Upload
michael
View
216
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
This article was downloaded by: [University of California Santa Cruz]On: 10 October 2014, At: 13:05Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T3JH, UK
Inquiry: An InterdisciplinaryJournal of PhilosophyPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/sinq20
Kant, Skepticism, and IdealismMichael Friedman aa Stanford University , USAPublished online: 20 Aug 2006.
To cite this article: Michael Friedman (2006) Kant, Skepticism, and Idealism,Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 49:1, 26-43, DOI:10.1080/00201740500497266
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00201740500497266
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of allthe information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on ourplatform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensorsmake no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy,completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views ofthe authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis.The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should beindependently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor andFrancis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings,demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, inrelation to or arising out of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private studypurposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution,reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any formto anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use canbe found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a Sa
nta
Cru
z] a
t 13:
05 1
0 O
ctob
er 2
014
Kant, Skepticism, and Idealism
MICHAEL FRIEDMAN
Stanford University, USA
(Received 31 October 2005)
ABSTRACT Skeptical problems arising for Kant’s version of transcendental idealismhave been raised from Kant’s own time to the present day. By focussing on how suchproblems originally arose in the wake of Kant’s work, and on the first formulationsof absolute idealism by Schelling, I argue that the skeptical problems in questionultimately depend on fundamental features of Kant’s philosophy of natural science. As aresult, Naturphilosophie and the organic conception of nature cannot easily beseparated from the deep and insightful response to these problems offered by absoluteidealism.
Post-Kantian idealism starts from a rejection of Kant’s central philosophical
dichotomies or ‘‘dualisms’’—most importantly, the dichotomy between the
active intellectual faculty of understanding and the passive receptive faculty
of sensibility, together with the closely related dichotomy between noumena
or things-in-themselves thought by the pure understanding alone and
phenomena or appearances given to sensibility. And one of the primary
motivations for rejecting this latter dichotomy, in particular, is that it
appears to return us to an objectionable form of skepticism. In a well-known
line of argument going back at least to F. H. Jacobi (first articulated in
1786–87), the complaint is that Kant’s defense of our knowledge of the
phenomenal world against the skepticisms of both Descartes and Hume
leaves us—even if correct—with an unbridgeable skeptical gap between our
knowledge of appearances and our knowledge of reality as it is in itself. By
denying in principle that knowledge of things in themselves is possible, Kant
has not only left our knowledge of a genuinely mind-independent reality
in doubt, he has positively precluded it. Kant’s transcendental idealism
therefore leads to skepticism—or, as Jacobi himself more forcefully puts it,
Correspondence Address: Michael Friedman, Department of Philosophy, Stanford University,
Stanford CA 94305-2155, USA. Email: [email protected]
Inquiry,
Vol. 49, No. 1, 26–43, February 2006
0020-174X Print/1502–3923 Online/06/010026–18 # 2006 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/00201740500497266
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a Sa
nta
Cru
z] a
t 13:
05 1
0 O
ctob
er 2
014
to nihilism, the denial of reality to everything outside the immediate contents
of consciousness.
Important versions of this Jacobian complaint have resurfaced recently
within the Anglo-American tradition. Barry Stroud puts the point this way
in his well-known book on philosophical skepticism:
If I understand the transcendental at all, I find it difficult to dis-tinguish transcendental idealism, in its explanatory power, from the
kind of scepticism that seemed inevitable on Descartes’s argument in
the First Meditation. I do not mean that transcendental idealism is the
same thing as empirical idealism; I mean that it is unsatisfactory as an
explanation of knowledge at the transcendental level in the same way
that empirical idealism is unsatisfactory at the empirical level. It would
not enable me to see any of the assertions or beliefs in science or in
everyday life as instances of knowledge of an independent domain.…[E]verything we know in science and in everyday life has turned out
to be subjective or dependent on human sensibility after all. It is not
knowledge of how things really are, independently of us. When we
move to the transcendental way of thinking we are left with knowledge
that is too centered on us, too subjective, and in that respect not what
we originally aspired to.1
John McDowell self-consciously echoes Stroud in Mind and World:
Once the supersensible is in the picture, its radical independence of our
thinking tends to present itself as no more than the independence any
genuine reality must have. The empirical world’s claim to indepen-
dence comes to seem fraudulent by comparison. We are asked to
suppose that the fundamental structure of the empirical world is
somehow the product of subjectivity, in interaction with supersensible
reality, which, as soon as it is in the picture, strikes us as the seat oftrue objectivity. But how can the empirical world be genuinely
independent of us, if we are partly responsible for its fundamental
structure? It does not help to be told that it is only transcendentally
speaking that the fundamental structure of the empirical world is of
our making.2
And what is especially noteworthy, in this case, is that McDowell also
explicitly invokes Hegelian absolute idealism as the salutary solution to thisskeptical problem.3
A standard Kantian response to this Jacobian complaint is to insist, once
again, on the fundamental distinction between transcendental idealism,
formulated at the transcendental level, and empirical idealism, formulated at
the empirical level. At the latter level Kant is an empirical realist and
Kant, Skepticism, and Idealism 27
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a Sa
nta
Cru
z] a
t 13:
05 1
0 O
ctob
er 2
014
defends our knowledge of mind-independent (in the empirical sense) objects
existing outside of us in space and time. We really know such objects—
physical bodies, for example—and they really are (from an empirical point
of view) independent of our minds. So why should the circumstance that
these same objects are dependent on our sensibility from the transcendental
point of view—that is, they are not noumena or things in themselves—in
any way impugn the status of our empirical knowledge? However, sincemost of those who pursue the Jacobian complaint (Stroud and McDowell,
for example) are perfectly clear about the distinction between empirical and
transcendental levels, this response, by itself, does not appear to take us very
far—we simply end up with philosophical a stand-off. Perhaps a better and
more direct response, therefore, is to remind ourselves what things in
themselves actually are for Kant: objects thought by the pure understanding
alone, entirely independently of sensibility, and thus necessarily not existing
in space or time. Paradigmatic instances of such objects, in fact, areincorporeal, supersensible objects such as God and the soul. By denying, in
principle, that knowledge of such objects is possible (at least from a
theoretical point of view), Kant does not appear thereby to be questioning
the status of our knowledge of the spatio-temporal (phenomenal) objects of
science and everyday life.
Now I do not pretend that this simple and direct response is conclusive—
as a reply to either the original Jacobian complaint or more recent Jacobians
like Stroud and McDowell. But it is well worth exploring, at this point,exactly how the Kantian dichotomy between appearances and things in
themselves (and closely related Kantian dichotomies) can lead to definite
skeptical problems concerning our knowledge of the empirical or
phenomenal world after all. It turns out that such problems, in particular,
were already raised by Kant himself; they were also developed, at virtually
the same time, within the German tradition immediately following Jacobi;
and they were then exploited to the maximum in the first system of absolute
idealism developed by Friedrich Schelling. Moreover, once we view the post-Kantian charge of skepticism in the light of these problems, I shall argue, we
obtain a much deeper understanding of both Kant’s own conception of the
basis for our knowledge of the phenomenal spatio-temporal world and its
characteristically post-Kantian reconfiguration in absolute idealism.
The key step in transforming the Jacobian problem of the thing in itself into
a skeptical problem about our knowledge of the empirical or phenomenal
world was taken by K. L. Reinhold, in his Elementarphilosophie developed
in the late 1780s.4 Reinhold’s principal aim, in fact, was to replace allmetaphysical concerns about the existence of realities outside conscious-
ness with a purely phenomenological version of transcendental philosophy
arising directly from the facts of consciousness themselves. In particular,
we directly find, according to Reinhold, that all conscious representations
as such include reference to both a subject and an object—they have, as
28 M. Friedman
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a Sa
nta
Cru
z] a
t 13:
05 1
0 O
ctob
er 2
014
Husserl will later put it, both a ‘‘subject-pole’’ and an ‘‘object-pole’’. And
this, for Reinhold, is expressed within conscious representation as such by a
dichotomy between the a priori forms of representation, which, according
to transcendental philosophy, are contributed by the subject, and the a
posteriori matter or content of representation, which, according to this
same philosophy, are contributed by the object. But this does not mean, at
least as I understand Reinhold, that we are also viewing both the subjectand the object as metaphysical or transcendent entities (the transcendental
ego and the thing in itself, respectively), whose (transcendent) causal
interactions then produce our conscious representations. The point, rather,
is that the purely immanent distinction between form and content allows
us to reinterpret the distinction between subject and object entirely within
the realm of conscious experience itself.5
However, this immanent reinterpretation of the distinction between
subject and object of conscious representation—which thereby presents uswith an immanent reinterpretation, at the same time, of the notion of
affection by the thing in itself—then opens up the possibility of a parallel
form of skepticism, within conscious experience, about the empirical or
phenomenal world. Even if we are in a position, as transcendental idealism
maintains, to anticipate the form of our knowledge a priori, how do we
know—and know a priori—that the matter or content a posteriori given to
us will actually conform to these forms and thus yield knowledge of
phenomenal objects? Genuine knowledge of phenomenal objects, for Kant,is possible only by a combination or synthesis of a priori forms with
a posteriori given contents, but the latter, according to Kant’s own
conception, are precisely what we are not in a position to anticipate a priori.
How, then, can transcendental idealism ever show that knowledge in Kant’s
own sense is truly possible?
This kind of question about the relationship, within experience, between a
priori form and a posteriori content leads to a transformation from
Jacobian (or Cartesian) skepticism about our knowledge of a genuinelymind-independent reality to a form of Humean skepticism about our
knowledge of necessary connections in nature. Indeed, Jacobi himself had
acknowledged a clear debt to Hume, and Reinhold argued that skeptical
empiricist philosophy is by no means directly refuted by Kant—since Kant
simply assumes a concept of experience as the ‘‘necessary connection of
perceptions’’, which is precisely what Hume denies. But it is in the work of
G. E. Schulze and, especially Salomon Maimon that the Humean challenge
to Kantian transcendental idealism takes center stage. For Maimon, inparticular, the ‘‘given’’ element of experience—its a posteriori content—is
simply defined as that which is not derivable, in its concrete determinateness,
from the purely a priori laws of our cognitive faculty. And it then follows,
for Maimon, that Kant has no genuine answer to Hume. All that Kant has
shown, in the transcendental deduction of the categories (which include
Kant, Skepticism, and Idealism 29
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a Sa
nta
Cru
z] a
t 13:
05 1
0 O
ctob
er 2
014
the category of causality, of course), is that the a priori laws of the
understanding govern all objects of experience in general. But these laws, by
definition, are completely indeterminate with respect to all possible
empirical contents. So there is an unavoidable gap between the very general
laws or principles of the understanding, on the one side, and all more
specific empirical laws of nature, on the other. The transcendental deduction
of the categories—and its further elaboration via the laws or principles of
pure understanding—leaves Humean skepticism about the necessity of all
more specific empirical laws of nature completely untouched.
Indeed, Kant himself is perfectly clear that the argument of the
transcendental deduction still leaves open a gap between the very general
conformity of appearances to the a priori forms of thought there
demonstrated and our actual empirical knowledge of nature.6 To be sure,
we now know that all appearances must conform to the a priori laws or
principles of pure understanding that Kant is in the process of articulating.
But this does not and cannot show that nature must also be governed by any
particular (and therefore more specific) empirical laws. The point can,
appropriately enough, be elucidated most clearly in reference to the second
analogy of experience: the a priori principle that every event must have a
cause. Since the causal relation, for Kant, requires that there be a genuine
law-like connection between the cause and the effect (every event of the
same kind as the cause must be always and necessarily followed by an event
of the same kind as the effect), the principle that every event has a cause
requires that some empirical causal laws (laws of the form just given) must
be found in nature. But it does not and cannot tell us which empirical causal
laws actually obtain; and, in this sense, there is an evident gap between what
the a priori principle of causality requires and the specific empirical laws
that must realize or instantiate this requirement in concreto.
Kant suggests that particular empirical causal laws, if true, are also in
some sense necessary, and that this necessity, in turn, is grounded in the
principles of pure understanding. In an introductory section to the system of
principles Kant puts the point this way:
Even natural laws, when they are considered as principles of the
empirical employment of the understanding, at the same time carry
with themselves an expression of necessity and thus at least the
suggestion of a determination from grounds that hold a priori and
antecedent to all experience. Yet all laws of nature without distinction
stand under higher principles of the understanding, in that they merely
apply these to particular cases of appearances. These principles alone
therefore give the concept that contains the condition, and as it were
the exponent, of a rule in general; but experience gives the case that
stands under the rule. (A159/B198)
30 M. Friedman
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a Sa
nta
Cru
z] a
t 13:
05 1
0 O
ctob
er 2
014
It is not adequate to view the relationship in question between principles of
the understanding and particular empirical laws of nature as simply one of
existential instantiation; for Kant states that any particular empirical law
of nature is in some sense determined by the higher principles of the
understanding it stands under, not simply that it exists. The problem, then,
is to understand how particular empirical laws can be grounded or
determined by the principles of pure understanding they stand under, eventhough they are not, as Kant also explicitly emphasizes, strictly derivable
from these principles.7 In the absence of such a relationship of determina-
tion or grounding, a putative empirical law is not a law after all (for it
cannot count as necessary), but nothing in the transcendental deduction
itself (or any other argument in the transcendental analytic) explains how
this crucial relationship between a priori intellectual form (here the category
of causality) and a posteriori given content (here the particular experiences
underlying a concrete empirical law) is actually put into effect.Kant fills this lacuna in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science,
published in 1786 between the first (1781) and second (1787) editions of the
Critique of Pure Reason. His subject there is what he calls pure natural
science (or the pure doctrine of nature); and he makes it perfectly clear in the
Preface that it is precisely this pure natural science that supplies the a priori
grounds of all properly empirical laws of nature:
Since the word nature already carries with it the concept of laws, andthe latter carries with it the concept of the necessity of all
determinations of a thing belonging to its existence, one easily sees
why natural science must derive the legitimacy of this title only from
its pure part—namely, that which contains the a priori principles of all
other natural explanations—and why only in virtue of this pure part is
natural science to be proper science. Likewise, [one sees] that, in
accordance with demands of reason, every doctrine of nature must
finally lead to natural science and conclude there, because thisnecessity of laws is inseparably attached to the concept of nature, and
therefore makes claim to be thoroughly comprehended. Hence, the
most complete explanation of given appearances from chemical
principles still always leaves behind a certain dissatisfaction, because
one can adduce no a priori grounds for such principles, which, as
contingent laws, have been learned merely from experience.
All proper natural science therefore requires a pure part, on which the
apodictic certainty that reason seeks therein can be based. (4, 468–9)
Moreover, it turns out that the pure part of natural science centrally
includes certain fundamental principles of Newtonian physics: most
importantly, the conservation of the total quantity of matter, the law of
inertia, and the principle of the equality of action and reaction (these three
Kant, Skepticism, and Idealism 31
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a Sa
nta
Cru
z] a
t 13:
05 1
0 O
ctob
er 2
014
are also prominently adduced in the Introduction to the second edition of
the Critique as clear and uncontroversial examples of synthetic a priori pure
natural science).
We can then see how an empirical (and thus not synthetic a priori) law is
grounded in the corresponding principles of pure understanding as follows.
On the one hand, our three synthetic a priori principles of pure natural
science are shown to realize or instantiate the three analogies ofexperience—more precisely, they result from the corresponding analogies
(and thus from the categories of substance, causality, and community,
respectively) by further specifying the objects in question under what Kant
calls the empirical concept of matter (thus, we are dealing with material
substances or bodies, whose fundamental changes consist of motions, and so
on). On the other hand, however, these same three principles of pure natural
science frame Newton’s well-known ‘‘deduction from the phenomena’’ of
the law of universal gravitation from Kepler’s laws of planetary motion—whereby, in Kant’s terminology, Kepler’s mere empirical rules are
transformed into something essentially different, namely, a genuine
empirical law expressing a genuine empirical necessity. In particular,
although Newton’s law of gravitation of course depends on the very
empirical phenomena recorded in Kepler’s laws, it is not simply one possible
hypothesis among many for explaining them. Rather, in the context of the
synthetic a priori principles of pure natural science, Newton’s law of
gravitation is uniquely determined by the empirical phenomena in question,and it thereby acquires a more than merely inductive epistemic status. It is in
precisely this sense that it is now fully grounded in the a priori principles of
pure understanding and therefore counts as necessary.8
However, even if all this is accepted, there is still a fundamental
epistemological gap between the most general laws of nature, governing all
matter or material bodies as such, and the more specific and particular laws
of nature which remain mere empirical ‘‘rules’’ (at least so far as we human
beings are able to comprehend). Kant, in the above passage from the Prefaceto the Metaphysical Foundations, specifically instances the putative laws of
chemistry in this regard; and, several pages later in the Preface, he argues
that chemistry will ‘‘only with great difficulty’’ ever attain the status of a
science in the strict sense, precisely because we do not (and might never)
have an elementary force law governing chemical interactions analogous to
the law of gravitation.9 It follows that chemistry is not—and might never
become—a science in the strict sense; its ‘‘laws’’ are in no sense necessary
but rather merely inductive; and it is not—and might never be—properlyand fully grounded in the a priori principles of the understanding.10 How,
then, can the propositions of chemistry (and, a fortiori, those of all lower-
level sciences) possibly count as genuine empirical knowledge of nature?
It is here that Kant invokes his famous doctrine of the regulative use of
reason. The faculty of reason, in contradistinction to the faculty of
32 M. Friedman
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a Sa
nta
Cru
z] a
t 13:
05 1
0 O
ctob
er 2
014
understanding, generates a priori intellectual representations that cannot be
fully realized in our human spatio-temporal experience. These include the
ideas of God, Freedom, and Immortality, for example, and also, more
relevant to our present concerns, the idea of the systematic unity of all
empirical concepts and principles under the a priori constitutive concepts
and principles already generated by the understanding. This idea of
systematic unity guides our process of inquiry in the more empirical andinductive sciences, without constitutively constraining it, as we successively
ascend from lower level empirical concepts and principles towards higher
level concepts and principles. The goal of this process is an ideal complete
empirical science of nature in which all empirical concepts and principles are
constitutively grounded in the pure categories and principles of the
understanding (as the law of gravitation already is), yet this is necessarily
an ideal we can only successively approximate but never actually attain. And
the paradigmatic application of the regulative use of reason, in both theMetaphysical Foundations and the first Critique, is precisely to contempor-
ary chemistry. Kant sees this chemistry—primarily the phlogistic chemistry
of Georg Stahl as supplemented by the new discoveries in pneumatics but
not yet including Lavoisier—as a purely empirical or experimental art
guided by the regulative use of reason towards an entirely unspecified and
indeterminate future state of affairs in which the experimental results in
question are finally grounded in the fundamental forces of matter in a way
that we are not yet in a position to anticipate.11
Moreover, as is well known, Kant, in the Critique of Judgement, extends
the doctrine of the regulative use of reason to what he now calls the faculty
of reflective judgement, and he now applies this faculty, in particular, to the
case of biology. The problem here, in a nutshell, is that all matter in general
and as such—all matter as the object of our outer senses in space—is
essentially lifeless. This, in fact, is how Kant interprets the law of inertia,
which law, in turn, is itself constitutively grounded by a further specification
of the a priori principle of causality articulated in the first Critique.12
Biology, the study of life, can therefore never be a science in the strict sense
for Kant; it can never be constitutively grounded in the fundamental forces
of matter. The best we can do, in this case, is to extend the doctrine of
the regulative use of reason via the teleological idea of purposiveness
[Zweckmaßigkeit]—an idea which already arises for reflective judgement in
general as it guides our inductive ascent from particular to universal towards
the ideal infinitely distant goal of a complete systematic unity of nature. And
this idea can now be applied to particular objects of nature or ‘‘naturalproducts’’ (i.e., living organisms) in so far as they are conceived, by
reflective judgement, as themselves purposively organized. Yet such a mode
of conception is in no way constitutive of these objects themselves; it is
rather a merely regulative device for guiding our empirical inquiry into
living organisms as far as it may proceed.
Kant, Skepticism, and Idealism 33
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a Sa
nta
Cru
z] a
t 13:
05 1
0 O
ctob
er 2
014
From the point of view of post-Kantian idealism, however, we are now
left with a quite intolerable skepticism concerning most of the phenomena of
nature. For only very few of these phenomena, as we have seen, are actually
constitutively grounded in the a priori principles of the understanding; and,
for the rest, we have at best the otherwise entirely indeterminate hope that
they might be constitutively grounded some day—as in the case of
chemistry, for example. In the case of biology, moreover, the situation isfar worse—for we shall never achieve, according to Kant, a genuine
constitutive grounding of the properties and behavior of even a single blade
of grass. It would appear, then, that the vast majority of natural phenomena
are not—and most likely never will be—objectively or constitutively
grounded at all, and our claims to have rational or objective knowledge
of nature are accordingly cast into doubt.13 It is in precisely this way,
therefore, that beginning with Kant’s own formulation of the problem of the
transcendental deduction, we can finally obtain a definite skeptical problemconcerning Kant’s conception of our knowledge of the empirical or
phenomenal world. And this skeptical problem is in fact closely related, in
the terms of Kant’s own system, to the Jacobian problem of the thing in
itself with which we began. The distinction between constitutive and
regulative principles depends on which a priori principles of pure thought
have a necessary instantiation or schematization in sensibility and which do
not, and this latter distinction is in turn closely related to the distinction
between noumena or things in themselves thought by the pure under-standing alone and phenomena or appearances given to sensibility. In other
words, as Maimon in particular emphasizes, the fundamental problem, for
Kant, ultimately stems from his radical separation between the active
intellectual faculty of understanding and the passive receptive faculty of
sensibility.
The project, then, is to radically reconceive the project of transcendental
philosophy in such a way that, by abandoning Kant’s fundamental
dichotomies (here, in particular, that between constitutive principles of theunderstanding and merely regulative principles of reason and reflective
judgement), we can show that all the phenomena of nature are
transcendentally grounded after all—and therefore count as genuinely
objective knowledge. And it is precisely here that Schelling makes his
decisive contribution to the articulation of absolute idealism. For Schelling,
transcendental philosophy, the story of how human reason successively
approximates to a more and more adequate picture of nature, has a
necessary counterpart or dual, as it were, in Naturphilosophie, the story ofhow nature itself successively unfolds or dialectically evolves from the
‘‘dead’’ or inert matter considered in statics and mechanics, to the essentially
dynamical forms of interaction considered in chemistry, and finally to the
living or organic matter considered in biology. Since nature, on this view,
dialectically unfolds or successively evolves in a way that precisely mirrors
34 M. Friedman
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a Sa
nta
Cru
z] a
t 13:
05 1
0 O
ctob
er 2
014
the evolution or development of our rational conception of nature (and, of
course, vice versa), it follows that there is no possible skeptical gap between
nature itself and our conception of it, or, in Kantian terminology, between
the constitutive domain of the understanding and the merely regulative
domain of reason and reflective judgement. All the phenomena of nature—
including, in particular, both chemical and biological phenomena—are
rationally or objectively grounded in the same way.The key to Schelling’s conception is a dialectical extension and
elaboration of Kant’s original dynamical theory of matter expounded in
the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. That theory had depicted
matter, not as a primitively hard or absolutely impenetrable solid, but rather
as originally constituted by two fundamental forces—the fundamental force
of attraction underlying Newtonian universal gravitation and the funda-
mental force of repulsion underlying impenetrability or resistance to
compression. Matter filling space to a determinate degree of density thenresults from a balance or equilibrium between these two fundamental forces.
But this same balancing or equilibrium, from Kant’s point of view, accounts
only for the most general properties of all matter in general and as such
(properties such as elasticity, density, gravity, mass, and weight, for
example), and it does not suffice to explain the more particular and specific
properties of matter considered in lower level science such as chemistry.
From Schelling’s point of view, in contrast, Kant’s dynamical theory of
the most general properties of all matter as such (which embraces, therefore,even the ‘‘dead’’ or inert matter considered in statics and mechanics) has
already introduced an essentially dialectical element into nature, in so far as
the dynamical constitution of matter in general proceeds from the positive
reality of expansive force (repulsion), through the negative reality of
contractive force (attraction), to the limitation or balance of the two in a
state of equilibrium. Moreover, we now know, as Kant himself did not, that
chemistry can be dynamically grounded by a dialectical continuation of this
progression—as we proceed, more specifically, from the magnetic, throughthe electrical, to the chemical (or galvanic) forms of the basic or original
dynamical process grounded in the fundamental forces of attraction and
repulsion. And, once we have gone this far, it is then a very short step
(particularly in view of the newly discovered parallel interconnections
among electrical, galvanic, and biological phenomena) to view biology, too,
as a further dialectical continuation of the same dynamical process.14
Biology, too, can be a science, for all rational science, as Kant did not see, is
grounded in a single dynamical evolutionary dialectical progression. Thewhole of nature, in this sense, is at once both rational and alive;15 and this
means, in particular, that there actually is life—objectively, not merely
regulatively—in even the very simplest forms of organized matter.16
Schelling’s entrancing vision is fueled by a number of dramatic new
discoveries in electro-chemistry. In particular, the invention of the Voltaic
Kant, Skepticism, and Idealism 35
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a Sa
nta
Cru
z] a
t 13:
05 1
0 O
ctob
er 2
014
pile led to the discovery of current electricity or galvanism, and current
electricity, in turn, led to the discovery of the electrolytic decomposition of
water—whereby oxygen and hydrogen separate out from the water and
accumulate, respectively, at the positive and negative poles inducing the
electrolytic current. Oxygen and hydrogen are thereby associated with
negative and positive electricity, respectively, and this suggests an especially
close link between electrical forces and the fundamental chemical forcesinvolved in combustion. Schelling, along with many other researchers at the
time, took this as evidence for the electrical nature of chemical affinities
quite generally. Finally, the well-known parallels between electrical and
magnetic forces suggested that magnetism, too, is essentially implicated in
chemical interactions (including galvanism) and, more specifically, that
what Schelling called the basic or original form of the dynamical process is
further differentiated, at the level immediately following that of Kant’s two
fundamental forces of attraction and repulsion in general, into magnetism,electricity, and chemical forces (including galvanism).17
It is precisely here, for Schelling, that we can unite the concept of matter
in general as conceived in Kant’s original dynamical theory (the ‘‘dead’’
matter considered in statics and mechanics) with matter as conceived by
Naturphilosophie—as an inexhaustible source of rational life. It is in
precisely this context that we can view chemistry, in Schelling’s words, as a
dialectical ‘‘middle term’’ between mechanism, on the one side, and
biological (ultimately rational) living purposiveness, on the other.18
Indeed, even the inert matter considered in statics and mechanics is already
at least potentially alive, since Kant’s dynamical theory had shown that the
fundamental forces of attraction and repulsion are necessary to all matter in
general and as such, and we have just seen that the original or primary
dynamical process governed by these two forces must necessarily evolve or
develop into first chemical and then biological forms of external nature. In
the end, it is precisely by rejecting the fundamental Kantian contention that
all matter in general and as such is essentially lifeless that Schelling, from hispoint of view, finally overcomes any possibility of a skeptical gap between
our rational conception of nature and nature itself.19
We can deepen our appreciation of both the skeptical gap Schelling finds
here in the Kantian philosophy and Schelling’s efforts finally to overcome it
if we take a brief look at how Kant himself, very late in his career, attempted
to extend his dynamical theory of matter into chemistry.20 This attempt is
visible in unpublished materials from the years 1796–1803 collected in the
Opus postumum (the very years during which Schelling was first developinghis system of absolute idealism), and it involves a new projected work Kant
entitles Transition from the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science to
Physics. By ‘‘physics’’, Kant here means the more empirical or inductive
branches of natural science in which the general empirical concept of matter
articulated in the Metaphysical Foundations is further specified into a variety
36 M. Friedman
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a Sa
nta
Cru
z] a
t 13:
05 1
0 O
ctob
er 2
014
of species and subspecies, and Kant particularly has in mind the new anti-
phlogistic system of chemistry recently developed by Lavoisier. Kant now
holds, contrary to the Metaphysical Foundations, that chemistry has thereby
finally entered the secure path of science, but it has not done so (as the
Preface to the Metaphysical Foundations had speculated) by discovering
an elementary force law underlying chemical interactions. Rather, what
Lavoisier has achieved is a new type of essentially physical chemistry basedon the central role of oxygen in combustion together with the newly salient
caloric fluid or the matter of heat. Kant now attempts to provide an a priori
foundation for this new science by presenting what he calls an aether
deduction: an a priori proof that there is a universally distributed aether or
caloric fluid, constituted by a perpetual oscillatory interaction between the
two fundamental forces of attraction and repulsion, filling all of space. This
universally distributed aetherial medium is supposed to provide an a priori
grounding for the central theoretical construct of Lavoisier’s new chemistryand, at the same time, to serve, in a way that had long been familiar in
eighteenth-century matter theory, as the medium or vehicle for light,
electricity, and magnetism as well. In this way, the totality of forces or
powers of nature—including, above all, the specifically chemical forces—
are, at least in principle, systematically unified.
The a priori representation in question—a universally distributed caloric
fluid or aetherial medium—is, by the standards of Kant’s critical
philosophy, an extremely peculiar one. As a continuum of forces providinga basis for the further specification of the concept of matter in general, it is
a discursive or conceptual representation; as a space-filling continuum,
providing what Kant calls a perceptual ‘‘realization’’ of the pure intuition of
space, it is a sensible or intuitive representation. Moreover, and by the same
token, as an a priori principle for the further specification of the concept of
matter in general it is a constitutive representation; as the ultimate ground
for the systematic unity of all of the forces of matter it is a regulative
representation. It is in this way, in fact, that the ‘‘top-down’’ constitutiveprocedure of the Metaphysical Foundations and the first Critique has
a necessary intersection, as it were, with the ‘‘bottom-up’’ regulative
procedure of the faculties of reason and reflective judgement; and it is in
precisely this way, accordingly, that the skeptical problems arising from the
doctrine of the regulative use of reason that so vexed the post-Kantian
absolute idealists are finally resolved for Kant himself.21
It is important to see, however, that Kant’s own solution stopped
considerably short of absolute idealism—and that, although he was in somesense on the verge of the scientific and philosophical situation addressed by
Schelling’s Naturphilosophie, he did not and could not take the decisive step.
Kant had already considered the problem of extending the dynamical theory
of matter into chemistry, and, at the same time, he had already subjected the
fundamental distinction between constitutive principles and regulative
Kant, Skepticism, and Idealism 37
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a Sa
nta
Cru
z] a
t 13:
05 1
0 O
ctob
er 2
014
principles to a radical reconceptualization. But the crucial new develop-
ments in magnetism, electricity, and chemistry that provided the fertile
empirical soil on which Naturphilosophie actually took root were in fact
unknown to him. Kant, to the best of my knowledge, never engaged with
even the electro-static and magneto-static work of Coulomb, to say nothing
of the electro-chemical research arising from the Voltaic pile. The central
idea of Naturphilosophie in its application to chemistry—that chemicalforces are at bottom electrical in nature—never occurred to Kant; and, as a
result, the idea that one could extend the dynamical theory of matter by
conceiving magnetic, electrical, and galvanic forces as a further dialectical
development of the original dynamical process governing the fundamental
forces of attraction and repulsion was entirely foreign to Kant’s own final
attempt to solve the problem of a ‘‘transition from the metaphysical
foundations to physics’’. Furthermore, although there may be room, with
considerable stretching and straining, to find a place in Kant’s criticalsystem for a representation that combines both constitutive and regulative
aspects, there is no room at all for the grand naturphilosophisch vision of
nature as a whole as the evolutionary dialectical development of a single
(and ultimately divine) rational life. For this idea, of course, entails the total
Aufhebung of all of Kant’s most fundamental distinctions, along with the
critical philosophy itself.
What are the implications of all this for the original Jacobian skeptical
problem with which we began—the idea that Kant’s distinction betweenappearances and things in themselves leaves us with an unbridgeable
skeptical gap between our knowledge of the phenomenal or empirical world
and a reality that is genuinely independent of us? I have argued, in the first
place, that if we are to move beyond a simple philosophical stand-off
between those who find the empirical mind-independence of the phenom-
enal world to be quite sufficient to ground our empirical knowledge and
those who take its transcendental dependence on our cognitive faculties to
threaten this knowledge, we need to look, more specifically, for a concreteskeptical problem afflicting our knowledge of the phenomenal world itself.
Such a problem in fact emerges, both conceptually and historically, in both
the writers on transcendental philosophy immediately following Jacobi and
Kant’s own virtually simultaneous attempts to further resolve the problem
of the transcendental deduction by explaining how the most general laws of
pure understanding serve to ground or determine the more specific empirical
laws of nature in accordance with which the empirical phenomena actually
proceed. This line of thought leads to Kant’s fundamental distinctionbetween constitutive principles due to the pure understanding and merely
regulative principles due to the faculties of reason and reflective
judgement—which, in turn, is closely connected, as we have seen, with the
distinction between appearances and things in themselves. And we are also
led, in following out this line of thought, to a serious engagement with
38 M. Friedman
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a Sa
nta
Cru
z] a
t 13:
05 1
0 O
ctob
er 2
014
Kant’s philosophy of natural science, as articulated especially in the
Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science and Opus postumum.
I have further tried to explain, in the second place, how, despite Kant’s
most serious and strenuous efforts to overcome them, fundamental skeptical
problems concerning the ultimate rational grounding of our knowledge of
the phenomenal world can still be raised, and also how, as a result, the
absolute idealism first constructed by Schelling—and later further developed
by Hegel—radically restructured the project of transcendental philosophy
by conceiving nature as a whole as the evolutionary dialectical development
of a single (and ultimately divine) rational life.22 That Kant himself, at the
end of his career, and during the very years in which Schelling first
developed this philosophy, was right on the verge of the scientific and
philosophical situation addressed by absolute idealism, further underscores
and illuminates the seriousness and precise character of the problems in
question. In particular, the organic conception of nature developed by
absolute idealism—however exaggerated and bizarre it might now appear to
us—was, in the particular intellectual context that gave rise to it, a perfectly
reasonable and intelligible response to the combination of deep internal
problems afflicting Kant’s critical philosophy, on the one side, and
revolutionary new scientific developments at the turn of the century (in
electricity, magnetism, chemistry and biology), on the other. And what this
means, finally, is that those who now want to return to absolute idealism in
order to resolve the Jacobian problem must carefully consider whether, and
to what extent, they can really do justice to both the problem in question
and the absolute idealist solution without also embracing—or at least taking
very seriously—Naturphilosophie and the organic conception of nature.23
Notes
1. Stroud, B (1984) The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism (Oxford: Oxford
University Press), pp. 166–7.
2. (Harvard, 1994), p. 42.
3. See op. cit., p. 44: ‘‘This is quite contrary to Kant’s intentions, but in spite of his staunch
denials, the effect of his philosophy is to slight the independence of the reality to which
our senses give us access. What is responsible for this is precisely the aspect of Kant’s
philosophy that struck some of his successors as a betrayal of idealism: namely, the fact
that he recognizes a reality outside the sphere of the conceptual. Those successors urged
that we must discard the supersensible in order to achieve a consistent idealism. In fact
that move frees Kant’s insight so that it can protect a commonsense respect for the
independence of the ordinary world.’’ McDowell makes it perfectly explicit a few
sentences later that Hegelian absolute idealism is precisely what he has in mind here—
although he also suggests that we need to ‘‘domesticate the rhetoric of that philosophy’’.
I will return to this last point below (note 23).
4. For extended discussion of the development from Jacobi through Maimon briefly
sketched below see Frederick Beiser, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant
to Fichte (Harvard, 1987), and chapter 1 of Ernst Cassirer, Das Erkenntnisproblem in der
Kant, Skepticism, and Idealism 39
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a Sa
nta
Cru
z] a
t 13:
05 1
0 O
ctob
er 2
014
Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit. Dritter Band: Die Nachkantischen
Systeme (Bruno Cassirer, 1920).
5. Both Beiser and Cassirer (note 4 above) read Reinhold as making an (illegitimate)
inference from the a posteriori given content of representation to a (transcendent) thing-
in-itself as the cause of this content. However, in view of Reinhold’s repeated insistence
(emphasized by both Beiser and Cassirer) that he is carrying out a purely immanent
phenomenology of conscious representation itself, it seems to me far more charitable to
understand him as proposing a reinterpretation of the very notion of the thing-in-itself
(along with the notion of transcendental affection).
6. It is no wonder then, that Kant, in a well-known letter to Marcus Herz of May 26, 1789,
asserts of Maimon that ‘‘none of my opponents had understood me and the main
question so well’’ (11, 49). Kant, at the time, was intensively engaged in completing the
Critique of Judgement, whose problems, as we shall see in more detail below, are
intimately connected with the gap in question. All references to Kant’s writings and
correspondence, except to the Critique of Pure Reason, are given by volume and page
number of the Akademie edition of Kant’s Gesammelte Schriften (Berlin: de Gruyter,
1902-); the Critique of Pure Reason is cited by the standard A and B pagination of the
first (1781) and second (1787) editions respectively. All translations are my own.
7. See A126–8: ‘‘Although we learn many laws through experience, there are nonetheless
only particular determinations of yet higher laws, among which the highest (under which
all others stand) originate a priori in the understanding itself, and are not borrowed from
experience but rather provide appearances with their law-governedness, and precisely
thereby make experience possible.…To be sure, empirical laws as such can in no way
derive their origin from pure understanding—no more than the immeasurable manifold
of appearances can be adequately comprehended from the pure form of sensibility. Yet
all empirical laws are only particular determinations of the pure laws of the
understanding, under which and in accordance with the norm of which they first
become possible, and the appearances take on a lawful form—just as all appearances,
notwithstanding the manifoldness of their empirical form, nonetheless also must always
be in accordance with the condition of the pure form of sensibility.’’
8. See R 5414 (around 1780) at 18, 176: ‘‘Empirically one can certainly discover rules, but
not laws—as Kepler in comparison with Newton—for to the latter belongs necessity,
and hence that they are cognized a priori. Yet one always supposes that rules of nature
are necessary—for on that account it is nature—and that they can be comprehended a
priori; therefore one calls them laws by way of anticipation. The understanding is the
ground of empirical laws, and thus of an empirical necessity, where the ground of law-
governedness can in fact be comprehended a priori—e.g., the law of causality—but not
the ground of the determinate law. All metaphysical principles of nature are only
grounds of law-governedness.’’ For further discussion of this passage, and the larger
question of empirical causal laws in general, see my ‘‘Causal laws and the foundations of
natural science’’, in P. Guyer, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Kant (CUP, 1992).
9. See 4, 470–1: ‘‘So long, therefore, as there is still for chemical actions of matters on one
another no concept to be discovered that can be constructed, that is, no law of the
approach or withdrawal of the parts of matter can be specified according to which,
perhaps in proportion to their density or the like, their motions and all the consequences
thereof can be made intuitive and presented a priori in space (a demand that will only
with great difficulty ever be fulfilled), then chemistry can be nothing more than a
systematic art or experimental doctrine, but never a proper science, because its principles
are merely empirical, and allow of no a priori presentation in intuition. Consequently,
they do not in the least make the principles of chemical appearances conceivable
with respect to their possibility, for they are not receptive to the application of
mathematics.’’
40 M. Friedman
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a Sa
nta
Cru
z] a
t 13:
05 1
0 O
ctob
er 2
014
10. Compare 4, 468: ‘‘If, however, the grounds or principles themselves are still in the end
merely empirical, as in chemistry, for example, and the laws from which the given facts
are explained through reason are mere laws of experience, then they carry with them no
consciousness of their necessity (they are not apodictally certain), and thus the whole of
cognition does not deserve the name of a science in the strict sense; chemistry should
therefore be called a systematic art rather than a science.’’
11. It is no accident, then, that examples from contemporary chemistry serve as particularly
important illustrations of the regulative use of reason in the Appendix to the
Transcendental Dialectic in the first Critique: see, e.g., A647–7/B673–4, A652–3/B680–
81. For discussion of these examples, see chapter 5 of my Kant and the Exact Sciences
(Harvard, 1992).
12. The statement of the law of inertia and accompanying proof is Proposition 3 of the
Mechanics chapter of the Metaphysical Foundations. The following Remark explains the
connection with lifelessness—viz., the non-existence of any internal principle of change.
See, in particular, the conclusion of this Remark (4, 544): ‘‘The possibility of a proper
natural science rests entirely and completely on the law of inertia (along with that of the
persistence of substance). The opposite of this, and thus also the death of all natural
philosophy, would be hylozoism. From this very same concept of inertia, as mere
lifelessness, it follows at once that it does not mean a positive striving to conserve its
state. Only living beings are called inert in this latter sense, because they have a
representation of another state, which they abhor, and against which they exert their
power.’’ This rejection of ‘‘hylozoism’’ is clearly directed at Leibnizean natural
philosophy.
13. My formulation of this skeptical problem is indebted to Paul Franks, ‘‘What should
Kantians learn from Maimon’s skepticism?’’ in G. Freudenthal, ed., Salomon Maimon:
rational dogmatist, empirical skeptic (Kluwer, 2003), although Franks himself does not
emphasize, as I do, the distinction between constitutive and regulative principles—he
instead formulates what I take to be essentially the same problem by means of a
distinction between scientific judgements and everyday or ‘‘ordinary’’ judgements.
14. For Schelling, this dialectical continuation takes a quite precise and specific form:
corresponding to the magnetic, electrical, and chemical (or galvanic) forms, we then
have, as the ‘‘third potency’’ of the original dynamical process, the biological powers of
reproduction, (nervous) irritability, and sensibility: see Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature,
supplement to book I, chapter 6. In what follows, references to this work (first edition
1797, second edition 1803) are to the second volume of Friedrich Wilhelm Josef von
Schellings Sammtliche Werke (J. G. Cotta’scher Verlag, 1848), and to the translation by
E. Harris and P. Heath (Cambridge, 1988), respectively.
15. See Ideas (1848, 54) (1988, 40): ‘‘Finally, if we comprehend nature as a single whole, then
mechanism, i.e., a past-directed series of causes and effects, and purposiveness
[Zweckmaßigkeit], i.e., independence of mechanism, simultaneity of causes and effects,
stand opposed to one another. In so far as we now unite these two extremes, an idea of a
purposiveness of the whole arises in us—nature becomes a circle that returns into itself,
a self-enclosed system.’’
16. See Ideas (1848, 46–7) (1988, 35): ‘‘This philosophy must admit, therefore, that there is a
graduated development [Stufenfolge] of life in nature. Even in mere organized matter
there is life, but only life of a limited kind. This idea is so old, and has been preserved
until now in the most varied forms up to the present day—(already in the most ancient
times the whole world was [regarded as] penetrated by a living principle, called the
world-soul, and Leibniz’s later period gave every plant its soul)—that one can well
surmise in advance that some ground for this natural belief must lie in the human spirit
itself. And it is in fact so. The entire mystery surrounding the problem of the origin of
organized bodies rests on the circumstance that in these things necessity and contingency
Kant, Skepticism, and Idealism 41
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a Sa
nta
Cru
z] a
t 13:
05 1
0 O
ctob
er 2
014
are united in the most intimate way. Necessity, because their existence is already
purposive, not only (as in the case of the work of art) their form; contingency, because
this purposiveness is nonetheless only actual for an intuiting and reflecting being.’’
17. Hans Christian Oersted, the discoverer of electro-magnetism, was deeply involved with
both the new electro-chemistry and Schelling’s philosophical interpretation of it, and
Oersted’s great discovery was essentially stimulated by this philosophy. See my ‘‘Kant—
Naturphilosophie—Electromagnetism’’ in R. Brain and O. Knudson, eds., Hans-
Christian Oersted and the Romantic Legacy in Science (Kluwer, 2005), for references
and further discussion.
18. See Ideas (1848, 187) (1988, 149): ‘‘Therefore, already in the chemical properties of
matter there actually lie the first, although still completely undeveloped seeds of a future
system of nature, which can unfold into the most varied forms and structures, up to the
point where creative nature appears to return back into itself. Thus, at the same time,
further investigations are marked out, up to the point where the necessary and the
contingent, the mechanical and the free, separate from one another. Chemical
phenomena constitute the middle term between the two. It is this far, then, that the
principles of attraction and repulsion actually lead, as soon as one considers them as
principles of a universal system of nature.’’
19. Schelling is here self-consciously returning to precisely the Leibnizean ‘‘hylozoism’’ Kant
explicitly rejects: compare notes 12, 14, and 16 above. This essentially biological or
organic conception of nature then entails the overcoming of all skepticism in the
sense that the closing of the circle implicated in notes 15 and 18 above (embracing
both mechanism and teleology) means that transcendental philosophy and
Naturphilosophie—spirit and nature—are ultimately identical, in so far as nature itself
gives rise to both life in general and conscious or rational life in particular. See Ideas
(1848, 56) (1988, 42): ‘‘Nature should be the visible spirit, spirit the invisible nature. It is
here, therefore, in the absolute identity of spirit within us and nature outside us, that the
problem of how a nature outside us is possible must be solved.’’
20. I can present only the very briefest outline here. For further details and references see
chapter 5 of my Kant and the Exact Sciences (note 11 above) and ‘‘Kant—
Naturphilosophie—Electromagnetism’’ (note 17).
21. In the Opus postumum itself Kant goes so far as to say that if the ‘‘transition’’ project he
is now embarked on cannot be successfully completed then there is a fundamental ‘‘gap’’
in the critical system. The importance of this idea has been recently emphasized by
Eckart Forster, ‘‘Is there ‘a gap’ in Kant’s critical system?’’ Journal for the History of
Philosophy 25 (1987): 533–55. For further discussion see again chapter 5 of my Kant and
the Exact Science, and also Forster, Kant’s Final Synthesis (Harvard, 2000).
22. I am not here in a position to extend my discussion to Hegel’s later elaboration of
absolute idealism. However, if Frederick Beiser is correct in his recent work, German
Idealism (Harvard, 2002), and ‘‘The Secret of Hegel,’’ in R. Brain and O. Knudson, eds.
(note 17 above), the organic conception of nature arising in Naturphilosophie is just as
central for Hegel as it is for Schelling. The difference is that Hegel adds a much deeper
and more detailed discussion of the psychological, social, and historical stages of the
evolutionary dialectical process.
23. I here have in mind, in particular, McDowell’s appeal to absolute idealism in Mind and
World—see note 3 above, together with the paragraph to which it is appended. As I
point out there, McDowell says that he wants to ‘‘domesticate the rhetoric’’ of absolute
idealism, and what he apparently means by this is that we can simply drop its
commitment to the organic conception of nature in favor of ‘‘a commonsense respect for
the independence of the ordinary world’’. Indeed, in the remainder of his argument
McDowell traces the ultimate roots of the epistemological problem at the center of his
concerns (the opposition between coherentism and the myth of the given) to the modern
42 M. Friedman
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a Sa
nta
Cru
z] a
t 13:
05 1
0 O
ctob
er 2
014
scientific ‘‘disenchantment of nature’’ whereby all rational meaning and value were
removed from external nature and relocated exclusively in the human mind. McDowell
definitely does not want to resolve this problem (as the absolute idealists themselves do)
by ‘‘re-enchanting’’ external nature so that the fundamentally mechanistic categories of
modern natural science no longer adequately describe it. Rather, he wants only
‘‘partially’’ to re-enchant nature so that human nature, in particular, is fully recognized
as ‘‘natural,’’ while the remaining non-human part is just as disenchanted as before. But
this kind of solution would be anathema from the point of view of the absolute idealists
themselves, and what I am calling into question here is whether McDowell’s attempt at
appropriating this tradition ultimately does justice to the actual historical and
conceptual issues surrounding its development. See my ‘‘Exorcising the philosophical
tradition,’’ Philosophical Review 105 (1996): 427–67, for an earlier attempt to come to
terms with Mind and World from an historical point of view; the present paper makes a
related point in the context of a more careful and detailed consideration of the transition
from Kant to absolute idealism.
Kant, Skepticism, and Idealism 43
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a Sa
nta
Cru
z] a
t 13:
05 1
0 O
ctob
er 2
014