matter could have molded itself on its own into the form of a self-preserving purposiveness’ (CJ 311 [5:424]). The gendered implications of this parsing of nature between mechanical and teleological principles become clear in one of Kant’s more dramatic

152  Rachel Jones examples. In a section discussing the scientific advantages of attempting to extend merely mechanical principles as far as possible, Kant discusses a ‘daring adventure of reason’ in which ‘mother earth’ is imagined ‘emerg[ing] from her state of chaos’ and giving birth to creatures that evolve in ever more purposive forms, until eventually nature’s ‘womb’ ossifies and ‘confine[s] itself to bearing definite species that would no longer degenerate’. Such an imaginative exercise remains rational in that it does not conceive of organic life emerging from ‘the mechanics of crude, unorganized matter’ (Kant is as clear as Hegel that such a possibility is ‘absurd’). Nonetheless, Kant notes, this daring hypothesis is only convincing to the extent that it has already smuggled in a reference to final causes, both by conceiving of this ‘universal mother’ as herself a natural purpose (as something like ‘a large animal’) and by implicitly attributing to her ‘an organization that purposively aimed at all these creatures’, whose own organization would otherwise remain just as inexplicable as without this adventurous tale (CJ 304–305 [5:419–420]). For Kant, this thought experiment confirms his view that it is the limits of our (distinctively human) cognitive capacities that mean we have to presuppose that nature operates according to final purposes as a regulative principle for judgement. It also shows, though, how a female body that births becomes split between merely mechanical and organic nature, operating as a hinge between the two. When ‘the archaeologist of nature’ (CJ 304 [5:419]) wants to see how far he can progress by extending the principle of natural mechanism, it is to a figure of ‘mother earth’ that he turns, in ways that perversely align the female body that brings new life into the world with ‘dead’ matter that operates like a machine. Insofar as this body also instantiates the essential capacity of a living organism to reproduce itself, it can do so only because of a productive power that belongs not to its materiality but to the underlying organizing principle or ‘natural purpose’ that determines both that body’s own form and the form of its offspring.21 Just as Metis disappears behind the image of Minerva’s paternal birth, so Kant’s hylomorphic account of nature depends on the constitutive exclusion of a generative maternal body, capable of giving form to matter through its own corporeal rhythms. As Zammito sums up, ‘at the origin, there must be some form of causality which is not material and which then persists and governs the whole process of reproduction and variation across time’.22 Nonetheless, this natural purposiveness remains ultimately ‘inscrutable’ (CJ 254, 311 [5:374, 424]): analogous neither to life (for then we would succumb to the contradictory idea of a ‘living matter’) nor to a soul conjoined with matter (for then the generative power would no longer belong to nature at all, and its products would be the artistic creations of some ‘alien principle’, CJ 254 [5:375]). It is thinkable only by analogy with our own reason, the only kind of cause we know ‘whose ability to act is determined by concepts’. While this reason is in principle

Kant, Hegel and Irigaray 153 universal, in practice, things are not so clear cut. Ironically, the reasons for this are tied to Kant’s own use of teleological judgement in his theories about both race and the role of the sexes in reproduction. In the former, Kant appeals to epigenesis to support the division of human beings into four races based on skin colour.23 As others have argued in detail,24 this version of what Fanon will later call an ‘epidermal racial schema’25 played a key role in the development of the modern concept of race while reinforcing the racism that takes whiteness as the (unmarked) mark of humanity (as given away by Kant’s closing comment in his 1785 essay, which notes that ‘even the character of the whites [selbst der Charakter der Weissen] is only the development of one of the original predispositions’ that characterize the species).26 For Kant, humanity finds its fullest expression in the moral autonomy that makes of man a purpose as the being who is able to determine his own purposes. His repeated rehearsals of colonial commonplaces about the indigence of the Negro and the American Indians thus imply that these ‘primitive people’ lack the industry required not only to develop the land but to cultivate the purposive thinking that in the end makes both morality and self-determination possible.27 The type of causality that, in teleological judgements, ‘we’ project onto nature by analogy with ‘our’ own reason turns out to be instantiated in a typically white, European subject. Moreover, because of Kant’s account of reproduction, that reason is ideally male. In the brief description given in the third Critique, Kant doubles down on the teleological point of view by suggesting that reproduction is the only case in nature where extrinsic purposiveness (where one thing serves another as a means to an end) is connected with the intrinsic purposiveness of the organism. Not only are male and female creatures each organized so as to propagate the species, but together they amount to ‘an organizing whole, even if not to an organized whole in a single body’ (CJ 312–313 [5:425]). As in any organic whole, the fact that the two sexes can be thought of as parts that exist ‘as a result of’ and ‘for the sake of’ each other does not mean they perform the same functions. As Kant comments in the Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, as a member of the female sex, woman’s natural purpose is to give birth. To help fulfil this goal, nature has ‘implanted’ in woman a fear ‘of physical injury and timidity before similar dangers’.28 While such fear will help her fulfil her natural purpose, it also ties her more closely to material nature (her own, and that which might threaten her and her offspring). As Christine Battersby argues, it therefore blocks her from fully developing her moral capacity to determine herself through reason alone, which would require her to overcome ‘nature within us, and thereby also [. . .] nature outside us (as far as it influences us)’.29 Thus it becomes clear that the self-determining reason which sees itself reflected by analogy in nature’s purposes is ideally male, or at least detached from woman insofar as she is a member of the female sex.

154  Rachel Jones In his essay ‘On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy’, Kant refers to a ‘not exactly unmanly’ fear that reason might get ‘unhitched’ from first principles and ‘wander about in unbounded imaginings’.30 The third Critique suggests that one of those imaginings is of a ‘common original mother’ (CJ 304 [5:418]). Woman’s (natural) fear of nature is thereby matched by an archetypally white, male subject’s (reasonable) fear of a generative materiality that might disrupt the possibility of seeing nature as a reflection of (his own) rational causality. Such a fear seems to haunt Hegel’s thinking, too, along with the gendered hylomorphism that Stone so helpfully traces. The distinctions between form and matter that run through Kant’s philosophy,31 and whose gendering shows up particularly clearly in his account of teleological judgement, coalesce in Hegel’s distinction between the material and the conceptual sides of nature and the symbolic association of the former with the female and the latter with the male.32 Considered as matter, nature is an ‘impotence’ whose individual shapes lack a concept of themselves; its differentiation thus depends on its existence as externalized Idea, and the extent to which it becomes ‘concept-permeated’.33 Thus, as Stone notes, ‘[g]iven Hegel’s sexual symbolism, the process that he narrates in his philosophy of nature—whereby the concept re-emerges from matter and progressively remodels matter in its own image—amounts to a progressive mastery of the female by the male’ (MF 212). In some ways, Hegel can be read as extending the patterns of gendered hylomorphism we find in Kant. For both thinkers, nature as a whole is represented by another ancient goddess, Isis. But whereas for Kant, reason would be emasculated by ‘lift[ing] the veil’ that conceals Isis, as the symbolic representative of unconditioned or noumenal nature,34 for Hegel, the inscription that forbids this act of unveiling ‘melts away before thought’ (PN §246A, p. 10). As Stone shows in detail, the permeation of matter by concepts extends through the whole of nature at every stage of its unfolding, as does the gendering of this process. Thus, in Hegel’s account of reproduction, it is the female who contributes the necessary material elements, while the male contributes the seed that contains ‘subjectivity’ and represents individuation.35 In other words, because of the underlying mapping of the male with conceptual form and the female with (in itself undifferentiated) matter, woman has always already been denied any properly formative role in birth (Metis has always already been absorbed and her generative capacities expropriated). The female body is destined to a merely re-productive role that consists in materializing the differentiating forms provided solely by the male. Crucially, as Stone explains, reproduction is conceived by Hegel ‘in metaphysical rather than narrowly biological terms, as the process of resolving the difference between individual and species (Gattung) by producing a third in whom this difference is—temporarily, imperfectly— overcome’. Male and female animals do not ‘play different roles in

Kant, Hegel and Irigaray 155 reproduction because they have different anatomies’ (MF 218). Rather, there must be different anatomies so as to fulfil the necessarily different roles required by reproduction. As the latter is designed to resolve the tension between identity and difference as well as between individual and species, one of the animals involved must relate to its offspring ‘as to something that is other to or different from it’, while the other will relate to it as ‘something identical with them’ (MF 218). Given Hegel’s alignment of the male with the conceptual, it follows that those whose reproductive role is to relate to their offspring as something different to themselves—and hence, as individuated—will develop the male anatomy, characterized by external genitalia, that produces (and expels) the semen that bestows singularity and subjectivity. Equally, given the symbolic alignment of the female with matter, it is logical that it is female anatomy that should develop so as to allow their offspring to be enclosed ‘within their own bodies, as part of their own bodily processes’, in ‘an undifferentiated unity’ (MF 219). As Stone notes, Hegel extends this corporeal lack of differentiation to suggest that mother and child also exist in a state of ‘self/other fusion’ in which ‘no firm psychical boundary demarcates the sensations of the mother from those of the child’.36 These differences between the sexes translate into the next level, as nature is spiritualized to become culture. Again, as Stone carefully points out, just as the differing reproductive roles of male and female do not spring from their differing anatomies, so anatomical sex difference does not determine men’s and women’s differing social roles. Rather, metaphysically necessary differences in both reproductive roles and social structures play out in gendered forms that follow from the underlying association of matter with female and concept with male.37 Thus, the image of the reproductive female body as existing in a relatively undifferentiated unity with others translates into women’s social role as guardians of family life: a role to which they are suited ‘because their bodies and psyches are organized by the same principle of “immediate unity” that regulates the family’.38 In contrast, the alignment of the male with individuation means that men are more suited to emerging from immersion within the family to become individuated subjects within the civil sphere, where they learn to subordinate both individual desires and familial bonds to the higher universal of community. In this way, the development of civil society involves the appropriation and subordination of women in ways that directly mirror the increasing permeation of matter by the concept in the unfolding of nature: the progression of male citizens beyond the family and their entrance into spheres of economic and political life from which they exercise jurisdiction over the family represent a culminating stage in this progressive domination of (female) matter by (male) mind. (MF 212–213)

156  Rachel Jones As Stone shows, Hegel’s account of organic life translates into an organic model of the state that not only naturalizes women’s relegation to the family but makes such socio-political subordination metaphysically necessary.39 In light of these patterns, in which a gendered hylomorphism forecloses the possibility of a generative maternal corporeality and undergirds the social subordination of women to men, it becomes clear why the thought of a third principle, somewhere in between mechanism and teleology, might hold feminist appeal, particularly if such a principle were capable of schematizing relations between the sexes in non-organic, and therefore non-reproductive, terms. In the next section, I will outline Hegel’s principle of chemism in more detail, drawing on Banham to examine its feminist potential.

2. Between Mechanism and Teleology: Chemism as Connective Principle In Hegel’s account of chemism, ‘chemical’ objects are differentiated by what they are oriented towards (as John Burbidge notes in his definitive study, without being differentiated, they would not exist as objects; without that differentiation being determined by what they are oriented towards, they would not be chemical objects).40 This orientation is characterized by Hegel in terms of the way the objects are ‘tensed against one another’, a relationship he calls their ‘affinity’,41 drawing on a concept which—due in large part to Goethe—already had an established usage bridging human and chemical relations.42 What allows chemical objects to realize their affinity is a third, mediating element; however, because we are here dealing with a logical (and, following Houlgate, ontological) principle of relations, and not merely the descriptive principles of a physical science, the meditating element can be the sexual relation or language as well as water or air.43 As Burbidge notes, this mediating element ‘reaffirms the separate existence of the two objects, since unity comes from somewhere else’. At the same time, by facilitating this unity as ‘the two objects are brought together in this common element’, the difference or ‘tension’ between them is dissolved ‘and they achieve some kind of peaceful co-existence’ (RP 84). Nonetheless, as Burbidge also emphasizes, by fulfilling its necessary role, the connecting element has ‘done too much’: in being united, the originally differentiated chemical objects lose their differentiated character; their affinity is realized, but their active orientation towards one another is also exhausted.44 The original chemical objects are dissolved, their difference ‘cancelled’: ‘The tension, which was their productive capacity, has disappeared’ (RP 86). Nonetheless, if the chemical process as it realized itself in these original objects is ‘exhausted’, the product of this process becomes the basis for a new incarnation of the chemical, as it in turn can now be de-composed into separate elements, thereby reintroducing the difference required for

Kant, Hegel and Irigaray 157 a properly ‘chemical’ relation. These elements in their turn become the basis of a third form of the chemical relation, for while they are indifferent to one another insofar as ‘[w]hat makes one distinctive has nothing to do with any of the others’, as elements that ‘divide themselves between one object and another’ they introduce tensions and distinctions between those objects (RP 90–91). In this way, we ‘have come full circle’ and are returned to the tensions and affinities between chemical objects with which we started (RP 91). As Burbidge makes clear, this ‘circle’ does not yet form a self-­determining whole (in other words, has not yet attained the form of the organic), for there is no necessary relation between each of the three stages sketched previously. At the end of the first stage, ‘[t]he process does not spontaneously re-kindle itself’, Hegel notes.45 As Burbidge elaborates, if the neutral product of the first process ‘turns out to be differentiated from other objects, and subject to other combinations, that would not follow from the first process on its own. Nor does it require that a consuming activity break it up into its elements’ (RP 93). Likewise, the differences between the elements that result from the decomposition of the neutral product of the first process do not necessarily match those between the chemical objects with which that process began (RP 94). The interrelated pattern formed by the three moments of the chemical relation is suggestive of the purposive whole of organic form but as yet lacks its self-determining and reproductive character. Instead, there remains a fundamental discontinuity at each stage. The three stages of chemism outlined previously are simultaneously logical forms of judgement, which can be encapsulated in distinctive syllogisms (RP 83–91), and ontological or metaphysical forms, which articulate the types of relation that structure different modes of being. As Cinzia Ferrini notes, once it is translated into the realm of chemistry in Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, the broken circle of chemism will manifest itself in the way that ‘the chemical process [. . .] depends on externally given circumstances and so does not “return into” itself: it does not renew and reproduce itself of its own accord’.46 Once a chemical process is completed, ‘further activity ceases, unless external factors cause a new process to begin’. As Ferrini continues: The beginning and end of the chemical process thus fall apart, in the sense that the end of the process does not of itself lead back to the beginning and initiate the process once more. In this respect, chemical processes fall short of what is required for life.47 In so doing, however, they also reveal that reproduction is a necessary condition of life, which requires not only that the purposive organization that sustains a specific kind of organism can be reproduced across each individual life but that it can be transmitted to future generations

158  Rachel Jones through sexual reproduction. Nonetheless, as the image of Minerva is supposed to remind us, organic life does not evolve naturally from the chemical process, which instead ‘points forward logically to life’ in a transition ‘that hinges on conceptual inner necessity, not a natural one in which chemical processes actually give rise to living organisms at specific points in time’.48 While particular living beings grow and change, the form of the organic fully informs them from the start, and it is in this sense that they can be said to spring forth, like Minerva, fully formed. Despite its clearly transitional status for Hegel, as a stage along the way to the organic, Banham’s description of chemism illuminates its potential appeal for feminist thinking in at least three ways. The first is found in his emphasis on chemism as a principle of interconnection through a common medium. Chemism is at work, he notes, ‘wherever we find distinct bodies or parts thereof in a common element which is their medium of communication’ (CEC 166). Given that chemism is not simply eliminated by the teleological principles through which we understand organic life but sublated within it, Banham suggests that chemism leads to a conception of both reason and life as incomprehensible ‘except through the postulation of mediums of connection’ (CEC 176). This emphasis on a ‘transcendental principle of enabling and connecting’ (CEC 167) resonates with the turn in recent feminist philosophy away from the atomistic individual and towards the role of relation and connectedness in the constitution of individuated beings. Second, by foregrounding Hegel’s emphasis on the role of the medium of connection, Banham also helps us to see why this mode of thinking might be of particular interest from an Irigarayan perspective, given Irigaray’s own emphasis on the role of a fluid, relational ‘in-between’ in both the constitution of sexuate subjects and the generation of sexual difference as non-specular and irreducible difference. Just as, for Hegel, chemism is the principle that articulates the role of a mediating element in the material constitution of objects, so, for Irigaray, the elemental speaks of a fluid materiality that constitutes beings by passing between them in ways that sustain life and becoming. Third, Banham draws attention to the ways in which chemism reaches beyond ‘the possibility of interconnection between basic elements’ (CEC 166) to include the schematization of sexual relations, highlighting Hegel’s own claim that: ‘In the animate world, the sex relation [das Geschlechtsverhältnis] comes under this schema and it also constitutes the formal basis for the spiritual relations of love, friendship and the like’.49 Extrapolating from this, we might understand the ‘chemical’ mode of the sex relation to express itself in the ‘affinity’ that attracts the sexes to one another and encourages them to ‘resolve’ the tension between them through the unifying medium of sexual intercourse. Just as the organic world continues to obey the laws of mechanism even as it is teleologically organized, so we can continue to understand it in terms of the relations articulated in the

Kant, Hegel and Irigaray 159 principle of chemism, even though those relations will be sublated by the higher principle of organic life through which they find their true meaning. Thus, the ‘sex relation’ points forward to Hegel’s account of reproduction while simultaneously holding open the thought of a relation between the sexes that is not (yet) fully determined by the reproductive imperative. As noted previously, given the ways in which this imperative has been socially and politically oppressive for women, such a thought has feminist appeal. Nonetheless, as it appears within Hegel’s philosophy, the ‘chemical’ affinity between the sexes remains inimical to feminist ends, caught as it is between a gendered metaphysics and a reproductive telos. On the one hand, as we have seen via Stone, Hegel’s account of sex difference emerges in the context of an underlying schema that maps matter onto female and concept/form onto male. On the other, this very gendering leads to an account of reproduction in which the necessary matter is supplied by the female sex while the male contributes the individuating form. Moreover, within Hegel’s account of the unfolding of nature as the progressive externalization of the Idea, the ‘dead end’ of the chemical process points logically ahead to the organic need for reproduction, while the truth of chemism as a non-reproductive principle is revealed only from the perspective of that higher (organic, teleological) stage. To be sublated into that more advanced, reproductive logic, the difference that creates the ‘chemical’ affinity between the sexes must thus be of a kind that can be productively taken up, incorporated and transformed. Happily (or not, depending on one’s perspective), the underlying gendering of Hegel’s conception of matter and form ensures that it is likely to be so. Within this frame, the ‘chemical’ attraction of the female to the male can readily be explained by her alignment with a materiality that seeks to ‘resolve’ itself by becoming ever more concept-permeated, while the male would naturally be drawn towards a female matter through which he can further externalize the subjectivity he bears within. Thus, although in principle we can separate a ‘chemical’ desire from a reproductive logic, even in its non-reproductive form, that desire is always already structured by a difference that finds its fullest bodily expression in reproduction. This means, however, that chemism is not only subordinated to the higher, reproductive principle required by life, its nonreproductive promise is always already permeated by the deeper patterns of (gendered, hylomorphic) thought that secure the reproductive process. And thus another constitutive exclusion reveals itself, for here sexual desire has always already been structured on a heterosexual matrix which equates sexual attraction with desire between two (male and female) sexes and excludes the very possibility of same-sex relations, providing no explanatory model of the tension and attraction that might express itself in such desire.50 Nonetheless, the non-reproductive relations articulated via the principle of chemism leave open the possibility of desires that do not spring from the elective affinity of female matter and male

160  Rachel Jones form. Reading with deliberate perversity, by refusing to look back at chemical desire from the vantage point of reproduction, we could hold the inclusive promise of ‘elective affinities’ open to a vast variation of desiring bodies, allowing for differences of multiple kinds and relations that encompass not just non-reproductive sex but sex without the possibility of reproduction. Such a reading would suggest that reproductive sex (as Hegel conceives it) is dependent on a sublation that amounts to a violent suppression of a primary mode of desiring attraction, whose queer forms exceed a reproductive logic. As should by now be clear, however, for desire to be thus reclaimed, sex difference needs to be released not just from a reproductive telos but also from the underlying gendering of the matter/concept relation that Stone delineates. Despite the ways in which chemism is designed to supplement Kant’s parsing of matter between dead mechanism and teleological organization, what remains foreclosed in Hegel’s system is the thought of a generative materiality capable of birthing forms—of bodies, of relations, of bodies as relations—that are not always already the reflective product of the Idea. This foreclosure ensures that matter can be figured not only as that which can be progressively taken up by the forms of thought but as entirely ‘concept-permeable’ (to use Stone’s phrase). The contingencies that arise when nature deviates from the externalization of the Idea—what Elaine Miller calls the ‘erratic birth of misshapen or monstrous exceptions’51—are signs not of nature’s creativity but matter’s failure to hold fast to conceptual forms. They result from matter’s ‘Ohnmacht’, its impotence, which makes nature into the ‘Abfall’ or refuse of the Idea.52 In ways that echo Kant’s conception of inherently lifeless matter, nature ‘estranged from the Idea’ is presented by Hegel as ‘only the corpse of the Understanding’ (PN §247A, p. 14). The (anti-hylomorphic) thought of a genuinely generative matter— a matter capable of producing forms that do not reflect a pre-existing concept or idea—would translate this ‘Ohnmacht’ into a potency that would disrupt the foundations of Kant’s and Hegel’s philosophies.53 Conceding such a possibility would allow both for a conception of birth as non-teleological and generative rather than merely reproductive,54 and for the non-reproductive relations of queer sex as a site where unforeseen affective and social relations might take shape. In the next section, I will suggest that Irigaray’s rethinking of birth as just such a generative maternal-materiality offers a way of breaking with gendered hylomorphism and developing an approach to ‘the elemental’ that recovers the relational, non-reproductive promise of chemism. Just as Metis is hidden behind Minerva, so Irigaray helps us discern another, shadowy possibility hidden behind nature’s ‘failure’ to realize the concept: perhaps such contingencies are the expression of some other logic, some other order of being, one that does not—for example—divide form so firmly from matter or map that hierarchy onto a division between the sexes.

Kant, Hegel and Irigaray 161

3. From Chemism to the Elemental: Recovering a Fluidity of Difference In Banham’s exploration of chemism, he foregrounds the way that this ‘third principle’ points ahead to the organic not only by signalling the need for reproduction but also by revealing death as a necessary part of life. As we have seen, the unity of parts attained via a mediating chemical element neutralizes or cancels their difference and hence their individuated existence. The extinction immanent to the chemical process thereby reveals death as a condition of life: This peculiar principle is what makes possible the realisation that individuals work beyond themselves. It ensures that any thought of purposiveness which does not understand the notion of purpose to include an aiming of the process beyond the point of any part will not and cannot in principle understand the conditions of life. (CEC 168) Banham suggests that Kant, for one, does not sufficiently appreciate this insight: because his philosophy ‘works only with principles that are mechanical or organic,’ Kant ‘does not uncover the importance of death as a principle of life’ (CEC 168). Stone’s analysis helps us to see that, for both Hegel and Kant, the forgetting of birth is also a condition of organic life as they conceive it.55 As we have seen, this forgetting is manifest both in the reduction of birth to nothing more than a reproductive function in which the maternal body supplies only the material elements and in the reduction of the female to an inert (non-generative) matter that requires permeation by active male forms. As Irigaray succinctly puts it, ‘You had form, I was matter for you’.56 If the mediating element of chemism produces a certain indifference as well as a neutralization of already existing forms, thereby showing death to be an intrinsic part of life,57 Irigaray can be seen as flipping the emphasis around to show how a fluid maternal-materiality generates the differences and relations that allow individuated beings to emerge, thereby foregrounding the ontological significance of birth. Throughout her work, Irigaray delineates two different processes of individuation: the first rooted in unity, identity and constitutive exclusion (which together produce the phallocentric One of the Western philosophical tradition), the other dependent on a fluid materiality and an originary, bodily relationality which means that each singular being emerges together with another from which it is differentiated without being wholly separable and inseparable without being wholly fused.58 Such singular beings are ‘neither one nor two’;59 rather, their distinct contours depend on a generative matter whose rhythmic flows allow singular bodies to emerge in relation to one another.

162  Rachel Jones One key site of this generative materiality is found in Irigaray’s invocation of a ‘placental economy’.60 This suggestive figure of thought, itself borrowed from the maternal body, allows Irigaray to develop a conceptual register in which to articulate both the generativity of that body and its capacity to bear otherness within. In so doing, she draws closely on an interview with embryologist Hélène Rouch, who describes the placenta as constituting ‘the mediating space between mother and fetus’ and operating as ‘a system regulating exchanges between the two’, allowing nutrients to flow from mother to fetus while simultaneously ‘modifying the maternal metabolism’.61 Here we begin to see how Irigaray breaks with the underlying alignments of the Hegelian frame. By thinking in terms of a placental economy, she displaces the image of a mediating element that neutralizes differences and instead presents it as allowing difference to be sustained within a birthing body. Equally, gestation is here figured as neither fusion nor mere indistinction but as a mediated, fluid relation more akin to a continuous negotiation. We might pause here to recall the image of Minerva, whose armour in one version of the myth is not inherited from her father’s warlike qualities but wisely made by her mother, who remains ‘hidden beneath the inward parts of Zeus’.62 The image of Metis protectively arming her daughter before she is born suggests a maternal relation that is far from undifferentiated fusion, hidden within the male body by which it is swallowed up.63 Reclaimed as a myth of Metis-Minerva, Hegel’s image carries with it a certain excess, a feminine remainder that cannot quite be absorbed by the matricidal logic that erases the significance of female specificity, mother-daughter genealogies64 and birth. On Irigaray’s somewhat gentler recuperation, the maternal relation involves an always already regulatory spacing as well as the temporal rhythms that allow one bodily being to emerge within another without simply belonging to either:65 Neither permanently fixed, nor shifting and fickle. Nothing solid survives, yet that thickness responding to its own rhythms is not nothing. Quickening in movements both expected and unexpected. Your space, your time are unable to grasp their regularity or contain their foldings and unfoldings.66 This generative space-time refuses the severance of form and matter. It is not quite that a female materiality is now thought as active and formative rather than passive and formless. Rather, new forms emerge from the fluid movements of a matter that is distinctively but not determinately sexuate (for the placenta is shared between the fetus and the maternal body, which need not also share the same sex). While these movements are certainly generative, they do not involve the active imposition of form upon inherently undifferentiated matter. In keeping with Irigaray’s increasing

Kant, Hegel and Irigaray 163 emphasis on the importance of the middle voice in ancient Greek,67 the fluidly generative movements of the placental economy are not only a spatio-temporal ‘relation-between’,68 shared between mother and fetus, but also in between active and passive, refusing this very opposition. In this way, Irigaray breaks with the gendered hylomorphism that Stone shows to characterize Hegel’s thinking. On Irigaray’s account, maternal matter is inherently form-giving, in ways that depend on a generative, elemental materiality that is manifest in the placental relation but that extends well beyond the human bodies and forms that are constituted by it. Thus, in The Forgetting of Air, Irigaray explores the dependence of human being(s) on a fluid materiality that refuses to operate as either solid ground or a passively absorptive container. Insofar as its lifesustaining powers depend on its capacity to flow through and between bodies (both as the oxygen passed between mother and fetus and as the breath that passes in and out of each body once born), air destabilizes the closed forms that depend on clear-cut boundaries between self and other, organic and inorganic, life and matter: No gap, breach, spacing or distancing is possible between the living organism and the blood that has always already nourished it, including with oxygen. Nor is there any more of a gap between it and the ambient air it continuously breathes once born.69 Just as Hegel binds conceptual and ontological forms together, air confounds material, spatial and conceptual boundaries simultaneously, as ‘space prior to all localization, and a substratum both immobile and mobile, permanent and flowing’.70 In her other work, Irigaray shows how this generative, elemental materiality is found in water, mucous and amniotic fluids.71 At the same time, reclaiming the fluidity of matter as air also makes possible a return to the earth which sees its manifold matters as sites of becoming, rather than freezing them into deathly solidity. Irigaray’s exploration of elemental materialities renders that which passes (and allows passage) between beings ontologically primary. The space-time produced by such generative matters is shared inseparably between beings even as it is the condition of the relations that differentiate them. The ‘modest back-and-forth motion’ found in both the placental flow between mother and embryo and the flow of breath in and out of those already born thus constitutes ‘the groundless ground of the relation-between’.72 Yet because differentiated forms here emerge from the fluid but rhythmic movements of a generative matter—and do not depend on the permeation of matter by concepts—when already differentiated entities are drawn together through a common medium, they need not be united in such a way that their differences are necessarily cancelled or dissolved. Rather, as it is only through phusis as ‘fluid medium’ that their differences first emerge,73 this medium can allow for continued

164  Rachel Jones passage between them while sustaining their differences, rather than neutralizing them into indifference. In this way, while Irigaray’s appeal to the elemental more obviously references the ancient Greek notion of the elements, she can also be read as re-thinking the constitutive connective medium that Hegel approaches via the concept of chemism from a perspective inflected by sexual difference and birth. By refusing the alignment of the female with matter and the male with form and instead thinking maternal matter as itself both en-forming and differentiating, the ‘affinity’ that animates the relation between the sexes need no longer be understood as arising from a female animality seeking to allow its own undifferentiated materiality to be penetrated by a male, form-giving force. And because difference is sustained by a mediating element that no longer simply absorbs and neutralizes, the sexual relation is permitted to be generative in and of itself, rather than finding its telos in the production of a child as an external third term. As Irigaray writes in her retelling of Diotima’s teaching from Plato’s Symposium: ‘Love [eros] is fecund prior to any procreation. [. . .] Diotima returns to a progression that admits love as it had been defined before she evoked procreation: as an intermediate terrain, a mediator, a space-time of permanent passage’.74 Despite this non-reproductive model of desire and sexual difference, it remains the case that in Irigaray’s explicit response to Hegel, particularly as formulated in i love to you, her own thinking seems to get trapped back into a dualistic frame in which sexuate difference is figured in terms of ‘being (as) two’ and desire is most fully realized between women and men. This troubling reinstatement of a heterosexual norm can be avoided, I want to suggest, if, instead of following the contours of Irigaray’s explicit response to Hegel, we read her account of the placental and the elemental back through Hegel’s chemism, as I have tried to do here. Such a reading gives ontological priority to a fluid, generative materiality that is able to pass between and sustain a multiplicity of bodily beings that are neither one nor two, producing forms that are distinctively yet not determinately sexuate (insofar as they easily exceed our clumsy conceptual distinctions between male, female, intersex or trans-), and ­sparking desires that refuse to be contained by a heterosexual or reproductive frame. If we look again, we see that the myth of Metis-Minerva was already pointing us in this direction: given that Metis is consumed whole by ­Jupiter/Zeus, his capacity to give birth is at least partly a result of absorbing a feminine, maternal matter, making this archetypal virile body rather less exclusively male than it might appear. If sexuate difference itself is both natural and universal, as Irigaray suggests, in the account I have sought to develop here, what is natural and universal is a fluidity of difference that—as ‘[a]lways at least two’—remains irreducible to either ‘a multiple of the one’ or a duality of only two.75

Kant, Hegel and Irigaray 165 Before leaving Hegel’s chemism behind, it is worth turning to the role of indifference one last time. While clearly at odds with Irigaray’s thought of sexual difference as irreducible and ontological difference, pausing with indifference might nonetheless help to draw out another crucial dimension of elemental materiality as Irigaray conceives it. The reason that the elements separated out in the second stage of chemism can, in the third, divide themselves between objects and thus differentiate them is, in Hegel’s account, because those elements are themselves ‘indifferent’ to each other (RP 90). In order to give themselves something through which they can enter into relation, they divide themselves into different objects, thereby engendering the tension between objects that initiates the first stage of the chemical process. We might translate this ‘indifference’ of basic elements into the non-sexuate nature of elemental materialities—air, water, fire, earth—that allows them to pass between differently sexuate bodies without collapsing them into one, participating each time in a becoming-sexuate while remaining open to other determinations. Indeed, just as chemism stands between the dead matter of mechanism and organic life, so the elemental materialities can be seen to retain an ambiguous position within Irigaray’s thought. If sexual difference ‘cuts across all realms of the living’,76 then the non-sexuate materiality of the elements is not straightforwardly part of living nature (phusis) even as it is necessary to all living (and thus sexuate) beings, sharing constitutively in their existence. Because Irigaray concentrates (with good reason but some problematic effects) on the ways in which rethinking matter is essential to recovering sexuate difference, her invocation of the elements often works to recall a fluidly sexuate, maternal matter, as in the way la mer doubles as la mère and air is linked to the vital breath of the mother. She also tends to problematically reinforce a constitutive division between human and animal life.77 Reading Irigaray together with Hegel on chemism helps to bring out more strongly the ways in which her concept of the elemental provides an opening onto the multiple dependencies of sexuate, human beings on non-sexuate, non-human matters.

Conclusion If Irigaray would be suspicious of Hegel’s invocation of Minerva-Athena, as a mode of femininity already too well assimilated to the ‘Father-King’,78 it is in the chemical relations that Minerva’s organicism supplants that she might find the traces of a different logic of being. In this chapter, I have suggested that these traces emerge most clearly when we begin to discern the buried figure of Metis, springing her free from the projections of a reproductive logic to allow for the resistant metamorphoses of a m ­ aternal-materiality whose queerly generative fluidity refuses to be contained by the bounds of organic form.79 If we can turn back through

166  Rachel Jones Minerva towards the generative figure of Metis, then with Irigaray’s help, we can also turn back through chemism to find an alternative way of articulating both the form/matter relation and sexual difference. On Irigaray’s approach, Hegel’s account of a connective chemical medium becomes an elemental materiality that is disclosed by birth but no longer governed by a reproductive logic, constituting instead the elemental condition of difference and bodily becoming. The reading I have proposed does a certain violence to Hegel’s text as well as the internal logic of his system. Chemism is as fully enfolded in the dialectical unfolding of the Idea as woman is enfolded within the dialectical development of society. In the approach offered here, I have drawn on both Irigaray and Stone to deliberately disrupt the internal logic of chemism by reading with certain feminist commitments in mind. This disruption was not, therefore, entirely arbitrary, insofar as it involved foregrounding that which has been constitutively repressed, both in Hegel’s thought specifically and the Western philosophical tradition more generally: namely sexual difference, femaleness and birth, understood in terms of a generative, non-teleological materiality capable of producing forms relationally, through its own fluid movements. At the same time, my reading has also been somewhat unfaithful to Irigaray. I have suggested that in her own response to Hegel, Irigaray’s thinking problematically re-prioritizes heterosexual relations along with a mode of ‘being two’ that closes down the more radically fluid relational ontology that appears elsewhere in her work. By reading chemism together with Irigaray, a version of her account of sexuate difference emerges that is both more attentive to the imbrication of human life with the nonhuman and inorganic, and more hospitable to a fluidity of differences. Finally, despite the importance of both Hegel and Irigaray to the approach taken here, as well as the crucial work of Alison Stone, this reading is most directly indebted to Gary Banham’s exploration of chemism as ‘the revelation of life as dependent on conditions of community’ (CEC 175). Without that text, this one would never have been written. I hope that in its own way it pays tribute to those forms of connection to which Banham draws our attention and without which, as he notes, ‘there could be no relations of friendship or love’ (CEC 174)—or, for that matter, of shared philosophical endeavour.

Notes 1 Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), §249, p. 20. The following abbreviations have been used: CEC = Gary Banham, ‘Chemism, Epigenesis and Community’, in Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 165–179; CJ = Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987); MF = Alison Stone, ‘Matter and Form: Hegel, Organicism and the Difference Between Women and Men’, in Hegel’s Philosophy

Kant, Hegel and Irigaray 167 and Feminist Thought, ed. Kimberly Hutchings and Tuija Pulkkinen (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 211–232; PN = Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature; RP = John W. Burbidge, Real Process: How Logic and Chemistry Combine in Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996). Citations of Kant’s works also provide the volume and page number of the Akademie edition between brackets. 2 PN §339, p. 284. 3 Robert Graves, The Greek Myths (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960), vol. 1, 46. 4 Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 13. 5 For an extended reading of the myth of Metis, which also draws on Irigaray, though in a more psychoanalytic vein, see Amber Jacobs’s excellent On Matricide: Myth, Psychoanalysis and the Law of the Mother (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). Jacobs argues that the incorporation-appropriation of Metis functions as the necessary (and necessarily disavowed) condition of a fantasy of paternal generative omnipotence. 6 See, for example, PN §250, p. 22: ‘as Nature, it [the Idea] is external to itself’. 7 Hegel’s Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1989), 727 [§1580]. 8 Here I follow Stephen Houlgate, who emphasizes that logical or conceptual forms are not ‘merely’ forms of thought for Hegel but at the same time the forms of being. See Houlgate, ‘Logic and Nature in Hegel’s Philosophy: A Response to John W. Burbidge’, The Owl of Minerva, 34 (1) (2002–2003), 107–125, at 109. 9 MF 212, 224–225. For an illuminating parallel reading of the way that Hegel’s mature philosophy involves ‘the sacrifice of nature as a whole for the sake of spirit’, see Elaine Miller, The Vegetative Soul: From Philosophy of Nature to Subjectivity in the Feminine (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2002), 125. While Stone’s focus on matter and form is particularly helpful for my argument here, my approach is also informed by Miller’s hermeneutic strategy of reading eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German thought for ‘the non-obvious places in which misogyny is concealed’ while also ‘delving’ for ‘productive possibilities for feminist philosophy’ (17). 10 Hegel, The Science of Logic, 727 [§1580]. 11 Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gillian C. Gill (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), 214–226. 12 Cinzia Ferrini, ‘The Transition to Organics: Hegel’s Idea of Life’, in A Companion to Hegel, ed. Stephen Houlgate and Michael Baur (Oxford: Blackwell, 2011), 208. 13 I am leaving aside the larger issue of the relation of Hegel’s Logic to his Philosophy of Nature. For key discussions, with particular reference to chemism, see John W. Burbidge’s definitive study (RP) and Houlgate’s response (‘Logic and Nature in Hegel’s Philosophy’). See also Stone’s defence of ‘strong a priorism’ in Petrified Intelligence: Nature in Hegel’s Philosophy (New York: SUNY Press, 2005). 14 Banham, Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics, 9. 15 See Susan Bordo, The Flight to Objectivity (New York: SUNY Press, 1987). 16 For a classic analysis of the way in which this pattern of thinking permeates Western philosophy, see Genevieve Lloyd, The Man of Reason (London and New York: Routledge, 1993). 17 Bordo, The Flight to Objectivity, 112. 18 CJ 120–121, 248 [5:261–262, 370], my emphases. 19 John Zammito, The Genesis of Kant’s Critique of Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 218; see CJ 249–250 [5:371–372].

168  Rachel Jones 20 CJ 276 [5:394]; see also 254, 311 [5:374, 424]. 21 This view is reinforced by Kant’s account of epigenesis in which the variations that occur in later generations (or in response to differing environmental conditions) must be seen as realizing a potential already latent in the ‘purposive predispositions’ that preserve the species as a kind; see CJ 306, 309 [5:420, 423]. While my approach takes its lead from Banham, here I diverge somewhat from the direction of his analysis. By reading Hegel back into Kant’s account of epigenesis, Banham sees the latter as a chemical moment already implicit in Kant’s thought, signalling the dependence of organic life on interconnectedness (CEC 171–175). Turning this around, my reading places the emphasis more on the ways in which, by taking up ‘connectedness’ within an organic model, epigenesis prefigures the sublation of chemism into the organic in Hegel’s thought. 22 Zammito, The Genesis of Kant’s Critique of Judgment, 217, my emphasis. 23 See ‘Of the Different Races of Human Beings’ [1775], ‘Determination of the Concept of a Human Race’ [1785], and ‘On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy’ [1788], in Immanuel Kant, Anthropology, History, and Education, ed. Günther Zöller and Robert B. Louden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 24 See, for example, Christine Battersby, The Sublime, Terror and Human Difference (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007); Robert Bernasconi, ‘Who Invented the Concept of Race? Kant’s Role in the Enlightenment Construction of Race’, in Race, ed. Robert Bernasconi (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001); Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, ‘The Color of Reason: The Idea of “Race” in Kant’s Anthropology’, in Postcolonial African Philosophy: A Critical Reader, ed. Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997). 25 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press, 2008), 92. 26 Kant, ‘Determination of the Concept of a Human Race’, 159 [8:106]; my emphasis. On the ways in which Hegel’s philosophy of nature also reinforces racialized hierarchies, see Miller, The Vegetative Soul, 126. 27 CJ 259 [5:379]; see also ‘On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy’, 209 [8:174]. 28 Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, in Anthropology, History, and Education, 402 [7:306]. 29 CJ 123 [5:264]; see Battersby, The Sublime, Terror and Human Difference, 62–63. 30 Kant, ‘On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy’, 215 [8:180]. 31 This distinction structures Kant’s conception of mechanical nature too, insofar as the understanding is ‘the lawgiver of nature’ (Critique of Pure Reason, A126–127) and determines its form through the a priori categories, thereby organizing the sensible matter of intuition into recognizable objects. 32 MF 224–226. Hegel does sometimes figure Nature as male, as in the image of Proteus in PN §§244, 246, pp. 3, 9. However, insofar as what is at stake in this image is nature’s capacity to change form (its ‘transformations’, §244, p. 3), it still fits the deep gendering whereby the production of form is symbolized as male, while the material side of nature is symbolically female. 33 PN §§248, 250, pp. 17, 23–24; MF 224–225. 34 Immanuel Kant, ‘On a Recently Prominent Tone of Superiority in Philosophy’, in Theoretical Philosophy after 1781, ed. Henry E. Allison and Peter Heath (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 439–440 [8:399– 400]; see also CJ 185n [5:316n], and Battersby, The Sublime, Terror and Human Difference, 88–99.

Kant, Hegel and Irigaray 169 35 MF 227; see also PN §368, pp. 413–414. The seed/semen in Hegel’s account is thus akin to the ‘Keim’ that carries the formative principle in Kant’s account of the epigenetic formation of species and races; ‘Of the Different Races of Human Beings’, 89 [2:434]. 36 MF 220, my emphasis. 37 ‘If Hegel is an essentialist with respect to sex, he is a metaphysical rather than a biological essentialist’ (MF 222). 38 MF 221, my emphasis. 39 Stone thereby reinforces the work of other feminist thinkers who have argued that on Hegel’s approach, woman constitutes a resource of natural or spiritualized matter for an archetypally male subject; see Irigaray, Speculum, 214–226, and Lloyd, The Man of Reason, 71–93. 40 RP 80–81. 41 Hegel, The Science of Logic, 728 [§1582]. 42 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth: Penguin, [1809] 1978); see also Isabelle Stengers, ‘Ambiguous Affinity: The Newtonian Dream of Chemistry in the Eighteenth Century’, in A History of Scientific Thought, ed. Michel Serres (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 372–400. 43 Hegel, The Science of Logic, 727–729 [§§1580, 1583]. 44 RP 85; see also Hegel, The Science of Logic, 729 [§§1584–1585]. 45 Ibid., 730 [§1586]. 46 Ferrini, ‘The Transition to Organics’, 207; see also 211: ‘chemicals, unlike organisms, neither reproduce themselves through their own activity, nor conserve themselves in a state of functional activity, nor do they have the capacity of adapting themselves to an indefinite number of changing circumstances’. 47 Ibid., 208. See also Hegel, The Science of Logic, 732 [§1591]. 48 Ibid., 214, my emphasis; 203. On Hegel’s hostility towards evolutionary theory as an explanation for the emergence of species, see also Houlgate, An Introduction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth and History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 173–175. 49 Hegel, The Science of Logic, 727 [§1580]. 50 Disturbing traces of this blind spot are found in some of Irigaray’s more recent comments about same-sex relations; see, for example, Irigaray, Conversations (London: Continuum, 2008), xii. 51 Miller, The Vegetative Soul, 122. 52 PN, §§248A, 250, pp. 17, 23–24; Miller, The Vegetative Soul, 122. 53 Such a disruptive potency would speak of an alternative logic of being, rather than the potency of nature’s contingencies within the Hegelian system, where they provide the negation of the Idea required for its dialectical unfolding. See Andrew Haas, Hegel and the Problem of Multiplicity (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2000), 177. 54 It is the non-teleological dimension of birth that allows it to break from the logic of ‘reproductive futurism’; see Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004). 55 Irigaray does not dismiss the significance of death, either as ontological horizon or as part of the process of becoming we call ‘life’, though her account of a generative, elemental materiality does re-situate death in relation to the ontological primacy of birth (without which we would not be exposed to dying), while resisting an account of birth and death as symmetrical events. See, for example, Luce Irigaray, The Forgetting of Air, trans. Mary Beth Mader (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999), 12: ‘this matter [air] escapes mastery and . . . the debate between man and physis, with respect to air, is the

170  Rachel Jones one that most constantly threatens death. . . . To air he owes his life’s beginning, his birth and his death’ (my emphasis). 56 Luce Irigaray, Elemental Passions, trans. Joanne Collie and Judith Still (London: Athlone, 1992), 60. 57 ‘Broadly speaking therefore the principle between mechanism and teleology is the principle of community understood as dependence of parts on a third which includes them and sends them to oblivion’ (CEC 167). 58 See Irigaray, The Forgetting of Air, 84. 59 Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter with Carolyn Burke (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), 26. 60 Luce Irigaray, je, tu, nous: Towards a Culture of Difference, trans. Alison Martin (London: Routledge, 1993), 37–44. 61 Ibid., 39. 62 Hesiod, Theogony, in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica, ed. and trans. Hugh G. Evelyn-White (London: Heinemann, 1914), lines 929a–929t. 63 On this point, see also Stone’s re-conceptualization of the mother-child (and in particular, the mother-daughter) relation as involving differentiation without separation in Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and Maternal Subjectivity (London: Routledge, 2011), 7, 9, 103–106, 162–165. Stone thereby refigures the maternal relation ‘in terms of an active process and [the] work of generating meaning out of body relations,’ ibid., 61. 64 See Luce Irigaray, Sexes and Genealogies, trans. Gillian C. Gill (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); An Ethics of Sexual Difference, trans. Carolyn Burke and Gillian C. Gill (London: Athlone, 1993). 65 While the placenta is formed within the maternal body, Rouch emphasizes that the placental tissue derives from the embryo; Irigaray, je, tu, nous, 38–39. 66 Irigaray, Elemental Passions, 13. 67 Luce Irigaray, ‘The Return’, in Teaching (London: Continuum, 2008), 220, 223. 68 See Irigaray, The Forgetting of Air, 80–85. 69 Ibid., 84. 70 Ibid., 8. 71 See, for example, Luce Irigaray, Marine Lover, trans. Gillian C. Gill (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991). 72 Irigaray, The Forgetting of Air, 85. 73 Ibid., 83. 74 Irigaray, An Ethics of Sexual Difference, 25, 28. 75 Luce Irigaray, To Speak Is Never Neutral, trans. Gail Schwab (London: Continuum, 2002), 231; my emphasis. 76 Luce Irigaray, I Love to You, trans. Alison Martin (New York and London: Routledge, 1996), 37. 77 Luce Irigaray, In the Beginning, She Was (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 58, 60, 75. 78 See Irigaray, Sexes and Genealogies, 12, 134. 79 Graves, drawing on Apollodorus 1.3.6, notes that Metis ‘turned into many shapes’ to escape Zeus (The Greek Myths, vol. 1, 46).

Part IV

Religion

8 The Schematism of Analogy and the Figure of Christ Bridging Two Types of Hypotyposis Nicola J. Grayson Hypotyposis is commonly defined in terms of a vivid, picturesque description of scenes or events. However, Kant uses the term to refer to the process through which concepts are subjected to inspection, illustrated and thereby granted reality either schematically (directly) or symbolically (indirectly). Hypotyposis derives from the Greek hypo-, meaning ‘under’, ‘below’, ‘beneath’, and typosis; ‘figure’, ‘sketch’ or ‘outline’, and the subject of exhibition in Kant’s Critical works is traditionally treated through an initial study of §59 of the third Critique on Beauty as the Symbol of Morality, where Kant states: All hypotyposis (exhibition, subiectio sub adspectum) consists in making [a concept] sensible, and is either schematic or symbolic. In schematic hypotyposis there is a concept that the understanding has formed, and the intuition corresponding to it is given a priori. In symbolic hypotyposis there is a concept which only reason can think and to which no sensible intuition can be adequate, and this concept is supplied with an intuition that judgement treats in a way merely analogous to the procedure it follows in schematising; i.e., the treatment agrees with this procedure merely in the rule followed rather than in terms of the intuition itself, and hence merely in terms of the form of the reflection rather than its content. (5:351) Attempts to present a comprehensive explanation of Kant’s account of exhibition often begin with this passage, grant it central significance and interrogate it with reference to the Schematism of the Pure Concepts of Understanding from the first Critique. However, examining §59 in light of the schematism chapter alone leads to the mistaken assumption that Kant views symbolic hypotyposis as the only means of granting reality to an idea. The schematic realisation of theoretical ideas addressed in the Architectonic of Pure Reason is not taken into account (A832/ B860-A851/B879), nor is the realisation of practical ideas by analogy with the form of a natural law discussed in the Typic of the Pure Practical

174  Nicola J. Grayson Power of Judgement (5:67–71). As a result, one cannot gain a comprehensive understanding of the topic of exhibition, the nature of practical exhibition is not interrogated and Kant’s distinction between the two types of hypotyposis is unclear. Kant designates the exhibition of practical ideas as ‘schematic’, as the idea of the good (the form of the moral law) is realised by analogy with laws of nature. Exhibition of the moral law is judged according to a hypothetical imperative: we may judge the actions of ourselves and others as ‘good’ only if we would will them to become a universal law. However, in Religion Within the Bounds of Mere Reason,1 Kant refers to a ‘schematism of analogy’ through which practical ideas appear to be realised indirectly in a manner akin to symbolisation (6:65). Christ indirectly embodies human elements (he can suffer, be tempted and must strive to overcome desires), yet he directly and schematically presents the idea of God (as part of the Trinity). Exhibition is not strictly direct (as Christ is granted the human traits necessary for him to serve as an example for us to emulate), nor is it indirect (as Christ is part of God and presents the idea of the highest good directly). The ‘schematism of analogy’ possesses schematic and symbolic features, and the figure of Christ presents a means through which one can bridge the human and the divine and correspondingly also the two types of hypotyposis. This chapter will begin by outlining the difference between schemata and symbols in order to demonstrate the limitations of Kant’s distinction in relation to practical exhibition. It will build on an analysis of the Typic with reference to the ‘schematism of analogy’ to show that the practical modes of exhibition possess a combination of direct and indirect features. Finally, it will suggest that, just as a schema serves as the ‘third thing’ which makes possible a bridge between concept and intuition, the figure of Christ (as a personified ideal) may be thought of as the ‘third thing’ which bridges the human and the divine and likewise also Kant’s distinction between schematic and symbolic hypotyposis.

Schematic Realisation In the Transcendental Doctrine of Elements, Kant explains that schematism is necessary, as “Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind” (A51/B75). It is of equal importance to make our concepts sensible as it is to make our intuitions intelligible, and we do this through schemata. The schema is not a concept or an intuition; it is a ‘third thing’ homogeneous with both which makes application of the former to the latter possible. No application is ever strictly direct, as a concept must be made applicable to an intuition and modified through the schema. However, we may consider an application ‘direct’ if the concept is not referred to or transposed into anything other than itself in order to be realised.

The Schematism of Analogy and Christ 175 In the Schematism of the Pure Concepts of Understanding, Kant discusses pure sensible concepts, empirical concepts and pure concepts of the understanding. Though the precise ways in which these concepts are realised may differ, they are all realised directly and schematically. Pure sensible concepts (e.g., triangles) are realised using a monogram2 generated by the a priori imagination (A141–2/B181), empirical concepts (e.g., dogs) are realised using a monogram generated by the reproductive imagination and pure concepts of the understanding (e.g., causality) are realised through time, which acts as the ‘third thing’ homogeneous with both concept and intuition. Pure sensible concepts are mathematically determinable, and, a priori, they are realised through a ‘figural schema’ according to space (or shape).3 As a figure, the monogram enables greater generalisation than any image would allow (though it is akin to a pure image) and serves to determine an intuition, for example, of a particular triangle as illustrating the concept ‘triangle’. Empirical concepts are dependent upon experience, and their application has to be learnt; they share homogeneous features with the intuitions which exemplify them and are realised through a ‘recollective schema’ via a monogram which has figural qualities. For example, a dog is judged with reference to its appearance as a ‘four footed animal’ (A141/B180) and a plate with reference to ‘roundness’ (A137/B176). The imagination recalls previous correctly judged examples to generate a general template that is homogeneous with both concept and intuition. As a result I may correctly judge that given four-footed animals are dogs in accordance with their appearance in space (as figures) and their temporal context (as part of a causal nexus governed by pure concepts of the understanding). Pure concepts of the understanding are realised by a transcendental schema which Kant describes as a mediating representation that is both intellectual (pure) and sensible (connected to intuition) (A138/B177). The transcendental schema is a product of the imagination that gives the formal and pure temporal conditions of sensibility to which the employment of the pure concepts of understanding are restricted (A140/B179). It serves to realise a concept in time (experienced through intuition), and the scope of the concept is restricted to certain sensible (temporal) conditions. We have unified experience, as these concepts concern functions of the understanding that bear an intrinsic relation to the self (as the unity of apperception). The schematic exhibition of theoretical ideas (discussed in the Architectonic of Pure Reason) does not involve mediation by the imagination. To show that ideas are not empty abstractions, we must connect them to knowledge and experience; however, their distance from intuition makes this problematic. Theoretical ideas present a standard in the form of a maximum which regulates the production of a system, and these ideas become realised through systems (or works) that possess architectonic

176  Nicola J. Grayson unity; they guide realisation of themselves by projecting a whole (as an end or aim) which guides the way in which the parts are devised and is also that which they aim towards (A833/B861). The system as a whole becomes realised through what Gary Banham fittingly terms a final end schema.4 This schema is devised in accordance with a monogram that is a product of reason, and although theoretical ideas are not granted objective reality, they become realised through their capacity to perform a regulative function (as a systematic means of organising an aggregate). Through the final end schema, a theoretical idea may retrospectively guide the schematic realisation of itself.

Symbolic Realisation A symbol is a representation of an indemonstrable concept or idea by analogy with something demonstrable. In §59 of the third Critique, Kant is clear that all intuitions supplied for a priori concepts are either schemata or symbols: schemata contain direct, symbols indirect, exhibitions of the concept [. . .] Symbolic exhibition uses an analogy [. . .] in which judgement performs a double function; it applies the concept to the object of a sensible intuition; and then it applies the mere rule by which it reflects on that intuition to an entirely different object, of which the former is only a symbol. (5:352) The examples Kant gives reveal a profane, a linguistic and a higher type of symbolisation which differ according to the nature of the analogy on which each relation is based. The analogy forms a mere part of the symbolising relation and operates according to a rule that relates to the schema of a concept of the understanding (e.g., causality or relation). Although the analogy derives its rule from the schema through which a pure concept of understanding is realised, the symbol is a mode of intuitive presentation that is distinct from and exceeds the analogy on which it is based.5 A monarchy ruled according to its own constitutional laws is symbolised by an animate body, and a monarchy ruled by an individual absolute will is symbolised by a mere machine: a hand mill (5:352). ‘For though there is no similarity between a despotic state and a hand mill, there certainly is one between the rules by which we reflect on the two and on how they operate [Causalität]’ (5:352). Other objects could serve in place of the hand mill, the despotic state is not strictly an idea of reason and the analogy between the two relata is constructed (not natural). The profane examples provide a means of substituting a complex concept for a simple one, achieving a subsequent simplification of the former by the

The Schematism of Analogy and Christ 177 latter, but this is much less than what a symbol can achieve by definition: the indirect exhibition of an idea in sensible intuition. The words ‘foundation’, to ‘depend’, to ‘flow’ are linguistic symbols as, by analogy with movement and a living scene, they supplement the direct communication of meaning. Linguistic symbols enable a word to expand beyond its determinate meaning and, although these examples may appear to be the most profane, as Kant states that ‘[o]ur language is replete with such indirect exhibitions according to an analogy’ (5:352–3), symbolic language is presented for reflection as a supplementary accompaniment that allows the imagination an expansive yet controlled role in communication. However, this is not the same as exhibiting an otherwise indemonstrable idea. Through an analogous rule of reflection between relata concerning the ennoblement of the mind above mere sensation, the presence of beauty serves as a symbolic realisation of the idea of the morally good. Now I maintain that the beautiful is the symbol of the morally good; and only because we refer [Rucksicht] the beautiful to the morally good (we all do so [Beziehung] naturally and require all others to do so, as a duty) does our liking for it include a claim to everyone else’s assent, while the mind is also conscious of being ennobled, by this [reference], above a mere receptivity for pleasure derived from sense impressions, and it assesses the value of other people too on the basis of their having a similar maxim in their power of judgement. (5: 353) A precise analysis of the nature of the analogy on which this symbolising relation is based is problematic, as the terms are open to a degree of dispute and interpretation. Felicitas Munzel demonstrates that, aside from §59, there are five other passages in Kant’s published works in which Kant refers to das Sittlich-Gute as an idea of reason.6 The higher symbol is, therefore, the only example that could (arguably) be considered an intuitive experience (or symbolisation) of an idea of reason. The idea of the morally good is represented in intuition and becomes realised through our experience of beauty; my mind is ennobled, and this provides me with a standard by which to judge others according to a parallel capacity to make aesthetic or moral judgements. Kant designates the way we refer our sensible experience of beauty to the idea of the morally good as ‘natural’ and the analogy between beauty and the morally good is set in relation to a shared feeling of ennoblement and four points of comparison, which gives it a double strength (5:354–5). The analogy in this symbolising relation reveals an aesthetic unity (or totality) that differs in kind from the synthetic unity between a concept and an intuition and the architectonic unity of a system. The mind becomes elevated in the experience of beauty by a natural reference to

178  Nicola J. Grayson morality which arises from a feeling of harmony as ‘even our higher cognitive powers harmonise’ (5:353). The mind becomes conscious of its own higher unity through what Gasche terms in The Idea of Form, a tableau or living picture.7 It is the higher symbol of beauty that reveals the aesthetic nature of the symbol most fully, as the possibility of symbolic representation enables the mind to present a living picture of its own aesthetic unity as a dynamic whole which unites the practical and theoretical domains of Kant’s critical system. The examples discussed communicate the performance of three separate tasks: profane symbols achieve the simple presentation of a complex concept, linguistic symbols enable the aesthetic supplementation of a simple concept to enhance communication and the higher symbol achieves indirect exhibition of an idea and enables Kant to bring unity to his critical system. In all three examples, symbolisation involves analogy and a transposition, so that one thing represents another and exhibition is indirect.

Exhibition of the Morally Good Through the Typic of the Moral Law In contrast to theoretical ideas, practical ideas are not concerned with architectonic unity; they are not systematic and do not yield cognition. Though it may appear that they can be realised more directly (through actions which take place empirically), nothing corresponding to the morally good can be found in any sensible intuition. Whereas theoretical ideas attain a projected reality on the basis of their regulative function, practical ideas are realised through moral actions committed and judged in line with the good. Our actions refer to the practical ideas of good and evil which cannot themselves be presented; rather, we infer their presence (or absence) within the motivating disposition of a freely acting subject. It is the relation of these ideas to the free actions of an individual that gives them their moral worth. The realisation of practical ideas therefore reveals a creative capacity of the will and a sense of causality which differs from that pertaining to the causal nexus which governs objects of nature in the theoretical realm. Kant claims that a natural law (which can be exhibited) may be used in its formal aspect to secure reality for the practical idea of the good. We may compare maxims of action with universal natural laws, and the latter grant us a determinate basis on which to judge the morally good. The comparison enables realisation of the moral law as the practical idea of the good becomes realised by analogy with a formal aspect of the type of the natural law: What the understanding can lay at the basis—as a law for the sake of the power of judgement—of the idea of reason is not a schema of

The Schematism of Analogy and Christ 179 sensibility but a law, but yet a law that can be exhibited in concreto in objects of the senses, and hence a law of nature, though only in terms of its form; therefore we can call this the type of the moral law. (5:69) How can our actions be occasioned by a law of freedom that determines the will independently of nature (and the empirical domain) and at the same time belong to experience and nature as they take place empirically? Here we get to the crux of the problem with practical ideas: the morally good is something that, in terms of the object, is suprasensible, so that nothing corresponding to it can be found in any sensible intuition; hence the power of judgement under laws of pure practical reason is subject to special difficulties which are due to [the fact] that a law of freedom is to be applied to actions as events that occur in the world of sense and thus, to this extent, belong to nature. (5:68) Mediation by the imagination cannot suffice to connect the very separate domains of nature and of freedom, and realisation of practical ideas with reference to the typic does not involve a monogram (of reason or of the imagination), nor does it directly involve a schema of sensibility. Kant’s concern here ‘is not with the schema of a case according to laws, but with the schema (if this word is fitting here) of a law itself’ (5:68).8 A different kind of causality is operative, as it is the determination of the will through the law itself (and not the action as the result) that ‘ties the concept of causality to conditions that are entirely different from those that amount to natural connection’ (5:68). Here causality does not constitute a natural connection between objects, it is that which enables objects (as ideas) to be realised as actual as they are brought into being by the free actions of a subject. A law of nature must have a corresponding schema, but for the law of freedom, Kant is quite clear that ‘there is no intuition and hence no schema that can be laid at its basis for the sake of its application in concreto’ (5:69). The imagination is not operative here, and the moral law has no cognitive power to mediate its application to objects of nature other than the understanding. The understanding cannot lay a schema of sensibility for the power of judging at the basis of an idea of reason. Instead, what it gives is: a law that can be exhibited in concreto in objects of the senses, and hence a law of nature, though only in terms of its form; therefore we can call this the type of the moral law. (5:69)

180  Nicola J. Grayson Laws of nature have corresponding schemas, but the law of freedom has no schema; it is realised instead by analogy with a natural law (that can be exhibited in objects of sense) only in terms of its form as the type of the moral law. The idea of the morally good is therefore exhibited through actions that typify this law. Kant states that the rule for judging under the practical power of reason is this: Ask yourself whether, if the action you propose were to occur according to a law of the nature of which you yourself were a part, you could indeed regard it as possible through your will. (5:69)9 The procedure (of hypothetically testing the categorical imperative) enables us to judge actions by analogy with laws of nature to generate a type of the moral law. It is a hypothetical device we may use to test whether an action fits the form of a categorical imperative. We test whether we can will our maxim and at the same time view it as a universal law without contradiction. If we cannot conceive of our action as a law of nature, or if it can be conceived but not willed by us without inconsistency arising, it is contradictory (and therefore cannot be judged as realising the idea of the good). This gives us criteria for judging whether actions are good, and Kant refers to three examples: deceiving to one’s advantage, ending one’s life due to weariness and viewing the plight of others with weariness. He asks: ‘if you too belonged to such an order of things, would you indeed be in it with the agreement of your will?’ (5:69). If we cannot be a part of such an order of things in agreement with our will, then these actions and behaviours cannot be judged as good in accordance with the moral law. By analogy with the form of a natural law, we can make moral judgements about a maxim of action according to whether it realises a practical idea. The law of nature gives us a type for judging particular maxims of action. The type is not a universal, but it may function as such. We judge according to the causality of the will through freedom, and in doing so we make the law of nature ‘merely the type of a law of freedom’ (5:70). By tying the application of the law of pure practical reason to experience (by analogy with nature), we may judge given actions as examples, and this is how practical ideas are exhibited. For Kant, using the nature of the world of sense as a type of intelligible nature is permitted as long as I do not transfer any intuitions to the latter and refer it only to the form of lawfulness as such. This means that none of the material aspects of the law of nature are transposed (in the analogy), just the formal ones. Secondary accounts which seek to explain the nature of this practical mode of exhibition confirm that its status is not clear. Heiner Bielefeldt claims that the law of nature is treated as a symbol of the moral law.10 His

The Schematism of Analogy and Christ 181 claim is based on the mistaken view that ideas can only be demonstrated indirectly (symbolically), and, as moral ideas cannot be schematised by the imagination, he claims that the understanding functions symbolically. For Bielefeldt, the analogy between the law of nature and the law of freedom allows us to take the latter as a symbol of the former. He quotes Gerhard Luf and H.W. Cassirer in support of his designation of this mode of exhibition as ‘symbolic’, describing the natural law as ‘the necessary symbolic medium for representing the moral law’.11 Bielefeldt extends what he terms ‘the symbolic significance of nature’ further to encompass purposiveness (as teleological order) to claim that ‘[t]his totality of the moral system also finds its symbolic representation in the order of nature, when considered as a purposive whole’.12 The interpretation is problematic, as Kant never claims that the typic is symbolic. Instead, he refers to it repeatedly as a ‘schema’ (albeit he is not happy about calling it this either). It is also confusing, as what is symbolised for Bielefeldt changes: first he claims that the understanding performs a symbolic function (when this is performed by reflective judgement in the third Critique). Second, he states that the law of nature symbolises the law of morality/freedom, but Kant understands the symbol as a mode of intuitive presentation, and neither relata in this relation are intuitive or directly demonstrable. Third, he claims that the order of nature symbolises the totality of the moral system. Once again, this causes problems, as both relata have the status of ideas. The typic concerns a presentation of practical ideas by analogy, and this is not in dispute, but the use of analogy does not equate it with or define it as symbolic.13 A symbol and an analogy are not the same thing, as, though the former requires the latter, the latter can occur without the former being attained. Neither relata involved (the practical idea or the natural law) are directly demonstrable, and the typic does not equate with any of the symbols outlined by Kant in §59. Also, the morally good is not transposed into something else in order to be presented; what is transposed is form as a device for judging, it is therefore problematic to consider this mode of exhibition straightforwardly ‘symbolic’. In Kant’s Practical Philosophy, Gary Banham affiliates the typic with the final end schema and states in relation to the latter: With this type of schema we can see the dependence of the organisation of a whole enquiry on a part that makes it possible and is supreme. This is the type of schema that is employed in practical philosophy.14 Banham has valid reasons to resort to the final end schema, as, like the typic, it does not have a direct reference to intuition. He claims that a use of analogy is necessary in practical philosophy and seeks to connect the two types of exhibition. His rationale is that the final end schema

182  Nicola J. Grayson concerns how a system must be organised (in accordance with an end that is also responsible for parts) and ‘the typic supplies the condition under which a law is presentable and hence organises the sensible in accordance with an intelligible principle’.15 Banham equates the final end schema with the typic, as the latter shapes moral character in accordance with an end. Though his account is less problematic than Bielefeldt’s (as he does not designate the typic as symbolic), the typic differs from the final end schema, as the latter concerns realisation of a theoretical idea (which differs in nature to a practical one), it does not enable realisation with any objective reality (but only in terms of a projected end or aim) and it concerns a system (which differs in nature, kind, unity and causality from the motivating disposition of a free moral agent). A further marked point of difference is that through the final end schema, a theoretical idea is realised using a monogram of reason, and no such figure is mentioned by Kant (or indeed possible) in respect to the realisation of practical ideas. The idea of the morally good cannot be presented within an architectonic construct or system; likewise, theoretical systems do not have any moral requirements. Realisation of practical ideas is possible in relation to a personified figure which embodies the highest good (as we will discuss), but this is distinctly different to a monogram. Attempts in secondary literature to reduce the typic to the schemata discussed in the first Critique risk compromising its practical nature, and the necessary distance from intuition possessed by both relata in this analogical relation prevents us from designating it as symbolic. The typic constitutes a means through which practical ideas can be realised in concreto by analogy with the formal aspect of a law of nature; it therefore presents a challenge to Kant’s claim that there are only two types of exhibition. Interpretations alternate between attempting to show similarities to the schemata of the first Critique or disregarding definitive features of the symbol (e.g., its intuitive, demonstrable status). Neither approach provides a viable solution, as both suffer the same consequences, and the difference between practical and theoretical ideas becomes compromised. The typic successfully highlights a problem in relation to Kant’s distinction between the two types of exhibition, yet it may also suggest a means by which to solve it.

The Schematism of Analogy and the Figure of Christ In a footnote to the main text in Religion, Kant refers to a ‘schematism of analogy’ (6:65). Here the figure of Christ plays an integral role in realising the practical idea of the highest good and reveals a capacity of pure practical reason to utilise figures (as personifications) in relation to exhibition. On the one hand, Christ directly and schematically presents the idea of the good (as he is part of God), yet he indirectly represents an ideal goal as a standard for human beings. A complex relation between

The Schematism of Analogy and Christ 183 three relata therefore takes place; God is a supersensible idea and transcendental ideal, Christ is an ideal figure who presents the idea of the good and represents an exemplary human being and humans can think both by analogy with an extension of their own attributes but can never be adequate to either. The three figures relate to one another in a combination of direct and indirect ways, and this forms part of the problem when seeking to determine the true nature of the schematism of analogy. Kant poses a hypothetical question; he asks us to: Assume a human being who honours the moral law, and who allows himself to think [. . .] what sort of world he would create, were this in his power, under the guidance of practical reason—a world within which, moreover, he would place himself as a member. (6:5–6) As human beings, we are subject to the external world of nature in which objects are causally related beyond our control, and we make sense of our cognitions by systematising them under theoretical constructs. Morally, we are free to create our own world, and the actions we take indicate the dominant moral concepts that regulate our disposition. We judge the former determinately based upon cognitions and the correct application of concepts and the latter based on the presence of a rational feeling which determines the existence of the good. Kant refers to Christ as the personified idea of the good principle and states that this idea has complete reality in itself, for it resides in morally legislative reason (6:62). This practical concept must possess reality as we ought and therefore must be able to conform to it, and it does not need to meet the same conditions as a concept of nature to be realised: There is no need, therefore, of any example from experience to make the idea of a human being morally pleasing to God a model to us; the idea is present as a model already in our reason. (6:62) The example of such a being need not exist nor ever have existed, and the idea is not created by us, yet it possesses necessity and reality in itself. The prototype of a human being well pleasing to God resides in reason, and each human being has within them an example of this idea. Outer examples or actions allow inference to one’s inner moral disposition, but they cannot adequately communicate or present it. To judge the moral worth of an action, we must portray the actor in human guise; thus, if an exemplary human being descended from heaven, ‘we would have no cause to assume in him anything else except a naturally begotten human being’ (6:63).16 The human being well pleasing to God must be afflicted by the same needs and inclinations as us; they must withstand suffering

184  Nicola J. Grayson and resist temptation if they are to serve as an example to be emulated. One who possesses innate goodness is good merely by omission, whereas one who endures through a process of resistance and suffering communicates an active goodness that can only be attained through free action. Christ possesses a dual status as part of God and example for humanity, but it is the latter that enables the realisation of the idea of the highest good. In the first Critique, God is presented as a Transcendental Ideal— as the sum and ground of all that exists—in a figure that stands outside of any possible emulation by humans. However, through the figure of Christ, a different perspective and a new engagement with God are undertaken and this solidifies Christ’s position as key in regard to the realisation of practical ideas. Christ embodies and presents the goodness of God, yet he represents this in human form to bring the otherwise impossibly transcendental within our realms of possibility. We could follow a rule that superhuman conduct communicates as a precept, but this type of being could ‘not be presented to us as an example to be emulated’ (6:65), and the pedagogical value that Christ possesses as an example would be removed. In the footnote to the section The Objective Reality of this Idea, Kant states that we need an analogy with natural beings to make supersensible characteristics comprehensible to us (6:65n). He refers to how ‘philosophical poets’ and the Scriptures ascribe a higher rung on the moral ladder to finite, flawed and free human beings as ‘[t]he world with its defects/is better than a realm of will-less angels’.17 We can emulate Christ as he can suffer, make choices, be tempted and overcome temptations. To communicate God’s love for us, the Scriptures use a form of representation that attributes to God the highest sacrifice a living being could perform: he gives humanity his only son: although through reason we cannot form any concept of how a selfsufficient being could sacrifice something that belongs to his blessedness, thus robbing himself of a perfection. We have here (as means of elucidation) a schematism of analogy, with which we cannot dispense. (6:65) The Scriptures impose a narrative so we can make sense of God’s love for us by analogy with ourselves and what this act would mean for us. The schematism of analogy does not make this comprehensible via concepts or via a schema of object determination (cognitions). Through the act of sacrificing his only son, we can infer that the highest good is present in God’s disposition and becomes actualised through an act that we respect by analogy with what it would mean for us to do the same. This communicates God’s love as excessive, but it does not mean that we can or should infer that our human response to such an act belongs to the concept of God (or could expand our cognition of him). God’s

The Schematism of Analogy and Christ 185 disposition is not really exemplified, but a schematism of analogy makes his love for us comprehensible as the highest good is personified and realised through the figure of Christ (and exemplified in his actions). To clarify the meaning of this practical mode of exhibition, Kant states that in ascending from the sensible to the supersensible, we can schematise, which he here defines as ‘render[ing] a concept comprehensible through analogy with something from the senses’ (6:65n). But we cannot infer that what belongs to the sensible must therefore be attributed to the supersensible. If we look back to the definition of symbolisation given earlier, it is difficult to differentiate this schema from symbolism. However, as with the typic, though a transposition occurs, it is not one that concerns any intuitive content. Christ need never have existed, and he is not a sensible empirical intuition, even though he serves to demonstrate the indemonstrable concept of God. We comprehend God’s love for us by analogy with an act of sacrifice that we too are capable of, and thus we render the concept of this love comprehensible by analogy with our own experience of loss. But we cannot infer that what belongs to our experience can be attributed to God, that is, that he would suffer the same feelings; this is anthropomorphism. Kant claims we cannot say: Just as I cannot make the cause of a plant comprehensible to me (or the cause of any organic creature, or in general of the purposive world) in any other way than on the analogy of an artificer in relation to his work (a clock), namely by attributing understanding to the cause, so too must the cause itself (of the plant, of the world in general) have understanding. (6:65n) We use an analogy to make the supersensible comprehensible, but it does not follow that traits which belong to what is used to construct the analogy must also belong to the supersensible concept. Kant states that, if we illustrate a concept with an example, the example does not necessarily belong to the object itself. Since this is not true of the other types of concept realised schematically using examples (triangles, dogs, causality), this would seem to be an indirect exhibition. But what Kant implies here is a dislocation of schema, concept and object, as he states: between the relationship of a schema to its concept and the relation of this very schema of the concept to the thing itself there is no analogy, but a formidable leap which leads straight to anthropomorphism. (6:65n) The schema uses an analogy to make a concept comprehensible, but this does not necessarily belong to or expand the thing itself that the

186  Nicola J. Grayson concept refers to. The transposition serves to exhibit the concept, not to give cognition of the thing itself. Kant states that it would run counter to all analogy to say that, if we use a schema for a concept, this schema must also belong to the object. Just because I make a scenario (e.g., the cause of a plant) comprehensible by analogy with another scenario (an artificer’s creation of a watch), I cannot infer that traits possessed by the artificer (understanding) must be possessed by the cause of the plant. I can exhibit the relation between the cause and the plant by analogy with the other relation, but this does not expand my cognition of the cause of the plant. Likewise, I can exhibit the significance of God’s gift of Christ to humanity by analogy with my own ability to sacrifice my child, but this does not mean that I can attribute the loss that I would suffer to God. Using a schematism of analogy, humans may emulate Christ, but human attributes cannot be extended to God. Christ exhibits the idea of the highest good and makes it comprehensible; he is the ‘third thing’ homogeneous with sensible human beings and the supersensible idea of God. However, the human traits he possesses in order to be utilised as an example for humanity cannot be attributed to God. God is the supersensible object, Christ is the schema and humans provide the analogy, but the human traits which make the supersensible idea comprehensible via the schema of Christ cannot expand the concept of God or enable cognition of him. As a mode of exhibition, the schematism of analogy realises the idea of the highest good. God gives his son as an example for humanity, and we infer a disposition behind this blessed, altruistic, loving act which enables the practical idea of the highest good to become realised. Christ directly presents this idea (as he is part of God and therefore no real transposition takes place), yet he indirectly represents a perfected instance of humanity as an example we may use to guide our moral conduct. God’s act enables a schematism of analogy with humans to become operative. It is not strictly schematic, due to the indirect component and the use of analogy, nor is it symbolic, as there are three relata, there is no intuitive component and Christ has a direct relation to God. In Kant’s Practical Philosophy, Gary Banham observes that Kant describes this schema in contrast to the schema of object determination but does not set out the procedure with clarity. To make sense of this practical schema, Banham recalls the final end schema used to realise theoretical ideas in the first Critique. His attempt to elucidate the schematism of analogy is as follows: It would be my contention [. . .] that it is best pictured not after a manner of pathological motivation but through practical feeling, the very practical feeling that it is a major task of the Religion to describe. However, the pattern of determining this practical feeling in the divine and in ourselves is in accord with a final end schema such

The Schematism of Analogy and Christ 187 as is described in the First Critique and it is this that describes the true schema of analogy.18 Banham claims that through a developing (open) account of the nature of practical feeling, we can conceive of an appropriate analogy between the supersensible capacity of freedom within us and that which lies beyond us (as both exceed the domain of nature). The analogical procedure adopted becomes more sophisticated as it develops, and in turn this alters the description of practical feeling. If we overlook the fact that the final end schema refers to the realisation of theoretical ideas, we can see how affiliating practical exhibition with it would secure the latter as a mode of direct exhibition. However, Banham then goes on to state: This schematism of analogy will further the final end schema by utilizing the procedure described in the Third Critique: ‘judgement performs a double function: it applies the concept to the object of a sensible intuition; and then it applies the mere rule by which it reflects on that intuition to an entirely different object, of which the former is only a symbol’. (5:352)19 Banham claims that the concept of practical feeling (respect) is applied to the sensible intuition of persons; then the rule of reflection on these persons is applied to a different object (God as the supersensible outside us) which is judged in accordance with freedom as the supersensible within us. For Banham, the symbol of God is given through traits of personality belonging to human beings and symbolisation of the supersensible ‘gives us the peculiar supersensible figuration we term “God” ’.20 He claims that the schematism of analogy opens up a recursive analogical connection, as the traits of this figuration are a reference back to ourselves. Banham affiliates the schematism of analogy with the direct schematic realisation of theoretical ideas (as systems) and the indirect symbolisation of God. Despite his recognition of practical feeling as a pivotal defining feature of practical ideas, recourse to the final end schema does not take this into account, as it is not a necessary part of any system. Insight into the disposition of God as a moral creator adds a distinct new component which not only transforms the status, nature, task and purpose of the final end schema but also shifts its sphere of influence from concepts of nature to the concept of freedom. By claiming that this mode of exhibition is also symbolic and that it opens up a recursive analogical connection, Banham risks the anthropomorphism that Kant warned us against. Kant nowhere designates this exhibition as symbolic, and, although we may exhibit the idea of God by analogy with traits that we possess, we cannot and must not infer that these traits belong to God.

188  Nicola J. Grayson Banham’s enquiry is not conclusive, as he does not explicitly address the role of the figure of Christ (as the third relatum) in exhibiting the idea of the highest good, and he presents this mode of exhibition as combining both types of hypotyposis, thereby failing to clarify its nature in relation to Kant’s distinction. In his Commentary to Kant’s Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, James DiCenso observes the dual nature of Christ’s status. On the one hand, Christ is referred to as prototype, archetype and original image by means of the term Urbild, which conveys a rational principle in a graphic image. On the other, he is characterised as a Vorbild; which DiCenso defines as an anticipatory image which is yet to come.21 It is the latter which Kant uses when he states: There is no need, therefore, of any example from experience to make the idea of a human being morally pleasing to God a model to us; the idea is present as a model already in our reason. (6:62)22 The interpretation suggests that Christ acts not merely as an existing prototype but as a projection of that which we should aspire to be: a model for our conduct. Dicenso’s temporal reading of Vorbild enables us to see an affiliation with the projected whole used to regulate a system via the final end schema, but he does not recognise or pursue this affiliation. Instead, Dicenso draws on similarities to Kant’s account of the symbol, and this is apparent in the language he uses: Christ ‘represents’ a fully realised ethical disposition, and we ‘reflect’ on his example to cultivate our own inner morality. DiCenso claims that the representative nature of religious images in relation to practical ideas highlights their symbolic function, as they imperfectly express an ideal ethical disposition for us to emulate. Christ serves as teacher, guide and exemplar, and though the ethical responsibility for our actions lies within us, the ideal figure of Christ may give us courage, force and strength. DiCenso claims that we personify ethical endeavours to make them ‘more imaginatively accessible’ and this shows the ‘pedagogical importance’ of Christ and reveals our propensity to render ideas in an intuitively graspable form.23 DiCenso notes an equivalence between the philosophical poets with their rendering of abstract concepts in accessible terms and traditional religious imagery and claims that the Scriptures use representation as, given the limitations of human beings, ‘some form of imagistic representation is not entirely optional for guiding our moral practice’.24 He affiliates the schematism of analogy with imagistic, intuitive symbolisations; however, when he attempts to clarify practical exhibition in a footnote, he writes: In the third Critique, Kant differentiates such schemata from symbols that generate representations of ideas in accordance with mere

The Schematism of Analogy and Christ 189 analogy (CJ V:352). Religion further divides the notion of schematism into two types, ‘object determination’ and ‘analogy,’ and these generally parallel the prior differentiation between schematism as such and symbolism.25 Here DiCenso tries to preserve the schematic status of this mode of exhibition; he claims it is a type of schematism which differs from that of object determination because it uses an analogy and this renders it parallel to symbolisation but not equal to it as such. He does not address how it is possible for the schematism of analogy to be different from the schema of object determination, parallel to symbolisation, and still be schematic. As a result, the boundaries between the two types of exhibition become blurred in a manner that is not properly accounted for. DiCenso’s presentation of the difference between the two modes of exhibition is problematic in itself, but he then goes one step further to claim: The schematism of analogy follows Kant’s definition of symbolism as offering analogical representation, drawing from the world of sense, of ideational abstractions and intellectual faculties that cannot be directly represented (e.g., our propensity to evil, moral laws, a moral disposition).26 Kant is clear that the idea of the highest good personified through Christ has reality in itself and resides in reason; it is a rational idea that need never be made intuitive in the world of sense; this is like asking for miracles. This idea could only be brought near to the world of sense through an account of practical feeling or lawfulness in a manner akin to the typic—but DiCenso does not draw upon either.

Conclusions There is evidence within and outside Kant’s Critical works of modes of exhibition that do not sit within his distinction between schematic and symbolic hypotyposis. In order to show this definitively, the topic of exhibition must be traced as it develops, and this requires an understanding of the theoretical schemata of the first Critique, the practical modes of exhibition in the second Critique and Kant’s account of symbolisation as distinct from the exhibition of aesthetic ideas in the third Critique.27 By supplementing discussion of the typic with an account of the ‘schematism of analogy’ in Religion, we gain insight into a mode of practical exhibition which uses an analogy and has indirect features, yet has no intuitive content and differs from the profane, linguistic and higher types of symbol discussed in §59 and the schemata of the first Critique.

190  Nicola J. Grayson Kant’s distinction between the two types of exhibition does not encompass either of the practical modes, and Howard Caygill claims that, because Religion was written after the third Critique, it signals Kant’s desire to reduce the symbolic to the schematic, but the situation is more complex.28 Confusion about the nature of the practical modes of exhibition not only impacts upon the distinction itself, it influences our understanding of the topic of exhibition as a whole. If the practical examples were the only ones to lie outside of Kant’s distinction, Caygill’s explanation could suffice, but there is further evidence of modes of exhibition which fall outside of Kant’s distinction between schematic and symbolic hypotyposis, for example, the realisation of aesthetic ideas through works of art and the realisation of the aesthetic standard idea of beauty; both suggest pertinent areas for further investigation that cannot be pursued here.29 Through the schematism of analogy, the figure of Christ demonstrates a capacity to bridge the divide between the schematic and the symbolic without being reducible to either. As a personified figure, Christ enables us to utilise God (formerly a transcendentally ideal figure) as an example of the highest good which is exemplified through his gift to humanity of his only son. Christ is not merely human (and capable of limited good conduct), nor is he solely divine (and innately good); he occupies a position which enables him to be both and neither at the same time, and this mirrors the status of practical exhibition in relation to Kant’s distinction. Whether one interprets Christ as means of synthesising the two modes of exhibition or as that which bridges them, as a figure he undoubtedly presents a means through which practical ideas can be realised in a manner that is not addressed, accounted for or made explicit within the distinction Kant makes in §59 of the third Critique.

Notes 1 Hereafter referred to as Religion. 2 A monogram is defined in terms of a design according to an identifying mark which can be constituted by an overlapping of letters or images. 3 I explain the different types of schema and Kant’s three-tier account of the symbol in detail in N. J. Crosby-Grayson, Schematic and Symbolic Hypotyposis in Kant’s Critical Works (Ph.D. Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2015), chs. 3, 7. 4 Gary Banham, Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), 57. 5 For a full analysis of the different examples Kant uses, see my unpublished paper ‘Kant’s Three Tier Account of the Symbol’, presented at the Annual Conference of the Dutch Association of Aesthetics, Ghent, 2011. 6 The passages occur in the Typic of the second Critique, the Analytic of the Beautiful and the discussion of intellectual interest in the beautiful in the third Critique, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, and the Metaphysics of Morals. G. Felicitas Munzel, ‘ “The Beautiful Is the Symbol

The Schematism of Analogy and Christ 191 of the Morally-Good”: Kant’s Philosophical Basis of Proof for the Idea of the Morally-Good’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 33 (1995), 317–331. 7 Rodolphe Gasche, The Idea of Form: Rethinking Kant’s Aesthetics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 210–211. 8 Note Kant’s hesitancy in applying the word ‘schema’ to this type of exhibition. 9 This is first presented in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (4:421). Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Practical Philosophy, ed. and trans. M. J Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 10 See H. Bielefeldt, Symbolic Representation in Kant’s Practical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 47–53. 11 See ibid., 50 n. 35, where Bielefeldt quotes H. W. Cassirer in respect to Kant’s use of ‘typic’: ‘His meaning would be more adequately expressed by the term ‘symbol’ [. . .] What he is trying to show is that the finite moral being is capable of symbolising the supersensible law by means of the concept of a universal law of nature’. He also refers to Paul Diedrichson’s view that ‘what [Kant] calls the ‘type’ (Typus) of the moral law is precisely a concretising of the abstract moral law in a symbolically concrete form’. Ibid., 50–51. 12 Ibid., 51–52. 13 The symbol is defined as a mode of intuitive presentation that concerns demonstration of an otherwise indemonstrable object by analogy with something that is directly demonstrable (5:351–352). 14 Gary Banham, Kant’s Practical Philosophy: From Critique to Doctrine (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 233. 15 Ibid., 233–234. 16 Kant states: ‘For let the nature of this human being well pleasing to God be thought as human, inasmuch as he is afflicted by just the same needs and hence also the same sufferings, by just the same natural inclinations and hence also the same temptations to transgressions as we are. Let it also be thought as superhuman, however, inasmuch as his unchanging purity of will, not gained through effort but innate, would render any transgression on his part absolutely impossible’ (6:64). 17 Albrecht Haller, Concerning the Origin of Evil, 1734 (as cited in Religion 6:65). 18 Ibid., 123. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 DiCenso states: ‘Noteworthy here is the use of the term Vorbild, rather than the previously employed Urbild, to indicate Jesus’ role as an ethical exemplar. A Vorbild is literally a “before image”; it therefore anticipates something that is yet to come [. . .] Just as Jesus is a prototype (Urbild) for the perfected moral disposition toward which we all should be striving, so too is he a model (Vorbild) of ethical autonomy that we must actively emulate.’ James J. DiCenso, A Commentary on Kant’s Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 100. 22 It is interesting to note that vor carries temporal and spatial connotations. DiCenso’s use of Vorbild emphasises the temporal, but vor also refers to a model that we hold before our eyes so that we may reproduce or imitate it. 23 Ibid., 105. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid.

192  Nicola J. Grayson 27 The realisation of aesthetic ideas and how this differs from symbolisation could not be pursued here. 28 Caygill states: ‘Kant develops this thought in RL [Religion] by dropping the distinction between symbolic and schematic procedures of judgement and regarding both objective and analogical determinations as forms of schematism’. Further analysis of later texts would be needed to prove this assertion, though Caygill does not cite any. Howard Caygill, A Kant Dictionary (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 66. 29 See Crosby-Grayson, Schematic and Symbolic Hypotyposis in Kant’s Critical Works, chs. 7, 8.

Bibliography Allison, Henry. Kant’s Theory of Freedom, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Banham, Gary. Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000. ———. Kant’s Practical Philosophy: From Critique to Doctrine, London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Beck, L. W. A Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960. Bielefeldt, H. Symbolic Representation in Kant’s Practical Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Caygill, Howard. A Kant Dictionary, Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. Crosby-Grayson, N. J. Kant’s Three Tier Account of the Symbol, Annual Conference of the Dutch Association of Aesthetics, Ghent, 2011. ———. Schematic and Symbolic Hypotyposis in Kant’s Critical Works, Ph.D. thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2015. DiCenso, James. A Commentary on Kant’s Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Grier, Michelle. Kant’s Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Practical Reason, Practical Philosophy, edited by M. J. Gregor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ———. Critique of Practical Reason, translated by Werner S. Pluhar, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2002. ———. Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith, New York and Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. ———. Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Werner S. Pluhar, Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett, 1996. ———. Critique of Judgement, translated by Werner S. Pluhar, Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett, 1987. ———. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Practical Philosophy, edited and translated by M. J. Gregor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ———. Religion Within the Bounds of Mere Reason and Other Writings, edited by Allen Wood and George di Giovanni, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. ———. Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, translated by T. M. Greene and H. H. Hudson, Chicago and London: Open Court, 1934.

The Schematism of Analogy and Christ 193 ———. Toward Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Project, Practical Philosophy, edited and translated by M. J. Gregor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ———. What Real Progress Has Metaphysics Made in Germany Since the Time of Leibniz and Wolff? Translated by Ted Humphrey, New York: Abaris Books, 1983. Munzel, G. Felicitas. ‘ “The Beautiful Is the Symbol of the Morally-Good”: Kant’s Philosophical Basis of Proof for the Idea of the Morally-Good’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 33 (1995), 317–331. Timmerman, J. and Reath, A., editors. Critique of Practical Reason: A Critical Guide, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Todorov, Tzvetan. Theories of the Symbol, translated by Catherine Porter, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977.

9 The ‘Proper’ Tone of Critical Philosophy Kant and Derrida on Metaphilosophy and the Use of Religious Tropes1 Dennis Schulting Without a doubt, Immanuel Kant is the quintessential Enlightenment philosopher who, whilst not recoiling from subjecting it to thoroughgoing critical philosophical inquiry, was fully alert to the fact that, not least because of its social relevance, religion could not be dismissed out of hand. Of course, I am not suggesting that Kant was by any means a religious philosopher as his contemporary Friedrich H. Jacobi or Søren Kierkegaard after him were. Kant was certainly no apologist for religion. For Kant, the general perspective on religion remained unabatedly critical in the strict sense that he bestowed upon the term (what this means will become clearer in the course of this essay). Nevertheless, Reason ­(Vernunft) cannot simply elevate itself, by decree, above faith (Glauben) or religion. There is, moreover, a systematic reason religion must play a role in the practical domain. For Kant, namely, if we take religion as at least concerned with the highest good, ‘reason needs to assume, for the sake of [. . .] a dependent highest good, a supreme intelligence as the highest independent good [. . .] in order to give objective reality to the concept of the highest good’.2 Kant was thus vigilantly attentive to the complexity of the relation between faith and Reason, between philosophy and religion. This complexity is borne out by the often largely implicit assumptions underlying philosophical theories on the relation between faith and Reason. More than any other philosopher of the modern age, Kant was aware of the threat of prejudice and dogmatism, also and perhaps especially in philosophy. The question of the relation between faith and Reason, specifically with regard to the use of Reason, was of central concern to Kant, already in his eloquently written early pre-critical essay Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (1766) and then famously in the aftermath of the Pantheism debate between Moses Mendelssohn and Jacobi, with the essay What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking? (1786), but particularly after he had completed, in 1790, the trilogy of the Critiques, when he became involved in a fiercely fought public debate concerning the role of religion in Prussian society. This concern culminated in the publication, in 1798,

The ‘Proper’ Tone of Critical Philosophy 195 of his major politico-theological tract The Conflict of the Faculties, after a short period in which he was forced to remain silent about his views on religion because of the anti-Enlightenment edict issued some years earlier by Frederick William II, himself a man given to relying on spirit-seers for political policy. More specifically, the publication in 1793 of his Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason resulted in the curb, by way of an imperial rescript that Kant received in October 1794, on his freedom to speak out on religious affairs, by which Kant no longer felt obliged upon the death of Frederick in November 1797.3 However, the work on which I shall focus here is Kant’s neglected metaphilosophical tract Of a Recently Adopted Exalted Tone in Philosophy (henceforth RTP),4 which was published in the intervening time in the Berlinische Monatsschrift of May 1796. I do not wish to go into the precise historical context of this minor work.5 Neither do I discuss its relation to Kant’s other aforementioned publications on religion and religious affairs. I am primarily interested in the ways in which RTP thematises the legitimacy of speaking in an exalted, quasi-religious tone apropos of the authority of Reason as a selflegitimising capacity in philosophical speech, specifically in relation to religion. An important additional reason for taking a closer look at this text is because the late Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) took a great interest in this work of Kant’s and, indeed, emphasised, rightly I think, that despite its prima facie rhetorically charged, polemical nature, this work— which might at first be taken to be merely a lampoon—is anything but insignificant in Kant’s oeuvre. Derrida’s On a Recently Adopted Apocalyptic Tone in Philosophy, originally published in 1983,6 is an oblique commentary on Kant’s RTP and aims to expose to view the alleged hidden underpinnings of Kant’s polemic against exaltation or fanaticism (Schwärmerei)7 in philosophy. Derrida tries to show that Kant’s appeal for tonal moderation in philosophy, for a measured speech, which should rein in exalted modes of speech, is itself not neutral and rather fundamentally biased against an exalted, quasi-religious manner of thought. It is evident that, as he himself notes early on in RTP, Kant is predisposed towards a more Aristotelian, academic kind of philosophy, which adopts a ‘proper’ tone or pitch in philosophical debate, but Derrida claims that Kant himself raises his voice precisely in lampooning exalted thinkers.8 Here, I am not so much interested in delineating Derrida’s own grounds for criticising Kant on this score, which are concerned with the way in which what he calls ‘apocalyptics’ presumably accounts for the very possibility of raising a tone in any arbitrary discourse and thus also for moderating one’s voice, thus revealing ‘apocalyptics’ as a transcendental condition of sorts of the philosophical speech mode.9 Rather, I am particularly interested in the extent to which Derrida’s critique manifests a fundamental misapprehension of the Kantian mode of moderating critique. (I shall therefore expand on some elements of this view insofar as

196  Dennis Schulting this is needed for my critical assessment of Derrida’s critique of Kant.) By expounding this misapprehension, Kant’s own reasons for his philippic against religious or quasi-religious talk in philosophy are foregrounded, thus showing the nature of properly critical thought. At the same time, I shall show how Derrida underestimates the self-reflexivity, and hence properly critical, self-authorising mode of thinking, underlying his own oblique references to the adieu as a trope for quasi-transcendental intentionality towards the so-called ‘Other’.

1.  The Self-Legislation of Reason Before I discuss central aspects of Kant’s account in RTP and Derrida’s critique of it, I shall give a very rough outline of what I take to be the Kantian critical mode of thought. One of the central planks of Kant’s philosophy is the thought that there is no room for a dogmatic belief in or an appeal to a heteronomous force, ground or fact of the matter, or any exogenous or endogenous (mental) content, incentive or disposition, which would externally legitimise a theoretical concept, a judging or belief that so and so is the case, or motivate a specifically moral act. Relying on a heteronomous determination of any belief, or judging of a state of affairs, or moral act would not thereby provide an a priori demonstrable insight into the grounding relation between the putative justifying power or authority and the objective validity or moral value which is, implicitly or explicitly, assigned or attributed to it by the cognising judger or the moral agent, respectively. According to Kant, such a determination would ex hypothesi not carry necessity and would thus lack normative force for the judger or moral agent.10 For, given heteronomy, on what grounds can I be sure that the putative determining or justifying power or ground that is external to my thinking may be assigned universal epistemic validity because it is indeed the determining or justifying power or ground of the content of my belief that it is necessarily true that B is causally effected by A, say? Mutatis mutandis, how may I attribute a moral value to a particular incentive to act, which derives from a certain interest or from the striving for happiness, having at any rate a specific end in mind that is not exclusively based on Reason, if that same incentive might as well cause me to act immorally or at least cause me to be morally negligent?11 Since no amount of appealing to a heteronomous authority or ground will provide insight into the reasons for my attributing specifically moral value or my assigning a truth value to p rather than to q, Kant considers it necessary to privilege the autonomy, or self-legislation, of our human rational capacity. This capacity to know or act purely from Reason is the sole means of determining a priori the ‘causality’ of both specifically moral actions and cognitive knowledge, namely the epistemic or moral agent’s own self-causing rational activity—or Reason itself, to which a human being

The ‘Proper’ Tone of Critical Philosophy 197 eo ipso subjects herself by making specifically moral or epistemic claims. Only such rational self-legislation yields a touchstone, Kant believes, for the possibility of an adequately determinable and universally valid conception of both moral and natural causal efficacy. In this self-legislation, that is, ‘the subjection of reason to no laws except those which it gives itself’ (OT, AA 8: 145 [Kant, ‘What Does It Mean’, 16]), consists the freedom of thought or will. Self-legislation, ‘[t]hinking for oneself’, ‘means seeking the supreme touchstone of truth in oneself (i.e. in one’s own reason)’ (OT, AA 8: 146n. [Kant, ‘What Does It Mean’, 18]).12 But in what precisely does such subjecting oneself to a law, that is, selflegislating, consist and what justifies Kant’s privileging of such a strategy? In general, as Kant writes in OT, [t]o make use of one’s own reason means no more than to ask oneself, whenever one is supposed to assume something, whether one could find it feasible to make the ground or the rule on which one assumes it into a universal principle for the use of reason. (OT, AA 8: 146n. [Kant, ‘What Does It Mean’, 18]) We can put this idea of self-legislation differently and more concretely if we consider the fundamental assumption underlying Kant’s thought that is paradigmatically expressed by the scholastic dictum forma dat esse rei, which in principle Kant endorses. This dictum is mentioned by Kant in RTP and is, as will become clear, also, in some sense, very dear to Derrida. The dictum means that in the form [. . .] lies the essence of the state of affairs [Sache] [. . .] insofar as this essence must be known through Reason [durch Vernunft]. (RTP, AA 8: 404 [Kant (1999), 70], trans. emended)13 In other words, if and only if the thinking self or epistemic agent, and mutatis mutandis the moral agent, gives a certain form (forma dat) to what she cognises—the state of affairs or object of her interest—in accordance with the general principles of her own rationality, then she is able to know something essential (esse) about a particular state of affairs (res); that is, she knows it through Reason, which for Kant means to know it necessarily and universally (or a priori; cf. CPR B4). This rule expresses the ‘universal principle for the use of reason’ (OT, AA 8: 146n. [Kant, ‘What Does It Mean’, 18]). As a corollary, the form that in accordance with her rational capacity a thinker, and mutatis mutandis a moral agent, puts into, or contributes to, the Sache (res) to be determined corresponds to the essence of the thing known, insofar as it is known; the form of thought is thus the known thing’s essence.14 Reason knows the form of what it cognises with

198  Dennis Schulting certainty and a priori, for it itself contributes this form, to which the known thing isomorphically corresponds. As a consequence, we as thinkers or moral agents are our own authors of the conditions under which we cognise things and act on maxims, respectively—we are subject to no law or cognitive constraint that we do not subject ourselves to ourselves or legislate for ourselves.15 Reason is self-legislative insofar as the necessary form of any cognition or moral action, or meaningful proposition, for that matter, is concerned. That means that any rational agent need not appeal, in virtue of a putative intellectual intuition, say, to heteronomous or non-rational means, be it any causal determinacy or inner dispositional force or a sheer feeling or a sensus divinitatis, even, for the warrant of her cognitive-determinative or moral capacity. The justification for choosing autonomy as the determining ground of our knowledge of reality, of the Sache, stems purely from the a priori provability of a cognition that is grounded in such self-legislation, that is, from the possibility of explaining the thing’s essence, its necessary form, in and by virtue of thought or Reason itself. An element of philosophical parsimony and epistemic harmony is also involved here, the latter aspect, as we shall see, being closely related to the tonality of philosophical speech. This choice for autonomy implies that the state of affairs (Sache) itself, apart from the manner in which I know it, is, in a manner of speaking, left for what it is (cf. CPR Bxx), involving Kant’s metaphysical doctrine of idealism, which says that we can know only appearances and not things in themselves and thus giving rise to a noumenal realm grounding our specifically moral claims without these having any theoretically provable basis in reality. Consequently, with regard to the issue of faith and religion and the alleged generalised epistemic function which Derrida supposes it to have (I shall come to this subsequently), a formal privileging of discursive Reason over faith conceived of as revealed (historical) faith is required. This is so because revealed faith, or any other form of non-discursive ‘knowledge’ dependent on exogenous sources of warrant (revelation, say), does not yield a priori provable knowledge of any arbitrary state of affairs, event or action, whether it be a case of sensible or putatively super-­sensible experience. Belief in an exogenous cause of one’s cognition or moral action, or of an allegedly super-sensible experience, for that matter, does not result in a rationally coherent, a priori hanging together of the constitutive elements that make up the cognition, experience or action. For, first, there is ex hypothesi a gap between the external warrant of the belief and the particular cognition’s or action’s inherently subjective thought form, in which, as claims of some kind, they are necessarily expressed. Second, any belief content must be able to be rationally justified in terms of such a belief necessarily taking on a certain subjective form, namely the way that the belief content, that is, a particular cognition, experience or action, is constrained by the subject’s mode of expressing it and taking the belief content as her content.

The ‘Proper’ Tone of Critical Philosophy 199 Given the limitations of our discursive capacities, it is impossible to verify whether the conception of a putative transcendent or an at any rate external source or cause as the ostensible warrant of one’s experience (or cognition, belief, act and so forth) veridically corresponds to the de facto subjective experience (or cognition etc.) that one self-consciously has. (Notice that a denial of the possibility of having an alleged super-sensible experience is not the issue here, since nobody can contest somebody else’s own de facto feelings or experiences, whatever their causes;16 what is at issue is the validity of making a claim to having such an experience or intuition, that is, the objective validity of one’s beliefs apropos of one’s experiences or intuitions. It is nonsensical to deny someone having the experiences she has or the fact of those experiences.)17 Therefore, a belief in the heteronomous nature of the warrant of one’s actual experience, cognition or action cannot be assented to, rationally, in the same apodictic way that one is, on the empirical level, intuitively certain to have an experience (putatively super-sensible or not). To act upon revealed faith or to philosophise through feeling18 may provide immediate certainty through sensible intuition for the person involved but, according to Kant, it will never yield philosophical certainty and hence universally and a priori insightful truth, since the putative certainty is intersubjectively incommunicable (and so not objectively valid). For Kant, communicability of one’s thoughts is an intrinsic feature of the capacity for thinking itself (OT, AA 8: 144).19 If we abandon the maxim that ‘reason alone can command validity for everyone’ and declare ourselves as it were liberated from the constraints of reason, ‘a confusion of language must soon arise’ (OT, AA 8: 145 [Kant, ‘What Does It Mean’, 17]). This will result in fanaticism (Schwärmerei)—where ‘each one [. . .] follows his own inspiration’ (OT, AA 8: 145 [Kant, ‘What Does It Mean’, 17])20 and thus ‘loses touch with the sensus communis’21—and eventually ‘the complete subjection of reason to facts, i.e. superstition’ (OT, AA 8: 145 [Kant, ‘What Does It Mean’, 17]). The authority to which revealed faith, or any act based upon it, appeals lies ex hypothesi outside of itself.22 Religion, by its very definition, signals dependence on an external power or authority as its legitimating ground. Philosophically speaking, to appeal to a revealing power or authority— God or any other presumably external source—for the justification of one’s belief(s), experience(s) or action(s) can only amount to a petitio principii, for one’s appeal to the authority of the heteronomous source of authorisation of one’s beliefs presupposes that one has always already accepted that source as primordial source of authorisation.23 This circularity would appear to be vicious, for an unbridgeable gap remains between the warrant provided by the authority to which one appeals (the instance of authorisation) and the act of belief itself in respect of it. Nothing tells a believer, apart from the sheer acceptance on authority, that she is justified to believe in the authority’s authorising force, even if the authority appealed to were indeed the ultimate warrant for one’s beliefs.

200  Dennis Schulting This is different from the circularity of the self-legislation of Reason—at least in Kant’s internalist conception of it—because in Reason no conflict arises as to the relation between the subjective appeal to the authorising source and that source, the warrant for one’s appeal, itself as the source of authorisation. For Reason, and hence every rational agent employing it, appeals to itself and, as authorising authority, is not exogenous with respect to the appeal. Succinctly put, Reason, and hence every rational agent, is self-authorising or self-legitimating. Reason provides its own authority or warrant. In Reason, an intrinsic, internal connection obtains between autonomy as warrant and justification, which is wanting in constructions of justification that appeal to heteronomy for warrantability. In light of the previous, given the appeal to heteronomy that is characteristic of religion, an investigation of the status of philosophy vis-à-vis religion itself can therefore not non-question-beggingly be based on an inversion of the relation between philosophy and religion with respect to the authorising source of the former, so that religion would become the terminus a quo of analysis, as the telling title of an important recent book, Philosophy and the Turn to Religion,24 suggests (in the next section, I elaborate on this peculiar strategic move). In this context, it is interesting to observe—and this becomes clearer shortly—that in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant stipulates, in the context of an account of the discipline of Reason, that it is ‘not the state of affairs [Sache], but the tone [which is] in dispute [streitig wird]’ (CPR A744/B772, trans. mine). Neither the orthodox (read: academic) philosopher nor the believer, who appeals to a religious intuition or revelation for authorisation, is able to know the state of affairs (res) directly by means of a putative intellectual intuition—nobody can, so to speak, verify his representation with the idea archetypa.25 Therefore, knowledge is a matter of the proper measure (Maß, Mäßigung) in which the tonal chord of any claim—which, for Kant, comes down to a certain forma of thought—represents the state of affairs (Sache, res). That is to say, measure is a matter of the proportion or ratio of the constituent elements of knowledge, the ratio in the modulation of tones, which constitutes the epistemically harmonious grasp of the state of affairs (Sache) that is to be known.26 It is Kant’s claim that only discursive Reason can satisfy this demand of rational proportionality—whereby it should be kept in mind that the typical synthetic a priori form of a conceptual representation of an objective state of affairs is directly proportional to the discursive nature of our intellect.27 What is thus fundamentally at stake is the nature of the measure of the tonal chord of philosophical speech. My central claim is that, all things considered, the tone of speech in philosophy, by definition, cannot be religious if, that is, one should remain, as Derrida proposes, within the critical parameters of the Kantian discourse, for the latter, unlike what Derrida proposes, stresses the self-authorising, necessarily discursive character of Reason.

The ‘Proper’ Tone of Critical Philosophy 201

2.  Différance and the Apocalyptic Discourse Derrida claims that a certain ‘differentiating’ mode—what he calls ­différance—that is itself not explicitly identifiable as such undermines the stability of Kant’s premise that, in accordance with the earlier quoted scholastic dictum, philosophy ‘beforehand demands certain forms, under which the [intuitive] material can be subsumed’ (RTP, AA 8: 395, trans. mine; cf. RTP, AA 8: 404). Why is this so? And what has religion or faith got to do with this so-called structurally differentiating and derailing mode, as Derrida suggests? Derrida appears to be saying that a distinction between, on the hand, the ‘formal’ and, on the other hand, the ‘concrete’, ‘material’ or the ‘empirical’, is not absolute or fixed but relative, for the possibility of such a distinction rests on a more originary form, what Derrida dubs a quasistructural différance. As a corollary, no absolute dividing line is possible, Derrida argues, between the rationality of philosophy and its a priori forms and the so-called irrationality of religion and its historical-positive manifest forms, which are dependent on a posteriori, historically contingent, material content, that is, concrete experience. For this reason, Derrida questions the justifiability of the distinction between what Kant calls ‘rational faith’ and what on Kant’s account is to be regarded as superstitious theophany.28 To put it in language that fits the arithmetical terminology of ‘ratio’ or ‘measure’ (Maß) that Kant employs in RTP, Derrida would appear to argue that the distinction between, on the one hand, a scientific arithmetic and, on the other hand, a mystical, Pythagorean numerology29 or a geometry based on intellectual intuition—a distinction on which, significantly, Kant insists in his apology of the ‘academic’ Plato against Plato the mystagogue—is not rigorous and a priori fixed.30 In other words, Kant would thus not be justified to make an absolute distinction between the dictating voice of Reason (dictamen rationis),31 which Kant suggests is mathematically proportioned and hence pure,32 and the emotive resonance of the exalted voice of the non-discursive ‘oracle’,33 to which belong all the tonalities of religion as well as the tones and tunings, and detunings, of the heart (pathos).34 In Derrida’s view, to privilege Reason over the irrational, ‘pathological’ appeal to such an oracle by virtue of an intellectual intuition would betray an arbitrary choice.35 It would disregard that both voices, the untuned or detuned exalted one of the fanatic who calls upon his immediate intuition and the so-called pure voice of discursive Reason, are effectively intonations (vibrations) of the same differentiating and differentiable tonal range.36 In some sense, the commanding voice of Reason itself (particularly in the case of morality) appeals, in the very strictness of its bidding, to a mysterium tremens, a fundamental secret that is no longer rationally determinable. That is to say, it summons up the ‘Idea of duty’ as ‘the majesty of the law’, on hearing of whose ‘adamant [ehernen, iron] voice’—as,

202  Dennis Schulting interestingly, Kant himself asserts—‘every human being [. . .] trembles [. . .] when inclinations, which try to make him deaf and disobedient to this voice, arise within him’ (RTP, AA 8: 402 [Kant (1999), 68], emphasis added).37 According to Derrida, then, there is thus no overriding reason whatsoever to consider, as Kant does, the authority of Reason, through its ‘adamant voice’, superior38 to the call of faith or of the heart just because Reason ostensibly speaks to everyone unambiguously and in a manner that is presumably publicly and universally sanctioned. This is so, according to Derrida, since, as we have just seen, Kant considers—or so it seems—Reason itself to presuppose an apparently non-rational exogenous ground, a mystery, a secret, which she cannot subsequently determine according to its own principle of autonomous self-determination or self-legislation.39 Consequently, the ground of the interpretation of the secret by, on the one hand, the fanatical speculator, the religious believer or the mystic and, on the other hand, the philosopher who is led by the principle of self-legitimation or the agent who, in conformity with the a priori rules of self-legislation, duly obeys the categorical imperative of Reason and accordingly acts from duty alone is, so Derrida argues, in all cases the same. Reason and faith would thus appear to have the same common primordial root to which they must all make an essentially ‘emotive’ appeal.40 The secret of the voice of Reason is, on Kant’s own account, impenetrable.41 Here Reason cannot fall back on the same arsenal of discursive concepts and constitutive principles which it applies in its determinative or moral judgements, so as to uncover the secret, for this original ‘true secret’—as Kant typifies the ground of the idea of freedom42—that reveals but also ‘conceals’ itself, as Kant himself admits (RTP, AA 8: 403 [Kant (1999), 68]), withstands all cognitive analysis just because, as Derrida suggests,43 it is the indeterminable ground of thought’s determinative predications.44 From this, Derrida believes it justified to infer that both the constative determinations of thought and the ethical maxims of moral action, on the one hand, and the idiomatic ‘rhythm’ (Takt) of religious-mystical consciousness, on the other hand, rest on the same original equivocality, namely a conflict between the interpretation of the secret of the supersensible and its effective exposure, that is, ‘the lifting of its veil’.45 This conflict, an antinomy almost, cannot be neutralised: in Derrida’s view, every representation of the supposedly supersensible, or indeed any representation and hence any cognition or action whatsoever, is merely an orientation toward the most singular, that is, an adieu or hint (a Heideggerian Wink)46 toward what is Other (l’autre, autrui) and is thus itself necessarily nothing but a particular articulation of the latter.47 By implication, this Other cannot be revealed as such, as Other, on pain of contradicting the singularity of the modus of the adieu, as an indispensable mere orientation toward alterity.

The ‘Proper’ Tone of Critical Philosophy 203 The equivocality at issue thus rests on the fact that the adieu cannot reveal or expose itself (to interpretation) just because in order to do that, it would first require itself as a means of so doing, which is epistemically circular.48 It cannot sublate—that is, aufheben, as in Kant’s reference to the lifting of the veil of Isis (RTP, AA 8: 399)49—its own orientating mode, not in terms of exposing it to view, let alone in terms of literally destroying it (which captures both meanings of ‘apocalyptics’). Consequently, the adieu as a mode of the apocalyptic—being the prototypical manifestation of the equivocality at issue—must be regarded, according to Derrida, as ‘the transcendental condition of each discourse, even of all experience, of each sign or trace’.50 Despite its ostensibly Kantian roots, Kant of course throws this ingenious juggling with ambiguity or equivocality in the face of the mystagogue or hierophant, who, as Kant says, paraphrasing Schlosser’s Platos Briefe, ‘approach[es] so near the goddess of Wisdom, that one can discern the rustling of her garment’ (RTP, AA 8: 399, trans. mine). The wilful ambiguity or equivocation at play here consists in the fact that, as Kant points out, at the same time ‘the veil of Isis’ must be thin enough so that ‘one can intimate the goddess under this veil’ but also ‘thick enough so that one can make the specter into whatever one wants’ (RTP, AA 8: 399 [Kant (1999), 64]).51 In Kant’s view, the equivocation issues from a deliberate detuning of the tonal chord, as it were, with which any thought should— on his account at least—reasonably comply to the extent that one should conform to a publicly validated cognition of the intelligible substrate (the Sache), which is the intended object of thought. The intonation is detuned so that, as Kant puts it, in the multitude of voices or tones the ‘heads [are incited] into exaltation’ (RTP, AA 8: 399), which only leads to mystical sectarianism in philosophy. In fact, this equivocality concerns a leap (Übersprung), ‘a mysterious rhythm’ (mystischer Takt), in respect of the concept of the indeterminable, beyond it ‘into the unthinkable’ (RTP, AA 8: 398 [Kant (1999), 62]). This leap is what characterises the fanatical thinker’s speculations,52 for in the detuning—that is, the adoption of an exalted tone—he is supposedly able, on the one hand, to appeal to an insight that, on the other hand, he believes he need not justify in terms of a rationally insightful, let alone intersubjectively valid, harmony—the latter being the ‘rhythm’ of a ‘measured’ beat (Takt). The disclosure of the secret, into which the fanatic presumes to have special insight (amounting to esotericism), is announced but is at the same time with intent infinitely postponed by not actually illuminating it (aufzuklären). This results in what Kant labels the ‘superior tone’ of a certain type of philosophising ‘in which one can do without philosophy’. Kant writes: [The fanatic] posits true philosophy (philosophia arcani) in precisely the fact that he broods over an Idea in himself, which he neither can

204  Dennis Schulting make comprehensible nor even communicate to others, and so here poetic talent finds nourishment for itself in the pleasures of raving [im Gefühl und Genuß zu schwärmen]. (RTP, AA 8: 393 [Kant (1999), 56], trans. emended)53 However, by what right can Kant claim, Derrida will insist, that this so-called leap (Übersprung), enacted by the fanatic, issues in ‘surrogate cognition’ and presumably effects the death or emasculation of philosophy, which alone yields ‘proper knowledge’ (eigenen Erkenntnis) (RTP, AA 8: 398)? Is the ‘proper knowledge’ that Kant intends not also merely an interpretation, a merely ectypal knowledge (cf. RTP, AA 8: 391), that is, a mere ‘surrogate’ (RTP, AA 8: 398) for the archetypal Platonic ideas, the ideas representing the ‘proper’ in the strict sense, ‘die Sache selbst’? Does Kant’s own oblique, transcendental perspective on the thing in itself, by way of his doctrine of transcendental idealism, not in fact prescribe a surrogate mode of cognition of the thing in itself? How should we then properly understand ‘proper’ in Kant’s sense?54 Do we not indeed encounter here an equivocality to which the so-called ‘proper knowledge’ to which Kant aspires is subject, too? To a certain extent, according to Derrida, religion even has primacy as regards what amounts to proper knowledge. This explains philosophy’s ‘turn to religion’ announced by Hent de Vries,55 the affirmation of a religio perennis, for a certain testimony of faith is said always to precede all knowledge, each act of thought in general. Derrida associates this testimony with a ‘promise [of a] (quasi-transcendental) axiomatic performative’,56 ‘an elementary faith’.57 This testimony or ‘elementary faith’ goes beyond all ostensive proof or ‘demonstrative Reason’.58 In this way, the equivocal relation between Reason and religion, which according to Derrida results in their indistinguishability, their formal substitutability, appears to have been surreptitiously translated by him into the language of religion itself as the quasi-‘proper’ discourse, to which what Kant calls the ‘Herculean labor’ (RTP, AA 8: 390 [Kant (1999), 53])59 of Reason is also subjected or from which Reason at least only first originates. The transcendental-formal substitutability of religion and Reason, which are to be sure undeniably related terms or concepts, now appears to be substituted by religion itself, as quasi-universal form. This suggests that, in the Derridean view, Reason is not just on a par with religion but in fact subordinate to it. The question then arises: how does religion function as the substitute of the transcendental, as the ‘quasi-transcendental’,60 as it were, which supposedly governs the very possibility of philosophy? The antinomial equivocality, to which I alluded previously, of a secret that must simultaneously be revealed and remain transcendent, intangible, is the characteristic, Derrida suggests, of apocalyptic discourses.61 It is not only the adherent of fanatical speculation, who, as Kant (RTP, AA 8: 398) indicates, hopes with much anticipation for an explication

The ‘Proper’ Tone of Critical Philosophy 205 of the secret—but, conspicuously, does not want to have it thereby exposed at the cost of it losing its seductive charm. According to Derrida, the Enlightenment itself also proves to be a discourse that strikes an apocalyptic tone, since it typically promises or announces to reveal or uncover (apokalupto) the secret of what philosophy proper is, without in fact exposing the secret, namely the thing in itself or the Absolute that is the very topic of philosophy. (This is paradigmatically demonstrated by Kant’s transcendental critique of ontological realism, which leaves open the metaphysical possibility of perspectives on reality other than the human-discursive one. In Kant’s critical perspective, one is ex hypothesi left to wonder what the real ‘secret’ of metaphysical, ultimate reality could be.) Consequently, Derrida believes that one should speak of a generalised detuning, of which the apocalyptic tone is not just an effect among other such religious effects. Rather, apocalypticity is itself in a certain respect the unisono voice, in which the various discourses, religion and philosophy, specifically Kant’s progressivist transcendental philosophy, manifest themselves62—which is not to say that apocalypticity is tantamount to ‘one fundamental scene, one great paradigm’.63 Apocalypticity is just the generalised mode in which both philosophy and religion manifest themselves as forms of progressivism in terms of offering ways to enlighten, to illuminate (aufzuklären), which are at the same time ‘destructive’ of previous attempts to do so.64 But do Derrida’s own beliefs in this regard not closely resemble an unmediated ‘apotheosis’ (RTP, AA 8: 390 [Kant (1999), 53]), even if no appeal is made to a special, metaphysical intuition of what is transcendent, of ‘die Sache selbst’? Has Derrida perhaps created, over and above Kant’s distinctions, a fourth level of ‘assent’ or holding-to-be-true (Fürwahrhalten), a kind of ‘pre-sentiment’ (RTP, AA 8: 397 [Kant (1999), 61]) of the quasi-transcendental?65 What actually remains of Derrida’s critical vigilance? Can Derrida’s ‘enlightened Enlightenment’ by way of a formalised apocalyptics still be called Kantian? Or is Derrida perhaps a hyper-Kantian?

3.  Derrida’s Formalised Exaltation At first sight, Derrida’s ‘hypercritical’ critique of Kant appears to neglect the conditional nature of the formal distinctions underlying Kant’s thought. As we have seen (Section 1), these formal distinctions are aimed at enabling a universally valid and intersubjectively obtainable insight into the matter at issue, that is, the res or Sache of philosophical enquiry (‘die Sache selbst’, things). It does not imply that other (non-discursive) ways of knowing regarding the same thing have no validity whatsoever, nor that religious experience as such has no warrant at all.66 It also does not mean that material aspects of cognition or moral action are not at all relevant for the possibility of knowledge and morality, respectively. Of

206  Dennis Schulting course, Derrida insists on the quasi-formal nature of différance, almost as if it were a principle, which is made manifest by the structural indistinguishability, or substitutability, of formal (Kantian) knowledge and more empirical forms of knowledge. In Section 2, I referred to this as the equivocality between interpretation and revelation of the transcendent substrate, an equivocality deriving from the ambiguous meaning of the concept of ‘revelation’ or ‘apocalyptics’ itself, as suggested by the mystical trope of ‘lifting the veil of Isis’ to which Kant refers; hence Derrida’s reference to apocalyptics, which aptly expresses the equivocality that Derrida wants to expose. The structure of indistinguishability between the two terms of this relation, interpretation and revelation, is the same as with the presumed relation of substitutability between formal and empirical kinds of cognition, the latter of which ostensibly signal more concrete types of knowledge. Suggesting a close proximity to Kant’s idea of the transcendental form of knowledge, Derrida even speaks of the ‘quasi-transcendental’,67 or indeed apocalyptics as a ‘transcendental condition of each discourse, of experience even’ or as ‘transcendental structure’.68 However, in Derrida’s account, the terms in the theoretical (re)construction of the state of affairs (res, Sache) would seem to be substitutable in the manner of an expressly intended infinite regress, so that the formality of différance, which effects this substituting mode, is not an a priori formality in the strict Kantian sense. Not a single form (forma), then, is isomorphically correspondent to the state of affairs (res, Sache) and so constitutive of its essence in the manner of the aforementioned scholastic dictum to which Kant adheres (see Section 1). Hence, for Derrida, no form is in principle superior to other ways of ‘formation’, formalisation or interpretation, and certainly no a priori form can be privileged over any merely a posteriori content (with its own particular forms). Given this scepticism with respect to the possibility of distinguishing explicitly between form and material content and a fortiori in respect of a standardisation of a given formalisation as the a priori form, the epistemological question arises about the extent to which Derrida is actually justified to give credence to his own thesis—if it may be so called—of différance. What is the epistemic warrant for this meta-epistemic trust? Can it be belief (faith) or the performative testimony itself, which is said to accompany every theoretical formalisation or enunciation and is one among many concrete manifestations of the so-called apocalyptic discourse, as Derrida contends, which provides this warrant? Does this not constitute a petitio principii in that he presupposes what he first means to establish as the quasi-epistemological ground of all thetic knowledge? If the authorising force of différance, the apocalyptic tone in terms of a promise or threat even, as Derrida characterises it, possibly manifests itself in arbitrary psychological-empirical motivations, the emotive force of the ‘rhetoric of astonishment’69 or perhaps a mystical feeling, then

The ‘Proper’ Tone of Critical Philosophy 207 this authority can equally, and wholly justifiably, be ignored or rejected as having no jurisdiction beyond any individual’s personal experience. Nothing indicates that we should, in virtue of the de jure force of a reasonable demonstration, take Derrida’s invocations seriously and not cast him off as just another fanatic. To put it otherwise, on the basis of which authority should we be vigilant (a trope of apocalyptics),70 as Derrida urges us to be, and what forces us to feel bound by this authority, when it must be observed that the quasi-transcendental structure of apocalypticity has possibly destructive as well as constructive consequences? Can such vigilance, for which the adieu is a trope, really be the same as the apocalyptic equivocality itself (constructive and destructive)? That is to say, should the credence lent to the apocalyptic authority, manifest in one’s vigilance, not be seen as solely positive in nature, an ‘original yes’ (oui originaire), as Derrida himself asserts,71 a yes that is not simultaneously a no? On the other hand, does Derrida perhaps try to exploit the indisputable equivocality of modern critique—and, by implication, of the notion of ‘vigilance’—which is by nature destructive as well as constructive, by playing off the critical (Kantian) perspective against itself? (Notice again that, in an important sense, the Kantian philosophy ‘destroyed’, in a manner of speaking, the possibility of nominalist, realist or naturalist takes on reality, on the Sache, so that affirmatively subscribing to the Kantian perspective ipso facto means negating, or ‘destructing’, other ways of looking at reality. The metaphilosophical implication of the critical philosophy is ‘construction through destruction’, as it were.)72 But how does Derrida justify this well-nigh dialectical strategy? The central question, therefore, is: how can Derrida legitimate the claim regarding the acceptability or even the truthfulness of an ‘elementary faith’ as a fundamentally apocalyptic tone, by which all discourses, philosophical and religious, are typified, without succumbing to a circulus in probando? On what, ultimately, does the persuasiveness of his claims rest so that we cannot but accede to their epistemic authority? To argue that Kant himself would be guilty of circular reasoning in that he acknowledges Reason as the sole legitimating authority is not pertinent, for, as noted, Kant formulates, wholly consistently, the justification of Reason as the ground of knowledge in the terms of Reason itself. Kantian rational justification boils down to Reason’s self-justification or selfauthorisation. The burden of proof lies therefore entirely with Derrida, who, although clearly being engaged in reasoning himself (in whatever way one takes it), paradoxically appeals to a different non-identical (that is, non-self) source of legitimation, a warrant that is not thought or Reason itself but is somehow principally external to it. By persistently forsaking the principle of identity as the quintessential principle of any thought, including his own, that is to say, by denying the identical form of thought itself as not only the necessary but also the sufficient ground of objectively valid cognition,73 Derrida effectively repudiates the existence of

208  Dennis Schulting a ground that would substantiate self-reflexively, in virtue of reasoning itself, his thesis of différance. The act of seeking authority whilst making pronouncements of some kind and the very authorising instance seem to come apart in Derrida’s reasoning. On the face of it, Derrida’s thinking thus appears to be precisely non-self-reflexive to the extent that he rejects the idea of self-legislative, autonomous thought as sufficient for the grounding of possible knowledge. The rub is, of course, that, according to Derrida, the characteristic mark of différance is precisely that there is no such substantiating ground to be revealed internally, from within thought itself, that is, selfreflexively, whilst différance is also not specifically external to thought (in terms of a putative exogenous content or entity to which one can appeal for warrant, a ‘mythical given’ of sorts). By calling attention to the intrinsic ambiguity of the apocalyptic discourse, Derrida highlights the heteronomous quasi-ground that he alleges is effective from within selflegislating thought itself. In this way, Derrida believes to have pinpointed an inherent structure that cannot be located externally nor sublated internally or indeed ‘unveiled’ by Reason by virtue of the internal process of its self-legitimation—for, given the nature of apocalyptic apophansis, it cannot literally be unveiled, exposed to view, as it would then effectively be nullified. Consequently, Derrida does not feel obliged to internally justify his claim about différance in the terms of a self-authorising rationality, for that would ex hypothesi undermine the very purport of his reasoning concerning the irrefutable equivocality underlying all selfauthorising discourse. Paradoxically, however, this structural aspect of différance would appear to reinforce formally the semblance of a typical Kantian transcendentality. I come back to this later. Certainly, one could rejoin that, first, Derrida is not at all interested in a philosophical legitimation of his assertions or in philosophical or meta­ philosophical issues concerning circularity, and, second, that to reorganise Derrida’s pronouncements in the terms of Kantian logic is entirely misplaced, itself tantamount to begging Derrida’s primary question. His locutions would be purely evocative or perlocutionary and would, quasiformally, as a performative event, rather precede and thus go beyond the formal requirement of justification.74 Such an originary event of faith or testimony which precedes all rational discourse and hence appears to indicate a messianic structure, a ‘messianicity’75, is, as Derrida writes, ‘not justifiable in the logic of what it will have opened up’.76 Reason, as Derrida writes with reference to Montaigne and Pascal, must simply acknowledge ‘an irrecusable [. . .] “mystical basis of authority [fondement mystique de l’autorité]” ’.77 However, by shirking the philosophical demand of a legitimation of one’s assertions, Derrida would appear to speak precisely in ‘the tone of a lord who is so lofty as to be exempted from the burden of proving the title of his property’ (RTP, AA 8: 395 [Kant (1999), 58]). Forswearing the

The ‘Proper’ Tone of Critical Philosophy 209 need for a self-legitimating internalist justification of one’s claims makes Derrida a quintessentially religious or ‘fanatical’ thinker, at least from a Kantian perspective. Consequently, his contentions would appear to carry little philosophical weight. At the very most, they might have a heuristic value. What I am tempted to call Derrida’s ‘formalised exaltation’ (Schwärmerei) in regard to the relation of the philosophical and religious discourses seems a classic case of an amphiboly of concepts. By means of this, he effects the coup d’état of religious or quasi-religious consciousness in philosophy, even if it is stipulated to amount to nothing but a mere orientation toward alterity—epitomised by the trope of the adieu. It is telling that in the context of an account of the adieu, De Vries78 talks about a sacrificium intellectus. But De Vries’s programmatically announced ‘turn to religion’ would effectively appear to imply, as Kant puts it, ‘a vaulting leap (salto mortale) beyond concepts into the unthinkable, [hinting at] a capacity to grasp what evades every concept, an expectation of secrets or, rather, a suspense-ridden tendering of secrets [Hinhaltung mit] that is actually the mistuning of heads into exaltation’ (RTP, AA 8: 398 [Kant (1999), 62]).79 Thus, Kant’s criticisms against the fanatic, who complains about academic philosophy, seem equally pertinent in the case of the Derridean ‘sophist’, who shuns philosophy’s obligatory formalisms. Kant writes: The disparaging way of denouncing formulations in our knowledge (which is indeed the principal activity of philosophy) as pedantry under the name of ‘form-giving manufacture’ confirms the suspicion of a secret intention: in fact to ban all philosophy under the shop-sign of philosophy, and to act superior as the victor over philosophy. (RTP, AA 8: 404 [Kant (1999), 69]) Must we therefore denounce Derrida’s ideas about the adieu, being one of the tropes of différance, as non-sensical ‘fanaticism’ intent on unequivocally banning academic philosophy, intent on completely exposing it and putting it to an end full stop ‘under the shop-sign of philosophy’?

4.  The Self-Consistency of Différance One might want to argue that Derrida’s intonation is more in line with a contemporary mode of thinking in continental philosophy, which is wary of the kind of formalised approach, characteristic of Kant’s thought, to the thinking subject and its a priori activity and to philosophy in general. It remains a problem, however, that Derrida systematically substitutes the semantics of his argument, or its narrative content, for its operative structure without thereby accounting for the undeniably reflexive mode of the substitution itself, as I pointed out previously. Derrida seems insufficiently aware, purposely or not, of the meta-philosophical implications

210  Dennis Schulting of his own reasoning. In this way, the tonality of the philosophical discourse that Derrida engages is consistently but nonetheless entirely ad hoc, disturbed by the introduction of a (non-philosophical) dissonance. Yet Derrida’s tone of voice threatens to evaporate (flatus vocis) into a mode of merely describing hints at supposed implicit structures without making, or willing to make, them explicit for thought. Therefore, an orthodoxly Kantian ascesis in regard to such arbitrary tonal Verstimmungen, which are directed at disturbing the critical ear or hearing, is called for.80 The ascetic intonation of Kant’s analysis reveals a choice for rational measure and clarity, which ex hypothesi implies a certain moderation.81 This tonal moderation seems wanting in Derrida, notwithstanding his painstaking dissection of the diverse timbres of philosophy. On the other hand, however, Derrida’s mode of thought seems in fact rather highly consistent with its own semantic content, namely the adieu or religion as the supposed (quasi-)ground of philosophy (the ‘mystical basis’ of philosophical ‘authority’). Derrida’s thought modus is, in other words, paradoxically extremely self-consistent. It manifests its own particular self-reflexivity. As I argued previously, Derrida keeps the ambiguity underlying the relation of the terms of argumentation or narration, form and content, firmly in place in that he consistently substitutes that which is being structured by rational thought, either descriptively or formal-logically, for what threatens to coagulate in terms of a formal thought structure (the form in which something is expressed or enunciated). By virtue of his ‘method’ of suspicion, Derrida sees to it that content prevails consistently and persistently over form. This is thrown into relief by pointing up the ‘essentially’ religious feature of such an ambiguous mode of reasoning. In contrast to philosophy, religious speech is essentially elliptical. It is conceptually necessary to speak of the essence of religion in such an oblique way so as to begin comprehending its fundamental alterity—as Derrida aptly writes: ‘Just as its name [sc. religion] indicates, one must [. . .] talk about the essence of religion with a certain religio-sity [religio-sité]’.82 For Derrida, to talk about différance as the ground of philosophy, then, means to speak ‘elliptically’ or ‘obliquely’ of philosophy’s origin, as if speaking religiously, in the tone of an apocalyptic modality. But what would it mean to speak ‘elliptically’ or religiously of the ground of philosophy, to speak of philosophy ‘with a certain religiosity’? One cannot speak of it in this way, that is, ‘elliptically’ or ‘religiously’, just by going about producing neat syllogisms or analysing concepts, even if that is what one normally does as a philosopher. The elliptic mode that Derrida has in mind, a certain reserve (retenue) apropos of a presumed coagulated formality in philosophical speech, is probably precisely that which typifies religion.83 In this respect, namely in objectively positing the object of its investigation, that is, religion as the equivocality of the adieu, equivocality as religion—which in its turn presumably articulates the

The ‘Proper’ Tone of Critical Philosophy 211 ground of philosophy itself—Derrida’s mode of thinking is, in an important respect, conspicuously similar to Kant’s rational model of reflection, for which the form of the understanding provides the necessary structure to the thing to be cognised (in conformity with the principle forma dat esse rei), so that a correspondence between subject and object, thought form and semantic content, becomes clear. That is to say, the mode of irreducible substitutability, différance, necessarily substitutes itself ad infinitum, that is, the adieu as a trope of différance, as object of description or analysis as well as mode of description or analysis. In this way, the structure of the adieu isomorphically maps onto the alterity to which it is oriented in the same way that the form of Kant’s transcendental subject isomorphically maps onto the object of cognition that it intends. To a certain extent, Derrida’s thinking articulates an infinitely repeated infinite judgement similar to the mode of negative or apophatic theology (not-p, not-q, not-s etc.).84 Put differently, negation—being one of the categories of quality, as the quintessential feature of objective determination, which in its turn results in a ‘limitation’ of the infinite sphere of possible experience by means of infinite judgement—is infinitised or infinitely negated, consistently aufgehoben, to put it in Hegelian language (recall the earlier mentioned lifting of the veil of Isis). One discerns that by means of the mode of consistent self-substitution, through infinite negation, Derrida enacts a certain mimesis of the self-legitimation of Reason. That is, Derrida mimics Kant’s thesis that subject and object qua their objective-unitary form exhibit a reciprocal and self-referential unity (paradigmatically expressed by the dictum forma dat esse rei), which shores up discursive thought’s self-legitimation and constitutes the possibility of thought and experience. How so? In Derrida’s manner of thinking, the positing of the structural directedness, or the adieu toward what is different (alterity), is reciprocal to the manner in which, whilst consistently differentiating and with a certain reserve (retenue), the ‘object’ of his thought—that is, the differentiating orientation of the adieu itself—is posited. This mimicry of transcendental philosophy, of its self-legitimating mode, is différance. Différance structurally ‘corresponds’ to the religious way of imaging the Absolute, or ‘die Sache selbst’, namely taking up the position of the adieu, which does not determine or attempt to determine the Absolute formal-logically, descriptively or in any other positively determinate sense but is fundamentally and consistently ‘merely’ oriented towards it, as if it is the ‘vehicle’ of religious thought (cf. A341/B399). The adieu is quintessentially ‘mere’ orientation—which is expressed by the literal meaning of adieu, which expresses a direction, namely à dieu.

5.  Derrida’s Hyper-Kantianism Notwithstanding the fundamental differences between Kant and Derrida insofar as the formal reflection upon the terms in the reflexive relation

212  Dennis Schulting is concerned (Reason/faith-religion, rational/irrational, harmony/dissonance and so forth), and notwithstanding the serious epistemological problems issuing from Derrida’s stance, we may say that there is a strong resemblance in the way that both Derrida and Kant aim at a certain consistency whilst expounding the matter (Sache) under consideration, a consistency that is true to the nature of the object of their respective enquiries—for Kant, it is the object of possible experience; for Derrida, the object of enquiry is the adieu, or différance. True, Kant strives for systematic harmony from within the perspective of rational reflection, since he believes that an internal justification of the means of argumentation will secure the tonal purity of the debate. Derrida, on the other hand, would not shy away from stirring things up by effecting a tonal disturbance, creating a dissonance, in order to refocus our minds, that is, to draw our attention again to the fundamental issues at stake—this refocusing reflects the characteristic apocalyptic attitude of watchfulness or vigilance to which Jesus of Nazareth exhorts his disciples.85 Such an approach ties in with the structural directedness, in Derrida’s thinking, to the ‘most singular’, time and time again. Derrida thus attempts to think formally about the singular without letting thought get bogged down in formal, let alone a priori, structures. Nevertheless, to the extent that Derrida, in the act of describing or narrating the adieu, strives for a certain systematicity that is appropriate to the matter at hand and thereby reveals a rational coherence in that specific intentional sense, which shows a self-reflexiveness between the subject and object of description, between form and content (namely to consistently think ‘singularly’ about the ‘singular’), one may say that Derrida is heir to the legacy of Kantian thought. The prima facie arbitrary tonal disturbance— to consistently ‘singularise’ what threatens to become too formalised or generalised—serves a rational goal; indeed, it aims, as Derrida asserts, at an ‘enlightenment of the Enlightenment’. As a result, one might even be inclined to argue that Derrida remains closer to the state of affairs, the Sache, more than Kant, who consistently thinks from the perspective of a certain old-fashioned structuring formality, distanced from the concrete object. Derrida’s approach is one of a more intimate focus. In a way, Derrida is a hyper-Kantian to the extent that he takes absolutely seriously, and thus repeats, Kant’s ‘zur Sache Selbst!’ (RTP, AA 8: 390). With the measure (Maß) and rhythm (Takt) of the adieu, it is no longer the acceptance on authority—either God’s voice or, indeed, the ‘adamant’ voice of Reason pure and simple—but unremitting vigilance which supersedes all measure in the self-critique of pure Reason precisely in moderation, by not presenting the truth as if it were an observable, eternal fact, not even qua formal transcendental structure. Vigilance, then, is the quasi-reflective form of tonal moderation par excellence, of hyper-moderation, by consistently keeping one’s focus on the concrete, the singular, on what is presently before us. Consequently,

The ‘Proper’ Tone of Critical Philosophy 213 speaking religiously in Derrida’s sense does not mean to put forward religious, speculative claims whilst speaking in an exalted tone but rather discloses a critical circumspection in regard to the legitimacy of any kind of claim, philosophical or other, with respect to concrete, lived reality and the experience of concrete particulars. Just as between the movements of a string quartet the musicians must retune their instruments, the tuning of Reason should never be taken for granted as if it were tuned once and for all. Reason, in all of its various manifestations, will always need to be fine-tuned, to be enlightened, as it were. Just as with the playing of a string quartet a detuning or mistuning (Verstimmung) of the tones—which is generated due to the materiality of the instruments86—will inevitably occur when the strings of the instruments are stroked (vibrations cause a slackening of the strings), sensibility has an ineradicable negative influence on the purity of the discursive intellect which is tempted to go astray by indulging in transcendent claims (cf. A294–6/B350–2). This ineluctable historical or natural necessity is shown by the given fact alone of the occurrence, in the history of philosophy, of fanatic dilettantes who ‘act the philosopher’ (RTP, AA 8: 403 [Kant (1999), 69]), one of whom one might at first blush be inclined to claim is Derrida.87 However, one should take heed that the watchfulness that is expressed by the adieu presupposes rather than quasi-grounds the Kantian formal starting-point of the transcendental reflective subject. Therefore, such vigilance needs to show respect indeed for the unmistakable and ‘adamant’ voice of Kant. In contrast to what Derrida will have us believe, the critical philosophy and thus Reason itself, and not the thesis of structural différance, let alone religion, stipulates the parameters of watchfulness— notice that Kant himself uses the same religious trope by speaking, in RTP, of an ‘ever-vigilant critique’ (RTP, AA 8: 404 [Kant (2002), 443]).88 In fact, even to speak of the adieu, as a structural mode of orientation, is intelligible only on that condition. The detuning that occurs during the performance of the movements of a string quartet does not contradict the purity of tone, which—as is apparent while the players, before actually starting the piece, are still tuning their instruments—is the exemplary standard for playing in tune. Primacy must thus be accorded to the formality of the understanding, of Reason, and not to religion or apocalyptics, as Derrida suggests; for, as I argued previously, the form in which Derrida states his views regarding the adieu or différance cannot escape its own self-referentiality or self-reflexiveness and so is therefore unmistakably a thought form that articulates a particular claim, a form of which one is necessarily self-aware as a thinker, even if only implicitly or elliptically—this reflexive form is adverbial, so to speak, to any philosophically articulable or articulated claim and should be able to be brought to light in a philosophical analysis.89 Derrida’s philosophy of différance, as a necessary

214  Dennis Schulting quasi-religious, apocalyptic speech form, is by the same token a reflexive form of self-legitimising thought which does not, or at least not merely, rest on a heteronomous authority of elementary faith. Rather, it necessarily gives itself, reflexively, a form in virtue of which, precisely in making pronouncements about the adieu, it thus is witness, even if only implicitly through an elliptic performative gesture or by means of mimesis, of the self-authorisation of autonomous thought—namely, of its own thought. All in all, Derrida might still be said to be a Kantian, just because he adopts and then slightly tilts a Kantian mode of thinking by way of an oblique perspective on Kant’s own paradigmatic intentio obliqua, that is, by consistently looking for the form in which the object of investigation must necessarily be thought, which means, in the case of philosophy’s other, religion, or what religion is said to express uniquely, le tout autre as such, to look for a form that is ex hypothesi not articulable in the formal language of philosophy and must be thought elliptically.

Notes 1 This essay, the earliest draft of which dates right back to the very early noughties, when I was pursuing my Ph.D. at Warwick University, is dedicated to the memory of Gary Banham (1965–2013), who besides being a staunch Kantian had a keen interest in Derrida. I would like to thank Johan de Jong, Giuseppe Motta and Jacco Verburgt for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this essay. I also thank my fellow Warwickian Tom Bailey for commenting on a very early draft, in particular on the parts that deal with Kant’s moral philosophy. Special thanks are due to Robert Clewis for his extremely helpful remarks on the penultimate draft of this article, especially regarding the proper translation of Kant’s technical term Schwärmerei. Christian Onof read and commented on the penultimate draft, for which thanks, as always. 2 OT, AA 8: 139 (‘What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?’, in Religion and Rational Theology, ed. and trans. Allen Wood and George DiGiovanni [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001—henceforth, ‘What Does It Mean’], 7–18, 12). All citations of Kant’s works are from the Akademische Ausgabe (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1900–) by means of the abbreviation AA followed by the respective volume and page numbers. The Critique of Pure Reason is cited from the original A and B editions. Other abbreviations of Kant’s works used in this paper are: Corr = Correspondence CPJ =  Critique of the Power of Judgement CPR =  Critique of Pure Reason CPrR = Critique of Practical Reason DDS =  Dreams of a Spirit-Seer Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics EMH = Essay on the Maladies of the Head GMM =  Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals OT =  What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking? PPP =  Proclamation of the Imminent Conclusion of a Treaty of ­Perpetual Peace in Philosophy Obs =  Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime Religion =  Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason RTP =  On a Recently Prominent Tone of Superiority in Philosophy

The ‘Proper’ Tone of Critical Philosophy 215 3 For an extensive and illuminating account of the history leading up to this injunction, see B. Stangneth, ‘Einleitung’, in Kant, Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft, ed. Bettina Stangneth (Hamburg: Meiner, 2003), ix–lxi. Interestingly, Stangneth’s introduction partly debunks certain persistent myths about Kant’s own position in this affair. See also Manfred Kuehn, Kant: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 361ff., 378ff. 4 The essay is variantly translated as On a Recently Prominent Tone of Superiority in Philosophy. The original German title is Von einem neuerdings erhobenen vornehmen Ton in der Philosophie. Unless otherwise indicated, for quotations I make use of the translation of Kant’s text in Raising the Tone of Philosophy. Late Essays by Immanuel Kant, Transformative Critique by Jacques Derrida, ed. Peter Fenves (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 51–81; whenever reference is made to Kant’s text contained in Fenves’ edition, I refer to Kant (1999). Occasionally, I use Kant (2002) to refer to the translation in the Cambridge edition by Peter Heath in Kant, Theoretical Philosophy after 1781, ed. and trans. Henry Allison et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 431–445. Page references are to the volume and page numbers of Kant’s original text as it is published in the Akademische Ausgabe, followed by the page numbers in the 1999 edition by Fenves. 5 See for this, for example, Kant (2002), 427–428 and especially Fenves, Raising the Tone of Philosophy, 72–75. 6 The title of the French original is D’un ton apocalyptique adopté naguère en philosophie, first published with Galilée in 1983. The text of the original English translation of this work by John Leavey Jr. can be found in Fenves, Raising the Tone of Philosophy, 117–171. I shall, however, cite the French original (Jacques Derrida, D’un ton apocalyptique adopté naguère en philosophie [Paris: Galilée, 1983]—henceforth, D’un ton apocalyptique) and, when quoting, give my own translations from it. 7 Schwärmerei is generally best translated as ‘fanaticism’. However, Fenves (Raising the Tone of Philosophy) translates it consistently as ‘exaltation’, which I think is appropriate and sometimes perhaps even preferable given the main theme of RTP, namely the critique of a superior tone in philosophy. The term ‘fanaticism’ lacks the connotation of ‘prominence’ or ‘superiority’ that is the object of critique in RTP. The Cambridge translation consistently uses the term ‘enthusiasm’ for ‘Schwärmerei’, which in its archaic English sense does indeed appear to refer to fanaticism, namely meaning ‘extravagant religious emotion’ (see the OED). However, in light of Kant’s distinction between fanaticism and enthusiasm in Obs (AA 2: 251n.), it seems appropriate not to use the latter term as a translation for Schwärmerei in the context of RTP. See also the observations made by Stephen Palmquist on Kant’s use of the term Schwärmerei in Stephen Palmquist, ‘Kant’s Lectures on Philosophical Theology’, in Reading Kant’s Lectures, ed. Robert Clewis (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2015), 365–390, 384–385n. Thanks to Robert Clewis for discussion on this topic. 8 Cf. RTP, AA 8: 393, 406n. 9 I should also note that to the extent that I discuss Derrida’s own thought, I do not make an effort to distinguish between earlier and later phases of his work. I take Derrida’s oeuvre to be a continuous body of work conveying a central idea across the various guises in which Derrida expresses it. Whereas, for example, such an idiosyncratically Derridean concept as différance might be taken to specifically refer to Derrida’s early thought, I employ all such concepts as though they applied to his thought in general.

216  Dennis Schulting 10 If we relate this directly to an appeal to a heterogeneous warrant for one’s belief in the existence of a super-sensible object, God, say, Kant is clear that Reason ‘deserves the right to speak first in matters concerning supersensible objects such as the existence of God and the future world’. If this is disputed, ‘then a wide gate is opened to all enthusiasm [Schwärmerei], superstition and even to atheism’ (OT, AA 8: 143 [Kant, ‘What Does It Mean’, 15]). Compare also a passage a bit earlier in OT, where Kant writes: ‘The concept of God and even the conviction of his existence can be met with only in reason, and it cannot first come to us either through inspiration or through tidings communicated to us, however great the authority behind them. [. . .] [I]n order to judge whether what appears to me, what works internally or externally on my feelings, is God, I would have to hold it up to my rational concept of God and test it accordingly. [. . .] [N]o one can first be convinced of the existence of a highest being through any intuition; rational faith must come first, and then certain appearances or disclosures could at most provide the occasion for investigating whether we are warranted in taking what speaks or presents itself to us to be a Deity, and thus serve to confirm that faith according to these findings’ (OT, AA 8: 142–3 [Kant, ‘What Does It Mean’, 14–15]). For Kant, any appeal to or basic belief in an exogenous source of one’s experience or representations must be preceded by an endogenous rational justification. 11 Cf. RTP, AA 8: 395n. 12 Cf. RTP, AA 8: 402. 13 When Kant uses the term ‘Sache’, he almost always means the really existing thing (de re). I translate this by ‘state of affairs’, which, although somewhat ungainly, is closer to the original meaning of the word ‘res’; more importantly, I want to avoid confusion with the Kantian terms ‘Ding’, ‘Gegenstand’ and ‘Objekt’. However, sometimes I use to term ‘Sache’ as designating ‘thing in itself’. 14 Cf. CPR Bxii and Bxviii. 15 For a paradigmatic description of the aspect of self-legislation in Kant’s moral philosophy, see especially GMM, AA 4: 431. 16 Cf. RTP, AA 8: 395. 17 Kant argues, in the context of his critique of exaltation or fanaticism in philosophy, that if I could make it credible that my feelings are not ‘merely subjectively in me but can be demanded of everyone and is therefore held to be objectively valid’, I would ‘have a great advantage over those who must first justify themselves before they are allowed to celebrate the truth of their assertions’. Kant sarcastically adds: ‘Long live philosophy drawn from feelings, a philosophy that leads us directly to the things themselves!’ (RTP, AA 8: 395 [Kant (1999), 58]). The question thus is not that one can or cannot have feelings that putatively provide insight not otherwise to be won. What Kant disputes is that such feelings can have objective validity and be epistemically relevant. 18 Cf. RTP, AA 8: 401. 19 Kant writes here: ‘[H]ow much and how correctly would we think if we did not think as it were in community with others to whom we communicate our thoughts, and who communicate theirs to us! [. . .] [If an] external power [. . .] wrenches away people’s freedom publicly to communicate their thoughts, [it] also takes from them the freedom to think’ (Kant, ‘What Does It Mean’, 16). Cf. RTP, AA 8: 389. 20 On exaltation or fanaticism, see also Obs, AA 2: 251, esp. 251n; EMH, AA 2: 267; DDS, AA 2: 348, 365; CPJ, AA 5: 275 and OT, AA 8: 145. 21 Gregory Johnson, ‘The Tree of Melancholy. Kant on Philosophy and Enthusiasm’, in Kant and the New Philosophy of Religion, ed. Chris L. Firestone

The ‘Proper’ Tone of Critical Philosophy 217 and Stephen Palmquist (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), 43–61, 55. 22 Notice, however, that, for Kant, revealed faith requires rational faith. Kant writes: ‘[R]ational faith [. . .] must also be taken as the ground of every other faith, and even of every revelation’ (OT, AA 8: 142 [Kant, ‘What Does It Mean’, 14], emphasis added). 23 Cf. Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Vernunft und Offenbarung’, in Stichworte. Kritische Modelle 2 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1969), 20–28, 25. 24 I refer to Hent de Vries, Philosophy and the Turn to Religion (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). 25 Cf. RTP, AA 8: 391. 26 Compare the exposition in RTP, AA 8: 392–393, where Kant discerns a conspicuous connection between mathematical ratios, music (tonality, harmony) and the principle of autonomy and self-determination in Pythagoras. This will be explored further in Section 5. 27 Cf. RTP, AA 8: 391, where Kant suggests that Plato espoused a proto-Critical theory of the synthetic a priori. I cannot here expand on the precise nature of Kant’s synthetic a priori or Plato’s supposed precursor notion of it. For more general reflections on the reference to Plato in RTP, see Rüdiger Bubner, ­‘Platon—Der Vater aller Schwärmerei. Zu Kants Aufsatz “Von einem neuer­ dings erhobenen vornehmen Ton in der Philosophie” ’, in Antike Themen und ihre moderne Verwandlung (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1992), 80–93. 28 Regarding the distinction that Kant makes between theology and theophany, see RTP, AA 8: 401n. In his Religion book, Kant differentiates rational faith (Vernunftglauben) from revealed historical faith (Offenbarungsglauben) (Religion, AA 6: 163). Of course, revealed historical faith is not to be conflated with superstitious theophany for Kant; historical faith has a positive role to play, whereas superstitious theophany certainly has no such role. Although historical-positive aspects of religion cannot be privileged over rational faith, Kant is certainly not simply dismissive of historical religion, as Derrida might be taken to suggest. However, the privileging of historical faith over rational faith would indeed result in false worship or superstition. Notice that Kant’s concept of (pure) rational faith is already introduced in OT, AA 8: 141 (Kant, ‘What Does It Mean’, 13–14), where it is defined as a belief ‘grounded on no data other than those contained in pure reason’. Rational belief or faith ‘can never be transformed into knowledge by any natural data of reason or experience, because here the ground of holding true is merely subjective, namely a necessary need of reason [. . .] to presuppose the existence of a highest being, but not to demonstrate it’. 29 RTP, AA: 392–393. 30 Cf. Derrida, D’un ton apocalyptique, 41. 31 RTP, AA 8: 401–402. 32 In the first Critique, Kant speaks, in the context of pointing out the impossibility of a physico-theological proof of God’s existence, of a ‘measured and modest tone [Ton der Mäßigung und Bescheidenheit]’ (Kant, CPR A624/ B652; cf. A749/B777). Kant employs the same terms in RTP, AA 8: 403. The voice of Reason is pure, but that does not mean that philosophy is toneless or even atonal, as Derrida (D’un ton apocalyptique, 18) seems to suggest by pointing to philosophy’s ‘neutrality’ of tone. Also, De Vries (Philosophy and the Turn to Religion, 369–370, 380) believes, wrongly, that philosophy is atonal or tone-neutral. Purity of tone is not tonelessness; rather, it signals tonal moderation. 33 Cf. RTP, AA 8: 390. Kant also speaks of the ‘oracle of reason’ for that matter (RTP, AA 8: 393).

218  Dennis Schulting 34 Cf. Derrida, D’un ton apocalyptique, 34–35. 35 Kant clearly dismisses intellectual intuition as a legitimate mode of cognition. However, he takes issue with the typical reproach that the formalism of the critical philosophy, its reliance on discursivity, would imply an ‘arbitrary form-giving undertaken by design, or even machine-made [plan- oder fabrikenmäßig [. . .] eingerichtete willkürliche Formgebung]’ (RTP, AA 8: 404 [Kant (2002), 444]). The discursivity of the understanding requires that, in contrast to ‘intellectual intuition [which] would immediately present the object and grasp it all at once’, ‘a great amount of labor [is expended] to analyze its concept and then combine them again according to principles [. . .] and [. . .] many difficult steps [must be climbed] in order to make progress in knowledge’ (RTP, AA 8: 389 [Kant (1999), 51], trans. emended). There is at any rate nothing arbitrary about the discursive nature of philosophy or indeed about Kant’s reason for privileging discursive cognition over intellectual intuition, since the latter is an impossible form of cognition for human beings. 36 Cf. Derrida, D’un ton apocalyptique, 70: ‘a pure differential vibration.’ 37 Cf. Derrida, D’un ton apocalyptique, 35–37. See also Kant, Religion, AA 6: 87. 38 Reason must ‘outweigh [überwiegen] [. . .] all [these inclinations]’, as Kant puts it (RTP, AA 8:402 [Kant (1999), 68]). 39 Cf. RTP, AA 8: 395 and especially RTP, AA 8: 403, where Kant, significantly, identifies the mystery as freedom. 40 See also Derrida, Foi et savoir (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2000), 46, 89. Although Kant would seem to admit as much regarding an essential emotional involvement in the last section of his treatise, when he offers his opponents a truce (RTP, AA 8: 405), Derrida’s portrayal of course rests on a false representation of Kant’s position. For Kant says emphatically that the amazement at the sublimity and impenetrability of the secret of freedom, that is, the feeling engendered from ideas (RTP, AA 8: 403), does not precede moral legitimation, so as to provide it a ground; feeling rather lends weight ex post factum to the obedience which the law of Reason calls forth in virtue of itself. That is to say, feeling accompanies the law. The secret can be felt only after ‘long development of concepts of the understanding and carefully tested principles’, that is, ‘only through work’ (RTP, AA 8: 403 [Kant (1999), 69]). Feeling is not the ground of knowledge (which would imply mysticism), but by means of clear knowledge our knowledge is increased, ‘which has an effect on (moral) feeling’ (RTP, AA 8: 403, trans. mine; cf. Religion, AA 6: 114). See also OT, AA 8: 139–40n., where Kant writes regarding ‘the felt need of reason’ to postulate a subjective maxim in order to orient oneself in speculative thinking (i.e., in the super-sensible domain): ‘Reason does not feel; it has insight into its lack and through the drive for cognition it effects the feeling of a need. It is the same way with moral feeling, which does not cause any moral law, for this arises wholly from reason; rather, it is caused or effected by moral laws, hence by reason, because the active yet free will needs determinate grounds’ (‘What Does It Mean’, 12). In other words, feeling is not primary and neither precedes nor grounds Reason but is rather an effect of Reason. Nevertheless, it appears that Kant acknowledges that Reason itself has a ‘drive’ (cf. RTP, AA 8: 404: ‘ [. . .] zum Übersinnlichen, wozu uns die Vernunft unwiderstehlich treibt’; emphasis added), and this at least remains mysterious. I think Derrida wants to highlight this inexplicably mysterious element in Reason’s own motivating drive for knowledge. 41 See RTP, AA 8: 403. 42 In fact, ‘freedom constitutes the secret itself’ (RTP, AA 8: 403 [Kant (1999), 68]).

The ‘Proper’ Tone of Critical Philosophy 219 43 Derrida, Foi et Savoir, 46, 89. 44 See per contra the passage where Kant distinguishes strictly between, on the one hand, a mystical instance, namely ‘merely hearing and enjoying the oracle in oneself’ (Kant, RTP, AA 8: 390, trans. mine) and basing one’s cognition on it (RTP, AA 8: 403), for which no discursive concepts are needed and, on the other hand, ‘the secret, which can be felt only after long development of the concepts of the understanding, and of carefully tested principles, that is to say, solely through work’ (RTP, AA 8: 403 [Kant (1999) 69], trans. emended). 45 Cf. Kant’s reference to the ‘veil of Isis’ in RTP, AA 8: 399. See further below. 46 See, for example, De Vries, ‘Theotopographies: Nancy, Hölderlin, Heidegger’, Modern Language Notes 109 (1994), 445–477. On the notion of the adieu see De Vries, Religion and Violence. Philosophical Perspectives from Kant to Derrida (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 178–187. 47 For Kant’s account of Reason’s ‘orientation’, see ‘What Does It Mean’. 48 Cf. CPR B404/A346 in regard to the circle concerning an attempted determination of the ‘I think’ as an object sui generis. The similarity here between the nature of the adieu and Kant’s ‘I think’ as an incontrovertible necessary condition of, and thus adverbial to, experience is significant. This will be explored in the subsequent sections. 49 Cf. CPJ, AA 5: 316n. 50 Derrida, D’un ton apocalyptique, 77. 51 I forego an analysis of the interesting psychoanalytic allusions that Derrida makes in the context of this illustration of Kant’s and also in reference to Kant’s remarks concerning an alleged Entmannung der Vernunft (see Derrida, D’un ton apocalyptique, 45–49). 52 Cf. Obs, AA 2: 251. 53 I thank Robert Clewis for suggesting an alternative translation. 54 Cf. Derrida, Foi et savoir, 16, 49–50, 64. 55 De Vries, Philosophy and the Turn to Religion. 56 Derrida, Foi et savoir, 97. 57 Ibid., 68; cf. ibid., 31, 44–45, 48–49, 66, 91, 96. Compare what Kant says about the use of the word ‘faith’ in a theoretical context (see RTP, AA 8: 396n.). Derrida hints at what Kant calls ‘Fürwahrhalten’ (CPR A820ff./ B848ff.), which should, however, not be equated with the practical ­objectively-real ‘Glauben’ in the super-sensible let alone a revelatory faith (Offenbarungsglauben). 58 Derrida, Foi et savoir, 52. 59 See also RTP, AA 8: 389, 393. 60 Derrida, Foi et savoir, 97. 61 Derrida, D’un ton apocalyptique, 67ff. 62 See Derrida, D’un ton apocalyptique, 67–68. See also ibid., 57–58, 77–78. Notice that Kant’s critical thought, too, is in an important sense an announcement of the end of all dogmatic metaphysics, just as apocalyptic discourses announce the end of the old system of things and the arrival of a new order. 63 Ibid., 67. 64 Significantly, the French equivalent for ‘Enlightenment’ (Aufklärung) is the plural les lumières, suggesting that there are more than one Enlightenment. 65 Cf. Kant, RTP, AA 8: 396–397. See also again CPR A820ff./B848ff. 66 Derrida’s (D’un ton apocalyptique, 82–83) criticism that everything that is detuned (tout ce qui détonne) or is eo ipso not admitting of general debate (collocution général) is by definition regarded by Kant as obscurantist or mystical and therefore without any validity rests, I believe, on a non sequitur. Kant’s diatribe against obscurantism in thinking is rather directed at the

220  Dennis Schulting claim made by mystagogues that their manner of speaking amounts to philosophy, to philosophy proper, and what is more, that it is the only true directly provable kind of philosophy (cf. Kant, RTP, AA 8: 390, 395). It is this claim, for which all legitimation is wanting, that is criticised by Kant. It is furthermore noticeable that Kant acknowledges—for example, in a letter of March 1790 to L. E. Borowski concerning the increasing tendency to fanaticism (Schwärmerei)—that an ‘[e]laborate refutation’ of this ‘humbug’ is to no avail and would be ‘beneath the dignity of reason’ (Corr, AA 11: 142–143 [Kant, Correspondence, ed. and trans. Arnulf Zweig (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 338]). It is striking that Kant more or less seems resigned to the fact that nothing much can be done against this obscurantism other than ‘grant space for disorganization, so long as it pleases them [viz., the ‘animal magnetizers’; D.S.] and others who are easily fooled’ (Corr, AA 11: 142 [Fenves, Raising the Tone of Philosophy, 108]). 67 Derrida, Foi et savoir, 97. 68 Derrida, D’un ton apocalyptique, 77–78. 69 Fenves, Raising the Tone of Philosophy, 7–8. 70 See the locus classicus of the notion of Christian ‘vigilance’ in Matthew, 24:42. 71 Derrida, Foi et savoir, 72. 72 Compare the important notion of Destruktion of traditional metaphysics in Heidegger’s thought, which might thus be regarded as one of the quintessentially Kantian traits of the Heideggerian philosophy. 73 For Kant, this identical form is the original-synthetic unity of apperception, or transcendental self-consciousness, which constitutes the possibility of having an objective unity of representations that is correspondent to the object of experience (see CPR B131–137). This identical form of self-consciousness is the same as the form that, according to the earlier mentioned scholastic dictum, constitutes the essence of an object. Any thought that I have about something is a thought that is accompanied by an act of apperception, that is, of an awareness that I’m the one having that thought. See further Dennis Schulting, Kant’s Radical Subjectivism. Perspectives on the Transcendental Deduction (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), chs. 3–4. 74 See Derrida, Foi et savoir, 32. 75 Ibid., 72. 76 Ibid., 32. 77 Ibid. It is striking that Derrida speaks of spontaneity in this context. Herein, Derrida links his notion of ‘messianicity’ as performative event to the traditional notion of a ground that is itself ungrounded, a self-causing cause, an automaton. Contrary to Kant, however, Derrida interprets this spontaneity or automaton not in terms of rational self-activity, but he associates it with an antecedent unique capacity, which distributes itself ‘machine-like’ (automatically) in the various discourses (cf. Derrida, Foi et savoir, 46), reminiscent of what Kant labels the mere relative spontaneity of a ‘turnspit’ (CPrR, AA 5: 97). 78 De Vries, Religion and Violence, 178. 79 Fenves fittingly translates ‘Hinhaltung mit’ as ‘suspense-ridden tendering of’. Indeed, the Duden. Deutsches Universal Wörterbuch (1989) gives as one of the meanings of ‘hinhalten‘ ‘durch irrreführendes Vertrösten (immer weiter) darauf warten lassen’! 80 Cf. Adorno, ‘Vernunft und Offenbarung’, 28. 81 The ascesis that I allude to here is hinted at by Kant himself in response to a criticism by Schiller of Kant’s characterisation of the concept of obligation in rigorist terms, which, presumably, ‘carries with it the frame of mind of a Carthusian’ (Religion, AA 6:23n. [Kant, Religion Within the Boundaries of

The ‘Proper’ Tone of Critical Philosophy 221 Mere Reason, in Religion and Rational Theology, ed. and trans. Allen Wood and George DiGiovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 57–215, 72]). In this response to Schiller’s critique of Kant’s rigorist view of duty, for which Schiller wants to substitute grace, Kant asserts that ‘Hercules becomes Musagetes only after subduing monsters, a labor at which those good sisters shrink back in fear and trembling’ (Religion, AA 6:23n. [Kant, Religion and Rational Theology, 72]), just as he pits ‘the Herculean labor’ of rigorous philosophy against the immediate intuition of fanatical modes of thinking in RTP, AA 8: 390 (Kant [1999], 53). 82 Derrida, Foi et savoir, 38 83 See ibid., 61. 84 The relation of Derrida’s thought to negative or apophatic theology has been amply elucidated in the literature. See, for example, John Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion Without Religion (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997); De Vries, Philosophy and the Turn to Religion, and De Vries, Minimal Theologies: Critiques of Secular Reason in Adorno and Levinas (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), in particular the Appendix. 85 See again Matthew, 24:42–44. 86 Cf. Derrida, D’un ton apocalyptique, 34. 87 Cf. ibid., 24 and RTP, AA 8: 389. The pure meaning of philosophy is never guaranteed against a detuning or a false tone. In this respect, one should heed the fact that the peace treaty that Kant proposes in philosophy, aimed at a ‘mutual understanding’ among the opposing parties, can ‘at least be announced as near its conclusion’ (PPP, AA 8: 421 [trans. Fenves, Raising the Tone of Philosophy, 92]), but it cannot be expected to have already been concluded. This would seem to indicate a messianic tone in Kant’s philosophy if ever there was one. 88 This phrase is wrongly (and unforgivably, given the topic) translated by Fenves (Raising the Tone of Philosophy, 70) as ‘an ever increasing critique’, presumably reading ‘wachsenden’ for ‘wachsamen’. 89 This adverbial reflexivity is paradigmatically expressed by Kant’s principle of apperception, which states that the ‘I think’ must be able to accompany all my representations (CPR, B131). See Schulting, ‘Apperception, Self-­ Consciousness and Self-Knowledge in Kant’, in The Palgrave Kant Handbook, ed. Matthew Altman (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 139–161.

Part V

Postscript

10 Remembering Gary Banham Genealogy, Teleology, Conceptuality Joanna Hodge

It says something about touching in general, or it touches on the sensitive point of touching: on this sensitive point that touching constitutes par excellence (it is, in sum, ‘the’ point of the sensitive) and on what forms the sensitive point within it. But this point is precisely the point where touching does not touch and where it must not touch in order to carry out its touch (its art, its tact, its grace): the point or the space without dimension that separates what touching gathers together, the line that separates the touching from the touched and thus the touch from itself.1 The citation is taken from the English translation, in 2008, of Jean-Luc Nancy’s 2003 text, Noli me tangere: Do Not Touch Me, Essay on the Raising up of the Body. It is cited by Gary Banham in his essay ‘Touching the Opening of the World’ in the special issue of Derrida Today on JeanLuc Nancy and the ‘Deconstruction of Christianity’, which he also edited and for which he wrote a preface.2 The phrase ‘noli me tangere’ is the authorised Latin translation of the injunction, attributed to Christ on the occasion of his encounter with Mary Magdalen, who at first supposes him to be the gardener.3 This encounter takes place shortly after the supposed resurrection of Christ on the third day and before the Ascension, and he is reported as saying: ‘Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my father’. In this essay, Banham provides a delicate and judicious account both of the encounter between Christ and the Magdalen and of the encounter between Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy. He also sketches in the salience of the disruptive relations to Christianity portrayed and explored in the readings by Derrida and by Nancy of both Friedrich Nietzsche on the death of God and of Georges Bataille on the migration of religious commitment into figures of sacrifice. Banham’s appreciation of what is in play is grounded in his extensive work on the idealisms of Kant and of Hegel and from his extended critical reflections on aesthetic practices, which defy convention. This is explored further in another special issue edited by him, this time in Angelaki:

226  Joanna Hodge Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, special issue on ‘Aesthetics and The Ends of Art’.4 In his preface to the Derrida Today special issue, Gary Banham marks up his admiration for the work of Gillian Rose, especially, but not only, her study Hegel contra Sociology, in which she explores her commitment to a view of a ‘speculative’ logic that refuses resolution.5 Banham remarks on another occasion that this work of Rose is in turn embedded in her study, The Melancholy Science: An Introduction to the Thought of Theodor W. Adorno (1978).6 The ‘melancholy science’ is so named by Adorno in contra-distinction to Nietzsche’s Gay Science, Die froehliche Wissenschaft (1887), in turn named by contrast to the version of political economy, the ‘dismal science’, proposed by Thomas Robert Malthus, for which Karl Marx criticises him in Capital: Critique of Political Economy, volume one (1867). Not the least of Banham’s marked talents was his capacity to hold in play such a series of referrals and embeddings of one set of enquiries into the multiple contexts provided by the enquiries of others. This Derrida Today special issue prompted me to return to this vexed question of how to construe Nancy’s enthusiasm for the phrase ‘deconstruction of Christianity’, as contrasted to Derrida’s very marked hesitations and reservations. At the end of his essay, Banham sets up for further discussion a negotiation between Derrida on the messianic and Nancy on this ‘deconstruction’ to think with Nietzsche on the death of God and with Kierkegaard on the radical leap required in Christian conversion. The last sentence of Banham’s essay reads: Such a conclusion points, without reserve, to the need to think together Nietzsche with Kierkegaard, a meeting therewith of Nancy’s ‘deconstruction’ with Derrida’s ‘messianic’ that would traverse texts, that, in their difference, would arrive at the need for something that neither alone can state but which, in their polemos, would emerge as the ‘beyond’ of/in nihilism.7 This, then, is Banham’s envoi, an incitement to revisit these disagreements or contestations (polemos). It is relevant to note here that Jacques Derrida, in his reading of Heidegger in 1989, offered under the title ‘Geschlecht IV: Of Philopolemology’, had put the focus on Heidegger’s reflections on the term ‘polemos’ in the writings of Heraclitus and in his own lectures on the Greek origins of philosophy and metaphysics, Introduction to Metaphysics, Lectures from the Summer Semester, 1935 (GA 40, 1953).8 The epigraph for my remarks, from Nancy’s essay, and as cited by Gary Banham, concerns, suitably enough, the raising up, or resurrection, of the body. For in the figure of resurrection, there is remembrance of and a coming to terms with loss, and, in remembrance of loss, there is an overcoming of mourning, in commemoration and memorialisation.9

Remembering Gary Banham 227

1.  Outline of a Trajectory of Thinking The three terms of my title, genealogy, teleology and conceptuality, pick out three phases of what seems to me to be the single trajectory of Gary Banham’s enquiries of which his work consists. Questions of genesis, and the genesis of the distinctively Nietzschean notion of genealogy, formed the topic for his doctorate, which he wrote with minimal supervision at Oxford in the early nineties. In it, he made a close reading of the movement of thought in Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music (1871), paying attention to the manner in which, for Nietzsche, the unique combination of forces in Greek culture makes available a new form of collective expression, tragedy. The reading, then, in parallel, showed how a unique combination of forces in Nietzsche’s own evolving sensibility makes it possible for Nietzsche to arrive at this diagnosis. It might be termed a study of the collectively given conditions of possibility for a unique articulation of meaning. ‘The Teleology Project’ was the title of the programme of work we invented for the post-doctoral position he held at MMU from 1994 to 1996. For this, he revisited the challenges posed to both Kantian and Hegelian notions of teleology by the Nietzschean programme, by Marxist critique and, increasingly, by the Derridean disruption, as explored in the various phases of Derrida’s developing notions of deconstruction: supplementarity, destinerrance and clandestination, topolitology and philopolemology. Derrida’s Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the work of Mourning and the New International was published at this time, and, as Derrida presented that text on a number of occasions in England before publication, at the University of York and at the University of Warwick, it was much discussed.10 The third term, ‘conceptuality’, marks up the overarching pre-­ occupation of his work: with the question of how it is possible to capture what there is in thought. This is the central focus for his work, and the aim, in this essay, is to suggest how a commitment to Kantian critique and to some form of transcendental grounding for reason and thinking was enhanced by his willing self-exposure to the Nietzschean and indeed to the Derridean challenges, which he encountered while writing that doctorate. He once said his favourite piece by Derrida was Eperons: Spurs, or Headlands: The Styles of Nietzsche (1978). His reflections on the upshot of some perceived conflict between critical delimitations of meaning and the inherent, but unpredictable, genealogical processes of transformation and metamorphosis were augmented by his systematic working through of the Hegelian formulations of speculative dialectics, with rigorous readings of Hegel’s Greater Logic, under the lead of the writings of Gillian Rose.11 Intriguingly, thereafter, he pursued this questioning of a tension between the quest for conceptual determinacy and the unravelling processes of genetic formation, under the lead of Husserl’s attention to the processes of genesis, in both active and passive synthesis.

228  Joanna Hodge This line he pursued with increasing dedication in the early years of the noughties, in his teaching on the MA European Philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan University of the newly translated lectures by Husserl, from Analyses Concerning Active and Passive Synthesis: Lectures on Transcendental Logic (HUA XI and HUE 9, 2001), offered by Husserl in 1920–21, 1923 and 1925–26.12 Banham also took work from that engagement to meetings of the Husserl Circle in Washington, DC, hosted by John Barnet Brough; in Boston, hosted by Nicolas de Warren and at UCD, Dublin, hosted by Dermot Moran. Thus, in this later work, attention to questions of Husserlian genesis, prompted in part by Derrida’s responses to Husserl, provides an alternative both to Nietzschean genealogy and to a Hegelian notion of becoming, as derived from what has been. This defused attention allows for an account of a manifold of becomings, as opposed to either a single unified teleological trajectory of the concept actualising itself or to some occasional ‘being interrupted’ in some as-yet-to-be-delineated process of self-actualisation. In his third study of Kant’s philosophy, Kant’s Transcendental Imagination, the question of genesis comes to the fore in the attention there to a questioning of Kant’s account of a genesis of synthesis and of the presentation of a transcendental unity of apperception.13 In addition, Heidegger’s insistence on the A edition of the First Critique, developed in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics and in the lectures from 1928, Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant’s First Critique, had been a major feature of Banham’s return to Kant after completing the doctoral dissertation on Nietzsche.14 This line of analysis is, however, prompted as much by the early engagement with Nietzsche on transformatory thinking and the thinking of transformation, but it becomes articulable as a consequence of an immersion in the writings of Husserl. Important for this was the re-arrival of Jacques Derrida’s early study, which is now much better known, The Problem of Genesis in Husserl’s Phenomenology, first published in 1990 but written in the early fifties and translated into English, by Marion Hobson, only in 2003.15 This brings about an unlikely but highly productive conjuncture between the concerns of a Nietzschean genealogy and those of a Husserlian phenomenology between Husserl on origins and genesis and Nietzsche on how the world became a fable. Attention to a non-organic genesis may be pursued in parallel to the work on the derivation (Herkunft) of concepts in Nietzschean genealogy, tracing out the emergence and subsequent decline of configurations of concepts, most notably but not only in Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals (1886). Genesis is also at work, for Husserl, in the noeses, the thinking processes of registration, through which noematic contents become determinate and determinable. This is explored by Husserl in the pairing of terms, activity and contents, noesis and noemata, from his Ideas One: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology onwards.16 In their different ways, through notions of genealogy, genesis and synthesis, Kant,

Remembering Gary Banham 229 Nietzsche and Husserl, and Banham, in his responses to them, pay attention to the workings and development of distinctive configurations of sensibility and sensitivity in the emergent determinations of conceptualisation. This is one of the connections from Gary Banham’s own philosophical projects to his readings of both Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy, who also explore these disruptive contra-flows between Hegelian conceptuality and Husserlian phenomenology, between Nietzschean genealogy and a Kierkegaardian leap of faith.

2.  Three Distinctive Features of Gary’s Mode of Working Three aspects of Gary Banham’s mode of working call out for remark, and indeed for celebration. First, there is something irreducibly distinctive about his mode of writing, in its manner of combining ways of reading and of setting out a response to the text of the other. It pays the closest attention to the detail of the text at hand but contrives to lift the thought off the page and give it life. The text is dynamised and activated: in the phenomenological phrase, the meaning is reactivated. The mode of reading is marked by a distinctive combination of attention and focus, with an intellectual energy and exuberance, which was characteristic of him and of his way of being. It marked his teaching, both undergraduate and graduate, and his manner of taking part in reading groups; it was immensely valued by students and colleagues alike and made his contributions to reading groups especially telling. There was an exceptionally productive series of reading groups of Husserl texts, first initiated by Richard Hamilton at the University of Manchester, which significantly contributed to my appreciation of both Husserl and of this distinctive mode of reading. This supported doctoral work on Husserl by Joaquim Siles i Borras, published as Ethics in Husserl’s Phenomenology, and by Jonathan Hunt, under our joint supervision.17 It also resulted in the collection of papers he edited, Husserl and the Logic of Experience, including his own fine essay on mereology.18 Banham also, of course, supervised doctoral work on Kant in conjunction with Professor Martin Bell while they were both still at Manchester Metropolitan University. Second, Gary Banham was an excellent interlocutor, intrigued by the readings and responses of others to the classic texts and their problems, in which our various traditions consist. His range was quite remarkable, moving happily between seventeenth-century metaphysics, detailed Kantian commentary and the various contemporary versions of deconstruction. These two sets of skills, his range and his precision, helped make him an excellent editor of the writings of others, marked in his enthusiasm for commissioning special editions of journals, for Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities, for the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology and for Derrida Today, and, in addition, in the monograph series Renewing Philosophy, which he edited for Palgrave Macmillan.

230  Joanna Hodge He was a painstaking editor, keen to assist younger scholars to reach for their own distinctive mode of reading, and of intervention in the transmission and renewal of philosophy. Third, he maintained an astonishingly productive balance between two contrasting sets of forces, between a playful disruptiveness and a rigorous respect for the order of the concept. He was quick to spot the ridiculous or deflate the pompous, and he marked his active dissent from convention by plastering the walls of his office at work. In some satirical take on a car repair shop, with its page-three female nudes and calendar girls, he had reproductions of photographs of naked men and their sexual organs, largely, but not only, by Helmut Newton. The distinction between nudity, addressed to the gaze of the other, and nakedness, as a mode of selfpresentation would not be lost on him. His respect for, and sensitivity to, conceptual orderings of various distinct kinds was deeply grounded in both his appreciation for the virtues and potentialities, still untapped, in the Kantian system and in his sense for the untapped resources of the Nietzschean dream states and states of intoxication, explored in Birth of Tragedy (1869), which work their way through into the writings of Walter Benjamin. In an essay, ’Apocalyptic Imagination’, published in a collection entitled Kant after Derrida (2001), he anticipated an alternative mode of transcendental imagination, sketching out a law of anachrony, informed by, but departing from, Derrida’s take on that term.19 Under this rubric of an ‘apocalyptic imagination’, he invokes a Kant under ‘a spectral sign of futurity’, responding thus to the unorthodox Kantianism of both Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida. This kind of innovative, disruptive reading, this time of the Kantian Transcendental Aesthetic, is made the more powerful by the attention to the detailed configuration of the thought thus disrupted. The principles of the Analogies of Experience in Kant’s First Critique are to be supplemented to open out a futural horizon of change. The Analogies analyse how a permanence of substance, a succession in time and a co-existence in a principle of community give rise to the determinations of time as permanence, succession and unity. However, these determinations can be shown to be subverted by a Derridean plus or minus one, in a fourth determination as lapsus, and in a law of anachrony, or, as Jean-Luc Nancy will rephrase it in The Discourse of the Syncope: Logodaedalus (1976), by the arrival of a certain syncopation in Kant’s text. Futurity, for Heidegger; anachrony, for Derrida and a certain syncopation, as non-simultaneity, for Jean-Luc Nancy provide a suppressed fourth determination of time, which might be found in Kant’s Critique of Judgment (1788) and which disrupts the results of the previous Kantian analysis. A critical delimitation of the concept modulates into a topolitology of borderlines on the threshold of futurity (l’a-venir), into which the initial thinking of differance comes to be transposed. This notion of ‘l’avenir’, that which is to-come, disrupts any closed teleologically formed

Remembering Gary Banham 231 or grammatically inscribed conception of the future (le futur). This work is humorous, for who could be less likely as interlocutors than Nietzsche and Husserl, but it is also ironic, in the style of Kierkegaard, and satirical, for the plus and minus one of Derrida’s uptake of Kant, by insisting on the letter of the text, leaves nothing intact. This is especially evident in his The Truth in Painting, much admired by Gary.20 Here, then, are three moments of disruption of the Kantian principles of order, permanence, succession and unity: first, in a humorous conjunction of Nietzsche and Husserl, thinking becoming otherwise. Second, in the attention to the ironic, almost Kierkegaardian reformulation by Husserl of what should be one and indivisible, a unified systemic transcendental logic is to be installed by a differential logic of experiences, each modifying their own hyletic data; and, third, in this satirical refiguring in the Heideggerian challenge and a Derridean deconstruction of the Kantian determinations of time.

3.  Genealogy, Teleology, Critique In his doctorate on Nietzsche, there is a close reading of the movement of thought in Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music, paying strict attention to its transformatory, metamorphic effects. As remarked, the reading attends to the manner in which, for Nietzsche, the unique combination of forces in Greek culture makes available a new form of collective expression, tragedy, and, in parallel, on how a unique combination of forces in Nietzsche’s own evolving sensibility makes it possible for Nietzsche to arrive at this diagnosis. As is well known, Nietzsche hypothesises how a certain splitting of aesthetic energy into both a tranquil dreaming, figured as Apollo, and a disruptive intoxication, figured as Dionysus, is overcome in the genesis of Greek tragedy. These two, Apollo and Dionysus, are two faces of one structure, the Olympian and the chthonic versions of the one divinity. A further reading of Nietzsche might then explore how Christ, the crucified, becomes a third incarnation in this study of the generative powers of affect, arriving in the mode of the dream state, and in the mode of intoxication, as subsequently elaborated by Walter Benjamin. These then migrate into the problematic identifications with the sufferings and sacrifice of Christ on the cross. The movement from passive dreaming to physical intoxication and from physical intoxication to a fantasmatic suffering provides a grid for distinct ways of conceiving a relation between passive and active synthesis. The modes of embodiment, too, are starkly contrastive. Such an overcoming of divided forces in the invention of genre is marked up in the evolving dynamics of Nietzsche’s own distinctive mode of writing, which requires the invention or inauguration of the work of a tenth muse to demarcate its innovative power: the muse of genealogy, transformation and overcoming. The task of a critique of reason

232  Joanna Hodge turns into a task of self-reinvention, charted by Nietzsche in Ecce Homo (1889) and culminating in the invocation of Dionysus the crucified. This attention to a genesis of Nietzschean genealogy is thus a placeholder for, more generally, the question of genesis, about how innovation in systems of registration of what there is might be possible to keep up with changes in what there is. In this, a disruptive reading of Kant’s Transcendental Analytic is in play, in which an irreducible givenness of the unity of the manifold takes centre stage and not the supposed necessity of the divisions of the table of judgment and of the related categories. The various layers and levels of a unified manifold are subject to re-organisation and reconfiguration, with a negotiation between Kant, Nietzsche and Husserl, in ways that the table of categories is not. The Teleology Project, as remarked, was the title of the programme of work devised for the post-doctoral position he held at MMU from 1994 to 1996, in which Banham revisited the challenges posed to both Kantian and Hegelian notions of teleology, first by the Nietzschean programme and then, increasingly, by the Derridean disruption. There was also a proposal to re-read Karl Marx alongside a reading of Heidegger, as intimated in Heidegger’s ‘Letter on Humanism’ (1946), and to rethink a relation between nature and technical transformation, between Heidegger on techne and phusis and Derrida on grammatology, muthos and logos and on an originary technicity, as developed in conjunction with Bernhard Stiegler. In this context, Banham drew together responses to the contrastive temporalities of Derridean spectrality, with respect to the temporalities of Hegelian spirit and to the unifying functions of Kantian teleological judgment, by re-reading Marx and revisiting the disputes between a humanist and a structuralist Marxism, roughly speaking, the readings of Alexander Kojève versus those of Louis Althusser. A later incisiveness as a reader of philosophical text owes much to this time of consolidation, putting the focussed, detailed work of his doctorate back into the broader context of his wider intellectual, political and cultural interests. A Hegelian teleology, in which the differences between a mechanism and an organicism are to be reconciled in a somatisation of psyche and spiritualisation of matter, was not for him. What did intrigue him about the Hegelian system was the potentiality of the differential conceptuality made available within the various distinct domains of dialectical differentiation, logic, nature, Geist and their distinctive modes of incompletion. It was at this time, too, that he began locating the shifts of register between Heidegger’s various responses to Kant, of which he picked out three. There is the reading of Kant offered by Heidegger in Being and Time, especially in Division Two, Section 64: ‘Care and Selfhood’.21 There is another reading, as given in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, and, in between, the lectures, Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant, in which Heidegger works up his reasons for privileging the First Edition

Remembering Gary Banham 233 of the Critique of Pure Reason and for the first version of the Transcendental Deduction of the categories over the second. For while the former lends itself to phenomenological appropriation and to Derrida’s disruptions; the latter leads to Claude Levi-Strauss’s structural reading, in which the processes of a self-transformatory thinking drop out of view in favour of a new table of categories based on, amongst other invariants, kinship relations and rules concerning endogamy and exogamy. While reading Nietzsche may have given Gary Banham his sense of how to analyse the inception of the new, it is maybe this reading of Heidegger which convinced him of the as yet unexhausted potential for a renewal of transcendental philosophy and specifically of the Kantian system. This renewal was to be focused not on the derivation of the categories per se but on the formation of a transcendental sensibility, in which intuitions of given particulars and the concepts of the understanding mutually inform each other. Thus, when he came to choose the title of his well-deserved Readership, he chose to be a Reader in Transcendental Philosophy. In The Problem of Genesis, Derrida makes much of the parallelism in Husserl’s enquiries between phenomenological psychology and transcendental phenomenology.22 The first explores the givenness of entities to consciousness, with attention to that which presents itself, thought of as extraneous to the processes of registration, by contrast to the same domain, thought from the stance of a transcendental phenomenology, in which modes of presentation are shown to be necessitated by what there is. In the latter, processes of registration, and that which is to be registered are two intertwined processes of genesis, all to be articulated on a single plane of immanence. It is this latter model of the transcendental, which forms the basis of the transcendentalism, to be explored in Gary Banham’s reconstruction of Kantian critique and of Kantian conceptuality.

4.  Marking Differences In the essay ‘Touching the Opening of the World’ in Derrida Today, Gary Banham provides a beautiful, lucid analysis of the critical tension between Jean-Luc Nancy’s take on this opening and the reservations about it articulated by, and attributable to, Jacques Derrida. Derrida on a number of occasions stated his puzzlement at Nancy’s willingness to adopt and write under the title and terms of his monograph, The Sense of the World (Le sens du monde).23 Banham concludes with the suggestion that a plurality of ‘deconstructions’ complicates any question of what is meant by the view that a ‘deconstruction of Christianity’ is itself a ‘Christian’ project. For Banham, this tradition is above all important since it constitutes an opening for a negotiation between philosophy and its Christian inheritance. My relation to that inheritance is to be contrasted to his, as I sense that all monotheisms have excluded me, from the start, from participation and have deprived me of an audible voice. In addition, the splitting

234  Joanna Hodge of Mary the mother of God and Mary the Magdalen sets up quite distinct dynamics of mis-identification and transformation from those provided by the registers of Apollo, Dionysus and Christ the crucified. In this last section, some of our differences may begin to emerge. His essay is tantalisingly brief, but it provides an insight into the connection between the interval at the origin of meaning, on which Nancy insists, and Nancy’s analyses of appearing, as a birth to presence of what arrives, as materialisation. Banham emphasises Nancy’s use of this term ‘birth to presence’ as the title for the collection in English of Nancy’s writings, edited by Brian Holmes, The Birth to Presence.24 In a brief preface, Jean-Luc Nancy explores some of the implications of the term ‘birth to presence’, by contrast to Heidegger, on being-towards death and on a transmission of philosophy as a history of a thanatophilia, a tradition exploring a certain fascination with deaths of various kinds. In this tradition, it may be noted, death in childbirth tends not to feature. The term ‘birth to presence’ also serves to disrupt figures of a metaphysics of presence, as discussed by Heidegger and by Derrida, in his responses to Heidegger’s critique of the suppression of pastness and futurity in a history of the concept of time. This history of the concept is to be disrupted by combinations of a genealogy of temporality and an attention to genesis and to affects of various kinds of specific temporal sensitivities: boredom and anxiety, suffering and dreaming. The emphasis on this ‘birth to presence’ is a further contribution to a genealogy of temporality and a marker of how Nancy inserts his thought into the margins of that of Martin Heidegger and subtly shifts its centre of gravity. In his essay, ‘The Being-With of the Being There’,25 Nancy deploys the under-­thematised second moment of Heidegger’s affirmation of Dasein (being-there) as Mitsein (being-with), and this disrupts the foreclosure imposed in the analytic of being-towards-death, in the third moment, and movement of being as being towards an open futurity as Zu-sein (being-towards). Heidegger’s being-towards-death is further supplemented and challenged by Nancy’s invocation of Arendt’s discussion of natality and, where death isolates, birth inserts the new born into a dynamic of shared meanings and horizons. This is the point at which I would claim Nancy’s enquiries for a diagnosis of the fate of phenomenology, for his analyses locate an arrival of matter in a suspension of the processes of phenomenological describing and not in their affirmation. Nancy’s focus on an excription, at the edge of sense, disrupts the project of any cumulative program of phenomenological description; the theme of a declosion, dis-enclosure in English, in a deconstruction of Christianity marks up a determination and delimitation of the propagative capacities of religious invention as an eclosion. For Nancy, Christianity has run out of re-inventive capacity. The relation between eclosion and declosion also mirrors and disrupts the relation in Heidegger’s Being and Time between an opening (Erschlossenheit) and

Remembering Gary Banham 235 a determination (Entschlossenheit) of Dasein. In Corpus, the concordat between phenomenology and Christianity is more directly addressed and displaced,26 for Nancy marks a release of embodiment and corporeality from the Christian and Hegelian problematics of birth and death, body and soul, female and male, and thus marks his exit from the shared horizons of phenomenological descriptions and Church authority in their mutual supplementations. While the deconstruction of Christianity arrives as a re-affirmation of the death of God, as announced by Nietzsche, and of a destruction of onto-theology, as announced by Heidegger, Nancy responds to it, and thereby navigates his way through a reading of both Heidegger and Husserl, in a reconfiguration of a new materialism as either ontological or transcendental, or both. This line of analysis is underway in The Experience of Freedom and Corpus and, increasingly, is thematised as technical and as an ecotechnics, especially marked in Being Singular Plural.27 The notion of ecotechnics opens up an account of how technical configurations of sensibility are mirrored in and respond to the production and information technologies constituting a world-wide system of communicativity and exchange. On my reading, Nancy thinks a deconstruction of Christianity in order to open the way to think a loss of meaning and, literally, rubbishing (l’immonde) of the world in technical practices, exemplified in trolling and plastic waste. This line of reading permits me to explore a commitment to a materialism, which awaits a fuller specification. This is not the route of Banham’s return, through the encounter with Nancy and Derrida, to raising up again the Kantian critical project into the context of twenty-first-century concerns. For me, too, Noli me tangere is a code word for yet another avoidance of the question of sexual difference, and for the carefully controlled presence of women and of women’s bodies in the history and practices of philosophy, and in the corresponding history of Christianity in all its forms. Hegel’s teleology is built on a naturalisation of women’s subordination to child-birth, which simply declining to give birth does not address. Philosophy in the name of the father is ghosted by the figure of women, in The Phenomenology of Spirit, as the perpetual irony of the tribe. Since the community only gets an existence through its interference with the happiness of the Family, and by dissolving (individual) self-consciousness into the universal, it creates for itself in what it suppresses and what is at the same time essential to it an internal enemy: womankind in general. Woman kind—the everlasting irony in the life of the community—changes by intrigue the universal end of the government into a private end, transforms its universal activity into the work of some particular individual, and perverts the universal property of the state into a possession and ornament of the Family.28

236  Joanna Hodge Jean-Luc Nancy will hypothesise: ‘we see that we should no longer be able to say in such a context “man” in the generic sense, but only “man” or “woman” ’,29 for that tribal unity presupposes what it cannot recognise: the availability of women’s bodies. Current focus on Arendt’s discussion of natality may end up revealing that, by recognising birth as a moment of inception, philosophers still fail to recognise the body, placenta and blood of maternal origins. Reading one of Gary Banham’s essays is always illuminating, and in this one, again, the lines of his analysis and of conceptual differentiation emerge with such clarity and deliberation. I regret not having his developing analyses of Nancy and of Kant, of deconstruction and of the critical programme. I also regret the fact that he had more recently turned away from the project of a close reading of Husserl to return once again to the engagement with Kant, while I much appreciated his respectful reading of Rose. I regret all the more no longer having his always carefully considered objections to my work, having no more of his always stimulating contributions to discussion, clearly thought out, lucidly expressed and always contestatory. These characteristics marked the strength of his commitment to the programme of renewing philosophy and made him such a lively and appreciated participant in the pursuit of scholarship. His mode was that of critical retrieval, not embalming commemorations, and this essay should sign off with a memory of his appreciation of just how jubilant Jacques Derrida contrives to be in his magical reading of Hegel, with Jean Genet, in Glas: The Death Knell, or What Remains of Absolute Knowing (1974). ‘What remains of absolute knowing’ would make a good title for Banham’s overarching philosophical focus.

Notes 1 Jean-Luc Nancy, Noli me tangere: On the Raising of the Body, trans. Sarah Clift, Pascale Anne Brault and Michael Naas (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008[2003]), 25/13, cited by Gary Banham, ‘Touching the Opening of the World’, special issue on Jean-Luc Nancy and the ‘Deconstruction of Christianity’, in Derrida Today, 6 (1), 2013, 64. The preface, 1–10, locates the terms of a disagreement between Jean-Luc Nancy and Jacques Derrida, and his own essay appears at pp. 58–77. 2 Gary Banham, ‘Touching the Opening of the World’, Derrida Today, 6 (1), 2013. 3 Gospels John 20.17. 4 Gary Banham, special issue on ‘Aesthetics and the Ends of Art’, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 7 (1), 2002. 5 Gillian Rose, Hegel Contra Sociology (London: Athlone Press, 1981); Gary Banham, Preface to the Jean-Luc Nancy and the ‘Deconstruction of Christianity’ Special Issue, 5. 6 See Gary Banham, ‘The Terror of the Law: Judaism and International Institutions’, in Applying: to Derrida, ed. John Brannigan, Ruth Robbins and Julian Wolfreys (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996), 96–106. 7 Gary Banham, ‘Touching the Opening of the World’, 75.

Remembering Gary Banham 237 8 See Jacques Derrida, ‘Heidegger’s Ear: Of Philopolemology (Geschlecht IV)’, in Reading Heidegger: Commemorations, ed. John Sallis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993) and Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). 9 A shorter version of this paper was initially presented at the Memorial Panel for Gary Banham, initiated by Professor Simon Glendinning, London School of Economics, and with Professor Howard Caygill, Kingston University, at the joint conference of the Society for European Philosophy and the Forum for European Philosophy in 2013, at Kingston University, London, UK. 10 Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1994[1993]). 11 G. W. F. Hegel, The Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller (London: George Allen and Unwin 1969[1812]). 12 Edmund Husserl, Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis: Lectures on Transcendental Logic (HUE 9), trans. Anthony J Steinbock (Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001). 13 Gary Banham, Kant’s Transcendental Imagination (London: Palgrave, 2006). 14 Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. Richard Taft, 5th enlarged ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997[1929]); Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997[1928]). 15 Jacques Derrida, The Problem of Genesis in Husserl’s Philosophy, trans. Marion Hobson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002[1953–4]). 16 Edmund Husserl, Ideas One: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, trans. W. Boyce -Gibson (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1931[1913]). 17 Joaquim Siles i Borras, Ethics in Husserl’s Phenomenology (London: Bloomsbury, 2009). 18 See Gary Banham, ‘Mereology, Intentional Contents and Intentional Objects’, in Husserl and the Logic of Experience, ed. Gary Banham (London: Palgrave, 2005). 19 See Gary Banham, ‘Apocalyptic Imagination’, in Kant after Derrida, ed. Philip Rothfield (Manchester: Clinamen Press, 2003), 66–89. 20 Jacques Derrida, The Truth in Painting, trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago: Chicago University Press 1987[1978]). 21 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarie and Edward Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962[1927]). 22 Jacques Derrida, The Problem of Genesis in Husserl’s Philosophy (1953–4) translated by Marion Hobson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). 23 Jean-Luc Nancy, The Sense of the World, trans. Jeffrey Librett (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997[1993]). 24 See Jean-Luc Nancy, ‘Introduction: The Birth to Presence’, in Jean-Luc Nancy: The Birth to Presence, ed. and trans. Brian Holmes (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 1–6: ‘If death has fascinated Western thought, it is to the degree that Western thought believed itself capable of constructing upon death its dialectical paradigm of pure presence and absence. Death is the absolute signified, the sealing off of sense. It is the name, but “to be born” is the verb.’ (3) 25 See Jean-Luc Nancy, ‘The Being with of the Being There’ translated by MarieEve Morin’, Continental Philosophy Review, 41 (1) (2008), 1–15. 26 Jean-Luc Nancy, Corpus, trans. Richard A Rand (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008).

238  Joanna Hodge 27 Jean-Luc Nancy, The Experience of Freedom, trans. Bridget McDonald (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993[1988]); Being Singular Plural, trans. Robert E. Richardson and Anne O’Byrne (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000[1996]). 28 See G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. by AV Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1977[1807]), 288. 29 Nancy, The Experience of Freedom, 158.

Contributors

Roxana Baiasu is Associate Member of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Oxford. Sorin Baiasu is Professor of Philosophy at Keele University. Keith Crome is Lecturer in Philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan University. Nicola J. Grayson has recently completed a PhD in philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan University. Joanna Hodge is Professor of Philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan University. Rachel Jones is Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy of George Mason University. Dermot Moran is Joseph Chair in Catholic Philosophy at Boston College and Professor of Philosophy at University College Dublin. Christian Onof is Honorary Research Fellow in Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London. Andrea Rehberg is Lecturer in Philosophy at Newcastle University. Dennis Schulting is former Assistant Professor of Metaphysics and Its History at the University of Amsterdam. Alberto Vanzo is an independent scholar.

Index

adieu 196, 202 – 203, 207, 209 – 214, 219 analogy(ies) 7 – 9, 13 – 14, 18, 49, 56n34, 57n46, 104 – 106, 107 – 109, 111, 116, 122, 128n42, 151 – 153, 173 – 174, 176 – 178, 180 – 190, 191n13 analytic 35, 64, 78n30, 139, 234; Transcendental Analytic 6, 16, 23, 36, 39, 51, 53, 60n124, 63, 101, 103 – 105, 111, 125n8, 138 – 139, 232; Transcendental Analytic of the Beautiful 83 – 84, 89, 97n31, 191n6; Transcendental Analytic of the Sublime 95, 95n1, 144n1 antinomies 6, 101, 124n4, 135 – 138 apocalypticity 205; see also apocaliptics apocalyptics 195, 203, 205 – 207, 213 appearance 9, 12, 14, 19, 24, 26, 30 – 31, 34 – 35, 37, 42 – 43, 46, 49 – 50, 52, 54n2, 54n4, 54n8, 55n19, 63, 65, 69, 72 – 73, 76n19, 78n30, 93, 106, 110 – 111, 113 – 114, 118 – 119, 121 – 122, 126n22, 127n36, 137, 140, 146, 175, 198, 216n10 Arendt, Hannah 3 – 5, 11, 79 – 80, 90 – 92, 95n1, 97n39, 97n42, 98n43, 98n49, 98n60, 234, 236 Baiasu, Sorin 20n1 Banham, Gary 4, 6, 16 – 19, 20n8, 20n9, 20n11, 20n12, 20n13, 24, 53n1, 61, 65 – 67, 73, 76n17, 77n21, 78n40, 81 – 82, 84, 95, 95n1, 95n6, 96n11, 97n26, 98n58, 101, 103 – 105, 108, 116 – 117, 125n2, 125n9, 125n12, 125nn14 – 15, 125n20, 127n32,

127n35, 128n43, 144n1, 147 – 150, 156, 158, 161, 166, 166n1, 167n14, 168n21, 176, 181 – 182, 186 – 188, 190n4, 191n14, 192, 214n1, 225 – 229, 232 – 236, 236n1, 236n2, 236n4, 236n5, 236n6, 236n7, 237n9, 237n13, 237n18, 237n19 Battersby, Christine 153, 168n24, 168n29, 168n34 Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb 25, 29, 30, 32, 36, 46, 56n33, 56n41, 56n43 Bernasconi, Robert 168n24 birth 146 – 147, 150, 152 – 154, 160 – 162, 164, 166, 169n54, 169n55, 234 – 236; Nancy’s Birth to Presence 234, 237n24; Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy 227, 230 – 231 body(ies) 5, 13, 26, 28 – 31, 55n27, 79 – 80, 153, 158 – 166, 170n63, 176, 225 – 226, 235, 236n1; female, maternal 146 – 148, 150, 152, 154 – 155, 161 – 162, 170n65, 235 – 236 Bordo, Susan 167n15 Burbidge, John 156 – 157, 167n1, 167n8, 167n13 Caird, Edward 36 – 37, 57n62 chemical 146 – 149, 156 – 161, 165 – 166, 168n21 chemism 7, 13, 17, 20n13, 146 – 150, 156, 157 – 161, 164 – 166, 166n1, 167n13, 168n21 Christ 7, 9, 13 – 14, 18, 56 – 57n46, 174, 182 – 186, 188 – 190, 226, 231, 234; see also exemplar; Jesus cognition 16, 23, 26, 33, 35 – 36, 38, 41, 44 – 46, 55n26, 56n36, 57n51,

Index  241 57nn55 – 56, 58n87, 79, 83, 85 – 87, 90 – 91, 93 – 94, 96n8, 96n15, 96n21, 96n23, 102 – 104, 106, 108 – 109, 111 – 112, 116, 118 – 119, 122, 125n8, 125 – 126n20, 127n38, 130, 137 – 139, 141, 143, 178, 183 – 184, 186, 198 – 199, 202 – 207, 211, 218n35, 218n40, 219n44 concept 5, 7 – 8, 10 – 11, 15, 18, 26 – 41, 43 – 48, 50 – 53, 54n5, 54n8, 63, 65 – 68, 70, 76n9, 76n16, 76n19, 77n20, 77n23, 83, 85 – 90, 92 – 94, 96n15, 96n21, 97n36, 101 – 103, 105 – 116, 119 – 122, 125n6, 125n8, 126n21, 126n22, 127n26, 127nn28 – 29, 127n36, 127 – 128n41, 130n1, 135, 141, 143, 147, 150 – 152, 154 – 155, 159 – 160, 163, 173 – 177, 179, 183 – 188, 194, 203, 209, 216n10, 218n35, 218n40, 219n44, 226 – 230, 233 Condillac, Étienne Bonnot de 39, 45, 58n73 conflict 6, 11 – 12, 91, 131, 135 – 137, 195, 200, 202, 227 constitutive 6, 12, 16, 45, 63, 67, 76n13, 80, 82, 104 – 109, 114 – 115, 138, 141, 143, 147 – 148, 151, 198, 202, 206 continental: philosophy 3, 4, 19, 144n1, 209; tradition 3, 4, 11, 20n1 critical philosophy 16, 19, 23, 28, 33, 57n62, 75n2, 81 – 82, 84, 95, 114 – 115, 125n17, 128n51, 130n1, 132, 137, 139, 144n1, 178, 194, 196, 207, 213, 218n35, 219n62, 236 Derrida, Jacques 3 – 4, 8, 13 – 15, 18 – 19, 96n11, 144n1, 194 – 198, 200 – 214, 214n1, 215n4, 215n6, 215n9, 217n28, 217n30, 217n32, 218n34, 218nn36 – 37, 218n40, 219n43, 219n46, 219nn50 – 51, 219n54, 219nn56 – 58, 219nn60 – 62, 219 – 220n66, 220nn67 – 68, 220n71, 220n74, 220n77, 221n82, 221n84, 221n86, 225 – 230, 232 – 236, 236nn1 – 2, 236n6, 237n8, 237n10, 237n15, 237nn19 – 20, 237n22

Descartes, René (and Cartesian) 25, 28 – 30, 35, 45 – 46, 48, 55nn27 – 29, 77n29, 147, 149 de Vries, Hent 204, 209, 217n23, 217n32, 219n46, 219n55, 220n78, 221n84 dialectic 135, 166, 169n53, 209, 227, 232, 237n24; transcendental 5 – 6, 16, 101, 103 – 105, 107, 109, 117 – 118, 123, 124n4, 126n22, 127n33, 129, 135, 138 – 139 DiCenso, James 188 – 189, 191nn21 – 22, 192 différance 201, 206, 208 –2   13, 215n9, 230 différend 4, 6 – 7, 12, 131, 145n4, 145n10, 145n21 direct exhibition/presentation 5, 7 – 8, 33, 173 – 179, 182, 186 – 187, 189; see also schema dogmatism 23, 28, 133 – 134, 136, 195 – 196, 219n62 dynamical 6 – 7, 16, 45, 101, 104 – 108, 137, 178, 231, 234 Eberhard, Johann August 5, 31 – 32, 35, 56n37, 56n44 Edelman, Lee 169n54 elemental 7, 13, 17, 147 – 149, 158, 160 – 161, 163 – 166, 169n55, 170n56, 170n66 Enlightenment 91, 138, 168n24, 194 – 195, 205, 212, 219n64 enthusiasm 144n1, 215n7, 216n10, 216n21, 226, 229 epigenesis 20n13, 147, 153, 166n1, 168n21 exaltation 195, 203, 205, 209, 215n7, 216n17, 216n20 example 7, 52, 116, 127n40, 132, 174 – 178, 180, 183 – 186, 188, 190, 190n5; see also exemplar exemplar 88, 183, 188, 191n21 exhibition 7 – 8, 19, 33, 54n5, 173 – 178, 180 – 182, 185 – 190, 191n8; see also hypotyposis Eze, Emmanuel Chukwudi 168n24 faculty 6, 25, 27 – 28, 31 – 32, 34, 37, 42, 63, 68, 80, 82, 85, 90, 95n5, 96n8, 101 – 102, 117, 119, 122, 128n50, 129 – 130, 136, 142 fanatic(al) 8, 201 – 204, 207, 209, 213, 220 – 221n8; see also fanaticism (Schwärmerei)

242 Index fanaticism (Schwärmerei) 195, 199, 209, 215n7, 216n17, 216n20, 219 – 220n66; see also fanatic(al) Fanon, Frantz 153, 168n25 feeling 79 – 80, 83, 87 – 89, 93, 96 – 97n23, 97n26, 142, 177 – 178, 183, 185 – 187, 189, 198 – 199, 206, 214n2, 216n10, 216n17, 218n40 Ferrini, Cinzia 157, 167n12 figure 9, 56 – 57n46, 131, 173, 182 – 185, 188, 190 final end 18, 176, 181 – 182, 186 – 188 form 5, 10, 12 – 13, 17, 24 – 27, 31, 33, 38, 41, 44, 47, 49 – 51, 53, 54n11, 57n61, 65, 68 – 72, 84 – 87, 90, 93, 95n7, 106, 108, 110, 114, 118, 124n4, 142 – 143, 147 – 148, 150 – 152, 154, 157, 159 – 166, 167n9, 168nn31 – 32, 173 – 174, 179 – 181, 197 – 198, 200 – 201, 204, 206 – 207, 209 – 214, 218n35, 220n73 forma dat esse rei 197, 211 Frege, Gottlob 57n50 givenness 10, 24, 34, 39 – 40, 42, 47 – 48, 53, 232, 233 Goclenius, Rudolph 57n56 God 8, 13 – 14, 19, 23, 33, 48, 101 – 102, 107, 115 – 116, 129, 174, 182 – 188, 190, 191n16, 199, 216n10, 225 – 226, 234 – 235; see also transcendental ideal Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 156, 169n42 Graves, Robert 167n3, 170n79 Haas, Andrew 169n37, 169n41, 169nn43 – 44, 169nn47 – 49, 169n53, 225 – 226, 236, 236n5, 237n11, 238n28 Hegel 4, 12 – 13, 17, 38, 40, 55n24, 139, 145n13, 146 – 149, 152, 154 – 158, 160 – 161, 163 – 166, 166n1, 167n8, 167n10, 167n12, 168n21, 168n32; “Encyclopaedia” 145n13; “Phenomenology”: 235, 238n28; “Philosophy of Nature” 146, 166n1, 168nn32 – 33, 169n35; “Philosophy of Right” 157; “Science of Logic” 167n10, 169n41, 169nn43 – 44, 169n47, 169n49, 237n11 Heidegger, Martin 3 – 4, 9 – 11, 15 – 16, 19, 61 – 74, 74n1, 75n2, 75n4,

75nn6 – 8, 76nn9 – 10, 76nn12 – 13, 76n15, 76n19, 77n25, 77nn28 – 29, 80nn30 – 33, 80n35, 80, 219n46, 226, 230, 232 – 235, 237n8, 237n14, 237n21 Hesiod 170n6 higher symbol 177 – 178 highest good 18, 174, 182, 184 – 186, 188 – 190, 194 Hintikka, Jaakko 10, 46 – 48, 52, 54n13, 56n45, 59nn103 – 104, 59n108, 59n112, 114 – 115 Houlgate, Stephen 156, 167n8, 167nn12 – 13 human 7, 11, 13, 23 – 24, 28, 32, 35 – 36, 38, 46, 50, 53, 62, 71, 75n6, 79 – 80, 83, 91 – 92, 94, 98n43, 110, 117, 121, 133, 135, 141, 147, 149, 151 – 153, 156, 163, 165 – 166, 174, 182 – 184, 186 – 188, 190, 191n16, 196, 202, 205, 218n35 Husserl, Edmund 4, 15, 19, 20n8, 27, 32, 43, 47, 53, 59n92, 61, 75n4, 228 – 229, 231 – 232, 235 – 236, 237n12, 237n16, 237n18 hylomorphism 7, 147 – 150, 154, 156, 160, 163 hypotyposis 7 – 8, 56n46, 173 – 174, 188 – 190; see also exhibition idea 7 – 8, 12 – 14, 18, 25, 86, 88 – 90, 92 – 94, 96n21, 102, 107 – 108, 115 – 116, 119, 136, 141, 150, 160, 173 – 174, 176 – 183, 186 – 190, 200, 202 impression 12, 24 – 26, 28, 31, 37, 39 – 41, 43, 48, 50, 140, 177 indirect exhibition 177 – 178, 185; see also analogy intuition 3 –  5 , 8 –  1 0, 12, 15, 18, 24  –   2 6, 28  –   2 9, 31  –   4 1, 43  –   4 8, 50 –  5 3, 54n2, 54n10, 54n13, 56n46, 57n50, 63, 76n9, 83, 92, 92n4, 96n21, 139, 143; formal 5, 52; form of 5, 25, 27, 38, 48 –  5 1, 53, 54n11, 57n61, 65 –  6 7; intellectual 29, 32, 34, 57n49, 57n61, 198, 200, 201, 218n35; original (intuitus originarius) 23; pure 5, 24, 26, 27, 41, 47, 50  –   5 1, 54n11, 63, 67  –   6 8, 71  –   7 2, 76n9 Irigaray, Luce 3, 4, 17, 146 – 149, 158, 160 – 166, 167n5, 167n11,

Index  243 169n39, 169n50, 169n55, 170n56, 170nn58 – 60, 170nn64 – 68, 170nn71 – 72, 170nn74 – 78 Isis 154, 203, 206, 211, 219n44 Jacobi, Friedrich 55n24, 195 Jacobs, Amber 167n5 Jesus 191n21, 212; see also Christ; exemplar judgement 6, 11 – 12, 35, 40, 43, 47, 80 – 82, 84 – 89, 91, 95n5, 96n15, 96n20, 97n35, 101, 117, 119, 122 – 123, 126n20, 128n50, 130 – 131, 133 – 135, 138 – 139, 141, 144n1, 152, 157, 173, 176 – 179, 187, 192, 211; aesthetic 81, 84 – 87, 92 – 95, 96nn11 – 12, 98n46; determinant 134; determinative 151; reflective 6, 16, 82 – 89, 91, 93, 97n26, 101, 117 – 118, 123 – 124, 134, 181; teleological 150 – 151, 153 – 154 Kant, Immanuel: “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment” 91; “Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View” 37, 45, 59n101, 153, 168n28; “The Conflict of the Faculties” 91; “Critique of Judgement” 5 – 7, 9, 11 – 12, 16, 20n5, 33, 40, 56n46, 57n47, 59n97, 80 – 86, 88, 91 – 92, 95n1, 95nn3 – 7, 96n12, 96nn14 – 15, 96nn17 – 23, 96nn24 – 31, 96nn33 – 38, 96n41, 98n45, 101, 117, 119, 120 – 124, 124n1, 124n3, 127n41, 128n46, 141, 144n1, 150 – 154, 166n1, 167n18, 168nn20 – 21, 173 – 174, 176, 177, 188, 190, 192, 194, 216n20, 219n49; “Critique of Practical Reason” 8, 20n6, 82, 141, 178 – 182, 189, 192, 194; “Critique of Pure Reason” 5 – 6, 9, 12, 15 – 16, 20n10, 23, 26, 31, 36, 38 – 39, 41 – 42, 44 – 52, 55n21, 55n30, 55 – 56n31, 58nn84 – 85, 61 – 62, 69 – 73, 74n1, 77n28, 78n33, 82 – 83, 93, 95n1, 96n8, 96n10, 101, 102 – 105, 107, 109, 111, 114 – 115, 124n1, 124nn3 – 4, 125n6, 125n8, 126n22, 129, 132 – 133, 135, 137 – 139, 141, 144n1, 168n31, 173 – 175, 182, 184, 186, 189,

192, 194, 200, 216n14, 217n32, 219n48, 219n65, 221n89; “Determination of the Concept of a Human Race” 168n23, 168n26; “Dreams of a Spirit Seer” 194; “Groundwork” 124n5, 191n9; “Inaugural Dissertation” 26 – 28, 31, 33, 36 – 37, 41, 48 – 50; “Of the Different Races of Human Beings” 168n23; “On a Recently Prominent Tone of Superiority in Philosophy” 8, 168n34, 195 – 197, 201 – 205, 208 – 209, 212 – 213, 215n4, 215n8, 215nn11 – 12, 215nn17 – 19, 215nn25 – 29, 215nn31 – 33, 215n35, 215nn37 – 42, 215nn44 – 45, 215n59, 215n65, 219 – 220n66, 220 – 221n81, 221n87; “On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy” 154, 168n23, 168n27, 168n30; “Opus Postumum” 9, 48, 60n117; other lectures 59n111; “Perpetual Peace” 91, 193; “Prolegomena” 40 – 41, 47, 58n80, 145n7, 145n9; “Reflexionen” 27, 42, 55n16, 55n22, 44n25, 56nn35 – 36, 58n87; “Religion” 8 – 9, 20n7, 174, 182 – 185, 188 – 189, 191n21, 192n28, 192, 195, 215n3, 218n37, 218n40, 220 – 221n81; “What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?” 194, 197, 199, 216n10, 216n20, 217n22, 219n47; writings on logic 37 – 39, 55n16, 55n23, 58n67, 58nn71 – 72, 59n110 Kitcher, Patricia 50, 60n121 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 25, 27, 29 – 32, 45, 55nn30 – 31, 56n32, 56n36, 56n42, 193 life 4 – 5, 7, 13, 80, 83, 87, 97n25, 146 – 147, 149 – 150, 152, 155 – 159, 161, 163, 165 – 166, 168n21, 169n55, 180 linguistic symbols 176 – 178, 189 litigation 131, 138 Lloyd, Genevieve 167n16, 169n39 Lyotard, Jean-François 3 – 7, 11 – 12, 16 – 17, 80 – 82, 90, 92 – 94, 95n1, 98nn50 – 51, 98nn53 – 54, 98n60, 131 – 135, 137 – 144, 144nn1 – 3, 145n4, 145n8, 145n11

244 Index materiality 17, 146 – 149, 152, 154, 158 – 166, 169n55, 213 mathematical 32, 41, 65 – 67, 76n19, 77n20, 104 – 106, 123, 124n4, 125n19, 137, 217n26 matter 12, 25 – 26, 36, 38, 41, 43 – 44, 49 – 51, 84, 86, 106, 136, 140, 143, 146 – 147, 149 – 152, 154, 155, 159 – 166, 167n9, 168n31, 169n39, 169 – 170n55, 212, 232, 234 mechanism 7, 13, 17, 147 – 152, 156, 158, 160, 165, 170n57, 232 Meissner, Heinrich A. 35, 57n51 Mendelssohn, Moses 194 metaphysics 4, 24, 61 – 64, 69, 71, 74, 78n32, 79, 115, 120, 132 – 136, 148 – 149, 159, 219n62, 220n72, 226, 229, 234 Metis 146 – 147, 152, 154, 160, 162, 164 – 166, 167n5, 170n79 Miller, Elaine 160, 167n9, 168n26, 169nn51 – 52 Minerva 146 – 147, 158, 160, 162, 164 – 166   76, 179, 182, 190n2 monogram 18, 175 –1 nature 4 – 7, 9, 11, 14, 16 – 17, 83, 101, 103, 107 – 108, 112, 114 – 123, 124n4, 126n22, 127n28, 127nn37 – 38, 127 – 128n41, 128n46, 132, 134, 137 – 138, 140 – 143, 146 – 155, 159 – 160, 165, 167n9, 168n26, 168nn31 – 32, 174, 178 – 183, 187, 191n11, 232 objective 12, 16, 25, 30, 37, 40, 43, 56n36, 58n87, 64, 67, 84 – 85, 88, 93, 103 – 104, 106 – 107, 109, 111, 113 – 116, 119, 125n17, 151, 176, 182, 192n28, 195 – 196, 199 – 200, 211, 216n17, 220n73 organic 147, 149 – 153, 156 – 159, 161, 163, 165, 168n21, 185, 228; see also organism organism 147 – 148, 150 – 153, 157, 163; see also organic paralogism 101, 138 Parsons, Charles 46 – 48, 52, 54n10, 57n59, 59n108, 59n110, 59n115, 60n119 passivity 24, 34, 139 perception 24, 27, 29 – 30, 32, 37, 40 – 42, 45, 51, 54n13, 65, 78n32, 105, 109, 122

Plato 147, 201, 217n27 practical ideas 7, 18, 174, 178 – 184, 187 – 188, 190 profane symbols 176 – 178, 189 purposive 6, 97n26, 102, 112, 114 – 116, 118, 124n4, 127nn37 – 38, 152 – 153, 157, 168n21, 181, 185 quasi-transcendental 196, 204 – 207 race 153, 169n35 rational faith 201, 216n10, 217n22, 28 reason 6 – 10, 13 – 14, 16, 18, 29, 35, 56n46, 57n51, 79 – 80, 84, 90, 101 – 105, 109 – 111, 113 – 119, 123, 124n4, 128n50, 129 – 130, 132 – 136, 138 – 139, 141 – 142, 149 – 150, 152 – 154, 165, 173, 176 – 180, 182 – 184, 188 – 189, 194, 197, 199, 216n10, 217n28, 217n33, 218n40, 219 – 220n66, 227, 231 receptivity 24, 27, 31 – 32, 37, 39 – 42, 49, 65, 139, 143, 177 reflection/reflective 6, 13 – 14, 16, 46, 76n9, 82, 91, 93, 96n17, 97n26, 101, 117 – 118, 123 – 124, 134, 150 – 151, 153, 160, 173, 176 – 177, 181, 187 – 188, 196, 208 – 214, 221n89 regulative 6 – 7, 12, 16, 18, 66, 101 – 120, 122 – 123, 127n36, 128n43, 132, 141, 151 – 152, 176, 178 religion 3 – 4, 7 – 9, 13 – 14, 19, 136, 194 – 195, 198, 200 – 201, 204 – 205, 209 – 210, 212 – 214, 217n28 representation [Vorstellung], 3, 5, 9, 15, 24 – 25, 27, 29 – 31, 33, 38 – 40, 42 – 43, 45 – 50, 52, 55n30, 56n36, 65 – 66, 68 – 69, 106, 126n24, 140, 142, 147, 175 – 176, 178, 181, 184, 188 – 189, 200, 202 reproduction 13, 126n22, 150, 152 – 155, 157 – 161 schema 13, 15, 18, 52, 65 – 68, 71, 73, 76n19, 77n20, 148, 153, 158 – 159, 174 – 176, 178 – 182, 184 – 188, 190n3, 191n8; recollective 175; see also direct exhibition schematism, the 4, 8 – 11, 15 – 16, 61 – 71, 73 – 74, 75n6, 76n9, 76n11, 77n20, 77nn23 – 25, 77n29, 78n39, 173 – 174 Schlosser, Johann Georg 203

Index  245 Scotus, John Duns 35 self-legislation 130, 196 – 200, 202, 208, 216n15 Sellars, Wilfrid 24, 37, 40 – 41, 48, 50, 54n6, 58nn65 – 66, 58n74, 58n76, 58n81, 58n86, 59n107, 60n122 sensation 24 – 30, 32, 34 – 35, 37 – 38, 41 – 45, 49 – 52, 55n27, 56n36, 58n87, 60n124, 86 – 87, 89, 140, 142 – 143, 177 sensibility [Sinnlichkeit, Sensualitas], 3 – 5, 9 – 11, 14 – 15, 24, 25 – 28, 31, 34 – 35, 38, 40 – 42, 46, 48 – 52, 54n2, 55n24, 57n50, 59n99, 68, 83, 109, 139 – 140, 143, 175, 179, 213, 227, 229, 231, 233, 235 sensuous/ness 23, 25, 28, 40, 53 sexual difference 7, 148 – 149, 158, 164 – 166, 235 space 4 – 5, 10 – 11, 16, 23 – 25, 36, 39 – 40, 42 – 44, 48, 50 – 52, 57n60, 59n114, 60n124, 61, 63, 72 – 74, 78n39, 83, 124n4, 125n19, 140, 162 – 164, 175, 225; play-space 63, 69 Stengers, Isabelle 169n42 Stone, Alison 146 – 147, 150, 154 – 156, 159 – 160, 163, 166, 166n1, 169n39, 170n63 subjective 6, 12, 30, 32, 37, 42, 44, 50, 56n36, 58n87, 84 – 90, 93, 96n23, 97n31, 110, 119, 120 – 122, 124, 151, 198 – 200, 217n28, 218n40 sublime 81, 95n2, 132, 141 – 143 super-sensible 32, 35, 96n21, 183 – 187, 191n11, 198 – 199, 202, 216n10, 218n40, 219n57 superstition 199, 201, 216n10, 217n28 symbol 3, 5, 8 – 9, 13, 32 – 33, 56n45, 56 – 57n46, 146, 154 – 155, 173 – 174, 176 – 178, 180 – 182, 186 – 190, 190n3, 191n11, 191n13, 192n28; see also indirect exhibition Synthetic Unity of Apperception (SUA) 69, 77n29, 93, 106, 126n22, 175, 220n73 Systematic Unity of Nature (SUN) 6 – 7, 11 – 12, 16, 103 – 104, 107 – 109, 111 – 119, 121 – 123, 124n4, 127n28, 127n38, 128n45, 130

teleology 4, 7, 13, 17, 19, 147 – 150, 156, 170n57, 227, 232, 235 theoretical ideas 7, 18, 173, 175 – 176, 178, 182, 186 – 187 time 4 – 5, 10 – 11, 15 – 16, 18, 24 – 25, 36, 39, 42, 48, 50 – 52, 57n60, 61 – 64, 67 – 74, 76n12, 77n23, 77n29, 78n30, 78n32, 78n39, 83, 106, 109, 114, 124n4, 140, 152, 158, 162 – 164, 175, 230 – 231, 234 tonality 7, 18, 173, 175 – 176, 178, 182, 186 – 187; see also tone tone 84, 195, 200, 203, 205 – 208, 210, 213, 215n7, 217n32, 221n87; see also tonality transcendental ideal 183, 190 transcendental schema 68, 175; see also schema typic 18, 179, 181 – 182, 185, 189, 191n11 understanding [Verstand], 6 – 8, 15, 18, 26 – 28, 31, 33 – 38, 40 – 42, 46, 52, 55n24, 63 – 65, 67 – 71, 76n11, 77n23, 83, 85, 87, 90, 93, 96n8, 101 – 111, 116 – 119, 121, 123, 129, 130n1, 135, 138 – 139, 141, 143, 168n31, 173, 175 – 176, 178, 181, 185 – 186, 189, 21, 213, 218n35, 218n40, 219n44, 233 unity 3, 5 – 6, 9 – 13, 16, 27 – 28, 39, 63, 66, 76 – 77n19, 81, 93, 101 – 103, 106 – 109, 11 – 113, 115 – 123, 124n3, 125n7, 126nn21 – 22, 126n24, 127n38, 129, 141, 155 – 156, 161, 175 – 178, 182, 211, 200n73, 228, 230 – 232; of experience 6, 16, 63, 101, 141 Wolff, Christian 24 – 25, 28, 35, 57n51, 193 wrong 131 – 132, 135, 138 – 139, 145n8 Zammito, John 150, 152, 167n19, 168n22