Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy

of Traditions and Cultures 27

Zehou Li

A New
Approach
to Kant
A Confucian-Marxist’s Viewpoint
Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy
of Traditions and Cultures

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Zehou Li

A New Approach to Kant

A Confucian-Marxist’s Viewpoint

123
Zehou Li
Department of Philosophy
University of Colorado
Boulder, Colorado
USA

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Preface to the English Edition

This book was written during 1972–1976 (during China’s Cultural Revolution) and
published in 1979. Although it has been reprinted many times, I have been unable
to revise the parts devoted to the discussion of Kant’s philosophy as much as I
would have liked, since I have moved on to other things. A New Approach to Kant
was the original title I chose for this book, and after having considered the particular
circumstances of the time, I have decided to keep it. The Chinese title has always
been A Critique of the Critical Philosophy: An Introduction to Kant.
What, then, is the “new approach” in A New Approach to Kant? I wish to
tentatively propose a new anthropo-historical ontology for introducing, describing,
interpreting, and criticizing Kant’s philosophy. This approach is based on materi-
alism, the theory of practice, and the theory of sedimentation; and it highlights
Kant’s question “What is the human being?” It stresses that the only possible
answer to Kant’s question “How is knowledge possible?” (i.e., how are a priori
synthetic judgments possible) must also be the answer to the question “How is the
human being possible?” The anthropo-historical-ontological approach assumes that
Kant’s philosophy, at its very heart, raises and discusses the question of “What is
human nature?” I am convinced that human nature is neither an endowment from
God nor an outcome of natural evolution; instead, human psychology has arisen
historically through the social and collective practice of making and using tools
over millions of years. Here, the term “psychology” refers neither to the psycho-
logical experience of reality nor to experimental positive science, but to a philo-
sophical perspective that begins with the belief that human beings possess
universal, necessary, self-constitutive psychological forms, structures, and frame-
works that are not shared by the lower animals. Therefore, while on the surface, this
book offers an account of philosophy from Kant to Marx, at a deeper level it is a
return from Marx to Kant. In other words, this book argues that the origin and
development of seemingly “transcendental” knowledge, morality, and aesthetic
psychological forms and structures begins from the basis of human existence that
can be found in the practical material activities and social relationships associated
with making and using tools—it is thus Kant’s philosophy turned upside down.
This point can also be integrated with Chinese Confucian teachings.

v
vi Preface to the English Edition

Perhaps I should first answer the question of whether or not I am a Marxist, since
the subtitle of this book, as well as many of its passages, refers to Marxism.
The answer is “both yes and no.”
Let me first explain the “no.”
There are three reasons for the “no.” First, I believe that, for some modern
intellectuals, Marxism is the revolutionary pursuit of a new social reality that makes
theoretical assumptions about the future. This type of Marxism does not have a
class character, hence it does not represent the worldview of the proletariat (the
working class). Second, I do not agree with doctrines such as “class struggle is the
impetus for historical advancement” and “revolution is the motor force for social
development”; nor do I support the view that class struggle and the dictatorship
of the proletariat are the program and central point of Marxism. Third, I use the
Transcendental Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason to argue that Marx’s
primary work, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, proceeds from basic
concepts such as “abstract labor” and “socially necessary labor time” that are not
supported by experience. These are logical constructs based on an abstract com-
munism that does not involve capital, commodity, or a market economy. This is a
“transcendental illusion” that is not an objective and realistic possibility. It has
neither the possibility nor the necessity of bringing itself into being. Were there to
be such a concrete project and measures implemented to realize such an illusory
“ideal society,” the result would be catastrophe.
With these three convictions, I am surely not a Marxist.
As to the answer “yes,” I have only one reason, although it is a very fundamental
one. In all these years, I have maintained that the collective practical activity of
using and making tools is the definitive factor in the origin and development
of humankind. In this, I agree with the view of Marx and Engels that the making of
tools, technology, productive forces, and the economy have been the fundamental
basis of human society and life since time immemorial. I believe that this is the hard
core of historical materialism. But I do not accept the rest of the materialist con-
ception of history. Nevertheless, I regard this hard core of the materialist conception
of history as the most precious legacy of Marx and Engels. This legacy precisely
matches Chinese Confucian teachings in its emphasis on human beings’ material
life, worldly existence, and real life.
In addition, I believe that there is a point of commonality between
“Communism” and the ideal of Great Unity in the Confucian tradition. The
Confucian teaching that “(they accumulated) articles (of value), disliking that they
should be thrown away upon the ground, but not wishing to keep them for their
own gratification. (They labored) with their strength, disliking that it should not be
exerted, but not exerting it (only) with a view to their own advantage” (Liji Liyun,
trans. James Legge) can be integrated into Communism’s rallying cry “from each
according to his ability, to each according to his needs” to constitute a spiritual faith
and a “social ideal” that encourages people; brings people together to change the
world and the bodies and minds of individuals; and becomes a regulative element
and significant continuation of the (political) religious morality of the Chinese
Preface to the English Edition vii

tradition. If this could be used to define what a Marxist is, I would be counted as a
Marxist, or even a Confucian-Marxist.
But why do I insist on adding the term “Confucian?”
I believe that Marx and Engels discussed the historical aspects of the material
existence of human society, yet failed to place sufficient emphasis on human
beings’ inner psychology. Confucianism, on the other hand, has always treated the
question of human nature as its central concern. Confucianism emphasizes “in-
wardly the sage and externally the king.” In philosophy, I propose concepts such as
“cultural-psychological formation” and “emotional-rational structure”; in science, I
believe that, in the future, brain science, psychology, and pedagogy will become the
central disciplines because of their positive and particular study of human nature.
These ideas offer quite a new solution to Kant’s fundamental questions “What is the
human being?” and “What is human nature?” I have remarked that
anthropo-historical ontology is a three-in-one theory of Chinese Confucianism,
Kant, and Marx.
It is true that I could not very well have mentioned Confucianism when I was
writing this book, since Mao Zedong had at that time launched the Criticize
Confucius Campaign. In addition, this book is, after all, about Kant’s philosophy.
Therefore, only along with my other works, such as “A Reevaluation of Confucius”
(published in 1980), and my thoughts on “proper measure,” “pragmatic reason,”
“the culture of optimism,” “the theory of two morals,” and “emotion as substance,”
could a “three-in-one” theory be fully visible. Furthermore, this “three-in-one”
theory makes up only the principal part of my thought, as I have also absorbed and
assimilated other Chinese and foreign theories and ideas.
In spite of my deliberate concealment, this “three-in-one” approach to “what is
human nature” nonetheless manifests itself in one way or another in this book. For
instance, in the discussion on epistemology, my response to Kant’s famous question
about “the unknowable common origin of sensibility and understanding” is that it is
not transcendental imagination, but human practice. I maintain that sensibility
originates from the sensible experience of an individual’s practice, while under-
standing arises from psychological forms in the human history of practice. The
categories and principles of understanding that Kant sees as transcendental, I
believe to be the achievement of the human race’s unique practice of psychological
forms and structures over millions of years. This achievement, which has been
passed on from generation to generation through language and education, seems
“transcendental” to an individual. Nevertheless, I replace universal necessity with
objective sociality, with the intention of employing practical reason and the
“One-World View” to overturn Kant’s pure reason, which is indeed an unsub-
stantiated supposition. I emphasize the ever-changing ontology of measurement that
human beings grasp, create, and develop in their ongoing actions.
From the perspective of the ontological philosophy of anthropological history,
that which is unknowable, and can only be held in awe, is the material thing in itself
that accounts for the existence of the universe. I describe this as the essence of the
mystery of reason. A wider epistemological vision that “every discovery is an
invention” is made possible by these fundamental conceptions: the thing in itself,
viii Preface to the English Edition

which can only be contemplated, but cannot be known; and the coexistence of the
universe and human beings. None of these thoughts may find sympathy in the
Western reader; nonetheless, they constitute a Chinese intellectual’s attempt to
integrate Kant’s philosophy into Chinese tradition.
Among the three formulations of the categorical imperative in Kant’s ethics,
“universal law” and “free will” are, in my opinion, also formal structures in the
construction of human psychology over millions of years. “The human being as an
end” is not a categorical imperative; it is rather an ideality as well as a modern
social morality based on universality. Morality is based on reason rather than
emotion. The content of reason is made up of those concepts and ideas that change
in accordance with different times, societies, and cultures; and the form of reason is
the will, which is one of the universal and necessary structures of human moral
conduct and psychology, and which has remained unchanged since ancient times.
This is certainly the case with aesthetics, which is more relevant to individual
bodies and minds, the blend of sensibility and reason, and so on.
In short, that which seems to be “transcendental” to an individual is actually
sedimentation, which has been historically acquired through the collective experi-
ence of humankind. This is what a “theory of anthropo-historical ontology” intends
by the expression “the empirical turns into the transcendental (a priori); history
builds up rationality (reason); psychology grows into substance.” This is also the
approach of A New Approach to Kant. Based on Chinese Confucianism and
Marxism, this approach offers a new understanding and interpretation of Kant’s
philosophy.
Darwin discusses the origin of the human being from the perspective of evo-
lution; while modern sociobiology has argued for a similarity between human
beings and animals, based on the belief that animals also have morality, aesthetics,
even politics. This book agrees with Darwin, while disputing the doctrines of and
the trend toward the latter. I begin where Darwin ends. I believe that these ques-
tions: “What is the human being?” “How is humankind possible?” and “How is the
human being human?” can no longer be determined or explained by natural evo-
lution. From this book to my most recent works, I begin from the fundamental view
of Chinese Confucianism and the distinction between human beings and animals.
From there, I have proposed the theory of the cultural-historical sedimentation of
human psychology; illuminated the question of “How is the human being possi-
ble?” by focusing on the making and use of tools; and maintained that, in order to
survive, humankind has been necessarily and fully engaged, over millions of years,
in the collective practical activities of making and using tools. These activities have
enabled humankind to break through its animal life, which was genetically akin to
that of chimpanzees, and this has given rise to reason, emotio-rational structure, and
language (mainly the semantic meanings relevant to making and using tools, which
are not possessed by the lower animals). These practical activities have not only
initiated, produced, and determined the social features of human beings’ relations
with nature, groups, and the self but have also produced forms of human knowledge
(e.g., logic, mathematics, various symbol systems) and conduct and behavior based
on ethical norms and moral laws. Moreover, it is the latter (ethics) that sparks off the
Preface to the English Edition ix

former (knowledge). I have paid special attention to their independent development

in the long run, which in turn continuously constitutes life and brings reality into
being, and enables humankind to possess supra-biological and super-biological
appendages, capacities, values, and its unique subjectality and subjectivity.
Language, which bears and sediments this historical experience, has become the
house of being. With this as its foundation, modern civilization has brought upon
itself many disasters and catastrophes. Nevertheless, in the main, civilization has
been beneficial rather than detrimental. Moreover, it has enabled human existence
to advance a giant step. It is precisely this sort of “brief history of humankind” to
which Confucianism today should give its attention and affirmation. This book can
only offer a disguised introduction to this topic by means of an exposition of Kant’s
philosophy, as the particular circumstances of the time did not allow me to openly
talk about it.
After all, this book was written 40 years ago when China was facing adverse
circumstances. It would certainly assume quite a different appearance were it to be
written today. In spite of my wishes, my very frail constitution prevents me from
further writing. I cannot even make emendations to the deficiencies of this book or
erase the historical marks of the age when the book was written, nor do I have the
strength to go over the translated manuscript. With a conscience-stricken mind, I
ask the reader’s allowance for my lack of care for the English edition.

Boulder, Colorado Zehou Li

October 2016
Contents

1 The Sources and Development of Kant’s Thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.1 Historical Background and Political Inclination . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Sources of Kant’s Thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.3 The Definitive Influence of Newton and Rousseau . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.4 Critical Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.5 The Synthesis of Diverse, Opposing Schools
of Philosophy into a System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .......... 27
1.6 A Trend in Modern Thought: Back to Kant . . . . . .......... 32
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .......... 38
2 Epistemology: I. Raising the Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.1 Critical Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.2 How Are A Priori Synthetic Judgments Possible? . . . . . . . . . . . 46
2.3 Dualism and Idealism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
2.4 “The View of Life and Practice Should Be the First
and Principal View of Epistemology” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
2.5 “Synthesis” Is the Object of Transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
2.6 On the Nature of Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
3 Epistemology: II. Space and Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..... 73
3.1 Time and Space Are Aesthetic Forms of Intuition . . . . . . ..... 74
3.2 Empirical Realism and Transcendental Idealism . . . . . . . ..... 79
3.3 Contemporary Western Philosophical Criticism of Kant’s
View on Time and Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..... 82
3.4 “The Essential Forms of All Being Are Space and Time” ..... 88
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..... 92

xi
xii Contents

4 Epistemology: III. Categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

4.1 Categories as Pure Concepts of the Understanding . . . . . . . . . . 93
4.2 Transcendental Schemata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
4.3 Transcendental Principles of the Understanding . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
4.4 Transcendental Principles of the Understanding . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
4.5 Transcendental Principles of the Understanding . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
4.6 The Kantianism of the Theory of Causality
in Natural Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
4.7 “The Proof of Necessity Lies in Human Activity,
in Experiment, and in Labor” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
5 Epistemology: IV. Self-consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
5.1 Self-consciousness as the Heart of Kant’s Epistemology . . . . . . 133
5.2 Subjective Deduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
5.3 Objective Deduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
5.4 The Interdependence of the Self-consciousness
and Consciousness of the Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
5.5 Kant’s Opposition to Treating the “Self” as the Entity
of the Soul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
5.6 Hegel’s Self-consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
5.7 “The Question Lies in Changing the World” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
5.8 Copernican Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
6 Epistemology: V. Antinomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
6.1 Transcendental Illusion and Dialectic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
6.2 Four Antinomies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
6.3 “Conflict Is Inevitable” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
6.4 Particularities of the Four Antinomies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
7 Epistemology: VI. Things in Themselves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
7.1 The Thing in Itself as the Source of Sensibility . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
7.2 The Thing in Itself as the Limit of Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
7.3 “Human Beings Must Prove the Truth of Their Thinking
in Practice” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
7.4 The Thing in Itself as an Idea of Reason . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
7.5 From Epistemology to Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
8 Ethics: I. Moral Laws . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
8.1 Against Empirical Eudaemonism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
8.2 Universal Legislative Forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
8.3 The Human Being as the End . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
Contents xiii

8.4 The Autonomy of the Will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230

8.5 “Kant Only Talked About the Good Will” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
8.6 The Concepts of Good and Evil and Moral Feeling . . . . . . . . . 239
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
9 Ethics: II. Views on Religion, Politics, and History . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
9.1 The Antinomies of Practical Reason and the Summum
Bonum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
9.2 Religious Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
9.3 Views on Right and Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
9.4 Views on History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
9.5 “The Good Is Understood to Be Man’s Practice” . . . . . . . . . . . 276
9.6 Kantianism in Social Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
10 Aesthetics and Teleology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
10.1 Critique of Judgment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
10.2 Analytic of the Beautiful . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
10.3 Analytic of the Sublime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
10.4 The Ideal of Beauty, Aesthetic Ideas, and Fine Art . . . . . . . . . . 306
10.5 Organized Beings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
10.6 Antinomy of Mechanics and Teleology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
10.7 Human Beings as the Final End of Nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
10.8 “Man also Produces in Accordance with the Laws
of Beauty” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336
Postscript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
Postscript to the Second Edition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
Postscript to the Sixth, Thirtieth Anniversary Edition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
Appendix: Advancing Along with Marx and Kant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
Chapter 1
The Sources and Development of Kant’s
Thought

1.1 Historical Background and Political Inclination

The poet Heinrich Heine said that Kant’s personal life did not yield an impressive
biography. Kant (b. 1724) was born to a harness-maker of limited means and he led
a life of teaching and contemplation, never engaging in public activities of any
importance. After graduating from university, he worked as a private tutor to make
a living until, at the age of thirty-one, he finally habilitated and began teaching as a
lecturer (Privatdozent) at the University of Königsberg.1 He was popular among the
students and established quite a reputation, but because of upper-class contempt for
his humble origins, he did not acquire a full professorship until the age of forty-six.
Kant taught many courses in philosophy and the natural sciences, including
mathematics, theoretical physics, geology, geography, and mineralogy.2 He also
published many treatises on topics in the natural sciences. But he had a weak
constitution that caused frequent concerns about his health, remained single
throughout his life, did not like change, and rarely set foot outside of his hometown.
Because of this disposition, he frequently turned down invitations for positions
from the Prussian Minister of Education and universities in other towns. In his later
years, several of his treatises on religion earned him a reprimand from the king,
Friedrich Wilhelm II. While he remained resolute in his convictions, he neverthe-
less made a promise to the king that he would refrain from lecturing or writing on
religious matters. “As your Majesty’s most loyal subject,” he wrote, “I will here-
after refrain altogether from discoursing publicly, in lectures or in writing, on

1
He offered only private courses and was paid directly by his students at the end of each semester.
He received no salary from the government.
2
Kant was also familiar with subjects in the humanities and was acquainted with his local con-
ditions and the customs of many countries. For instance, he mentioned the Chinese philosophy of
Laozi, and the well-known Chinese shop advertisement: Equally honest with customers old and
young.

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 1

Z. Li, A New Approach to Kant, Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy
of Traditions and Cultures 27, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0239-8_1
2 1 The Sources and Development of Kant’s Thought

religion, whether natural or revealed.”3 With the death of Wilhelm II, Kant felt
released from his promise, and again began to publish religious treatises. He wrote,
“to deny one’s inner conviction is mean, but in such a case as this, silence is the
duty of a subject; and though a man must say only what is true, it is not always a
duty to say all truth publicly.”4 In another place, he said, “although I am absolutely
convinced of many things that I shall never have the courage to say, I shall never
say anything I do not believe.”5 And again, “what I do know is not appropriate for
me to say, yet I don’t know what is appropriate for me to say.”6 All these words
reflected Kant’s discontent with the obscure state of affairs in society, and his
powerlessness to resist such circumstances and conditions. It is easy to grasp the
anguish of being in such a dire situation, since, at that time in Germany, society had
not yet created the sort of atmosphere that had been achieved in France by the
French Revolution.
All that a progressive intellectual with a humble position could do was to remain
silent and resort to roundabout ways of resistance and struggle. Kant was fond of
company, and his conversation was cheerful and humorous. Many of his writings
were written in a colloquial and lively style, filled with captivating language, rich
source materials, and abundant anecdotes of life experiences, yet not desirous of
contention. Nonetheless, his unspectacular life and monotonous daily activities may
have given the impression that he himself, like the style of his most prominent
works, such as the Critique of Pure Reason, was tedious and repetitive, dull and
dry.
But if the style of the Critique of Pure Reason reflected Kant’s apparent lifestyle,
the content of this work reveals the reality of his turbulent age.
It was an age of great progress in modern natural science, and an age when the
tempest of French revolution was in the air.
Although Kant spent the whole of his life in lecture rooms and his study, he
keenly observed the contemporary political situations and social struggles in the
world, and kept a close eye on political trends.7 On the eve of the French
Revolution, conflict was evident everywhere, and society was surging with clashes
among people. An anecdote about Kant even entered the repertoire of the philos-
ophy classroom: it was said that as storms loomed over the academy, Kant, who had
never before interrupted his daily routine, gave up his daily walk in order to

3
October 12, 1794, Kant’s letter to Fredrich Wilhelm II. Kant and Zweig (1986).
4
Kant and Abbott (1898).
5
Letter to Moses Mendelssohn, April 8, 1766. Kant and Zweig (1986).
6
Kant’s comment in a lecture from 1765–66.
7
In a letter to Lindner, October 28, 1759, Kant wrote, “For my part I sit daily at the anvil of my
lectern and guide the heavy hammer of repetitious lectures, constantly beating out the same
rhythm. Now and then I am stirred by some nobler inclination, a desire to extend myself beyond
this narrow sphere; but the blustering voice of Need immediately attacks me and, always truthful in
its threats, promptly drives me back to hard work” (Kant and Zweig 1986). Kant was not all that
content spending 28 h of his life each week in lectures and seminars. But his circumstances left
him no alternative but to direct his energies to hard work in the classroom.
1.1 Historical Background and Political Inclination 3

continue his study of Rousseau’s Émile. As was typical of progressive people in

Germany, Kant absorbed the insights of the French bourgeois revolution, and these
insights, in turn, manifested themselves in his philosophical ideas and constituted a
genuinely valuable aspect of his philosophy.
On the other hand, the actual state of affairs in Germany was indeed lagging
behind the times. Germany was not a unified country, but consisted of many feudal
kingdoms, duchies, and city-states, which were often in a condition of disunity and
isolation. Capitalism was underdeveloped and the citizenry—the bourgeois class—
which was both economically and politically weak, offered ready obedience to the
will of the aristocratic Junkers. Despotic bureaucracy oppressed the people and
suppressed progressive culture, while Marx and Engels expounded on the condi-
tions in Germany at that time:
This was the condition in Germany in the years of the last century. It was a heap of rotting
and decaying nuisance. No one felt at ease in such conditions. Handicraft, commerce,
industry and agriculture in the domestic market were exceedingly destitute. Peasants,
craftsmen and business proprietors suffered double blows, that is, bureaucratic rapacious
levy and impoverished economy … everything is rotten, all is shaken.8

While a rich and powerful bourgeoisie had been in existence in England since
the seventeenth century and in France since the eighteenth century, one can speak
of a German bourgeoisie only from the beginning of the nineteenth century.9
This was the historical context that gave rise to Kant’s philosophy, which
reflected the demands, interests, and aspirations that the bourgeois class, not yet
fully fledged and still weak, in underdeveloped Germany wished to express; it
represented the reaction of the German bourgeois class, in its early stage, to the
French Revolution. Marx remarked that Kant’s philosophy was the “German theory
of the French Revolution.”10 This is a concise and incisive remark. It shows how
Kant’s philosophy embodied the Zeitgeist of the French bourgeois revolution, the
spirit of the times, and the underdeveloped condition of the social classes in
Germany. Kant’s philosophy was the German philosophical sublimation of the
French political revolution.
As Engels has pointed out, the relation of “soaring lofty insights,” such as those
made by religion and philosophy, to the economic base that underlies a society and
its material requirements for existence must be connected by means of intermediate
links. Politics is one of these. The characteristics of the era and social classes that
appeared in Kant’s philosophy were distinctive, particularly in his writings on
political philosophy. Even when he was still quite young, Kant had taken an interest
in political matters. In the 1760s, he studied the works of Rousseau, taking many
notes on his readings. In his “critical period” and his later years, he published a
series of political treatises in which he deliberated upon questions concerning
religion, history, law, the state, and world peace (see Chap. 9). Kantian scholars

8
Engels (1994a).
9
Engels (1994b).
10
Marx (1994).
4 1 The Sources and Development of Kant’s Thought

often pass over or avoid these writings, and in particular they tend not to recognize
the relationship between the political views he expressed in these writings and his
philosophical ideas.11 But as a conscious creator of a philosophical system, Kant
made his political views a crucial aspect of his Weltanschauung and intimately
connected these views to his philosophy (e.g., to ethics). Despite its abstract and
obscure style, Kant’s philosophy had its origins in real life. The social stance and
political perspective that Kant chose to adopt was a decisive factor that shaped the
features of his philosophy.
Kant’s philosophical Weltanschauung took its final shape under the influence of
the same ideological trends that stimulated the French Revolution. At that time,
“Reason” and “Enlightenment” were the banners raised by the bourgeois class in its
battle against feudalism. These ideas were also an essential aspect of Kant’s
Weltanschauung. Kant said: “‘Have the courage to use your own understanding’ is
therefore the motto of the Enlightenment” and “The public use of one’s reason must
be free at all times.”12 As to his political view, Kant disapproved of feudal
hereditary landholding and autocracy and favored the trias politica principle in
which power is divided into the three branches of the legislature, the executive, and
the judiciary, with a parliamentary-republican form of government. This view
expressly articulates the aspirations and interests of the bourgeois class.13 Kant
hailed the American War of Independence and sympathized with the French
Revolution, which he considered to “excite a sympathy bordering on enthusiasm”
in the hearts of all observers. The selfless sacrifices of many individuals in the
Revolution seemed to Kant to testify to the fact that human beings are endowed
with a moral predisposition to pursue the ideal, and that human history and morality
have shown continual progress. He saw the French Revolution as the external
fulfillment of a moral principle and said: “True enthusiasm is always directed
exclusively towards the ideal, particularly towards that which is purely moral (such
as the concept of right), and it cannot be coupled with selfish interests. No pecu-
niary rewards could inspire the opponents of the revolutionaries with that zeal and
greatness of the soul.”14 He later said: “For such an appearance in human history [as
the French Revolution] is not to be forgotten, because it has revealed a tendency
and faculty in human nature for improvement such that no politician, affecting

11
This is the main tendency that holds sway among Kantian scholars. The other tendency tends to
politically caricature Kant’s philosophy. For instance, in Kant’s Political Thought, Hans Saner
remarks that, from the beginning, Kant’s philosophy as a whole is a political philosophy
(Translated by E. B. Ashton, Kant’s Political Thought: Its Origins and Development (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1973)). That is, Kant’s political thought is the essence of his
metaphysics, and his metaphysics is a preparatory work for his political thought. All of Kant’s
writings are permeated with political considerations (from the topic of resistance to his discussion
about peace). But it is wrong to regard Kant’s philosophy as merely an introduction to his political
thought. This argument, albeit novel, does not correspond to the facts.
12
Kant et al. (2006).
13
See Chap. 9.
14
Kant et al. (1996).
1.1 Historical Background and Political Inclination 5

wisdom, might have conjured out of the course of things hitherto existing […] But
even if the end viewed in connection with this event should not now be attained,
even if the revolution or reform of a national constitution should finally miscarry …
that philosophical prophecy still would lose nothing of its force.”15 It is evident
from these remarks that the French Revolution made a great impression on Kant.
On the other hand, in theory and in principle, Kant was against revolution. He
believed that if the law was an expression of the “general will,” then it would be
paradoxical to allow it to be overthrown by violence; and any form of government
would be better than a revolution that forced a civilization to regress to a primitive
state of anarchism. Kant emphasized that we can only address deficiencies in a
system of government through the reforms of legislators themselves, rather than by
means of mass revolution.16 A person can complain and criticize—and “as a
scholar, he is completely free as well as obliged to impart to the public all his
carefully considered, well-intentioned thoughts on the mistaken aspects of those
doctrines”—but he does not have the freedom to rebel.17 Kant advocated the
freedoms of speech and publication, claiming that the “freedom of the pen is the
only safeguard of the rights of the people.”18 Even so, the pen does not have the
freedom to incite revolution: “it must not transcend the bounds of respect and
devotion towards the existing constitution.”19 Kant lived through the reign of King
Frederick II of Prussia (r. 1740–86), who took pride in being a friend and patron to
Voltaire. This made Kant believe that to “rule autocratically and yet to govern in a
republican way, that is, in the spirit of republicanism and on an analogy with it—
that is what makes a nation satisfied with its constitution.”20 Although he disap-
proved of absolute monarchy in theory, Kant hoped for an enlightened sovereign
who would institute a republican constitution, and he advocated evolution instead
of revolution. Therefore, Kant’s political thought was rather contrary to that of the
Jacobins, despite his having been mistaken for a radical Jacobin by many people.
Like many enlightened men in Germany, Kant felt deep sympathy for the French
Revolution in its beginning, but was horrified by the Reign of Terror. He said: “The
revolution of a gifted people which we have seen unfolding in our day may succeed
or miscarry; it may be filled with misery and atrocities to the point that a sensuous
man, were he boldly to hope to execute it successfully the second time, would never
resolve to make the experiment at such cost—this revolution, I say, nonetheless
finds in the hearts of all spectators (who are not engaged in this game themselves) a
wishful participation that borders closely on enthusiasm.”21 This passage

15
Ibid., 304.
16
See The Metaphysics of Morals, Sect. A, and Chap. 9.
17
Kant and Reiss (1991a, 56).
18
Kant, and Hans Siegbert Reiss, “On the Common Saying,” Kant: Political Writings, 32.
19
Ibid., 85.
20
Kant, Allen W. Wood, and George Di Giovanni, “Conflict of Faculties,” Religion and Rational
Theology, 3.
21
Ibid., 2.
6 1 The Sources and Development of Kant’s Thought

eloquently expresses Kant’s conflicted state of mind toward the French Revolution.
He sympathized with it while being terrified by it; he was terrified by its atrocities,
yet sympathetic to its fundamental demands. On account of this, that is, based on
his longing for a republic and his opposition to autocracy, his advocacy of reform
and his objection to revolution, one can say that Kant adopted a political stance of
democratism and a political line of reformism. Marx and Engels pointed out that
Kant embodied “the characteristic form which French liberalism, based on real class
interests, assumed in Germany.”22
This political tendency marks the fundamental difference between the German
Idealism initiated by Kant and French materialism. Engels remarked, “just as in
France in the 18th century, so in Germany in the 19th, a philosophical revolution
ushered in the political collapse. But how different the two looked! The French were
in open combat against all official science, against the church and often also against
the state; their writings were printed across the frontier, in Holland or England,
while they themselves were often in jeopardy of imprisonment in the Bastille. On
the other hand, the Germans were professors, state-appointed instructors of youth;
their writings were recognized textbooks.”23
The works of d’Holbach, La Mettrie, Helvétius, and Rousseau were often printed
abroad or published anonymously and many writers were driven into exile. Kant
and Hegel, however, still held their state-appointed professorships in the Prussian
kingdom. In his writing, Rousseau set down these courageous words: “The popular
insurrection that ends in the death or deposition of a Sultan is as lawful an act as
those by which he disposed, the day before, of the lives and fortunes of his subjects.
As he was maintained by force alone, it is force alone that overthrows him.”24 And
d’Holbach: “Despotism that built upon force and [the] suffering of the people could
never be acknowledged by its oppressed subjects.”25 Kant nevertheless held that
“they have no right to riot, no right to rebel, and have the least right to punish or
execute the sovereign.”26 While Hegel claimed that “the madness resulting from
freedom in the hand of the masses is decidedly horrifying,” and complained of the
“formless mass whose movement and activity can consequently only be elemental,
irrational, barbarous, and terrifying.”27 It is evident from these texts that French and
German philosophies walked distinct political lines.
Arguments about religion, in particular, manifested this difference. D’Holbach
declared that religion was the sworn enemy of the progressive human being, and
denounced the monarch who supported religion for the sake of his own interest.
Kant, in the meantime, defended the authority of religion and urged people to have

22
The German Ideology, A Complete Edition of Marx-Engels, Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
23
Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Marx Engels Internet Archive
1994.
24
Rousseau and Cress (1992).
25
D’Holbach (1994).
26
Kant and Reiss (1991b, 97).
27
Hegel and Sibree (1899).
1.1 Historical Background and Political Inclination 7

faith in God. What he called for was some sort of reform. Even his most radical
book, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, was merely a pale reflection
of the light of the French Revolution, even though it was published at the height of
the Revolution and met with opposition from the king’s censor. It can be said that
Kant’s theory and practice of religion are key links and intermediary agents
between political thought and philosophy. On the one hand, they addressed the
touchy subject of political struggle; on the other hand, they were indispensible to
the philosophical thought of that time.
As a consequence of their dissimilar social classes and political lines, French
bourgeois materialism as represented by La Mettrie, d’Holbach, and Helvétius was
completely different from German classical idealism as represented by Kant and
Hegel.28 The former adopted an unequivocal, determined attitude and marched
forward without hesitation; the latter was equivocal, abstract, and abstruse. In terms
of the paths pursued by the two schools of philosophy, French materialism and
German classical idealism were mutually antagonistic.
Although politically, they favored civic rights, parliamentarianism, and the
abolition of economic and political privileges such as feudal hereditary rights, and
even though their philosophy nevertheless contained many well-grounded insights
and achievements that were certainly beyond the reach of French materialism, the
classical German philosophers adopted the ideological line of idealism. Because of
the cruelty and ferocity of the feudal regime, and the underdeveloped and straitened
social conditions, philosophers in Germany could only lose themselves in their
study, letting their souls soar freely in the air instead of taking action.
Through profound contemplation (philosophy) and passion (poetry and music),
they achieved unprecedented heights that those who were engrossed in everyday
life could not reach. However, this fact also caused their philosophy to fall often
into sharp contradictions. In Hegel, the conflict lies with the paradoxical position of
dialectics in his idealistic system, whereas in Kant it is marked by a manifest
dualism. On the one hand, Kant emphasizes the Enlightenment and lays great stress
on science, claiming that the existence of God cannot be deduced from theory; on
the other hand, he works to preserve a domain for religion, relocating the question
of the existence of God to the domain of faith. In Kant’s philosophy, the
dichotomies between science and religion, theoretical reason and practical reason,
“appearance” and “the thing in itself,” and empirical evidence and a priori forms
exhibit this conflict well.

28
This is only a claim about general states of affairs and principal tendencies. It is another matter
whether or not the French materialists forthrightly endorsed the violence of the French Revolution,
or whether the Revolutionists approved of their theory. For instance, d’Holbach opposed the
Revolution. He feared the “tumult” of mass violence. Robespierre, leader of the Jacobins, and the
leftist Zola adamantly opposed and refuted atheism and materialism. Robespierre even smashed
the statue of Helvétius, a notorious atheistical materialist. This complex situation demands further
analysis.
8 1 The Sources and Development of Kant’s Thought

1.2 Sources of Kant’s Thought

In addition to reality, Kant’s philosophical thought draws from other philosophical

ideas as well. Kant says that he was awakened from his Leibniz-Wolffian dogmatic
slumber by Hume.29 In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant’s major philosophical
work, he mentions Locke and Leibniz in several places; while in the second edition
of the Critique, he again emphasizes the ideas of Berkeley and Descartes. Kant’s
philosophy carries forward past heritage and opens up future possibilities. He
begins from the accumulated knowledge of the past and then reviews, analyzes, and
critiques European philosophy of previous generations so as to pose new questions
upon this examined ground. His philosophy marks a historical turning point in the
history of European philosophy. Engels remarks that “the political revolution of
France was accompanied by a philosophical revolution in Germany. Kant began it
by overthrowing the old system of Leibnitzian metaphysics, which at the end of last
century was introduced in all Universities of the Continent.”30
I will present a brief review of the schools of modern European philosophy that
are relevant to Kant’s thoughts, mainly the so-called schools of rationalism and
empiricism.
Bacon (1561–1626) and Descartes (1596–1650) are the originators of modern
European philosophy. Bacon introduced The New Organon, which focuses on
experiments and thus becomes the forerunner of British empiricism. While
Descartes—with his well-known philosophical proposition “cogito ergo sum,”
which expresses his view that while the existence of all things can be doubted, we
cannot doubt that we are thinking while we are doubting, and from which he
concluded that the I who is thinking must necessarily exist—emphasizes reason and
deduction, and seeks to deduce all knowledge from the principle of “clarity and
distinctness.” Descartes thereby becomes the forerunner of continental idealism in
Western European countries such as France, Germany, and Holland. He holds that
mathematical theorems—e.g., that the three angles of a triangle equal two right
angles—are the clear, distinct, and self-evident knowledge of a priori reason.
Idealism seeks knowledge of universally necessary truths, such as “innate ideas,”
that are attributable to reason. For Spinoza (1632–1677), “that method will be most
perfect which affords the standard of the given idea of the most perfect being
whereby we may direct our mind.”31 “It is in the nature of reason to perceive things
truly, namely, as they are in themselves—that is, not as contingent, but as neces-
sary.”32 Spinoza holds that that which is conceived by perception is perishable and

29
Christian Wolff (1679–1754), although he rejected the term “philosophy of Leibniz and Wolff,”
systemized Leibnizan philosophy and his dogmatic rationalism enjoyed prestige and influence in
Germany. Kant usually alludes to Wolff’s doctrines whenever he discusses metaphysical
dogmatism.
30
Engels (1994c).
31
Benedictus de Spinoza and Elwes (1955).
32
Ibid., 114.
1.2 Sources of Kant’s Thought 9

illusory knowledge which can only leave contingent traces on human beings. He
intends to deduce all necessary knowledge from “a priori reason” and “self-evident
truisms.”
Kant is influenced most by Leibniz (1646–1716), an idealistic rationalist who
believed that the universe is composed of independent and isolated monads that are
“the sources of internal activities” and “incorporeal automata” and that contain
various levels of perception and entelechy. Entelechy, or the soul with motility, can
enable us to cognize necessary truth. To Leibniz, animal cognition relies entirely on
experience and association, while human cognition relies on innate reason and the
attainment of necessary knowledge such as mathematics. Leibniz explains that
“only reason can establish reliable rules […] construct necessary inferences,
involving unbreakable links. This last often lets us foresee events without having to
experience links between images, as beasts must.”33 The sensationalists have a
well-known principle that there is nothing in the human mind that has not first
appeared to the senses. Leibniz agrees with this principle, but with an addition,
namely, that there is nothing but intellect. For him, only the mind can provide
universal and necessary deductive truths. For instance, concepts such as substance
and causality cannot be obtained through sensible experience. Perception can
provide only contingent and unreliable instances, or “truths of fact.” Therefore,
Leibniz claims that the sources and standards of truth and knowledge are innate
ideas and self-evident principles that are in the intellect a priori, while external
objects merely awaken the intellect. The law of noncontradiction in formal logic is
the principle by which universal and necessary deductive truths are attained, while
the law of sufficient reason is the basis of truth for facts. There is a cause for the
being of everything, with God as the final cause, or sufficient reason, at the end of
an endless series of causes. In short, God, reason, and formal logic become the
sanctuary for all truths, and the fundamental approach for seeking truth. Descartes
employed psychology to provide an ontological argument for the existence of God,
a thesis held by medieval theologists (who deduced the existence of God based on
their idea of a perfect being). Leibniz accepted this view as well. His concurrence
indicates that although rationalists rejected experience and relied solely on reason,
they could not distinguish right from wrong, or science from religion. The universal
and necessary knowledge they sought was, in fact, not truth. Some of their so-called
knowledge was metaphysical dogma that went against the tide of modern science.
At the outset, in an effort to resist the church and throw off the shackles of religion,
rationalism placed emphasis on reason. But as science moved forward, rationalism,
conversely, fell into the grip of crisis. This reversal made a deep impression on
Kant.
Leibniz, in refuting Locke, clearly points out that Locke’s emphasis on expe-
rience places him near Aristotle, while Leibniz himself is closer to Plato. In contrast
with the Platonic Leibniz, Locke (1632–1704) is the representative of materialistic
empiricism. He opposes innate ideas and maintains that all knowledge comes from

33
Leibniz et al. (1996).
10 1 The Sources and Development of Kant’s Thought

the senses. Locke says, “let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper
void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to be furnished? […]
Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one
word, from EXPERIENCE. In that all our knowledge is founded; and from that it
ultimately derives itself.”34 “First, our senses, conversant about particular sensible
objects, do convey into the mind several distinct perceptions of things, according to
those various ways wherein those objects do affect them. And thus we come by
those ideas we have of yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter, sweet, and all
those which we call sensible qualities.”35 For Locke, the intellect exists merely to
store, repeat, compare, and unite these simple ideas; while all complex ideas are
simply those that mechanically unite a certain number of simple ideas. Therefore,
reason cannot transcend the simple ideas provided by the senses. Because all things
are particular beings, abstract ideas are merely their nominal essences; cognition
does not make an essential distinction between the stages of sensibility and of
reason, nor is it concerned with universal and necessary knowledge. Locke only
concerns himself with the empirical qualities of perception. He proceeds from
experience of the senses and distinguishes primary qualities (solidity, extension,
figure, motion or rest, number, etc.) and secondary qualities (sounds, colors, odors,
tastes, etc.). He asserts that the primary qualities belong to the object itself, while
secondary qualities are, in truth, nothing in the objects themselves but rather their
power to produce various sensations in us through their primary qualities, i.e.,
through the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of their insensible parts: “Whatever
reality we by mistake attribute to them, are in truth nothing in the objects them-
selves.”36 Thus, Locke holds that sounds, colors, odors, and tastes depend on that
which is perceived.
Bishop Berkeley mostly follows and expands on Locke’s empirical doctrine.
Berkeley (1685–1753) contends that since secondary qualities depend on primary
qualities, primary and secondary qualities should be inseparably associated. It is
unimaginable to have an object with only extension, figure, and motion, but without
color or sound. “For my own part, I see evidently that it is not in my power to frame
an idea of a body extended and moving, but I must withal give it some colour or
other sensible quality […] Where therefore the other sensible qualities are, there
must these be also, to wit, in the mind and nowhere else.”37 Berkeley asserts that
“all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word all those bodies which
compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind,
that their being is to be perceived or known.”38 In other words, esse est percipi, no
material being exists. Berkeley concludes that it is God rather than substance that
gives human beings their sensations and ideas.

34
Locke (1959).
35
Ibid.
36
Ibid., 76.
37
Berkeley (1990).
38
Ibid.
1.2 Sources of Kant’s Thought 11

Hume (1711–1776), following this tradition, carries empiricism to utter skepti-

cism and agnosticism. Berkeley has transformed being into a matter of perception;
however, perception itself is a mere heap of chaotic and instantaneous impressions,
thereby prompting the question of how to connect all these instantaneous impres-
sions so as to constitute knowledge according to some principle. Hume holds that
knowledge arises from habits and associations, and that no objective orders and
principles exist. Thus, rationalism’s conviction that the validity of universality and
necessity is derived from rational deduction cannot be established. Hume asserts
that “causes and effects are discoverable, not by reason but by experience”;
moreover, “after the constant conjunction of two objects—heat and flame, for
instance, weight and solidity—we are determined by custom alone to expect the one
from the appearance of the other […] All inferences from experience, therefore, are
effects of custom, not of reasoning.”39 Therefore, we can only see that flame and
heat, snow and cold, the body (motion of the limbs) and the soul (the activities of
the will) have always been conjoined, yet their relations of cause and effect are
utterly unknowable to us. It is also unknowable what power makes one event follow
another, or arouses our ideas. Therefore, apart from the necessary analytic propo-
sitions of mathematics, which are unrelated to experience, all scientific knowledge
concerning experience is a form of probabilistic reasoning; there is no guarantee of
its validity or its universal necessity. There is no universally applicable, objective
truth. All truth is merely people’s customary experience. We believe that the sun
will rise tomorrow simply because we have seen it rising every day.
Hence, we can see that empiricists such as Hume, who attribute the origin of
knowledge entirely to sense experience, will reject the existence of God, religious
miracles, and spiritual entities. Meanwhile, they reject the existence of a material
world and its objective laws independent of human subjective consciousness. More
pointedly than any other philosopher, Hume’s skepticism lays bare the character of
the problem embedded in the system of modern philosophy, which sees sense
experience as its starting point. His theory still possesses great influence today.
From Bacon to Hume, empiricism and the inductive method can no longer
vouchsafe the validity and universal necessity demanded by science for objective
content. That is to say, they cannot prove the truth of knowledge. On the other
hand, from Descartes to Leibniz, neither can rationalism and the deductive method
offer such a guarantee. Although both rationalism and empiricism have cast off their
shackles of medieval theology and oppose feudal ignorance, the one stresses human
the understanding, while the other emphasizes our perception; the one asserts that
only the understanding can attain truth, while the other holds that only sense
experience can provide truth. Both intend to establish a philosophical proof and a
basis for the natural science that was flourishing at that time; however, empiricism
eventually falls into skepticism, while rationalism ends in downright fideism. The
great mathematician Leibniz made an immense effort to prove the existence of God

39
Hume (1990).
12 1 The Sources and Development of Kant’s Thought

and religion. The historian Hume, who wrote volumes on British history, rejected
the existence and knowability of any objective laws. However, from Galileo to
Newton, natural science made a triumphal progression that allowed people to gain
knowledge that was, as Galileo puts it, comparable to God’s. Now the ground of
scientific knowledge in turn becomes a problem. How is true scientific knowledge
possible? How is the objective validity and universal necessity of natural science,
which at that time had made genuine achievements, possible? These questions pose
great difficulties for philosophy. On the one hand, they raise the puzzle of how to
tackle questions such as the existence of God. (All these questions are then again
associated with social and political problems.) Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, and
Berkeley acknowledge or even advocate for the existence of God. Spinoza’s God is
the totality of nature, while Hume retains a skeptical stance toward God. In short, to
these philosophers, epistemology (knowledge of God) is still mingled with ontol-
ogy (the existence of God), and has yet to be distinguished from it. Can religion,
like science, possess objective truth? What are the differences between religion and
science? How can the status and significance of science and religion be explained?
These puzzles became great difficulties at that time. Empiricism and rationalism
were obviously incapable of solving these problems.
French materialism in the eighteenth century pushed empiricism into downright
sensualism. The materialists advocated that all knowledge arose from the senses,
and they opposed the existence of God. However, the senses and experience to
which they referred were mere individual perceptions and passive observations.
Their understanding of universal, rational knowledge was quite inadequate and,
therefore, they were unable to transcend Locke’s standpoint or to solve the problem
of the universal necessity of scientific knowledge.
Hence, the problem, historically and logically, lay before Kant, who was con-
versant with the diverse schools of philosophy and the disciplines of natural science
of that time.
We often read in books on the history of philosophy that Kant is a synthesizer of
Continental rationalism and British empiricism. While this claim is a prevalent
cliché, it nevertheless contains some truth and reveals some of the characteristics of
Kantian epistemology. However, if read as an inclusive outline of Kant’s philos-
ophy, then it is not quite on point. First, the claim endorses a Hegelian history of
philosophy that describes the development of philosophy solely in accordance with
the evolvement of ideas; it therefore explains and defines Kant from that philo-
sophical perspective, rather than from the actual origins of Kant’s philosophy.
Second, and more importantly, this claim stresses epistemology and fails to adopt a
comprehensive review of Kant’s philosophy that includes ethics and aesthetics.
Third, rationalism and empiricism each included schools with materialistic and
idealistic tendencies; therefore, by simplistically asserting that Kant synthesized
rationalism and materialism, the claim would seem to have glossed over the rather
entangled situation in philosophy. For instance, the claim is commonly understood
as saying that the terminal point for Hume is the starting point for Kant, and that
philosophy develops in a direct line from Hume to Kant. In so doing,
eighteenth-century French materialism, which is nearly contemporary with Kant, is
1.2 Sources of Kant’s Thought 13

written off at one stroke. Kant in fact very much admires Epicurus and Locke, and
claims that he disagrees with Berkeley and Descartes. This stance reveals the
materialistic origins and inclinations of his philosophy. But the idealism of Plato,
Leibniz, and Hume also had great influence on him as well.40 A great part of that
which he inherits and synthesizes belongs to idealistic rationalism (Leibniz) and
idealistic empiricism (Hume). But among the views that he rejects is the reflection
theory of eighteenth-century French materialism, which is the main target of his
ethics. In this sense, one cannot grasp Kantian philosophy without appreciating
French materialism. It is therefore rather simplistic to say that Kant synthesizes
rationalism and empiricism.

1.3 The Definitive Influence of Newton and Rousseau

Significantly, however, what conclusively determines Kant’s philosophy and

affords it a positive content is neither the schools of rationalism and empiricism, nor
any philosophers.
Rather, it is the trends of natural science, as represented by Newton (1643–
1727), and the French Revolution, as represented by Rousseau (1712–1778).
Newton and Rousseau embodied the zeitgeist of the pursuit of science and
democracy at the time that the bourgeois class was taking shape. Their influence on
Kant is the most significant. Their influence extends not only to suppling Kant with
materials for thought, but also to providing for Kant’s philosophy a distilled
expression of reality. Newton and Rousseau are the pacesetters of that age. It is
through them that vast reality casts its profound light and shadow on Kant. As will
be shown later, we can see through the developing course of Kant’s philosophy
that, from early on, Kant studied and believed Galileo and Newton, advocated
modern science, was actively involved in the pursuit of natural science, and pro-
posed important discoveries and ideas. On the other hand, he was originally
devoted to studies of metaphysics and Weltanschauung, such as religion and the-
ology. On the eve of the French Revolution, Rousseau’s works, which were
well-known representatives of the ideas of the time, revealed a series of crises in
society, politics, religion, and education, thus giving urgent and genuine signifi-
cance to stale metaphysical questions, which made these questions all the more
appealing to Kant. The problems of natural science and contemporary society are
the soil that nourishes Kant’s philosophy. Science and democracy were the two
fundamental problems in Kant’s time as well as for many coming generations. This

40
The extent to which Kant read and grasped the works of the representatives of rationalism and
empiricism is still much debated. Many modern Kant scholars assert that Kant did not actually read
Berkeley’s major works, and that his knowledge of Leibniz’s New Essays on Human
Understanding came fairly late due to the publication date of the book. Hermann J. de
Vleeshauwer even claims that Kant was not much influenced by Hume.
14 1 The Sources and Development of Kant’s Thought

is also where Kant is most influenced by Newton and Rousseau, and takes in the
most advanced thought of his time.
Beginning with the ground of scientific experiments and social reality, and
connecting these with the material provided by the history of philosophy, Kant
realized that science, which dealt with questions concerning nature, was advancing
at a swift speed; while philosophy, which dealt with fundamental questions con-
cerning human beings and the universe (including the fundamental question of the
truth of natural science), was completely frustrated under the sway of rationalism
and empiricism. For instance, Newton’s laws of mechanics, as a major scientific
achievement, had dominated the eighteenth century. The rationalists regarded
Newton’s achievement as the result of Descartes’s emphasis on mathematics and
deduction, while the empiricists considered it to be an accomplishment of obser-
vation and experiment. Despite the fact that Newton wa mainly influenced by
Bacon’s empiricism, and actually had an aversion to Descartes’s rationalism, he
nevertheless explicitly declared that his method was inductive.
However, the scientific method of the modern natural sciences, from Galileo to
Newton, is identical neither with rationalistic geometric deduction, nor with
empirical description and induction. This scientific method neither sets great store
by the senses, nor relies solely on reason; rather, it combines experiment and
mathematics, experience and reason. Experiments are conducted under the guidance
of reason, while mathematics is not a form of reason that is void of sensibility. In
short, the turning point in the history of science and in epistemology is the
employment of the experimental method in modern science.41
Therefore, according to this standard, science (knowledge) would have to
abandon the old rationalistic metaphysics that did not utilize experience. This
included the pseudo-sciences, which had attempted to prove the existence of God
since the Middle Ages. On the other hand, skeptical empiricism, which denies
necessary truth, could hardly stand on sound footing.
Knowledge is for the sake of practice, and science, therefore, is eventually meant
to be in the service of human beings, and has a lower status than that of human
beings. Then, what is the nature and purpose of human beings? To state the
question in the terms prevalent at that time, metaphysical questions are the so-called
questions concerning freedom, the soul, and God. Can these questions be trans-
formed into universal necessary scientific knowledge like Newton’s laws of
mechanics? If they can not, where lies the way out? On the one hand, there is the
mechanism of nature (a position in the grip of materialism), and on the other hand,
there is teleology with society as its pillar (a tenacious stronghold of idealism); on
the one hand, Newton’s causal laws, on the other, Rousseau’s human freedom. Kant
makes a great effort to reconcile and synthesize these two sides.
Therefore, instead of saying that Kant is a synthesizer of continental rationalism
and British empiricism, it would be more appropriate to say that he critically
synthesizes mechanism and teleology, as well as Newton and Rousseau. In the

41
See Chap. 2.
1.3 The Definitive Influence of Newton and Rousseau 15

meantime, the synthesis involves an intricate fusion of the above mentioned

rationalism and empiricism, along with a philosophy revolution that overthrows the
metaphysics of Leibniz-Wolff.
After having studied diverse works on natural science and sociology, and
digested nourishment from various schools, Kant set out to construct his own
philosophical system and put forth his singular thoughts. Herder, his former student
who later becomes his opponent, recalled:
His lecturing was discourse at its most entertaining. In precisely the spirit with which he
examined [the philosophers] Leibniz, Wolff, Baumgarten, Hugo Grotius, and Hume and
pursued the natural laws of the physicists Kepler and Newton, he took up those works of
Rousseau which were then appearing, Émile and Héloïse, just as he did every natural
discovery known to him, evaluated them and always came back to unprejudiced knowledge
of nature and the moral worth of mankind.42

Books on the history of philosophy evaluate Kant with such statements as:
He passed through the school of the Wolffian metaphysics and through an acquaintance
with the German popular philosophers; he plunged into Hume’s profound statement of
problems, and was enthusiastic for Rousseau’s gospel of Nature; the mathematical rigour of
the Newtonian natural philosophy, the fineness of the psychological analysis of the origin
of human ideas and volitions found in English literature, Deism from Toland and
Shaftesbury to Voltaire, the honourable spirit of freedom with which the French
Enlightenment urged the improvement of political and social conditions, all these had found
in the young Kant a true co-worker.43

All these remarks demonstrate that the sources of Kant’s philosophy and the
road to synthesizing these sources in order to construct his own system are rather
complicated. For Kant, the process is long and full of twists and turns. The essence
of the problem reveals itself in the process.

1.4 Critical Period

According to Kant himself, the development of his philosophy is generally divided

into two stages, the pre-critical period and the critical period, with his major works
(the three Critiques, and, in particular, the Critique of Pure Reason) as the dividing
line. However, the division is not a dramatic turn, but a qualitative change resulting
from accumulation of a series of quantitative changes.44
Kant was originally a follower of Leibniz-Wolffian idealistic rationalism, which
is a school of philosophy that renders obedience to religion and theology. Theology

42
Herder, Letters for the Advancement of Human being. Letter 79. Kant would use Baumgarten’s
books, such as his Metaphysics, as textbooks for his class. However, this does not imply that Kant
agrees with Baumgarten’s views.
43
Wilhelm (1935). The popular philosophers refer to such thinkers as Moses Mendelssohn.
44
There is ongoing debate about the development of Kant’s philosophy, including the exact date
and extent of Hume’s influence. I do not intend to go into detail on this topic.
16 1 The Sources and Development of Kant’s Thought

was the dominant discipline in the domain of philosophy at that time, and phi-
losophy classrooms were filled with transcendental theology (philosophical proofs
of religion), transcendental psychology (philosophical theology that argues for
immortality), and the doctrine of transcendental cosmology (expounding on the idea
that the universe is a creation of God, and that time and space have a beginning).
Kant was brought up in a pietist household that stressed religious devotion,
humility, and literal interpretation of the Bible. He was implanted with strict reli-
gious instructions in his early years and might well have become a theologian or a
mediocre instructor of Wolffian philosophy. However, his interest and study of
Newton’s laws of mechanics played a decisive role in the development of his
thought. In 1746, Kant published his maiden work (1746, but published in 1749),
Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces.45 In this book, he argues that
bodies are not passive objects relying solely on external forces; they internally
possess sources of motion, that is, living forces (gravity and repulsion). This
position reveals that the young Kant has already formed a clear awareness of the
conflicts between Newton and Leibniz, between the new scientific method and the
old metaphysics. Leibniz’s monadology, with its theory that the universe is com-
posed of isolated monads, contradicts Newton’s mechanical conception of the
universe in which everything is interrelated. Likewise, Leibniz’s emphasis on
internal causes of motion and teleological ideas is again contradictory with
Newton’s mechanism. Various disputes concerning questions about space and the
infinite, which were entangled with theology at that time, brought certain funda-
mental problems in natural science before the altar of philosophy, including
questions concerning absolute and relative space, the infinite divisibility of matter,
logic and reality, the laws of causality, and the principle sufficient reason. All these
debates accentuated the scientific method, and the boundary and purpose of science
and its relation to philosophy and theology. Classical mechanics (Newton’s) and its
difficulties had gone beyond the boundary of natural science, its conflicts with the
old metaphysics (Leibniz’s) expressed themselves in its divergence in philosophical

45
This book is of great importance because for the first time some of the characteristics of Kant’s
thought are displayed. First, there is the spirit of creative inquiry, daring to challenge tradition and
authority. In the Preface, Kant points out that due to prejudice and the reign of traditional
authorities, annonymous writers who dared to publish their own ideas to improve science were
often ridiculed by apparently learned scholars. But “the truth, for which many great men have
strived in vain, open first to my mind” (Chaps. 1, 55). Second, this book displays his interest in
philosophical meanings and problems in his inquiry into natural science. Kant said that he did not
“discuss whether or not active force or motivating force is important in mechanics and physics; but
it is important in metaphysics,” because it is related to the problems of matter, spirit, substance, the
soul, and God. Third, Kant asserts in this book that when two parties of equal intelligence hold
different opinions, truth often can be found in their midst; for him this was an assertion “that I have
always used as a rule in the investigation of truth” (Chaps. 2, 20) and was, in fact, a means for
coming up with a compromise. Last and most important, Kant pays characteristically close
attention to conflicts (as well as testing his argument from the opposite side). All these charac-
teristics will turn up time and again in Kant’s works.
1.4 Critical Period 17

methodology and epistemology, of which Kant was well aware.46 From his early
works to his Opus Postumum, Kant made many inquiries into pure natural science
that should be examined within this context. Kant’s philosophical system, in par-
ticular, needs to be examined within this context, namely, in the light of the forceful
influence of natural science. We can see that Kant investigates specialized disci-
plines of natural science from a philosophical point of view, and his treatises on
natural science have a distinctive philosophical character. Kant often focuses on
scientific topics that are fundamental or intimately related to the interests of
humankind. Unlike most natural scientists, he insists on examining and dealing
with problems from a philosophical point of view, and sets great store on
methodology, a systematic view, and universal theorization. It is from such a spirit
of scientific inquiry that Kant’s philosophical ideas first arise and then flourish.
In the 1850s, Kant published a series of original works on natural science, e.g.,
on tidal friction and lunar attraction, that were a rejection of a doctrine on the aging
of the earth, and on a theory of wind. Meanwhile, he also published philosophical
works. In his essay Meditations on Fire, Kant says, “I have everywhere carefully
guarded against freely indulging, as often happens, in hypothetical and arbitrary
proofs, and have followed as diligently as possible the thread of experience and
geometry, without which the way out of the labyrinth of nature can hardly be
found.”47 In an essay on earthquakes, Kant refuted the view that regarded the
misfortunes brought about by earthquakes as God’s punishment being meted out on
the afflicted cities, and he urged people to learn to rationally face these calamities.
He urged that the natural philosopher’s obligation to the public, in the face of such
great events that affected the fate of all mankind, is to give an exposition of the
insights yielded by observation and investigation (Kant’s study on earthquakes is a
response to the Lisbon earthquake of 1755).48 In his treatise “New Theory on
Motion and Statics,” Kant maintained that a static object is static relative to another
object, an object in motion changes its location relative to another.49 This remark is
full of scientific and philosophical insight.
Kant’s most important work in this period is the Universal Natural History and
Theory of Heaven (1755), in which he develops a nebular hypothesis. Kant makes
use of Newton’s laws of mechanics (the law of universal gravitation) as his
foundation, and creatively explains the origin of the heavenly bodies and the
development of the universe. He breaks free of the rejected possibility of a
mechanical doctrine of cosmogony, and of Newton’s theology, which sees the
origin and order of planetary motion as arranged by God. Kant asserts that it is the
struggle, movement, and interaction between the two opposing forces of attraction

46
As is shown in his essay The Employment in Natural Philosophy of Metaphysics Combined with
Geometry, of Which Sample I Contains the Physical Monadology (1756).
47
Kant and Watkins (2012).
48
“On the Causes of Earthquakes on the Occasion of the Calamity that Befell the Western
Countries of Europe towards the End of Last Year” (1756).
49
New Theory on Motion and Statics (1758).
18 1 The Sources and Development of Kant’s Thought

and repulsion that produced the solar system and other heavenly bodies. This
process does not rely on divine intervention, nor does it need an initial catalyst
through an external force, as Newton emphasized. Kant’s natural cosmogony is
consistent with his views on natural science, as displayed in a series of works
published before and after this book. These works express the materialistic incli-
nation in his views of natural science during this period. This inclination is also
inseparable from Kant’s study of Greek materialism (mainly Atomism). In the
Universal Natural History and Theory of Heaven, Kant states that “I will therefore
not deny that Lucretius’s theory or that of his predecessors Epicurus, Leucippus,
and Democritus, has much in common with mine.” “The whirlpools that arose out
of the perturbed motion of the atoms were a centre piece of the theories of
Leucippus and Democritus, and they will also be found in ours.”50 Kant explains
the unity exhibited in the development of nature by means of the cause of pure
substance (confirmed by causality in Newton’s laws of mechanics). Engels highly
praises Kant’s achievement, noting that “the first breach in this petrified outlook on
nature was made not by a natural scientist but by a philosopher. In 1755 appeared
Kant’s Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens. The question of the
initial impulse was abolished; the earth and the whole solar system appeared as
something that had come into being in the course of time.”51 Engels also remarks
that “Kant made the first breach in this conception, which corresponded exactly to
the metaphysical mode of thought, and he did it in such a scientific way that most of
the proofs furnished by him still hold good today.”52 “Kant began his career by
resolving the stable solar system of Newton and its eternal duration, after the
famous initial impulse had once been given, into the result of a historic process.”53
In the Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, Kant declared,
“give me matter and I will build you a world out of it. That is, give me matter and I
will show you how a world is to come into being out of it. Because if matter
endowed with an essential attractive force is present, then it is not difficult to
determine those causes that can have contributed to the arrangement of the world
system, viewed on the large scale.” We can see that Kant’s view of the universe and
his conception of nature (apart from organisms) are basically mechanical and
materialistic.
However, we should also see that Kant’s mechanical and materialistic concep-
tion of nature is not his Weltanschauung. Mechanical materialism is the
Weltanschauung of French materialists. They apply mechanism to everything,
arguing that both human beings and animals are machines, and even social events
can be explained by mechanical causality. Kant rejects this view and holds that
mechanical movement can explain the universe, but not a caterpillar, because
mechanism can not comprehend and explain phenomena of life. On the one hand,

50
Kant and Jaki (1981).
51
Engels (1994d).
52
Engels (1994e).
53
Ibid.
1.4 Critical Period 19

this conviction indicates that Kant sees that organized beings are essentially placed
higher in the hierarchy than mechanical movement. On the other hand, it also
reveals that Newton’s laws of mechanics can neither satisfy Kant’s mind, nor solve
the philosophical problems with which Kant is most concerned. Newton’s laws of
mechanics can hardly be used to explain organized beings, not to mention regu-
lating the morality of humankind. Their failure to accomplish the latter task is what
Kant cannot possibly countenance. In the field of morality, Leibniz’s teleology and
traditional theology still have predominant influence over him. In the Universal
Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, Kant raises his doubt: “Does not this
move one to ask: Why did matter have to have precisely such laws as have order
and propriety as their purpose? […] Does this not provide an undeniable proof of
their common first origin, which must be an all-sufficient highest mind in which the
natures of things were designed in accordance with unified purposes?” Kant
believes that “a God exists precisely because nature cannot behave in any way other
than in a regular and orderly manner, even in chaos.” Kant maintains that the
movement of matter can explain the evolution of the universe and the origin of
heavenly bodies; but matter and the laws of mechanics cannot explain the cause of
the existence of the universe. God, though not the architect, is nevertheless the
designer of the universe; God is not the agent of the initial impulse, but is never-
theless the first cause of the universe. Kant argues for the existence of God by
means of the natural order, laws, and teleology, and maintains that time does have a
beginning, despite its not having an end. God created the world for the sake of
humankind, therefore the laws of mechanics cannot go beyond the law of nature,
whereas the law of nature in turn can only be explained by teleology. Thus, it is
evident that Kant’s philosophical Weltanschauung is, at that time, intrinsically the
same as traditional idealism. In other words, Kant theoretically averred the exis-
tence of God and assumed the stance of the old metaphysics and natural theology,
both of which he would unrelentingly criticize in the Critique of Pure Reason. In
spite of the fact that his Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens is of
high philosophical value, it does not express, contrary to the opinions held by many
Chinese scholars, a higher level Weltanschauung and philosophical thought than
Kant had at the time of his writing of the three Critiques.
In fact, Kant’s thorough inquiry into natural science leaves him with some
skepticism about the old metaphysics and theology, such as belief in the existence
of God. Just like Newton, Kant had spent many years inquiring into natural science,
with the intention of “transcending from natural science to the knowledge of God.”
Newton saw the existence of God as the first cause, while Kant intended to use
teleological proof to demonstrate the existence of a God who has a will. However,
his argument cannot be supported by experience or evidence. Kant confessed that
he mulled over the question of the existence of God for eight or nine years. It was
not until 1763 that he firmly concluded in a treatise that “it is thoroughly necessary
that one should be convinced of God’s existence; but it is not nearly so necessary
20 1 The Sources and Development of Kant’s Thought

that it be demonstrated.”54 Nonetheless, Kant does present an argument for the

existence of God in the treatise. On the other hand, he refutes, one by one,
well-known conventional arguments such as the ontological argument and the
cosmological argument. Kant stresses the investigation of the natural causes of all
things and states that one should not always attribute the cause to God, nor is the
miracle of God’s creation necessary to metaphysical questions. Meanwhile, he
laments his misfortune in inquiring into these metaphysical questions, because “the
bottomless abyss of metaphysics” is like “a dark and shoreless ocean, marked by no
beacons.” Evidently, Kant is, at that time, frustrated and distressed by the diffi-
culties encountered in his investigation.
One of the important achievements Kant made during this time of distressing
investigation was to break away from Leibniz-Wolffian rationalistic metaphysics.
Kant becomes increasingly aware that the question of whether or not the existence
of one thing is caused by the existence of another cannot be determined purely by
speculative and formal logic. He stated that “one cannot deduce that it is real just for
the reason that I cannot think it is unreal.”55 Metaphysical theories about beings,
e.g., the rationalistic ontological proof of the existence of God, are precisely
grounded in the deductive reasoning of formal logic, hence they cannot be sound.
For an argument to be sound, it must survive the test of experience. Kant is quite
dissatisfied with rationalists’ identification of the logical relations (universal and
necessary) of reasoning with the logical relations of objective reality, and deducing
the latter from the former.
Kant expresses this stance in the treatise “Attempt to Introduce the Concept of
Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy,” published in the same year. In the treatise,
Kant criticizes the confusion of the questions concerning being and cognition,
actuality and concept, the logic of objective reality and the logic of reasoning. He
stresses that formal logic, which is exalted by rationalism, cannot provide the
ground for objective reality. We cannot deduce, on the ground of formal logic, rain
from the notion of wind. Kant maintains that, for instance, the negative number in
mathematics is not based on formal logic, rather it is a negation of reality. In formal
logic, affirmation is in opposition to negation, both cannot be true at the same time.
Whereas in reality, they can be true at the same time. Formal logic does not allow A
as well as not A; however, mathematics allows a given number, A, to be both
positive and negative. Negation and opposition in real life are different from con-
flicts in formal logic. In reality, conflicts and negations do not have mere negative
significance. Instead, they have positive aspects as well. Two opposites can co-exist
in the evolution of one thing. Kant gives many examples of conflicts from everyday
life. This treatise foretells Kant’s later viewpoint that mathematics is related to the
experience of the senses rather than to formal logic. More significantly, the treatise
demonstrates that Kant attaches great importance to actual conflicts, that he
demands breaking through the law of identity and the law of non-conflict in

54
Kant and Treash (1979).
55
The prize essay of 1763. Kant et al. (1992a, 259).
1.4 Critical Period 21

traditional formal logic, and that he is already contemplating some of the important
concepts that will constitute a part of his critical system, such as setting great store
by synthetic judgments in contrast with analytic judgments, putting forward a priori
logic in contrast with formal logic, criticizing Leibniz’s confusing the identity of
concepts (formal logic) with the identity of sensibility (mathematics), and deriving
the latter from the former. These are the philosophical fruits that Kant collected
after having investigated natural science for many years. These insights demonstrate
that Kant is gradually turning away from investigations of a general science of
nature to those of philosophical theory, and that with an increasing purposiveness
he concentrates on the fundamental philosophical questions—in particular, from the
viewpoint of the relation of being and cognition, concerning how to prove the
possibility of universal and necessary scientific truth, and how to prove the
impossibility of the old metaphysics that claims the existence of God and
immortality to be scientific truth? These are the questions that occupy Kant’s
thoughts.
Kant introduced a basic concept in mathematics, negative magnitudes, into
philosophy.
Meanwhile he stressed that mathematical and philosophical methods are fun-
damentally different. In the treatise “Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the
Principles of Natural Theology and Morality,” which came in second to
Mendelssohn’s Prize Essay in the Berlin Royal Academy of Science essay com-
petition in 1767, Kant presents an answer that directly contradicts the position of
Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn claims that metaphysics is as certain as geometry, but
is more difficult to understand. This is a conventional rationalistic stance. Kant
disagrees with this view and argues that philosophical metaphysics is fundamen-
tally different from mathematical geometry. Mathematics arrives at knowledge by
constructing its objects from definition.
Philosophy, on the other hand, cannot proceed in this same fashion. Instead, the
philosopher must begin with certain abstract concepts, and only in applying these
concepts can he acquire their definition. Kant opposes rationalism, seeing it as a
pseudo-mathematical philosophy that deduces all knowledge from so-called a
priori, self-evident axioms. He calls for the adoption of the method of physics, that
is, the Newtonian method, which proceeds from experience. Kant states that “the
true method of metaphysics is basically the same as that introduced by Newton into
natural science and which has been of such benefit to it.”56 Metaphysics, for Kant,
is nothing but “philosophy about the highest principle of our knowledge.”57
Theoretically, Kant believes that logic is not identical with reality; method-
ologically, he holds that philosophy is not identical with mathematics. In short,
without experience, speculative reasoning and deduction cannot suffice to enable
metaphysics to acquire truth. From logical deduction and speculation about con-
cepts one can deduce neither the existence and causality of objects in reality, nor

56
Ibid., 259.
57
Ibid., 135.
22 1 The Sources and Development of Kant’s Thought

knowledge. All one ends up with is delusions. In the “Dreams of a Spirit-Seer,”

written in the same year, Kant criticizes Swedenborg’s soul-vision, which was
creating a great stir in Europe. Kant compares it with traditional metaphysics,
emphasizing that we can only ground our knowledge of reality in experience, that
argument for the existence and causality of things can only be found in experience,
and that argument cannot go beyond experience, nor can it proceed from reason.
Kant maintains that if soul-vision can be called a dream of the senses, then
metaphysics is a dream of reason. We can neither obtain nor do we need perception
and concepts about ghosts, spirits, or the soul. We do not possess sufficient
experiential data for a philosophical investigation and abstraction concerning
questions of what spiritual substance is, or how spirit and matter relate with each
other. Therefore, we can neither confirm nor negate these questions. That is to say,
there is no relevant cognition. Due to the lack of experiential data, metaphysical
questions of life and death are matters beyond the bounds of our reason.58 In the
1760s, Kant repeatedly stressed the importance of sense experience to cognition.59
This awareness is of utmost significance to the construction of his critical philos-
ophy in the 1780s. For instance, Kant’s writings during this period, such as
“Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime,” are full of remarks
about making use of experience, and about the descriptive and inductive method.60
By this time the old rationalistic metaphysics had completely crumbled in Kant’s
Weltanschauung and his long-term investigation of natural science and his concern
for philosophical metaphysics enabled him to perceive the profound conflict
between natural science, as represented by Newton, and the old metaphysics. He
thus awoke from the slumber of rationalistic ontology. It is because of this that
British empiricism at the time had such an influence on Kant and he credited Hume
with awakening him from those dogmatic slumbers. In fact, Hume was mainly a
catalyst in his awakening.
Besides being devoted to natural science, Kant was also a keen observer of
social and political issues and began to teach courses on these topics in the early
1760s. Despite the fact that Kant first takes a skeptical stance and then opposes
Leibniz-Wolffian metaphysics, he cannot turn his back on metaphysics and the
fundamental questions concerning God, the soul, and freedom. The problem is that
these topics often stand in sharp conflict with science, and they require a new
resolution. Kant says about metaphysics, “with which it is my fate to be in love,”61
that he loves it, but metaphysics does not love him reciprocally. To say that he
cannot find love from metaphysics is to imply that he cannot find the answer to his
questions about it. Since it is not possible, in the manner of proving scientific truth

58
Kant to Mendelssohn, April 8, 1766, on Swedenborg. Kant and Zweig (1986).
59
This characteristic is also prominent in his lecture notes. For instance, he notes that “the rule is as
following, train students to compare perception to reach an experience judgment rather than to leap
into the air to reach a farfetched judement.”.
60
Ernst Cassirer believes that it is due to Rousseau’s influence, see Rousseau, Kant and Goethe.
61
Kant (1899).
1.4 Critical Period 23

as construed by the rationalists, to prove the existence of God, Newton’s laws of

mechanics cannot solve ethical problems. Then, is there a way out? In “Dreams of a
Spirit-Seer,” Kant argues that moral principles can be deduced neither from the-
ology nor from speculative metaphysics. Only moral experience can produce a kind
of moral belief that cannot be proved by speculation. Kant also repeatedly maintains
in his 1764 prize essay that “it has yet to be determined whether it is merely the
faculty of cognition, or whether it is feeling, which decides [morality’s] first
principles.” Knowledge of God, “might only be of a moral nature,” and that “the
faculty of representing the true is cognition, while the faculty of experiencing the
good is feeling, and that the two faculties are, on no account, to be confused with
each other.”62 This indicates that by then Kant wished to make a distinction
between natural science and social problems, i.e., between cognition and morality,
so as to find a resolution for the conflicts that had vexed him for so many years. It is
for this reason that the doctrine of moral sense propounded by Shaftesbury and
Hutcheson (they identify an inner sixth sense in addition to the five senses com-
monly recognized, that is, the moral sense by which we perceive virtue and vice,
beauty and ugliness) is highly praised by Kant.63
However, Kant does not stop here. He sees that principles of morality can neither
be deduced from rationalistic speculative metaphysics nor be a product of the
experience of the senses (this has already been pointed out by Hume). Kant cannot
bring himself, as a means to perfunctorily settle the matter, to follow the path of
Hume and the advocates of the doctrine of moral sense in their attribution of moral
principles to emotions, conscience, and the sixth sense.
Kant still wishes to find a rational solution, and to clarify that the nature of
morality does not lie in sensibility and emotion. The moral principles of humankind
do not come under the jurisdiction of emotion, sensibility, and the natural faculties
(no matter how superior the faculty may be), but fall under the jurisdiction of
reason. He asserts that this is the reason why human beings are on a higher level
than beasts. Since the old path of rationalism is a dead end (for although rationalism
highly praises the rational nature of morality, this nature is merely a covert theology
at odds with scientific spirit, and Kant could no longer tolerate this method), then,
where lies the way out? It is Rousseau who provided vital inspiration to Kant at this
critical moment. The reason why the metaphysics of morality holds such a sublime
position in Kant’s mind, the reason why this question exacts such intense attention
from him and has led to his spending so much time on investigating natural science,
the reason why his attention is not weakened by his study of natural science, is
neither because Kant was once a pietist, nor because of his natural disposition. It is
because of Rousseau’s great influence. This influence is, in turn, inseparable from
the French Revolution, the great many questions raised in that tumultuous era, and

62
1764 prize essay (but written in 1763), “Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of
Natural Theology and Morality,” Theoretical Philosophy 1755–1770 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992), 272.
63
In his 1756–1766 lecture notes, Kants remarks that “Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume made
the greatest advance in the question of moral principles.”.
24 1 The Sources and Development of Kant’s Thought

the whole tendency of Europe’s historical development. As mentioned above, the

French political revolution and the German philosophical revolution are almost
concurrent. It is said that Kant’s philosophy is the German theory of the French
Revolution. This is not to say that Kant’s philosophy is a product or reflection of the
French Revolution (the Critique of Pure Reason was published in 1781, earlier than
the outbreak of French Revolution in 1789); rather, his philosophy also expresses
critical questions raised in the era of bourgeois revolution. While political revolu-
tion broke out under French social conditions, German conditions could only foster
a philosophical revolution.
Nevertheless, both revolutions find in Rousseau their fountainhead. Rousseau
vigorously advocated natural conscience and moral emotion—which is no longer
instinctive emotion or the sensory perception of British empiricism, but has a
metaphysical touch—and maintains that faith (religion) is not a matter of reason,
but of emotion. He attacks the society, politics, education, religion, and culture
(sciences and arts) of corrupted feudalism, and proposes fresh views of life and
living (such as his view that the sciences and arts are in sharp contrast with
morality, that the human being is born free, and that democratic rights are to be
demanded). These views were no doubt very inspirational and stimulating for Kant,
who was deeply concerned about these questions and was striving to cast off the old
metaphysics, and yet was distressed because he could not find a solution to the
problems of ethics. (These questions, in everyday life and in practice at that time,
were closely related to the questions of freedom of the will, the existence of God,
and immortality.) Kant, as it were, found in Rousseau a powerful guide. Rousseau,
who would become the banner of the French bourgeoise revolution twenty years
later, was at that time the man most admired by Kant, and Rousseau’s portrait was
the only adornment in Kant’s study. In 1764, Kant writes:
Rousseau is another Newton. Newton completed the science of external nature, Rousseau
that of the internal universe or of man. Just as Newton laid bare the order and regularity of
the external world, so Rousseau discovered the hidden nature of man. It was imperative to
recover a true conception of the nature of man. Philosophy is nothing but the practical
knowledge of man.64
I feel the consuming thirst for knowledge, the eager unrest to advance ever further, and the
delights of discovery. There was a time when I believed that this is what confers real
dignity upon human life, and I despised the common people who know nothing. Rousseau
has set me right. This imagined advantage vanishes. I learn to honor men, and should regard
myself as of much less use than the common labourer, if I did not believe that my
philosophy will restore to all men the common rights of humanity.65

Later on, in the Critique of Pure Reason, he says:

On account of this superiority which moral philosophy has over all other occupations of
reason, the ancients in their use of the term ‘philosopher’ always meant, more especially,
the moralist; and even at the present day we are led by a certain analogy to entitle anyone a

64
Complete Works of Kant, vol. 20, 58. Quoted by Smith (1923).
65
Ibid.
1.4 Critical Period 25

philosopher who appears to exhibit self-control under the guidance of reason, however
limited his knowledge may be.66

For him, philosophy is not scientific knowledge, but moral practice, and higher
than knowledge. And this is the noumenon of metaphysics. A human being’s
dignity lies not in his intellectual reason and knowledge, but in his restraining
himself from natural desires to pursue the goal he has set up for himself. Human
beings possess democratic rights and moral freedom, and this morality belongs to
common people in everyday life. Kant had finally located the key to his puzzles and
problems. The key is to distinguish two realms and two worlds: the scientific realm
and the moral realm, the sensible world (science) and the rational world (morality).
Newton and Rousseau respectively are his supreme guides in the two worlds.
Newton inspired him to discover the fundamental error of using super-experience in
natural science and traditional metaphysics, because this error had led to the anti-
nomies in reason. Rousseau illuminated for him the idea that human dignity and
faith in human rights can constitute a ground for a new metaphysics, without the aid
of theology and religion. For Rousseau, the human being is the purpose. These
ideas are, of course, anti-feudalistic and democratic. Kant would also take one step
forward to place reliance on faith rather than knowledge in order to tackle the
question of the existence of God,67 using the distinction between noumena
(morality) and phenomena (cognition) to resolve the antinomies of reason. In a
letter written in 1767, Kant mentions that he has had a series of new thoughts, and
believes that he can eventually solve moral problems, implying that he has already
set out to work on moral metaphysics.
As was pointed out earlier, it should be noted here as well that it is the realistic
conflict between natural science and social problems, rather than speculative dis-
cussion about pure philosophy and theology, that precipitates Kant’s abandonment
of the old metaphysics and his turn to critical philosophy in order to establish a new
and future metaphysics. Kant states that “this product of pure reason in its tran-
scendent use is its most remarkable appearance, and it works the most strongly of
all to awaken philosophy from its dogmatic slumber, and to prompt it toward the
difficult business of the critique of reason itself.”68 In his later years, Kant again
remarked in a letter that “it was not the investigation of the existence of God,
immortality, and so on, but rather the antinomy of pure reason—‘the world has a
beginning; it has no beginning, and so on,’ right up the 4th, ‘There is freedom in
man, versus there is no freedom, only the necessity of nature’—that is what first
aroused me from my dogmatic slumber and drove me to the critique of reason itself,
in order to resolve the scandal of ostensible conflict of reason with itself.”69
Evidently, it was not the history of philosophy, but the sharp conflicts between

66
Kant (1929).
67
The road from when he begins to feel Rousseau’s influence to the development of his critical
philosophy is not direct, but rather long and tortuous.
68
Kant et al. (1992b, 129).
69
To Garve, Septemer 21, 1798. Kant and Zweig (1986).
26 1 The Sources and Development of Kant’s Thought

empirical natural science (the antitheses of the four antinomies) in everyday life and
rationalistic metaphysics (the theses of the four antinomies)70 that caused much
distress for Kant, and impelled him to relentless research, and finally to his break
with the old metaphysics.71 The differentiation of morality and science helped Kant
to resolve the antinomies, to conciliate rationalism with empiricism, and to proceed
along the road to critical philosophy. Therefore, the profound sources, taken from
reality, from which Kant imbibed nourishment for accomplishing his critical phi-
losophy are the ideas of Newton and Rousseau: vigorous scientific experiment,
social struggle, and democratic thought. Hence, it is not coincidental that, in this
critical period, Kant also wrote a great many treatises on politics, religion, morality,
and history, and that he all the more keenly observed social life and political
struggles. Such observations became a prominent feature of Kant’s critical period,
and indeed served as a means to test and apply his philosophical system.72
Meanwhile, the outbreak of the French Revolution was imminent.
Natural science, with Newton as its representative, is certainly not just science,
but also an organic part of the Enlightenment, of which the newly emerging
European bourgeoise was in need. Whereas Rousseau exalted the romanticism that
greatly influenced the nineteenth century, Kant and his philosophy (ethics included)
followed rationalism, the Enlightenment spirit, and optimism.73 Rousseau led Kant
to realize that science (knowledge) cannot make a human being good (morality),
that morality has its own origin. However, Kant, unlike Rousseau, is reluctant to
attribute the origin of morality to the natural state of the human being and
thereby denying the development of science and history. What Kant does is to
completely separate the two realms and to propound a double world. Rousseau’s
sentimentalism and romanticism, which lay stress on the heart, emotion, and nature,
and despise reason, knowledge, and culture, are not what Kant can bring himself to
accept. Therefore, Kant critically accepts Rousseau’s influence,74 just as he is
critically receptive to Newton’s influence. This critical attitude is an expression of
the German sublimation of the quintessential spirit of Europe in that era.

70
The issue here is, of course, quite complicated. Newton’s noumenal concepts of absolute time
and space as independent aspects of objective reality lead to the cosmological antinomy Kant
analyzes.
71
The debate between Leibniz and Clarke is closely related to Kant’s awakening by the
antinomies.
72
See Chap. 9.
73
This is one of the important reasons why Goethe was particularly fond of Kant. He said that he
felt every page was imbued with light when he was reading Kant.
74
For instance, although Kant was captivated by Émile, he nevertheless thought that the problem of
education for future generations had yet to be solved (see the essay he wrote shortly after having
read Émile, “Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime”). Despite their
important differences, including Kant’s emphasis on reason and his rejection of emotion, Kant’s
ethics is unmistakable inspired by Rousseau.
1.5 The Synthesis of Diverse, Opposing Schools of Philosophy into a System 27

1.5 The Synthesis of Diverse, Opposing Schools

of Philosophy into a System

All in all, if we see that Kant in the 1750s was still attempting to conciliate Leibniz
and Newton, and to infiltrate rationalistic idealism into materialistic natural science,
then Kant in the 1760s had taken leave of rationalistic metaphysics and allowed
British empiricism to guide his thought. In addition to his inclination toward
Newton, he gradually shifted toward Rousseau as he steadily approached his critical
period.
In the 1760s, Kant’s thought about his critical philosophy was maturing, and was
beginning to emerge liberally in his writings.75 He says, for example, that “meta-
physics is the science of the boundaries of human reason,”76 that “metaphysics is
useful in that it removes the appearances that can be harmful,”77 and that pure
philosophy is moral philosophy. Leibniz’s New Essays on Human Understanding,
published in 1765, must have worked fresh influence on Kant.78 In this work,
Leibniz refutes Locke’s view that all concepts arise from experience, and maintains
that notions like entity, necessity, and causality cannot be derived from experience.
They arise from the mind’s own spontaneity. These thoughts obviously inspired
Kant’s construction of his epistemology of transcendental understanding. In 1769,
Kant said that he suddenly saw a glimpse of light after many years of anguished
investigation into the problems of metaphysics. In 1770, on the occasion of his
appointment to a professorship, Kant published his inaugural dissertation “On the
Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World” (referred to below
as “Inaugural Dissertation”), in which he systematically expounded on some of the
ideas that he had been accumulating in the ’60s. His ideas had reached a point of
qualitative change. In the essay, Kant formally proposes a division into two worlds,
that is, a world of understanding (noumena) and a world of the senses (phenomena).
The notions of immortality and of God as the final cause of all things do not belong
to the world of the senses, but rather to that of understanding. Metaphysics is the
form of knowledge of the intelligible world, while mathematics is the form of
knowledge of the sensible world. Kant also put forward for the first time the view
that time and space are forms of intuition, thereby ending his years of hesitation
between the solutions of Newton and Leibniz.79 On the problem of ethics, Kant also
took his leave of the doctrine of inner moral sense propounded by Shaftesbury and

75
In 1764, he endorsed Lambert’s view that thought should be constituted with materials from
experience and forms from logic.
76
Kant, Dreams of a Spirit-seer: Illustrated By Dreams of Metaphysics, 112.
77
Kant and Guyer (2005).
78
Before then, Kant’s the understanding of Leibniz was through the twisted version of the Wolffian
system.
79
A collection of correspondence between Leibniz and Clark (who represented Newton’s view),
which pointedly demonstrated their differences, was published in 1768. This book led Kant to take
a stance different from both parties to the dispute.
28 1 The Sources and Development of Kant’s Thought

his colleagues, and laid stress instead on the perfection of pure intellectual forms
and the theory of autonomous legislation. All these thoughts are a prelude to the
Critique of Pure Reason, but not strictly part of the critical philosophy.80 Kant, at
the time, still held that the categories of the understanding can be applied tran-
scendently, that is, they can be applied to things in themselves, and that the ideas
(e.g., the idea of God) thus obtained are knowledge. In other words, the world of
noumena is knowable. In 1772, Kant substantially revised these ideas, when he
began to argue that the understanding cannot be applied beyond the limits of
experience, and that the old metaphysics, such as knowledge of God and the soul, is
not properly knowledge at all, and therefore cannot constitute objects of cognition.
Kant was, at the time, contemplating the division between theoretical reason and
practical reason. After years of contemplation, the essential distinction between
things in themselves (moral substances) and phenomena had become increasingly
clear to him, and the central concept of synthesis, which is of great importance in
Kant’s philosophy, was gradually developing.81 This thought process was long and
arduous, and it was not until 1781 that the Critique of Pure Reason appeared. In this
work, Kant makes an absolute distinction between the terms “transcendental” and
“transcendent,” and denies that any transcendent application of the understanding
can attain knowledge. Kant maintains that only in the domain of sense experience
can reason have objective validity and become truth. As to questions about God,
immortality, and freedom of the will, none of them are proper objects of scientific
pursuit. They are only objects of faith and belong to the postulates of practical
reason. Thus, the system of critical philosophy is established, with human cognition
and practice united in one system of reason. However, what pure reason is is still
unknown. Kant thus synthesizes in one system science and ethics, enlightenment
spirit and religious tradition, materialism and idealism, empiricism and rationalism,
and diverse and opposing schools of philosophy.
Instead of saying that the Critique of Pure Reason is directed at Hume’s
empiricist skepticism, it would be more accurate to say that it is aimed at Leibniz’s
rationalistic dogmatism. This school was, at the time, the orthodox philosophy of
continental Europe. Therefore, immediately after its publication, the Critique of
Pure Reason stimulated a great many responses, ardent praise as well as vehement
attacks. Young, unmarried women would purchase the Critique of Pure Reason as
an adornment for their boudoirs, although its content was totally opaque to them;
whereas the church and clergy, from the Vatican to the small towns of Germany,
were in such a rage over the book that dogs were sometimes named after Kant.
Admirers saw Kant as their guardian of freedom and a liberator of the spirit, while
opponents regarded him as a heretic and a scourge. Romantics thought that he was
overly rational and took no account of emotions. In response, Herder wrote

80
Vleeschauwer believes that the Inaugural Dissertation proposes views that are actually in
opposition to the critical philosophy. However, this interpretation is exaggerated, and the later
work is more accurately seen as an advance of the former.
81
See Chap. 2.
1.5 The Synthesis of Diverse, Opposing Schools of Philosophy into a System 29

Understanding and Reason: A Metacritique of the Critique of Pure Reason (1799),

and Jacobi wrote David Hume on Faith, or Idealism and Realism (1787). Both
books aimed to refute Kant’s view, and asserted that emotions are better at grasping
reality than reason. Even Mendelssohn, Kant’s friend and a prominent philosopher
at the time, regarded Kant as an “all destroyer.” However, the most vehement
criticism was from the Leibniz-Wolffian school, which then held sway over phi-
losophy, and in particular, from Johann August Eberhard who was its representa-
tive. He founded a new periodical solely for the purpose of refuting Kant. He
asserted that whatever was right in Kant had already been said by Leibniz, therefore
Kant did not make any contribution to truth; whatever was new in Kant’s system
was a transparent error and in opposition to Leibniz’s theory; Kant’s work was
entirely superfluous and worthless; he was merely another Berkeley, and so on.
Kant was infuriated by Eberhard’s criticism, and wrote an essay to refute him in
1790. Kant was against all mysticism as well as orthodox rationalism. So, while he
did not really mind being rebuked for overlooking emotions, he could not endure
seeing his theory identified with that of Berkeley. In order that his theory not be
mistaken for Berkeleyanism, and to make the Critique of Pure Reason more
accessible to the reader, in 1783 Kant wrote his “Prolegomena to Any Future
Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward as a Science” (referred to below
as “Prolegomena”). In the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, published
in 1787,82 he specially added criticism of Berkeley.
Although the Critique of Pure Reason mainly discusses epistemology, it also
contains basic insights into moral philosophy and teleology. Thereafter, Kant
regularly published treatises, lectures, and thoughts on various topics, including
education.83 The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant’s most prominent work, together
with the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals written in 1785, the Critique of
Practical Reason written in 1788, and the Critique of the Power of Judgment
written in 1790 constitute Kant’s critical philosophy. In preparation for writing the
Critique of Pure Reason, Kant had already planned out his division into the three

82
There has been heated debate about the differences between the first and second editions. In
general, the inclination toward idealism is more prominent in the first edition. Schopenhauer and
Heidegger attached greater importance to the first edition.
83
Kant was very concerned with the problems of education. He firecely opposed the learning of
ancient languages (mainly Latin) by rote, the tradition of focusing solely on textbook learning, the
excessively reverance paid to the classics, and encouraging pupils to “blindly following their
instruction.” He thought that education should not restrain the youth by insisting on the imitation
of the ancients, and maintained that “overestimating the ancients would mean for our under-
standing to regress to its childhood, and to overlook the full use of our capabilities.” Kant believed
that the youth should acquire useful skills and also take physical exercise. Kant also said that good
students do not need to memorize lecture notes, and that those who do memorize notes cannot be
good students. All these thoughts display Kant’s Enlightenment spirit. Kant’s On Pedagogy
contains very perceptive and wise remarks drawn from his own experience as well as his ethical
principles. For instance, his emphasis on children’s self-control and independence is insightful.
(I personally think that preschool education should focus on attention, self-control, and inde-
pendence as three basic abilities for children to acquire.).
30 1 The Sources and Development of Kant’s Thought

faculties of understanding, feeling, and will. With these publications, then, the
system of critical philosophy was complete.84
In short, the course of developing Kant’s philosophy was tortuously progressive,
rather than retrogressive or full of constant changes. The course was not a dialectic
in the sense that Hegel would later make famous.85 Kant has become one of the
great figures in the history of philosophy, not because he wrote such books as the
Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, but because of the three
Critiques (in particular, the first Critique). When studying Kant’s philosophy, one
should mainly focus on his major works, that is, the three Critiques, rather than the
Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, which (incredibly) is said by
some scholars today to be Kant’s primary work.
In February, 1804, Kant died of illness at the age of eighty. His life was entirely
about his books, and his books are his biography. Engels comments that “this
shameful political and social age was at the same time the great age of German
literature. About 1750 all the master-spirits of Germany were born, the poets
Goethe and Schiller, the philosophers Kant and Fichte, and, hardly twenty years
later, the last great German metaphysician, Hegel.”86 Goethe remarked that “Kant
never took notice of me, though I followed a similar path as he.”87 They were both
nurtured by the zeitgeist of the French bourgeois revolution, but also reflected the
underdeveloped state of Germany. These intellectuals, without exception, either
avoided struggles or eventually made compromises in real life, and in turn directed
their attention to ideology, making great contributions in that field. Goethe said that
the duty of the German nation was to rule the intellectual world, that is to say, in
comparison with France’s rule of the political world. Schiller also remarked that the
Germans, independent of political vicissitudes, found their distinctive value in the

84
As to Kant’s Opus Postumum, which collects notes written in his old age and includes the
unfinished Transition from the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science to Physics, some
scholars maintain that it plainly breaks from the critical philosophy and exhibits an absolute
idealism inclining toward romanticism, while others hold that it is in harmony with the critical
philosophy. I am of the latter opinion. However, this question demands more attention, and I return
to it in Chap. 7.
85
That is, from rationalism to empiricism to a higher level of rationalism. This view maintains that
Kant passed through a period of empiricism (in the 1760s) then returned to a higher rationalism.
This view is far from correct. Kant in fact expressed a pointed aversion to rationalism in his critical
period. This popular view is derived from Hegelian ideas, as was shown by E. Caird, Critical
Philosophy of Kant.
86
Engels (1994f).
87
Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann, April 11, 1827. Goethe praises Kant highly. “I asked
Goethe which of the new philosophers he thought the highest. ‘Kant,’ said he, ‘beyond a doubt’”
(April 11, 1827). Goethe said, “Kant did an infinite deal, by writing the ‘Critique of Pure Reason’”
(February 17, 1829). Although Hegel very much admired Goethe, Goethe did not much like him
(as implied in the conversations mentioned above). Goethe and Kant both stress experience and
reality, and oppose the view that reason holds sway over everything, as well as attempts to prove
the existence of God. They embody more of the classical and Enlightenment spirit. Goethe is
hostile to French materialism, and has a low opinion of d’Holbach’s System of Nature. Goethe and
Kant indeed have a lot in common.
1.5 The Synthesis of Diverse, Opposing Schools of Philosophy into a System 31

ethical greatness of their culture and national character. His thoughts were in the
same vein as those of Goethe. Therefore, while political revolution broke out in
France, only intellectual revolution was possible in Germany; although both were
important revolutions.
Fichte, on the other hand, said that his philosophy matured during the time when
he was most devoted to revolutionary work. While Hegel said that philosophers
could prove human dignity, and that the people could learn to feel that dignity.
They would then not be content that their rights were tramped on, but would
demand that these rights be respected. These thoughts again confirm that a
philosopher’s investigation of ideology is a reflection of real life, and that such an
investigation serves real struggles. At that time in Germany, the group of bourgeois
thinkers, philosophers, poets, and writers that included Kant, Goethe, Fichte, Hegel,
and Schiller all embodied this profound conflict. On the one hand, they all
expressed ardent compassion for the French Revolution, held progressive ideals and
demands, and hoped to make a difference to their reality; on the other hand, they
were unable to escape the underdeveloped state of Germany, with the result that
their ideals were expressed in philosophy and limited to the ivory tower, and this
embodied their contradictory double personality.
In the meantime, another split among the German bourgeois class deserves
further study, as it divided Germany into two aspects: unparalleled glory in the
cultural and intellectual domain, with Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven, Kant, and Hegel
shining as the brightest intellectual stars in the cultural history of the world; and
barbarous, blood-thirsty Prussian militarism and fascism, with its futile attempt to
rule the world, which the whole nation from top to bottom followed in ecstasy, even
though this eventually brought catastrophe to humankind as well as Germany’s
everlasting shame in world history. The former was weak in action, yet rich in
mind; the latter was politically and militarily ruthless, yet extremely impoverished
in mind. How could these two opposites have sprung up in the same soil of this
national culture? What kind of relation was there between them? Was this split
intrinsic to the German bourgeoise spirit, or was it that the cruel Junkers forced the
intellectuals to confine their activities within the sphere of pure intellect? And what
is the complex relationship between the double nature that is embodied by these
intellectual giants with their intrinsic rationality and the irrationalism of their
national spirit? Do these questions deserve further investigation (see Chap. 9)?
Engels commented about Goethe that “there is a continuing battle within him
between the poet of genius who feels revulsion at the wretchedness of his envi-
ronment and the cautious offspring of the Frankfurt patrician or the Weimar
privy-councillor who finds himself compelled to come to terms with and accustom
himself to it. Goethe is thus at one moment a towering figure, at the next petty; at
one moment an obstinate, mocking genius full of contempt for the world, at the next
a circumspect, unexacting, narrow philistine.”88 Of course, this is not a defect in

88
Engels (1994g).
32 1 The Sources and Development of Kant’s Thought

Goethe’s personality; this two-sided nature is also revealed in Kant’s philosophy.89

Lenin commented that “the principal feature of Kant’s philosophy is the reconcil-
iation of materialism with idealism, a compromise between the two, the combi-
nation in one system of heterogeneous and contrary philosophical trends. When
Kant assumes that something outside us, a thing in itself, corresponds to our ideas,
he is a materialist. When he declares the thing in itself to be unknowable, he is an
idealist. Recognising sensible experience as the only source of our knowledge, Kant
is directing his philosophy towards sensualism, and via sensualism, under certain
conditions, towards materialism, while in recognizing the a prioricity of space, time,
and causality, Kant is directing his philosophy towards idealism. Both consistent
materialists and consistent idealists (as well as agnostic Humeans) have mercilessly
criticized Kant for this inconsistency. The materialists blamed Kant for his idealism,
rejecting the idealist features of his system, demonstrating the knowability, the
this-sidedness of the thing in itself, the absence of a fundamental difference between
the thing in itself and the appearance, the need of deducing causality, and so on, not
from a priori laws of thought, but from objective reality. The agnostics and idealists
blamed Kant for his assumption of the thing in itself as a concession to materialism,
‘realism’ or ‘naïve realism.’ The agnostics rejected not only the thing in itself but
apriorism as well, while the idealists demanded the consistent deduction from pure
thought not only of the a priori forms of intuition, but of the world as a whole.”90
When studying Kant’s philosophy the crucial thing is to make a thorough
analysis of transcendental idealism, because it constitutes the unique character of
Kant’s philosophy. Even under the pressure of modern natural science and social
theory, this contribution still exercises great influence and deserves thorough study.

1.6 A Trend in Modern Thought: Back to Kant

Recalling the past is not done for the purpose of expressing exquisite feelings of
longing for it. One should devote attention to the living Kant, namely, his influence
on the history of philosophy, and in particular, his influence on modern times;
rather than losing oneself in digging up the dead Kant, as in the all-too-many
massive scholarly works on Kant’s philosophy. There have appeared worldwide an
immense number of books of Kantian scholarship, a great part of them bogged
down in the inconsequential details of syntactic and semantic analysis and debate,
which more often than not unnecessarily complicate genuine philosophical ques-
tions while the significance and characteristics of Kant’s philosophy are blotted out.

89
In Kant’s Political Thought, Hans Saner points out that conflict (the unity of oppositions) is the
theme of all Kant’s works. He elaborates on many examples of conflict, such as Kant’s conflict
with his contemporaries, with himself, and so on. Unfortunately, Saner does not mention the
profoundly contradictory characteristics of the era and of Kant’s social class.
90
Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Selected Works of Lenin, vol. 2. Marx Engels Internet
Archive 1994.
1.6 A Trend in Modern Thought: Back to Kant 33

The works of these schools of Kantian scholarship, because of their want of contact
with reality and scientific research, cannot embody or represent the concrete
function and historical influence Kant’s philosophy has in the present day.
The influence and function of Kant’s philosophy are largely manifested in the
main trends of modern Western philosophy and science. From Kant forward,
Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel developed Kant’s philosophy into absolute idealism.
From Kant to Hegel, German classical idealism reached the climax of modern
European thought. Neo-Kantians disapprove of this development, and cry for a
return to Kant. They do not acknowledge a transcendent spiritual substance, or
absolute spirit, but their way of going back to Kant wipes out the materialistic
aspect of things in themselves. Therefore, they are just like the descendents of
British empiricism who called for steering clear of Kant91 and who commonly
displayed the general trend toward subjective idealism in contemporary philosophy.
Later on, analytic philosophy, that is, the logical positivism of the British and
American schools, held sway over philosophy, as phenomenology and existen-
tialism did over continental Europe. Logical positivism assumed the stance of
exactitude characteristic of contemporary science, rejecting metaphysical questions.
They in fact went back to Hume, and abandoned metaphysical questions to
existentialism. In a certain sense, existentialism, with its subjective preoccupation
with the problems of human freedom and its extreme indifference towards objective
empirical science, actually revived the rational psychology to which Kant was
opposed. Existentialism and logical positivism are indeed two sides of the same
coin; they are heterogeneous as well as complementary to each other, reminiscent of
the situation between empiricism and rationalism before Kant.92 In other words,
these two positions, one represented by scientific philosophy and logical positivism,
the other by existentialism, are precisely the two sides of Kant’s conceptions of
phenomena and ontology.
The course of thought in the history of philosophy often recurs in more or less
transformed forms. The general line that contemporary capitalism assumed toward
Kant, represented by logical positivism, was to draw Kant near to Berkeley and
Hume and attempt to employ these British thinkers to explain and define Kant. In

91
These schools violently attacked Kant. For instance, Russell and the logical positivists. One can
also quote the pragmatist William James’s remark: “The true line of philosophic progress lies, in
short, it seems to me, not so much through Kant as round him to the point where now we stand.
Philosophy can perfectly well outflank him and build herself up into adequate fulness by pro-
longing more directly from the older English lines.”.
92
In his essay “Lewis’s Kantianism,” Lewis White Beck groups contemporary Kant critics into two
categories: analytic and realistic critics. The former acknowledge Kant’s view that the subject
actively constructs phenomenal objects, but denies that there can be knowledge of universal and
necessary laws. These critics roughly correspond to the criticism of Kant in logical positivism. The
latter group of critics advocate the transcendent use of the understanding, maintaining that there
can be objects independent of empirical proof and that cognition does not have to proceed from
sense data. “A true judgment is about independent and metaphysically real objects, regardless
whether these objects were given by perception.” This group of critics can be said to correspond to
rationalism.
34 1 The Sources and Development of Kant’s Thought

the meantime, the ontologism in Continental studies of Kant, under the influence of
existentialism, drew Kant back to the beaten track of rationalism (certainly in an
extremely narrow sense) and arguments for the existence of God, immortality, and
the essence of the human soul. However, in the past twenty years, due to attacks
from both within and without, and in particular, due to the objections raised by
Quine and Noam Chomsky, logical positivism, with Hume as its forefather, finds
itself falling into a difficult time; whereas existentialism, with its high-flown ideas
about the ontology of human existence, is finally spent. Therefore, the trend in
returning to Kant passes over into various new alternatives, with new schools of all
sorts constantly emerging.
Lewis White Beck, a distinguished American scholar of Kant’s philosophy,
remarked in the 1960s: “In the past few years there has been a noteworthy increase
in the amount and improvement in the quality of studies devoted to Kant in France,
England, Italy, and America; there seems to be a heightening of interest in Kant
even in Germany, where the number and quality of Kant-studies have always been
high. It seems as if a period of thought in which the creative and critical work and
spirit of David Hume are dominant (as in America and England) is to be followed
by one in which Kantian criticism and reconstruction—perhaps not recognized as
such—revive.”93 Additional confirming remarks and comments bubble up as well,
such as, “in certain degree marked a response to Kant,”94 “Kant’s view totally
adapts to contemporary natural science—from physics to biology.”95 Karl Popper’s
cry of “critical rationalism” also echoes the cry of “Back to Kant.”
However, what is important is not that for which philosophers cry, but that
which is shadowed by Kantianism in the theoretical domain of natural science and
in social struggles. This newly calm cry of “Back to Kant” seems to be more
influential than last time (the influence of Neo-Kantianism in the nineteenth cen-
tury), which kicked up a terrific storm for a while, because it has a definite ground
in reality.
First, this is because the modern scientific and technological industry—with the
theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, high energy physics, control theory, and
genetic engineering as its vanguard—demonstrates human cognitive spontaneity in
an unprecedentedly distinctive form. Human consciousness innately poses ques-
tions for itself concerning subjective spontaneity.
These questions first became noticeable and triggered Kant’s philosophy in the
age of Galileo and Newton and the first great European advances in science and
technology. In the twentieth century, especially during the time when the scientific
and technological industry was making great strides after the Second World War,
these problems became unprecedentedly prominent. People no longer take induc-
tive experience as it spontaneously comes. Instead, they equip themselves with the

93
Beck (1963).
94
A. J. Ayer, quoted. Translation quoted from a quotation in M. Cornforth’s Marxism and the
Linguistic Philosophy, 204.
95
Kant and Modern Science (1974).
1.6 A Trend in Modern Thought: Back to Kant 35

powerful instruments of mathematics, combined with experiments on a great scale,

in order to sort out, organize, and construct the objects of scientific inquiry.
Therefore, the significance of various abstract theories, methods, categories, and
hypotheses; the emphasis on features and aspects of structures, forms, exactitude,
and subjectivity; and the importance of constructing ideal models all render more
pronounced the relationship between the subject and the object in epistemology. It
is no longer the subject who reflects the object, rather the subject constitutes and
constructs the object, and demands that the object meet the requirements of the
subject. The division between the subject and the object is thus obscured.
Therefore, doctrines such as Kant’s Copernican revolution, with its claim that the
human being legislates the form of nature, have become increasingly popular.
Although one often observes that people avoid reading Kant and even criticize him,
they are in fact all Kantians. Unlike those who candidly hold aloft the banner of
“Back to Kant,” although they do not have a catchy slogan, they nonetheless enjoy
a more widespread influence. Just as Beck says, despite “thoroughgoing censures
from positivists, pragmatists, conventionalists, language analysts, and sociologists
of knowledge, all of [them] join Kant in regarding physical objects as some sort of
construction.”96
As early as the 1920s and 1930s, some representatives of quantum mechanics
frequently mentioned Kant in their philosophical discussions. Although some
employed Hume to criticize Kant, while others still wavered between Hume and
Kant, the general tendency was to regard the subjectivity of cognition as the
leading, dominant, and decisive factor. To cognize (construct) objects under sub-
jective regulation and organization can be said to be essentially Kantianism.
Werner Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty and Niels Bohr’s principle of
complementarity also have this kind of significance in philosophy. In what appears
to be the opposite of this tendency, in the 1960s, modern science and technology
again inclined toward objectivism, i.e., structuralism, as their general methodology
and epistemology. This prevailed in many fields such as linguistics, economics,
cultural anthropology, sociology, history, psychology, biology, and mathematics.
Some fields even attempted to use this so-called structuralism as a substitute or a
complement to Marxism.
Nonetheless, Claude Levi-Strauss, a cultural anthropologist and the principal
founder of structuralism, was evidently inclined toward Kantianism in his episte-
mology. While Jean Piaget, a well-known psychologist, especially in his most
active decades of the 1960s and ’70s, consciously raised an ancillary structuralism
to the height of epistemology. Schools of structuralism are very heterogeneous and
have various representatives. I select Piaget, who originally did not belong to this
school, because his scientific achievement and philosophical theory are most
noteworthy. Piaget opposed logical positivism, which grounds cognition in sense
data and considers logic to be a mere linguistic grammar; nor did he agree with
Chomsky’s view that the origin of logic lies in the inner reason of humankind. He

96
Beck (1965).
36 1 The Sources and Development of Kant’s Thought

opposed empiricism as well as rationalism, emphasizing that “knowledge is a

continuous construction.”97 For him, truth was neither a ready-made answer in the
objective world, nor in the subjective world, rather it lay in the subject’s actions and
operations within the continuous construction of the objective world.98 Thus, the
“object is seen be a limit, which is an independent existence, but never to be
achieved.” In fact, the “object is constructed.”99 Piaget points out that what he
propounds is not a pure psychology. He says, “our goal essentially is epistemol-
ogy,”100 and “structuralism is a method.”101 According to the Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, “Piaget would say that what he was really doing in this work was
re-examining the whole question of the Kantian categories. This re-examination
formed for him the basis of a new discipline that he called genetic epistemol-
ogy.”102 Piaget stipulated that the whole of knowledge, as a construction, is not
identical with the sum of its mechanical parts, nor is it an unanalyzable Gestalt.
Instead, it is a system of multiple interacting elements that are scientifically ana-
lyzable. The three characteristics (totality, transformation, and self-adjustment) of
the structure he prescribed are consistent with the theories of other scholars such as
Levi-Strauss. In other words, they all possess a certain quality that transcends any
particular society and history.103 This is a characteristic of Kant’s transcendental
philosophy as well. Although Piaget does not think of himself as a Kantian, and
even criticizes Kant for being a transcendentalist, Piaget’s emphasis on diachronism
and on constructing a temporal process of genesis differs from more usual versions
of structuralism, which emphasize the non-historical and synchronic. Structuralism
assumes a scientific objectivism, which may appear dissimilar from Kant. However,
when it comes to the constitution of knowledge, the fundamental essence of
Piaget’s theory, just as with any other modern scientific thought, is its emphasis on
the subject’s operation, thinking, and action on an unknowable and indefinite
object. From the point of view of essence, it is Kantian. Piaget maintains that
structure is open and in continuous development. This emphasis separates him from

97
Piaget (1971).
98
Dewey also makes similar remarks. But he denies that the object can exist divorced from
experience, and exaggerates the concepts of action and operation.
99
Ibid., This view is very close to that of Neo-Kantianism, which stresses that there is no fait
accompli. Cognition is an infinite process of continuous creation, and philosophy is basically
epistemology and methodology. However, Neo-Kantianism does not have its ground in positivistic
theory of natural science.
100
Ibid, preface. Although Piaget maintains that epistemology should be separated from philos-
ophy and established as an independent, positive, empirical science. He calls it experimental
philosophy. However, he does not avoid the philosophical questions of the relation between
existence and consciousness or object and subject.
101
Piaget, Structuralism, Chap. 7.
102
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1972), vol. 6, 306.
103
This remark concerns human history in general. Piaget devotes much discussion to social and
historical problems, including the history of science. Unfortunately, however, he does not relate
children’s cognitive development as a whole to general human history so as to study the infiltrating
and dominant role of the latter on the former.
1.6 A Trend in Modern Thought: Back to Kant 37

other structuralists, who assert that structures are definite and constant. Piaget is
wiser than many other structuralists, particularly in his observation of the primary
function of action and operation in forming human logical thinking, and because of
his fully open cognitive structure.
Thus, Piaget provides an important materialistic foundation for science, and
presents a concrete explanation of the origin and development of cognition. The
principal defect of his theory lies in his failing to comprehend the essential dis-
tinction between human beings and animals. In other words, Piaget fails to study
and expound the problem from an anthropological point of view, and is especially
deficient in his appreciation of the making and use of tools. Therefore, his theory of
cognitive development is, in the end, not historical (anthropological), but biological
(the mechanism of self-adjustment). Some of the fundamental ideas and charac-
teristics of Kant’s philosophy still affect and influence natural science as well as
social struggles. But capitalistic philosophy, including that of Hegel, has yet to truly
uncover the secrets of Kant’s philosophy. Historically, the task of appeasing the
restless wandering ghost of Kant’s philosophy has fallen to the Marxists.
Marxist philosophy is the theory of practice, that is, historical materialism. On
the one hand, it must inquire into the origin and development of human material
civilization, from the objective historical process of the modes of production to the
long-term perspective of the future of human beings. It thus certainly includes
consideration of the problems of revolution and socialism. However, if one were to
conclude from these aspects that Marxist philosophy merely incites or promotes
revolution, that it is a mere philosophy of revolution and criticism, such a con-
clusion would substantially limit and restrain the discussions and the ideals that
Marx propounded in his time. In addition to revolution, there is the problem of
development after the revolution; and in addition to the development of material
civilization, there is the development of spiritual civilization. Only in this com-
prehensive way is the overall development of the human being possible. The
diverse, rich, and comprehensive development of the human being as an individual
is precisely the characteristic goal of Communism. Therefore, Marxism not only
needs to inquire into revolution, but all the more, must also to inquire into devel-
opment. In real life, these two aspects (revolution and development) are often
interrelated and penetrate into each other (particularly at an early stage). For
instance, it would be difficult to establish new notions and ideas if the old con-
ventions were not overcome; however, there is continuity even in destruction, and
affirmation even in negation. In a spiritual civilization, the interplay of constructive
destruction and affirmative negation is all the more complex. These questions, i.e.,
how to investigate these problems and how to propose the development of the two
civilizations (material and spiritual), constitute a consequential direction and project
for the genuine development of Marxism today.
I think that the study of Kant’s philosophy displays its significance especially in
this respect. If it is said that Hegel’s great sense of history about the macroscopic
process of human development is the most salient feature of his philosophy, then
Kant’s comprehensive inquiry into the human spiritual structure (cognition,
ethics, and aesthetics) is the strongest feature of his philosophy. If it is said that
38 1 The Sources and Development of Kant’s Thought

Hegel demonstrates the objective movement of human subjectivity (albeit in an

illusory frame of idealism), then what Kant grasps is the subjective psychological
construction of human subjectivity (albeit in a framework of idealistic transcen-
dentalism.) For the sake of the new philosophy, we now need to deliberate cau-
tiously; it becomes an important project to consciously investigate the construction
of the human being as a subject. This is what I call the cultural-psychological
structure, namely, the question of human nature, or the capacity of human nature.
It is interesting that contemporary scientific disciplines seem to have a tendency
toward investigating and proposing problems about our deep-seated psychological
structure. Chomsky concludes that our linguistic faculty arises out of a transcen-
dental reason that human beings universally possess, while Levi-Strauss attributes
the structural constancies of social custom to a psychological structure common to
humankind. Surely there is no need to mention Jung’s collective unconscious! It
seems to me that there are indeed some family similarities among all of these trends.
In other words, notwithstanding their diverse concerns, the center of their game is
all about the cultural-psychological structure of the human subject.
Wittgenstein, in his late period, associates language with real life and social
interaction (which he calls language games). He maintains that it is impossible to
understand language apart from these “games” and argues that the psychological
should be explained through the social.104 On the other hand, Piaget associates
logic with operation in a more concrete sense, propounding a theory of internal-
ization. All these theories have significant scientific and philosophical value.
I regard it as important to investigate how to recapitulate correctly the questions and
doctrines proposed by modern disciplines and to combine them with the study of
Kant’s philosophy, and to posit the philosophical concepts of human subjectivity
and cultural-psychological structure as part of the large-scale study of human
history.

References

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Beck, Lewis White. 1963. A Commentary On Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason, vii. Chicago:
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Beck, Lewis White. 1965. Studies in the Philosophy of Kant, 110. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
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Engels, Friedrich. 1994b. The Constitutional Question in Germany, A Complete Edition of Marx
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Kant, Immanuel, and Thomas Kingsmill Abbott. 1898. Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and
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Chapter 2
Epistemology: I. Raising the Question

2.1 Critical Philosophy

Kant’s major philosophical work is the Critique of Pure Reason, published in 1781,
with a second, revised edition in 1787. The book is over four hundred thousand
words. Kant himself remarks that it is “the product of nearly twelve years of
reflection, I completed it hastily, in perhaps four or five months, with the greatest
attentiveness to its content but less care about its style and ease of comprehension.”1
The book is not only written in a difficult and convoluted style, with repetitive and
long-winded sentences,2 but also employs concepts, arguments, and terminologies

1
Letter to Mendelsohn, August 16, 1783. Kant and Zweig (1986). As to the question of com-
prehensibility for the common mind, Kant said time and again that “I should like to undertake a
popular yet thorough exposition myself (though others will be better at this)” (Letter to Christian
Garve, August 7, 1783. 197) and remarks that while “popularity may indeed follow in time, [it]
can never be expected at the commencement” (Prolegomena, 7).
2
One quip about Kant’s style is quite well known. Someone complained to Kant that he was
wanting of fingers when reading Kant’s book. Kant was puzzled and asked why. He replied that he
had to use his fingers to nail down the clauses of Kant’s terribly complicated sentences, and after
having used up all ten fingers the sentence still hadn’t concluded.

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 41

Z. Li, A New Approach to Kant, Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy
of Traditions and Cultures 27, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0239-8_2
42 2 Epistemology: I. Raising the Question

that are often inconsistent and paradoxical,3 thus posing great difficulty for the
understanding of Kant’s philosophy. The Critique of Pure Reason has become one
of the most important as well as most difficult works in the history of European
philosophy.4
The fundamental cause of the difficulty lies not in Kant’s lack of time,5 nor in his
changing thought in different periods.6 The reason is that Kant undertakes to rec-
oncile materialism and idealism, seeking a happy medium in his system for these
two contradictory lines of philosophy.
Therefore, his writing repeatedly betrays different inclinations, arguments, and
viewpoints, and is often lost in paradoxes. The conflicts of the Critique of Pure
Reason are profoundly philosophical, they are not superficial discrepancies of
phrases, sentences, or arguments. Neither the view that emphasizes the latter (in-
cluding that of Vaihinger and Kemp Smith) nor that which rejects the former (such
as Paton and Grayeff) sees the true problems in Kant’s writing style.
The structure of the Critique of Pure Reason is arbitrary and sketchy. Kant
divides the book into two uneven parts, namely, a “Transcendental Doctrine of
Elements” and a “Transcendental Doctrine of Method.” The former is in turn
divided into two unbalanced parts, a “Transcendental Aesthetic” (on sensibility)
and a “Transcendental Logic” that is itself subdivided into a “Transcendental

3
There has been much debate as to the relation between the structure and content of the work.
Scholars, for instance, Vaihinger and Kemp Smith, hold that the work is pieced together in
haste from notes accumulated over many years. Various layers can be discerned to be written at
different times, and for that reason the book contains many conflicts. Specifically the central
chapter on the analytic of concepts of the first division, the Transcendental Analytic of Categories,
is pieced together from arguments written in different periods, so that it is extremely obscure. Each
section in fact has its own opening and ending, forming an independent and isolated unit without
much connection to the rest of the text. Therefore, the first part of the book appears to be
fragmented and is highly repetitive. Other scholars, for instance, Ward, maintain that the central
part is a jeweled pavilion that must not be reorganized. These scholars propose a theory of
assembly or multiplicity (A. C. Ewing) to account for the writing style. Some later scholars, such
as H. J. Paton, oppose this view and maintain that the work as a whole is fully consistent. What the
critics see as repetition and conflict are actually varied arguments with different emphases on the
same topic. I think the latter view is closer to the facts. Kant himself once said that these apparent
conflicts are easy to remove. He repeatedly emphasized that one should not “hang on words,” or
quote isolated fragments (Prolegomena). On the other hand, some scholars entirely deny con-
tradiction in the work, holding that “every sentence and every argument of the Critique of Pure
Reason can be satisfactorily fitted into this account” (Felix Grayeff, Kant’s Theoretical
Philosophy). Such a view goes to the other extreme and is partial.
4
Hegel’s works are also known for their obscurity, but in a different sense. While reading Hegel, it
would seem that each sentence is hard to grasp, even though it is not difficult to get the gist of the
whole paragraph and section; whereas, in reading Kant, each sentence or clause may not be hard to
understand, though the gist of a whole paragraph and section can be hard to follow, which makes
Kant’s books especially difficult reading.
5
Some scholars, for instance, Paton, believe that apart from lack of time, it is due to the difficulty
and novelty of the topic as well.
6
Kemp Smith holds this view.
2.1 Critical Philosophy 43

Analytic” (on the understanding) and a “Transcendental Dialectic” (on reason).

These divisions are summarized in the chart below:
Critique of Pure Reason
Transcendental Doctrine of Elements
Transcendental Aesthetic
Transcendental Logic
Transcendental Analytic
Analytic of Concepts
Analytic of Principles
Transcendental Dialectic
Transcendental Doctrine of Method.

Additionally, each section follows a rigid format. The Critique of Practical

Reason and the Critique of Judgment, which were written much later, also follow a
similar structure. This is actually a vestige of the formalism that Kant is fond of and
adopts as the architectonic for his critical philosophy.7 Nevertheless, the discrim-
ination and continuation of the “Aesthetic,” “Analytic,” and “Dialectic” manifest
the orderly argument Kant sets forth for cognition, which proceeds from sensibility
to the understanding and to reason before passing into the practical realm (ethics).
The section on methodology, which is often passed over or downplayed, is in fact a
synopsis of the whole book; one should learn to distinguish insignificant structural
issues from significant insights. Due to its intricate and compromised conflicts, the
Critique of Pure Reason has inspired many a fastidious quarrel; however, the
influence and significance of Kant’s philosophy lies not in these details, but in
his thought. I will make an effort to avoid minute details, directing my attention
solely to the main ideas. For instance, the concept of things in themselves seems to
me to be the center of Kant’s philosophy; the doctrine of the thing in itself has its
basis in the transition point from epistemology to ethics. Therefore, I place the
discussion of this concept at the end of my sections on epistemology, and before
those about ethics. In addition, the “Dialectic” contains criticisms of the rational
psychology and rational theology of Kant’s time, and these criticisms reflect Kant’s
inquiry into and refutation of the supposed proofs of the existence of God. These
ideas were of great importance to philosophy at the time and to the development of

7
It is said that Wolff had such a habit of systemization and that Kant inherited his practice. The
discipline of medieval scholasticism can also be traced to Aristotle’s division of theoretical and
practical philosophy. The former is also called metaphysics, with subdivisions for ontology (on the
question of being), rational psychology (on the mind or soul), cosmology (on the system of the
universe), and rational theology (on the existence and attributes of God). Practical philosophy is
divided into ethics, economics, and politics. Wolff formally separated theology from ontology
(which became metaphysics, concerning the question of being). The practice of distinguishing
principle from method and analytic from dialectic is inherited from the Aristotelian tradition.
44 2 Epistemology: I. Raising the Question

Kantian thought; however, they are now somewhat antiquated. Since these criti-
cisms would be quite unfamiliar to a Chinese reader, I have decided to skip over
this part.
Kant claims that the Critique of Pure Reason does not aim at erecting a system,
but rather at critiquing cognition, in order to distinguish itself from philosophy of the
past and, in particular, to refute Leibniz-Wolffian dogmatism. In the Preface to the
first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant compares dogmatism to despotism,
and skepticism to nomads who despise all settled modes of life and wish to break up
civil society. Kant maintains that ever since Descartes, who employed the standard
of clarity and distinctness, the old rationalistic dogmatism has regarded sensibility as
a vague idea, and has asserted that truth lies in pure reason. This doctrine places a
priori intellect over everything and deduces all knowledge from it. However, such
knowledge surpasses the domain of experience, and the doctrine therefore cannot but
fall to pieces. Dogmatism’s use of the criterion of clarity and distinctness as the
standard for truth gets it nowhere. Moral concepts of reason can indeed be extremely
ambiguous; however, theories of geology, since they are empirical, must be very
clear and certain. As to the skepticism of the empiricists, they start off from per-
ception, in opposition to universal and necessary objective truth, and thus cut off
scientific knowledge at its root. Therefore, their work can only cause harm. Kant
states that “the very attempts to bring such a science [of metaphysics] into existence
were without doubt the original cause of the skepticism that arose so early, a way of
thinking in which reason moves against itself with such violence that it never could
have arisen except in complete despair as regards satisfaction of reason’s most
important aims.”8 Skepticism, which can prove nothing with certainty, just like
dogmatism, is detested by ordinary people. Natural science has been making pro-
gress, while philosophy, which was titled the queen of the sciences, still lingers in
dispute and darkness. In order to liberate it from the darkness, a philosopher has to
start all over again, discussing, considering, analyzing, and examining cognitive
faculties, and drawing a boundary that cannot be trespassed. This is the reason why
Kant chooses the word “critique” and calls his philosophy “critical philosophy.”
Kant clarifies that “I do not mean by this a critique of books and systems, but of the
faculty of reason in general, in respect of all knowledge after which it may strive
independently of all experience.”9 In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant’s first step is
to show how all scientific knowledge is possible (mainly mathematics and physics,
because other disciplines of science were still in an embryonic stage), in other words,
to discuss the conditions under which a science for existing science can be estab-
lished (see “Transcendental Aesthetic” and “Transcendental Analytic”). The second
step is to show how religious and moral entities—the soul, freedom, and God—
cannot be objects of scientific cognition because they belong to a transcendent use of
reason that passes beyond the limits of experience. These two steps are two sides of
the same matter, and this matter concerns the nature, features, and possibility of

8
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics that will be able to come forward as a Science.
9
Kant (1929).
2.1 Critical Philosophy 45

human cognition. To put it in Kant’s terms, does human cognition have a proper
domain or limit? Kant believed that rational dogmatism made deductions without
comprehending the nature of human cognition, and therefore included the notions of
God, the soul, and freedom as objects of cognition, which confused them with
empirical science. Having trespassed the limit of human cognition, they reached
entirely unsubstantiated conclusions. On the other hand, empirical skepticism also
failed to comprehend the nature of cognition, and therefore questioned and denied
what science had properly established, fallaciously denying all possibility of sci-
entific knowledge. All these failures were caused by poorly formulated epistemo-
logical problems. Kant concentrates his whole philosophy on resolving this problem,
which becomes a fulcrum of modern European philosophy. The focus of modern
philosophy shifts from ontology to epistemology, and this shift is expressly mani-
fested and realized in Kant’s critical philosophy.10
Although the Critique of Pure Reason contains some fundamental ideas con-
cerning practical reason (for instance, the chapter on the Doctrine of Method in part
two, and the Canon of Pure Reason and the Preface in the second edition), nev-
ertheless, its thesis is epistemological and concerns theoretical reason.11 Kant
maintains that sense experience is the basic datum for human cognition. This
differentiates his view from rationalism. Meanwhile, he emphasizes transcendental
forms of intuition and categories of the understanding as necessary factors for
human cognition, and this differentiates his view from empiricism. Kant believes
that all scientific knowledge can only be constituted through sensibility and the
understanding (that is, reason in a broad sense), and is a fusion of the materials of
sensibility and the forms of the understanding. He states that “through the former,
objects are given to us; through the latter, they are thought.”12 “Thoughts without
content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.”13 While Kant’s

10
From Bacon to Descartes, modern philosophy has always attached great importance to episte-
mology. Before Kant, however, epistemology and ontology were often entangled and had yet to be
separated from each other. The former had generally been ancillary to the latter, but Kant trans-
formed this situation by rejecting the old ontology and declaring independence for epistemology.
After Kant, as a matter of fact, ontology was often subordinated to epistemology, and is even
deduced from epistemology in Hegel’s philosophy. Hegel’s logic and epistemology are continu-
ous, and emphasize his idea of the consistency of logic and history, epistemology and ontology.
11
Some philosophers, for instance, Heidegger, hold that “the Critique of Pure Reason has nothing
to do with a ‘theory of knowledge,’” and is instead a theory of ontology (Kant and the Problem of
Metaphysics). G. Martin states that “Kant’s final intention … is directed towards an ontology, a
doctrine of being” (Kant’s Metaphysics and Theory of Science). Heidegger borrowed Kant’s
theory to express his own philosophical argument, which incited scorn from Neo-Kantians such as
Cassirer. Heidegger emphasized a priori imagination, and regarded the Critique of Pure Reason as
a phenomenology of the subject (human being), thus passing from psychology into metaphysical
ontology. Ernst Cassirer emphasized the function of cognition and saw the Critique of Pure
Reason as a phenomenology of the object, thus inclining to a theory of cultural-historical sym-
bolism. Their emphases are different. Heidegger totally wipes out Kant’s epistemology, while
Cassirer cancels the materialistic factor in Kant’s epistemology.
12
A15/B29.
13
A51/B75.
46 2 Epistemology: I. Raising the Question

philosophy contains considerable conflicts and discrepancies at different stages, this

basic line of thought runs throughout his epistemology. It constitutes the main
thesis which he revisits time and again. By emphasizing the fusion of sensibility
and the understanding, Kant affirms the possibility of universal and necessary
scientific knowledge, and dismisses the possibility of proving God as an object of
cognition. In so doing, he refutes Hume’s skepticism on the one hand, and opposes
Leibniz’s rationalism on the other. In the meantime, these two schools are com-
bined and synthesized in his Critique. However, because Kant builds his affirmation
of scientific knowledge on principles of the understanding and forms of intuition,
which he regards as transcendental, he sets up a static transcendental framework to
regulate and govern the material of the senses, thus distorting the fundamental
nature of science, which lies in practice. Additionally, Kant’s denial of God as an
object of cognition emphasizes the important role of sense experience in knowl-
edge, and allows a place for God as an object of transcendental belief and as a moral
entity. I intend to uncover and investigate these intricate features of Kant’s critical
philosophy by discussing the main sections of the Critique of Pure Reason.

2.2 How Are A Priori Synthetic Judgments Possible?

The Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason presents the question that Kant
considers most in need of resolution by philosophers: how are a priori synthetic
judgments possible? This question, in the present day, may seem inept and
bewildering, but it was the result of Kant’s many years of reflection. Kant sets down
in the first line of the Introduction to the first edition that “experience is, beyond all
doubt, the first product to which our the understanding gives rise, in working up the
raw material of sensible impression.”14 The first line of the Introduction to the
second edition emphasizes the same point: “There can be no doubt that all our
knowledge begins with experience.”15 These two sentences, in the opening of the
two editions, express the characteristic form and content of Kant’s philosophy.
First, the word “experience,” from the start, carries two different meanings. In the
beginning sentence of the first edition, “experience” refers to the products of the
understanding acting on sensibility, and corresponds to the word “knowledge” in
the second edition. Second, the word “experience” in the second edition mainly
refers to sensible impressions and sensible materials. In the meantime, we should
note that the word “experience” (Erfahrung) differs from the word empirisch. The
former is the product of the understanding acting upon the latter (that is, the
materials of sensible experience). Kant states: “Although all judgments of experi-
ence are empirical, i.e., have their basis in the immediate perception of the senses,
nonetheless the reverse is not the case, that all empirical judgments are therefore

14
A1.
B1. Goethe’s summary is more incisive: “Experience is only half of the experience.”
15
2.2 How Are A Priori Synthetic Judgments Possible? 47

judgments of experience.”16 However, in terms of content, the opening line, whether

of the first or second edition, makes clear Kant’s basic view of cognition, which is
that although knowledge cannot arise without the experience of the senses, it cannot
be attributed to that experience.17 Knowledge must be a product of the understanding
transforming and acting on the material of the senses. Kant begins his argument with
the distinction between analytic judgments and synthetic judgments.
Kant holds that knowledge is expressed through logical judgments (see Chap. 4),
which can be divided into two categories, i.e., analytic judgments and synthetic
judgments.18 In a discussion of affirmative judgments,19 Kant says that an analytic
judgment is one whose predicate is contained in its subject. Since such a judgment
deduces what is already contained in the subject, the deduction is therefore inde-
pendent of experience and has universal necessity. If such a judgment is true, then
its negation must be false. However, since it adds nothing to our concept of the
subject, such judgments cannot lead to new knowledge. As an example of an
analytic judgment, Kant gives the following: “All bodies are extended.” In thinking
of a body, we cannot help but also think of something extended in space; so this
would seem to be just part of what is meant by “body.” Further, if the judgment
“All bodies are extended” is true, then “Some bodies are not extended” must be
false. The two judgments cannot both be true. This does not hold for synthetic
judgments, of which Kant’s example is: “All bodies are heavy.” In this case it is
easy to see that the predicate is not contained in the subject. Whether or not a
specific body is heavy cannot not be deduced from a mere analysis of the concept of
the body, but can only be known through experience. Synthetic judgments extend
our knowledge by adding something to the subject that is not analytically contained
in it. But such knowledge is not universal and necessary. It does not possess
objective validity, because experience is the sole source by means of which we
determine its truth; and our experience, being limited and partial, cannot guarantee
the universal, necessary, objective validity of such a judgment. That is to say, the
truth of a synthetic judgment does not make the opposite judgment impossible.20

16
Kant and Hatfield (1997). Empirical judgment is the judgment of perception. See Chap. 5.
17
I use the word “experience” only in the sense of the second edition, which refers to the material
of the senses. I use the word “knowledge” for what Kant refers to as “experience” in the first
edition, i.e., as the product 构成物 of the understanding acting on the material of the senses.
18
Lovejoy, who dismisses Kant’s doctrines as hackneyed and devoid of merit, claims that the
analytic-synthetic distinction and the doctrine of synthetic judgments a priori were already pro-
posed by Leibniz, and that Kant added nothing new. This view does not correspond to the facts.
19
Some scholars fault Kant for focusing solely on affirmative judgments and brushing aside other
forms of judgment. They claim that he makes unfounded generalizations from isolated cases. His
use of terms like “contain” and “include” is confusing as well, and such terms can only be seen as
unhelpful spatial metaphors. Nonetheless, these criticisms do not hit their target. For instance, the
distinction between analytic and synthetic, which is acknowledged by modern logic, is not limited
to affirmative judgments.
20
This, of course, is put in terms of non-formal logic. We can also see Kant begin to rise above
formal logic. This breakthrough would in fact become a harbinger for Hegel and has important
philosophical implications.
48 2 Epistemology: I. Raising the Question

That the statement “All bodies are heavy” is true does not make the statement
“Some bodies are not heavy” necessarily false. The law of contradiction suffices for
an analytic judgment,21 but synthetic judgments, on the other hand, require other
principles. Kant basically equates analytic judgments with the transcendental
(which doesn’t rely on experience), and synthetic judgments with experience,
linking rationalism to the former and empiricism to the latter.22,23 Therefore,
rationalism, whose main instrument is deductive logic, the deduction of knowledge
from a priori self-evident axioms and innate ideas, is in fact merely one kind of
analytic judgment that cannot extend knowledge. If one proceeds from analytic
judgments, then all objects that are not perceptible, for instance, God, the soul, and
various other transcendent fallacies, become confused with the objects of empirical
knowledge. This method, therefore, cannot be the correct way to obtain scientific
truth. On the other hand, empiricism, whose main instrument is induction, the
production of knowledge from the senses and experience, is a posteriori synthetic
judgment. It can produce new knowledge; however, the universal and necessary
objective validity of this knowledge cannot be guaranteed. Kant holds that uni-
versal, necessary, objective validity, that is, universally applicable truth, is the basic
requirement for all scientific truth. Since empirical induction cannot satisfy this
requirement, it cannot be the correct way to obtain scientific truth. Therefore,
scientific truth cannot be attained by either a priori analytic judgments or empirical
synthetic judgments. How then can we explain and guarantee scientific truth?
Kant was conversant with the natural science of his time and entertained no
doubt about its objective validity. He believed in the application of Euclidean
geometry and the Newtonian laws of mechanics to all objects of experience. In
other words, he believed that those laws enjoyed universal, necessary, objective
validity. Euclidean geometry and Newton’s laws of mechanics are synthetic
judgments and rely on materials provided by sensible experience, but they also
possess universal, necessary, objective validity in being applicable to whatever
object we consider. So from where does this universal necessity come? Kant
maintains that it cannot come from empirical induction, as it has to be a priori. This
kind of scientific truth, then, is neither an a priori analytic judgment nor an
empirical synthetic judgment, but rather an a priori synthetic judgment. An

21
There has been much debate as to whether analytic judgments can be prescribed by the logical
law of non-contradiction. Modern philosophers tend to discuss analytic propositions using a strict
definition of the term. Beck, however, opposes the interpretation of Kant’s analytic judgments as
depending on convention and a strict reading of analytic propositions. In fact, what Kant inves-
tigates is not a problem of formal logic. As Paton said, “formal logic has nothing to do with the
possibility of synthetic judgment” (Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience, vol. 1, Chap. 35, Sect. 2).
22
These two equations, however, are not all-inclusive. Some scholars assert that the
analytic-synthetic distinction is synonymic, while the transcendental-experiential distinction is
epistemological.
23
Leibniz (rationalism) and Hume (empiricism) both maintain that the analytic is transcendental
while the synthetic is empirical. The difference is that Leibniz believes the former can lead to true
knowledge whereas the latter is contingent. Hume, on the other hand, believes the opposite,
holding that only experience leads to empirical knowledge of the world.
2.2 How Are A Priori Synthetic Judgments Possible? 49

important goal of Kant’s critical philosophy is to investigate how this kind of

judgment is possible. Therefore, this unusual question “How are a priori synthetic
judgments possible?” can be rephrased as “How is scientific truth, which possesses
universal, necessary, and objective validity, possible?” In asking about the condi-
tions for the establishment of such judgments, the central phrase here is “universal
and necessary.”24 This is also the reason why Kant stresses the distinction between
experience and the a priori, for that which is a priori is universal and necessary. This
is not the universal necessity of formal logic (which is analytic); rather it is the
universal necessity of actual objectivity in experience, which cannot be induced
from experience itself.
It should be noted that what is under investigation is “How is it possible?” rather
than “Is it possible?” To Kant, there is no question about whether scientific
knowledge of nature is possible, because modern physics has established such
knowledge. The question that concerns Kant is how is it possible. Thus, in the
Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason, he poses questions such as “How is
pure mathematics possible?” (and gives a transcendental aesthetic answer), and
“How is pure natural science possible?” (and gives a transcendental analytic
answer). Kant attempts to explain scientific knowledge through idealistic tran-
scendentalism, and attributes the objective truth of science to a whole set of tran-
scendental forms of cognition.
Kant disapproves of Leibniz’s view that mathematics is analytic, and that the law
of contradiction in formal logic suffices for its truth. He holds that mathematics is
synthetic, yet not synthetic a posteriori. It is rather a non-experiential construction,
an a priori synthetic judgment of universal necessity. He argues that even an
elementary example in arithmetic, for instance, 7 + 5 = 12, is synthetic, since the
concept of 12 cannot be analyzed from the concepts of 7, 5, and +. He thinks that
“the concept of the sum of 7 and 5 contains nothing further than the unification of
the two numbers into one, through which by no means is thought what this single
number may be that combines the two. […] One must go beyond these concepts, in
making use of the intuition that corresponds to one of the two, such as one’s five
fingers, or […] five points […] One therefore truly amplifies one’s concept through
this proposition 7 + 5 = 12 […] We could never find the sum through the mere
analysis of our concepts, without making use of intuition.”25 It is even more
obvious in the addition of large numbers, such as ten of thousands added to tens of
thousands, that the sum is not an analytic but a synthetic judgment. On the other

24
On the relation between “universal” and “necessary,” see Prichard, Kant’s Theory of Knowledge,
Chap. 2. He points out that universal and necessary are eventually continuous. In a marginal note
in his Philosophical Notebooks, Lenin quotes a comment Feuerbach made in his commentary on
Leibniz: “Kant and Leibniz, necessity inseparable from the universal.” The original quotation is
thus: “The basic thought, therefore, of the Nouveaux Essais sur l’Entendement Humain is already,
as in Der Kritik der reinen Vernunft, that universality, and the necessity which is inseparable from
it, express the essence belonging to the understanding or apperceiving being, and therefore cannot
arise from the senses, or from experience, i.e., from outside.”
25
Kant, and G. Hatfield, Prolegomena, 18.
50 2 Epistemology: I. Raising the Question

hand, the proposition 7 + 5 = 12 is applicable on all occasions, for all objects and
experiences, and is not dependent on any specific experience, which means that it
has universal and necessary validity. Kant uses an example from geometry, “The
straight line is the shortest between two points,” to explain that the concept of the
shortest (a magnitude) is not analytically contained in the concept of a straight line
(a quality).26 He argues: “For my concept of the straight contains nothing of
magnitude, but only a quality. The concept of the shortest is therefore wholly an
addition and cannot be extracted by any analysis from the concept of the straight
line. Intuition must therefore be made use of here, by means of which alone the
synthesis is possible.”27 Such a proposition is a synthetic judgment related to
experience, yet it still possesses universal, necessary, objective validity, which is
not supplied by experience. Therefore, Kant names it an a priori synthetic judg-
ment. He lays great stress on mathematics, and holds that investigations become
properly scientific only when they contain mathematics, whose a priori synthetic
judgments are the pure element that grounds the objective, universal validity of
science. So, for example, he says that if chemistry cannot employ mathematics to
calculate and express molecular movement in space, it cannot become a science.
This conclusion applies to any would-be natural science, which must contain a
priori synthetic judgments as its ground. Kant states: “Natural science (physics)
contains a priori synthetic judgments as principles.”28 He gives examples of such
basic principles—for instance, “the law of conservation of mass” and “action and
reaction must always be equal”—and points out that these principles cannot be
induced from experience, nor deduced from concepts.29 Instead, they are a priori
synthetic judgments. Kant sees forms of intuition, i.e., time and space, as a priori
conditions for mathematical judgments; that is to say, a priori synthetic knowledge
of arithmetical and geometrical propositions is mainly supplied by sensible intu-
ition. He sets forth twelve categories as a priori conditions for natural science
(mainly physics) to be established as a priori synthetic judgments (see Chap. 4), but
attributes the ultimate source of a priori conditions for natural science to what he
calls transcendental apperception.
In addition, Kant raises two questions. First, “How is metaphysics as natural
disposition possible?” Second, “How is metaphysics as science possible?” The
Critique of Pure Reason is an answer to these two questions. He maintains that
these questions are qualitatively different from the two questions I discussed earlier
concerning the possibility of mathematics and natural science. To ask “How is

26
Different from analytic judgment, it does not logically exclude the statement that “a straight line
is not the shortest line between two points.” Some scholars hold that Kant in fact not only does not
exclude but even foresees the coming of non-Euclidean geometry. But it is an overstatement to
regard this as foresight on his part.
27
Kant, and G. Hatfield, Prolegomena, 19.
28
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, B17.
29
Some scientists and philosophers today still acknowledge and stress this point, which they
consider to be wrapped up with the laws of conservation of energy, relativity, and causality. See
Chap. 4.
2.2 How Are A Priori Synthetic Judgments Possible? 51

metaphysics possible?” is to ask how the existence of God, immortality, and

freewill can be established, just like other scientific truths. Kant thinks that these
metaphysical questions arise as a natural disposition of humankind,30 yet are not
possible terms of scientific knowledge. The two questions concerning the possi-
bility of mathematics and natural science were the occasion for philosophical
arguments explicating effective scientific truths; the second set of questions aims to
expose the errors of the old metaphysics, and are an occasion to point out that
metaphysical concepts and propositions, such as the immortality of the soul and the
existence of God, are transcendental illusions produced by reason’s passing beyond
the boundaries of experience. At the same time, Kant thinks that transcendental
illusions are a natural demand and inclination of our knowledge. On the one hand,
they are not scientific truths, therefore they cannot be proved; on the other hand,
they do have function and value for our thought and action. As subjective ideas,
their function and value lie in leading and regulating our speculations and actions.
Kant stresses that only after having cleared up these questions, and dispensing with
the old metaphysics that had passed itself off as a science, can a properly scientific
metaphysics be established. His critical philosophy, as a matter of fact, intends to
find answers to these questions, or at least to clear the ground for a future meta-
physics. His critical philosophy is a propaedeutic,31 as it were, to a future meta-
physics of science.
Kant called the critical philosophy transcendental philosophy, stating: “That what
here constitutes our subject-matter is not the nature of things, which is inexhaustible,
but the understanding which passes judgment upon the nature of things; and this the

30
“That the human mind would someday entirely give up metaphysical investigations is just as
little to be expected, as that we would someday gladly stop all breathing so as never to take in
impure air. There will therefore be metaphysics in the world at every time, and what is more, in
every human being, and especially the reflective ones; metaphysics that each, in the absence of a
public standard of measure, will carve out for themselves in their own manner. Now what has
hitherto been called metaphysics can satisfy no inquiring mind, and yet it is also impossible to give
up metaphysics completely; therefore, a critique of pure reason itself must finally be attempted, or,
if one exists, it must be examined and put to a general test, since there are no other means to relieve
this pressing need, which is something more than a mere thirst for knowledge.” (Prolegomena,
118).
31
Kant wrote the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Present Itself as a
Science (abbreviated Prolegomena) as a summary of the Critique of Pure Reason for the general
public. However, he does not specifically give a description of this future metaphysics, about
which there has been much debate among later scholars. Some scholars maintain that Kant
presents only a moral metaphysics and does not intend to construct a metaphysics of science or
epistemology, while others assert that the critical philosophy is Kant’s metaphysics, “a system of a
priori concepts and principles which make objects of experience possible” (Gregor). Kant indeed
states that he intends to write on metaphysics and that the Critique is only a propaedeutic for the
purpose of clearing the ground. But when he was criticized for having merely worked out the
introduction and leaving his philosophical system half-done, Kant indignantly replied that a
complete pure philosophy is indeed to be found in the Critique of Pure Reason (see his “Public
Declaration Concerning Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre,” August 7, 1799). One should note that
Kant’s use of the word “metaphysics” carries a different emphasis as well.
52 2 Epistemology: I. Raising the Question

understanding, again, only in respect of its a priori knowledge.”32 He explains, “I

entitle transcendental all knowledge which is occupied not so much with objects as
with the mode of our knowledge of objects in so far as this mode of knowledge is to
be possible a priori.”33 He says, “The critique of pure reason therefore will contain all
that is essential in transcendental philosophy.”34 Thus, it is evident that Kant’s critical
philosophy proposes to investigate all a priori conditions, origins, and modes of the
understanding, instead of inquiring into the content of various a priori synthetic
judgments. Kant argues that just as geometry extracts the concept of the triangle from
particular triangles in experience, to construct an a priori system that is made of all
kinds of a priori synthetic judgments, transcendental philosophy extracts forms of
intuition, i.e., time and space, and the categories of the understanding from sense
experience and scientific knowledge, in order to investigate and construct a system of
pure a priori knowledge. Such a priori knowledge refers only to the forms of the
understanding, that is, the transcendental forms that make experience and empirical
knowledge possible. Kant often uses the terms “a priori,” “pure,” and “form,” as if
they are synonyms.35 He states that “the word ‘transcendental’ does not signify
something that surpasses all experience, but something that indeed precedes expe-
rience (a priori), but that, all the same, is destined to nothing more than solely to make
cognition from experience possible.”36 Therefore, the term “transcendental” refers to
the conditions of experience, and transcendental philosophy investigates the condi-
tions of cognition (which cannot depart from experience). Kant sees his epistemology
as an investigation into the pure system of forms of cognition. This investigation
contains the seed for Hegel’s epistemology, that is, the seed of dialectical logic. The
difference is that Kant remains in epistemology, while Hegel transforms epistemol-
ogy into ontology.

2.3 Dualism and Idealism

In his Introduction, Kant unites “a priori” and “synthetic” in one phrase, raising his
question about how universal and necessary scientific truth is possible. In so doing,
he poignantly raises, in a particular way, the fundamental philosophical question in

32
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A12-13/B26.
33
Ibid., A11/B25.
34
Ibid., A14/B28.
35
The term “pure” has two meanings. First, it refers to a kind of a priori knowledge, that is, in
contrast to impure a priori knowledge. Second, it is synonymous with a priori. Impure a priori
knowledge refers to the situation where the relation of the concepts is a priori, though the concepts
themselves are empirical. For instance, in “every change has a cause,” the concept of change is
empirical. Pure a priori refers to the situation where not only the relation of the concepts is a priori,
but the concepts themselves are also not empirical. However, Kant does not always maintain a
vigilant watch over this distinction, and the term “pure” is often confused with “a priori.”
36
Kant, and Henry Calderwood, Prolegomena, 112.
2.3 Dualism and Idealism 53

epistemology, namely, the relation of thought and being. Concerning this question,
Kant characteristically exhibits his underlying attitude of wavering between,
compromising with, and reconciling materialism and idealism. In the Introduction
to the Critique of Pure Reason, he scorns the old idealism for doing away with
experience:
The light dove, cleaving the air in her free flight, and feeling its resistance, might imagine
that its flight would be still easier in empty space. It was thus that Plato left the world of the
senses, as setting too narrow limits to the understanding, and ventured out beyond it on the
wings of the ideas, in the empty space of the pure understanding.37

In the Prolegomena, he puts it in more specific terms:

The thesis of all genuine idealists, from the Eleatic School up to Bishop Berkeley, is
contained in this formula: ‘All cognition through the senses and experience is nothing but
sheer illusion, and there is truth only in the ideas of pure the understanding and reason.’ The
principle that governs and determines my idealism throughout is, on the contrary: ‘All
cognition of things out of mere pure understanding or pure reason is nothing but sheer
illusion, and there is truth only in experience.’38

However, this is only one side of the coin. On the other side, Kant states:
There are only two ways in which we can account for a necessary agreement of experience
with the concepts of its objects: either experience makes these concepts possible or these
concepts make experience possible. The former supposition does not hold in respect of the
categories (nor of pure sensible intuition) […] There remains, therefore, only the second
supposition […] that the categories contain, on the side of the understanding, the grounds of
the possibility of all experience in general.39

In the Prolegomena, he also says: “the understanding does not draw its (a priori)
laws from nature, but prescribes them to it;” and “the understanding is the origin of the
universal order of nature, in that it comprehends all appearances under its own laws.”40
On the one hand, cognition needs experience, and truth does not lie in pure speculation;
on the other hand, it is not consciousness that reflects being, rather it is the subject that
determines the object. This line of thought that proceeds from Kant’s solution to the
problem of the possibility of a priori synthetic judgments constitutes the thesis of his
dualism. On the one hand there is the sensible material provided by things in them-
selves (see Chap. 7), on the other hand there are the forms of cognition supplied by the
transcendental self (see Chap. 5). This pair of contrasts runs throughout Kant’s epis-
temology. It is vital for us to penetrate this conflict, and to discover its reasonable
significance, instead of trying to bridge, eliminate, or cover up misunderstandings.
The main difficulty is that the a priori forms (time and space as forms of intu-
ition, and the categories of the understanding) dominate, control, and construct
sensible material. Knowledge is mainly attained through the forms acting on the

37
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A5/B9.
38
Kant, and Henry Calderwood, Prolegomena, 126.
39
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, B166-7.
40
Kant, and Henry Calderwood, Prolegomena, 73.
54 2 Epistemology: I. Raising the Question

data of the senses; and the universal, necessary, objective validity of scientific truth
also comes from the experience of the senses. The transcendental aspect is the main
feature of this conflict. Therefore, in spite of Kant’s efforts to reconcile and mediate
between rationalism and empiricism, and in spite of his years of wavering and
compromising, the essential nature and necessary destiny of knowledge can be
nothing but idealistic transcendentalism.
Although Kant criticizes both idealistic rationalism and idealistic empiricism, he
in fact inherits the ideas of both schools. Idealistic rationalism holds that universal
and necessary knowledge can only arise from innate ideas, which are clear and
certain self-evident axioms, while sense experience is merely a heap of vague and
chaotic impressions. Idealistic empiricism also believes that universal necessity
cannot be induced from experience, but is only found in analytic judgment, that is,
in logic and mathematics. Both schools agree that experience cannot supply uni-
versal and necessary truth, and both admit that logic and mathematics are such
universal, necessary truths. Kant’s critical philosophy takes over this view,
emphasizing that universal necessity cannot arise from experience, but only from
the a priori. But critical philosophy diverges from the conception of innate ideas in
its denial that any particular, actual knowledge or concepts can be innate or
immanent, despite admitting that the forms of knowledge are transcendental.
This difference is of great importance, because innate ideas are merely deter-
minate contents of knowledge, while transcendental forms are indispensable, nec-
essary conditions for all knowledge. Hence, critical philosophy is of more profound
significance than idealism with its innate ideas. Although, unlike innate ideas,
transcendental forms do not precede experience in time, they precede it transcen-
dentally and constitute the universal necessity of all a priori truth. Therefore,
although no particular knowledge or empirical concept is a priori, in Kant’s phi-
losophy the universal forms of cognition that are necessary for constituting
knowledge become immanent or, in a sense, innate.
Hegel takes this conception over from Kant, stressing the universal necessity of
forms of reason. Hegel argues: “But if the law does not have its truth in the Notion,
it is a contingency, not a necessity, not, in fact, a law.”41 That is to say, universal
necessity (the truth of a law) can only lie in concepts, thinking, and reason. To
Kant, concepts and thinking are subjective (albeit transcendental) forms of cogni-
tion, while to Hegel they are objective absolute spirit which rules the world. Hegel
states that there are “three meanings of objectivity.”
First, it means what has external existence, in distinction from which the subjective is what is
only supposed, dreamed, etc. Secondly, it has the meaning, attached to it by Kant, of the
universal and necessary, as distinguished from the particular, subjective, and occasional element
which belongs to our sensations. Thirdly, as has been just explained, it means the
thought-apprehended essence of the existing thing, in contradistinction from what is merely our
thought, and what consequently is still separated from the thing itself, as it exists in independent
essence.42

41
Hegel et al. (1977).
42
Hegel and Wallace (1874).
2.3 Dualism and Idealism 55

The purpose of Kant’s raising the question of universal necessity is to pursue and
confirm the objectivity of truth and knowledge, and to distinguish objectivity from
the subjectivity of sense experience (see Chap. 5). However, only subjective
thinking can possess universal, necessary objectivity, therefore it seems that Kant
reverses the order of the subjective and the objective, i.e., Hegel’s first meaning. To
Hegel, however, this reversal is a profound truth. He explains, “the perceptions of
sense are the properly dependent and secondary feature, while the thoughts are
really independent and primary.”43 But Hegel is not satisfied with Kant’s objec-
tivity, because it is merely universal and necessary for cognition, whereas he wishes
to see the universal necessity of thinking extended to the nature of things.
Feuerbach disagrees with Hegel, emphasizing the universality of sensibility. He
argues: “Man is not a particular being like the animal; rather, he is a universal
being,” and “universal sense is intellect, and universal sensuousness is intellectu-
ality.”44 However, Feuerbach does not explain where this universality comes from.
All he does is phrase his view of human nature in empty words: “The togetherness
of man with man is the first principle and the criterion of truth and universality.”45
What he means when he says that man differs from animals in man’s being “a
universal being” and possessing “universal sense” actually refers to features of
sensuous human nature. Feuerbach basically makes a detour and comes back to the
passive sensuousness of the old materialism because he does not appreciate how
these features of the senses have evolved in the history of human society. The
universal sensuousness Feuerbach expounds does not in fact exist, and it would be
futile to prove the universal necessity of scientific knowledge by searching sensible
experience. But Feuerbach insists on employing the senses to obtain empirical
knowledge; as a result, his epistemology fails to overcome the limitations of the old
materialism. As Engels pointed out: “The empiricism of observation alone can
never adequately prove necessity […] It does not follow from the continual rising of
the sun in the morning that it will rise again tomorrow.”46 Epistemologically, it is
because the objective truth of knowledge cannot be guaranteed by sense experience
alone that the empiricism of the old materialism is eventually replaced by skepti-
cism (Hume) and transcendental idealism (Kant). The old materialism can hardly
stand up to Kant’s criticism: How is universal and necessary scientific truth
possible?
This question is the starting point of Kant’s epistemology.

43
Ibid.
44
Feuerbach (1994).
45
Ibid., §41.
46
Engels (1994).
56 2 Epistemology: I. Raising the Question

2.4 “The View of Life and Practice Should Be the First

and Principal View of Epistemology”

Marx says: “All social life is essentially practical.”47 Human existence is not merely
the sensuous existence of a natural organism; it is not merely, as Feuerbach
assumes, an abstract sensuous relationship of the “togetherness of man with man.”
The human essence is a product of social practice within historical processes. It is,
first of all, a product of the activities of using and making tools. These are the
activities that distinguish human beings from things (animal as well other natural
beings), and distinguish human practices from animal activities. Before Marxism,
the old materialism investigated the problem of knowledge from the perspective of
the experience of the senses, and took the perspective that human beings are natural
biological entities. Many modern subjective idealistic schools see the perception of
the senses, or experience, or observable empirical statements as final facts, and use
these as the starting point for cognition. They fail to see the essential distinction
between human cognition and that of animals. It is only if one starts from social
practice and considers questions of cognition without ignoring human sociality that
one can explain the interdependent relationship between knowledge and social
practice in its particular historical context and discern that the formation and
development of human sense perception are historical products of human practice.
To start from the materials of the senses is actually to proceed from individual
psychology. But individual psychology is, from the beginning, limited by the level
of development of human beings as a whole. The perception of primitive peoples is
different from that of moderns.
It is because Kant had the wisdom to proceed from the historical achievements
of the whole of human beings (a priori forms of knowledge) that his transcen-
dentalism is superior to empiricism, which starts from the perception and experi-
ence of individual psychology (the a posteriori content of cognition). Wittgenstein
and other modern philosophers often start from language. But while it is true that
language is what distinguishes human beings from animals, and while it is quite
wise to adopt language rather than perception and experience as a starting point, is
language the final substance, noumenon, or reality of the human being?
Most modern Western philosophical schools answer this question affirmatively.
But my answer is negative. In my view, the final substance, noumenon, or reality of
the human being is the social, practical activities of material production; and these
activities are the ground upon which signs (language is mainly sign-production)
arise. The relation between language and practical social activities is certainly
extremely complicated. As Wittgenstein has pointed out, language is determined by
social life and practical social activities, and individual perception is determined by
social language rather than the other way around. All these theories are quite
correct. But the problem we are facing now is how to inquire into the relation and

47
Theses on Feuerbach. Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
2.4 “The View of Life and Practice … 57

structure of primitive language-sign activities and practical social activities (mainly

material production for collective survival) from the perspective of genetics. In this
context, genetics is not merely empirical science; it is of ontological and philo-
sophical significance.
From a philosophical point of view, the inquiry into human knowledge neither
proceeds from language (as in analytic philosophy), nor from feelings (as in psy-
chology); rather, it proceeds from practice (as in anthropology). Linguistics and
psychology should be grounded upon anthropology, meaning the whole history
of social practice. The true universality of sensibility and language can only be built
on the universality of practice. Marx states that “all mysteries which lead theory to
mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension
of this practice.”48 Only after having correctly comprehended the universality of
practice can one resolve Kant’s question of how a priori synthetic judgments are
possible, and this question inevitably touches also on the universality of reason and
language.
There is no absolute universal necessity in nature. Universal necessity is merely
a philosophical idea that has become rigid. The universal and necessary scientific
knowledge that Kant has in mind is, in fact, relative truth; it is only universal and
necessarily, objectively valid for a certain level of human social practice. This
validity constantly expands, diminishes, is revised, and changes, because human
social practice is in continuous development.49 From Euclidean geometry to
non-Euclidean geometry, from Newtonian laws of mechanics to Einstein’s theory
of relativity and quantum mechanics, all these scientific developments prove that
what Kant sees as universal, necessary, unchangeable, and absolutely applicable
scientific truth is only applicable in a certain field, under certain conditions, and at a
particular time.
Scientific truth is universally necessary only within these limits. It is apparent
then that universal necessity is essentially determined by the level, scope, or limit
that human social practice achieves in a certain historical period, and is marked,
without exception, by the sociality of historical time.
This sociality is objective, a human objectivity, because it arises neither from the
association of subjective notions, nor from man-made convention, nor from tran-
scendental norms. Instead, it arises from the material activities of the objective
social practice of human beings. This does not mean that all laws in objective
nature (e.g., those discovered by mechanics and biology) are arbitrary creations of
human practice. Although objective natural beings are not dependent on human
society and practice, their laws are discovered, comprehended, employed, and
learned by means of human beings’ social practice. Therefore these laws have
universal, necessary, objective validity, which is supplied and proved by social

48
Theses on Feuerbach. Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
49
S. Körner also holds that there is no a priori synthetic judgments, that they are relative to the
development of science (see Kant, Chap. 1). Analytic philosophy also stresses, from the per-
spective of language, that an empirical proposition (e.g., a refuted scientific proposition) can be
false.
58 2 Epistemology: I. Raising the Question

practice only within the scope of a certain historical time. It is social practice that
gradually distinguishes, through technology, the varied and changing appearances
of the phenomena of nature (which rarely have universal necessity) from relatively
stable laws (which have some universal necessity); it extracts the former from the
latter and applies them to vast objects and research fields. Piaget argues, from the
perspective of cognitive development, that the universality and objectivity of
knowledge are intimately related to social activity. Without the latter, the former is
not possible. Universal and necessary logical thinking also needs cooperative action
in social life as its condition.
Earlier, I proposed replacing Piaget’s microcosmic perspective of cognitive
development in psychology with the macrocosmic perspective of human history.
However, as the level of social practice advances, the objective validity that is
comprehended, learned, and extracted from historical experience acquires universal
necessity. Therefore, this universal necessity must be conditioned by a partic-
ular, objective social nature. Social nature is the theoretical measure for social
practice at any particular historical time. Social practice refers, first and most
importantly, to socially productive work characterized by the using and making of
tools (both material tools, e.g., a primitive axe or a space shuttle; and also energies,
for instance fire and nuclear fusion). Second, social practice mainly expresses the
pioneering functions of the modern scientific experimental method. We are familiar
with the historical facts that: first there was the practice of ancient land surveying,
and this was followed by Euclidean geometry; first there were capitalistic factories
and their employment of simple machines, then came Newton’s mathematical laws
of mechanics; first there was modern industry and scientific experimentation on a
large scale, then came non-Euclidean geometries, the theory of relativity, quantum
mechanics, and the theory of elementary particles. These scientific theories in turn
continuously transform into technologies and tools, which change rapidly, and
which transform into directly productive forces in society.
The well-known thesis that human beings legislate nature, which appears
prominently in Kant’s epistemology, is a reflection of these new features of sci-
entific experimentation at his time. Scientists from Galileo on generally initiated
experiments in order to pose questions to nature, and demand that nature give an
answer. They then testified, revised, and developed their hypotheses and theories,
rather than using simple observation, description, and induction. Kant sees this shift
clearly, and remarks in the Preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure
Reason:
When Galileo caused balls, the weights of which he had himself previously determined, to
roll down an inclined plane; when Torricelli made the air carry a weight which he had
calculated beforehand to be equal to that of a definite volume of water; or in more recent
times, when Stahl changed metal into lime, and lime back into metal, by withdrawing
something and then restoring it, a light broke upon all students of nature. They learned that
reason has insight only into that which it produces after a plan of its own, and that it must
not allow itself to be kept, as it were, in nature’s leading-strings, but must itself show the
way with principles of judgment based upon fixed laws, constraining nature to give answer
to questions of reason’s own determining. Accidental observations, made in obedience to
no previously thought-out plan, can never be made to yield a necessary law, which alone
2.4 “The View of Life and Practice … 59

reason is concerned to discover. Reason, holding in one hand its principles, according to
which alone concordant appearances can be admitted as equivalent to laws, and in the other
hand the experiment which it has devised in conformity with these principles, must
approach nature in order to be taught by it. It must not, however, do so in the character of a
pupil who listens to everything that the teacher chooses to say, but of an appointed judge
who compels the witnesses to answer questions which he has himself formulated.50

Kant’s conception of the human being as legislating nature could only have
originated from the ground of modern scientific experiment and from the subjective
spontaneity of human cognition that the methodology of natural science exhibits.
This feature, which Kant stresses time and again, has become all the more
prominent and important in modern times, and is fundamentally grounded in social
practice, e.g., industrial technology and scientific experiment on an unprecedented
scale.
It is evident that scientific method itself is restricted by the level of social
development. Karl Popper’s empirical falsification of hypotheses and Thomas
Kuhn’s paradigm shifts could only emerge under modern scientific conditions,
when sufficient knowledge had accumulated and people were ready to cast off
ordinary experience, just as Bacon’s inductive method could appear only in an age
when rigid medieval dogma had been smashed and science truly began to face the
world of experience. That is why Popper stressed falsification, maintaining that
scientific theories continuously advance by the process of refuting false doctrines.
Kuhn, in contrast, stressed retaining truth and approaching truth in the process of
enlarging our knowledge of experience. Kuhn states: “The bulk of scientific
knowledge is a product of Europe in the last four centuries.”51 The remark confirms
my point. Therefore, they all emphasize that science does not start from
observation-perception; rather, perception, material, and observation are outcomes
of selection under the instruction of hypotheses or ideas. The latter are, of course,
associated with social life and ideas.
The relation between the universal necessity of science and the objective
sociality of human history does not at all negate the internal logic of scientific
development. The more specialized the disciplines of science become, the less it is
necessary for them to rely on an external impetus, including society. Mathematics
and modern theoretical physics prove this point. In this respect, that which I have
emphasized is merely seen from the perspective of their origins.

50
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, Bxiii.
51
Kuhn (1962).
60 2 Epistemology: I. Raising the Question

2.5 “Synthesis” Is the Object of Transformation

The terms “analytic” and “synthetic” were originally relative to one another and
could not be absolutely distinguished or contrasted, as logical positivism tried to
do.52 Strict analytic propositions are rare in actual thinking. Kant himself distin-
guished two kinds of analytic judgments, namely, tautologies, when the subject
already contains the predicate, and a second case in which the predicate explains the
subject, which he held to be more valuable to our thinking.53 Engels also remarks
that “the fact that identity contains difference within itself is expressed in every
sentence, where the predicate is necessarily different from the subject; the lily is a
plant, the rose is red, where, either in the subject or in the predicate, there is
something that is not covered by the predicate or the subject.”54 All these thoughts
attest to the fact that tautological analysis is rare in ordinary language.
The analytic-synthetic distinction occupies a prominent place in Kant’s philos-
ophy, where a central theme is that the concept of the synthetic unit differs from the
analytic unit, because the synthetic is more fundamental in cognition than is the
analytic. All these terms—analytic judgments, analytic unit, analysis, and analyzing
—are neither identical nor synonymous (for instance, Kant states that the analytica
methodo differs from analytic propositions because the former does not ask whether
knowledge is analytic or synthetic). However, they do share a commonality, as is
also the case with the synthetic. Kant states as early as the 1770s that “the analysis
of a substantial composite terminates only in a part which is not a whole, that is, in a
simple part, so synthesis terminates only in a whole which is not a part, that is, the
world.”55 In his later years, Kant remarked again in the Lectures on Logic that
“propositions whose certainty rests on identity of concepts (of the predicate with the
notion of the subject) are called analytic propositions. Propositions whose truth is
not grounded on identity of concepts must be called synthetic.”56 Again, “analytic
principles are not axioms, because they are discursive. And even synthetic prin-
ciples are axioms only if they are intuitive.”57 And also, “to synthesis pertains the
making distinct of objects, to analysis the making distinct of concepts.”58 Kant
makes a strict distinction between “the analysis of concepts, which allows us to
render distinct those concepts that are given, and the synthesis of intuition, which
allows us to make or fabricate distinct concepts.”59 The use of the former is merely
to analyze, while the latter describes synthesizing activities related to intuitive

52
Some scholars, e.g., W. V. O. Quine, have criticized this strict division. See Quine, “Two
Dogmas of Empiricism.”
53
See Kant, Lectures On Logic, §37.
54
Dialectics of Nature. Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
55
Kant and Eckoff (1970).
56
Kant and Young (1992).
57
Ibid.
58
Ibid. Also see Prolegomena, VIII c5.
59
Ibid.
2.5 “Synthesis” Is the Object of Transformation 61

objects. It is evident that synthetic judgments are identical with synthesizing

activities.60 Kant describes the “analytic method” as the process of starting from
known facts and proceeding by analysis to trace their constituent factors;61 for
instance, to trace and analyze the transcendental conditions from determinate facts
of mathematics and physics, which Kant maintains was the method he used to write
the Prolegomena. By contrast, the “synthetic method” begins from transcendental
conditions and proceeds to establish known facts; for instance, starting from time,
space, and the categories, and investigating the possibility of mathematics and
physics, which was the method Kant used to write the Critique of Pure Reason. He
lays great stress on cognition and the logical synthetic function in epistemology as
well as in methodology. This is one of Kant’s main theses.
Kant spent much time expounding the analytic and synthetic methods; however,
he did not succeed in giving a clear explanation. In particular, he failed to explain
why synthesis is more fundamental and important than analysis. Many Kantian
scholars also fall into this same error, and make one of the central tasks in com-
prehending Kant’s epistemology an understanding of the concept of synthesis.
I believe that the reason why Kant stresses the analytic-synthetic distinction is not
because of formal logic or the relation of subject and predicate. In other words, the
reason is not the forms of judgment, but the content of judgment; the question is
whether or not thought relies on reality, which is a basic philosophical question
about the relation between thought and being. Through his division into the two
kinds of judgment, Kant is, in fact, summarizing his position from the pre-Critical
period that logic is not equal to reality, and is proposing the central concepts of his
critical philosophy. Because synthetic judgments can produce new knowledge, the
synthetic method is able to continuously develop the particular. The synthetic
method is more fundamental than the analytic method because the former reflects
the fact that practice transforms and manages objects in actual activities and breaks
through old relationships to establish new ones, hence constituting a historical
process that evolves from the simple to the complicated. This is how the synthetic
method expands knowledge in our minds.
Such a procedure is indeed different from analytic judgments, which turn on formal
logic. Therefore, it can be said that the synthetic method inheres in the very nature of
practical activities. It is the method of “eating and digesting objects” (Mao Zedong).62

60
Which is contrary to Aristotle and Leibniz, who hold that concepts precede judgments. Kant,
however, maintains that judgments (synthesis) precede concepts (analysis).
61
In the Lectures on Logic, Kant states that the “analytic is opposed to synthetic method. The
former begins with the conditioned and grounded and proceeds to principles […] while the latter
goes from principles to consequences or from the simple to the composite. The former could also
be called regressive, as the latter could progressive. Analytic method is also called the method of
invention. Analytic method is more appropriate for the end of popularity, synthetic method for the
end of scientific and systematic preparation of cognition” (Kant, and J. Michael Young, Lectures
On Logic, 639).
62
Mao’s thought is from the perspective of the Chinese War of Liberation. However, modern
industry more vividly demonstrates the immense power of the practical synthetic of the doctrine of
“eat and digest things” to thereby produce products.
62 2 Epistemology: I. Raising the Question

In short, social practice is, in my view, the ground of universal, necessary, a

priori synthetic judgments. Because social practice has an intimate relation with
sensible practice and is a direct expression of human activities, the synthetic method
is fundamental. However, modern philosophical schools, e.g., logical positivism,
choose to refute Kant from the opposite perspective, which seems misguided. Their
criticism is not a priori, but synthetic. They either emphasize the blunt division
between analytic propositions and synthetic propositions, in order to deny a priori
synthetic judgments; or they mistakenly identify a priori synthetic judgments as
analytic judgments. Logicism, with Bertrand Russell as its representative, launched
a vehement criticism, on the ground of mathematics, against Kant’s a priori syn-
thetic judgments. These critics adamantly rejected the a priori synthetic status Kant
claimed for mathematics. As a result of their contention, the nature of mathematics
became a battlefield for philosophical debate. But this does not come as a surprise,
because the question raised by Kant about the nature of mathematics is a philo-
sophical question of profound significance. In modern science, industry, and
technology, mathematics has increasingly acquired a pragmatic function. As a
powerful tool of signs, just as with any material tool, mathematics opens the pro-
spect of infinite possibilities and plays a crucial role in people’s activities of cog-
nizing and transforming the world. It becomes an important object for
epistemology. I will dwell on this theme in the next section and, by contrasting the
antithetical views of Kant and Russell, discuss the essential significance of practice
and synthesis as the ground of knowledge.

2.6 On the Nature of Mathematics

Kant holds that mathematics is not analytic, and that, therefore, it is not identical
with formal logic. He emphasizes that mathematics is related to aesthetic intu-
ition;63 for instance, we use fingers to help us count, and other intuitive operations
to produce and change quantities (algebra and geometry both presuppose intuition).
To Kant, analytic judgments are only valid in logic, while synthetic judgments are
valid in reality, and the former must have the latter as its ground. The truths of
mathematics are obviously universally necessary. Logicists believe that mathe-
matics is simply logic, so Frege deduces cardinal numbers, e.g., 1, 2, 3 … and
operations like addition from logical definitions, while Russell attempts to reduce
the whole of mathematics to the systematic deduction of logical propositions. This
work has made an important contribution to mathematics and logic, and has had a
huge impact on methodology, even apparently fusing logic and mathematics. As
Russell states: “Some have argued that the objects of mathematics were obviously

63
See “the Distinction between Analytic and Synthetic Judgments” in the Critique of Pure Reason
for Kant’s criticism of Leibniz. Kant points out that a difference of quantity is not the same as one
of concepts, because it is related to the senses, which cannot be proved by formal logic.
2.6 On the Nature of Mathematics 63

not subjective, and therefore must be physical and empirical; others have argued
that they were obviously not physical, and therefore must be subjective and mental.
Both sides were right in what they denied, and wrong in what they asserted; Frege
has the merit of accepting both denials, and finding a third assertion by recognising
the world of logic, which is neither mental nor physical.”64
Russell’s idea is that number is neither objectively physical nor subjectively
psychological; rather, it is a logical relation that is beyond perception. For instance,
a natural number is a set of sets. It is not incorrect to say that it is “a third assertion,”
and I indeed agree that it is a third assertion. However, Russell’s third assertion
demands that mathematics completely break away from sensible reality and become
a pure form of relation in a logical language; these relations are eventually seen as
conventional tautologies that “simply record our determination to use words in a
certain fashion,”65 that is, as grammatical rules for using language signs. Russell’s
followers say that “a mathematical proposition is really a rule for the manipulation
of symbols.”66 That is to say, it is a rule for calculation. They all tend to believe that
analytic propositions have nothing to do with experience.
Reducing mathematics to logic cannot solve the problem, however. For instance,
the axiom of infinity originally did not belong to logic, even though without it
Russell could not complete the project of his Principles of Mathematics.
Philosophically, it can be said that Russell regressed from Kant to Hume (Hume
explains that mathematics, as opposed to empirical science, is a matter of pure
analytic judgment). Russell merely reaffirms Leibniz’s view of mathematics. Kant
rejects Hume as well as Leibniz, both of whom think that the law of contradiction
can define mathematics. Kant maintains that mathematics cannot be guaranteed by
formal logic but must instead be referred to the conditions of sensuous intuition.
This view is superior to that of Hume, just as the formalism of modern math-
ematics that is influenced by Kant is superior to logicism, which is influenced by
Hume. Hilbert, who is at the helm of formalism, states: “We find ourselves in
agreement with the philosophers, notably with Kant. Kant taught—and it is an
integral part of his doctrine—that mathematics treats a subject matter that is given
independently of logic. Mathematics, therefore, can never be grounded solely on
logic.”67 Kant emphasizes the relation between mathematics and sensible reality,
but sees this relation as the a priori forms of intuition, time and space. The intu-
itionism of modern mathematics takes over Kant’s inclination, directly identifying
the notions of number and time with intuition.68

64
Russell (1960). In Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits, Russell acknowledges at last that
some propositions in science are “hypotheses” that are independent of experience. He attributes
these to biology or psychology. However this approach is Humean rather than Kantian.
65
Ayer (1952).
66
Newman (1956).
67
David Hilbert, “On the Infinite.” [quoted from Woleński (1994)].
68
Among the three major schools of mathematical philosophy, intuitionism is closer to the truth
than logicism and formalism. Brouwer holds that structure has intrinsic significance in
64 2 Epistemology: I. Raising the Question

Logicism, which concludes that mathematics (axioms) is either convention or

tautology, is more mistaken than intuitionism.69 However, the terms of convention
and tautology themselves need explanation. These questions, namely, why con-
vention is needed and how to establish conventions, are ultimately to be determined
by practical experience. Otherwise they would end up as sheer mystery. The same
applies to the reduction of mathematics to primitive concepts of logic. Propositions
(or axioms) that cannot be proven are questionable. Kurt Gödel’s famous unde-
cidability theorem proves that any system of consistent axioms must have at least
one true proposition that cannot be proven within the system, but this conclusion is
fatal for logicism.
Gödel makes quite an interesting remark: “Rather they [i.e., the givens that
govern mathematics], too, may represent an aspect of objective reality, but, as
opposed to the sensations, their presence in us may be due to another kind of
relationship between ourselves and reality.”70 Gödel’s statement is somewhat
obscure and he does not explain what this “other kind of relationship” is, but he
nevertheless expresses the inclination of some mathematicians to pursue the actual
nature of mathematics. Gödel claims that he is a Platonist and differs greatly from
Russell’s logicism.
What is the nature of these mathematical (arithmetic) propositions, e.g.,
2 + 2 = 4, 7 + 5 = 12, which are universally applicable? Are they analytic a priori
deductions? The approach that Hume and Russell adopted is not correct. Are they
empirical inductions? John Stuart Mill’s inductive explanation of mathematics, and
the attempts of new Hegelians today, such as Brand Blanshard, to argue that
arithmetic is meaningful because there are divisible objects in the world, are also
futile.71 Induction cannot produce universally applicable and necessarily valid
mathematics. It is impossible to comprehend the nature of mathematics by means of
the senses and passive observation. Yet the essence of mathematics does not lie in
Kant’s transcendental intuition either.
Mathematics is not logic but is related to aesthetic intuition. However, it is not
related to Kant’s a priori forms of intuition but rather to human sensible experience.
As Hegel said, mathematical abstraction is still sensible.72 Nevertheless, I believe

mathematics, that number is related to society, and that causality is related to the order of
precedence in time.
69
Formalism sees mathematics as a sort of game of contradictions. This view is also mistaken.
Paul J. Cohen states that “according to the Formalist point of view, mathematics should be
regarded as a purely formal game played with marks on paper, and the only requirement this game
need fulfill is that it does not lead to inconsistency” (Set Theory and the Continuum Hypothesis,
Introduction). This view is, of course, rather close to logicism. Robinson holds also a similar view,
while Hilbert does not. Modern radical formalism goes farther than Hilbert.
70
Benacerraf and Putnam (1983).
71
See Blanshard (1962).
72
For example, when discussing geometry, Hegel states: “The shining example of the synthetic
method is the science of geometry … On the other hand, the abstract subject matter is still space, a
non-sensuous sensuous; intuition is raised into its abstraction; space is a form of intuition, but is
still intuition” (Hegel and Di Giovanni 2010).
2.6 On the Nature of Mathematics 65

that sensibility is not about objects of sense, but is, first of all, about the activities of
sense and their origin in the practical activities of primitive human society. Contrary
to Ernst Cassirer’s Kantian view on primitive thought, I believe that the origin of
numbers lies in primitive practical activities, that is, in primitive labor characterized
by using and making tools. The origin of mathematics, first of all, is not in external
things, but in the abstraction of subjective activities of sensibility. The basic forms
of mathematics, such as pure quantity, are not deduced from external objects but
abstracted from the practical activities of the subject. Yet what they reflect are
aspects of objective reality, instead of the perceptional relations we have with the
external world in our observations of it. Gödel vaguely grasps this point in what he
referred to as his “third assertion,” that is, discovering certain structures, including
numbers, in the objective world through the forms of sensibility and in relation to
the most primitive and basic practical activities (primarily manual labor) of
human society.
We stipulate that 1 + 1 = 2, 1 + 1 + 1 = 3, and so on. These propositions seem
to be analytic (definitional), which was also Russell’s assumption. On the contrary,
they are essentially synthetic, originating from primitive practical activities, such as
the activities of defining and describing, or counting. The same point holds for the
application and comprehension of division, unification, reversibility, identity,
symmetry, infinity, and so on. All these various operations are, at first, practical
activities on objects, and subsequently evolve into operations on signs. In the
beginning, all of these operations generally take the form of shamanistic rituals.
Because of this beginning, mathematics is not merely for cognizing actual objects
or subject matter but mainly a means of cognition that possesses a certain formal
character that surpasses a particular time, space, and empirical causality; and it
differs from all other disciplines of science that have empirical objects as their
subject matter, since these always require observation and experiment as their basis,
while mathematical operations are their own guarantor.
Mathematics is just another tool, a cognitive tool and sign-language peculiar to
human beings, but it also expresses the subjective spontaneity of human cognition
and its pure forms. This cognitive spontaneity, philosophically speaking, is still a
highly abstract but practical human activity. This should constitute the starting point
for studies of primitive concepts of mathematics and the comprehension of math-
ematical structure. Therefore, the universal necessity of mathematics, from its
origin, is a universal necessity of abstract practical activities (labor and operation).73
That is the reason why propositions like 2 + 2 = 4 and 7 + 5 = 12 are valid no
matter what the degree of the macrocosmic or the microcosmic that our practices
(including modern astronomical observation) have reached and regardless of their
specific experiential circumstances. This is also the philosophical principle that

73
For instance, “infinity” does not refer to things in the actual world, the infinity of objects, but
rather to the idea that human beings can continue indefinitely or endlessly. This idea eventually
becomes an indispensable concept in mathematics. It is because people believe in the infinity of the
universe that human beings can carry on infinitely. Therefore, this mathematical concept of infinity
is also applicable to the objective world.
66 2 Epistemology: I. Raising the Question

explains the reason why mathematics has become one of the most powerful tools
(attested by the tremendous achievements accomplished by the widespread use of
mathematics in modern science) that human beings have to cognize and transform
the world, and why it manifests the salient characteristic of human cognitive
spontaneity. Leibniz remarks that mathematics is the language of God. I would say
that mathematics is the pride of human beings.
If we were to analyze the seemingly simplest pure mathematics, which bears
ample testimony to the nature of mathematics, we would find that it basically
consists of two components. One is the law of noncontradiction (the law of identity,
A = A) of formal logic; the other includes the concepts of operations such as
addition and subtraction, and the natural numbers. The two components are
reflections of primitive labor and operations (practice) in human society. These
concepts, for instance, addition and subtraction, originate from the most basic forms
of ongoing operations in primitive labor. Originally, natural numbers emerged from
the abstract quantities (pure quantity) that appeared and were apprehended in
practical activities. Grasping the identity of forms, structures, and quantities, as
mentioned above, marks a tremendous leap in human cognition. From then on, the
world is cognized with the highly abstract form and structure of quantity and
relation. On this ground, and combined with the capability of free intuition with
which human beings relate to the sensible world, humans have continuously created
free and idealized relations of constitution, spontaneous ideas, and systems of
structures (most of them divorced from prototypes, as if purely deduced from the
world of ideas). These, in turn, become sharp tools for cognizing the world without
the aid of prototypes in reality, just as human beings have been continuously
making material tools that have no prototypes in reality. Mathematics is a special
kind of sign-tool as well as a structure of objective reality. The relationship between
these two roles is a question that still needs further investigation. However, seen
from its origin, mathematics has undergone a long process of objectivizing aspects
that related to forms of labor, abstracting and transforming them into basic rules for
sign operations in calculation; for instance, Piaget’s reversibility of operations
(A + B = B + A) and conservation (A = A). (The parts that are directly related to
the objects of objective experience, on the other hand, transform into classifiers in
logic, or, notions and signs such as “of”.) It seems quite certain that the nature of
mathematics possesses a synthetic quality. The difference between logic and
mathematics is that the former is a formal abstraction from practical activity,
while the latter is a formal abstraction of the mode of relation between
practical activity and the sensible world. Therefore, the former is analytic while
the latter is synthetic.
The nature of the elements of formal logic in mathematics and formal logic itself
comes from the relative stability demanded by primitive labor and its operations, for
example, the proposition “if one does this, then one cannot do that (A 6¼ A).” These
propositions—after a long historical process, in response to the demand for
relative stability in practical activities, and by means of conscious attention,
which is an important psychological function peculiar to humans (see Chap. 4)
—transformed into concepts and the relative stability of words, as demanded
2.6 On the Nature of Mathematics 67

by language and thought, so as to almost become the nature of thought and the
laws of language.74 The transforming process of abstraction is achieved through
coercive measures in society, at first through primitive and shamanistic rituals to
formalize, reinforce, and centralize highly formulaic gestures, poses, incantation,
repetitions, and orders. I believe that the rigorous demand for conformity in
primitive society, manifested first in religious ritual, then in morality, expressed this
quality. Through these powerful ideological activities, primitive people transcended
their chaotic and confusing minds and their dream-like pre-logical thinking about
right and wrong, and shifted to a logical-thinking stage that was characterized by
the law of identity. It was a long historical process, the consequence of which
eventually constituted the analytic aspect of mathematics. In short, structural fea-
tures of primitive practical labor were abstracted, extracted, internalized, and
composed into the elements of language, thought, logic, and mathematics. Thus
was universal necessity established.
It is evident that mathematics is neither a priori analysis (the view of Hume and
logical positivism), nor empirical induction (Mill), nor a priori synthesis (Kant), but
the unity of the analytic and synthetic, with practice as its basis and synthesis as its
nature. The invention of the computer allows some analytic work, such as
demonstration, to be done by machine, which makes more prominent the synthetic
nature of mathematics in discovery and invention. This empirical trend in con-
temporary mathematics is noteworthy.
As mentioned above, I believe the most noteworthy thoughts on this question in
modern literature are those of Piaget. This psychologist opposes logical positivism
through ample experiments on the psychology of children, and maintains that logic
cannot arise from language. He also opposes Chomsky, arguing that logic is not
some deep structure of the mind. He stresses that logic and mathematics arise only
from primitive activities, that “in this hypothesis the abstraction is drawn not from
the object that is acted upon, but from the action itself. It seems to me that this is the
basis of logical and mathematical abstraction.”75 He also points out that “all these
forms of coordinations have parallels in logical structures, and it is such coordi-
nation at the level of action that seems to me to be the basis of logical structures as
they develop later in thought.”76 Piaget argued from the perspective of child psy-
chology, and insightfully pointed out that Bourbaki’s three “matrix structures”

74
In our national debate on formal logic in 1955, one camp advocated that its laws were innate to
the nature of thought and language, while the other camp insisted that they were reflections of the
relative stability of the objective world. The former is idealistic, while the latter is passive
materialism. At that time, I held the view that the relative stability of the objective world could be
reflected in the basic laws of thought only through the relative stability required in practical
activity. Without this active agent, the question of how the basic laws of formal logic came to be is
unintelligible. As to the question of how the relative stability required by practical activity
eventually became the laws of thought, it could only be established and cultivated in association
with ritual activities in primitive society. This is an important reminder.
75
Jean Piaget, and Eleanor Duckworth, Genetic Epistemology, 15.
76
Ibid., 17.
68 2 Epistemology: I. Raising the Question

actually arise from the collaboration of perceptional movement.77 All these views
are of philosophical value. The collaborative structure is the basis for “synthetic”
reversibility, order, topology, binary operations, and the associative law. These
fundamental formal features of mathematics are abstractions of the child’s collab-
orative operational character. Piaget’s conception of the forms of activity and
operation is superior to the logicists’ proposal to explain everything either by
perception or language, as well as to Chomsky’s use of the deep structure of mind
to explain language. Unfortunately, although Piaget understands from psychology
that activities and operations are the basis for forming logical thinking and math-
ematical conceptions in the primitive mind, he fails to give an explanation from the
perspective of anthropological social history. As a result, his explanation of
activities and operations is disconnected from social practice, which is to say,
from the whole of history. In particular, Piaget does not give enough attention to
the great significance of using tools in operational activities. But it was the agency
of tools that produced our understanding of causality in the objective world.
Therefore he inevitably eventually falls into a biological mechanism, as if uncon-
sciously downplaying the fundamental distinction between active human cognition
and that of animals, and overlooking the huge impact of coercive education on
humankind, especially on children.
Pragmatists also employ practical views to criticize Kant. They also talk about
tools, operations, and practices, arguing that knowledge is an interrelation between
the subject and the situation, and that thought is essentially action-activity, while
concepts are merely operational rules (the operationalist Bridgemann holds this
view). Dewey states that laws are tools that are determined by operations.78 The
experimental activities of research are comprised through logic, while knowledge is
constructed from chaotic materials. C. I. Lewis states: “what an objective fact
means is certain possibilities of experience which are open to realization through
our action.”79 These pragmatists replace Kant’s transcendental forms with practical
operations that act on objects to obtain knowledge. It seems to me that this for-
mulation is noteworthy because it bears some similarity to Marx’s theory. However,
the practice and operation pragmatists refer to, first of all, is fundamentally the
biological activity of adapting to the environment, rather than human social prac-
tice, which is historical in nature. Pragmatism stresses the importance of the role
played by tools; however, the tools they refer to are all-inclusive, including intellect
and thought. In so doing, they obscure the original historical meaning of
humans’ making material tools, thus overlooking the basic significance of the
material nature of labor and material production in the origin of the human race
and the development of society. It is through the practical activities of using and
making material tools that human beings comprehend and employ the laws of the
objective world, gradually constituting them in the mind. Pragmatists confuse

77
See Piaget, Structuralism.
78
See Dewey, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry.
79
Irving Lewis (1946). Lewis also opposes Kant’s concept of the a priori synthetic.
2.6 On the Nature of Mathematics 69

material tools with tools of thought, and practical activities with intellectual sign
activities; therefore, they fail to stress the defining importance of material tools on
practice at its origin.
The Marxist theory of practice, on the other hand, exactly emphasizes the
super-biological nature of human practical activities; therefore, it discerns that
human cognition has a super-biological nature, which is attained initially through
using and making material tools.
Second, Kant acknowledges that things in themselves are independent of human
beings.
The pragmatists, however, totally deny the objective, independent existence of
an external material world, not to mention practice as activities that comprehend
objective laws. The practice they refer to is a subjective arrangement and a heap of
chaotic feelings. Therefore, they reject the need for synthetic activities that possess
universal necessity.
In short, when criticizing Kant from the perspective of the theory of practice, a
clear line should be drawn separating it from the criticism of Kant from the
standpoint of mechanical materialism (which merely emphasizes an ideology
reflecting existence). As Lenin’s “two aphorisms” point out: “1. Plekhanov criti-
cises Kantianism (and agnosticism in general) more from a vulgar-materialistic
standpoint than from a dialectical-materialistic standpoint, insofar as he merely
rejects their views a limine, but does not correct them (as Hegel corrected Kant),
deepening, generalising and extending them, showing the connection and transi-
tions of each and every concept. 2. Marxists criticised (at the beginning of the
twentieth century) the Kantians and Humists more in the manner of Feuerbach (and
Büchner) than of Hegel.”80 One should recognize, in the manner of Hegel, the
important questions concerning cognitive spontaneity and dialectics raised by Kant.
First of all, one needs to expound the question of the materialistic origin of human
cognitive spontaneity, rather than merely arguing that Kant’s theory does not meet
the requirements of materialism. In other words, in epistemology one should pay
attention to the study of human cognitive spontaneity, and be vigilant lest one halt
or regress to the old standpoint that, to put it in Marx’s words, spontaneity is
developed by idealism. On the other hand, emphasizing human practice and the
subjective spontaneity of cognition does not mean one rejects the objective his-
torical nature of social practice, or embarks on the path, trod by the pragmatists, of
either a social contract or the species adapting to the environment.81
When reading Kant’s philosophy, one should try to “correct, deepen, generalize,
and expand.” The correcting here means to place the question of universal neces-
sity, which Kant raised in the wider context of the whole history of the human race,

80
Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks. Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
81
There are two tendencies among Kant scholars. One is to pull Kant toward idealism, interpreting
subjective spontaneity as the power of spirit. There are also scholars, e.g., A. Riehl, who attempt a
realistic interpretation. But most of them remain on the level of the old materialism. In short,
Kant’s argument on cognitive spontaneity cannot be grasped without comprehending human
practical spontaneity.
70 2 Epistemology: I. Raising the Question

under its specific objective social conditions and to investigate the question on this
ground. Even the investigation of natural science should be related to social history.
For instance, independent and autonomous forms of truth (mathematics), which
seem to be entirely unrelated to social life and the world of experience, have their
roots in the primitive forms of social practice—in primitive operational activities.
Just as material production—labor and operations—manifests the spontaneity of
human practice, sign operations—mathematical structures—manifest the cognitive
spontaneity peculiar to the human being. This spontaneity is an important aspect of
the cultural-psychological structure of human subjectivity. In other words, this
spontaneity is a fundamental factor in the structure of human culture, it is nothing
less than our very intelligence. From the perspective of psychology, it is also
internalized from practice, that is, from practical operations. In terms of the epis-
temology of Marxism, this spontaneity is a reflection of social practical activities.
This is how I understand the Marxist theory of active reflection, namely, as practical
philosophy and as anthropological ontology. It should be noted that these terms,
“anthropological,” “anthropology,” and “anthropological ontology” do not refer to
the biological terms of Western philosophical anthropology, which is disconnected
from historical social process. On the contrary, what is emphasized here is the
specific process of human development in the whole history of social practice.
This is social being, which transcends biological species. The term “subjectivity”
also implies this meaning. Human subjectivity, on the one hand, manifests practical
social activity in material reality, with its core in the activity of material production.
This is the objective aspect of subjectivity, namely, techno-social structure. In other
words, subjectivity is the fundamental aspect of social existence. On the other hand,
subjectivity also includes social consciousness, that is, the subjective aspect of
cultural-psychological structure. What I have discussed is the subjective psycho-
logical structure, which, first of all, refers to the spiritual culture of collective
historical achievement, which is comprised of intellectual structure, ethical con-
sciousness, and aesthetical pleasure—in short, the capacity of human nature. When
criticizing Kant’s philosophy, one should investigate in detail Kant’s transcendental
forms of cognition, the categories, pure intuition, the categorical imperative, and the
aesthetic common sense, situating them within their social historical origin and
particular process of development. This is crucial for the study of anthropological
ontology and the question concerning subjectivity.

References

Ayer, A.J. 1952. Language, Truth, and Logic, 64–65. New York: Dover Publications.
Benacerraf, Paul, and Hilary Putnam. 1983. What is Cantor’s Continuum Problem? In Philosophy
of Mathematics: Selected Readings, 484. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Blanshard, Brand. 1962. Reason and Analysis. London: Allen & Unwin.
Engels. 1994. Dialectics of Nature. Marx Engels Internet Archive.
Feuerbach. 1994. Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, §53. Marx Engels Internet Archive.
Hegel, and William Wallace. 1874. The Logic of Hegel, 73. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
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Hegel, and George Di Giovanni. 2010. The Science of Logic, 724. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Hegel, Arnold V. Miller, and J.N. Findlay. 1977. Phenomenology of Spirit, 151. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Irving Lewis, Clarence. 1946. An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 208. La Salle: Open
Court Pub. Co.
Kant. 1929. Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, Axii. New York: Macmillan.
Kant, and J. Michael Young. 1992. Lectures On Logic, 569. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kant, and G. Hatfield. 1997. Prolegomena, 41. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kant, Immanuel, and William Julius Eckoff. 1970. Kant’s Inaugural Dissertation of 1770, 43.
New York: AMS Press.
Kant, Immanuel, and Arnulf Zweig. 1986. Philosophical Correspondence 1759–1799, 202.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kuhn, Thomas S. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 167–168. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Newman, James Roy. 1956. The World of Mathematics, 1713. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Russell, Bertrand. 1960. Our Knowledge of the External World, 205. New York: New American
Library.
Woleński, Jan. 1994. Philosophical Logic in Poland, 105. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Chapter 3
Epistemology: II. Space and Time

Kant’s epistemology begins from aesthetic intuition. The thesis of the opening
chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason concerns the transcendental aesthetic, and
Kant begins by setting forth a series of definitions and explanations of basic con-
cepts, e.g., intuition, sensibility, sensation, material, and form. However, as pointed
out in the previous chapter, these definitions and explanations and their later use are
extremely abstruse and involved. For instance, the ubiquitous term “object” is an
important concept and poses many puzzles. Kant constantly uses Objekt and
Gegenstand as a pair of synonyms; but his use does not follow a strict definition.
Objekt originally referred to objects that exist without our perception or
awareness of them; but sometimes it also refers to the objective content in our
consciousness, that is, the object of appearance that emerges after the stimulation of
our senses. The term appears twice in the first line of the Transcendental Aesthetic,
and is already used with two distinct meanings.1 This is also the case with other
concepts, such as sensibility and sensation. It is noteworthy that the concepts and
terms that are most important are polysemous and obscure from the beginning of
the book. This situation indicates that it cannot be a matter of negligence; rather,

1
Kemp Smith interprets this phenomenon in this vein: “In the first part of the sentence ‘object’
means object of intuition. In the latter part it signifies the cause of intuition. And on Kant’s view
the two cannot coincide. The object which affects the mind is independently real; the immediate
object of the intuition is a sense-content […] The term object is thus used in two quite distinct
meanings within one and the same sentence” (Norman Kemp Smith, A Commentary to Kant’s
Critique of Pure Reason, 80). Paton also notes: “The word ‘object’ is used by Kant in at least four
senses. It is used for the thing as it is in itself, and for the thing as it appears to us; or, in more
technical language, it is used for the thing in itself and for the appearance of the object.
Furthermore the phenomenal object is itself composed of a matter given to sense and a form
imposed by thought; and each of these is called by Kant the object […] Hence he is capable of
saying that the object is not known, and that the object must be known; and again that the object is
given to us apart from thought, and that there is no object apart from thought” (Paton 1936). “No
doubt this position is complicated, too complicated for either Kant or an expositor of Kant to
repeat every time the word 'object' is used” (Ibid., footnote to Chap. 17). Also see H. A. Prichard,
Kant's Theory of Knowledge.

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 73

Z. Li, A New Approach to Kant, Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy
of Traditions and Cultures 27, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0239-8_3
74 3 Epistemology: II. Space and Time

these details involuntarily betray a characteristic of Kant’s philosophy. This situ-

ation is also convenient for some of the expositors of Kant’s philosophy who
emphasize the idealistic inclination of some of the terms and definitions. For
instance, they read Kant’s “object,” “experience,” and “sensibility” as the products
of subjective consciousness.

3.1 Time and Space Are Aesthetic Forms of Intuition

The basic view of Kant’s epistemology is that things in themselves supply intuitive
aesthetic material, while the subject supplies forms of cognition. The gist of the
Transcendental Aesthetic is that the objective object, which is independent of our
consciousness, provides sensible material, impressions, or matter, while the subject
possesses a priori forms of intuition, namely, time and space, to arrange the
material. Time and space, as pure forms of intuition, cannot exist without the
sensible material, while awareness of such material would be impossible without a
priori forms of intuition. Our feelings are in a completely confused state, and cannot
support any objective sense perception. Kant states: “The capacity (receptivity) for
receiving representations through the mode in which we are affected by objects, is
entitled sensibility.
Objects are given to us by means of sensibility […] and it alone yields us
intuitions, they are thought through the understanding, and from the understanding
arise concepts. But all thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain
characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility,
because in no other way can an object be given to us.”2 However, Kant’s exposition
also goes in the other direction:
The pure form of sensible intuitions in general, in which all the manifold of intuition is
intuited in certain relations, must be found in the mind a priori. This pure form of sensibility
may also itself be called pure intuition. If, then, I take away from the representation of a
body that which the understanding thinks in regard to it, substance, force, divisibility, etc.,
and also itself be called pure intuition. If, then, I take away from the representation of a
body that which the understanding thinks in regard to it, substance, force, divisibility, etc.,
and likewise what belongs to sensation, impenetrability, hardness, colour, etc., something
still remains over from this empirical intuition, namely, extension and figure. These belong
to pure intuition.3

Kant is saying that human knowledge must start from sensibility, and all thoughts
are ultimately related to sensibility. On the other hand, even in the sensible intuitions
of experience, the mind of the subject must have pure intuitions.4 The pure forms of

2
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A19/B33.
3
Ibid., A20-1/B34-5.
4
Commentators have argued about the similarities and differences between pure intuition and
forms of intuition. For instance, they insist on the difference between forms for intuiting and the
forms of the intuited. In fact, Kant often uses these two terms interchangably because pure intuition
3.1 Time and Space Are Aesthetic Forms of Intuition 75

intuition are a priori, they are independent of any sensations or sensible material
(e.g., qualities like impenetrability, solidity, or color). Kant argues that the unity of
these two aspects alone, that is, a priori forms of intuition and sensible material, can
produce actual, empirical, sensible intuitions. In this unity, the former (a priori forms
of intuition) guarantees the universal, necessary, objective validity of sensible
cognition. Therefore, these intuitions take the leading role in Kant’s investigation of
the principles of the transcendental knowledge of sensibility.
Kant holds that the pure intuition of human beings has the forms of time and
space. He admits that the reason why there are only two forms cannot be answered.
In his time, there were two major views about time and space, namely, the views of
Newton and Leibniz. Newton believed that time and space have their own inde-
pendent reality; they are attributes of God, infinite and eternal, independent of any
object or human subjective consciousness. They are, as it were, boxes that contain
various things. Leibniz believed that time and space are relations, whether an order
of coexistence (space) or succession (time), and they themselves have no autono-
mous existence apart from the objects that are related; but the relation is abstracted
from experience and enjoys an idealized existence in the mind. In reality, time and
space are blurred representations of experience. They seem to have independence,
but actually cannot exist apart from empirical objects.
Kant thinks that neither view can be established, though both have their merits.
Newton’s conception of time and space, as existing apart from their material
content, does not hold up well because experience cannot prove this view. If
Newton were right, time and space would still exist even if all the things in the
world were destroyed. Time and space would then seem to be God himself. As
Newton stated of God, “by existing always and everywhere, he constitutes duration
and space.”5 Pseudo-problems concerning time, space, and God, such as where
non-material entities (e.g., the soul) are located in time and space, continue to
puzzle theologians, though Kant adamantly denies their validity. However, he
refutes the idea that time and space are sheer fabrications; the merit of Newtonian
time and space is their omnipresent universal necessity, which can be used as the
ground for scientific knowledge. Leibniz’s view does not have this merit, for he
sees time and space as obscure representations of the relations of things.
Regarding knowledge of spatial science (geometry) as an abstraction from
experience destroys its universal necessity and makes geometry unreliable. The
merit of Leibniz’s view is that he stresses the relational character of time and space,
and argues that they are not substantial entities, but rather relations and
well-founded phenomena. For a long time, Kant wavered between Newton and

is not sense-perception, since it excludes the sense factor, nor can it exist apart from experience.
Pure intuition can only be a form of empirical intuition. That is why it is also called the form of
intuition. But we need not get into this meticulous distinction here. The German word anschauen
is not an active but a passive verb, while in English and French, the word “intuit” is active,
therefore the translation is not quite proper. The word is sometimes translated as “perceive” in
English.
5
Newton et al. (1803).
76 3 Epistemology: II. Space and Time

Leibniz, seeking to reconcile them; but after several attempts, he finally proposed a
new solution, which was that time and space are forms of sensible intuition.
Kant explains: “What, then, are space and time? Are they real existences? Are
they only determinations or relations of things, yet such as would belong to things
even if they were not intuited? Or are space and time such that they belong only to
the form of intuition, and therefore to the subjective constitution of our mind, apart
from which they could not be subsumed to anything whatsoever?”6 This first view
is Newton’s, the second is Leibniz’s, while the third is Kant’s own, which
understands time and space as subjective modes of perception. Time and space
cannot be derived from experience; rather, they constitute the conditions of all
sensible experience. Time and space cannot exist independently, yet are the uni-
versal necessary conditions of all sense experience.
Kant lays out a series of expositions divided into a Metaphysical Exposition and
an A Priori Exposition. In the metaphysical exposition he explains the metaphysical
nature of time and space, according to which time and space are not empirical but
are rather a priori and independent of experience. In the transcendental exposition,
he explains why time and space, when applied in experience, have universal nec-
essary validity. He sets forth four points in the Metaphysical Exposition (there are
five in the first edition, one of them is moved to the A priori Exposition in the
second edition). The four can in turn be divided into two parts. The first and second
expositions refute the claim that time and space are not empirical representations,
and argue that they are a priori; the third and fourth expositions argue that time and
space are forms of intuition rather than concepts (Kant does admit that there are
concepts of time and space, but such concepts should be distinguished from time
and space as forms of intuition, since the concepts are abstractions of an experience
that presupposes the forms of intuition).
In the first exposition, Kant states: “Space is not an empirical concept which has
been derived from outer experiences.”7 That is to say, representations of space do
not apprehend things in a space existing apart from perception. Kant argues that the
opposite is true. Empirical perceptions of things outside me must have a repre-
sentation of space in its entirety as their condition. For instance, in order to perceive
A and B together in space, we must have a space that allows this simultaneity. In
other words, when perceiving outer things, we have already made a representation
of space, whether or not the perceiver subjectively realizes it. “The representation of
space cannot, therefore, be empirically obtained from the relations of outer
appearance. On the contrary, this outer experience is itself possible at all only
through that representation.”8 That is to say, if my perception is to be related to
certain things outside of me, and allows me to perceive that they are outside of me
and that they are different from each other, each occupying a different location, then
I must have a representation of space as the ground of this experience. Therefore,

6
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A23/B37-38.
7
Ibid., Critique of Pure Reason, A23/B38.
8
Ibid., A23=B38.
3.1 Time and Space Are Aesthetic Forms of Intuition 77

space is the condition for perceiving outer things, rather than outer things being that
from which we abstract our representation of space.
In the second exposition, Kant states: “We can never represent to ourselves the
absence of space, though we can quite well think it as empty of objects. It must
therefore be regarded as the condition of the possibility of appearances, and not as a
determination dependent upon them.”9 Kant’s first point emphasizes that space is
not abstracted from the experience of perceiving things outside; there is already a
representation of space the moment we perceive the external object. Let us stress
once again that empirical objects, in order to be perceived, are dependent on space,
while space is independent of empirical objects. Therefore, we can conceive of a
space without any objects, while it is impossible to imagine objects without space.10
In the third exposition, Kant states: “Space is not a discursive or, as we say,
general concept of relations of things in general, but a pure intuition.”11 The first two
arguments have established that space cannot be derived from experience; rather, it
is an a priori condition for the possibility of experience. The third argument points
out that this a priori condition is not a concept of the understanding but rather a
sensible intuition. All concepts have their logical intension and extension. For
instance, concepts such as “human” and “red” are abstracted from many particular
human beings or things that are red in color. However, that is not the case with the
concept of space. It does not have these logical relations of intension and extension.
There is only one space. Its relation to other different spaces is the relation of the
whole to its parts rather than the relation of species and individuals (e.g., the relation
of the concept of the human being to a Chinese, or the concept of red to a particular
rose). A specific location in space is a part of space, and not an example or instance
of a species. Space as pure intuition is the condition of all specific spaces. For
instance, we can immediately intuit the different spatial positions occupied by our
right and left hands, which cannot be deduced from concepts, because the different
relations our right and left hands have to our body are not a difference in concept. In
other words, the difference cannot be logically deduced, but can only be intuited by
sense. Kant explains: “Thus, to make intelligible to ourselves the difference between
similar and equal yet incongruent things (e.g., snails winding opposite ways), we
must relate them to the right and the left hand. That means that it must be done
through intuition; it can’t be done through any concept.”12
In the fourth exposition, Kant states: “Space is represented as an infinite given
magnitude.”13 The infinity of space also makes it clear that space is not a concept.
A concept contains a certain number of attributes, while the intuition of space can

9
Ibid,, A24=B39.
10
Hence some scholars read Kant’s first proof as Platonic idealism and the second as a realism akin
to that of the ancient Greek atomists, as for example in his thought that the existence of space
precedes objects in space (see Gottfried Martin, Kant's Metaphysics and Theory of Science).
11
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A24/B39.
12
Kant and NetLibrary (1990).
13
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A25/B39.
78 3 Epistemology: II. Space and Time

expand without limit. Of course, that does not mean that we can intuit infinite space;
it is rather to say that our sensible intuition about individual objects can expand
continuously. The intuition of “red” (actually perceiving red) is totally different from
the concept of “red.” The former is a spatial intuition that can be indefinitely
expanded, whereas the latter refers only to a certain limited attribute of an object.
These are the four Metaphysical Expositions on space as pure intuition.
However, a good grasp of the A priori Expositions is more important. As mentioned
in the previous chapter, Kant’s doctrine on the transcendental aesthetic endeavors to
solve the problem of the universal necessity of mathematics by explaining that time
and space are forms of sensible intuition. I have discussed how Kant, in distinction
from Leibniz and the logicists of the present day, emphasizes the differences
between mathematics and logic, and holds that mathematics is a science that is
related to the forms of aesthetic intuition. Mathematics as a priori synthetic judg-
ments is possible because it is related to the a priori intuition of time and space.
Kant’s argument begins from the self-evident axioms of Euclidean geometry to
argue that space is an a priori intuition rather than an empirical concept. While
Euclidean geometry was generally acknowledged to have universal necessary
objective validity in Kant’s time, how can we explain this status?
Kant believes that this formal quality cannot be induced from experience,
however abundant. No experience can guarantee the unconditional validity of
geometrical axioms, or that space is three-dimensional, or that a straight line is the
shortest distance between two points. We cannot guarantee the universal necessary
and applicability of these geometrical axioms.
Similarly, these axioms cannot be deduced from concepts and mere thought.
Whatever methods we employ to analyze a straight line, we cannot reach the
conclusion that it is the shortest distance between any two points, nor can mere
conceptual analysis establish that space must be three-dimensional. It is the same
with the concept of the triangle. No mere analysis can establish the conclusion that
the sum of its three interior angles is 180°.
Kant thinks that this evidence demonstrates that geometrical axioms are results
of spatial intuition, but spatial intuition is not an experience. No experience of
measuring lines between points, or of triangles drawn on the blackboard could
establish these conclusions. Kant argues that only a formal intuition can establish
that a straight line is the shortest between any two points. This is a universal,
necessary, a priori constitutive principle of geometry. Therefore, in Kant’s view, the
theory of Leibniz, which distinguishes ideal lines in mathematics from real lines in
space, obscures both the nature of lines in mathematics and the nature of sensible
bodies in space. Kant points out that time and space, as sensible appearance, are
distinct rather than obscure. While the world of reason, which is characterized by
such concepts as the soul and God that are considered to be fully real by the
rationalists, is actually obscure and not distinct. Kant stresses that space is an a
priori sensible intuition that is applicable to everything in external appearance.
Euclidean geometry (which Kant regards as the vital part of mathematics)
demonstrates this point; that is, space as intuition is a priori, and is universally
applicable to experience. This is the transcendental exposition of space.
3.1 Time and Space Are Aesthetic Forms of Intuition 79

The exposition of time follows that of space, and its format and content are
similar. Kant maintains that time is not an empirical concept, but the succession of
objects in experience is possible only on the presupposition of time. We cannot
remove time itself, though we can very well think of time as devoid of objects.
There is only one and the same time; different times are merely a part of this one
time. Therefore, time is different from a logical concept. To Kant, the relation of
arithmetic to time is just like that of geometry to space. Counting, as an empirical
orderly succession, is related to time as a form of intuition; the successive order of
counting is only possible because time is a form of intuition. In other words, it takes
time to count 1, 2, 3…. It is also the case that geometric axioms are possible only
with a pure intuition of space.
Moreover, Kant associates motion and change with time, and compares the
relation of mechanics to time with the relation of geometry to space. He explains
that only when time is seen as an a priori form of intuition can motion (change of
location) be comprehended. Hence, time is the universal and necessary condition of
motion and change. This condition is not a concept of the understanding, but an
intuition of sensibility. Even if time has only one dimension, or if different times are
always successive, these principles still cannot be derived from the concept.
Kant points out one characteristic of time that is different from space, namely,
that time is the form of inner sense. In other words, time is the form in which we
self-consciously intuit ourselves and our inner states. Hence, its scope is broader
than space, which is a form of outer sense only, and is the form of intuition for
external objects. An intuition of external objects must include our inner state, and
time is therefore the form of inner sense: “It is the immediate condition of inner
appearances (of our soul), and thereby the mediate condition of outer appear-
ances.”14 Nevertheless, time and space are mutually dependent; space surely cannot
exist apart from time, while time has to manifest itself in the perception of external
objects in space. An example of this situation is that the time-dimension can be
represented by a straight line in space. Time as the form of inner sense involves a
series of complex issues and I will return to this topic later (see Chaps. 4 and 5).

3.2 Empirical Realism and Transcendental Idealism

In the Transcendental Aesthetic, Kant summarizes his argument about time and
space. First, time and space are a priori forms, that is, they are derived
non-empirically. They are subjective conditions that every human being has in
common, and this has psychological and logical implications. Psychologically, time
and space precede experience; logically, time and space are independent of expe-
rience. Kant refers mainly to this latter implication. External sensible material,
arranged and ordered by these a priori subjective forms of intuition, becomes

14
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A34/B50.
80 3 Epistemology: II. Space and Time

objectively organized into objects that are either successive in time or simultaneous
in space. Second, time and space are a priori forms of sensible intuition, and not
concepts of the understanding. Third, time and space are not applicable to things in
themselves, but only to the sensible intuitions that are provided by things in
themselves.
This is Kant’s exposition of empirical reality and transcendental ideality, by
means of which he wants to differentiate his position from those of both tran-
scendent realism (e.g., Leibniz) and empirical idealism (e.g., Berkeley).
The term “empirical realism” means, first, that time and space are related to
sensible experience. Kant explains that there is no reason to rule out an intellectual
intuition that is beyond or in no need of time and space (see Chap. 10, etc.), but
such an intuition does not belong to human beings. Human intuition can only be
sensible. “It is, therefore, solely from the human standpoint that we can speak of
space, of extended things, etc.”15 “Time,” he says, “is therefore a purely subjective
condition of our (human) intuition (which is always sensible, that is, so far as we are
affected by objects).”16 In other words, nothing that is not related to time and space
can be given to us in experience. Second, since time and space are directly related to
sensible material (and only indirectly related to concepts), these forms possess
direct objectivity. In other words, time and space, though forms of subjective
intuition, possess objectivity in experience. They constitute objective orders of
succession (time) and simultaneity (space) in the world of appearance, and are
fundamentally different from subjective sensations, e.g., sound, color, scent, taste,
or warmth. Kant argues that such sensations “cannot rightly be regarded as prop-
erties of things, but only as changes in the subject, changes which may, indeed, be
different for different men.”17 Moreover, “they are mere sensations and not intu-
itions, [and] do not of themselves yield knowledge of any object, least of all any a
priori knowledge.”18 Kant stresses the essential differences of time and space from
sensory qualities like sound, color, scent, taste, and warmth; the latter are sensa-
tions, hence they have only a subjective validity, while the former are forms of
intuition and are objectively valid. As a result, the order of the world of phenomena,
constructed through intuitions of time and space, is not subjective but objective and
in that way real—an empirical realism. Kant is against Berkeley’s conception of
time and space, which treats time and space like sound, color, scent, taste, and
warmth, as if time and space were subjective empirical sensations. Kant argues that
from subjective experience alone one cannot distinguish between waking and
dreaming, or truth and illusion, because these are all subjective experiences. This is
the view taken by empirical idealism, which is opposed to Kant’s empirical realism.
Kant distinguishes time and space from sound, color, scent, taste, and warmth in
order to arrive at objectivity. He nonetheless opposes regarding time and space as

15
Ibid., A26/B42.
16
Ibid., A35/B51.
17
Ibid., A28/B45.
18
Ibid., A28/B44.
3.2 Empirical Realism and Transcendental Idealism 81

properties or qualities of the objects themselves (things in themselves), as if space

and time belonged “to things absolutely, as their condition or property, indepen-
dently of any reference to the form of our sensible intuition,”19 That is the view of
transcendental realism, which sees time and space as belonging to things in
themselves, instead of as forms of intuition belonging to the subject.
Contrary to this view, Kant excludes from an independent reality anything that is
related to the properties and experiences of sensible objects. For instance, he
completely separates motion from time and space, because motion always involves
the experience of sensible objects. He explains that “motion presupposes the per-
ception of something movable. […] Consequently the movable must be something
that is found in space only through experience, and must therefore be an empirical
datum.”20 Likewise, alternation must also presuppose the empirical data of objects,
for time itself does not alternate. In short, motion and alternation are merely
empirical qualities of empirical objects. They do not derive from the intrinsic nature
of time and space, which are forms of subjective intuition and not transcendent
realities. This is Kant’s transcendental idealism.
Kant’s method of raising problems, for example, by raising the issue of empirical
realism and transcendental idealism in the discussion of time and space, constitutes
the main characteristic of his whole epistemology. He himself claims that his
philosophy combines transcendental idealism and empirical realism. On the one
hand, because he holds that forms and structures of cognition do not derive from
objects, but are supplied a priori to the objects by the subject, his theory is a form of
transcendental idealism. On the other hand, because he maintains that the materials
of cognition are empirically given by things in themselves, his theory is a form of
empirical realism. Kant here opposes both rationalism and materialism (which, for
Kant, is transcendental realism),21 and the attribution of time and space to the
objective material world, or to any sort of spiritual entity or property. On the other
hand, he also opposes Berkeley’s empirical idealism, which sees time and space as
mere subjective perceptions of experience (Kant calls this view empirical idealism,
or realistic idealism). Kant holds that time and space are a priori forms of intuition,
on the one hand; while, on the other hand, he maintains that apart from the sensible
materials given by external things, time and space would be meaningless. Time and
space cannot independently exist prior to sensible material. Time and space are
subjective forms, despite enjoying an objective universal necessity in experience.
Kant requires both a priority (independent of experience) and objectivity (univer-
sally applicable to sensible experience). In short, as his argument proceeds from the
transcendental aesthetic to the theory of the understanding and its categories, Kant’s
view on the reality of time and space expressly betrays the dualism of critical
philosophy.

19
Ibid., A 36/B52.
20
Ibid., A 41/B58.
21
Transcendental realism is not the same as materialism. But for Kant, Leibniz’s idealism is
transcendental realism, and so is materialism.
82 3 Epistemology: II. Space and Time

3.3 Contemporary Western Philosophical Criticism

of Kant’s View on Time and Space

Just as with the criticism of Kant’s philosophy as a whole, there have always been
two strands in the criticism against Kant’s view of time and space. Schopenhauer,
who sees the world as a merely illusory subjective representation, admires Kant’s
doctrine of things in themselves, and sees Kant’s view of time and space as the most
remarkable part of his philosophy.
Schopenhauer thinks that, according to Kant, just as the ears and eyes create
sound and color, so does the mind create time and space. On the other hand, he
criticizes Kant for failing to see his own correspondence with Berkeley. This
criticism can be seen as representative of subjective idealism’s misinterpretations
and distortions of Kant. But the more influential criticism of Kant is from subjective
idealists as early as Herbert Spencer, and comes cloaked in scientific empiricism.
Spencer, from a positivistic point of view, regarded Kant’s view of time and space
in the Critique of Pure Reason as ridiculous, and refused to consider the problem
more closely.22 From then on, philosophers such as Ernst Mach, Russell, and the
logical positivists generally refuted Kant with a brew of Berkeleyanism and
Humeanism.
I will dwell only on Russell’s criticism. Although Russell’s study of time and
space is not as profound as those by other scholars such as Reichenbach, I choose
him because he is a more influential philosophical representative. In the widely read
A History of Western Philosophy, Russell comments that Kant’s exposition of time
and space is “the most important part” of the Critique of Pure Reason, although
Russell does not explain why that is.23 It may be because of its association with
modern mathematics. As mentioned in the previous chapter, Russell, as an advocate
of logicism, firmly opposed Kant’s view of mathematics as a priori synthetic, which
also led him to oppose Kant’s view of a priori time and space as conditions of the a
priori synthetic knowledge of mathematics. In A History of Western Philosophy,
Russell sketches out the main points of Kant’s epistemology and brushes off other
parts, dwelling on Kant’s expositions of time and space, and refuting them point by
point. Russell’s refutation exposed the problems of Kant’s theory, but it also made
clear that Russell not only fails to understand the main point of Kant’s argument but
has even regressed to a pre-Kantian stage.
Russell’s refutation of Kant’s four metaphysical expositions runs as follows.
First, Russell states that there is “a difficulty which he seems to have never felt.
What induces me to arrange objects of perception as I do rather than otherwise?
Why, for instance, do I always see people’s eyes above their mouths and not below
them?”24 That is to say, Kant’s a priori forms of time and space cannot resolve the

22
See Paul Carus, Kant and Spencer.
23
See Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy.
24
Russell (2009).
3.3 Contemporary Western Philosophical Criticism … 83

particular temporal and spatial orders of things. However, Kant clearly states that
such orders are mainly given by experience, and that any given spatial determi-
nation has its ground in its unknowable object.25 In other words, objects affect
senses and the subject provides universal and necessary forms of time and space;
particular temporal and spatial relations, such as size, shape, and sequence, are then
formed with the specific dimensions and orders conditioned by objects.26 This point
would be more salient if we extended our reading to the principle of causality in
Kant’s Doctrine of Categories. Second, Russell states: “But I should emphatically
deny that we can imagine space with nothing in it […] But I do not see how
absolute empty space can be imagined.”27 This is well said. Kant himself refutes
Newton’s assumption that time and space are subsistent realities, as if they were
empty boxes. In the Transcendental Analytic, Kant also firmly denies any abso-
lutely empty space.
Therefore, the word “imagine” here, apart from being a clumsy psychological
description, mainly refers to the idea that we can extract all sensible objects in the
mind, but cannot extract time and space, because time and space are not sensible
objects. They are pure forms of sensible intuition. It is on this point that Russell
fails to offer a refutation. Third, Russell states: “What we call ‘spaces’ are neither
instances of a general concept ‘a space,’ nor parts of an aggregate […] since neither
‘space’ nor ‘spaces’ can survive as a substantive.”28 As mentioned above, Kant
denies that time and space are independent entities, and his expositions are mainly
directed at differentiating intuitions from concepts, and sensibility from under-
standing. Russell is unable to deny this distinction. Fourth, concerning space as an
infinite quantity to be intuited, Russell taunts, “this is the view of a person living in
a flat country, like that of Königsberg: I do not see how an inhabitant of an Alpine
valley could adopt it.”29 As a matter of fact, Kant does not think that space, as the
whole of infinite quantity, can be given in intuition. What Kant wishes to explain is
that the infinity of sensible cognition must relate to the quantitative infinity of
space; therefore, space cannot be a concept.
Kant’s expositions are indeed contrived and equivocal.30 However, Russell’s
criticism retrogresses from Kant to Berkeley. What he criticizes is not the a

25
See Metaphysical Basis of Natural Science.
26
Some commentators illustrate Kant’s view by using the example of wearing blue glasses to look
at things. Everything is blue through the blue lens, but the shades and shapes of blue are still
determined by the object itself. Similarly, the specifics of the temporal and spatial relation is given
by the object itself. See Paton, Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience, vol. 1, Chap 6.
27
Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, 573.
28
Ibid.
29
Ibid., 574.
30
Scholars have tirelessly pointed out that Kant fails to prove that time and space are not objective
forms of bodies (things in themselves), since forms of intuition can also be proved as forms of
intuitive objects, and transcendental ideality can actually be transcendental reality (see Kant by
Koner, Chap 2). It is entirely due to the integrity of his whole philosophical system that Kant
insists that time and space belong to the subject rather than to the object (things in themselves).
84 3 Epistemology: II. Space and Time

prioricity of time and space in Kant’s theory, but their objectivity, which differs
from subjective sensations. Kant emphasizes that time and space are qualitatively
different from sound, color, or taste; while Russell abolishes this distinction. Russell
asserts that sound and color, as subjective sensations, have corresponding objective
sound waves and color waves; and he thinks that time and space should be the
same. Russell argues that: “But there is no difference in this respect between space
and other aspects of perception […] There is no reason whatever for regarding our
knowledge of space as in any way different from our knowledge of colour and
sound and smell.”31
Mach, like Russell, maintains that the notions of time and space, like arithmetic
and geometry, arise from subjective experience. “If physical experience did not tell
us that a multiplicity of equivalent, immutable and permanent objects exists, nor
biological needs impel us to gather these into groups, then counting would be
without sense of purpose. Why count as in a dream? If direct counting in order to
determine larger numbers were not impossible in practice because of the time and
effort required, the inventions of calculation or mediate counting would never have
forced itself on us. By direct counting we take note only of what is given in direct
sense perception. Since calculating is a form of indirect counting, it cannot be learnt
from direct counting. How, then, could mathematics prescribe a priori laws to
nature?”32 Both Mach and Russell appear to refute transcendentalism from the
perspective of empiricism. They both hold that the notions of time and space arise
from experience, and that time and space have some correspondence in real things.
However, they are actually downright idealists who are trying to refute Kant with
the Berkeleyan empirical idealism that Kant has already refuted. To Mach and
Russell, time and space are mere experience; and experience, fundamentally, is
compounded of sensible materials or sensations. Therefore, like sound and color,
time and space are merely subjective sensible experiences. Mach argues: “For us,
therefore, the world does not consist of mysterious entities, which by their inter-
action with another, equally mysterious entity, the ego, produce sensations, which
alone are accessible. For us, colours, sounds, spaces, times,… are provisionally the
ultimate elements, whose given connexion it is our business to investigate.” And
also, “the antithesis between ego and world, between sensation (appearance) and
thing, then vanishes, and we have simply to deal with the connexion of the ele-
ments…”33 However, in my opinion, we should regard our representations and
notions of time and space as historically formed and emerging through social
practice. They are indeed different from sound, color, scent, taste, or warmth. It is of
profound significance that Kant reveals this difference, and sees time and space as
forms of intuition, which, unlike passive sensations, possess an active synthetic

Just as Heimsoth comments: “The critical limitation of knowledge (especially the limitation of
time and space to phenomena) is determined by some fundamental metaphysical conviction.”.
31
Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, 650.
32
Mach (1976).
33
Mach (1914).
3.3 Contemporary Western Philosophical Criticism … 85

nature. However, Kant fails to see that this synthetic nature is a historical
achievement of practice, and that this psychological structure is an outcome of
social history. Only from the philosophical perspective of social practice can Kant’s
view of time and space be correctly analyzed and criticized.
Philosophers such as Russell revoke the distinction Kant draws between time
and space, on the one hand, and qualities like sound, color, scent, taste, or warmth,
on the other. This revocation is similar to Berkeley’s canceling of Locke’s dis-
tinction between primary and secondary qualities. Both Russell and Berkeley try
hard to attribute objectivity to subjective sensible experience. But while time and
space indeed have an intimate relation with the primary qualities, Berkeley sub-
sumes all primary qualities to secondary qualities, while Russell and Mach argue
that time and space are of the same nature as sound, color, scent, taste, and warmth.
They ignore the important historical fact that the distinction between the primary
and secondary qualities that was made by Galileo, Descartes, and Locke has a
historical scientific background and an origin in social practice.
The profound historical significance of this distinction is that the primary
qualities (extension, motion, number, etc.) of bodies, unlike their secondary qual-
ities (sound, color, etc.), are more closely related to the social practices of a certain
historical period in which they were first employed, comprehended, and understood
by human beings. Consequently, the primary qualities are more than sensations.
Certainly, our five senses (the organs of sense) are an achievement of history; they
themselves have sedimented the nature and function of a particular society. It was
through their efforts to transform the world (practice) that humankind first com-
prehended the world, and our five senses are restricted and affected by this practice.
However, in terms of the physiological aspect of the senses, there is no differ-
ence between humans and beasts. Therefore, for the physiological organs of sense,
there is no essential difference between primary and secondary qualities.
Locke argues that: “The ideas we get by more than one sense are, of SPACE or
EXTENSION, FIGURE, REST, and MOTION. For these make perceivable
impressions, both on the eyes and touch; and we can receive and convey into our
minds the ideas of the extension, figure, motion, and rest of bodies, both by seeing
and feeling.”34 Locke’s argument about “more than one sense” and using one organ
of sense as one of the grounds for the distinction between primary and secondary
qualities obviously comes from the viewpoint of the sensualism of the old mate-
rialism. Locke is unable to understand that the activity of the senses, which
involves more than an organ since it depends on human labor and practice,
arises from the use and making of tools, which are capable of producing
qualitative differences that go beyond distinctions made by sense perception.
Although he stressed the synthetic function of time and space as forms of intuition,
neither can Kant discover the genuine ground of their synthetic nature. As a matter
of fact, in human social practice, these particular activities involve “more than one
organ” and differentiate human beings from other animals, who only have passive

34
Locke (1824).
86 3 Epistemology: II. Space and Time

sensations. A human being’s notions of time and space are not formed by passively
perceiving the world; rather they are required, determined, and formed in the course
of making and using tools, and this opens up possibilities for transforming the
environment of a collective historical social structure. Therefore, time and space
differ greatly from pure sensations, e.g., sound, color, and taste. The objective
sociality of time and space is prominent and significant, because the origin of our
notions of them is not animal sensations, but the collective practice of sociality.
This is the true significance of synthesis as the characteristic of time and space.
The view of Galileo and Locke, that extension, motion, and number are the
primary qualities belonging to external bodies, does not depend upon how many
sense organs are involved. Instead, their view depends upon demonstrating the
achievements of human practice, which are reflected in the historical achievements
of social practice and the scientific experiments of their time. Theirs was the age of
mechanics, which mainly dealt with extension, motion, and number in the bodies
familiar from daily life; discovering and extracting these qualities from an objective
world; and seeing them as objective properties. In short, these are qualities that
occupy space. But these objective properties of bodies in the objective world are
first manifested through the characteristics of the social practice by which human
beings transform the world. This is why, in a certain historical period, the primary
qualities can appear objective and of more importance than merely subjective
sensations like sour and sweet or fragrant and foul. We can hardly find any essential
difference in the sensations themselves corresponding to what are supposed to be
secondary qualities and what are supposed to be primary qualities. Does extension
have no color? What is extension if it does not have color?
These questions cannot be answered using the doctrine of senses of the old
materialism.35 To this day, it is still a feature of modern philosophy to regard the
senses or perception as the beginning and the end of epistemology, without real-
izing that the senses and perception are historical constructions. The difference
between time, space, and other senses expressly confirms this point.
Therefore, it is only from a particular historical social practice, rather than from
abstract, immutable, animal nature or individual sense, that we can grasp that
primary qualities and secondary qualities are not as Locke argued; namely, it is not
the case that primary qualities are objective properties while secondary qualities
rely on the subject. Rather, both primary and secondary qualities are objective
properties of things. Subjective sensations of color are determined by different
lengths of objective light-waves, while subjective sensations of smell are deter-
mined by the motions of molecules; although light-waves are different from color,

35
Berkeley seizes on precisely this point, arguing that since the secondary qualities (e.g., sound,
color, smell, taste, and warmth) are not objective properties of things, but empirical sensations
depending on the sense structure of the subject, so why shouldn’t primary qualities be so as well?
What is the essential difference among the senses such as sight, hearing, touch, and taste, when the
reflection of the senses relies on and is restricted by the sense organs of the subject, and cannot
objectively cognize the world? It follows that the objective world is merely subjective empirical
perception. Thus Berkeley arrives at his renowned saying that “to be is to be perceived.”.
3.3 Contemporary Western Philosophical Criticism … 87

and motions of molecules are different from smell. The position, motion, and
extension of bodies are not the same as the position, motion, and extension that we
perceive in objects (the theory of relativity has proved this point, which is all the
more salient in the microcosm). But primary and secondary qualities, although
distinct from each other, are not essentially different. The differences that do exist
should be investigated in the context of what practice produced that knowledge, and
what particular historical relation of primary and secondary qualities existed, in
order to reveal that primary and secondary qualities manifest different aspects and
depths that correspond to the scientific levels at different historical times.
In essence, Kant’s view of time and space adopts Locke’s distinction between
primary and secondary qualities.36 As Schopenhauer points out, Kant decided to
position both primary and secondary qualities in the world of appearance, and deny
them to the things in themselves. This is because the primary qualities, in contrast to
secondary qualities (subjective sensations), include the a priori forms of time and
space and the categories of the understanding, and have universal, necessary
objectivity. Because Berkeley assimilates primary and secondary qualities,
regarding them all as subjective sensations, his view is therefore empirical idealism.
Kant understands the distinctions between these two categories of qualities, but he
nevertheless rules out the materiality of primary qualities and assumes that time and
space are a priori forms of intuition. Kant’s further abstraction is, as he himself
admits, a formalistic idealism. However, while philosophers from Berkeley to Mach
have advocated subjective idealism, what Kant propounds is an idealism about the
forms of cognition. The former stresses psychologically particular sensations, while
Kant stresses the universal forms of cognition. As idealisms, they all oppose Locke
and the French materialists, who see primary qualities as properties of things in
themselves; but these two idealisms cannot be treated as the same thing. That would
neither correspond to the facts, nor to the necessary progress of the history of
philosophy, because Kant is much more profound than Berkeley.

36
Although Kant directly inherits Locke’s view of attributing primary qualities to phenomena, in
so doing he assimilates his view to Berkeley’s by ascribing primary qualities to secondary qual-
ities. However, Kant emphasizes that “the existence of the thing that appears is thereby not
destroyed” (Prolegomena, trans. James Fieser). The emphasis on the existence of things in
themselves makes Kant’s view essentially different from that of Berkeley. Kant was furious when
his theory was equated with Berkeley’s view, and he tried to defend himself from the charge:
“Hence we may at once dismiss an easily foreseen but futile objection, “that by admitting the
ideality of space and of time the whole sensible world would be turned into mere sham” (Ibid., 3).
In the Critique of Judgment, Kant also distinguishes between objective and subjective sensations,
the former, such as grass, and the latter, such as the pleasure that arises in the mind from the
perception ofthe grass. The former is associated with perception, while the latter with emotions.
This view is probably taken from the idea of tertiary qualities proposed by Shaftesbury and
Hutcheson. We should note this factor because Kant’s philosophy is greatly influenced by British
empricism.
88 3 Epistemology: II. Space and Time

3.4 “The Essential Forms of All Being Are Space

and Time”

Engels maintains that “the essential forms of all being are space and time.”37 Time
and space are indeed different from other perceptions, and this difference, as was
discussed above, is due to the fact that the representations of time and space are not
only obtained through individual sense organs, but also more importantly through
social practice. Human beings possess time and space as sensible frames (repre-
sentations, concepts) because human social practice is a part of the material world;
and practice unfolds in space at given locations, and sequentially in time.
Therefore, practice demands both a social and an objective determination.
Representations or concepts of time and space do not have any transcendental or a
priori nature; they are sedimentations of social practice internalized in our sub-
jective consciousness. Here, the crucial intermediate links are the two factors of the
social (non-individual) and of practice (perception). Although animals can have
certain sensations of time and space, as adaptive orientating responses, these sen-
sations are essentially different from the representations of time and space that
human beings possess. It is also because of this that representations of time and
space are fundamentally different from such qualitative sensations as sound, color,
smell, and taste.
Subjectivity and diversity are most salient in individual perception, whereas
awareness of time and space requires a strict social regulation of language-signs. If
not, the individual’s psychological sensations of time and space would be as sub-
jective and diverse as their sensations of sound, color, smell, taste, and so on. For
instance, individual experiences of time are, in fact, very diverse. Einstein states the
significance of the theory of relativity as, “There exists, therefore, for the individual,
an I-time, or subjective time.”38 “Real” time is in fact individual, subjective, and
heterogeneous. But this aspect, despite its use in art and in certain aspects of
everyday life, is secondary. The more important aspect of time is its consistency in
social life and in scientific knowledge. Because of sociality, time acquires a
homogeneous determination. Even the idealistic intuitionist Bergson, who stresses
the duration of time (that is, that moments of time permeate or interpenetrate each
other), acknowledges that the demands of social life produce scientific concepts of
time and space. This concession is contrary to Bergson’s emphasis on psycho-
logical sensations. Bergson argues that “our perceptions, sensations, emotions and
ideas occur under two aspects: the one clear and precise, but impersonal; the other
confused, ever changing, and inexpressible, because language cannot get hold of it
without arresting its mobility or fit it into its commonplace forms without making it
into public property.” “The reason is […] social life is more practically important to
us than our inner and individual existence. We instinctively tend to solidify our

37
Anti-Dühring.
38
Einstein (2005).
3.4 “The Essential Forms of All Being Are Space and Time” 89

impressions in order to express them in language.” “Science has to eliminate

duration from time and mobility from motion before it can deal with them.”39
Bergson attempts to downplay the philosophical significance of this aspect, and
denies that it is the “nature” of time, which, for him, is indescribable individual
subjective time. However, Bergson’s argument in fact reveals that the nature of time
and space are indeed an objective sociality; and it is society that gives to time and
space their regulated expression, e.g., year, month, clock, watch, territorial map,
compass, and so on, in order to coordinate people’s lives and practice. It is precisely
this social, coordinating aspect of time and space that has profound philosophical
content and significance in an anthropology that embraces the whole of human
historical existence.
Einstein states that “by the use of a clock the time concept becomes objective.”40
And that time is “a means designed to better understand our sense experience.”41
The evolution of the conceptions of time and space, from Newton’s view of
box-like time and space, to the theory of relativity in the present day, demonstrates
that people’s view of time and space is continuously advancing in social practice.42
Therefore, the view of spatialized time, although it seems to be inconsistent with
the nature of time, has its reasonable ground. In remote times, childlike primitives
conceived of time and space as chaotic and continuous. As human society
advanced, their view started to introduce elementary divisions. Time was intimately
associated with real life and particular things, and entangled with tangible contents,
but was nonetheless without general form. For instance, time was entangled with
the seasons and solar positions, space was entangled with the cardinal points of the
compass and, as in ancient China, thoroughly entangled with the rhythms of
agriculture.
The limitations and tangibility of these primitive conceptions of time and space
are similar to the conceptions of children. Both demonstrate that the comprehension
and the understanding of objective time and space are determined by the historical
nature of social practice. While the relative, universal necessity of their conception
expresses a certain objective sociality.

39
Bergson (1913). One of Bergson’s important contributions is on the question of time. He breaks
through Newton’s static, infinitely divisible, box-like conception of time and space, which has no
relation to substances, and emphasizes that every moment of time has its individuality inseparable
from substances. It is not like cinema, where every frame exists for a moment only to be replace by
the next. It is rather like life itself, in which succeeding moments contain the proceeding. Bergson,
of course, employs subjective idealism to expound this view. Einstein scientifically proves the
inseparability of time and space from the existence (motion) of matter.
40
Einstein and Infeld (1960).
41
Einstein and Calder (2006).
42
On the relation between Kant’s view of time and space and modern physics, see Ernst Cassirer,
Substance and Function and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, and C. B. Garnet, Kant’s Philosophy
of Space. The former argues that Kant and Einstein are not contrary to each other, but are actually
consistent; while the later emphasizes the inconsistences in the sections on the Aesthetic and
Analytic in the Critique of Pure Reason, and maintains that the theory of time and space in the
Analytic corresponds with that of modern physics, while that of the Aesthetic does not.
90 3 Epistemology: II. Space and Time

Therefore, the universal, necessary, absolute a priori forms of time and space that
Kant expounds do not exist. His attempt is futile, even if he avails himself of
mathematics for his argument. History shows that the earliest Greek arithmetic
resulted from the activities of counting sheep, fruits, and so on, while geometry
began to take its shape from the practical activities of measuring land. Engels
explains that “the concepts of number and figure have not been derived from any
source other than the world of reality. The ten fingers on which men learnt to count,
that is, to perform the first arithmetical operation, are anything but a free creation of
the mind […] So the idea of figure is borrowed exclusively from the external world,
and does not arise in the mind out of pure thought.”43 Arithmetic is intimately
connected with the notions of time and space, because natural numbers and oper-
ations such as addition and subtraction are mainly abstracted from the practical
activities that the subject carries out in time. For instance, the repetition of the same
activity is related to the forming of the notion of the number 1; while addition and
subtraction are related to division and unification in the labor activities of the
subject. As was mentioned in the previous chapter, equations such as 2 + 2 = 4 or
7 + 5 = 12 cannot be induced from the mere observation of external objects; they
are symbolized standards of primitive practical activities, hence their relation to
time and their formation are grounded in the practical activities of counting and
measuring.44 In addition, notions like location, straight line, curve, and so on are
abstracted from manual labor; and it is especially from the subject’s using and
making tools and controlling of space that geometry was discovered. Newborn
babies and primitives do not have a geometrical notion of space. In short, human
beings grasp time and space and determine the forms of the objective world,
gradually internalize them, and transform them into forms of cognition and psy-
chological structures, including time and space. This is done neither through pas-
sive observation and induction from external objects, nor through a priori pure
intuitions; but rather through manual, operational practices that actively transform
the world. This is what I call the internalization of reason. The laws of the objective
world are turned into the subject’s tools and means of cognition, which means that,
in transforming the objective world, social practice also changes the subjective
world. This is the case with cognitive content and also with the forms and structures
of cognition. Mathematics is, of course, an important aspect of these forms and
structures, and also a powerful tool for cognizing forms and structures in the world.
Mathematics, although derived from the regulation of practical activities in the
actual world, is fundamentally linked with time and space. As Engels points out, “as
in every department of thought, at a certain stage of development the laws, which
were abstracted from the real world, become divorced from the real world, and are
set up against it as something independent, as laws coming from outside, to which

43
Anti-Dühring. Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
44
“The fatal error that the necessity of thinking, preceding all experience, was at the basis of
Euclidian geometry and the concept of space belonging to it, this fatal error arose from the fact that
the empirical basis, on which the axiomatic construction of Euclidian geometry rests, had fallen
into oblivion”(Einstein, and Jean Piccard, Physics and Reality).
3.4 “The Essential Forms of All Being Are Space and Time” 91

the world has to conform.”45 So it is with Kant’s transcendental idealism, which

regards the laws abstracted from reality as transcendental laws to which the world
must conform. For example, the axiom that the straight line is the shortest distance
between two points, which originally emerged from long human practice, acquires
self-evidence. However, Kant claims its nature is an a priori form legislated by
human reason to which nature must conform. From the perspective of the historical
development of mathematics, however, we can see that the relation between
mathematics and sensible time and space evolves from direct into indirect, and from
the sensible to a whole set of supersensible formal structures. This evolution is a
profound demonstration of the influence of objective reality, and also opens up new
possibilities of cognition. Einstein repeatedly states that geometrical space derives
from the separation of solid bodies in physical space. The intimate relation of
mathematics, space, and time to human beings’ social practices becomes all the
more true when we consider the practical activities of modern industrial technology
and scientific experiment, which have provided the occasion for introducing various
non-Euclidean geometries. Because of the great familiarity of Euclidean space in
daily life, it seems impossible to perceive or even conceive of non-Euclidean
geometrical space. And yet this is not only a possible development of logic, but also
an important opportunity for us to reach profound knowledge of objective
relations.46
Cognition is always approximate. It can never be exhaustive, but only gradually
reaches a deeper level. The same applies to the representations of time and space,
and to the mathematical and physical sciences. Representations of space such as
north and south, and right and left, and representations of time such as the suc-
cession of moments, and arithmetic and geometry, from their primitive beginnings
to Newtonian mechanics to the theory of relativity, all have progressed from the
limited and simple to the vast and complicated, from the elementary to the advanced
level. The conception of time and space will keep on advancing, as social practice is
continuously making headway. One point in Kant’s view of time and space is of
special interest, namely its emphasis on the relation between time, space, and
sensible intuition. I regard this as a significant insight. Time and space are neither
concepts of reason, nor are they similar to passive sensations such as color, taste,
scent, or touch. Sensible intuitions sediment social reason; and therefore, to
individuals, time and space seem to be a priori forms of intuition without
origin. However, from the perspective of humankind as a totality, they are
nonetheless the fruits of social practice. Such fruits, unlike formal logic, are not
merely internalized operations or external practical activities transformed into
internal structures of reason; rather, they are a sedimentation by which social reason
becomes sedimented in sensible perceptions. The former (internalization) is logic,

45
Anti-Dühring. Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
46
Although various formal systems of symbolic computation are entirely divorced from Euclidean
geometrical space, this is the notion of space in daily life.
92 3 Epistemology: II. Space and Time

while the latter is the result of free intuition, which is related to taste, which can
enlighten truth by means of the beautiful, and expresses the nature of free creation.
The birth and development of mathematics relies on these two aspects of
internalization and sedimentation. While this process has yet to be studied fully by
psychology, Piaget has made a start with his theory of internalization. I merely
propose this approach from a philosophical perspective.

References

Bergson, Henri. 1913. Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness,
129, 130. London: Allen & Unwin.
Einstein. 2005. The Meaning of Relativity, 1. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Einstein, Albert, and Nigel Calder. 2006. Relativity: The Special and the General Theory, 49. New
York: Penguin Books.
Einstein, Albert, and Leopold Infeld. 1960. The Evolution of Physics: From Early Concepts to
Relativity and Quanta, 180. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Kant, Immanuel, and Inc NetLibrary. 1990. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, 75. Boulder:
Alex Catalogue.
Locke. 1824. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. In The Works of John Locke, vol. 1,
12th ed, 43. London: Rivington.
Mach, Ernst. 1914. the Analysis of Sensations: And the Relation of the Physical to the Psychical,
19. Chicago: Open Court.
Mach, Ernst. 1976. Knowledge and Error: Sketches on the Psychology of Enquiry, 244. Boston:
D. Reidel Pub. Co.
Newton, Andrew Motte, William Davis, William Emerson, and John Machin. 1803. The
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 36. London: Printed for H. D. Symonds.
Paton, Herbert James. 1936. Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience, §9. London: Allen and Unwin.
Russell, Bertrand. 2009. A History of Western Philosophy, 573. Abingdon: Routledge.
Chapter 4
Epistemology: III. Categories

4.1 Categories as Pure Concepts of the Understanding

Kant divides human knowledge into two parts, sensibility and understanding.
Therefore, critical philosophy has to investigate two forms of a priori knowledge. In
the first part of the Transcendental Analytic, which follows after the Transcendental
Aesthetic, Kant states:
Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of the mind; the first is the capacity
of receiving representations (receptivity for impressions), the second is the power of
knowing an object through these representations (spontaneity of concepts). Through the
first an object is given to us, through the second the object is thought in relation to that
[given] representation […] 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.1
If 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, then the mind’s power of producing represen-
tations from itself, the spontaneity of knowledge, should be called the understanding. Our
nature is so constituted that our intuition can never be other than sensible; that is, it contains
only the mode in which we are affected by objects. The faculty, on the other hand, which
enables us to think the object of sensible intuition is the understanding. To neither of these
powers may a preference be given over the other. […] These two powers or capacities
cannot exchange their functions. The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think
nothing. Only through their union can knowledge arise.2

1
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A50/B74.
2
Ibid., A51/B75. In a letter to Marcus Herz, May 26, 1789, Kant said that “the antinomies of pure
reason could provide a good touchstone for that, which might convince him that one cannot
assume human reason to be of one kind with the divine reason, distinct from it only by limitation,
that is, in degree—that human reason, unlike the divine reason, must be regarded as a faculty only
of thinking, not of intuiting; that it is thoroughly dependent on an entirely different faculty (or
receptivity) for its intuitions, or better, for the material out of which it fashions knowledge” (Kant,
Immanuel, and Arnulf Zweig, Philosophical Correspondence 1759–1799, 155).

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 93

Z. Li, A New Approach to Kant, Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy
of Traditions and Cultures 27, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0239-8_4
94 4 Epistemology: III. Categories

Because sensibility and understanding are two independent faculties, Kant

criticizes rationalism and empiricism for jumbling them together:
Leibniz intellectualised appearances, just as Locke, according to his system of noogony (if I
may be allowed the use of such expressions), sensualized all concepts of the understanding,
i.e., interpreted them as nothing more than empirical or abstracted concepts of reflection.
Instead of seeking in the understanding and sensibility two sources of representations
which, while quite different, can supply objectively valid judgments of things only in
conjunction with each other, each of these great men holds to one only of the two, viewing
it as in immediate relation to things in themselves. The other faculty is then regarded as
serving only to confuse or to order the representations which this selected faculty yields.3

Rationalism sees sensibility as a chaotic representation of the understanding,

while empiricism sees the understanding as an abstraction from sensibility. One
attributes sensibility to the understanding, while the other attributes understanding
to sensibility. Kant believes that both rationalism and empiricism thus defined are a
dead end, because neither sensibility nor understanding can produce the other.
Sensibility and understanding can be compared with two mountains standing
opposite one another, as represented in the synopsis below:
Sensibility: from the object, passively received, chaotic, particular content, subjective,
empirical.
Understanding: from the subject, active creation, synthetic, universal forms, objective, a
priori.

It is obviously on the basis of this sharp dichotomy that Kant emphasizes that
knowledge arises from the union of sensibility and the understanding.
This union results from the understanding’s acting on sensibility. The under-
standing regulates, organizes, and constitutes sensibility. Knowledge arises from
the organizing of sensible material, while synthesis unifies the material provided by
intuition into a conceptual system of logical forms. This is how knowledge is
possible. In the “Transcendental Analytic,” Kant mainly expounds on this theme.4
His argument in this part belongs to the domain of transcendental logic, which Kant
conceives in a very different way from traditional formal logic.

3
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A272/B327.
4
“The very fact that the totality of our sense experiences is such that by means of thinking […] it
can be put in order, this fact is one which leaves us in awe, but which we shall never understand.
One may say ‘the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.’ It is one of the great
realizations of Immanuel Kant that the setting up of a real external world would be senseless
without this comprehensibility.” (Einstein, Physics and Reality). “It seems that the human mind
has first to construct forms independently before we can find them in things: Kepler’s marvelous
achievement is a particularly fine example of the truth that knowledge cannot spring from expe-
rience alone but only from the comparison of the inventions of the intellect with observed fact”
(Einstein, Johannes Kepler). Although Einstein opposes Kant’s immutable transcendental cate-
gories, he seems to be in agreement with Kant on some basic views in epistemology.
4.1 Categories as Pure Concepts of the Understanding 95

Traditional logic is analytic, with the law of non-contradiction as its basis, and
deals with the necessary forms of all thought.5 It is not capable of providing
sufficient conditions and positive standards of truth (Kant is here attacking
Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason).
Transcendental logic, on the other hand, is synthetic. It requires the corre-
spondence of knowledge and its object, and involves cognitive content. Kant
maintains that this is the logic of truth.6 Transcendental logic focuses on conditions
of thought that are independent of experience yet make experience possible. In
other words, the analysis of concepts and the principles of pure understanding serve
as the transcendental ground for natural science. Kant’s transcendental logic is a
rebellion against rationalism, against the exclusive use of formal logic to resolve the
question of knowledge, and against the exclusive use of the law of
non-contradiction to cognize the world (see Chap. 1). Kant maintains that the
axioms of geometry and arithmetic are self-evident because they are related to
sensibility, whereas the axioms of mechanics lack the self-evidence of sensible
intuition and therefore require the deductions of transcendental logic to guarantee
their objective universal necessity.
Transcendental logic mainly concerns the understanding and reason, with the
Transcendental Analytic focused on the understanding and the Transcendental
Dialectic focused on reason. For Kant, the understanding is fundamentally different
from sensibility. The concepts and principles of pure understanding cannot be
abstracted from sensible impressions or experience, but are only found in the
activities of the understanding, which are mainly for passing judgment. As Kant
says, “we can reduce all acts of the understanding to judgments.”7 To pass judgment
is to apply concepts and to unite representations. While concepts, as lively activities
of the mind, cannot function without judgments and are, in fact, products of syn-
thesis. A concept that could not be used in judgments would be meaningless, for
cognition requires judgment. Since cognition is not a state but an activity of the
mind, the active character of judgment should be emphasized with a view toward
advocating that judgment precedes concept.8 In this context, judgment is no longer a
formal determination of logic but is instead concerned with the content of knowl-
edge and refers to the basic activities and functions of unified consciousness. Kant
states that “the understanding may therefore be represented as a faculty of judgment.
For, as stated above, the understanding is a faculty of thought.”9 He regards the
forms of judgment in traditional formal logic as being well attested, unchanging,

5
When Kant refers to formal logic, he actually means some of its basic laws, such as the law of
identity, the law of non-contradiction, and the law of the excluded middle.
6
This view anticipates Hegel’s logic. See also Kant’s Lectures on Logic, which is actually a
mixture of tradition formal logic and modern epistemology.
7
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A69/B94.
8
Which involves matters of both logic and psychology. In the Lectures on Logic, Kant distin-
guishes between clarifying a concept (analysis) and inventing a clear concept (synthesis). Also, the
formal logic he refers to is not the logic of propositions but of judgment.
9
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A69/B94.
96 4 Epistemology: III. Categories

and exhaustive. They are actually unified functions of synthesis and belong to
epistemology and transcendental psychology. Any judgment, be it analytic or
synthetic, has such a unifying function, subsuming a manifold of intuitions under
concepts. Following the logical tradition, Kant classifies judgments as follows:
I. Quantity of Judgment: Universal, Particular, Singular
II. Quality: Affirmative, Negative, Infinite10
III. Relation: Categorical, Hypothetical, Disjunctive
IV. Modality: Problematic, Assertoric, Apodeictic11
When dealing with the understanding, Kant equates function with form. The
function of judgment is the form of judgment because the function of the under-
standing is to synthesize intuitions and constitute judgments, and its forms serve
this synthetic function. It is evident that “synthesis” is the key word here, because it
breaks through the conventional psychological dichotomy between sensibility and
the understanding and highlights their unity.12 This concept also overcomes the
earlier tendency to ascribe sensibility to the understanding (rationalism) or to
ascribe understanding to sensibility (empiricism), thus underscoring their different
origins and warning against the error of confusing the two. In order to form
knowledge, one must unite sensibility and the understanding through synthesis, and
in synthesis the understanding has the active function. Judgment, in essence, is an
active function of the understanding that yields the unity of representations, that is,
the pure concepts of the understanding. Kant states that “the same function which
gives unity to the various representations in a judgment also gives unity to the mere
synthesis of various representations in an intuition; and this unity, in its most
general expression, we entitle the pure concept of the understanding.”13 Just as pure
intuitions exist in all empirical intuitions as the forms of intuition, pure concepts
also exist in all activities of the mind as forms of thought (judgment). Therefore,
there must be pure concepts of the understanding and its unifying function, cor-
responding to every form of judgment in traditional formal logic. We can only
discover the origin of these forms of judgment by tracking down the pure concepts
of the understanding. The grounds for various logical judgments are conditions for

10
The word “infinite” means that the subject belongs to an unlimited (not closed) category, such as,
A is non-P, as Kant explains: “The infinite judgment indicates not merely that a subject is not
contained under the sphere of a predicate, but that it lies somewhere in the infinite sphere outside
its sphere; consequently this judgment represents the sphere of the predicate as restricted.
Everything possible is either A or non-A. If I say, then, something is non-A, e.g., the human
soul is non-mortal, some men are non-learned, etc., then this is an infinite judgment. For it is not
thereby determined, concerning the finite sphere A […] which is really no sphere at all.” (Lectures
on Logic, §22).
11
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A70/B95.
12
A remark made by Wilhelm Windelband is worth mentioning: “This conception of synthesis is a
new element which separates the Critique from the Inaugural Dissertation; in it Kant found the
common element between the Forms of the sensibility and those of the understanding”
(Windelband 1935).
13
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A79/B104-5.
4.1 Categories as Pure Concepts of the Understanding 97

the possibility of these judgments. To Kant, these pure concepts of the under-
standing are categories. The work of the Metaphysical Deduction of Categories is to
determine, through the investigation of judgment, the a prioricity of the categories,
which are also called pure concepts of the understanding. It is evident that Kant’s
transcendental logic is intended to transcribe formal logic (forms of judgment) into
philosophy (categories) through psychology (functions).
This point will become clear in the next chapter, which discusses the subjective
and objective deductions. Psychology (empiricism) becomes an intermediary for
the transition from formal logic to transcendental logic (epistemology), which is
also the course of development of Kant’s philosophy (see Chap. 1).
Kant is the first philosopher after Aristotle to raise the forms of judgment in
formal logic, as functions, to the height of epistemology and a new doctrine of
categories.14 What Kant has done is a significant development in the dialectical
normalization of thought. Aristotelean categories were ontological, concerning
beings, whereas Kant’s categories are epistemological and concern the mind.
Taking the classification of judgments in traditional formal logic, Kant modifies
Aristotle’s ten categories (e.g., Kant holds that time is a form of sensible intuition
rather than a category of the understanding), and proposes a table of categories as
follows:
Table of categories
I
Of quantity
Unity
Plurality
Totality
II
Of quality
Reality
Negation
Limitation
III
Of relation
Of inherence and subsistence (substantia et accidens)
(continued)

14
Robert Paul Wolff claims that Kant’s table of categories was not derived from formal logic, but
was deduced from self-consciousness (Kant's Theory of Mental Activity). G. Martin also holds that
since formal logic is analytic to Kant, the categories, which are forms of synthesis, cannot be
derived from judgments of formal logic, and therefore cannot derive from judgments (Kant's
Metaphysics and Theory of Science). I agree with neither of them. A statement in the Lectures on
Logic explains Kant’s reason for thinking that the judgments of formal logic are necessary con-
ditions for the truth of knowledge. Kant argues that for knowledge to be complete it must possess
universality (quantity), clarity (quality), truth (relation), and certainty (modality). Quantity, quality,
and so on each have their own epistemological content. So it is evident that Kant intends to
transform formal logic into epistemology.
98 4 Epistemology: III. Categories

(continued)
Of causality and dependence (cause and effect)
Of community (community between agent and patient)
IV
Of modality possibility—
Impossibility existence—
Non-existence necessity—
Contingencya
a
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A80/B106

Kant has obviously made many changes in his effort to deduce the table of
categories from forms of judgment of formal logic. Judgments of formal logic are
basically a classification of external forms, while Kant’s categories involve content.
For instance, categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive judgments are transformed
into the category of relations of substance, cause and effect, and community.
However, this deduction introduces a great deal of subjective arbitrariness. On the
one hand, there is the question of whether or not the categories of the understanding
are exhausted by the deduction of its twelve categories from the twelve forms of
judgments. The deduction evidently cannot be exhaustive, and there are more
categories than the twelve Kant lists. In the appendix entitled “The Amphiboly of
the Concepts of Reflection,” Kant lists four pairs of concepts, namely, identity and
difference, agreement and opposition, inner and outer, and matter and form, and
believes that they are related to sensibility rather than to the categories. In fact, these
concepts have no distinct, definite difference from Kant’s twelve categories. His
decision to limit the categories and their standards to the forms of judgment in
formal logic is not a developmental but a static view.15 On the other hand, Kant sets
less weight on some of the twelve categories than others, which are included merely
to make the number of categories correspond to the traditional twelve forms of
judgments. In fact Kant uses only eight of these forms and says very little about the
remainder. Some of the important categories, the three categories of relation, for
instance, are jumbled together with others, and their significance downplayed. In
short, the table of categories is thoroughly static and rather uninspiring.
However, if seen from the perspective of the history of philosophy, the transition
from a classification of judgments in traditional formal logic to a table of categories
in transcendental logic demonstrates Kant’s endeavor to investigate the nature of
logical thought by means of tracking down the origin of formal logic. He gives the
principles and standards for abstracting categories from judgments of thought, and

15
From Fichte to Hegel, categories are no longer given but rather established by the mind, that is,
they have a process of development. As to why there should be twelve categories, Kant admits
there is no reason. It is just as in the case of the rules of language: “We can’t give a reason why
each language has just this and no other grammatical structure, let alone why its formal rules are
just these, neither more nor less.” (Kant, Immanuel, and Inc NetLibrary. Prolegomena to Any
Future Metaphysics, §39).
4.1 Categories as Pure Concepts of the Understanding 99

points out that the forms of thought, which human beings have possessed for a long
time, contain a further synthesizing function of the understanding. This insight is
substantially different from the rationalistic doctrine of innate ideas, such as was
held by Descartes and Leibniz, as well as by the metaphysical empiricists. Kant
poses the problem of epistemology in a more profound way, opening up a new
approach that leads to an intimate relation among epistemology, logic, and dialectic,
and provides important hints for the study of cognitive spontaneity in human
thought. Unlike Hegel, who identifies formal logic with metaphysics in order to
dispatch both, Kant takes note of the relation between formal logic and transcen-
dental logic (epistemology), He notes their differences, namely, that the former
simply focuses on forms of thought, while the latter focuses on the content of
knowledge; and their similarities, that both are forms and functions of knowledge.
Kant arranges the twelve categories into four classes with three members each.
He states that “it is significant that in each class the number of the categories is
always the same, namely, three. Further, it may be observed that the third category
in each class always arises from the combination of the second category with the
first.”16 For instance, “totality,” which is the third category of quantity, is the
“unity” of “plurality,” that is, a unified (singular) plurality. The category of “lim-
itation” is the combination of “reality” with “negation.” The category of “com-
munity” is the causality of substances reciprocally determining each other, while
the category of “necessity” is “existence” given through “possibility.”17 Kant later
explains the distinction between his trichotomy and the dichotomy of traditional
formal logic, stating that the former is synthetic, while the latter is analytic. The
distinction is not that of A and non-A in formal logic. It is rather that of “(1) a
condition, (2) something conditioned, (3) the concept that arises from the unifica-
tion of the conditioned with its condition.”18 This view of Kant’s was taken over
and fully developed by Hegel, who sees this trichotomy as the turning wheel of
logic, and further expounds on the relation, independence, conflict, transition,
development, and transition among the categories. Hegel develops the dynamic
progress of the transformation and development of categories, which are no longer
the same as Kant’s static twelve categories and no longer assume the forms of
traditional logic, but are charged with the dialectic of thought, which is an inter-
related and ongoing development. This dialectic inversely manifests the objective
dialectical laws of development in the material world, hence constituting the
essence of Hegelian philosophy. However, were it not for Kant’s table of cate-
gories, it would not have been easy for Hegel to have developed this dialectic.
Aristotle transformed, through Plato, what was for Socrates the internal into the
external abstract Universal; while Hegel, through Fichte and Schelling, transformed
what was for Kant the internal into the concrete Universal19 by transforming Kant’s

16
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, B110.
17
Ibid., B111.
18
Kant and Bernard (1951).
19
See A. D. Linsay, Kant.
100 4 Epistemology: III. Categories

table of categories of subjective knowledge and regulative principles into objective

and objectized spirit and ideas (see Chap. 6).
Kant and Hegel differ concerning the question and focus of their investigations
of categories. Hegel makes use of absolute spirit to produce, control, and alter
everything, emphasizing how logical categories can be consistent with history, and
can even subordinate history under logical categories. Kant focuses his exposition
on how categories, as pure concepts of the understanding, apply to sensibility, and
how to make them relate to sensible experience.
For Kant, understanding the form and function of the categories is a question of
synthesis. Categories are, in fact, specific forms of synthesis that are emphasized by
Kant. The difference between Kant and Hegel runs through their entire systems of
epistemology. Kant mixes epistemology with questions of psychology and natural
science, while Hegel does not at all take psychology into account and his focus
revolves solely around the historical development of society.

4.2 Transcendental Schemata20

As discussed above, Kant held that categories are a priori “pure concepts of the
understanding” (i.e., the self-consciousness of transcendental apperception, see
Chap. 5). Consciousness of time is closely bound up with self-consciousness. But
unlike general concepts, they do not derive from experience. How then could they
apply to sensible intuition? Since general concepts are drawn from experience and
are homogenous with intuitions, there is no difficulty in applying them to intuition.
For instance, the concept of the circle can be applied to a plate because the geo-
metrical concept is homogeneous with the sensible intuition of the plate.
However, the categories, as transcendental “pure concepts of the understanding,”
are not homogeneous in that way with sensible intuition. Kant states:
But pure concepts of the understanding being quite heterogeneous from empirical intu-
itions, and indeed from all sensible intuitions, can never be met with in any intuition. For no
one will say that a category, such as that of causality, can be intuited through sense and is
itself contained in appearance. How, then, is the subsumption of intuitions under pure
concepts, the application of a category to appearances, possible? Obviously there must be
some third thing, which is homogeneous on the one hand with the category, and on the
other hand with the appearance, and which thus makes the application of the former to the
latter possible. This mediating representation must be pure, that is, void of all empirical

20
According to the structure of the Critique of Pure Reason, the Transcendental Deduction, which
explains the objective validity of the categories of the understanding in application to empirical
objects, comes after the table of categories in the Analytic (the section on “Metaphysical
Deduction”). Since the Transcendental Deduction is the kernel of Kantian epistemology, I discuss
this in detail later (see Chap. 5). This discussion goes more smoothly if we proceed from the dis-
cussion of the table of categories to that of principles. Some scholars, for instance, A. C. Ewing (A
Short Commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason), often place the discussion
of the Transcendental Deduction before that of the table of categories.
4.2 Transcendental Schemata 101

content, and yet at the same time, while it must in one respect be intellectual, it must in
another be sensible. Such a representation is a transcendental schema.21

Kant’s schemata are not particular sensible figures or images. Rather, they are a
sort of abstract sensible form directed at concepts but are not themselves concepts.
Instead, they are a sort of sensibly conceptualized pattern, somewhat like a diagram,
map, or blueprint. Kant cites mathematics as an example. In his illustration, these
five dots “•••••” are an image, not a schema; while the number 5 is a schema and not
an image. It is more obvious with larger numbers that they are schemata rather than
images, and it is the same with the triangle in geometry (not triangles drawn on a
blackboard or on paper). The triangle differs from a circle. We can acquire the
experience of the circle from circular objects, but we cannot acquire the image of
the triangle in this simple way. Our image of the triangle must necessarily be acute,
right, or obtuse, and not an image of the triangle in general. Images are particular
and specific sensible figures, while schemata are more abstract sensible structures.
All images are sensible, but not all sense experience has an image. So, too, for
schemata, which are neither empirical concepts nor images of things, but are instead
conceptual sensible structures, structural principles, or functions. They are not
figures passively received, but rather principles actively constructed. For instance,
the schema of dog is not a picture of a dog; it is a composition of a four-footed
animal with the features of a dog (e.g., the anatomy of a dog). In short, schemata are
abstract sensible structures that link specific sensible data. They operate at the
intersection of the understanding and sensibility, and their main characteristic is an
actively created abstract sensibility.
Kant maintains that time is the transcendental schema that mediates between
pure concepts of the understanding (categories) and sensibility because it meets the
three conditions of transcendental schemata mentioned above. A transcendental
schema must be pure, and without any empirical content. Time, as pure intuition,
meets this requirement. A transcendental schema must also belong to understanding
as well as to sensibility. For Kant, time meets this requirement as well. On the one
hand, things must be contained in time, taken as a transcendental form of sensible
intuition, in order to be perceived. For instance, in order to cognize a house we must
go from part to part through a sequential perceptual process, so that the house
becomes an object of cognition only through being thus related to time. On the
other hand, as the form of inner sense, time is different from space and is intimately
related to the categories of the understanding and to self-consciousness, which must
unfold in time. Therefore time also possesses the characteristics of the under-
standing. And on one hand, time is a pure form of intuition that is related to
sensibility; on the other, it has a kind of universality and is related to the under-
standing. Kant states:
Now a transcendental determination of time is so far homogeneous with the category,
which constitutes its unity, in that it is universal and rests upon an a priori rule. But, on the
other hand, it is so far homogeneous with appearance, in that time is contained in every

21
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A137-8/176-7.
102 4 Epistemology: III. Categories

empirical representation of the manifold. Thus an application of the category to appearances

becomes possible by means of the transcendental determination of time, which, as the
schema of the concepts of the understanding, mediates the subsumption of the appearances
under the category.22

In a letter written in his later years, Kant once again tried to clarify his con-
ception of the schema. The elucidation is quite clear and to the point:
This subsumption of an empirical concept under a category would seem to be the sub-
sumption of something heterogeneous in content; that would be contrary to logic, were it to
occur without any mediation. It is, however, possible to subsume an empirical concept
under a pure concept of the understanding if there is a mediating concept, and that is what
the concept of something composed out of the representations of the subject’s inner sense
is, insofar as such representations, in conformity with temporal conditions, present some-
thing as a composition, i.e., as composed a priori according to a universal rule. What they
present is homogeneous with the concept of the composed in general (as every category is)
and thus makes possible the subsumption of appearances under the pure concept of the
understanding according to its synthetic unity (of composition). We call this subsumption a
schema.23

Whence then come the transcendental schemata? Kant believes that they arise
from a synthetic activity of transcendental creative imagination. Categories come
from pure forms of logical judgments and have the abstract unity of pure logic. For
instance, the category of substance comes from the subject term of all object terms,
and the category of causality comes from the logical concept of “in accordance.”
But this is not the case with schemata. Schemata are connected with sensibility and
the synthesis of the sensible manifold in time and space.
Therefore, they do not have a purely logical significance, but are bound up with
empirical judgments and are represented as eternity (substance) and subsequence
(causality) in time. Here Kant still employs empiricism (psychology) to rectify
rationalism (logic). He declares that schemata are fruits of a priori imagination,
which mediates between sensibility and the understanding. This transcendental
creative imagination is an active spontaneity of the understanding acting on sen-
sibility, and therefore differs from passive reproductive imagination, which simply
inducts or abstracts from sensory images. Creative imagination is identical with the
spontaneity of the understanding; it is, in fact, a particularized spontaneity of the
understanding. The general possibility of the unity of empirical objects derives from
the understanding, while a priori imagination, that is, creative imagination, unifies a
specific, given manifold of intuition into the unity of a particular empirical object.
This creative imagination supplies rules and plans to produce schemata, just as
reproductive imagination produces images. But images produced by reproductive
imagination can be related to concepts only through schemata. Thus it is evident
that schemata are not restricted by particular images of experience. Kant claims that
the power of schemata “is an art concealed in the depths of the human soul, whose
real modes of activity nature is hardly likely ever to allow us to discover, and to

22
Ibid., A138-9/B177-8.
23
Letter to J. H. Tieftrunk, December 11, 1797. Kant and Zweig (1986).
4.2 Transcendental Schemata 103

have open to our gaze.”24 After this rather limited exposition, Kant does not return
to the topic, which leaves creative imagination as one of the most vital yet obscure
terms in Kant’s epistemology.25
Kant swiftly subsumes four of the categories under temporal schemata: the
schema of quantity is number, i.e., a time-series; the schema of quality is measure,
i.e., a time content; the schema of relation is temporal sequence; and the schema of
modality is time in general. The meaning of this passage will become clear later
when we discuss the principles of the understanding. Kant does not give an explicit
exposition of the different schemata for each of the twelve categories. He dwells
mainly on the schemata associated with totality under the category of quantity and
of limitation under the category of quality. Some scholars avail themselves of
Hegel’s view and propose that Kant intends to emphasize the third category among
thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.26 However, this interpretation is not quite right
because Kant presents a detailed account of the first two categories of relation,
which indicates that he does not set up a rigid rule for exposition.
How can the understanding have objectivity? This is the heart of Kant’s dis-
cussion to which we will return in Chap. 5. Schemata and creative imagination are
bridges by which the understanding connects with sensibility and thus acquires
objective reality. They are the pivot point that allows the understanding to relate to
sensibility. The function of the schemata is to allow categories to have reality in
their application to appearance, on the one hand, and to restrict categories within the
domain of sense experience, on the other. Kant states: “The categories, therefore,
without schemata, are merely functions of the understanding for concepts; and
represent no object. This [objective] meaning they acquire from sensibility, which
realises the understanding in the very process of restricting it.”27 Additionally, “thus
the categories, apart from the condition of sensible intuition […] have no relation to
any determinate object, cannot therefore define any object, and so do not in
themselves have the validity of objective concepts.”28
Take for instance the category of substance. If it is not related to sensible
intuition, that is, if it is without a temporal schema as its medium for application to
sensible appearance, it will have no value to cognition. So what is substance? It
cannot be grasped without the determination of time. However, substance, with a
temporal schema as its medium, amounts to the idea of something everlasting and
continuous in time, despite the alteration of its attributes. Thus substance is made
sensible and this category becomes applicable to intuitions and appearances. As a

24
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A141/B180-1.
25
Transcendental synthesis of imagination and transcendental synthesis of apperception are in fact
two sides of the same coin. Kant states that “it is one and the same spontaneity, which in one case,
under the title of imagination, and in the other case, under the title of the understanding” (Kant,
and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, B161). Yet their relation is still rather complex. For
more details, see Chap. 5.
26
See E. Caird, Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant. This is certainly a Hegelian interpretation.
27
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A147/B187.
28
Ibid., A246.
104 4 Epistemology: III. Categories

pure concept of the understanding, the applicability of the category of substance to

experience depends on such a temporal schema as its medium. Similarly, the cat-
egory of causality is schematized by temporal succession.
Kant’s transcendental categories are pure concepts of the understanding and are
totally independent of experience, but once he touches on specific categories, he
dwells longest on their schemata. For instance, in dealing with the category of
substance, most of Kant’s exposition concentrates on its temporal schemata of
succession and eternality. Consequently, there is no significant difference between
the categories and their schemata. That categories are used synonymously with
schemata means the collapse of pure transcendentality for the categories.29
Schemata are said to employ sensibility to restrict the categories of the under-
standing. Some Kant scholars discredit the schemata, maintaining that Kant’s
transcendental idealism is incomplete and is inconsistent with the Transcendental
Deduction. Others believe that the doctrine of schematism is insignificant and avoid
this section as best they can. However, the theory of schematism is, in fact, one of
the keys to our understanding of Kant’s critical epistemology. His design is to use
schematism to built a bridge between the transcendental and the empirical, between
understanding and sensibility, between the general and the particular, between
nature and appearance. It is of great importance that Kant poses this problem of a
bridge between these oppositions in a thoroughly idealistic manner.

4.3 Transcendental Principles of the Understanding

I. Quantity and Quality

Following his account of the doctrine of schematism, Kant expounds on the
“Transcendental Principles of Understanding,” which is actually a specification of
the time schema. Kant states:
The table of categories is quite naturally our guide in the construction of the table of
principles. For the latter are simply rules for the objective employment of the former. All
principles of pure understanding are therefore—

1. Axioms of intuition.
2. Anticipations of perception.
3. Analogies of experience.
4. Postulates of empirical thought in general.30

29
This, of course, refers to epistemology. In Kant’s philosophy as a whole, e.g., in the ethics,
categories with schemata are still significant.
30
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A161/B200.
4.3 Transcendental Principles of the Understanding 105

Kant maintained that any experience or science was possible only as schema-
tized under the four categories. For instance, in his Metaphysical Foundations of
Natural Science, he applied the categories to natural science and regarded physics,
defined as the study of all motions in nature, as dividing into four branches:
kinematics, which deals with the quantity of motion (velocity and direction);
dynamics, which deals with the quality of motion (force and torque, and their
constituting the degrees of substances of different intensity, i.e., creating motion);
mechanics, which deals with relation of motions (e.g., the equality of action and
reaction); and phenomenology, which deals with the different states of motion
(straight lines, curves, and so on). He pointed out in the Transcendental Principles
of Understanding that, in order to apply to all experience, the categories must rely
on these principles. For instance, for the category quantity to apply to experience so
that the manifold of sensible experience constitutes an object of knowledge, it must
proceed under the transcendental principle of the axioms of intuition, which state
that “all intuitions are extensive magnitudes.” Kant argued that only after having
given the exposition of the principles of understanding, which brings the
Transcendental Analytic to a conclusion, could he finally resolve the epistemo-
logical puzzle of the possibility of a priori synthetic judgments. The section on the
Principles of Understanding is not only a specification of Kant’s table of categories
and his doctrine of schematism, but also the richest discussion in his epistemology.
Thinking about mathematical and mechanical facts, Kant raised the question
“How are a priori synthetic judgments possible?” and saw time and space, which
are forms of intuition, and the categories of understanding as the two transcendental
elements. He proceeded from the abstract to the particular in his metaphysical and
transcendental exposition or deduction, until he reached the section on schemata
and principles, where he unfolded and completed his explanation. The question of
how the understanding is connected, controlled, and allowed to interact with sen-
sibility to constitute knowledge is explicitly described by this synthetic method. At
this point in the argument, the unification of sensibility and understanding, which
until now have been treated as if they were quite separate and even opposed, is
finally achieved.31
Let’s consider these points in turn:
First, the Axioms of Intuition. “Their principle,” Kant says, is this: “All intu-
itions are extensive magnitudes.”32 This is also the principle of time and space,
which are forms of intuition that enter the schema of temporal sequence because
intuition is a continuous synthesis of part to part in successive moments; this is the
so called “time sequence.” Only under the third category of quantity (totality),

31
Some Chinese scholars have employed the relation between ti (substance) and yong (function) to
interpret categories and principles (see Zhen Xin, An Introduction to Kant’s philosophy). The
analogy may appear relevant, yet one must guard against the mistaken impression that ti (not
meaning the categories) could exist without yong (not meaning principles). To Kant, without
principles, the categories could not have a cognitive function despite their ontological significance
in ethics (e.g., in the idea of a free cause).
32
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, B202.
106 4 Epistemology: III. Categories

i.e., the schema of number, could appearance be known to us in the way that
mathematics requires.33 It is evident that in the Transcendental Aesthetic, the
account of mathematics as a priori synthetic judgments was concerned only with
time and space as transcendental forms of sensible intuition, which was not suffi-
cient. Knowledge, including geometry and arithmetic, must unite sensibility and
understanding and apply the principles of understanding mentioned above.
Sensibility and understanding “can determine objects only when they are employed
in conjunction.”34 The a priori synthetic judgments of pure mathematics are no
exception.
It was purely for the convenience of argument that Kant singled out mathematics
in the Transcendental Aesthetic, treating it as if forms of intuition could be
knowledge without any contribution of the understanding. In fact, Kant always held
that mathematical knowledge required the participation of the categories of
understanding (quantity) and an appropriate principle of the understanding.
Therefore, it can be said that the first principle of the understanding is a direct
development of his doctrine of the aesthetic. Its importance lies in stipulating that
every object of knowledge, instead of being indivisible and uncountable, must have
a countable quantity, hence also be divisible. Kant holds that all categories directed
at transcendental synthesis require homogeneous data when they express mathe-
matical functions, while heterogeneous data are subsumed by mechanics. Extensive
magnitude specifically belongs to the former. Therefore, the category of quantity
actually becomes a transition from the aesthetic (time and space) to the under-
standing (the categories). The identity of quantity and temporal homogeneity are
indeed related. In my view, it is the homogeneity of time and the identity of
quantity that caused the primitive ideology of human beings to gradually grow from
an illusory mythology to scientific and historical knowledge. Kant attaches great
importance to quantity in cognition, using quantity to determine quality. He stresses
that the mathematical method was used to construct objects, and argues that the
mathematization of data is a condition of any natural science. All these views can
be connected with an important feature of modern natural science, namely, the
emphasis on formalization or mathematization. Mathematics possesses extensive
universal applicability and this universality is increasingly important as the
empirical sciences advance.

33
In his inaugural dissertation, Kant had already proposed, “The pure image of all objects of sense,
generally, is time. Now the pure schema for quantity, regarded as a concept of the understanding,
is number. Number is a presentation comprising the successive addition of homogeneous units.
Number, therefore, is simply unity in the synthesis of the manifold in a homogeneous intuition
accomplished by my generating time itself while apprehending my intuition” (Kant and Eckoff
1970). L. E. J. Brouwer, of the Intuitionist school of mathematical thought, adopted Kant’s theory
and held that the nature of mathematics lies in the continuity of time; while other scholars asserted
that Kant, in this axiom, was trying to explain how mathematics could apply to experience.
34
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A258/B314.
4.3 Transcendental Principles of the Understanding 107

Second, the Anticipations of Perception. Its principle is: “In all appearances, the
real that is an object of sensation has intensive magnitude, that is, a degree.”35 In
contrast to Hegel’s idea of quality preceding quantity, quantity precedes quality in
the Kantian categories, just as intuitive forms precede the content of perception.
This sequence has profound significance. The subordination of Hegelian quality to
quantity is in effect the elimination of quality. Hegel’s quality was a sort of pure
logical determination, thoroughly in line with his absolute idealism, while Kant’s
schematic category of quality indirectly confirms the existence of external material.
Kant argues:
No perception, and consequently no experience, is possible that could prove, either
immediately or mediately (no matter how far-ranging the reasoning may be), a complete
absence of all reality in the [field of] appearance. In other words, the proof of an empty
space or of an empty time can never be derived from experience.36

And again:
Every reality has, according to its quality, some specific degree … Thus a radiation which
fills a space, as for instance heat, and similarly every other reality in the [field of]
appearance, can diminish in its degree in infinitum, without leaving the smallest part of this
space in the least empty.37

Kant does not acknowledge an absolute void, either in space or time, but
maintains that as forms of intuition (quantity), time and space are inseparable from
quality (beings, material reality.) He endorses the heterogeneity of empirical con-
tents and opposes trying to explain quality solely in terms of difference of quantity.
He argues: “The real has therefore magnitude, but not extensive magnitude.”38 And
again, “the real in the [field of] appearance has always a magnitude. But since its
apprehension by means of mere sensation takes place in an instant and not through
successive synthesis of different sensations, and therefore does not proceed from the
parts to the whole, the magnitude is to be met with only in the apprehension.”39 In
other words, this magnitude is different from the extensive quantity mentioned
earlier, which was merely parts added to parts; this magnitude is not a quantity of
the forms of intuition that enables apprehension. The degree of quality refers to the
quantity immediately obtained by apprehension, because at any moment the object
of apprehension is always a magnitude of a certain quality (because of its material
reality). The terms were not germane to each other and are irrelevant.40 Magnitude
is about forms of intuition, while extensive magnitude is about material data; thus

35
Ibid., A258/B314.
36
Ibid., A172/B214.
37
Ibid., A174/B216.
38
Ibid., A168/B210.
39
Ibid., A168/B210.
40
Many scholars have identified the magnitude of anticipation of perception with quality, or
reduced it to the quantity of the forms of intuition. They regard it either as internal or as external
quantity. Such interpretations were contrary to Kant’s original intent. See Richard Kröner, W.
H. Walsh.
108 4 Epistemology: III. Categories

the former belongs to the axioms of intuition, while the latter belongs to the
anticipations of perception. That is because the latter concerns the intensity of
perceptions, which never lack some degree. If this degree were to diminish to zero,
there would be no perception and empirical knowledge would be impossible. This
magnitude is not given part after part in temporal sequence; rather, it must be
present at any moment of time. In fact, Kant here anticipates the ideas of “deter-
minate being” and “degree” in Hegelian logic, even though he did not unify quality
and quantity in the fashion of Hegel’s dialectic.41 In short, Kant maintained that
although the particular material of apprehension cannot possibly be anticipated, the
existence of such material must be transcendentally anticipated; that is, there must
exist external real matter to supply the content of perception. As in the account of
the principle of quantity, the principle of quality is also a necessary condition for
scientific knowledge. Therefore, it can be said that in expounding the anticipations
of perception Kant regarded objective existence in the material world as a sort
transcendental determination. Such a view, albeit shackled in transcendental ide-
alism, nevertheless indirectly confirms the objective existence of the material world.

4.4 Transcendental Principles of the Understanding

II. Substance and Causality

Kant divides the principles of the four categories into two parts, each of which in
turn consists of a pair. The first pair is the principles of mathematics, while the
second pair is the principles of mechanics. The first are intuitions of appearance,
and exhibit mathematical characteristics such as continuity, limit, and so on, and are
directly related to sensibility. The second pair is about the existence of essence,
with no direct relation to sensibility. The former constructs objects, while the latter
regulates knowledge. The former enjoys immediate self-evidence, while the
necessity of the latter can be established only through a deduction.
Kant’s third principle is called the analogies of experience. “The principle of the
analogies is: Experience is possible only through the representation of a necessary
connection of perceptions.” That is to say that experience is possible only through
the analogy of some necessary connection of perceptions (not the subjective
apprehension of a contingent series). To know a thing, one must know its relation to
other things. Knowledge cannot be attained from the cognition of an isolated thing
torn from its relations. Knowledge about the relation of an object to other objects,
however, cannot be attained through intuitive apprehension, but only through
thinking. For instance, the causal relation between two objects cannot be intuited,

41
“An example of extensive magnitude would be a collection of similar things (for example, the
number of square inches in a plane); an example of intensive magnitude, the notion of degree (for
example, of illumination of a room).” Letter to J. H. Tieftrunk, December 11, 1797. Kant,
Immanuel, and Arnulf Zweig, Philosophical Correspondence 1759–1799, 538.
4.4 Transcendental Principles of the Understanding 109

but can only be inferred. The relation between a substance and its attributes also
cannot be intuited but only thought. Therefore, Kant believes that the principles of
relational categories, unlike the previous two principles, cannot be intuited, but only
inferred. This is not the intuitive mathematical construction of an object, but rather a
logical ordering of the object.
The schema of the categories of relation is time-order. Kant states: “The three
modes of time are duration, succession, and coexistence. There will, therefore, be
three rules of all relations of appearances in time, and these rules will be prior to all
experience, and indeed make it possible.”42 However, time, as a form of intuition,
does not independently exist. We cannot perceive time itself. Nor could these three
modes of time exist independently. They could not be cut off from sensible
materials, and could have meaning only for sensible reality. They are constituted
and determined by objective relations of real things in time. To Kant, all things are
always in relations of time, otherwise experience would not be possible. If the time
relation could not be determined objectively, there would be no objects of expe-
rience, but only some chaotic contingent collection of subjective ideas. Thus, these
three modes of time are interrelated and contain each other. Duration is possible
only in correspondence with succession; and there must be duration for succession
to be possible. These two in turn presuppose coexistence. The three analogies deal
with three aspects of the same matter and are closely related to the categories of
substance and causality.
Kant first states the principle of substance, which is that “in all change of
appearances substance is permanent; its quantum in nature is neither increased nor
diminished.”43 He explains that: “The permanent is the substratum of the empirical
representation of time itself; in it alone is any determination of time possible.
Permanence, as the abiding correlate of all existence of appearances, of all change
and of all concomitance, expresses time in general.”44 “In all appearances,” he says,
“the permanent is the object itself, that is, substance as phenomenon; everything, on
the other hand, which changes or can change belongs only to the way in which
substance or substances exist, and therefore to their determinations.”45
What Kant means is that change can be discussed only when the category of
substance and the schema of permanence are transcendently assumed, because
change is always the change of something (the permanent). If there is change, then
there must be something unchangeable whose attributes undergo change. Without
the abiding and permanent, the changes cannot be known.
All these are apprehended in time. Our perception is within time, and things
appear in time with duration, succession, and coexistence. Hence comes the
necessity of assuming that time has a permanent substratum in the object of per-
ception. Without this permanent substance, no empirical time-order is possible.

42
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, B219.
43
Ibid., B224.
44
Ibid., A183/B226.
45
Ibid., A183-4/B227.
110 4 Epistemology: III. Categories

Nevertheless, this permanent substance is not time itself, because time itself has
nothing to do with either change or stasis. Time itself is a form of intuition in the
subject. Divorced from things, we cannot perceive time; while the changes we
perceive are all in time. We are aware of duration, succession, and coexistence;
though what we are really aware of is duration, succession, and coexistence through
time. Therefore, the permanent substance can only be “something” in time. As to
what this “something” is, Kant cannot say. However, one point is plain. This
permanent immutable thing cannot be anything spiritual. On the contrary, it must be
an object of sensible experience, and can only have meaning in sensible experience.
When we cognize an object, we do not see it as a heap of subjective perceptions,
but instead represent it as a coexistence of parts. For instance, when we look at a
house, we do not merely form subjective perceptions of colors, bulk, and so on, but
cognize its several parts and their coexistence. The category of substance must be
brought into play in our cognition of this kind of experience. Kant points out that if
this “permanent sensible condition” were not tied to a concept of substance, then it
could not receive any predicates, could not inform us of anything, and would be
utterly valueless for knowledge.
So while Kant does not state this explicitly, the category of substance refers to
permanent substance in nature. Contrary to Augustine’s doctrine that time is the
extension of thought, Kant’s view is conditioned by the energy conservation law in
Newton’s mechanics.46 Newton proposed four rules of reasoning for his natural
philosophy, and one of them is: “The qualities of bodies, which admit neither
intensification nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies
within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all
bodies whatsoever.”47 In fact, these universal qualities are qualities of material
existence as substance.
Therefore, just like the principle of the anticipations of perception, Kant’s
principle of the permanence of substance endorses the permanence of the material
world, although in a distorted way.48 Kant dogmatically assumes the permanence of

46
Kant repeatedly states that “through all changes of corporeal nature, the over-all amount of
matter remains the same—neither increased nor lessened.” ( Metaphysical Foundations of Natural
Science). Again: “A philosopher, on being asked how much smoke weighs, made reply: ‘Subtract
from the weight of the wood burnt the weight of the ashes which are left over, and you have the
weight of the smoke’” (Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A185/B228). Nothing
can come from nothing, nor can something be completely reduced to nothing. This is the difference
between reality and dreams. The word “substance” is sometimes used in the singular, sometimes in
the plural, therefore, it is evident that it refers not to subjective perception but to objective bodies.
There has been much debate on this issue among commentators, on which we shall not dwell.
47
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, part 3.
48
Most Kant scholars interpret substance as something belonging to the senses, e.g., sensible
material, and base their argument on some of Kant’s ambiguous and contradictory expressions,
e.g., when he states that matter is mere phenomenon rather than a thing in itself. These scholars
deny the materialistic aspect of the principle of substance, just as Kant denied it of things in
themselves as the source of sensibility. It is more so with the anticipations of perception, which
they consider to be merely about the senses. None of these opinions is plausible. Nevertheless, it is
4.4 Transcendental Principles of the Understanding 111

the natural world in time as the foundation for the duration and changes of expe-
rience, as if these changes must have their ground in a permanent substance. In the
Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, Kant gives a definition of matter:
“Whatever is movable and fills a space, becomes an object of experience.” This
definition indeed draws his conception of matter closer to the concept of substance
in science. Kant believes that some basic principles of natural science (physics)—
for example, that nothing can come from nothing and that no being can be entirely
annihilated—are possible only on the ground of this definition. The whole of
natural science is based on these basic principles (the conservation of mass and
energy, and so on). This is also the case for experience in general. Without the
continuous existence of substance (matter) in time, changes could not be objectively
comprehended, in which case, things could not be cognized as relatively stable
objects, but would instead be little more than a chaotic dream.
Kant admits that “though the above principle is always postulated as lying at the
basis of experience (for in empirical knowledge the need of it is felt), it has never
itself been proved.”49 In other words, the principle of the permanence of substance
as the basis of experience “has never itself been proved,” because it is an a priori
supposition of the understanding. Kant explains that “we have nothing permanent
on which, as intuition, we can base the concept of a substance, save only matter,
and even this permanence is not obtained from outer experience, but is presupposed
a priori as a necessary condition of determination of time.”50 Attributing the per-
manence of the material world to an a priori condition of subjective thinking (the
understanding) independent of experience seems to be a premise of logic, which is
the nature of this principle of substance. It contains a materialistic element on the
one hand, and on the other hand it subsumes matter under idealistic transcendental
forms.
The second analogy concerns causality, as Kant explains: “All alterations take
place in conformity with the law of the connection of cause and effect.”51 Causality
is the most difficult and important among Kant’s categories. If it can be said that the
principle of substance is about existence, then the principle of causality is about
process. The principle of substance aims at refuting rationalism, which advocates
spiritual substance, while the principle of causality aims at refuting empiricism,
which denies the existence of causality. These two aims are intimately related. The
principle of causality is based on the previous analogy, that is, the principle of
substance; but it goes further because causality and the alteration of things must be
based on the existence of the immutable, i.e., substance, and substance in turn is the

true that Kant uses many expressions to refer to substance, and often refers to it as the force of
motion, i.e., repulsion and attraction. He also identifies it with the permeating ether, in such
statements as that matter (the ether) “is distributed everywhere in the universe,” that “all matter is
physically divisible,” and that “matter proceeds the formation of bodies” (see Metaphysical
Foundations of Natural Science).
49
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A185/B228.
50
Ibid., B278.
51
Ibid., B232.
112 4 Epistemology: III. Categories

fundamental and primitive “cause.” However, any change in a substance has a

cause. A thing without a cause, e.g., a religious miracle, does not belong to the
realm of knowledge, and therefore cannot constitute an object of science. In the
Philosophical Notebooks, Lenin first quotes a passage from Hegel: “Substance
attains … actuality only when it has become cause,” then comments: “On the one
hand, knowledge of matter must be deepened to knowledge of Substance in order to
find the causes of appearance. On the other hand, the actual cognition of the cause is
the deepening of knowledge from the externality of appearance to the Substance.”52
This dialectical process of development and transmutation, from substance to
causality to community, is also a process of deepening cognition in everyday life.
Hegel will take over and lay stress on this insight, whereas Kant himself only
occasionally mentions it without fully arguing for the relation of transmutation in
these categories.53
Newton established the law of causality in mechanics to explain the existence
and movement of material in the universe. According to this law, everything, from
the sun and stars to dust, is controlled by the objective causality of mechanics. This
view has been conclusively proved by empirical facts. Kant, in fact, endeavors to
establish such a universal principle in philosophy.
Before Kant, Hume was already skeptical of causality and argued that causality
is not a logical or purely rational relation as the rationalists had said. Rather, it is a
subjective habit that people form through experience. People often observe that A
appears before B, and B and A are often related in such a manner that when they are
encountered people are accustomed to believe that A is the cause of B. That is to
say, the habit of “A before B” makes people believe that “A, thus B.” Hume argues
that a causal relation for A to B cannot be deduced from a mere analysis of their
concepts, and from this he concludes that causality does not exist in the objective
world.
Kant certainly opposes the rationalists’ reduction of cause to logical reason, and
he holds that causality is not a relation of pure logic that is guaranteed or proven by
reason. For Kant, logical truths arise out of the mere analysis of concepts, while
causes require the synthetic unity of experience. However, he is not happy with
empiricism either. Arguing against empiricism, which rejects causality altogether,
Kant points out that the concept of succession is not the same as the succession of
concepts. The latter is an association in psychological experience, whereas the
former involves passing a logical judgment about objective facts. Therefore, Kant
demands that we distinguish two orders, a subjective succession and an objective
succession. What standard can be employed to distinguish these two orders? Kant
explains that it depends upon whether the order of succession can be reversed.
A subjective succession is a perceptual order that can be reversed at will. For

52
Philosophical Notebooks. Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
53
Kant states that “causality leads to the concept of action, this in turn to the concept of force, and
thereby to the concept of substance” (Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A204/
B249).
4.4 Transcendental Principles of the Understanding 113

instance, when looking at a house, we are free to look from the roof to the foun-
dation, or the reverse, from the foundation to the roof. This sequence of perception
is reversible. In addition, subjective imagination can also be shifted randomly. An
objective succession, on the other hand, is not at the disposal of our will, and its
sequence is irreversible. For instance, the perception of a boat going downstream
can only be from upstream to downstream, and cannot be reversed in accordance
with our arbitrary wishes. This sequence of perception is forced on us by external
objects that oblige to us to perceive them in a certain way.54 That is to say, objective
succession consists of an inevitable connection, namely, causality. An objective
succession in time has the causality of the objects as its premise.
Therefore, the consciousness of this time-order is also the consciousness of
causality in objective things. Because of causality, nature constitutes an objective
time-order. Although the different locations of the boat at different times are not
themselves a relation of cause and effect, the apprehension of this objective
sequence presupposes the category of causality. Kant explains:
For instance, I see a ship move downstream. My perception of its lower position follows
upon the perception of its position higher up in the stream, and it is impossible that in the
apprehension of this appearance the ship should first be perceived lower down in the stream
and afterwards higher up. The order in which the perceptions succeed one another in
apprehension is in this instance determined, and to this order apprehension is bound
down.55
In the perception of an event there is always a rule that makes the order in which the
perceptions (in the apprehension of this appearance) follow upon one another a necessary
order. In this case, therefore, we must derive the subjective succession of apprehension
from the objective succession of appearances.56
In conformity with such a rule there must lie in that which precedes an event the condition
of a rule according to which this event invariably and necessarily follows. I cannot reverse
this order […] Let us suppose that there is nothing antecedent to an event, upon which it
must follow according to rule. All succession of perception would then be only in the
apprehension, that is, would be merely subjective, and would never enable us to determine
objectively which perceptions are those that really precede and which are those that follow
[…] That is something merely subjective, determining no object; and may not, therefore, be
regarded as knowledge of any object.57
Only in so far as our representations are necessitated in a certain order as regards their
time-relations do they acquire objective meaning.58

Note that Kant refers here to the logical order of time rather than the duration or
lapse of time and his remarks thus also apply to events of simultaneous causality,

54
Arthur O. Lovejoy holds that what Kant proves is the different perception of static and moving
objects rather than the difference of reversibility and irreversibility between subjective and
objective succession.
55
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A 192/B237.
56
Ibid., A 193/B238.
57
Ibid., A 193-4/B238-9.
58
Ibid., A197/B243.
114 4 Epistemology: III. Categories

such as fire (cause) and warmth (effect). Kant argues: “The time between the
causality of the cause and its immediate effect may be [a] vanishing [quantity], and
they may thus be simultaneous; but the relation of the one to the other will always
still remain determinable in time.”59 Nevertheless, like time, cause and effect are
irreversible. It should also be mentioned that the irreversibility of apprehension is
not automatically a relation of causality. Kant does not mean that that which pre-
cedes is necessarily the cause of that which follows; sequence is only an indicator of
objective causality.
Kant’s argument for causality is rather intricately wrought, and while some
scholars break it down into as many as five distinct arguments, I do not intend to go
into those details here.60 The main point is that a rule of succession is necessary for
the order of apprehension to be neither a merely subjective and arbitrary perception
nor a mere fiction of representation. Our subjective perception must obey the
objective succession of things and also originate from necessary causality. The
objective causality in objects is the prerequisite for a corresponding time-order in
subjective perception. Otherwise, time-order itself could neither exist nor be
meaningful.
But this is only one side of Kant’s argument. He also holds that since we can
objectively cognize objects, empirical scientific knowledge is therefore possible.
We can discover the objective causality relating objects because our understanding
carries time-order over into our perception, which is the result of the category of
causality acting on sensual material through its temporal schema. Kant explains that
“[the understanding’s] primary contribution does not consist in making the repre-
sentation of objects distinct, but in making the representation of an object possible
at all. This is done by carrying the time-order over into the appearances.”61 In other
words, although we do not yet know specific causes and effects, which we have to
discover in experience, the transcendental concept of causality, as a category of the
understanding, assures us that everything that exists has a cause.
Kant first argues that the objective causality of objects determines the subjective
succession of perception. He then argues that our transcendental categories
underwrite the experience of particular causal relations among empirical objects by
their regulation of perception. As mentioned, the transcendental category of
causality has no objective application that is independent of experience. I have also
pointed out that it is not only logically independent of any specific empirical
causality, but is also the prerequisite of all empirical causes and effects. Thus Kant
refutes the Leibniz-Wolffian contention that causality belongs to pure reason and
admits of transcendent application to things in themselves. Kant also refutes Hume,
who holds that causality is a subjective habit of perceptual representation and lacks
objectivity. Kant maintains that, on the one hand, the application and validity of
causality must lie in experience while, on the other hand, causality has universal

59
Ibid., A203/B2438.
60
For discussions on the topic, see the works of Kemp Smith and T. D Weldon.
61
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A 199/B244.
4.4 Transcendental Principles of the Understanding 115

validity and does not arise from experience. Such is Kant’s ambivalent stance
toward causality, emphasizing both its objectivity (which must lie in experience and
cannot, therefore, be subjective perceptual habit but must be sought in objective
objects) and its transcendental ideality. It is imposed on experience by our under-
standing, and arises only from the transcendental categories of the understanding.
He has no choice but to waver between the two opposite views.
Kant’s attempt to reconcile this irreconcilable conflict results in his being caught
in a dilemma. The dominant part of this dilemma is the transcendental aspect. As in
the first analogy, “substance” is a transcendental category while, for example,
protons and electrons are given by empirical science. In the same manner, the
universal category of causality is transcendental while specific laws of causality in
science must be discovered by experience. To put it simply, in whatever we do or
think, in whatever discipline of science, we first have the idea that everything that
exists has a cause, then we start to pursue the cause in some specific case. It would
be impossible to carry out any inquiry if we did not first have the very idea of
causality. This is one difference between human beings and animals. According to
Kant, the idea of causality is a transcendental category and belongs to human reason
(in its broad sense). This category directs, regulates, and organizes particular
thoughts and the general form of sensuous material; the idea that everything has a
cause is not induced from experience. The specific empirical induction that, say, all
crows are black would be invalid the moment we see a single white crow. However,
if we have a scientific attitude, whenever we encounter something that seems to be
without a cause, we redouble our effort to discover its cause rather than conclude
that, in fact, it has none. So we cannot really doubt the idea that everything has a
cause. It is evident that this idea is not induced from experience but is instead
universally and necessarily applicable to all objects of experience, and can therefore
only come from reason, as a transcendental category of the understanding. Kant’s
proposition that reason gives laws to nature and that, just as a judge questions a
defendant, reason poses questions to nature and demands an answer from it also
contains this implication.

4.5 Transcendental Principles of the Understanding

III. Community and Three Standards of Empirical Thought

Having discussed the categories of substance and causality, Kant proceeds to
expound on the category of community. Its principle is “all substances, in so far as
they can be perceived to coexist in space, are in thoroughgoing community.”62
Community includes interrelation, when two things are cause and effect for each
other. Its temporal schema is “simultaneous existence.” However, perception can-
not grasp simultaneous existence, which manifests as the perception of A and B

62
Ibid., B256.
116 4 Epistemology: III. Categories

reciprocally exchanging locations; furthermore, in causality, because of the

sequential temporal order, A and B cannot do so either. Since there is a necessary
objective relation between the objects, it is possible to perceive them in reverse
order, but this relation can only be apprehended through the category of community
with its schema of simultaneous existence.
This category is less important than those of substance and causality, though one
point deserves our attention. We should remember that the exposition focuses on
space, rather than on time as in the other expositions. Space, as the form of outer
intuition, is different from time, which is the form of inner intuition. Space is more
closely related to the objective reality of experience, therefore it exercises greater
determination on the objectivity of objects. In the second edition of the Critique of
Pure Reason, Kant augments the emphasis on space.63 In the Metaphysical
Foundations of Natural Science, he also lays great stress on space. In that work,
space has the same important position as does time in the Critique of Pure Reason.
Kant’s conception of the principle of community is consistent with the direction of
physical research in his time, which employed Newton’s laws of mechanics to
investigate spatial relations and positions between, for example, the sun and planets.
For Kant, reason alone is not sufficient to grasp the category of community, whose
objective reality can only be determined through intuition, specifically, the outer
intuition of space. Only in space can reciprocal relations and influence between
matter and substances be apprehended. It is also through community that different
spatial locations can manifest their coexistence, and that nature can be experienced
as mutually related. Just as the principles of substance and causality expressed the
state of natural science at the time, the principle of community expressed in phi-
losophy the prospect in science (astronomy in particular) that the mutual relation of
objects, including their causality, constituted the whole domain of mechanics.
However, Kant does not consider his philosophical principles to be drawn from
natural science. On the contrary, he believes that natural science is made possible
by the transcendental principles of the understanding he describes. The principle of
substance (continual (持续) existence) makes the knowledge of the birth and death
of things possible. The principle of causality (necessary succession) makes the
knowledge of change possible. The principle of community (simultaneous exis-
tence) makes the knowledge of simultaneous relation and covariance possible.
According to Kant’s table of categories, the principle of community, as the third
item in the category of relation, has the significance of being a final cause. In other
words, the category of community (the third principle) stands for substances (the
first principle) causally related (the second principle) to each other. Hegel further
develops this point, and makes community the supreme category of the logic of
essence.

63
In the discussion of substance and causality, Kant states that “to demonstrate the objective reality
of this concept, we require an intuition in space (of matter). For space alone is determined as
permanent […] in order to exhibit alteration as the intuition corresponding to the concept of
causality, we must take as our example motion, that is, alteration in space. Only in this way can we
obtain the intuition of alteration” (Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, B291).
4.5 Transcendental Principles of the Understanding 117

The section following the three categories of relation is entitled “The Postulates
of Empirical Thought in General.” Unlike his earlier discussion, this section does
not elaborate on the qualities of the categories but on the relation between cate-
gories and subjective knowledge. Unlike such categories as quantity, quality,
substance, causality, and community, which are directed at external empirical
objects, this category is directed at states of knowledge and is concerned with
questions of the possibility, actuality, and necessity of knowledge. The knowledge
in question is the knowledge of science or daily life, and for that reason its pos-
tulates are called the postulates of empirical thought, meaning the rules that
empirical thought must abide by. There must first be sensibility as material to be
determined within the scope of particular empirical cognition, thereby emphasizing
the sensible objective aspect of these categories. The three postulates of empirical
thought are as follows:
1. That which agrees with the formal conditions of experience, that is, with the
conditions of intuition and of concepts, is possible.
2. That which is bound up with the material conditions of experience, that is, with
sensation, is actual.
3. That which in its connection with the actual is determined in accordance with
universal conditions of experience, is (that is, exists as) necessary.64
Their temporal schemata are: to exist at some time (possibility), to exist in a
period of time (actuality), and to exist at any time (necessity). Kant states that
possibility can only be proven by sensation and experience, and that “without such
confirmation [possibilities] are arbitrary combinations of thoughts, which, although
indeed free from conflict, can make no claim to objective reality, and none,
therefore, as to the possibility of an object such as we here profess to think.”65 He
points out that possibility in scientific knowledge is a sort of possibility of reality.
A quality that is possible in experience must appear in time and cannot merely be a
merely logical possibility in the realm of pure thought. Scientific and ordinary
thought alike should be based on sense experience rather than on speculative reason
preoccupied with the mere possibilities of things. Leibniz’s monad would neither
occupy time and space (without the schema of the category of quantity), nor per-
ceive it (without the schema of quality categories). This impossible, contradictory
monad is a substance, yet without causality or community with other substances
(without the schema of category of relation), and a logical rather than a physical or
empirical possibility without actual existence. Therefore, it is evident that formal
logic’s law of non-contradiction cannot be the criterion (准则) for the possibility of
empirical knowledge. Anything that violates the law of non-contradiction is not
possible in logic but may nonetheless be a possible reality, such as, the unity of
opposites discussed in Chap. 1. Also, something logically non-contradictory may
be possible in logic but not possible in reality if it does not meet the formal

64
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, B266.
65
Ibid., A223/B270.
118 4 Epistemology: III. Categories

conditions of experience. For instance, forming a figure with two straight lines is
logically possible, but the reality of daily life cannot provide appropriate sensible
intuitions, therefore such a figure is not a real, empirical, objective possibility, as
was also the case for Leibniz’s monad.
It is all the more so in the case of reality. Kant states: “I do not, indeed, demand
immediate perception […] What we do, however, require is the connection of the
object with some actual perception, in accordance with the analogies of experi-
ence.”66 He illustrates with an example of the perception of the magnetic attraction
of iron filings. Although we cannot immediately perceive the magnetic field, we
know its existence by analogy. That is to say, although we might not perceive a
thing at the present moment, it must be connected with some actual perception in
accordance with the analogies of experience. Although actuality has greater scope
than immediate sensation, it is fundamentally based on perception and must finally
be proven by perception. This point demonstrates that from the categories, applied
to perception, we can deduce the actuality of other things. Actual things are not
limited to the narrow scope of immediate perception. One aspect of this principle is
directed at rationalism, which purports to establish the actuality of objects merely
on the ground of reasoning.67 The other aspect is directed at empiricism, which
denies the existence of objects on the ground that they cannot be proven by sen-
sations.68 Kant’s principle stresses perception as the ground for reasoning but also
denies immediate sensations as the criterion for actual existence. Kant’s work thus
imparts to philosophy the new scientific method of combining experience and
mathematics which natural science had also recently adopted.
The category of necessity implies that “the necessity of existence can never be
known from concepts, but always only from connection with that which is per-
ceived, in accordance with universal laws of experience.”69 That is to say, necessity
cannot be a product of thought and reason, as the rationalists think. What is
properly described as necessary is not determined by mere logic, but has to be
confirmed through actual sensation, on the ground of the analogies of experience.
The proposition that “All men are mortal” is an example of such necessity. Kant
holds that this proposition does not logically negate its opposite, “Some men are
immortal.” The second proposition is logically possible although it cannot be
proved by experience. Therefore, the proposition “All men are mortal” is not
logically necessary but is instead a necessity of empirical reality, which relates to

66
Ibid., A225/ B272.
67
In the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Newton also exhibits an inclination to
refute idealism, demanding the rejection of hypotheses. He states that “the qualities of bodies are
only known to us by experiments.”
68
On the one hand, Kant despises that sort of meaningless conceptual speculation, while on the
other hand, he admires the achievements of logical reasoning. He says: “Every logically perfect
cognition always has some possible use, which, although we are as yet unacquainted with it, will
perhaps be found by posterity. If in the cultivation of the sciences one had always looked only to
material gain, their use, then we would have no arithmetic or geometry.” Kant (1992).
69
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A227/B279.
4.5 Transcendental Principles of the Understanding 119

scientific knowledge. The necessity of a proposition such as “Some men are

immortal” cannot be established from the data provided by experience. Therefore it
should be banished from the realm of knowledge and scientific investigation. It is
evident that Kant’s emphasis on necessity is also an emphasis on the relation of
knowledge to empirical perception.
As to the difference and relation among the three categories, Kant states else-
where that “possibility is thought without being given; actuality is given without
being thought; necessity is given through being thought.”70 His idea is that although
possibility meets the requirements of the formal conditions of empirical knowledge,
i.e., the principles of the three categories mentioned above, it is not presently given
in sensation. Actuality is already given but yet to be proven, that is, it has not yet
been brought under the formal conditions of empirical knowledge. Necessity is the
unification of these two; the object is given by data provided by sensation and is
determined by the schemata of the categories of substance and causality. Possibility
thus provides the formal conditions of experience and actuality provides the
material conditions. The former comprise forms of intuition, time, space, and the
categories of the understanding; the latter is sensation. Actuality unifies possibility
and necessity. In fact, actuality is already a unity rather than being merely the
material of sensation.
Kant did not fully unfold the relations among the three. Hegel took over at this
point from Kant, and developed the relations into a set of dialectical ideas which are
interdependent and transmutable. For instance, actuality and necessity, which are
ambiguously equated in Kant, are developed into a profound dialectical relation. On
this basis Hegel proposes such well-known doctrines as “what is rational is real, and
what is real is rational” and “in the course of its development reality proves to be
necessary.” On the other hand, in developing Kant’s three categories, Hegel
abandoned the materialistic element of Kant’s conception, that is, his assumption
that any actual existence must relate directly or indirectly to the experience of the
senses (all scientific instruments and measuring devices are merely extensions of
our sense organs for the sake of expanding our perception). Therefore, we can see
that unlike Hegel’s effort to make these categories dialectical, Kant’s focus is on
their nexus with knowledge. Kant repeatedly emphasizes, at the end of the section
on the principles, that the categories of the understanding cannot have transcendent
employment separated from sensibility. In his conclusion he says:
The final outcome of this whole section is therefore this: all principles of the pure
understanding are nothing more than principles a priori of the possibility of experience, and
to experience alone do all a priori synthetic propositions relate—indeed, their possibility
itself rests entirely on this relation.71

Quoted from Kemp Smith, A Commentary to Kant's ‘Critique of Pure Reason.’.

70

71
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, B294.
120 4 Epistemology: III. Categories

Moreover:
All concepts, and with them all principles, even such as are possible a priori, relate to
empirical intuitions, that is, to the data for a possible experience. Apart from this nexus they
have no objective validity, and in respect of their representations are a mere play of
imagination or of the understanding.72

And again:
They cannot, when separated from all sensibility, be employed in any manner
whatsoever.73

Were it not for sensibility, the categories of the understanding would only be a
logical possibility without objective actuality and universal validity, and conse-
quently would be of no value to knowledge. Kant holds that since epistemology
seeks to inquire into the question of the correspondence between concepts and
objective objects, it cannot obtain knowledge purely through logic. Therefore, as I
take it, Kant’s emphatic belief that the pure understanding cannot cognize reality,
his demand for unity between the understanding and sensibility and between uni-
versal principles (categories of the understanding) and particular reality (sensations
of experience), and his refutation of the dogmatism implicit in both rationalism and
empiricism is of important constructive value to epistemology and is a philo-
sophical expression of the methodology and epistemology of the experimental
science of his time. These are important parts of Kant’s philosophy, which many
Kantian scholars have tended to dismiss lightly or brush aside.
On the other hand, the understanding, which Kant requires to be united with
sensibility, is fundamentally transcendental, and entirely isolated from sensibility.
Kant emphasizes the interdependence of the understanding and sensibility in
experience, and neither concepts nor intuitions can be excluded in cognition. But he
separates and contrasts the nature and origins of the understanding and sensibility.
Therefore, the unity of the two is merely a confused assembly of dualistic com-
ponents. Because sensibility and understanding are fundamentally separated, sen-
sibility cannot rise to the level of understanding, while understanding and its
categories cannot be derived from sensibility. Sensibility is rooted on the earth,
while understanding is in the heavens. As a result, the understanding, because of its
lofty position, rules over sensibility, that is, the transcendental rules over
experience.
The reason is epistemological. Kant does not understand the historical origin of
the categories of the understanding and the stages of development of rational
knowledge. He realizes that the categories of the understanding cannot be
abstracted directly from scraps of sensible experience (as is conceived by Locke),
therefore he bluntly separates them from experience in his idealistic transcendental
manner. Hegel also claims that “the categories are not contained in the sensation as
it is given us. When, for instance, we look at a piece of sugar, we find it is hard,

72
Ibid., A239/B298.
73
Ibid., A248/B305.
4.5 Transcendental Principles of the Understanding 121

white, sweet, etc. All these properties we say are united in one object. Now it is this
unity that is not found in the sensation. The same thing happens if we conceive two
events to stand in the relation of cause and effect. The senses only inform us of the
two several occurrences which follow each other in time. But that the one is cause,
the other effect—in other words, the causal nexus between the two—is not per-
ceived by sense; it is only evident to thought.”74 If it is true that the categories, such
as substance and causality, are functions of thought, and cannot by any means be
given in sensation, then where do these functions and categories come from? How
do the categories of thought arise? Hegel does not give a straightforward answer.
Instead he regards thought as the noumenon of the world, from which he deduces
everything. In so doing, Hegel sees no need to answer this question.

4.6 The Kantianism of the Theory of Causality in Natural

Science

To Kant, the importance of the category of causality to natural science (physics) is

like that of the forms of intuition, time and space, to mathematics: they are tran-
scendental elements that vouchsafe the establishment of science. The question of
causality has been an important topic in modern theories of physics. In some of the
influential debates on this topic, Kant’s name has often been mentioned and he
rarely goes unmentioned in philosophical writings on natural science, while Hegel
is completely obscured in this field and, in fact, skillfully skirted around the
problem of causality.
Werner Heisenberg states: “Kant says that whenever we observe an event we
assume that there is a foregoing event from which the other event must follow
according to some rule. This is, as Kant states, the basis of all scientific work […]
Therefore, the law of causality is reduced to the method of scientific research; it is
the condition which makes science possible.”75 But Heisenberg immediately points
out that this theory will not do for modern physics. In the micro-world, the causal
determination of classical mechanics is replaced by statistical probability, leading to
the claim that causality no longer exists, and even the declaration that the electron
has “freedom of the will.” He states that “the atoms or the elementary particles
themselves are not…real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather
than one of things or facts.”76 Niels Bohr, on the other hand, proposes his com-
plementarity principle as an epistemology capable of unifying human knowledge.
He underlines an “uncontrollable interaction between the object and the measuring
instrument.” The limit between the subject and the object can be indefinite, thus it
cannot be subjected to arbitrary division, and that which belongs to psychology and

74
Hegel, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences: Logic, §42.
75
Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science, Chap. 5.
[quoted from Du Preez (1991).].
76
Ibid., Chap 9.
122 4 Epistemology: III. Categories

physics becomes complementary: the subject of perception creates the object. Bohr
states that “any observation necessitates an interference with the course of the
appearance, which is of such a nature that it deprives us of the foundation under-
lying the causal mode of description. […] Causality may be considered a form of
perception by which we reduce our sense impressions to order.”77
The logical positivist M. Aebi criticizes Kant’s view of causality for having
triggered Hegel’s determinism, and Hans Reichenbach refutes Kant’s transcen-
dental category of causality and the supposed axiom that “everything that exists has
a cause.” “This argument,” Reichenbach says, “is fallacious. If we seek for a
particular cause, we need not assume that there is one. We can leave this question
open, like the question of what is the cause.”78 Moreover, “the empiricist Hume
appears superior to […] the rationalist Kant.”79 Reichenbach states that “it has
sometimes been said that this problem is specific for quantum mechanics, whereas
for classical physics there is no such problem. This is, however, a misunderstanding
of the nature of the problem. Even in classical physics we meet with the problem of
the nature of unobserved things […] let us assume we look at a tree, and then turn
our head away. How do we know that the tree remains in its place when we do not
look at it?”80 This obviously inclines towards Berkeleyianism.
The circumstances are complex. It can also be seen, in the general tendency to
regress from Kant back to Berkeley, that some scholars waver between Hume and
Kant, or retrace their course from Hume to Kant. Increasingly, the latter tendency
has been overwhelming the former.
Contemporary literature on quantum mechanics mostly admits causality. Max
Born, an eminent figure in the field of quantum mechanics, maintains that “causality
is such a principle, if it is defined as the belief in the existence of mutual physical
dependence of observable situations,” then “[metaphysical problems] are ‘beyond
physics’ indeed and demand an act of faith.”81 The logical positivists A. J. Ayer and
Herbert Feigl are also, to a certain extent, inclined to move from Hume to Kant.
They gradually acknowledge that it is not right to reduce all science to experience
(sensible material). Philosophers such as Gilbert Ryle note as well that categories
do not depend merely on the use of language. Even Russell eventually acknowl-
edges things that are neither purely logical nor merely empirical. These people all
appear to be vehemently criticizing Kant but they are in fact admitting the value of
Kant’s a priori synthesis. They expound on such questions as how to apply logic

77
Bohr (1934).
78
Reichenbach (1951).
79
Ibid.
80
Hans Reichenbach, Philosophic Foundations Of Quantum Mechanics. Reichenbach also
expresses dissatisfaction with logical positivism, holding that theories cannot be completely
reduced to “observational statements.” He thus shows a realistic inclination toward acknowledging
the independence of the physical world.
81
Max Born, Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance. In Human Knowledge: Its Scope and
Limits, Bertrand Russell states that “belief in an external cause of perception is embedded in
animal behavior and in the very idea of perception, as it is implied in common language.”
4.6 The Kantianism of the Theory of Causality in Natural Science 123

(analysis) to experience (synthesis), and how concepts can unite with experience in
science. All these views are distorted forms of Kant’s question about how a priori
synthetic judgments are possible.
The case is the same for some of Einstein’s philosophical views. He believes that
causality and the existence of the objective world are independent of human beings.
This stance is quite different from the Copenhagen school of quantum mechanics.82
Einstein holds that while causality exists, it is still a belief that cannot be proven;
but he nonetheless states that “the belief in an external world independent of the
perceiving subject is the basis of all natural science.”83 He also believes that
although concepts are given by experience, they are not induced from experience;
on the contrary, sense experience is organized by our concepts so as to constitute
knowledge. These concepts are our free creation. In order to have value for cog-
nition, these concepts must be connected with sensible material.
Einstein repeatedly states:
All our thoughts and concepts are called up by sense-experiences and have a meaning only
in reference to these sense-experiences. On the other hand, however, they are products of
the spontaneous activity of our minds; they are thus in no wise logical consequences of the
contents of these sense-experiences.84
The concepts which arise in our thought and in our linguistic expressions are all—when
viewed logically—the free creations of thought which cannot inductively be gained from
sense experiences.85
For even if it should appear that the universe of ideas cannot be deduced from experience
by logical means, but is, in a sense, a creation of the human mind, without which no science
is possible, nevertheless this universe of ideas is just as little independent of the nature of
our experiences as clothes are of the form of the human body.86

It is evident from these statements that Einstein nearly repeats Kant’s view.87
The only difference between them is that Einstein insists that all concepts (not just

82
Although it was a mistake for Einstein to deny the significance of probability in the microcosm,
he is more clearheaded than some other representatives of quantum mechanics on the philosophical
issues. Einstein calls the notion of “free will” nonsense, and points out that “our present rough way
of applying the causal principle is quite superficial […] Quantum physics has presented us with
very complex processes and to meet them we must further enlarge and refine our concept of
causality” (“Conversations on Causality and Free Will,” see Max Planck’s Where Is Science
Going?).
83
“Maxwell’s Influence on the Evolution of the Idea of Physical Reality,” see Maxwell.
84
Einstein (1955).
85
Albert Einstein, “Remarks on Bertrand Russell's Theory of Knowledge,” in The Philosophy of
Bertrand Russell, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp.
86
Albert Einstein, The Meaning of Relativity.
87
Einstein’s philosophical views are rather complicated, and have undergone much change in his
lifetime. Roughly speaking, his views can be summarized as follows: (1) Natural laws are
objectively independent of human thought or experience; (2) belief in such laws is a religious
feeling; (3) the content of such laws is not determined by perception, but rather by thought, though
the evidence that confirms them is perceptual; (4) therefore, it is free imagination rather than
induction (experience) or deduction (logic) that discovers natural laws and the concepts by which
124 4 Epistemology: III. Categories

the twelve categories Kant selected) are free creations rather than transcendental.
This difference is certainly not substantial, as Einstein himself admits: “The theo-
retical attitude here advocated is distinct from that of Kant, only by the fact that we
do not conceive of the ‘categories’ as unalterable (conditioned by the nature of the
understanding), but as (in the logical sense) free conventions. They appear to be a
priori only insofar as thinking without the positing of categories and of concepts in
general would be as impossible as is breathing in a vacuum.”88
Kant would have agreed with and probably would have approved of Einstein’s
view. In a certain sense, it is out of the same concern that Kant proposes a priori
synthetic judgments, which resemble neither pure analytic nor pure synthetic
judgments; while Einstein proposes free imagination, which is neither logical
deduction nor empirical induction. They both concentrate on the question of human
creative activities and the functions of cognition. As to the question how these
activities and functions work, that remains a philosophical and scientific problem
that needs further investigation. In the same way as Einstein opposes the criterion of
observability for empirical reality, one of the characteristics of modern natural
science is to maintain that theories are invented rather than discovered, that theories
precede observation, and that any genuine systematic theory has some content or
factor that is unobservable and cannot be proven by experience. Such a systematic
theory actively constructs abstract theory and ideal models through the nexus of
highly mathematical abstractions and particular empirical data, deducing and pre-
dicting new realities in advance of experience and observation.
The human creative, psychological function has been increasingly exhibiting its
power and influence and profoundly manifesting its cognitive spontaneity, which
neither empirical induction nor logical deduction can explain. Therefore it is not
surprising to see the shadow of Kantianism flitting about in the theories of the
natural scientists. Quantum mechanics and Einstein are representative examples of
this. In the 1930s, H. J. Paton said that “the scientists themselves are finding
paradoxes and inconsistencies thrust upon them as in the case of the quantum
theory and the theory of relativity. It is even asserted that time is merely a human
way of looking at things, and is not to be found in the physical world; and that we
are aware only of our own measurements, but have no idea of what it is that we are
measuring. Such assertions, made quite independently of Kant’s influence, look
very like a revival of the Kantian doctrine.”89

they are expressed. Like Kant, Einstein wanders between rationalism and empiricism and seeks to
reconcile them.
88
Einstein, “Reply to Critics”, in Albert Einstein: Philosopher—Scientist, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp.
89
Paton (1936, Chap. 2).
B. B. Wolman also said that “theoretical physicists, among them Niels Bohr, De Broglie,
Arthur Eddington, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, James Jeans, Max Planck, and Erwin
Schrodinger, are today's leading philosophers of the physical science. They do not share the beliefs
of Mach and Wittgenstein; Max Planck (1931) was highly critical of the logical positivists, […]
does not believe Carnap and Lear, his epistemology is not logical positivism” (Handbook of
General Psychology (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1973), 31). However, not every theoretical
4.6 The Kantianism of the Theory of Causality in Natural Science 125

Engels had already remarked earlier that “propositions that were advanced in
philosophy centuries ago, which often enough have long been disposed of philo-
sophically, are frequently put forward by theorising natural scientists as brand new
wisdom and even become fashionable for a while.”90 This is true enough, even if
Kant’s propositions have yet to be dismissed.
Some Neo-Kantians of an older generation attempted to reduce causality to an
innate physiological structure. F. A. Lange suggested that “perhaps some day the
basis of the idea of cause may be found in the mechanism of reflex action and
sympathetic excitation. We should then have translated Kant’s pure reason into
physiology and made it more easily conceivable.”91 The concept of causality as an
innate physiological structure is still favored by some scholars.92
Even though the idea was challenged long ago, it nonetheless deserves notice
because evolutionary history might have influenced physiological structures such as
the cerebral cortex.93 This is a difficult scientific question that deserves further
investigation. In particular, we need a physiological psychology developed from the
viewpoint of the philosophical idea of sedimentation if we are to scientifically
discover a channel from society (history) to psychology (the individual). The
progression from a deep-level history to a deep-level psychology, from social
practice and historical achievement to the psychological mechanisms of con-
sciousness and the unconscious, might well become the direction for future phi-
losophy and science. This is also a scientific prerequisite for the complete solution
to the riddle of Kant’s transcendental doctrine. From an epistemological point of
view, genetics is surely a mere potentiality of physiology. For that potentiality to
transmute and develop into actuality requires social practice (and, for the individual,
education).

physicist has the same philosophical inclination. For instance, Max Planck is inclined towards
realism and Schrödinger to subjective idealism; but in general the philosophical inclinations of
these physicists, founders of modern physical science, cannot be confined to Humeanism (or
logical positivism), and many of then lean toward Kantianism.
90
Engels (1994b).
91
F. A. Lange, History of Materialism, vol. 2, Chap. 2.
92
Heisenberg was sympathetic to ideas from genetics. Some linguistic philosophers claim that the
roots of language might be biological. See Chomsky’s doctrine of deep structure.
93
For instance, the Japanese scholar Kuwaki Genyoku points out in his accessible book Kant and
Modern Philosophy that ignorance of the philosophical significance of the Kantian transcendental
theory led to the use of the theory of evolution to explain this idea.
126 4 Epistemology: III. Categories

4.7 “The Proof of Necessity Lies in Human Activity,

in Experiment, and in Labor”

As with the problem of time and space, the various doctrines mentioned above
attempt to correct Kant’s category of causality, either from the perspective of
Kantianism, Humeanism, or Berkeleyanism. Historical materialism seeks to criti-
cize Kant’s transcendental doctrine from the perspective of anthropology in order to
discover the realistic origin of the category of causality.
Engels is very concerned with the problem of causality, and has many discus-
sions about this topic. He states: “The empiricism of observation alone can never
adequately prove necessity. Post hoc but not propter hoc […] But the proof of
necessity lies in human activity, in experiment, in work: if I am able to make the
post hoc, it becomes identical with the propter hoc.”94 “In this way,” he says, “by
the activity of human beings the idea of causality becomes established, the idea that
one motion is the cause of another. True, the regular sequence of certain natural
appearance can by itself give rise to the idea of causality: the heat and light that
come with the sun; but this affords no proof, and to that extent Hume’s skepticism
was correct in saying that a regular post hoc can never establish a propter hoc. But
the activity of human beings forms the test of causality. If we bring the sun’s rays to
a focus by means of a concave mirror and make them act like the rays of an
ordinary fire, we thereby prove that heat comes from the sun.”95 Causality refers to
the essential and necessary nexus among things.
Discovering this essential nexus and forming the notion of causality does indeed
require more than perception, observation, and induction, and could not be carried
out by animals. It is a mode of rational knowledge characteristic of human beings,
and can arise only through the social practical activities of human beings over their
long history.
The question of how knowledge is possible fundamentally arises from the
question of how the human being is possible. Only by looking at the social con-
sciousness of human beings—including categories such as causality—from the
viewpoint of the latter question, that is, from the viewpoint of the social existence of
human beings, can the question find a historical-materialistic answer in terms of a
theory of practice that does not separate man from man’s social nature. From the
perspective of human origins, the practical activities of human beings are different
from the living activities of animals. The most essential difference lies in using and
making tools. The hands and upright posture that are characteristic of human beings
result from the use of tools.96 A consequence of using and making tools in practical

94
Engels, Dialectics of Nature. Complete Edition of Marx-Engels, vol. 20, 572.
95
Ibid., 573.
96
Kant holds that man’s upright posture was not naturally formed, but was impelled by reason. He
argues that while nature preserves man as an animal species, reason compels him to stand upright.
He thinks this upright posture is not physiologically beneficial but serves human purposes and
makes human beings superior to animals. “On the Essential Corporeal Differences Between the
4.7 “The Proof of Necessity Lies in Human Activity … 127

activities is not only that human beings’ limbs and organs become extended, but
that they also come to grasp the laws of external nature in order to use those laws to
act on nature.
First, the manifold of practical activities of using and making tools (clubs, stone
and bone tools of different functions and shapes, different ways of holding and
handling these tools) fundamentally breaks the inflexibility, limitation, and partic-
ularity of the limbs, organs, and merely physical or biological capacities of the
human species, which go beyond anything the limbs and organs of animals can do
(their sharp fangs, claws, nimble legs or wings, or any abilities such as running,
preying, or climbing). The latter are determined by the animal’s living activities,
which can only serve to limit the animal. The limbs, organs, and abilities of
animals are limited by the objective causal relations that gradually evolved
into animal instinct and are passed on generation after generation. Human
abilities are poles apart from this. By actively acting on reality and bringing about
manifold and extensive objective causalities, the objective attributes and laws of the
material world of reality are increasingly and exhaustively revealed through our
practical activities. The transmutation of quantity to quality is evident.
In natural history, the extraordinary transition from ape to human begins with the
transition from tools as scarce and intuitive to tools in great quantity and
non-intuitive in both use and procedures of construction. The ground of this tran-
sition is primitive practical activity. In this process, primitive operations are refined
and abstracted into action-thought, then joined with language, gradually evolving
into the systematic concepts of language-thought. As I have repeatedly stressed,
primitive sorcery and ritual play a decisive role in mediating this transition.
Therefore, the ultimate explanation of how objective laws of causality can be
grasped by human beings and how causality becomes an important category of
knowledge lies, first of all, in the practical social activities of human beings rather
than in passive perception, observation, and induction. As Engels points out: “The
mastery over nature, which begins with the development of the hand, with labour,
widened man’s horizon at every new advance. He was continually discovering new,
hitherto unknown, properties of natural objects.”97
Causality, as an important attribute of the objective world, gradually emerges in
human consciousness through primitive language. Yet it has its own historical
development from the specific to the abstract. In the beginning, the notion of cause
is very specifically connected with particular things and ideas (see the vast literature
on primitive society). It took a long time for the category of causality and the
understanding that “everything that exists has a cause” to develop, and to gradually
be abstracted from particular notions of cause.98 In essence, this category is a

Structure of Animals and Humans,” 1771. This simple idea of two hundred years ago is rather
interesting.
97
Engels (1994a).
98
Piaget offers many insightful arguments from child psychology in his study of the origin and
development of ideas such as causality.
128 4 Epistemology: III. Categories

necessary product of human practice and cannot be a product of mere induction. On

the other hand, the formal emergence and use of causality as a dialectical category
appears much later in history, as do other categories, such as yin-yang, the five
elements, complementary opposition, and the unity of opposites. Engels states that
“dialectical thought—precisely because it presupposes investigations of the nature
of concepts themselves—is only possible for man, and for him only at a compar-
atively high stage of development (Buddhists and Greeks), and it attains its full
development much later still through modern philosophy.”99
We see, then, that categories are neither empirical inductions from sensibility
(empiricism), nor transcendental deductions of reason (Kant), nor logical
hypotheses (positivism), nor rules of operation (pragmatism), nor physiological
structures (Lange). Categories are not inductions of any individual perception or
experience, but are rather the internal fruition of the historical practices of human
society. The process from the prototype in the unconscious to the sign in con-
sciousness to abstract dialectical ideas can arise only on practical grounds that
contain social historical content. Empirical research limited to the experience of the
senses and subjectivistic interpretation cannot explain this.
Not only the dialectical categories, but also rational knowledge, such as ordinary
concepts and judgments that are abstracted from sensation and perception, are a
leap unique to human cognition, and palpably manifest cognitive spontaneity. This
leap also has its ground in practice and requires the language-signs of human
society. Therefore, to the sensations of an individual (e.g., children), the concepts,
judgments, and modes of reasoning that require language-signs appear to be tran-
scendental forms of the understanding, as do Kant’s transcendental concepts of the
understanding, imposed on the sensible experiences of the individual so as to
constitute knowledge.100 But what seems transcendental to an individual is actually
abstracted from the long historical experience of the human community. Although
the transcendental cannot be directly induced from individual perception, it can be
effected by historical social practice within material reality, and preserved in our
science and culture. The transcendental can accumulate and develop so as to
increasingly expand human beings’ cognitive power.
Such thinking not only reflects the world but also creates a thinking subject no
less than its thoughts. Thus arises our understanding of such propositions as “The
labour of a man who has also disposable time, must be of a much higher quality
than that of the beast of burden,”101 and “When it is of a scientific and at the same
time general character, not merely human exertion as a specifically harnessed
natural force, but exertion as subject … appears in the production process not in a
merely natural, spontaneous form, but as an activity regulating all the forces of
nature.”102 It is the subject, with his creative activities of rational knowledge rather

99
Engels (1994a).
100
Kant of course does not think that ordinary concepts are transcendental, only the twelve
categories of the understanding.
101
Marx (1994a).
4.7 “The Proof of Necessity Lies in Human Activity … 129

than his limited physical strength, who subdues the world. Human beings have been
handing down this wealth of reason just as we hand down material wealth from
generation to generation, developing it in the processes of transmission and
preservation. The questions raised by Kant, Einstein, and Piaget need further
inquiry from the basic viewpoint of anthropological ontology.
Kant raises the question of categories in an idealistic fashion. The gist of his
treatment is to emphasize the spontaneity with which the subject cognizes the
world. Kant sees that the knowledge of any object cannot be obtained without
categories, although the subject may not be consciously aware of this. For instance,
when we know that XX is XX, this ordinary judgment relies on categories such as
substance. Kant believes that categories are different from general concepts and of
greater importance in knowledge. His view is more insightful than that of the
logical positivists, who hold that these abstract concepts and categories are useless
and should be eliminated. Marxism also underscores the significance and central
function of categories in knowledge. Lenin remarks in the Philosophical Notebooks
that “man is confronted with a web of natural appearance […] Conscious man does
distinguish, categories are stages of distinguishing, i.e., of cognising the world,
focal points in the web, which assist in cognising and mastering it.”103 And, “the
moments of the cognition (=of the ‘idea’) of nature by man—these are the cate-
gories of logic.”104 Moreover, “these categories serve people in practice.”105 The
specific modality of the category of causality certainly changes as the sciences
develop; it can either be a classical linear sequence or a modern reticular structure
with feedback functions.
There is a concept of causality in classical determinism, and another in modern
probability and non-mechanical determinism. The concept’s specific form cannot
be unchangeable a priori, although being an abstract philosophical concept, it
nonetheless has a particular kind of law of conservation. Concepts of matter have
altered their specific forms, and so too the philosophical category of substance.
This holds all the more for the account of schematism. Schemata have the
characteristic of a formal construction according to laws. Whether as the necessary
ladder to ascend to theories of pure science, or in the application of theories to
practice (e.g., models, blueprints, or charts), schemata are a very important link to
knowledge and have a significant status, even a central one, in scientific theories,
inventions, and designs. Examples such as Mendeleev’s periodic table of chemical
elements, which is not only a schema but also a theory, emphasize this point. It is
also the case with various “models” in physics, which function as bridges between
experiments and theories. Theoretical modeling has posed a difficult question for
the methodology of modern science, when the procedure becomes far more

102
Marx (1994b).
103
Lenin (1994).
104
Ibid.
105
Ibid.
130 4 Epistemology: III. Categories

important than empirical observation.106 The schemata that Kant attributes to cre-
ative imagination are intimately related to this topic, which requires further inquiry
if we are to fully understand the contribution of spontaneity to the theory of
knowledge in modern science.
Kant does not explain the reason why categorical schemata are always temporal.
Some scholars say that it is because thought (the understanding) necessarily
occupies time. Kant indeed holds that time is the form of inner sense, so that the
existence of outer objects depends on inner sensations of time. This is also why
some scholars identify Kant with Berkeley. In fact, time as a transcendental schema
is essentially what Lenin calls “a focal point in the web” of knowledge that results
from the spatialization and internalization of human practical activities. The fact
that time occupies a more important position than space in the philosophies of Kant
and Hegel is actually related to the question of the human being (society). Kant
maintains that animals do not have consciousness of change, i.e., no time, because
they only have outer intuition and no inner intuition, while Hegel believes that
nature does not have development in time, only repetition in space. It is also
because of this that many philosophers emphasize time in a mystic manner. Time is
a profound question in science and philosophy.107 For instance, the relation
between time and mathematics, the significance of time and mathematics in the
schematism, the identity between homogeneous time and pure magnitude, and the
relation between the part and the whole all have important scientific and philo-
sophical implications.
However, Kant, because of his idealistic approach, turns the question upside
down. We must recognize that it has been the social practice of human beings over
a long history to internalize the laws of the objective world as categories. Kant, on
the contrary, believes that ahistorical, transcendental categories are applied to
sensibility through temporal schema. Hegel trods after Kant on the same track.
Instead of seeing the formation of the categories of dialectics in the historical
practices of human beings, he turns human history into the unfolding of the absolute
idea. Idealism separates the spontaneity of cognition from the long history of
human practice and in so doing human knowledge becomes transcendental and like
a stream without source or a tree without roots.
Thus it is evident that the theory of practice has first of all to reverse tran-
scendental theory, so as to discover its ground in reality. Kant’s transcendental
doctrine holds that categories are products of a priori reason, while the theory of
practice maintains that they are historical products of objective practice.
Transcendental doctrine believes that schemata are the work of a priori imagination
employed to combine the material of sensibility and organize experience, while the
theory of practice regards these schemata as an abstraction from sensibility,

106
See Nagel (1961).
107
Zhang Binglin (1868–1936) says that “it is because of his idea of past and future that man
differs from birds and beasts.” “A Rebuttal to the Proposal for the Adoption of Esperanto in
China.” The Confucian Analects and the Daoist Zhuangzi have similar sayings. Time has been a
philosophical topic at all times and in all lands.
4.7 “The Proof of Necessity Lies in Human Activity … 131

although still a creative, objective abstraction. So, should the spontaneity of cog-
nition be explained in a mystical manner, or traced to the spontaneity of practice?
This question takes its most concentrated form in the theory of self-consciousness,
which is the center of Kant’s epistemology.

References

Bohr, Niels. 1934. Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature, 117. Cambridge: The University
Press.
Du Preez, Wilhelmus Petrus. 1991. A Science of Mind: The Quest for Psychological Reality, 134.
London: Academic.
Einstein, Albert. 1955. Space-time. In Encyclopedia Britannica. Chicago.
Engels. 1994a. Dialectics of Nature. Complete Edition of Marx-Engels. Marx Engels Internet
Archive.
Engels, Frederick. 1994b. Original preface to Anti-Dühring, vol. 20. Marx Engels Internet
Archive.
Kant. 1992. Lectures on Logic, trans. J. Michael Young, 551. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Kant, and J. H. Bernard. 1951. Critique of Judgment, ix. New York: Hafner.
Kant, Immanuel, and Arnulf Zweig. 1986. Philosophical Correspondence 1759–1799, 538.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kant, Immanuel, and William Julius Eckoff. 1970. Kant’s Inaugural Dissertation of 1770, 18.
New York: AMS Press.
Lenin. 1994. Philosophical Notebooks. Marx Engels Internet Archive.
Marx, Karl. 1994a. Theories of Surplus-Value, Complete Edition of Marx-Engels. Marx Engels
Internet Archive.
Marx, Karl. 1994b. Grundrisse: Outline of the Critique of Political Economy. Marx Engels
Internet Archive.
Nagel, Ernest. 1961. Structure of Science.
Paton, H.J. 1936. Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience. London: Allen and Unwin.
Reichenbach, Hans. 1951. The Rise of Scientific Philosophy, 112. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Windelband, Wilhelm. 1935. A History of Philosophy, 538. New York: Macmillan.
Chapter 5
Epistemology: IV. Self-consciousness

5.1 Self-consciousness as the Heart of Kant’s

Epistemology

Kant expounds his thoughts on self-consciousness in the section entitled “The

Original Synthetic Unity of Apperception,” which is a key part of Kant’s episte-
mology and has also been regarded as the most difficult section of the Critique of
Pure Reason. It has even been called the enigma of Kant’s epistemology. The
question of self-consciousness is mainly dealt with in the Transcendental Deduction
of the categories, which falls under the division of the Transcendental Analytic.1
Kant states: “I know no enquiries which are more important for exploring the
faculty which we entitle the understanding, and for determining the rules and limits
of its employment, than those which I have instituted in the second chapter of the
Transcendental Analytic under the title Deduction of the Concepts of the
Understanding. They are also those which have cost me the greatest labour labour,
as I hope, not unrewarded.”2
The difficulty as well as the importance of this section are due to the fact that
Kant raises, in an idealistic manner, the question of cognitive spontaneity, which in
turn is invoked to solve the question of the objectivity of knowledge. Like the
transcendental exposition of time and space, the transcendental deduction aims to
explain why categories have universal, necessary, objective validity in their
empirical use. The argument moves through the idea and transcendental conditions
of “self-consciousness,” which becomes the ground and origin of the pure concepts
of the understanding (i.e., the categories) discussed in the previous chapter. The
application of the categories of the understanding is merely its particular fulfillment.
Kant takes the transcendental unity of this “self-consciousness” (also called the
1
The so called Transcendental Deduction, as Kant explains, is not a deduction in the sense of logic
but rather that of law, where to deduce is to prove. The point of the Transcendental Deduction is to
prove the objectivity of the categories.
2
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, Axvi.

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 133

Z. Li, A New Approach to Kant, Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy
of Traditions and Cultures 27, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0239-8_5
134 5 Epistemology: IV. Self-consciousness

synthetic unity of pure apperception3) to be the highest point of knowledge. He

states time and again that “the synthetic unity of apperception is therefore the
highest point, to which we must ascribe all employment of the understanding, even
the whole of logic, and conformably therewith, transcendental philosophy. Indeed
this faculty of apperception is the understanding itself.”4 And, “the principle of the
synthetic unity is the supreme principle of all employment of the understanding.”5
And again, “the principle of apperception is the highest principle in the whole
sphere of human knowledge.”6 Kant argues that since time and space are imme-
diately related to sensibility, they therefore have objectivity, whereas the categories
do not have such an immediate relation with sensibility and their objective validity
depends upon self-consciousness.
The transcendental deduction is divided into a subjective deduction and an
objective deduction. These two parts are often so interwoven that it is very difficult
to distinguish between them. In short, the subjective deduction inquires into the
conditions of knowledge, how knowledge is possible from a subjective psycho-
logical perspective, and explains self-consciousness as arising in the process of the
development of human knowledge. Kant says that this subjective deduction starts
from the fact that consciousness first manifests as the consciousness of time, and he
describes three syntheses of subjective spontaneity: the synthesis of apprehension in
intuition, the synthesis of reproductive imagination, and the synthesis of recognition
in a concept. The psychological element is rather prominent here.7 The objective
deduction proceeds more directly.
Since transcendental categories arise from pure reason, how can they have
objective validity in experience? Kant insists on the difference between our
awareness of an empirical object and awareness of the self, or self-consciousness.
The first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason focuses mainly on the subjective
deduction, although Kant states in the Introduction that the objective deduction has
more weight. He also explains that what he intends to discuss is not the question of
how experience arises, which is a psychological question, but rather the philo-
sophical question of how experience is possible at all. His replies to criticism
indicate his difference from Berkeley. Kant made many changes to this section in
the second edition, deleting many psychological arguments and stressing the
objective deduction. Commentators have contributed a massive amount of

3
The term “apprehension” is from Leibniz, who uses it to refer to the reflective consciousness of
the inner state of sensibility. He states that perception is “the internal condition of the monad
representing external things,” while apperception “is consciousness or the reflective knowledge of
this internal state.” The Principles of Nature and Grace, §4. Kant uses “pure apperception” to
emphasize that it is neither self-consciousness nor reflective knowledge.
4
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, B134.
5
Ibid., B136.
6
Ibid., B135.
7
Although some Kant scholars have denied this point, the entanglement of epistemology and
psychology has nevertheless become a regular phenomenon in modern philosophy, much as
contemporary philosophy has become entangled with linguistics.
5.1 Self-consciousness as the Heart of Kant’s Epistemology 135

interpretation to the two deductions; and many scholars complain of the dry, dull
writing, describing it as “an immense desert”8 that is difficult to navigate as they
have pored over every sentence of these “arabesque” passages.9 I do not intend to
get entangled in this topic and will only give brief and summary comments on this
section.
I mentioned in a previous chapter that Kant clearly demarcates between sensi-
bility and understanding. How are the two faculties related to each other in cog-
nition? He argues that objects can only give us a manifold of sensible
representations. The combination of elements in this manifold is beyond the power
of sensibility and relies on imagination, which in turn has to rely upon what it
combines into concepts, which finally unify the manifold. Kant states:
But the combination (conjunction) of a manifold in general can never come to us through
the senses, and cannot, therefore, be already contained in the pure form of sensible intuition
[…] All combination—be we conscious of it or not, […] is an act of the understanding. To
this act the general title ‘synthesis’ may be assigned […] and that of all representations
combination is the only one which cannot be given through objects. Being an act of the
self-spontaneity of the subject, it cannot be executed save by the subject itself.10

Although combination means the synthesis and the unity of the manifold, unity
cannot arise out of mere combination. “On the contrary, it is what, by adding itself
to the representation of the manifold, first makes possible the concept of combi-
nation.”11 In other words, sensibility can give only a jumble of representations
(colors, sounds, and so on). What combines and synthesizes these disorderly ele-
ments into an object (chair, tree, and so on) is the active unity of the consciousness
of the subject. The priority of this unity (which is not a precedence in time) makes
possible the combination of the manifold.
So what is this unity and where does it come from? Kant believes that it does not
arise from categories such as unity and substance. On the contrary, it is the pre-
requisite for the application of the categories (that is, it makes the use of the
understanding possible). It is a sort of fundamental synthetic unity. Kant calls it “the
original synthetic unity.” The key term in this phrase is “synthetic.” In Chaps. 2 and
4, I have pointed out that synthesis is the prerequisite of knowing truth, and the
ground of categories. After the expositions of the categories, Kant immediately
raises the question of a transcendental deduction, which leads to the exposition of
the schemata and the principles of the understanding. The focal point of the tran-
scendental deduction is synthesis, specifically, the original synthetic unity, the
synthetic unity of apperception. In a letter written in his later years, Kant put down
his thoughts in a concise manner:
The concept of the synthesized in general is not itself a particular category. Rather, it is
included in every category (as synthetic unity of apperception). For that which is

8
Paton, Kant’s Empirical Metaphysics.
9
Weldon, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.
10
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, B130.
11
Ibid., B131.
136 5 Epistemology: IV. Self-consciousness

synthesized cannot as such be intuited; rather, the concept or consciousness of synthesizing

(a function that, as synthetic unity of apperception, is the foundation of all the categories)
must be presupposed in order to think the manifold of intuition (that is, what is given) as
unified in one consciousness. In other words, in order to think the object as something that
has been synthesized, I must presuppose the function of synthesizing; and this is accom-
plished by means of the schematism of the faculty of judgment.12

5.2 Subjective Deduction

In this section, Kant first explains how unity arises from the consciousness of time.
He states that “all our knowledge is thus finally subject to time, the formal condition
of inner sense. In it they must all be ordered, connected, and brought into rela-
tion.”13 First of all, the consciousness of temporal continuity allows the intuitions of
sensibility to manifest as a manifold or manyness. Otherwise, each moment would
be isolated, and could only be an absolute single entity, and could never constitute
knowledge. Therefore, a simple perception already contains the gathering and unity
of a manifold of sensations as well as time consciousness. In other words, a unity is
contained at the outset of perception, and it combines the manifold of sensible
representations. Otherwise, the elements of the manifold would merely be isolated,
fragmentary, and disorderly intuitions. Rather than passively receiving that which
sensibility supplies, the unity that synthesizes the manifold must operate with the
active synthetic function of the soul.
This is what Kant calls the synthesis of apprehension in intuition.
Second, representations must be preserved in memory and then reproduced by
imagination (which Kant calls “a blind but indispensable function of the soul”).
Only in this way can sensible intuitions (i.e., the manifold of sensibility) combine in
a certain sequence, and one perception connect and unify with another. Otherwise,
with the arrival of the second perception, the first one would have already been
forgotten, making a complete representation impossible. This process of imagina-
tion is obviously related to a consciousness of time and proceeds in time. This is
what Kant calls the synthesis of reproduction in imagination. In fact, the synthesis
of apprehension in intuition discussed earlier is also inseparable from the operation
of imagination.14

12
Letter to J. H. Tieftrunk, December 11, 1797. Kant, Immanuel, and Arnulf Zweig, Philosophical
Correspondence 1759–1799, 245.
13
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A99.
14
In Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, Kant divides imagination into three types:
(1) Plastic imagination, for instance, spatial images in dreams (uncontrolled) or artistic images
(controlled); (2) association; (3) affinal imagination, for example, imagination that combines the
manifold of the same object. Reproductive imagination is an instance of the second type. Kant
believes that the third type is the most important to cognition.
5.2 Subjective Deduction 137

The third as well as the most important synthesis is that of recognition of a

concept. Since “if we were not conscious that what we think is the same as what we
thought a moment before, all reproduction in the series of representations would be
useless.”15 Therefore the concepts are needed to combine and synthesize the rep-
resentations recalled by imagination with representations of present perception, and
to recognize the successive perceptions and the manifold impressions of imagina-
tion as referring to the same single object of cognition. Thus comes about
knowledge of an object. Without the contribution of concepts, the combination of
perception and imagination could not possibly constitute an object of knowledge.
Concepts must be imposed on the manifold of intuitions to unify and synthesize
representations. Kant states that “the word ‘concept’ might of itself suggest this
remark. For this unitary consciousness is what combines the manifold, successively
intuited, and thereupon also reproduced, into one representation.”16 Only through
concepts can the identity of an object in consciousness be possible, or an object
even appear to exist. In fact, concepts synthesize and unify at the outset of per-
ception. This is all the more so in the case of imagination, which does further
synthesis by means of concepts. Kant attaches great importance to the immense
function that concepts have in knowledge, and he regards them as the essential
difference between human beings and animals.
Kant believes that because of the spontaneous unity in the consciousness of the
subject that combines and synthesizes, we can know an object by means of per-
ception, imagination, and concepts; disorderly sensible impressions can become a
unified object by means of a synthesis of perception, imagination, and concepts.
The unity of the object arises from the synthetic unity of the consciousness of the
subject that constitutes it. This unity of the consciousness is the “I think.” That is to
say, in the activity of synthesis, the “I think” preserves its continuity and identity.
For the activity of synthesis to be consistent and stable, the “I think” must be its
ground. In other words, a permanent “I think” must act as the ground for all
syntheses of perception, imagination, and concepts. This is the exposition of the
original synthetic unity of apperception, i.e., the self-consciousness.
Kant repeatedly stresses that without the synthetic unity of apperception (i.e.,
self-consciousness), no synthesis of concepts, imagination, and perception would
be possible. The manifold of intuition would only be a mass of incomprehensible
sensations, a jumble of colors, and so on, which could neither be combined
nor synthesized to constitute an object of knowledge, and this would preclude
experience no less than objective knowledge. Kant explains that “it must be pos-
sible for the ‘I think’ to accompany all my representations […] All the manifold of
intuition has, therefore, a necessary relation to the ‘I think’ in the same subject in
which this manifold is found. But this representation is an act of spontaneity, that is,
it cannot be regarded as belonging to sensibility. I call it pure apperception.”17

15
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A103.
16
Ibid., A103.
17
Ibid., B131-132.
138 5 Epistemology: IV. Self-consciousness

Sensible material must be combined, synthesized, and unified at the commencement

of sensible intuition. These sensible materials cannot automatically unify them-
selves. There must be a spontaneous subject that is constantly active in the process
of synthetic unification, abstracting sensations (sound, color, scent, taste, etc.) into
concepts in order to constitute an object of experience (a piece of sugar, a flower, a
table, etc.). Such a functioning subject and the faculty of the subject is the “I think,”
i.e., the self-consciousness. “I think” is also the unity of the cognitive process,
which is not possessed by animals. Kant states that “animals have apprehensions,
but not apperceptions, and cannot, therefore, make their representations univer-
sal.”18 To Kant, the self-consciousness is the fundamental characteristic of human
cognition, while imagination and the understanding merely manifest the self con-
sciousness of the subject under difference circumstances. The self remains latent in
the understanding and imagination, but becomes self-conscious in the application of
concepts, when it first becomes aware of itself.
The subjective deduction begins from empirical facts of inner sense and time
consciousness, argues for the empirical self-consciousness from a psychological
point of view, and then derives the a priori self-consciousness. I want to draw
attention to the main point here, which is the important spontaneous function of the
subject in the psychological process of cognition. Even the simplest perception
contains cognitive spontaneity, which is often constitutional rather than an entirely
passive reflection. Modern psychology offers many illustrations of this point. For
instance, human sense perception enjoys substantial latitude and is often carried out
under the control of concepts, as is hinted at in the well-known saying “We only see
what we know.”19
The question of self-consciousness is also noteworthy. In a certain sense, the
combination of the manifold in sensation and the synthesis of apprehension in
intuition are all related to this question. Self-consciousness is not something that
arises when external objects attract the instinctive needs of the subject. Such
consciousness is spontaneous. In my opinion, conscious attention is the earliest
psychological expression of human spontaneity, which restrains spontaneous
consciousness and instinctive needs. The object of conscious attention has nothing
to do with animal instinct, desire, interest, or demand.20 The sense of sight com-
bines, synthesizes, and unifies visual with motor and tactile sensations, not because
of external objects such as food, but because of subjective practical human activities
(labor), and the conscious attention these activities compel. It is only in such a way
that our physical labor can gradually meet with the demands of objective laws and
achieve its aim of serving species survival.

18
Quoted from Kemp Smith, Commentary to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.
19
Reports on feral children supposedly raised by animals illustrate this point very well. These
children have no awareness of stimuli, even powerful ones, that do not attract their attention.
20
See Ribot (1890). Unfortunately, modern psychology has not investigated this question under
controlled conditions and has not made much of a contribution to this topic.
5.2 Subjective Deduction 139

The earliest spontaneous psychological characteristic unique to human beings,

which arises in the process of the using and making tools, is the earliest “intellectual
state” that distinguishes human beings from other animals. Over history, the
objective causality of labor (such as hunting for food with weapons) is gradually
reflected and finally internalized as a subjective notion of causality. Apes can make
and use tools under both natural and laboratory conditions (Wolfgang Köhler’s
experiments are well known). But these activities are individual contingences rather
than historically necessary species activities and they cannot engender spontaneous
psychological capacities such as self-consciousness so as finally to form concepts of
causal relation. Apes cannot apprehend the significance and function of using tools
as a causal link to the subject’s acquiring food. Consequently, it is not surprising
that they do not preserve or improve on the tools they happen to use. Instead, they
just toss them away.
The key to human consciousness lies in the subject’s using and making of tools.
By continuously combining, synthesizing, and unifying sensations so as to preserve
the consciousness of the identity of the objects, the subject becomes conscious of an
objective object. This is transcendental apperception, which is precisely a product
of human labor, and is further refined and preserved through the activities of
primitive sorcery and ritual. Indeed, experiments have shown that apes only have
consciousness of objects, but not self-consciousness of their own activities, while
children cultivate this capability in their social environment and education. Thus the
cultivation of this self-consciousness has nothing to do with instinct but is instead
an outgrowth of early education. This self-consciousness is also closely linked with
another capability unique to human beings, namely, self-control. The spontaneity of
knowledge (including sensations) historically arises from the spontaneity of prac-
tice (i.e., human labor).
After self-consciousness, imagination is another important characteristic of the
spontaneity of human psychology. Sensory consciousness is not only related to
individual things, but is also under active control. The issue is very complicated, so
I will not go into detail here. I do not intend to further discuss the cognitive
spontaneity of concepts for the reason that these points will sound familiar to most
readers. Thus I end my discussion of psychological development by emphasizing
that the characteristic of spontaneity is unique to human beings.
It seems to me that the study of human psychology should be differentiated from
animal psychology. The former should proceed from psychological structures and
characteristics that emerge from social practice, and then sensations and perception
should be investigated. Since human social practice differs from an animal’s sur-
vival activity, human sensations and perceptions differ from those of animals.
Modern psychology has accumulated a great deal of firsthand data regarding these
points, even though it has been unable to elucidate the question fully. Instead,
human psychology has been biologized; the psychological characteristics of human
spontaneity have been ignored, and the fundamental difference between human
beings and animals has been blurred. Even Pavlov’s theory of two signal systems
has this flaw.
140 5 Epistemology: IV. Self-consciousness

Most modern psychological theories attempt to explain human psychology

without touching on the fundamental ground of social history and fail to investigate
the origin of practical activities in the millions of years since the dawn of the human
species and the emergence of primitive society. I wish to point out again that the
origin of human psychological characteristics lies in the physical activities of using
and making tools. These activities are consolidated in collective life through social
and ideological activities such as sorcery and elaborate rituals and are eventually
transformed into psychological forms, functions, and features. Isolated from
anthropology, these psychological questions cannot be solved.
Leslie White’s theory of cultural anthropology deserves mention here. He cor-
rectly opposes the trend of reducing culture to psychology, and emphasizes the
essential function of tools and signs (language) in forming culture, which tran-
scends individual psychology. He stresses the fundamental importance of tech-
nology (e.g., energy and tools), but confuses material production with materialized
spiritual production (e.g., the production of ideology and signs), and fails to note
the importance of using and making tools in the genesis of psychological structures
that are unique to human beings. Consequently his theory of cultural anthropology
has some vulgarized and partial features. In short, the question of cognitive
spontaneity that Kant’s subjective deduction raises from a psychological point of
view remains an important topic that has not yet been fully studied.

5.3 Objective Deduction

No empirical psychology can replace epistemology. The question of the objective

truth of knowledge cannot be philosophically solved by arguing for transcendental
apperception (“I think”) in the subjective deduction, or by explaining the psycho-
logical functions involved in the cognitive process of synthetic unity. Hence, Kant
stresses the objective deduction in the second edition. The subjective deduction
basically argues from the process of constituting an object of knowledge to prove
that the spontaneous “I think” of pure apperception must be the ground of this
process, while the objective deduction sets aside this process to show how the
understanding can correspond with objects and how categories have objectivity. In
other words, it raises the questions of the relation between forms of knowledge and
empirical content, between the unity of consciousness and the manifold of sensi-
bility, and between self-consciousness and consciousness of an object. This is
basically a subjective deduction in the psychological realm.
In philosophical terms, this subjective deduction is an analytic unity, such as
saying that “I am I.” What this statement says is that “the representations that I have
are my representations.” More important is the synthetic unity, which has to explain
how the manifold of intuition, which is different from this “I,” is combined and
unified in my consciousness in a way that leads to truth. As a judgment, human
knowledge is based on the categories of the understanding, but we do not yet have
an account of how the categories apply to experience, i.e., how transcendental
5.3 Objective Deduction 141

understanding can have empirical application, which is the argument Kant calls the
Transcendental Deduction. This problem cannot be solved merely by psychological
argument.
The unity of the object that corresponds to the unity of self-consciousness must
be explained, and the manifold of representations must be apprehended as
belonging to the unity of the object.
Only in this synthetic, objective unity can the analytic unity or the subjective
unity of self-consciousness be possible.
“Synthetic unity” and “analytic unity” are intricate concepts in Kant’s episte-
mology. Seen as abstractions from different representations, concepts have an
analytic unity, that is, they proceed from the specific to the abstract. On the other
hand, concepts have a synthetic unity insofar as they combine and unify the
manifold of intuitions in thought, proceeding from the abstract to the concrete. For
instance, only when the judgment that “this is a house” combines and unifies the
manifold of representations under the concept “house” can that concept have
specific content, i.e., apprehend the manifold in a concrete representation. This is
synthesis, the manifold of intuition constitutes an object of knowledge through
concepts.
Kant attaches great importance to this synthesis. To him, only when the synthetic
unity combines different representations can the analytic unity be possible (that is,
the abstraction of concepts). Synthesis is the ground and condition for analysis, and
knowledge originates from synthesis. This point will become clearer if seen in the
light of the statements made in the previous chapter, where I explained how
judgment precedes concept. Kant finally moves from a psychological argument to a
philosophical account and begins to investigate the consciousness of the object.
The consciousness of the object refers to the object constructed in consciousness,
that is, the object as it appears to consciousness. Kant believes that this object does
not arbitrarily arise from psychological processes such as association but is an
objective order and unity which allows consciousness to surpass all natural psy-
chological processes, such as animal association, and to acquire universal necessary
knowledge. Kant directly raises the fundamental question in epistemology, namely,
the subject-object relation between consciousness and existence. He states:
The synthesizing itself is not given; on the contrary, it must be done by us: we must
synthesize if we are to represent anything as synthesized (even space and time) […] The
grasping (apprehension) of the given manifold and its reception in the unity of con-
sciousness (apperception), is the same sort of thing as the representation of a composite
(that is, it is only possible through synthesis), if the synthesis of my representation in the
grasping, and its analysis insofar as it is a concept, yield one and the same representation
(reciprocally bring forth one another). This agreement is applied to something that is valid
for everyone, something distinguished from the subject, that is, an object, since it lies
exclusively neither in the representation nor in consciousness but nevertheless is valid
(communicable) for everyone.21

21
Letter to S. Beck, July 1, 1794. Kant, Immanuel, and Arnulf Zweig, Philosophical Correspondence
1759–1799, 215.
142 5 Epistemology: IV. Self-consciousness

His point is that the unity of knowledge can be explained not from the per-
spective of the subject, but from that of the object. This is an important insight in
Kant’s epistemology. However, in proving this argument, Kant becomes entangled
in the subject-object dichotomy.
From perception to imagination to concept to object, the movement from sen-
sation to knowledge and from concepts to objects are two aspects of the same
process. To be conscious of an object (cognition) is a process in which the synthesis
of perception and imagination come under a certain concept that agrees with the
object. This is the basic content of Kant’s objective deduction. The presupposition
of the self-consciousness as apperception is necessary in order to demonstrate the
objectivity of the agreement between the understanding and the object. Kant argues:
The transcendental unity of apperception is that unity through which all the manifold given
in an intuition is united in a concept of the object. It is therefore entitled objective and must
be distinguished from the subjective unity of consciousness.22

The subjective unity of consciousness is an empirical unity, a combination of

representations. For instance, as a perception, a table is merely a combination and
unification of sensations such as hard, yellow, heavy, and so on. Kant holds that an
object is not a mere combination of sensations, which was Berkeley’s doctrine and
makes empirical objects a mere “play of ideas” no better than a “daydream.” Kant
argues that perception, imagination, and knowledge have an objective ground and
must be distinguished from views that see them as random collections of subjective
sensations. In the Prolegomena, Kant explains this point rather clearly. He stresses
the distinction between a “judgment of perception” and a “judgment of experi-
ence.”23 The former is a subjective judgment valid only for the individual and is a
random combination of sensations, while the latter is an objective, i.e., universal
necessary, judgment that is valid for everyone.
Kant states:
To think, however, is to unite representations in a consciousness. This unification either
arises merely relative to the subject and is contingent and subjective, or it occurs without
condition and is necessary or objective. The unification of representations in a con-
sciousness is judgment. […] Judgments are therefore either merely subjective, if repre-
sentations are related to one consciousness in one subject alone and are united in it, or they
are objective, if they are united in a consciousness in general, i.e., are united necessarily
therein.24
The objective validity of a judgment of experience signifies nothing other than expressing
not merely a relation of a perception to a subject, but a property of an object; for there
would be no reason why other judgments necessarily would have to agree with mine, if
there were not the unity of the object – an object to which they all refer, with which they all
agree, and, for that reason, also must all harmonize among themselves.25

22
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, B139.
23
See Prolegomena, §18–20.
24
Prolegomena, §22.
25
Ibid., §18.
5.3 Objective Deduction 143

Objective validity and necessary universal validity (for everyone) are therefore inter-
changeable concepts, and although we do not know the object in itself, nonetheless, if we
regard a judgment as universally valid and hence necessary, objective validity is understood
to be included.26
A judgment of perception […] has thus far only subjective validity; it is merely a con-
nection of perceptions within my mental state, without reference to the object.27

Here Kant carefully distinguishes his position from that of empiricists like
Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. He stresses cognitive spontaneity and associates this
spontaneity with the universal, necessary, objective validity of knowledge. Kant
holds that passive receptivity (perception) forms subjective judgments that seem to
proceed from experiences, such as sensations and perceptions, but actually only
result in subjective judgments of perception, which do not have universal necessity.
Such judgments, theoretically speaking, can lead to Berkeley’s subjective idealism
or Hume’s skepticism. Therefore, objective validity cannot come from an imme-
diate perception of the object, but only from the conditions that constitute uni-
versality. This is the function of the understanding, with transcendental
apperception as its ground, which expresses a judgment of experience and con-
stitutes objective knowledge. Kant states:
…if, however, through the concept of the understanding the connection of the represen-
tations which it provides to our sensibility is determined as universally valid, then the object
is determined through this relation, and the judgment is objective.28

To Kant, to say that a judgment is true is to say that it can construct its object under
certain conditions. Therefore, objective truth does not lie in the passive reflection of
the senses but in the spontaneous construction of thought. Sensibility itself cannot
guarantee the objectivity of knowledge, which can only be obtained through the
imposition of reason (the categories of the understanding) on sensible material.
In other words, the objectivity of truth comes from the human cognitive spontaneity
that is characterized by a synthesis of the understanding.
Because human beings use transcendental categories such as quantity, quality,
causality, and substance to synthesize and unify the manifold of sensibility,
knowledge can have universal valid objectivity. I have discussed in a previous
chapter (on schemata and principles) how the categories can be applied to sensi-
bility and how they constitute empirical objects and laws. Here we are dealing with
the fundamental ground, i.e., apperception, or self-consciousness, where the cate-
gories possess the function of combining, synthesizing, and unifying sensations.
Kant explains that a proposition such as “the sun shines on a stone, the stone
becomes hot” is merely a judgment of perception and does not have necessity.29

26
Ibid., §19.
27
Ibid., §20.
28
Ibid., §19.
29
Kant is being contradictory here. For instance, in the Critique of Pure Reason, he holds that
perception cannot pass judgment. Judgment must have the categories of the understanding
imposing on it. Without the understanding, perception is not possible because perception is a
144 5 Epistemology: IV. Self-consciousness

It still belongs to the empirical apperception of inner sense, that is, the mere
combination of my subjective sensations. On the other hand, if we were to say, “the
sun heats the stone,” this would be a different case.
This judgment is based on transcendental apperception and employs pure con-
cepts of the understanding, specifically, the category of causality. The category of
causality combines “the sun” and its necessary result “heats the stone,” making the
judgment universal and objectively valid. Kant argues that a statement such as
“bodies are heavy” is not merely a combination of two concepts in my perception. It
is a combination of objects, regardless of the conditions of the subject. A judgment
with a copula verb such as “to be” cannot be identified with “I feel,” because such a
judgment has objectivity and can therefore be entitled a judgment of experience, in
distinction from a judgment of perception.30
As a natural scientist, Kant is indeed different from Bishop Berkeley. What Kant
pursues is the universal, necessary, objective validity of knowledge. Thus, he has to
acknowledge that the object does have its own order and nature, which cannot be
altered according to our will. Kant believes that there is an objective “affinity”
among the objects of appearance which compels us to imagine and think the objects
according to certain laws or orders, and not whimsically.31 He explains that if
cinnabar were sometimes red and sometimes black, sometimes light, sometimes
heavy, without any objective order and stability, then our imagination would not be
able to combine redness and heaviness into a synthetic representation, and we
would not have any objective knowledge. The affinity of the object of appearance
produces the objective unity which, in distinction from a mere subjective unity,
determines consciousness of an objective representation. Because of objective
unity, the manifold can be combined and synthesized in an object, and intuition can
be associated with consciousness to constitute knowledge. Obviously this objective
unity refers to the structural features of objective laws, which the object manifests in
consciousness. Kant attempts to reduce objective unity to consciousness of the
object.

combination and synthesis of the manifold of sensibility. Kant further argues that, without the
transcendental activities of imagination, no definite intuition is possible. Kant’s commentators
have proposed various solutions to these problems. Caird believes that, without the understanding,
even sensible material is not possible and there would be a mere heap of elements in a chaotic
manifold. Others, such as Lindsay, hold that without the understanding there could still be images,
although they could not constitute objects of knowledge.
30
“E.g., In touching the stone I sense warmth, is a judgment of perception, but on the other hand,
The stone is warm, is a judgment of experience” (Lectures on Logic, §40).
31
Affinity, in particular, transcendental affinity, is another term for which Kant does not give a
clear explanation. Affinity can be seen as belonging to the subject rather than the object, and as the
result of an a priori synthesis of imagination. The transcendental synthesis of imagination is the
origin of affinity. But I will not dwell on this term here.
5.4 The Interdependence of the Self-consciousness … 145

5.4 The Interdependence of the Self-consciousness

and Consciousness of the Object

In the objective deduction, self-consciousness corresponds with the consciousness

of the object. So what is self-consciousness? Kant explains that it is not empirical,
but is rather an a priori self-consciousness. The empirical self-consciousness is what
the self is aware of itself in thought, perception, imagination, memory, and so on.
A priori self-consciousness differs from this empirical self-consciousness. Kant
holds that just as consciousness of an object is merely an unstable manifold, the “I”
of the empirical self consciousness is also a volatile sensible experience. On the
other hand, a priori self-consciousness is a permanent form of the consciousness
that is unique to human beings. It logically precedes all definite thought. This “self”
is not a sense experience of the individual but a form of knowledge. Therefore,
Kant calls it the transcendental self. Perceptions and sensations belong to the
individual, and because of a priori self-consciousness and the knowledge that it
grounds, they are able to rise to the level of objective cognition. But a priori
self-consciousness cannot independently exist without the empirical consciousness
of experience. It exists as a form in all empirical consciousness and is determined
by the consciousness of the object in experience. It is called a priori because it is
universally and necessarily applicable to empirical knowledge and has objective
validity.
Here we reach the crucial part of Kant’s argument, namely, the interdependence
of the self-consciousness and consciousness of the object. On the one hand, tran-
scendental self-consciousness is only a pure form and cannot exist independently,
but only as empirical consciousness, i.e., the consciousness of an object. Therefore
it is evident that self-consciousness is determined by the consciousness of the
object. On the other hand, the consciousness of the object is only possible when
transcendental apperception applies the categories of the understanding to the
intuitions of sensibility. Hence, the consciousness of the object is principally
determined by the self-consciousness. Only with the consciousness of the object,
which is directed by thought and necessarily related in inner sense, can
self-consciousness, as transcendental apperception, exist in reality; otherwise, there
would only be empty nothingness. Without the synthetic identity of consciousness
of the object, the soul cannot think that its own identity is transcendental. At the
same time, the object, as an item of appearance, becomes a comprehensible unity
because it is subordinated under and obeys the forms of apperception of tran-
scendental self-consciousness. The consciousness of the object is constructed and
established by transcendental self-consciousness and its sensible material. On the
one hand, the object compels us to think in such and such a way; on the other hand,
the objective laws of the object are possible only if transcendental
self-consciousness applies the categories to the manifold of sensibility. Unlike an
empiricist, Kant points out that the universal necessary knowledge of objective truth
does not rely on the senses alone, but comes from the understanding. It is the
spontaneous understanding, given with self-consciousness, that guarantees the
146 5 Epistemology: IV. Self-consciousness

objectivity and truth of knowledge. Unlike a rationalist, Kant stresses that the
spontaneous understanding cannot exist independently of sensible experience. On
the contrary, it is expressed solely in empirical consciousness and depends on the
knowledge of specific objects. Without objects the spontaneous understanding
would not be possible, nor would objective knowledge and the criteria of truth.
Hence, the objective order and unity of specific objects determine the synthetic
unity of self-consciousness. It is evident, then, that the self-consciousness cannot be
separated from, but is dependent on, consciousness of the object, whereas con-
sciousness of the object is constructed by the self-consciousness.32 Consequently,
the self-consciousness and the consciousness of the object are antithetical as well as
interdependent, they mutually determine each other despite lacking any association.
Thus, the problem of the relation between objectivity and the spontaneity of
knowledge is all the more prominent.
This conflict is the result of Kant’s dualistic views. It arises because Kant admits
there is a manifold of sensibility that is independent of self-consciousness and that
any knowledge of empirical objects must begin with given sensible material. Just as
empirical concepts have their corresponding empirical objects, self-consciousness
also has its corresponding object, that is, the transcendental object. As an indefinite
“something,” the transcendental object is the prerequisite of all judgments of
experience. For instance, when we judge something to be a flower, the manifold of
intuition given to us by the judgment concerns a certain object that is independent
of the soul rather than a mere subjective conjury of sensation. Because there is such
a “something” existing a priori in our cognition, our knowledge enjoys objective
validity. Kant argues that the activity “I think” would not happen if the empirical
representations did not give material for thought. He states that “only our sensible
and empirical intuition can give to them [concepts] body and meaning.”33 On the
other hand, apperception (the self-consciousness in synthetic unity) must be the
condition of the understanding’s combining, organizing, and ordering sensible
material so as to form an object and constitute knowledge. Because of the
self-consciousness, i.e., the synthetic unity of apperception, that “something” can
become a known thing and the object of the subject’s conscious awareness. “The
synthetic unity of consciousness is, therefore, an objective condition of all
knowledge,”34 Kant says, and “only in intuition, which is distinct from the ‘I,’ can a
manifold be given; and only through combination in one consciousness can it be

32
“The concept ‘object’ is a means of taking into account the persistence in time or the continuity,
respectively, of certain groups of experience-complexes. The existence of objects is thus of a
conceptual nature, and the meaning of the concepts of objects depends wholly on their being
connected (intuitively) with groups of elementary sense-experiences. This connection is the basis
of the illusion which makes primitive experience appear to inform us directly about the relation of
material bodies (which exist, after all, only in so far as they are thought).” Einstein (1955).
33
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, B149.
34
Ibid., B138.
5.4 The Interdependence of the Self-consciousness … 147

thought.”35 The manifold comes from the sensible object while the unity comes
from the understanding of the subject. Only through the categories of the under-
standing can experience be known as an object. But it still relies on sensible
material to determine what sort of an object it is. Kant argues that “empirical laws,
as such, can never derive their origin from pure understanding. That is as little
possible as to understand completely the inexhaustible multiplicity of appearances
merely by reference to the pure form of sensible intuition. But all empirical laws are
only special determinations of the pure laws of the understanding, under which, and
according to the norm of which, they first become possible.”36 As I said in a
previous chapter, the category of causality, as a form, belongs to the understanding
while specific causal laws and relations depend on specific objects of experience.
Thus, a priori self-consciousness and the transcendental object are complementary
to each other and together they form the ground for knowledge. Kant holds that this
ground is unknowable. We shall fully discuss this topic in Chap. 7.
The purpose of Kant’s argument on self-consciousness is to oppose Leibniz’s
doctrine of pre-established harmony, which holds that it is due to a predestined
harmony that the object conforms with our knowledge. To Kant, such a meta-
physics transcends possible experience and is therefore impossible to prove. Kant
also opposes the epistemology of Locke’s empiricism, which holds that our
knowledge and categories conform with objects because they arise from our
experience with objects. Kant argues that such a view is impossible because cat-
egories cannot arise from experience. Hence he needs to find a third way, which he
does with his theory of the conformity between knowledge and the object that is
established by the formal conditions of experience. Kant calls this “the Copernican
Revolution” in epistemology. Although he opposes Leibniz’s pre-established har-
mony, he nevertheless replaces it with a pre-established harmony between under-
standing and sensibility, i.e., the harmony among the inner faculties of the subject.
Consciousness of an object can only be established through the harmony of the
consciousness of the subject. In the interdependent relation between
self-consciousness and consciousness of an object, the former plays the major role.
“The object,” which appears in the manifold as the unity of consciousness, is the
object of that consciousness, and the conditions that constitute self-knowledge are
identical with the conditions that form the object of knowledge. The conditions of
the subject’s knowledge of the object and those of the objectivity of knowledge
become identical. The synthetic unity of self-consciousness, Kant states, “is not
merely a condition that I myself require in knowing an object, but is a condition
under which every intuition must stand in order to become an object for me.”37
Everything is carried out in the realm of transcendental self-consciousness. Kant
transforms the pre-established harmony, which Leibniz regards as “objectively
adopted” (i.e., holding among things), into a pre-established harmony that is

35
Ibid., B135.
36
Ibid., A128.
37
Ibid., B138.
148 5 Epistemology: IV. Self-consciousness

“subjectively adopted” (i.e., holding among the transcendental faculties of experi-

ence and knowledge). Kant argues that these are “two faculties belonging to the
same nature, in which sensibility and the understanding harmonize to form expe-
riential knowledge.”38 The origin and harmony of these two are transcendentally
determined and unknowable. Consequently, the ontology of Leibniz’s rationalism
turns into Kant’s transcendental epistemology.

5.5 Kant’s Opposition to Treating the “Self” as the Entity

of the Soul

Self-consciousness, as the active, major, determinate aspect of the form of apper-

ception and the capacity of synthetic unity, cannot exist independently of the
consciousness of an object and the experience of the senses. Kant specifically
stresses that self-consciousness is neither inner sense nor the “I think” of Descartes’
doctrine, nor is it the awareness of the entity of the soul, as was held by the rational
psychology of the time. Apperception differs from inner sense because it is a
transcendental faculty (a form) without any sensible intuition. It transcends space
and time, while inner sense belongs to the empirical self-consciousness.
Transcendental apperception (the “I think”) is a condition that makes empirical
self-consciousness possible, while the empirical self-consciousness unfolds in inner
sense and its manifold. The empirical self-consciousness in inner sense, on the other
hand, requires consciousness of the external world as its premise. Therefore, the
Cartesian cogito cannot be Kant’s transcendental self-consciousness. The latter is a
pure form while the former has empirical content.
In arguing against Derscartes’s doctrine of cogito ergo sum, Kant points out that
the indubitable inner experience of the “I think” is possible only on the condition of
external experiences of something other than the “I,” a non-I. The consciousness of
“I” is precisely the consciousness of that which is outside of the consciousness of
“I.” Kant states:
I am conscious of my own existence as determined in time. All determination of time
presupposes something permanent in perception. This permanent cannot, however, be
something in me, since it is only through this permanent that my existence in time can itself
be determined. Thus perception of this permanent is possible only through a thing outside
me and not through the mere representation of a thing outside me; and consequently the
determination of my existence in time is possible only through the existence of actual things
which I perceive outside me. Now consciousness [of my existence] in time is necessarily
bound up with consciousness of the [condition of the] possibility of this time-
determination; and it is therefore necessarily bound up with the existence of things out-
side me, as the condition of the time-determination. In other words, the consciousness of

38
Letter to Marcus Herz, May 26, 1789. Kant, Immanuel, and Arnulf Zweig, Philosophical
Correspondence 1759–1799, 154.
5.5 Kant’s Opposition to Treating the “Self” as the Entity of the Soul 149

my existence is at the same time an immediate consciousness of the existence of other

things outside me.39
In the above proof it has been shown that outer experience is really immediate […] inner
experience is itself possible only mediately, and only through outer experience.40
The subject must be determined. But in order so to determine it, outer objects are quite
indispensable; and it therefore follows that inner experience is itself possible only medi-
ately, and only through outer experience.41
Not only are we unable to perceive any determination of time save through change in outer
relations (motion) relatively to the permanent in space (for instance, the motion of the sun
relatively to objects on the earth).42

His point is that the inner experience of “I think” can only have the outer
experience of “what I think” as its premise. From the thinking I, which differs from
that which I think, we cannot deduce that the thinking I can produce that which I
think, for that material content can only be given by experience. Without such
experience, the “I” is merely an empty form. Only with the existence of empirical
objects is the inner experience of “I think” possible. The thinking I itself, as a form,
is not an object of sensible intuition. Therefore, from “I think” we cannot deduce
the conclusion that “I am.” Being cannot be deduced from thought. Being must
have its evidence in sensible intuition given by the thing in itself. Kant explains:
The ‘I’ is indeed in all thoughts, but there is not in this representation the least trace of
intuition, distinguishing the ‘I’ from other objects of intuition. Thus we can indeed perceive
that this representation is invariably present in all thought, but not that it is an abiding and
continuing intuition, wherein the thoughts, as being transitory, give place to one another.43
I do not know myself through being conscious of myself as thinking, but only when I am
conscious of the intuition of myself as determined with respect to the function of thought.44
My existence cannot, therefore, be regarded as an inference from the proposition ‘I think,’
as Descartes sought to contend.45

In the Transcendental Dialectic, Kant again devotes a good deal of space to

refuting the doctrine of soul as substance in rational psychology. Rational psy-
chology is an extension of Leibniz’s rationalism. In the Monadology, Leibniz
argues that “it is also through the knowledge of necessary truths and through
abstractions from them that we come to perform Reflective Acts, which cause us to
think of what is called the I, and to decide that this or that is within us. It is thus, that
in thinking upon ourselves we think of being, of substance, of the simple and
compound, of a material thing and of God himself, conceiving that what is limited

39
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, B276.
40
Ibid., B276-277.
41
Ibid., B277.
42
Ibid., B277-278.
43
Ibid., A350.
44
Ibid., B406.
45
Ibid., B422.
150 5 Epistemology: IV. Self-consciousness

in us is in him without limits. These reflective acts furnish the principal objects of
our reasonings.”46 Unlike Leibniz, Kant emphasizes that “I think,” i.e., the
self-consciousness, is not a substance known by reflection, because without sensible
intuition the category of substance cannot be applied. Kant explains that “the unity
of consciousness, which underlies the categories, is here mistaken for an intuition of
the subject as object, and the category of substance is then applied to it. But this
unity is only unity in thought, by which alone no object is given, and to which,
therefore, the category of substance, which always presupposes a given intuition,
cannot be applied.”47 The transcendental “I think” does not have any sensible
intuition, nor is it an object of experience. It differs from the empirical “I think,”
which is an object of experience. The transcendental [postulate] of a priori self
consciousness makes the point that cognition always contains the existence and
activity of the “I think.” The combination of the subject term and object term in this
sentence may seem to form a tautology because cognition, or the process of cog-
nition, is the self-consciousness and its process. But human knowledge itself is the
“I think.” Therefore transcendental self-consciousness (“I think”) is not an ordinary
form of consciousness. Kant employs it to refer to all transcendental faculties or
possibilities of empirical consciousness, therefore it is not itself just mere empirical
consciousness. It has only a logical significance and cannot have substantial exis-
tence. It actually refers to the activity rather than to any substantial subject of
thought. Rational psychology fallaciously substantializes the “I think.”
John Watson explains rather clearly Kant’s refutation of the substantialized “I think”: The
fact that in all determination of objects the self-consciousness is implied does not prove that
there underlies the permanence of the subject. […] The unity of self-consciousness only
shows that so long as there is a consciousness of objects there is a self-consciousness: it can
never warrant the inference that there is a thinking substance which is permanent and
indestructible….If we ask what the I is, we can only say that it is the general form of all the
ideas through which a knowledge of objects is obtained; and to take this general form of
experience as an object, which exists and can be known independently of experience, is a
mere confusion of thought or paralogism.48

Kant always stresses that the “I think,” the a priori self-consciousness (tran-
scendental apperception) has only pure form and has a merely logical significance.
The I of the “I think” is inseparable from specific material content, i.e., empirical
objects and concepts. Therefore, it is neither inner sense (empirical
self-consciousness), nor a specific psychological process, because both involve
experience and sensuous content. If the “I think” (transcendental apperception)
were to be separated from the things that we think, separated from specific

46
Leibniz and Montgomery (1902).
47
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, B422.
48
John Watson, The Philosophy of Kant Explained. Kemp Smith thinks that “the ‘I think,’ though
intellectual, can find expression only in empirical judgments—in other words, that it is in and by
itself formal only, and presupposes as the occasion of its employment a given manifold of inner
sense; and secondly, by the statement that the ‘existence’ which is involved in the ‘I think’ is not
the category of existence” Smith (1930).
5.5 Kant’s Opposition to Treating the “Self” as the Entity of the Soul 151

empirical thoughts, or if self-consciousness were to be completely separated from

consciousness of an object, then we could not possibly know what it is. It would be
a completely empty “I,” not only without objective reality, but also “the most empty
representation of all representations.” The concept “I think” cannot have any par-
ticular reference because it is only used to guide our thought “and we cannot even
say that this is a concept, but only that it is a bare consciousness which accompanies
all concepts.”49
In short, Kant’s a priori self-consciousness is a premise and condition of
empirical consciousness. It is a form, capacity, or faculty and has no independent
substance or existence.50 It is evident that, rather than merely arguing for its
existence as an independent substance, Kant points out the immense function of the
self-consciousness from an epistemological viewpoint, and employs it to unify
knowledge, to constitute objects, and to guarantee the universal necessary objective
validity of knowledge. Kant firmly opposes the practice of substantializing the “I
think,” i.e., self-consciousness. He refuses to regard it as a sort of spiritual existence
(be it subjective or objective). This tendency is an important materialistic element in
Kant’s philosophy.

5.6 Hegel’s Self-consciousness

The question of consciousness that Kant raised has had great influence in the
history of philosophy, with different schools of philosophy branching out from this
point. Fichte comes after Kant and, regardless of Kant’s opposition, proposes the
pure thought of the “I think” in order to establish the “non-I” (sensible nature and
the whole world), and argues for an ontological view of the “non-I” within the
“self.” Hence, Fichte comes to see Kant’s conception of the “I think,” which is a
spontaneous form of knowledge, as a thinking substance that establishes the world
of objects by its activity, which he links to a supersensible world.
Obviously this line of thought no longer concerns the question of how knowl-
edge is possible, but rather how existence is possible. Fichte argues that “idealism
explains the determinations of consciousness on the basis of the activity of the
intellect. […] The intellect, for idealism, is an act, and absolutely nothing more […]
since it is not included in its principle and everything else must first be deduced.

49
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A346/B404.
50
Modern linguistic philosophy attempts to clarify the use of language in order to refute certain
traditional philosophical propositions. For instance, in The Concept of Mind, Gilbert Ryle argues
that “to talk of a person’s mind is not to talk of a repository which is permitted to house objects
that something called ‘the physical world’ is forbidden to house; it is to talk of the person’s
abilities, liabilities and inclinations to do and undergo certain sorts of things, and of the doing and
undergoing of these things in the ordinary world.” Also see John Austin’s analysis of the use of
words such as “self” and “I.” However, this newest revolution in philosophy is actually much
shallower than Kant.
152 5 Epistemology: IV. Self-consciousness

Now out of the activity of this intellect we must deduce specific presentations: of a
world, of a material, spatially located world existing without our aid, etc., which
notoriously occur in consciousness.”51 This is no longer the Cartesian doctrine of “I
think therefore I am,” but “I act therefore I am.” Moreover, this “act” is thought, a
subjective thought without any objects with which to start thinking.
As a result of Fichte’s intervention, these questions concerning the relation
between thought and existence become all the more prominent. Kant’s dualistic
distinction between self-consciousness and the consciousness of objects is abol-
ished and replaced by absolute subjective idealism. Fichte states: “The resources of
the unconditioned and absolutely certain are now exhausted; and I would wish to
express the outcome in the following formula: In the self I oppose a divisible
non-self to the divisible self.”52 He says, “[the thing] is nothing else but the totality
of these relations unified by the imagination.”53 He thus substantializes the
self-consciousness of Kant’s epistemology (which Kant stridently opposed), and
conceives of the self as the absolute thinking substance itself.
After Fichte, Hegel attempts to revise and develop Kant from the direction of
objective idealism.54 He transforms the self-consciousness in Kant’s epistemology
into absolute spirit and raises Kant’s conception of the a priori self to an ontological
level, endowing with substantial reality something that had only a formal, tran-
scendental reality in Kant. The objectivity of concepts in knowledge becomes the
objectivity of noumena, and the objective validity of knowledge is identified with
the universal necessity of thought.55 To Kant, spontaneity and objectivity are

51
Fichte et al. (1970).
52
Ibid., 110.
53
Ibid., 23.
54
Kant’s concept of the self does not refer to the individual. This implication is more obvious when
seen in the development from Kant to Fichte, Hegel, and finally Schelling’s objective idealism.
Schelling states that “it is evident that something higher is contained in the concept of the self than
the mere expression of individuality”; and “From this alone it is evident that something higher is
contained the concept of the self than the mere expression of individuality; that it is the act of
self-consciousness as such, with which, admittedly the consciousness of individuality must enter at
the same it, but which does not itself contain anything individual.” (von Schelling et al. 1978).
55
Kantian commentators on Hegelianism have contributed a clarification of the question which is
worthy of reference. In their opinion, Kant’s subjective and objective deductions should be seen as
one and the same process. According to his conception, self-consciousness produces experience
and its laws. The object is not outside of self-consciousness but rather latent in it. In this process,
the self (soul) seeking its own unity in an externalized world of objects is a process of
self-knowledge. To know an object is to know the self. Thus, the object falls totally within
consciousness. Kant explains that the activity of consciousness guarantees the objectivity of truth
in epistemology, which here has ontological significance. Consciousness no longer spontaneously
cognizes the world, but instead actively creates it. Hence, the objective validity that Kant
emphasizes is completely identified with the universal necessity of consciousness, eliminating the
requirement for sensible material given by things in themselves. Consequently, Kant obtains
objectivity from mere universality. This line of interpretation thoroughly Hegelianizes Kant’s
philosophy. See Caird, The Critical Philosophy of Kant.
5.6 Hegel’s Self-consciousness 153

intimately connected in the realm of knowledge, while to Hegel they are related in
the realm of ontology, hence thought is endowed with objectivity. The identity of
epistemological objectivity and ontological objectification makes history itself a
transcendental field. Thought is no longer restricted to the realm of subjective
knowledge, and categories do not merely determine knowledge but become laws of
objective nature and social development. The transcendental logic of Kant’s epis-
temology becomes objective logic and indeed the motor of world history. The
conflict between the manifold of sensibility (the object) and the identity of self (the
subject) in Kant becomes a historical dialectic of the unity of opposites of the idea,
which first externalizes (the subject), then returns to itself (the object).
What Hegel rejects in Kant’s philosophy is the materialistic element that made
self-consciousness inseparable from the consciousness of the object, understanding
inseparable from sensibility, and knowledge possible only with sensible experience.
Hegel’s doctrine re-establishes the metaphysical ontology that Kant refuted, sub-
stantializing the faculty of knowledge and turning self-consciousness into the
god-like absolute idea. This absolute idea is all-inclusive, encompassing everything
in the world. It molds the universe and is in effect another name for God. This view
certainly carries idealism through to the end, yet it also lingers on the verge of
materialistic criticism.
Hegel argues:
Kant employed the awkward expression, that I “accompany” all my representations—and
my sensations, desires, actions, etc., too. “I” is the universal in and for itself, and com-
munality is one more form—although an external one—of universality. All other humans
have this in common with me, to be “I,” just as all my sensations, representations, etc., have
in common that they are mine. But, taken abstractly as such, “I” is pure relation to itself, in
which abstraction is made from representation and sensation, from every state as well as
from every peculiarity of nature, of genius, of experience, and so on. To this extent, “I” is
the existence of the entirely abstract universality, the abstractly free.
Therefore “I” is thinking as the subject, and since I am at the same time in all my
sensations, notions, states, etc., thought is present everywhere and pervades all these
determinations as [their] category.56

56
Hegel, Encyclopaedia Logic, §20. Hegel also states that “just as thinking constitutes the sub-
stance of external things, so it is also the universal substance of what is spiritual. In all human
intuiting there is thinking; similarly, thinking is what is universal in all representations, recol-
lections, and in every spiritual activity whatsoever, in all willing, wishing, etc. These are all of
them just further specifications of thinking. When thinking is interpreted in this way, it appears in
quite a different light than when we simply say that, along with and beside other faculties such as
intuiting, representing, willing, and the like, we have a faculty of thinking. If we regard thinking as
what is genuinely universal in everything natural and everything spiritual, too, then it over grasps
all of them and is the foundation of them all. As the next step, we can add to this interpretation of
thinking in its objective meaning (as nous) [our account of] what thinking is in its subjective sense.
First of all, we say that man thinks, but, at the same time, we say too that he intuits, wills, etc. Man
thinks and is something universal, but he thinks only insofar as the universal is [present] for him.
The animal is also in-itself something universal, but the universal as such is not [present] for it;
instead only the singular is ever [there] for it. The animal sees something singular, for instance, its
food, a man, etc. But all these are only something singular for it. In the same way our sense
154 5 Epistemology: IV. Self-consciousness

The Ego is what is originally identical, at one with itself, and utterly at home with itself.
[…] Thus the Ego is, so to speak, the crucible and the fire through which the indifferent
multiplicity is consumed and reduced to unity. This, then, is what Kant calls “pure
apperception,” as distinct from ordinary apperception; the latter takes up the manifold into
itself, as a manifold, whereas pure apperception must be considered the activity of making
[the object] mine.
Now this certainly expresses correctly the nature of all consciousness. What human beings
strive for in general is cognition of the world; we strive to appropriate it and to conquer it.
To this end the reality of the world must be crushed as it were; i.e., it must be made ideal.
At the same time, however, it must be remarked that it is not the subjective activity of
self-consciousness that introduces the absolute unity into the multiplicity in question;
rather, this identity is the Absolute, genuineness itself. Thus it is the goodness of the
Absolute, so to speak, that lets singular [beings] enjoy their own selves, and it is just this
that drives them back into absolute unity.57

Lenin comments in the Philosophical Notebooks that “Hegel regards as Kant’s

great merit the advancement of the idea of the ‘transcendental unity of appercep-
tion’ (the unity of the consciousness in which the Begriff [concept] is created), but
he reproaches Kant for his one-sidedness and subjectivism. Hegel raises Kant’s
idealism from being subjective to being objective and absolute.”58 Lenin says,
“Kant admits the objectivity of concepts (Wahrheit [truth] is their object), but all the
same leaves them subjective. He makes Gefühl [feeling] und Anschauung [intu-
ition] precede the understanding.”59 The lines Lenin quotes from Hegel are these:
“The Notion must not here be considered as an act of self-conscious the under-
standing, or as subjective the understanding: what we have to do with is the Notion
in and for itself, which constitutes a STAGE AS WELL OF NATURE AS
OF SPIRIT. LIFE, OR ORGANIC NATURE, IS THAT STAGE OF NATURE AT
WHICH THE NOTION EMERGES.”60 Lenin comments on the margin of this
passage that we are posed here at “the ‘eve’ of the transformation of objective
idealism into materialism.”61
Hegel sees thought as the unity of concept and reality, stressing the identity of
thought and existence (as mutually dependent and transmutable). He criticizes
Kant’s dualism for separating thought and existence, as well as what he sees as
Kant’s tendency to regard categories of the understanding (thought) as merely

experience always has to do only with something singular (this pain, this pleasant taste, etc.).
Nature does not bring the nous to consciousness for itself; only man reduplicates himself in such a
way that he is the universal that is [present] for the universal. This is the case for the first time
when man knows himself to be an ‘I.’ When I say ‘I,’ I mean myself as this singular, quite
determinate person. But when I say ‘I,’ I do not in fact express anything particular about myself.
Anyone else is also ‘I,’ and although in calling myself ‘I,’ I certainly mean me, this single [person],
what I say is still something completely universal.” Hegel, Encyclopaedia Logic, §24. The evo-
lution from epistemology to ontology is rather evident.
57
Hegel Encyclopaedia Logic, §42.
58
Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks.
59
Ibid.
60
Ibid.
61
Ibid.
5.6 Hegel’s Self-consciousness 155

subjective. Hegel’s abstract categories of the understanding transcend sensibility so

as to obtain knowledge about the nature of objects. But to the idealist Hegel,
knowledge of the nature of objects is, in a nutshell, knowledge of God. It is the idea
itself cognizing itself. More importantly, this self-consciousness can only be
obtained in the dialectic process of objectification and return to itself. Therefore, the
question arises of the unity of opposites with the material world. The transcendental
apperception of self in Kant’s subjective idealism turns into the absolute idea of self
in Hegel’s objective idealism. The self and the object are not only independent in
cognition (epistemology), but also become a real unity of opposites, which is
transmutable in objective reality. To Kant, self and object are opposites and inde-
pendent, without a transmutable dialectic relation, whereas Hegel stresses dialectic
transmutability, that things are my things, and the “I” is the “I” of things, i.e., the
objectification of human (thought), the humanizing of the object. Thus is the
summit of classical German idealism reached.
Classical German idealism identifies the human being with God, and regards
self-consciousness as the primitive driving force, whether for knowledge of the
world (Kant) or for its transformation (Hegel). It greatly elevates the value and
status of the human being.62 However, this elevation is idealistic and abstract. First,
the human being referred to is an abstraction rather than a person in human society
and history; second, this human being is a speculating consciousness rather than a
real person. In Hegel, “self” and thought become one, and everything is contained
in the “self,” which is the speculating spirit. Things and “I,” existence and thought,
are interdependent and dialectically transmutable. Everything belongs to the
activities of the realm of spirit-speculation, rather than the realm of sensible reality.
Labor and production are conceived speculatively and history is reduced to the
alienation and self-return of the thinking self. Marx remarks that “for Hegel the
human being—man—equals self-consciousness. All estrangement of the human
being is therefore nothing but estrangement of self-consciousness.”63 “Hence,” he
concludes, “in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed
abstractly by idealism—which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as
such.”64 Hegel’s replacement of the historical and particular man with an abstract
human being is an expression of bourgeois ideology. Indeed, his whole treatment of
the thinking man as the ruler of reality reflects the unique character of German
bourgeois thought at the time.
As a materialist, Feuerbach wants to restore sensuality to the human being. He
points out that the error of idealism lies in its treating the general, whether in
thought or language, as God; regarding them as having universal necessary per-
manence; and treating sensibility as the individual, contingent, and temporary
appearances of ordinary experience. He states that: “Kant’s philosophy is the

62
Lacroix holds that Kant’s three Critiques all center on the question of the status of human beings
in the universe, and that Kant’s transcendental self is the noumenon of his ethics.
63
Marx (1994a).
64
Marx (1994b).
156 5 Epistemology: IV. Self-consciousness

conflict of subject and object, essence and existence, thinking and being.”65 Fichte,
Schelling, and Hegel tried to overcome this conflict in thought alone.
Feuerbach comments: “The human being is the existence of freedom, the exis-
tence of personality, and the existence of right. Only the human being is the
foundation and basis of the Fichtean I, of the Leibnizian monad, and of the abso-
lute.”66 “The new philosophy therefore regards as its epistemological principle, as
its subject, not the ego, not the absolute—i.e., abstract spirit, in short, not reason for
itself alone—but the whole being of the real man. Man alone is the reality, the
subject of reason. It is man who thinks, not the ego, not reason. […] If the motto of
the old philosophy was: ‘The rational alone is the true and real,’ the motto of the
new philosophy is: ‘The human alone is the true and real,’ for the human alone is
the rational; man is the measure of reason.”67 The new philosophy attempted to
replace the reasoning spirit, the ego, the absolute, with a real and sensuous human
being, and to replace the universality of reason with that of sensibility. Feuerbach
says: “The new philosophy joyfully and consciously recognises the truth of sen-
suousness: It is a sensuous philosophy with an open heart.”68 “The unity of thought
and being has meaning and truth only if man is comprehended as the basis and
subject of this unity.”69 Therefore, Feuerbach’s philosophy is indeed a criticism of
the idealism implicit in the doctrines of Kant and Hegel. Feuerbach emphasizes that
the notion of a supersensuous God comes from our experience of the sensuous man,
while the content of reason comes from the content of sensibility. “All we have to
do is not separate the intellect from the senses in order to find the supersensuous—
spirit and reason—within the sensuous.”70 And also, “not only is the finite and
phenomenal of being, but also the divine, the true being, an object of the senses—
the senses are the organs of the absolute.”71 That is to say, the senses alone can
know the truth.
However, despite his effort to restore the dignity of the senses, Feuerbach’s new
philosophy does not substantially surpass Locke and French materialism. Feuerbach
argues that there is nothing in the intellect that is not first given in the senses, which
was exactly Locke’s idea as well (see Chap. 1). Nor does this new philosophy
significantly depart from the old materialism before Kant. “Certainly Feuerbach has
a great advantage over the ‘pure’ materialists in that he realises how man too is an
‘object of the senses.’ But apart from the fact that he only conceives him as an
‘object of the senses,’ not as ‘sensuous activity’ […] Thus he never manages to
conceive the sensuous world as the total living sensuous activity of the individuals
composing it; […] As far as Feuerbach is a materialist he does not deal with

65
Feuerbach (1994, §22).
66
Feuerbach (1972).
67
Feuerbach (1994, §50).
68
Ibid., §36.
69
Ibid., §51.
70
Ibid., §42.
71
Ibid., §39.
5.6 Hegel’s Self-consciousness 157

history.”72 Feuerbach’s man is still a non-social, non-historical natural being, and

his senses are passive sources of perception separated from sociality (which implies
passive perceptions). It is still unclear whether or not sensibility has universality,
and what significance such a universal sensibility might have. Kant’s purpose is to
reveal that the old materialism, starting from the senses, can neither grasp the
spontaneity of knowledge nor guarantee the universal, necessary, objective validity
of knowledge, and to establish in its place his own transcendental idealism.
Feuerbach brings his philosophy from idealism back to materialism, and from the
self-consciousness back to sensuous man. However, because his sensuous man is of
such a nature that it cannot allow for the subjective spontaneity that is unique to
knowledge, neither can it resolve the problem of universal, necessary, objective
validity. “The highest point reached by contemplative materialism, that is, mate-
rialism which does not comprehend sensuousness as practical activity, is contem-
plation of single individuals and of civil society.”73 Because that position is entirely
incapable of explaining the spontaneity of knowledge, it can only be said that
Feuerbach regresses rather than progresses from the point reached by Kant.

5.7 “The Question Lies in Changing the World”

Marx’s theory of practice is the historical solution to all of these problems.

Marx points out that “Feuerbach, not satisfied with abstract thinking, wants
contemplation; but he does not conceive sensuousness as practical,
human-sensuous activity.”74 In fact, the difference between these two kinds of
sensualism is the fundamental difference between human beings and animals. For
animals, life activity and its objects are the same and both are subjected to the same
determinate laws of nature. Marx states: “The animal is immediately one with its
life activity.”75 He says, “the animal does not enter into ‘relations’ with anything, it
does not enter into any relation at all.”76 Therefore, the division of subject and
object is invalid for the animal, thus precluding the spontaneity of cognition that is
unique to human beings.
The practices of primitives, especially making and using tools, break through
this limitation. Human practice is no longer merely the narrow life activity of an
animal species but becomes an objective activity of controlling and transforming
nature, with infinite possibilities of development, restricted only by historical social
structure, and increasingly expanding and deepening the human being’s grasp of the
objective world. Therein lies an essential distinction with the animal’s survival

72
Marx (1994c).
73
Marx (1994b).
74
Marx (1994b).
75
Marx (1994d).
76
Marx (1994c).
158 5 Epistemology: IV. Self-consciousness

activities, which adapt instinctively to the environment. It is at this conjunction

that the distinction between the subject and object acquires its true signifi-
cance. Social practice, making use of nature to act upon itself so as to make nature
serve the human being, is different from nature. The existence and development of
human beings, which is always a social development, also differs from other
phenomena of nature. Thus arises the great distinction between natural objects and
the subject of history and practice. Feuerbach cannot explain this difference, and is
compelled to comprehend human essence “as ‘genus,’ as an internal, dumb gen-
erality which naturally unites the many individuals.”77 Social existence, charac-
terized by practical productive activities and the making and use of tools, and social
consciousness, characterized by language and sign systems, mold biological Homo
sapiens into a subject profoundly differentiated from the natural world. If the dis-
cussion of practice and language is not rooted in this ground, the most distinctive
human activities would be identical with the animal’s life activity and the sensuous
state of animal psychology, while language would become a mysterious structure
and a transcendental instinct of the organism.
In the literature of modern Marxism, the term “practice” is rather prevalent. It is
used to refer to all human activities, from daily life to theoretical research and
cultural activities. In his early manuscripts and in the Theses on Feuerbach, Marx
stresses that the activities of the sensuous human, which unify theory and practice,
constitute praxis. The term praxis embraces all human life activities. However,
from early on, Marx already emphasized the fundamental status and decisive sig-
nificance that human labor, material production, and economic activity have on
human society, firmly maintaining that material production is the ground of social
life. Marx’s historical investigations of modes of social production established his
theory of base and superstructure, and his doctrine of historical materialism deep-
ened the theory of practice and made it concrete.
In my view, Marx’s theory of practice is one with historical materialism.
Therefore one must comprehend which among the wide variety of human practical
activities belong to the base and enjoy that fundamental level of significance.
Historical materialism stresses the economic base while the forces of production
are, as it were, the base of the base. Are forces of production not the practical
activities in which people use and make tools to carry out material production? The
first principle and fundamental aspect of Homo sapiens is that they evolved from
such activities (see Engels, “The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape
to Man”).
Historically speaking, these activities belong to a process that developed from
unconscious, purposeless contingency to conscious and purposeful necessity. In
this process, language, self-consciousness, signs, and thought also emerged.
However, the question of the development of language from tools, and the relation
between material tools and signs (which are a kind of tool), need further investi-
gation. I have repeatedly mentioned Piaget because his theory, based on his careful

77
Marx (1994b).
5.7 “The Question Lies in Changing the World” 159

investigation of child psychology, sheds light on the anthropological ontology of

the theory of practice. I have also mentioned Wittgenstein because in his later work
he definitively argues for the determinate function of social life and practice in the
formation of language as well as for individual psychology and consciousness. All
these theories help to explicate Marx’s theory of practice.
The genuine subject of the human self is not the transcendental self-
consciousness that Kant discussed, but is rather historical human practice, a
material reality. Practice, as the experience of real activity, is essentially universal
despite being expressed in the acts of individual human beings. It is universal not
only because practice is always the activities of certain social structures acting
universally on nature, but also because it expresses universal spontaneity in
transforming the world. The productive activities of human practice must have
some overall conformity with objective nature, despite possible temporary lapses;
otherwise the objective transformation of nature that is a historical fact would be
impossible. History as a totality necessarily possesses a realistic power to actualize
human reason. Non-rational impulses and blind actions are admittedly forces of
sensuous reality, but their nature belongs to the animal or the individual, and lack
the historical necessity of self-actualizing reason.
Lenin states that “practice is higher than theoretical knowledge, for it has not only
the dignity of universality, but also of immediate actuality.”78 This actuality not only
refers to general practices that have sensuous material force, but also to objective
practical activities that bring about their own ends. This allows the existence of the
subject to be not only of actual universality (i.e., conforming to universal natural
law), but also of universal actuality (i.e., actualizing the purpose of the subject that
conforms with universal laws). But subjective consciousness and the universality of
thought are mere expressions of the universality of the subject’s practice in material
reality. The relations and orders among perception and consciousness are precisely
what practice discovers in objective nature and abstracts in thought and conscious-
ness. Therefore, Kant’s conceptions, namely, the consciousness of an object and the
reproduction of objects in thought, and the spontaneous synthesis in thought of
sensible material to constitute knowledge of the object, must have their ground and
premise in the spontaneous transformation of reality in practice. As pointed out in
Chap. 2, synthesis has its premise in practice’s spontaneous transformation of the
object. When explaining transcendental apperception, Kant vigorously stresses that
the synthetic function and capacity for self-consciousness reflect the practical self, as
the subject actually and sensibly transforms the object. He insists on the transcen-
dental “I think” as the unchangeable ground of synthetic consciousness, but its
permanence actually belongs to human subjective practice and expresses the unifi-
cation it continually discovers in objective nature. The spontaneity of knowledge
comes from practice, while the objectivity of knowledge and the standard of truth are
also in practice. The unity of spontaneity and objectivity that Kant emphasizes as the

78
Lenin (1994).
160 5 Epistemology: IV. Self-consciousness

essential characteristics of the self-consciousness actually come from the spontaneity

and objectivity of human practice.
Engels criticizes Dühring, who appropriates Kant’s thoughts and passes them off
as his own, for the idea that thought turns being into unity and that the nature of all
thought lies in its combination of elements into a conscious unity. Engels points out
that the unity of being does not lie in thought, but in materiality. In fact, the unity of
the material world must precede the unity of thought, while the unity of the material
world can only be transformed into the spontaneous unity of the consciousness and
of thought through human practice. This is also the case with the unity of forms of
speculation and consciousness. When discussing the Subjective Deduction, I spoke
of how this psychological and conscious unity comes from the unity of practice
(labor activities). Similarly, high-level forms of logical thought (e.g., dialectical
categories and formal logic) and free intuition are also an internalization and
sedimentation of the universal qualities of practice. Such forms of knowledge as
logic, mathematics, and the concept of causality are unique to human beings as
representations of the spontaneity of knowledge, and they fundamentally originate
from the operational practice of human beings. The particular content of thought, as
is commonly known, is historically determined by the practical content of a par-
ticular epoch. We can identify practice neither with sensuous experience (as logical
empiricism believes) or language activities (Wittgenstein); nor regard it as a merely
subjective activity without objective material determination; nor can we see practice
as all-inclusive, which is the view of Western Marxism. Instead, we should restore
the determination of practice through material structure, which means particular
historical and objective actuality.
This is the genuine theory of practice. This is why I stress, even at the price of
being tedious, the use and manufacture of tools. A great deal of literature today
discusses Marx’s theory of practice, but none of it adequately emphasizes this point
(see Chap. 8).
Feuerbach and all the older materialists, although they claim to start from the
senses, actually proceed from the individual, which has actuality but not univer-
sality. Kant and Hegel claim to start from the universal, but they actually proceed
from thought, which has universality but not actuality. Only a theory that proceeds
from practice can have not only universality but also actuality. Should we seek a
foothold in the senses and sensibility, or in reason, i.e., abstract speculation? Or
should we seek our foothold in practice and specific historical social activities? In
answering these questions, Marx’s theory of practice departs from all theories of
knowledge proposed by either the old materialism or idealism. The old materialists
(including Locke, the French materialists, and Feuerbach) base their theories on the
senses (passive existence), while German idealists base their theories on con-
sciousness (active reason). Marxism, however, bases its theory on practice (material
activities). To proceed from practice implies proceeding historically from modes of
social production and the daily life of millions of ordinary people.
Such a practice fundamentally refers to the operational activities of making and
using tools. That is why historical materialism is the philosophical ground for the
5.7 “The Question Lies in Changing the World” 161

theory of knowledge. In criticizing contemplative materialism and natural science,

which fail to grasp historical materialism, Marx and Engels state time and again:
Feuerbach speaks in particular of the perception of natural science; he mentions secrets
which are disclosed only to the eye of the physicist and chemist; but where would natural
science be without industry and commerce? Even this ‘pure’ natural science is provided
with an aim, as with its material, only through trade and industry, through the sensuous
activity of men. So much is this activity, the unceasing sensuous labour and creation, this
production, the basis of the whole sensuous world as it now exists.79

Again:
Industry is the actual, historical relationship of nature, and therefore of natural science, to
man. If, therefore, industry is conceived as the exoteric revelation of man’s essential
powers, we also gain an the understanding of the human essence of nature or the natural
essence of man.80

Moreover,
Natural science, like philosophy, has hitherto entirely neglected the influence of activity on
their thought; both know only nature on the one hand and thought on the other. But it is
precisely the alteration of nature by men, not solely nature as such, which is most essential
and immediate basis of human thought, and it is in the measure that man has learned to
change nature that his intelligence has increased.81

Their point is that only in social, practical activities can the objective world as
well as human beings and human knowledge, sensibility, and reason be understood.
This practice is not Fichte’s subjective spontaneity of pure thought but mainly the
activity of material production, which presumes natural beings and, through using
and making tools, enables human technology to make use of objective nature. From
the primitive stone axe to modern automatic machines, this development marks the
human being’s liberation from animal life activity. Human beings are no longer
merely armed with the limited physical strength, organs, and instinctual skills that
belong to a natural biological species. It is because of his tools that man is the
measure of all things.
Marx maintained: “Technology reveals the active relation of man to nature, the
direct process of the production of his life, and thereby it also lays bare the process of
the production of the social relations of his life, and of the mental conceptions that
flow from those relations.”82 Marx particularly values technology, which he
describes as “the history of the productive organs of man in society, of organs that are
the material basis of every particular organization of society,” and compares it with

79
The German Ideology, Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
80
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
81
Dialectics of Nature, Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
82
Marx (1994e).
162 5 Epistemology: IV. Self-consciousness

Darwin’s study of “the history of natural technology, i.e., the formation of the organs
of plants and animals, which serve as the instruments of production for sustaining
their life.”83
Marx states that “the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of
human activity can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionizing
practice.”84 The practice of revolution, as a great and living material force of
actuality, is the subjective self that molds nature and unifies all things. This self, as
the subject, possesses genuine objective force. From the emergence of modern
mechanical mass production to contemporary automated machinery and computers,
this force can all the more immediately face the world with its infinitely developing
intelligence, knowledge, and science. As a result, science can directly transform
into forces of production. Materialized intelligence, as a mode of production, will
increasingly become a prominent feature of the self.
This self even has a spiritual significance. Kant’s a priori self-consciousness is
merely an idealistic harbinger of this genuine self of human practice. As a supposedly
omnipresent form in thought, Kant’s transcendental synthetic apperception is really a
mere projection of this practical self as a material force in reality that transforms the
world. Only when this practical self unifies everything in reality can the rational self
unify everything in consciousness. Therefore the creator of history, the transformer
of the objective world, and the ground of scientific knowledge is not the thinking self
but the practical self; it is not the spiritual self of reason but the self of the people and
of society. This is the materialistic theory of reflection, which is also called the theory
of practice, and which maintains that people create history.
We Chinese have a folk song that goes like this: “There is no Jade Emperor in
heaven, nor Dragon King in the ocean, I am Jade Emperor and I am Dragon King.
I bid the mountain yield to my step.” It is this “I” who bids that the mountain yield
to the creator of history and the master of social practice. It is this “I,” as a human
being in general, that is the true self and subject of the theory of knowledge. Only
on the ground of this objective self can all forms of knowledge of the subjective self
spontaneously arise. The understanding, judgment, and reason that Kant wants to
establish are indeed beyond the animals, and only human beings have these uni-
versal necessary faculties. However, these faculties only arise historically from
practice. Only with human material practice as its empirical ground and premise is
the progress from the animal and subjective senses to the objective and spontaneous
forms of knowledge, and from individual judgments of perception to common
judgments of experience, possible.
Here is the true unity of ontology and epistemology as well as the agreement of
anthropology and psychology. Here also lies the true materialistic significance of
the self. On the ground of modern science, technology, and industry, the human
subject, which transforms the world, is increasingly prominent, as are questions
related to the status, function, significance, creativity, and variety of the individual.

83
Ibid.
84
Marx (1994b).
5.8 Copernican Revolution 163

5.8 Copernican Revolution

It is evident that the philosophical development from Kant to Fichte and Hegel tries
to base everything on the spontaneity of thought, while Marx makes the practical
social activity of material production the ground of the unity of man and nature, and
thereby sets psychology and logic on a foundation of historical materialism. Such
is the approach for proceeding from Marx to Kant.
Kant proposes self-consciousness as the pivot of the subjective spontaneity of
knowledge and rejects a passive theory of reflection, styling his theory as a
“Copernican Revolution.”85 Copernicus derived the apparent motion of the planets
from the real motion of the earth. Kant derives the apparent objectivity of experi-
ence from the a priori forms of human cognition. This shift from regarding material
nature as noumenon to the spiritual consciousness of the human being as noume-
non, and from regarding the human being rather than nature as the center of the
universe, is called Kant’s Copernican Revolution in philosophy.86 It is a shift from
the epistemology of Locke and French materialism to that of classical German
idealism, and opposes the old materialism to idealistic transcendentalism.
However, as pointed out earlier, Kant’s transcendental self-consciousness
depends on the objective empirical content of the particular “I think” as well as on
the consciousness of the object, and that implies that the Copernican Revolution has
not been fully realized. Only with Hegel’s absolute idea—although it must be
manifested in the empirical world to fulfill its spiritual progress—is self-
consciousness finally fully realized. Hegel definitively raises spirit and conscious-
ness to the level of first principles and finally accomplishes the Copernican
Revolution, i.e., the idealistic refutation of materialism that Kant began.
When absolute idealism reaches its summit, it also makes ready the conditions of
its reverse movement, which is the dawn of a higher level materialism. The young
Hegelians criticized Hegel beginning precisely from the concept of self-
consciousness. The young Marx, in his doctoral dissertation, expounded a critical

85
In the Introduction to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant also mentions this
point: “If intuition must conform to the constitution of the objects, I do not see how we could know
anything of the latter a priori but if the object (as object of the senses) must conform to the
constitution of our faculty of intuition, I have no difficulty in conceiving such a possibility. […]
Either I must assume that the concepts, by means of which I obtain this determination, conform to
the object, or else I assume that the objects, or what is the same thing, that the experience in which
alone, as given objects, they can be known, conform to the concepts. In the former case, I am again
in the same perplexity as to how I can know anything a priori in regard to the objects. In the latter
case the outlook is more hopeful” (B xvii). In other words, that intuitive forms of categories of the
understanding transcendentally exist in the transcendental apperception of self-consciousness
makes scientific knowledge possible.
86
There has been much controversy about Kant’s comparison of himself to Copernicus. Some hold
that Copernicus’s overthrow of the Ptolemaic system, which put man (the earth) at the center of the
universe, is exactly the opposite of Kant’s establishing the human being as the center. However,
the gist of Kant’s thought is to compare the spontaneity of the human being with the spontaneity of
the earth.
164 5 Epistemology: IV. Self-consciousness

theory of self-consciousness using the Epicurean conception of the atom, since the
problem of self-consciousness was crucial to the dissolution of Hegelian doctrine at
the time. In his criticism of the spiritualized self-consciousness of the young
Hegelians, Marx veers toward historical materialism. He states:
We shall, of course, not take the trouble to enlighten our wise philosophers by explaining to
them that the ‘liberation’ of man is not advanced a single step by reducing philosophy,
theology, substance and all the trash to ‘self-consciousness’ and by liberating man from the
domination of these phrases, which have never held him in thrall. Nor will we explain to
them that it is only possible to achieve real liberation in the real world and by employing
real means, that slavery cannot be abolished without the steam-engine and the mule and
spinning-jenny, serfdom cannot be abolished without improved agriculture, and that, in
general, people cannot be liberated as long as they are unable to obtain food and drink,
housing and clothing in adequate quality and quantity. ‘Liberation’ is an historical and not a
mental act, and it is brought about by historical conditions, the development of industry,
commerce, agriculture, the conditions of intercourse.87

Self-consciousness becomes a key link in the development from Hegel to Marx,

from idealism to materialism, and from the subjective self of thought to the his-
torical, material, and actual self. Through the medium of Feuerbach, Marx finally
accomplished his critical revision of Hegel. In the development from Locke and
French materialism to Kant and Hegel, and from Kant and Hegel to Marx, lies a
dialectic which has profound significance in the history of human knowledge:
negation of the negation, that is, from the material to the spiritual, then from the
spiritual to the material. This dialectic becomes the end and completion of the
modern history of philosophy. Lenin comments on the “‘circles’ in philosophy:
Modern: Holbach—Hegel (via Berkeley, Hume, Kant). Hegel—Feuerbach—
Marx.”88
Materialism develops from a passive theory of reflection to a spontaneous theory
of practice. An immense leap in the development of materialism is taken when it
advances from Locke and the French materialists, who passively observe nature
(the senses) and regard nature as the center, to an active transformation of the world
(practice) that regards historical man as the center. In the old materialism, man is
only a part of nature and is subject to nature.89 Marx’s theory of practice stresses
human spontaneity, hence man becomes the master of the whole world including
nature. This is truly a Copernican Revolution in philosophy, and was achieved
through criticism of the Copernican Revolution of Kant and Hegel in classical
German idealism. French materialism subordinates man to nature and German
idealism subordinates nature to spirit, while Marxist materialism subordinates
nature to man’s spontaneous material transformation of the world. This

87
The German Ideology. Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
88
Lenin (1994).
89
D’Holbach also stresses that man should not confidently flatter himself and call himself king of
the universe, “man has no just, no solid reason to believe himself a privileged being in Nature;
because he is subject to the same vicissitudes as all her other productions” The System of Nature,
vol. 1, Chap. 6.
5.8 Copernican Revolution 165

development also runs from natural ontology (French materialism) to the ontology
of consciousness (German idealism) to anthropological ontology (Marxism). In this
process, the collective self of human beings, no less than the individual self, has
undergone a continuous development, and the existential significance, nature,
rights, status, and richness of the individual self have been notably renewed and
illuminated, while self-consciousness has acquired revitalizing significance as well.
Only on the ground of the spontaneous transformation of nature can the individual
self acquire and develop his unique existential value, character, and dignity.
Although animals also possess a biological endowment, even temperament and
skills, they do not have true character. The richness and variety of human character
develop and expand as the collective—that is, as social existence and social con-
sciousness—develop. Piaget believes that children’s character develops along with
their sociality, and individual subjectivity develops along with their knowledge of the
objective social environment. It was inevitable and necessary for the human being
that individuality as suppressed and overlooked, and the individual self as drowned in
the collective self appeared in history before the coming of Communism. Just as the
most telling evidence of the loss of individuality was the rise of universal systems of
signs that externalized, depersonalized, and materialized the self, so the most telling
evidence of the true power of the individual lies in artistic structures that prove the
uniqueness, variety, and richness of the individual human being; this evidence,
through its unfolding in various domains of society, had to await the end of human
prehistory. I shall touch on this topic again in Chap. 10.
In previous chapters I discussed time and space as forms of intuition, and the
categories of the understanding, while in this chapter I have dwelt on Kant’s idea of
self-consciousness and how Marx, through Hegel, moved from these theories of
self-consciousness to historical materialism. I have thus prepared the way for a
theory of the objective ground of the cultural and psychological structure of human
subjectivity in historical social practice. The subjective self is constituted by the two
factors of techno-social structure and cultural-psychological structure.
Technology and social material production are our proper first principles. That is
what I wish to clarify in this chapter.

References

Einstein, Albert. 1955. Space-time. In Encyclopedia Britannica. Chicago: Encyclopedia

Britannica.
Feuerbach. 1972. Preliminary Theses on the Reform of Philosophy. In Ludwig Feuerbach, The
Fiery Brook: Selected Writings of Ludwig Feuerbach, 170. Garden City: Anchor Books.
Feuerbach. 1994. Principles of Philosophy of the Future. Marx Engels Internet Archive.
Fichte, Peter Lauchlan Heath, and John Lachs. 1970. Science of Knowledge with the First and
Second Introductions, 21. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Leibniz, and George R. Montgomery. 1902. Discourse on Metaphysics and the Monadology, 52.
Chicago: Open Court Pub. Co.
Lenin. 1994. Philosophical Notebooks. Marx Engels Internet Archive.
166 5 Epistemology: IV. Self-consciousness

Marx. 1994a. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts. Marx Engels Internet Archive.
Marx. 1994b. Theses on Feuerbach. Marx Engels Internet Archive.
Marx. 1994c. The German Ideology. Marx Engels Internet Archive.
Marx. 1994d. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Marx Engels Internet Archive.
Marx. 1994e. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 1. Marx Engels Internet Archive.
Ribot, Théodule-Armand. 1890. Psychology of Attention.
Smith, Norman Kemp. 1930. A Commentary to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. London:
Macmillan.
von Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph, and Peter Lauchlan Heath. 1978. System of
Transcendental Idealism (1800), 31. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
Chapter 6
Epistemology: V. Antinomy

6.1 Transcendental Illusion and Dialectic

The second division of Kant’s first Critique is entitled Transcendental Dialectic,

and is relatively straightforward. The Analytic explained how knowledge (truth)
was constituted, while the Dialectic explains how paralogisms arise and belongs to
the second part of the Transcendental Logic. Kant claims that the fundamental
mission of epistemology is to prevent knowledge from intruding into domains
beyond its proper reach. It is also for this reason that his philosophy is called a
critical philosophy. Kant states that “the greatest and perhaps the sole use of all
philosophy of pure reason is therefore only negative; since it serves not as an
organon for the extension but as a discipline for the limitation of pure reason, and,
instead of discovering truth, has only the modest merit of guarding against error.”1
(This statement appears rather similar to some of the views of modern logical
positivism and linguistic analysis.) In the Dialectic, Kant defines the proper, limited
domain of the understanding, and asserts that metaphysical concepts like the soul,
free will, and God, because of their lack of empirical ground in sensible intuition,
cannot provide material with which the understanding can operate scientifically.
Kant refutes in turn all of the arguments for the soul, free will, and God that were
popular at the time (chiefly, rational psychology, rational cosmology, and rational
theology). In particular, he discusses in detail the theological version of the onto-
logical proof of God (Anselm) as well as the philosophical version in Descartes.
Kant’s refutation is of great significance, especially if we bear in mind the power
that religion had at that time. As discussed in Chap. 1, at the time of the French
Revolution Germany was undergoing a philosophical revolution that ended the life
of seventeenth-century metaphysics as well as the life of the theological proofs of
the existence of God. Engels mentions how the poet Heinrich Heine noticed the

1
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A795/B823.

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 167

Z. Li, A New Approach to Kant, Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy
of Traditions and Cultures 27, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0239-8_6
168 6 Epistemology: V. Antinomy

philosophical revolution in Germany. In On the History of Religion and Philosophy

in Germany, Heine compares Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason to the National
Assembly during the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution. Heine remarked
that as Robespierre sent Louis XVI of France to the guillotine, Kant had done the
same with God. From then on, any attempt to prove the existence of God was a lost
cause. Kant maintained that the existence of God cannot be proven; it is purely a
matter of subjective faith. As we know, human beings have intelligence and human
intelligence can strengthen or weaken faith. Because of this, the church and the
guardians of religion will always seek out new ways to prove God’s existence.
However, now that Kant has banished the question of God from the domain of
knowledge, people’s faith in God can be expected to weaken. Although this was not
Kant’s intention, such an effect was predictable.
Heine celebrated Kant’s achievement as a revolution, while the religious
authorities saw it as apostasy. In fact, what Kant showed is that neither the existence
nor the non-existence of these objects—an immortal soul, a free will, and God—can
be proven. As objects of faith, however, they are not only beneficial to morality but
also have a role to play in scientific understanding: as regulative principles, they
have positive significance for human knowledge. Therefore, in the Dialectic as in
the Analytic, the two tendencies of Kant’s philosophy are locked in profound
confrontation, although this is not manifest as a direct conflict, but is expressed in a
typically compromised form. On the one hand, Kant’s whole epistemology reaches
its completion in the Dialectic, while on the other hand it gradually shifts from
epistemology to ethics. In fact, it is in this section of the work that Kant begins the
transition from theoretical to practical reason.
The Transcendental Aesthetic focuses on sensibility and the Transcendental
Analytic is mainly about the understanding, while the Transcendental Dialectic
dwells on reason. Both Kant and Hegel insist on the division of sensibility,
understanding, and reason in the human cognitive faculties. Sensibility is the
receptive faculty, i.e., the senses, with time and space as forms of intuition; and the
understanding is the conceptual faculty. Reason, however, has a rather particular
status in German idealism. It differs from both sensibility and the understanding,
and refers to something at once more fundamental and on a higher level. Sometimes
it has a rather mysterious undertone, and sometime “reason” is entirely synonymous
with the understanding.
Here is how Kemp Smith interprets the term:
Reason (Vernunft) is used in the Critique in three different meanings. In the above title it is
employed in its widest sense, as the source of all a priori elements. It includes what is a
priori in sensibility as well as in the understanding (Verstand). In its narrowest sense it is
distinct even from the understanding, and signifies that faculty which renders the mind
dissatisfied with its ordinary and scientific knowledge, and which leads it to demand a
completeness and unconditionedness which can never be found in the empirical sphere.
6.1 Transcendental Illusion and Dialectic 169

The understanding conditions science; reason generates metaphysics. The understanding

has categories; reason has its Ideas. Thirdly, Kant frequently employs the understanding
and reason as synonymous terms, dividing the mind only into the two faculties, sensibility
and spontaneity.2

The third use, namely, reason as synonymous with understanding, is approxi-

mately equal to our use today, as for example when we divide knowledge into
knowledge of the senses and knowledge of reason. However, for Kant (as well as
for Hegel), the important thing is not the use of the word but the use of reason,
which should be distinguished from the use proper to the understanding. Anyway,
we see that the term “reason” contains extremely complicated and confusing con-
tent, and we shall have occasion to return to this topic in Chap. 9. Now we are
going to dwell on the role of reason in Kant’s epistemology, where it chiefly refers
to “pure speculative reason.” It is also called “pure theoretical reason” in distinction
from the “pure practical reason” of ethics. In the Dialectic, however, reason does
not refer to another faculty or capacity of thought different from the understanding,
but to the objects and contents of thought that are different from those of the
understanding. The object and content of the understanding is sensuous experience,
while the object and content of reason is the understanding itself. Reason is asso-
ciated solely with the activities and applications of the understanding, and has
nothing to do with sensibility. Kant explains: “For pure reason never relates directly
to objects, but to the concepts which the understanding frames in regard to
objects.”3Additionally, “reason never applies itself directly to experience or to any
object, but to the understanding, in order to give to the manifold knowledge of the
latter an a priori unity by means of concepts.”4
The concepts of pure understanding are categories, while the concepts of pure
reason are called ideas. The categories of pure understanding have the capacity to
synthetically unify sensuous intuitions, subordinating the manifold of sensibility to
the understanding through imagination. Ideas of pure reason, on the other hand,
have a unifying capacity for the understanding, which reason supplies with regu-
lative principles. The understanding gives unity to sensibility while reason gives
unity to the understanding. Since reason merely unifies the understanding, it has no
relation to sensibility. It is therefore not concerned with empirical unity but rather
with the unity of concepts, a unity that arises from the application of concepts in
constructing a system. Categories determine the sensible concepts applied to
experience, while ideas are directed at the non-empirical. The unity of reason is
merely subjective, without any objective significance or effect. In other words, the
ideas of reason that unify the understanding do not refer to actual objects or have
objective determination; this distinguishes reason and its ideas from the categories
and concepts of the understanding.

2
Norman Kemp Smith, A Commentary to Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason, 2.
3
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A335/B392.
4
Ibid., A302/B359.
170 6 Epistemology: V. Antinomy

The ideas of reason appear to be not much different from the concepts of the
understanding, since both are abstract. Their difference, however, lies in the point
mentioned above. The object of the understanding is sensuous experience and this
experience concerns conditional and limited particulars. However, we are not
content with conditioned and limited empirical knowledge, but endeavor to attain
knowledge of the unconditional and unlimited absolute totality, which cannot be
given in the experience of the senses. Kant maintains that “the absolute totality of
all possible experience is not itself an experience.”5 For instance, the world as a
totality cannot be given by the experience of the senses because the experience of
the senses is conditional and limited. When the understanding moves from the
conditional and limited experience of the senses to deduce the existence of an
unconditional and unlimited absolute totality, this use of the understanding and its
categories fallaciously transcends the conditions of experience and falls into
dialectical illusion. The soul, free will, and God are also transcendental ideas and
illusions that arise when the understanding pursues the unconditional and unlimited.
Kant states that “the concepts [ideas] of reason extend to the completeness, i.e.,
the collective unity of the whole of possible experience.”6 In other words, the
understanding is in charge of experience, while reason pursues the complete unity
of the whole of experience through an illegitimate, fallacious, or, as Kant says,
dialectical use of the concepts of the understanding.
Kant employs formal logic as an analogy, comparing judgment and inference
with the understanding and reason. Just as every judgment of formal logic contains
a concept of pure understanding, i.e., a category, so does every syllogism (infer-
ence) of formal logic contain a concept of pure reason, i.e., an idea.7 From the
twelve forms of judgments Kant derives his twelve categories of the understanding;
and from the three kinds of syllogism (categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive) he
derives the three ideas of reason. From the categorical syllogism he derives the idea
of a subject that is not an object, i.e., the soul; from the hypothetical syllogism he
takes the idea of a premise that does not need anything as its condition, i.e., freedom
of the will; and from the disjunctive syllogism he derives the idea of an uncondi-
tional totality, i.e., God. The categories of the understanding do not arise from
sensibility, but only from logical judgments; and the ideas of reason do not arise
from judgments, but only from reasoning. This is because judgment is direct
inference, while reasoning has major and minor premises, i.e., conditions. Hence,
Kant continuously traces from the conditioned to the unconditioned, and arrives at
the three ideas mentioned above.8

5
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. §40.
6
Ibid.
7
Kant’s “idea” does not refer to people’s subjective ideasor thought, nor does Kant’s conception of
idea imply an objective being, as does that of Plato or Hegel.
8
The derivation of three ideas from forms of reasoning exemplifies Kant’s architectonic method,
which he devised for the sake of building up his system, although this method actually confounds
the accurate expression of his thought.
6.1 Transcendental Illusion and Dialectic 171

Kant explains that “all transcendental ideas can therefore be arranged in three
classes, the first containing the absolute (unconditioned) unity of the thinking
subject, the second the absolute unity of the series of conditions of appearance, the
third the absolute unity of the condition of all objects of thought in general.”9
The idea of an absolute unity of subjective thinking (the immortal soul) is derived
from the first class; the idea of an absolute unity of objects is derived from the
second class, giving rise to the cosmological antinomies; and the absolute unity of
all subjective and objective conditions, i.e., God, is derived from the third class.
Kant underlines that “we therefore take the subjective necessity of a connection of
our concepts, which is to the advantage of the understanding, for an objective
necessity in the determination of things in themselves.”10 In other words, it is a
transcendental illusion to see that which is pursued in subjective thinking (our
endless search for conditions of conditions) as an objective being. This transcen-
dental illusion is not a purely logical error which could be avoided or corrected once
discovered; nor is it an empirical illusion, for it arises from reason. Just as under
certain conditions empirical illusion is inevitable, as for example when the moon on
the horizon appears to be bigger than the sun, transcendental illusion is also
inevitable when reason attempts to obtain knowledge of the unconditioned.
Although illusory, their appearance is inevitable.
Empirical illusion results from erroneous judgment because the senses affect our
understanding, while transcendental illusion results when the understanding
transcends empirical conditions. Such illusions arise because of the psychological
demand by human beings for metaphysical knowledge, which is an inevitable
inclination in the progress of thought. There is in everyone a metaphysical impulse
that demands a grasp of the supersensible totality.
Kant asserts that since transcendental illusion—which regards the false as the
true, concepts as facts, and subjective ideas as objective realities—inevitably arises
in cognition, the task is to investigate it and to expose its errors and conflicts. The
exposition of the errors and conflicts of transcendental illusion is called dialectic.
Dialectic is the logic of transcendental illusion, which arises when we regard the
subjective necessity of thought as the objective necessity of existence. Dialectic
aims to expose this conflict. Kant explains: “For here we have to do with a natural
and inevitable illusion which rests on subjective principles, and foists them upon us
as objective […] There exists, then, a natural and unavoidable dialectic of pure
reason […] one inseparable from human reason.”11

9
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A334/B391.
10
Ibid., A297/B353.
11
Ibid., A298/B354.
172 6 Epistemology: V. Antinomy

6.2 Four Antinomies

The fullest expression of the dialectic of cognition is in the four cosmological

antinomies, which comprise the most important part of Kant’s discussion of the
ideas of reason. We have already touched on the first transcendental idea, the soul
as substance, and will turn to the third transcendental idea, God, in Chap. 9.
Kant writes: “I entitle all transcendental ideas, in so far as they refer to absolute
totality in the synthesis of appearances, cosmical concepts, partly because this
unconditioned totality also underlies the concept—itself only an idea—of the
world-whole.”12 The antinomies of speculative knowledge arise from our tendency
to pursue an idea of the absolute totality of the universe. This pursuit of totality
produces an unresolvable conflict that results in transcendental (or dialectical)
illusion. Kant maintains that since such illusions involve a synthesis of experience
they can be expressed by the four categories of quantity, quality, relation, and
modality.
Corresponding to quantity is the dilemma between limited and unlimited time
and space; corresponding to quality is the dilemma of whether or not matter is
infinitely divisible; corresponding to relation is the dilemma of whether or not there
is a free causality of the will that is different from the causality of nature; and
corresponding to modality is the dilemma of whether or not there is a final cause or
a first beginning of the universe. Here is a summary of these four antinomies.
First antinomy:
Thesis: The world has a beginning in time, and is also limited as regards space.13
Antithesis: The world has no beginning, and no limit in space; it is infinite as regards both
time and space.14

Second antinomy:
Thesis: Every composite substance in the world is made up of simple parts, and nothing
anywhere exists save the simple or what is composed of the simple.15
Antithesis: No composite thing in the world is made up of simple parts, and there nowhere
exists in the world anything simple.16

Third antimony:
Thesis: Causality in accordance with a law of nature is not the only causality from which
the appearances of the world derive. To explain these appearances it is necessary to assume
that there is also another causality, that of freedom.17

12
Ibid., A407-408/B434.
13
Ibid., A426/B454.
14
Ibid., A427/B455.
15
Ibid., A434/B462.
16
Ibid., A435/B463.
17
Ibid., A444/B472.
6.2 Four Antinomies 173

Antithesis: There is no freedom; everything in the world takes place solely in accordance
with a law of nature.18

Fourth antimony:
Thesis: There belongs to the world, either as its part or as its cause, a being that is
absolutely necessary.19
Antithesis: An absolutely necessary being nowhere exists in the world, nor does it exist
outside the world as its cause.20

Kant employs proof by reduction to absurdity to argue that both the theses and
antitheses of the four antinomies can be logically established, thereby revealing the
dilemma of speculative knowledge. He holds that these antimonies arise because
absolute totality is beyond the scope of possible experience. Sensible intuition
cannot supply the understanding with an experience of the universe as a totality,
which the senses cannot perceive. The empirical world given in sensible intuition is
always limited, incomplete, partial, related to other things, and subject to the causal
nexus of nature. The “absolute totality in the synthesis of appearances” cannot be
given in experience. Therefore the four antinomies cannot be proven by experience.
No objects of experience can confirm either the thesis or the antithesis of these
antinomies (therefore they can only be proven using the proof of conflict).
Kant maintains that the cosmological ideas are either too broad or too narrow for
the concepts of the understanding, which apply solely to experience and allow the
world to be empirically known to us. If we are to say that the world has no
beginning, is composed of infinitely divisible parts, and has no first cause, such an
idea would be too broad for any possible experience or empirical concept of the
understanding; whereas if we are to say that the world has a beginning, is composed
of indivisible simple parts, and has a first cause, this idea would be too narrow.
Experience and the understanding will continue to progress and science will con-
tinue to discover and invent; they never recognize any limit, but always press their
inquiries further. So the idea that the world has a beginning or that matter is
infinitely divisible can never be proved by experience, while the idea that the world
has no beginning and that matter is ultimately atomic and indivisible is not
something that experience can definitively falsify.
How then might we resolve these dilemmas? Kant claims “transcendental ide-
alism as the key to the solution of the cosmological dialectic.”21 He believes that the
antinomies prove that transcendental idealism, i.e., the division between unknow-
able things in themselves and empirical appearances, is correct. Applying this
transcendental distinction to the antinomies, Kant decides that the theses of these
antinomies apply to things in themselves while the antitheses apply to experience.
As things in themselves, the theses confirm the existence of God and the freedom of

18
Ibid., A445/B473.
19
Ibid., A452/B480.
20
Ibid., A453/B481.
21
Ibid., A490/B518.
174 6 Epistemology: V. Antinomy

the will, which are not objects of knowledge or sensible intuition but are rational
ideas proper to the domain of ethics. That is why the theses are correct. As
appearances in the world of experience, however, the antitheses are also correct
because the non-existence of God and free will agrees with our experience. There is
no place in the sensible intuitions of time and space and the empirical world for a
supernatural causality or spontaneous free will.
Kant maintains that the first and second antinomies are wrong, either in respect
of things in themselves or the world of appearances. Things in themselves are not
objects of knowledge, hence, time and space are not applicable to them, nor are
questions of whether they are limited or unlimited, single or multitude (i.e., either
finitely or infinitely divisible). Thus, to say that things in themselves are either
finitely or infinitely divisible is wrong, because knowledge of the world of
appearances is inseparable from our subjective forms of intuition. As mentioned
above, as a series of appearances, forms of intuition can exist only in an empirical
regress. Since they are dependent on our empirical knowledge, we cannot arrive at a
confirmative conclusion, which will be either too broad (infinite) or too narrow
(finite) for empirical knowledge. The claim that time and space are finite and that
matter is not infinitely divisible does not conform to empirical knowledge, because
empirical knowledge will continue to expand; likewise, the claim that time and
space are infinite and that matter is infinitely divisible does not conform to empirical
knowledge, because this can never be given to us by empirical knowledge.
Therefore, both theses and antitheses are meaningless to experience. Kant argues
that “since the world does not exist in itself, independently of the regressive series
of my representations, it exists in itself neither as an infinite whole nor as a finite
whole. It exists only in the empirical regress of the series of appearances, and is not
to be met with as something in itself. If, then, this series is always conditioned, and
therefore can never be given as complete, the world is not an unconditioned whole,
and does not exist as such a whole, either of infinite or of finite magnitude.”22
Besides, “the number of parts in a given appearance is in itself neither finite nor
infinite. For an appearance is not something existing in itself, and its parts are first
given in and through the regress of the decomposing synthesis, a regress which is
never given in absolute completeness, either as finite or as infinite.”23 This
empirical regress of time and space itself is not ongoing finitely or infinitely, but is
ceaselessly ongoing. In other words, the ceaseless synthesis of our knowledge
cannot be determined finitely or infinitely either, because synthesis does not have a
finite or infinite absolute completeness. If we were to confirm that the regress can be
infinitely ongoing, then we would have to presume that time and space are infinite,
that is, “with the world having infinite magnitude as its premise.” If we were to
confirm that the regress can only be finitely ongoing, then “such absolute limitation
is impossible in experience.” That is, the regress would be too narrow to experi-
ence, because experience would keep expanding.

22
Ibid., A505/B533.
23
Ibid., A505/B533.
6.2 Four Antinomies 175

Hence, the key to resolving the dilemma between finite and infinite is to pin
down that experience can keep expanding. These two antinomies are, instead of
being contradictory judgments, opposite judgments of formal logic. That is, both of
them can be false, therefore, there can be a third way (i.e., to be ceaselessly
ongoing). “Ceaselessly ongoing” implies that experience is neither finite or infinite,
and that it will keep going forever.
The theses and antitheses of the four antinomies indicate two sources and
inclinations of Kant’s philosophy. The theses belong to traditional rationalism, and
agree with theology and religion and the tendency of idealism. The antitheses
belong to empiricism, and disagree with theological doctrines and the prevailing
moral customs of his time. The antitheses are close to materialism in acknowl-
edging the infinity of time and space and rejecting God and the non-natural cau-
sation of a free will. Kant himself expressly acknowledges that these antinomies
exhibit the contrast between the Platonic and Epicurean schools of ancient Greek
philosophy. He states that “the contrast between the teaching of Epicurus and that
of Plato is of this nature. Each of the two types of philosophy says more than it
knows. Epicurus encourages and furthers knowledge, though to the prejudice of the
practical; Plato supplies excellent practical principles, but permits reason to indulge
in ideal explanations of natural appearances in regard to which a speculative
knowledge is alone possible to us—to the neglect of physical investigation.”24
However, Kant himself compromises between these two schools and between the
theses and antitheses of his antinomies. He sometimes inclines towards the
antitheses and finds it lamentable that the philosophical world is under the sway of
rationalism and fails to appreciate the justice of the antitheses. He claims that “it is
extremely surprising that empiricism should be so universally unpopular.”25 But he
also abides by the religious ideology of the time and complains that when
empiricism “becomes dogmatic in its attitude towards ideas, and confidently denies
whatever lies beyond the sphere of its intuitive knowledge, it betrays the same lack
of modesty; and this is all the more reprehensible owing to the irreparable injury.”26
In his theory of knowledge, Kant admires Epicurus, who recommends that
deductions should never be pressed beyond the limit of experience: “He showed in
this regard a more genuine philosophical spirit than any other of the philosophers of
antiquity.”27 In ethics, however, Kant admires Plato. The noumenon is superior to
appearances, as Plato said; and ethics is superior to scientific knowledge, as
Epicurus said.
However, as a system that supposedly synthesizes these two antithetical posi-
tions, Kant’s transcendental idealism is the most advantageous position.
Due to the demand for conformity with fact, Kant’s arguments for the antitheses
tend to be relatively clear, whereas his arguments for the theses are comparatively

24
Ibid., A471-472/B499-500.
25
Ibid., A472/B500.
26
Ibid., A471/B499.
27
Ibid., A471/B499.
176 6 Epistemology: V. Antinomy

weak. Here we shall illustrate the point with Kant’s arguments for the thesis and
antithesis of the first antinomy, that is, the arguments for and against finite time and
space. The arguments are as follows:
Thesis: The world has a beginning in time, and is also limited as regards space.
Antithesis: The world has no beginning, and no limits in space; it is infinite as regards both
time and space.

Proof [of the thesis]:

If we assume that the world has no beginning in time, then up to any given moment an
eternity has elapsed, and there has passed away in that world an infinite series of successive
states of things. Now the infinity of a series consists in the fact that it can never be
completed through successive synthesis. It thus follows that it is impossible for an infinite
world-series to have passed away, and a beginning of the world is therefore a necessary
condition of the world’s existence. This was the first point that called for proof. As regards
the second point, let us again assume the opposite, namely, that the world is an infinite,
given whole of co-existing things. Now the magnitude of a quantum which is not given in
intuition [i.e., perception] as being within certain limits can only be thought through the
synthesis of its parts, and the totality of such a quantum only through a synthesis that is
brought to completion through repeated addition of unit to unit. In order, therefore, to think
of a world, as a whole, that fills all spaces, the successive synthesis of the parts of this
infinite world must be viewed as completed, that is, an infinite time must be viewed as
having elapsed in the enumeration of all co-existing things. This, however, is impossible.
Therefore, an infinite aggregate of actual things cannot be viewed as a given whole, nor
consequently as simultaneously given. The world is, therefore, as regards extension in
space, not infinite, but is enclosed within limits. This was the second point in dispute.28
Proof [of the antithesis]: First let us assume that the world has a beginning. Since the
beginning is an existence that is preceded by a time in which the thing is not, there must
have been a preceding time in which the world was not, i.e., an empty time. Now no
coming to be of a thing is possible in an empty time, because no part of such a time
possesses, as compared with any other, a distinguishing condition of existence rather than
of non-existence; and this applies whether the thing is supposed to arise of itself or through
some other cause. In the world, many series of things can, indeed, begin; but the world
itself cannot have a beginning, and is therefore infinite in respect of past time. As regards
the second point, let us start by assuming the opposite, namely, that the world in space is
finite and limited, and consequently exists in an empty space which is unlimited. Things
will therefore not only be related in space but also related to space. Now since the world is
an absolute whole beyond which there is no object of intuition, and therefore no correlate
with which the world stands in relation, the relation of the world to empty space would be a
relation of it to no object. But such a relation, and consequently the limitation of the world
by empty space, is nothing. The world cannot, therefore, be limited in space; that is, it is
infinite in respect of extension.

These proofs really only use one argument: that an infinite series cannot be
completed (“synthesized”) either in thought, perception, or imagination. This was
also Aristotle’s argument against infinite space. There are two arguments here:
First, that there is no reason for the universe to come to be at one time rather than

28
Ibid., A426-428/B454-456.
6.2 Four Antinomies 177

another when all points in an empty time are alike. Second, that objects can only be
spatially related to each other, not to empty space, which is not an object.29
The argument for the antithesis, although rather tedious, is fairly clear because it
conforms to experience and common knowledge. This argument can be put in brief
terms: If the world had a beginning, then there would be empty space before the
beginning, while eventless empty time would be similar at any time. Therefore,
since the beginning of the world cannot be distinguished in empty time, the world
has no beginning and time is infinite. The argument for the thesis is rather different.
The finitude of space is derived from the finitude of time, while the finitude of time
is in turn based on time having a beginning, which makes it finite. This derivation is
quite confusing in its wording and in its specious argumentation. It completely
changes the essential nature of the time-vector and confuses “the beginning” that
moves toward the future with a “fulfillment” that refers to the past series. “The
beginning” that needs to be proven is transformed into a premise of the argument.
This argument in fact jumbles together the actual infinite and the more potential
infinite series of mathematics.

6.3 “Conflict Is Inevitable”

When refuting Dühring, Engels quotes this argument of Kant’s verbatim and
observes that the infinity of time and space “is something quite different from that
of an infinite series, for the latter always starts from one, with a first term. The
inapplicability of this idea of series to our object becomes clear directly we apply it
to space.” He writes that “because in mathematics it is necessary to start from
definite, finite terms in order to reach the indefinite, the infinite, all mathematical
series, positive or negative, must start from 1, or they cannot be used for calcula-
tion. The abstract requirement of a mathematician is, however, far from being a
compulsory law for the world of reality.”30 Actual time and space do not have either
a beginning or an end, and Kant obviously conflates the supposedly actual infinity
of time and space with the merely potential infinity of a mathematical series. Hence
Kant’s argument on the finitude of time and space cannot stand.
However, the significance of this part of the work lies in Kant’s raising the
dialectical relation between the infinite and the finite, and exposing the dilemma
that rational thought inevitably encounters. He sees the dilemma as an illusion of
subjective knowledge that arises when rational thought is applied to experience, but
that does not mean that these ideas cannot have some kind of positive significance.
This conclusion has been influential in the history of philosophy. Hegel time and
again mentions Kant’s antinomies, commenting, for instance, that the “Kantian
conception of the antinomies is that they ‘are not sophistic artifices but conflicts

29
Ibid., A427-429/B455-457.
30
Engels (1994).
178 6 Epistemology: V. Antinomy

reason must run up against.’ This last is a Kantian expression, and the view
expressed is an important one.”31 Additionally, “The stain of conflict ought not to
be in the essence of what is in the world; it has to belong only to thinking reason, to
the essence of the spirit.”32 Hegel acknowledges that Kant sees conflicts as prob-
lems that reason necessarily encounters, but criticizes Kant for regarding these
conflicts as mere subjective illusions. He says:
This true and positive significance (expressed generally) [of these contradictions] is that
everything actual contains opposed determinations within it, and in consequence the cog-
nition and, more exactly, the comprehension of an object amounts precisely to our
becoming conscious of it as a concrete unity of opposed determinations.33
It is quite correct to say that we can go beyond any determinate space and similarly beyond
any determinate time; but it is no less correct to say that space and time are only actual in
virtue of their determinacy (i.e., as “here” and “now”), and that this determinacy lies in their
very concept.
When the antinomy of freedom and necessity is more closely considered, the situation is
that what the understanding takes to be freedom and necessity are in fact only ideal
moments of true freedom and true necessity; neither of them has any truth if separated from
the other.34

All these remarks aim to elucidate how actual things themselves harbor conflicts
that the search for truth cannot evade or ignore. Instead, truth can only be attained in
the process of grasping the unity of these opposites and transforming their conflict
by the Aufhebung, or cancellation and preservation at a higher level, of the abstract
partiality that characterizes the concepts of the understanding. Hegel sees knowl-
edge as the dialectical movement of concepts, and this process requires the
development of conflicts and the unfolding of antinomies. Hegel holds that “the
main point that has to be made is that antinomy is found not only in the four
particular objects taken from cosmology, but rather in all objects of all kinds, in all
representations, concepts, and ideas.”35 However, “Kant only identifies the four
conflicts, that is too few, for every concept harbors conflicts.”36 Additionally, “A
true solution can only consist in that two determinations, in being opposed and yet
necessary to one and the same concept, cannot have validity in their one-sidedness,
each for itself, but have truth rather only in their sublated being, in the unity of their
concept.”37 It can be said that this unity is obtained in the cognitive process of the
deriving of concepts. Hegel holds that knowledge should resolve its problem of
finitude with its own movement, and thereby resolve its own conflicts.

31
Hegel, and George Di Giovanni, the Science of Logic, 191.
32
Hegel et al. (1991).
33
Ibid., §4 8. 93.
34
Ibid., §4 8. 94.
35
Ibid., §48, 92.
36
Hegel, E. S. Haldane and Frances H. Simson, Lectures on the History of Philosophy.
37
Hegel, and George Di Giovanni, the Science of Logic, 158.
6.3 “Conflict Is Inevitable” 179

Kant is not unaware that all concepts and things may conflict. From his first
treatise written in the 1750s to his “An Attempt to Introduce the Concept of
Negative Quantities into Philosophy,” written in the 1760s, and the essay “On
History,” written in the 1780s, Kant always emphasizes the potential conflicts of
things and concepts, which he thought were not at all detrimental to knowledge. On
the contrary, he often underscores their positive significance by discussing repulsive
forces and counteractions in nature, the unsociable in society, and the process of
development through discord and competition (see Chap. 9). These are important
moments that prepare Kant’s philosophy for its Hegelian development. Kant raises
four antinomies, while Hegel acknowledges the omnipresence of antinomies and
sees them as an intrinsic dialectic of concepts. Marxism acknowledges that rational
knowledge is obtained through concepts that are inevitably fixed and rigid and can
only partially and abstractly reflect a fragmented objective reality. Only with
practice as its ground, and by overcoming the partiality and static fixation of
concepts in the process of their ceaseless combination, transition, and transforma-
tion, can knowledge conform to objective actuality and attain truth. The finite and
infinite, causality and contingency, freedom and necessity—all these antinomies
actually exist in nature and in history, and have to be worked through in the
progress of human thought. The same point can be made with respect to the
development from simple mechanical change to the evolution of organisms, from
the macrocosm revealed by the theory of relativity to the microcosm revealed by
quantum mechanics, and in the endlessly complicated social life and tumultuous
class struggles of history. As pointed out by Engels:
Motion itself is a conflict: even simple mechanical change of position can only come about
through a body being at one and the same moment of time both in one place and in another
place, being in one and the same place and also not in it. And the continuous origination
and simultaneous solution of this conflict is precisely what motion is.
Life consists precisely and primarily in this—that a being is at each moment itself and yet
something else. Life is therefore also a conflict which is present in things and processes
themselves, and which constantly originates and resolves itself; and as soon as the conflict
ceases, life, too, comes to an end, and death steps in.
We likewise saw that also in the sphere of thought we could not escape contradictions. Here
once again we find the same contradiction as we found above, between the character of
human thought, necessarily conceived as absolute, and its reality in individual human
beings all of whom think only limitedly. This is a contradiction which can be resolved only
in the course of infinite progress, in what is—at least practically for us—an endless suc-
cession of generations of mankind. In this sense human thought is just as much sovereign as
not sovereign, and its capacity for knowledge just as much unlimited as limited. It is
sovereign and unlimited in its disposition, its vocation, its possibilities and its historical
ultimate goal; it is not sovereign and it is limited in its individual realisation and in reality at
any particular moment.38

38
Engels, Anti-Dühring.
180 6 Epistemology: V. Antinomy

6.4 Particularities of the Four Antinomies

From his early years Kant had always emphasized the contradictions present in
actual things, and many of his works are devoted to the topic of such contradictions.
So why does he present only four antinomies in this discussion of the dialectical
illusions? There is a reason. The theses and antitheses of the four antinomies are
obviously distinct from the theses and antitheses of contradictory concepts in
general. One should not bury, as Hegel does, the specific content of the four
antinomies under the dialectic of the unity of opposites in general. Rather, one
should investigate the particularity of their contradictions. The problem of the
particularity of the four contradictions cannot be resolved by merely dwelling on
their universality.
We mentioned in Chap. 1 Kant’s claim that the four antinomies woke him from
a dogmatic slumber and compelled him to expel this scandal of human reason,
which he finally did with his system of critical philosophy and transcendental
idealism. Kant employs his distinction between things in themselves and appear-
ances to resolve the four contradictions and shake off transcendental illusion. In the
Prolegomena, Kant writes that “this product of pure reason in its transcendent use is
its most remarkable phenomenon, and it works the most strongly of all to awaken
philosophy from its dogmatic slumber, and to prompt it toward the difficult business
of the critique of reason itself.”39 He elaborates on this point in the Critique of Pure
Reason:
From this antinomy we can, however, obtain, not indeed a dogmatic, but a critical and
doctrinal advantage. It affords indirect proof of the transcendental ideality of appearances a
proof which ought to convince any who may not be satisfied by the direct proof given in the
Transcendental Aesthetic. This proof would consist in the following dilemma. If the world
is a whole existing in itself, it is either finite or infinite. But both alternatives are false (as
shown in the proofs of the antithesis and thesis respectively). It is therefore also false that
the world (the sum of all appearances) is a whole existing in itself. From this it then follows
that appearances in general are nothing outside our representations which is just what is
meant by their transcendental ideality.40

Kant’s critical philosophy crucially depends on both his appreciation of the sci-
entific achievements of his time and his struggle with rationalism. The four anti-
nomies directly relate to this investigation and struggle. In the first place, the question
of the finitude or infinity of the world is not just a controversial debate that goes back
to the beginning of Western philosophy among the Pre-Socratics (e.g., Parmenides
holds that space is finite, while the atomists and Pythagoras hold that space is infinite;
Plato’s time can be said to be finite, while Aristotle’s is otherwise); it was also a topic
of scientific debate in Kant’s time, and that is what drew his attention to the problem.

39
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, §50. The cosmological ideas are the product Kant is
referring to here.
40
Critique of Pure Reason, A506-507/B534-535.
6.4 Particularities of the Four Antinomies 181

Newton maintained the absolute existence of infinite time and space, while
Leibniz believed that both time and space were merely relational. Kant devoted
many years to the investigation of this question and wrote many essays on this
topic, but the problem was not solved until he found his way to his critical phi-
losophy. The same point can be made concerning the antinomy between atomism
and continuous theories of matter, which reflects both the controversies sparked by
ancient atomism and Aristotle’s criticism of it, as well as differences once more
between Newton and Leibniz. The third and fourth antinomies concern issues
arising from similarities and conflicting differences in science, religion, and meta-
physics (see Chap. 1). The contradiction between the infinite and finite or between
causality and freedom compels Kant to break through the rationalist dogma of
transcendental realism and to conceive his critical philosophy of transcendental
idealism. “Transcendental realism” refers to the rationalists’ idea that God and free
will are realities that utterly transcend sensuous experience. However, from the
viewpoint of Kant’s transcendental idealism, the world, as the object of human
knowledge, is not a real thing in itself, nor is free will a metaphysical reality that
scientific metaphysics can establish as true. The question of whether the world is
finite or infinite only arises in the continuous progress of our knowledge, and does
not bear on the intrinsic reality of the world in itself. Kant maintains that the conflict
between causality and freedom is resolved with the distinction between appearances
and things in themselves. The sensible world of appearance is controlled by nec-
essary mechanical causality, which absolutely excludes freedom, while freedom can
be (problematically) attributed only to noumena (things in themselves) which,
however, cannot be proven by experience; it is only a logical instead of an actual
possibility or existence. It can be thought but cannot be known. One should not
confuse appearance and reality or noumenon and phenomenon, as rationalists did
and which led them into the insuperable problems Kant exposed in the antinomies
of pure reason.
It is evident therefore that the four antinomies have a special, particular place in
Kant’s system, and that their resolution is the keystone of Kant’s critique.41 The
question of finitude and infinity, as a topic in science and philosophy, has been
around for a long time, and is still under heated debate. Zeno of Elea in ancient
Greece exposed several well-known paradoxes concerning the reality of time and
motion, and Chinese philosophers of the pre-Qin period also discovered these
problems. “If from a stick a foot long you every day take the half of it, in myriad
ages it will not be exhausted,” and “That which is so great that there is nothing
outside it may be called the Great One.” Indeed, we are still discussing today
whether the universe is finite or infinite, and the particle divisible or indivisible, just

41
Therefore it can be said that the form of the Critique of Pure Reason corresponds to some degree
with the history of its composition. It begins with the Aesthetic, whose ideas about time and space
were earlier expressed in the Inaugural Dissertation, proceeds to the Dialectic by raising the
problem of the antinomies, and finally explicates the distinction between appearances and things in
themselves. This sequence of Kant’s writing was revealed by scholars, rather than being apparent
in the actual structure of the book.
182 6 Epistemology: V. Antinomy

as with the possibility of free will. So it is appropriate that these problems should
find a special, particular place in Kant’s system. It is also the case with the questions
of causality (necessity) and freedom that they have been a focus of debate since
ancient times. Such is the particularity of the four antinomies, unlike other conflicts
in general, that gives them their important significance.
Hegel’s contribution to dialectic was to have raised and then properly solved the
four antinomies. Hegel sees infinity as merely a potentially endless expansion of a
series, which he calls a “bad infinity” because its end is unreachable, e.g., 1.2.3.4…
or 1,½,1/4, 1/8…. As Lenin points out, this infinity “qualitatively counterposed to
finitude, not connected with it, separated from it, and if the finite were diesseits [on
this side], and the infinite jenseits [on that side], as if the infinite stood above the
finite, outside it.”42 Newton’s cosmology belongs to this “bad” kind of infinity.
Kant disposes of the difficulty of this infinity, whereas Hegel finds a “true” infinity
that resolves the conflict. Hegel maintains that there is a process of the finite
becoming the infinite; the finite contains the infinite. His so-called bad infinity is
like a straight line that extends endlessly, while true infinity is like a circle, “without
beginning and end.”43 Our modern view that the universe is a four-dimensional
space can also be said to belong to Hegelian infinity. Nevertheless, this infinity is
actually finite because modern cosmology has calculated the dimensions of the
universe. Perhaps the conflict between infinity and finitude has not yet finally been
resolved.
The two antinomies concerning time and space are Kant’s mathematical anti-
nomies and are concerned with magnitude, such as the infinite or finite divisibility
of matter. The other two antinomies are dynamical, involving not magnitude but
“existence.” Kant states that “the dynamical concepts of reason […] possess this
peculiarity that they are not concerned with an object considered as a magnitude,
but only with its existence.”44 To describe them as concerned with existence means
that they concern the actual existence of a totality. Is there such a totality or not?
The third and fourth antinomies are in fact about the same question, because
whether or not the universe has a final supernatural cause and whether or not a free
causality different from that of nature exists both ultimately come down to the
question of the existence of God.
In my view, the problem of the final cause of the world, with the assumption that
the world forms a closed, complete totality, inevitably leans toward mysticism
because our concepts, such as our concept of causality, are reflections of conditions
in the objective world from which they are inseparable. If we foist these concepts
onto the totality or try to extend them back to the supposed absolute beginning of
the world, we are not only guilty of a linguistic error (as maintained by logical
positivism), we raise pseudo-questions and inevitably fall into mysticism.

42
Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks.
43
Hegel, Science of Logic, vol. 1.
44
Critique of Pure Reason, A535/B563.
6.4 Particularities of the Four Antinomies 183

Wittgenstein claims: “Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is.”45 In other
words, the laws and appearances of the universe are not mystical, but why the
universe exists at all is an inevitably irresolvable mystery. Wittgenstein keenly
raises this “metaphysical question,” which is of course the very one that Kant was
also grappling with in the third and fourth antinomies.
The crucial point in Kant’s discussion of the ideas of reason, including his
cosmological antinomies, is the question of totality, which constitutes an important
feature of dialectic from Kant to Hegel. For Kant, objective totality raises the
cosmological antinomies and the problem of God, while the problem of a subjective
totality raises the question of the soul. The soul and God are merely mystical
manifestations of the idea of totality in these antinomies. After Kant, Hegel also
reaches for the concept of totality and puts it in an intimate nexus with dialectic,
thereby according it an unprecedented significance. Hegel maintains that totality
can only truly exist and be known in the whole process of dialectic. Totality is the
whole process of dialectical development. To put it plainly, we can say that totality
is a system. Here also lies the difference of modern dialectics, which was initiated
by Kant and brought to consummation by Hegel, in contrast to ancient dialectics
(e.g., the contradictions of Zeno and the Chinese opposition of yin and yang). The
modern conception of dialectic deals with the whole movement and course of
history instead of merely disposing of opposite items (contradictions) in things or
thought.
Hegel’s dialectical logic differs entirely from the ancient idea of contradiction. In
Hegel’s system of logic, the unity of opposites is the core of dialectic but not its
entire content. Its entirety unfolds as the dialectical movement of opposites that
ultimately form a totality. The law of the negation of the negation is also an
abstraction from the totality of this process and represents the unique character of
the Hegelian dialectic. This law is by no means a superficial dogmatic process of
“thesis-antithesis-synthesis,” as so many commentators claim. Its essence lies in the
process of the unity of opposites, developed through ceaseless negation and the
attainment of truth in the unfolding of the totality. It is a historical mode manifested
by the unity of opposites.
Marxism emphasizes Hegel’s law of the negation of the negation. The struggle
and resolution of conflicts (the unity of opposites) is negation, and the negation of
this negation is the synthesis that Kant emphasized. It should be noted that to negate
is not merely to cast aside but to sublate and absorb the essence and overcome partial
views, to consume and digest conflicting forces in a way that ultimately makes real
progress. Such is the development of dialectic.46 Marx sees Hegel’s dialectic as a
“dialectic of negation.” Engels, in defining dialectic, expressly points out that “the
development arises from conflict, or the negations of negation—[a] spiral form of

45
Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.44.
46
Piaget sees negation as dialectical reason, explaining that “in logic and mathematics, con-
struction by negation has practically become a standard method.” Structuralism, Chap. 7. He
underlines the reversibility of the operation and discerns the importance of negation for
construction.
184 6 Epistemology: V. Antinomy

development.”47 While Lenin comments: “From assertion to negation—from

negation to “unity” with the asserted—without this dialectics becomes empty
negation, a game, or skepsis.”48 It is evident that the gist of the law of the negation of
the negation does not lie in the external form of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, especially
not when this form is construed in either a mystical or an overly rigid way. The gist is
to comprehend truth in a systematic and organic structure, which is obtained through
the totality of the whole process of various contradictory movements. “Truth lay now
in the process of cognition itself, in the long historical development of science.”49
The totality of a system is greater than the sum of its parts; it must be thought
historically and comprehensively. For instance, we comprehend the present from a
comprehensive understanding of the past and the future, which are out of reach in
the experiences of the present. This distinguishes the dialectical method from
scientific and positivistic empirical methods, which merely focus on parts and
details of the whole. Dialectic is the method of reason and grasps the totality,
while positivism is the method of the understanding and comprehends partial,
merely abstract aspects and elements. Because dialectic focuses on totality it
does not result in determinism. It understands causality not as a linear mechanical
determinism but rather as the complex structure of a system forming a plural and
reticular causal nexus in which alternative possibilities abound. Meanwhile, any
selection among these alternatives must affect the whole system and its structure.
Hence, the process of totality cannot be seen as a necessary mechanical deter-
minism. Contingency, multiple possibilities, and alternatives should be noted.
In sum, if dialectic did not include the concept of totality it would not be able to
determine truth objectively and would amount to nothing more than the trite
observation that there are two sides to everything, or that opposites have their hidden
unity. Then the great power of the negative would reduce to an “empty negation.”
This pseudo-dialectic does not proceed historically and comprehensively from
totality. Instead, it grabs a question or a historical stage and blathers selectively or
quibbles sophistically. A properly objective dialectic reflects the totality of the
material process and its unity.50 This is why Lenin repeatedly states that “truth is a
process” and “the unfolding of the sum-total of the moments of actuality N.B. = the
essence of dialectical cognition.”51 Only in this way can the unity of opposites
(contradictions) have historical force. Here also lies the character of the Hegelian
dialectic and its great historical sense. Human beings, who first created tools as well
as material and social machines to subdue the world, and who were in turn reduced to
the status of subsidiaries to these tools and machines, may thereby be liberated from
their alienation and became the true masters of the world. This historical course of
freedom is the true foundation of dialectic and of Hegelian idealism.

47
Engels, Dialectics of Nature.
48
Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks.
49
Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy.
50
Lenin (1994).
51
Ibid.
6.4 Particularities of the Four Antinomies 185

Hegel’s dialectic, characterized by the law of the negation of the negation, is not
only a view of history but also an ontology of the externalization and return of the
spirit. Hegel’s noumenon is a complex panoramic course of evolution as the absolute
spirit’s self-externalization (or objectification) in the form of nature, and its eventual
return to itself. The whole course is seen as truth itself and forms an organic whole,
which is the whole course of history. In this movement of externalization and return,
the spirit encompasses all things, thereby obtaining for itself richness, actuality, and
profundity. Here also lies the significance of the panoramic course. Kant sees totality
as merely subjective ideas and dialectical illusions, whereas Hegel views it as a great
power of ontological actualization unfolding along an inevitable historical course.
Ideas of reason, which in Kant are merely subjective regulative principles, become in
Hegel objective principles with active controlling power. For Kant, ideas of reason
belong to methodology and guarantee the unity and system of the understanding
(knowledge), while, for Hegel, they belong to ontology and guarantee the unity and
system of actuality (existence). Hegel Spinozicizes (as it were) or substantializes
Kantian ideas of reason, availing himself of the spontaneity by which Fichte used the
self to establish the non-self. “In the speculative way of speaking, this operation is
called comprehending Substance as Subject, as an inner process, as an Absolute
Person, and this comprehension constitutes the essential character of Hegel’s
method.”52 Unlike Spinoza’s melting everything into substance, Hegel offers a whole
course of externalization and restoration of the subject through the process of
thesis-antithesis- synthesis (i.e., the negation of the negation). Nature, which is seen
by Kant as the opposite of subjective reason, is with Hegel integrated into the course
of reason and becomes one of its links and turning points. Human spirit, as an
objective creative power, seizes and transforms nature.
To Hegel, true infinity (the good infinity) resides only in the history of human
spirit. His concrete universal, the identity of thought and existence, as well as the
unity of subject and object are founded on this ground. Hence it can be said that
Hegel’s view of history as “negation of the negation” is an ontological view which
sees the spirit as a force of transformation in the world. Hegel replaces Kant’s
transcendental logic of dialectical illusion with an idealistic- historical logic, unifying
epistemology, logic, history, and ontology in a complete system of philosophy. This
system promotes the dialectic of speculative logic as ruling over everything, which
unfortunately leads to the loss of a healthy and important content—which is what
Kant should have taught us to expect when logic is separated from experience.
Marx states:
Hegel has conceived the negation of the negation, from the point of view of the positive relation
inherent in it, as the true and only positive, and from the point of view of the negative relation
inherent in it as the only true act and spontaneous activity of all being, he has only found the
abstract, logical, speculative expression for the movement of history, which is not yet the real
history of man as a given subject, but only the act of creation, the history of the origin of man.53

52
Marx and Engels (1994).
53
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts. Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
186 6 Epistemology: V. Antinomy

The actual history of human beings is the ongoing progress of practical activities
that enrich them through the transformation of nature. This progress often manifests
as a circle that forms a spiral of twists and turns. What happens in experience and
history can also happen in philosophical systems and debate. This is why Lenin sets
great store on the Hegelian thought of circular development. The ground for the
circular movement of the negation of the negation, from the perspective of Marxist
materialism, is neither objective spirit nor the self-consciousness, as in Hegel’s
logic and ontology, but can only be the social practice of human beings. Dialectic
should not be allowed to become an abstract logical framework placed above
subjective practice, but only a sort of regulative idea. In practice, dialectic still
needs to obey the fundamental principle of what is knowable and operational on the
basis of experience.
History unfolds in objective time. One of the heated debates of modern phi-
losophy is about time. Bergson and Heidegger see the subjective experience of time
as the real, and exclude the objective time of social practice, hence the history they
talk about is actually non-dialectical individual experience isolated from the pro-
gress of an objective totality. Modern structuralism also emphasizes the idea of the
whole, although the fundamental defect of structuralism is its lack of a philosophy
of history. It does not have a historical concept of totality. It is thus advisable to
critically absorb and adopt the methods and concepts of structuralism while never
forgetting that its philosophical ground is not historical dialectic but transcendental
metaphysics. Only with a dialectic that unfolds in historical process can a scientific
and historical-structural analysis be truly carried out. The Western Marxists also set
great store by the concept of totality, but their conception of totality (such as that of
György Lukács) is rather vague. The concept of totality they oppose to historical
materialism is actually subjective, individual, cultural, and psychological, and thus
obliterates objective processes (see Chap. 9). In this chapter, I wish to underline the
historical nature of totality through an illustration of methodology, which sees
dialectic as a system of totality. This historical nature actually arises from the
objective, actual process of human practice, but the “agreement between logic and
history” of the dialectic often results in the latter subjugating the former, which
leads to serious consequences.
Thus, we have briefly touched on the series of problems concerning “totality”
that are raised by the theory of dialectic illusion in Kant’s Transcendental Dialectic.
We should also note that Kant’s three ideas of reason (the soul, free will, and God)
are not only ideas of a totality that the understanding pursues to unify and syn-
thesize. They also have a power and status superior to empirical knowledge. They
are not only transcendental logical illusions but also postulates of practical reason in
ethics; and a full consideration of their role in Kant’s philosophy must eventually
lead us from epistemology to ontology.
Kant’s ideas of reason have both negative and positive functions and implica-
tions. Their negative aspect is to warn against the understanding’s transcendent use,
against its reach beyond the domain of experience. Their positive aspect is to focus
thought on the inevitable limits of the understanding and assist us in making the
transition from appearances to noumena. Both aspects can be essentially attributed
6.4 Particularities of the Four Antinomies 187

to the question of things in themselves. Kant states: “Thus all human knowledge
begins with intuitions, proceeds from thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.”54
The Critique of Pure Reason reaches its destination in epistemology before Kant
finally proposes his ontology of ethics. This last part contains essential ethical
thoughts, which though not fully expounded will be carried over to the Critique of
Practical Reason, as well as the teleological thoughts in the Critique of Judgment. It
is therefore evident that the third and fourth antinomies, with the problematic
affirmation of things in themselves as their final end, are an important link in the
transition to ethical ontology, which will be the theme of the next chapter.

References

Engels. 1994. Anti-Dühring. Marx Engels Internet Archive.

Hegel, Théodore F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting, and H. S. Harris. 1991. The Encyclopaedia Logic,
92. Cambridge: Hackett.
Lenin. 1994. Philosophical Notebooks. Marx Engels Internet Archive.
Marx and Engels. 1994. The Holy Family. Marx Engels Internet Archive.

54
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A702/B730.
Chapter 7
Epistemology: VI. Things in Themselves

Self-consciousness, that is, the ground of a priori synthetic judgment, is the center
of Kant’s epistemology, while the doctrine of the thing in itself is the center of
Kant’s whole system of philosophy. In the conclusion to the Transcendental
Analytic, Kant devoted an entire chapter to “The Ground of the Distinction of all
Objects in general in Phenomena and Noumena.” There he explained the concept of
the thing in itself. The poet Heine regarded this chapter as the most important part
of the whole book, even though Kant provides much discussion on the topic of the
thing in itself before and after this chapter and indeed throughout the Critique of
Pure Reason, e.g., in the chapters on the “Transcendental deduction,” “erroneous
reasoning,” the third and fourth antinomies, the transcendental ideal, the appendix
to dialectic, etc.
Because of its pivotal status in Kant’s philosophy, the implications of the con-
cept of the thing in itself become rather involved. In epistemology, the meaning of
this concept is threefold: the source of sensibility, the limits of knowledge, and an
idea of reason.1 It is also crucial to the transition from epistemology to ethics.

7.1 The Thing in Itself as the Source of Sensibility

The first and basic meaning of the thing in itself is as the source of sensible material
in knowledge. Kant holds that things in themselves are the ultimate, albeit
unknowable, source of our sensible intuitions. Things in themselves exist inde-
pendently of us and our sensibility is aroused by their action on our sense organs.
Without things in themselves, sensibility would provide no empirical data, and
knowledge would not have a starting point. In this sense, things in themselves refer
to the objective material world that exists independently of our consciousness. If we
examine the whole Critique of Pure Reason and understand it in conjunction with
1
The role of the thing in itself as an ontological concept is to limit the experience of the senses,
though as Kant himself admits, in doing so, this concept also limits the understanding.

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 189

Z. Li, A New Approach to Kant, Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy
of Traditions and Cultures 27, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0239-8_7
190 7 Epistemology: VI. Things in Themselves

Kant’s other works (such as Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics, Metaphysical

Foundations of Natural Science), it is evident that sense, as the source of experi-
ence, is the ground of appearances and that this ground exists independently of our
consciousness and is nothing spiritual such as Berkeley’s God.
Kant declared in the Prolegomena that “it never came into my mind to doubt”
the existence of things. For Kant, “the word transcendental, however, which with
me never signifies a relation of our cognition to things, but only to the faculty of
cognition…[it is] reprehensible idealism to transform actual things (not appear-
ances) into mere representations.”2 He also says, “Thus perception of this perma-
nent is possible only through a thing outside me and not through the mere
representation of a thing outside me.”3 Kant often uses the phrase “thing in itself” in
the plural, which seems to imply that the phrase actually refers to distinct spatial
bodies.4 As the source of sensibility, things in themselves cannot refer to a single
particular spiritual substance. Strictly speaking it cannot be correct to attribute
plurality, unity, or causality to things in themselves, as these concepts are all
categories of the understanding and are limited to possible experience. However,
the way Kant describes the thing in itself reveals its true nature. Although we have
to dig to uncover its materialistic aspect, I consider this aspect to be decisive to the
whole system of his epistemology because it accounts for the inseparability of the
understanding from sensibility and the prohibition of its transcendent use.
Kant stresses time and again that the principle of the understanding is experience
rather than ideas, and intuition rather than concepts. Experience and intuition alone
can prove the actuality and truth of knowledge (see Chap. 4). Kant’s refutations of
Descartes’s idea of the “cogito ergo sum” and Leibniz’s rationalism and his effort to
distinguish his position from Berkeley and Fichte all imply what I consider to be the
materialistic aspect of Kant’s conception of the thing in itself (Kant saw Fichte’s
philosophy as a sort of pure logic without actual objects, see Chap. 5). He affirms
that the thing in itself, as the source of sensibility, exists independently of human
consciousness. He maintains that the intuited manifold of sensibility is given
independently of the activity of the understanding; moreover, it is also the only
criterion of knowledge. Kant argues that “there is one feature from which I could
not abstract, the feature, namely, that the manifold to be intuited must be given prior
to the synthesis of the understanding, and independently of it.”5 Additionally:

2
The Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, §13, Note III.
3
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, B275.
4
See Prichard, Kant’s Theory of Knowledge. He explains that “the interest which it has excited is
due to Kant’s use of language which at least seems to imply that bodies in space are things in
themselves, and therefore that here he really abandons his main thesis” (p. 319). Kemp Smith
comments that “his use of ‘body’ as a name for the thing in itself is likewise without justification”
(A Commentary to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, 306). Paton also asks “if we cannot apply our
human categories to things in themselves, how can we speak of things in themselves in the plural?”
Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience, vol. 1, Chap. 2, Sect. 4.
5
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, B145.
7.1 The Thing in Itself as the Source of Sensibility 191

Idealism consists in the claim that there are none other than thinking beings; the other
things that we believe we perceive in intuition are only representations in thinking beings,
to which in fact no object existing outside these beings corresponds. I say in opposition:
There are things given to us as objects of our senses existing outside us, yet we know
nothing of them as they may be in themselves, but are acquainted only with their
appearances, that is, with the representations that they produce in us because they affect our
senses. Accordingly, I by all means avow that there are bodies outside us, that is, things
which, though completely unknown to us as to what they may be in themselves, we know
through the representations which their influence on our sensibility provides for us, and to
which we give the name of a body – which word therefore merely signifies the appearance
of this object that is unknown to us but is nonetheless real.6

I think this argument clearly expounds the materialistic aspect of the doctrine of
the thing in itself. The “trans-” in the theory of the transcendental concepts of the
understanding (categories) refers to mere logical possibility, while the actuality of
knowledge depends on sensibility. Many philosophers, celebrated or obscure, such
as Fichte, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, employ various methods to blot out the
materialistic aspect of Kant’s thing in itself.7 Some believe that the thing in itself, as
a sort of objective existence independent of human consciousness, is superfluous to
Kant’s philosophy and an unnecessary encumbrance. Others believe that Kant’s
thing in itself is actually God, spirit, consciousness, or will, instead of the objective
material world.8 We can read such kinds of interpretations in many historical books
of philosophy. In order to blot out the materialistic aspect of Kant’s thing in itself,
commentators try to identify Kant with Berkeley. For instance it is said that “the
relation between Kant and Berkeley has yet been an unresolved secret,” and that
this relation “is almost backed up by everyone who has studied the relation of these
two philosophers.”9 They explain that Kant’s disagreement with Berkeley is
actually a deliberate misunderstanding, or a misunderstanding due to Kant’s reading
only secondary sources, when in fact his views agree with that of Berkeley. Such
interpretations have appeared from the beginning, with the publication the first
edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (see the criticism by Christian Garve), and
are still widespread today. I do not buy this view. Kant’s thing in itself is actually
compatible with the actual existence of material bodies, and one cannot place Kant
and Berkeley in the same camp.
Kant’s thing in itself, although the source of sensibility, is also completely
unknowable.
For this reason Kant is called an agnostic. Kant’s thing in itself is not a material
thing that science might investigate but is instead the unknowable noumenon
behind matter. Kant maintains that matter is the object of outer sense and cannot be
reduced to subjective concepts, yet it also cannot be equated with the thing in itself.

6
Ibid., §13, Note II.
7
The scholars of the ontological school of Kant-studies reject the Neo-Kantian cancelling of thing
in itself, but they maintain that the thing in itself ultimately belongs to the metaphysics of morality
and is in no way a materialistic conception.
8
See A. C. Ewing, A Short Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, 189–191.
9
Kant and Berkeley (1973).
192 7 Epistemology: VI. Things in Themselves

He explains: “space is only the form of our external sensible intuition, so that matter
and space are not things in themselves but only subjective modes of representation
of objects that are in themselves unknown to us.”10 Kant uses the term “matter” not
to refer to the thing in itself, but to material, i.e., the data for logical judgments and
the content of sensible experience. Therefore, the quintessential meaning of the
thing in itself is not matter but the unknowable.
The conception of the unknowability of the thing in itself has a long history. It is not
only a weapon that idealism carries into its fight with materialism, but also an internal
defect of the old materialism itself. We can see this in the concept of substance in
Locke. He maintains that a substance exists independently of subjective consciousness
as the basis for attributes. When we ask what the nature of this substance is, Locke
replies that “it is something we do not know of,” i.e., it is unknowable. He claims: “It is
plain then, that the idea of CORPOREAL SUBSTANCE in matter is as remote from
our conceptions and apprehensions, as that of SPIRITUAL SUBSTANCE, or
spirit.”11 Eighteenth-century French materialism also holds this view.
D’Holbach claims that “we do not certainly know the essence of any being, if by
that word we are to understand that which constitutes its peculiar nature. We only
know matter by the sensations, the perceptions, the ideas which it furnishes.”12
All these representatives of the older materialism intimated the idea that the
essence of the material world is unknowable. This older materialism, starting from
the passive senses and perception, sees human knowledge of external things as
restricted by passive perception, as for instance when D’Holbach argues that we can
only know matter by the impressions, representations, and ideas that things furnish
to the senses. Matter itself, when separated from these impressions, representations,
or ideas, that is, from the essence and nature of these things, is unknowable. The
older materialism inevitably reached such a conclusion because it focused on
passive sensations and impressions. Such a conclusion provides a convenient
departure for idealism. Berkeley, departing from Locke’s sensualism, developed a
subjective idealism that sees the objective world as dependent on perception.
However, the older materialism is starkly opposed to Berkeley because the former,
although acknowledging the unknowability of substance and the inner intrinsic
nature of things, affirms that matter is nevertheless an objective material indepen-
dent of subjective consciousness, while Berkeley holds that there is no such thing as
matter, it is only human perception and God that cause that perception.
Kant’s thing in itself is relatively close to the view of Locke while distinctly
different from that of Berkeley. Kant and Berkeley also differ in what they make of
the older materialism.

10
Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. [Early Modern Texts, trans. Jonathan Bennett,
2009, 26.].
11
Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, vol. 1.
12
D'Holbach (1994).
7.1 The Thing in Itself as the Source of Sensibility 193

While Berkeley straightforwardly develops a theistic subjective idealism, Kant

indirectly and evasively moves from dualism to transcendental idealism. This
intricate transition renders Kant’s subjective idealism more sophisticated, impor-
tant, and profound than that of Berkeley.

7.2 The Thing in Itself as the Limit of Knowledge

When Kant states that the thing in itself is unknowable, he means that while the
thing in itself exists, it resides on the other shore of the transcendent, which our
cognition cannot reach. Therefore its existence implies a limitation on knowledge
and marks a boundary that knowledge cannot trespass. This is what Kant calls the
noumenon. The term “noumenon,” as Kant expressly stresses in the Critique of
Pure Reason, is used specifically for the determination of this limit.
This aspect should be the primary meaning of the term in epistemology.
Noumenon is opposed to appearance, and we can know only appearance, and the
purpose of the whole of critical philosophy is to expound this view. Kant explains
that “the concept of a noumenon is necessary, to prevent sensible intuition from
being extended to things in themselves, and thus to limit the objective validity of
sensible knowledge. The remaining things, to which it does not apply, are entitled
noumena, in order to show that this knowledge cannot extend its domain over
everything which the understanding thinks.”13 Kant holds that the function of the
concept of the noumenon is to point out the “negative” limitation past which the
experience of the senses cannot extend.
However, the understanding’s use of this concept not only limits sensibility but
also the understanding itself, whose categories and principles cannot apply to the
thing in itself for the reason that the thing in itself is not an object of sensible
experience. As a noumenon, the role of the thing in itself is essentially “for the
limitation of empirical principles, without itself containing or revealing any other
object of knowledge beyond the sphere of those principles.”14 This is the negative
aspect of Kant’s thing in itself, according to which it merely limits experience and
knowledge without positively affirming the transcendent reality of anything.

13
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A252-255/B310. Thus the term noumenon
refers to the manifestation of the thing in itself in human thought. In other words, it is a concept
that is employed to elucidate the nature of the thing in itself. These two terms, “noumenon” and
“thing in itself,” are not properly synonyms, although Kant often uses them synonymously.
14
Ibid., A260/B315. Kant also holds that it is necessary to employ categories such as substance and
causality to think about God. Kemp Smith comments that Kant is inconsistent in this argument,
that he first holds that the categories of the understanding can apply to noumena but would be
meaningless, and later states that they cannot apply to noumena. Paton thinks that if the categories
were to apply to the thing in itself, they would have to be categories of timeless schemata. For
instance, for the category of causality to apply to a thing in itself, it could not imply a successive
sequence, in which case such an application would not have much significance, being a mere
analogy of experience and not knowledge.
194 7 Epistemology: VI. Things in Themselves

From this point of view, the distinction between the thing in itself and appear-
ance does not refer to two separate things, one intrinsically knowable and the other
intrinsically unknowable.
However, Kant’s unknowable thing in itself actually contains two distinct
aspects. In its objective aspect it is the essence of the objective material world; in its
transcendental aspect it is the transcendental self, which Kant opposes to the
transcendental object in the Transcendental Deduction, i.e., the consciousness of
self of the synthetic unity of apperception. As mentioned in Chap. 5, the tran-
scendental self is only an unknowable, empty form in empirical consciousness. In
other words, the cognitive subject, the transcendental “I think” or “pure self” is
unknowable. Kant states: “It is, indeed, very evident that I cannot know as an object
that which I must presuppose in order to know any object.”15 The transcendental
self is the origin of time although it is not contained within time, and hence does not
belong to the domain of empirical appearance. It is therefore a thing in itself. As
Engels points out, “Kant suffers shipwreck also on the thinking ego and likewise
discovers in it an unknowable thing in itself.”16 The “unknowable” does not refer to
the self as the object of knowledge, but the noumenon of ethics.
We shall have occasion to return to this topic later in this chapter, as well as in
the next two chapters.
The thing in itself, as the source of sensibility and the limit of knowledge, is an
independent existence beyond the scope of knowledge. In this sense, it is a tran-
scendent object. However, in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant refers to the thing
in itself several times as identical with the transcendental object. But these two
terms have distinct meanings. As the limit of knowledge, the expression “thing in
itself” is also used in many different ways, although transcendent object and
transcendental object are the two most important uses among them because they are
the ontological and epistemological uses. In epistemology, the expression properly
designates the transcendental object, but since this transcendental object is just as
unknowable as the transcendent object, the two concepts are in effect identical.
However, the transcendent object transcends all objects of knowledge, while the
transcendental object merely transcends any particular given empirical object. The
theory of the transcendental object implies that there must exist an X, which cannot
be specifically determined, as the premise and condition of knowledge so as to
become the basis of the unity of the manifold of representation in consciousness.
This indeterminate unknown X is the transcendental object. Thus, as the opposite of
subjective cognition and the basis of the object’s unity in consciousness, the
transcendental object actually enters into the cognitive process. This distinguishes it
from the transcendent object, which transcends all possible knowledge. The tran-
scendental object does not refer to any particular empirical object, being merely the
necessary premise and condition of the knowledge of these experiences. Kant
states:

15
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A402.
16
Dialectics of Nature. Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
7.2 The Thing in Itself as the Limit of Knowledge 195

The concept of this unity is the representation of the object = x.17

and,
These appearances are not things in themselves; they are only representations, which in turn
have their object—an object which cannot itself be intuited by us, and which may,
therefore, be named the non-empirical, that is, transcendental object = x.18

Furthermore,
The object to which I relate appearance in general is the transcendental object, that is, the
completely indeterminate thought of something in general. This cannot be entitled the
noumenon; for I know nothing of what it is in itself, and have no concept of it save as
merely the object of a sensible intuition in general, and so as being one and the same for all
appearances.19

From these arguments, it can be said that the transcendental object, which is
distinguished from the transcendent object, affirms an indeterminate as well as
unknowable object X in the domain of knowledge as the necessary condition of
understanding the object.20
It is evident that, having distinguished the transcendental object from the tran-
scendent object, the thing in itself as a transcendental object actually refers to the
necessary condition of human knowledge, including both a subjective aspect (the
transcendental self) as well as an objective aspect (the transcendental object). Here
the transcendental self is also another thing in itself. In short, on the one hand, the
two concepts require confirmation of their existence as conditions of human
knowledge; however, they themselves are unknowable X. Of the two X, one is the
transcendental object as the source and ground of sensibility and the object that
must be presumed in cognition; while the other X is the transcendental self as the
source and ground of the understanding, the subject that must be presumed in
cognition. Both are necessary conditions of knowledge yet they themselves are
beyond the reach of experience and knowledge. Ironically, the effort to explain the
possibility of knowledge ultimately reduces to the unintelligible coordination of
two unknowable things. Knowledge is established by the categories of the under-
standing and synthetic unity of consciousness is given by the transcendental self.
But how the transcendental object can provide sensible material, and how the
transcendental self can give a whole set of categories and principles to the under-
standing is very hard to make out; and indeed Kant frankly admits that he cannot
answer the questions concerning the essence, origin, and existence of these rather
mysterious entities, which unfortunately casts a shadow over Kant’s epistemology.
We can read many key moments where such unknowns raise their heads in the
Critique of Pure Reason:

17
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A105.
18
Ibid., A109.
19
Ibid., A253.
20
The relation between the thing in itself and the transcendental self is rather intricate, andKant’s
commentators hold different interpretations.
196 7 Epistemology: VI. Things in Themselves

The manifold to be intuited must be given prior to the synthesis of the understanding, and
independently of it. How this takes place, remains here undetermined.21
This peculiarity of our the understanding, that it can produce a priori unity of apperception
solely by means of the categories, and only by such and so many, is as little capable of
further explanation as why we have just these and no other functions of judgment, or why
space and time are the only forms of our possible intuition.22
But to explain why in the given circumstances the intelligible character transcends all the
powers of our reason, indeed all its rights of questioning just as if we were to ask why the
transcendental object of our outer sensible intuition gives intuition in space only and not
some other mode of intuition.23
How in a thinking subject outer intuition, namely, that of space, with its filling in of shape
and motion, is possible. And this is a question which no man can possibly answer.24

Kant elucidates this point more clearly in another passage:

Nor could we explain why they, as two otherwise completely heterogeneous sources of
knowledge, always agree so well as to permit empirical knowledge in general and espe-
cially (as the Critique of Judgment points out) as to permit an experience of nature under its
manifold particular and merely empirical laws, of which the understanding teaches us
nothing a priori, as if nature were deliberately organized in view of our power of
comprehension.25

The transcendental object and the transcendental self cannot maintain lasting
peace either in Kant’s own system or in the history of philosophy. They always
attempt to gobble each other up, and Kant himself eventually realizes that there is a
common ground for sensibility and the understanding, which he originally con-
sidered as stark opposites, although he holds that human beings can never reach that
ground. Kant holds that it is possible for the two opposing entities, that is, the
transcendental object and the transcendental self, the two unknowable Xs, to be the
same thing, which, even though human beings cannot comprehend it, may simply
be God. At the end of the Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant states
that “there are two stems of human knowledge, namely, sensibility and the
understanding, which perhaps spring from a common, but to us unknown, root.”26
In another passage he explains:
But with all this knowledge, even if the whole of nature were revealed to us, we should still
never be able to answer those transcendental questions which go beyond nature. The reason
of this is that it is not given to us to observe our own mind with any other intuition than that
of inner sense; and that it is yet precisely in the mind that the secret of the source of our
sensibility is located. The relation of sensibility to an object and what the transcendental
ground of this [objective] unity may be, are matters undoubtedly so deeply concealed that

21
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, B145.
22
Ibid., B145-146.
23
Ibid., A557/B585.
24
Ibid., A393.
25
Kant and Allison (1973).
26
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A15/ B29.
7.2 The Thing in Itself as the Limit of Knowledge 197

we, who after all know even ourselves only through inner sense and therefore as appear-
ance, can never be justified in treating sensibility as being a suitable instrument of inves-
tigation for discovering anything save always still other appearances—eager as we yet are
to explore their non-sensible cause.27

Kant clearly feels that there might be a common root at the basis of knowledge.
But because human beings possess only a passive faculty of sensibility, we are not
able to know this “non-sensible cause” which transcends empirical knowledge.
Only God, possessing intuitive understanding, could know such a secret. Hence,
Kant states that “how the faculty of the understanding achieves this conformity with
the things themselves, is still left in a state of obscurity”28; and “If we wanted to
make judgments about their origin [sensibility and the understanding]—an inves-
tigation that of course lies wholly beyond the limits of human reason—we could
name nothing beyond our divine creator.”29
Kant’s doctrine of the thing in itself, with its peculiarity of two opposing and
unknowable Xs, has been frequently criticized and refuted by Kant’s contempo-
raries as well as by later philosophers like Fichte and Hegel, the later existentialists,
and any number of commentators on Kant’s philosophy. All of them attempt to
unify the two opposing Xs and to find their common root, whether they identify this
root with some metaphysical spiritual entity, e.g., Hegel’s Idea, or pursue some
positivistic psychological explanation. They regard the unknowable common root
as spirit, consciousness, the will, or an inscrutable object of sheer faith. They aim to
integrate, deduce, and derive by various means the transcendental object = X from
the transcendental self = X. Let us consider these means in turn.
Since its publication, Kant’s doctrine of the thing in itself has met with criticism
from his contemporaries such as Salomon Maimon and F. H. Jacobi. Most of them
hold that the thing in itself cannot be the ground and cause of appearances in the
sense of being the source of sensibility. Jacobi argues that causality, according to
Kant’s philosophy, can only apply to appearances, so it would be contradictory to
say that the thing in itself is the source of sensibility, i.e., the cause of sensible
intuitions. J. F. Fries, on the other hand, attempts to integrate Kant and the mystic
Jacobi, holding that the thing in itself is the object of religious faith.30 Jacobi’s well-

27
Ibid., A278/B334.
28
Letter to Marcus Herz, February 21, 1772. Kant, Immanuel, and Arnulf Zweig, Philosophical
Correspondence 1759–1799, 133. Kant and Zweig (1999). One should note that Kant’s thought in
this period is still in transition from the Inaugural Dissertation to the Critique of Pure Reason,
hence his terms have different implications. However, one can still see a common aspect in this
transition.
29
Letter to Marcus Herz, May 26, 1789. Kant, Immanuel, and Arnulf Zweig, Philosophical
Correspondence 1759–1799, 154.
30
Jacobi holds the view that knowledge is limited by sense experience and that reason cannot
transcend sensibility, though he maintains that immediate intuition can grasp the essence that
transcends sensibility. He argues that Spinoza’s is the only truly systematic philosophy, although
accepting Spinoza’s thought would mean accepting atheism. Therefore his philosophy is to no
avail. Jacobi stresses that the question of God belongs not to reason but to the soul, and that one
should replace Spinoza’s thought with faith. He says, “there is light in my heart, but when I would
198 7 Epistemology: VI. Things in Themselves

known refutation certainly does not have any credibility (since Kant expressly
states that the “thing in itself and its causality are unknowable”) and has been
invoked by later scholars.
Maimon’s refutation anticipates that of Fichte.31
Evidently, despite Kant’s displeasure, his followers at the time denied the
materialistic implications of the concept of the thing in itself while struggling to
derive the empirical object no less than the transcendental object from the subject
and the transcendental self.32 This tendency is especially obvious in Fichte. He
states that “the thing in itself is a pure invention and has no reality whatever. It does
not occur in experience: for the system of experience is nothing other than thinking
accompanied by the sensation of necessity.”33 To Fichte, only thought has true
reality while the rest does not have any reality at all. He calls Kant a dogmatist who
“wants, indeed, to assure to that thing reality, that is, the necessity of being thought
as the ground of all experience.” He says, “the consistent dogmatist is necessarily
also a materialist. He could be refuted only on the basis of the postulate of the
freedom and self-sufficiency of the I. But this is precisely what he denies.”34 Hegel,
coming after Fichte, holds that philosophy cannot proceed from the subjective self,
preferring instead to deduce everything from the objective absolute idea and utterly
obliterate the thing in itself as the source of sensibility. To Hegel, the thing in itself
is the non-rational that opposes the rational and must be brought under the system
of reason-logic. Hegel’s approach is to develop Kant’s second X, the transcendental
self, and to see it as a noumenon capable of integrating the first X, the transcen-
dental object. He unifies Kant’s two unknowable concepts so as to carry idealism
through to the end.
Schopenhauer, coming shortly after Hegel, employs the “will to live,” which he
opposes to the world of phenomena (knowledge) as the thing in itself. The
anti-rational will to live is that which constitutes the world and human nature. He
knits together a Platonic dualistic world and Indian philosophy with a Kantian
division of the thing in itself and appearance, in order to construct a philosophy of
the will in contrast to the tendency of all philosophical rationalism.
Thus do Fichte, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, the most eminent German philoso-
phers after Kant, all refute Kant’s doctrine of the thing in itself.

bring it to the understanding it disappears.” Jacobi is a well-known “philosopher of faith” and a

mystic.
31
In a letter to Reinhold, in 1795, Fichte wrote: “My esteem for Maimon’s genius is boundless.
I firmly believe and am ready to prove that through Maimon’s work the whole Kant’s philosophy,
as it is understood by everyone including yourself, is completely overturned.” Maimon rejected the
concept of the thing in self (both the object and the subject), and maintained that the human heart is
part of the infinite spiritual world.
32
J. Beck, a follower and intimate friend of Kant’s, also rejects the thing in itself, holding that the
transcendental apperception of the subject is the starting point. Some scholars believe that certain
aspects of Kant’s thought in his last work, the Opus Postumum, are influenced by Beck.
33
Science of Knowledge, 10. Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
34
Ibid., 10.
7.2 The Thing in Itself as the Limit of Knowledge 199

After these eminent philosophers come the interpretations of modern Kantian

commentators. Kemp Smith, when explaining Kant’s remark that “sensibility and
the understanding might originate from the same root,” comments that “Kant
sometimes seems to suggest that imagination is this common root. It belongs both
to sensibility and to the understanding, and is passive as well as spontaneous. But
when so viewed, imagination is virtually regarded as an unknown supersensuous
power, ‘concealed in the depths of the soul.’ The supersensuous is the point of
union of our disparate human faculties, as well as of nature and freedom, mecha-
nism and teleology.”35 In other words, one should regard imagination as the
common root of sensibility and the understanding.
In his monograph on Kant, Heidegger holds that the a priori imagination is the
heart of Kant’s philosophy. It is not just a bridge between sensibility and the
understanding but also their common root, linking pure and practical reason as well.
Heidegger maintains that the unity of intuition and thought does not occur solely in
the cognitive process but also in an ontological synthesis effected by a priori
imagination. He sees the schemata given by a priori imagination as the center of
Kant’s critical philosophy. However, schemata are merely transcendental determi-
nations of original time, and original time is not merely a form of intuition but is the
presupposed condition of the understanding and the imagination as well. “Original
time” is, in effect, another name for “being.” Thus the fundamental question of
metaphysics becomes, for Heidegger, the question of “the unity of basic faculties of
the human soul.” Our comprehension of the world is dependent on our methods of
comprehension, on our comprehension of the object’s existence for our sake.
Therefore, Kant’s transcendental object is identified with beings of imagination,
while the transcendental self becomes the unity of the past, future, and present.
The contemporary commentator T. D. Weldon holds that Kant’s philosophy can
be developed in two directions. One is the metaphysical attitude of Hegel, the other
the positivistic scientific attitude that employs empirical psychology to interpret
Kant’s philosophy. Weldon also holds that imagination occupies a pivotal position
in Kant’s epistemology. It links sensibility and the understanding, possessing what
is distinctive about each of them yet differentiated from both. Kant sees imagination
as the central link that can intuit (sensibility) as well as synthesize (understanding).
Unfortunately, Kant only mentions this point in passing and does not develop it.
The point can either be interpreted metaphysically, or merely be seen as an
empirical determination of psychology. Weldon evidently maintains the latter view
and attempts to divert Kant’s epistemological thesis in the direction of positivistic
psychology.36
Evidently, in the studies of Kant’s philosophy, whether by Kemp Smith,
Heidegger, or Weldon, modern philosophers stress “imagination” as the key to
Kant’s epistemology, and attempt to use metaphysical or positivistic scientific
thought to explain away Kant’s contradictions and discover the common root of

Kemp Smith, Commentary to Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’, 77.

35

36
See T. D. Weldon, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.
200 7 Epistemology: VI. Things in Themselves

sensibility and understanding, by which route they hope finally to make sense of
Kant’s idea of the unknowable thing in itself. The unknowable thing in itself is
refuted and replaced with the spiritual self (Hegel) and imagination.37 Spirit
becomes the origin and noumenon of knowledge, while the Kantian duality of the
two unknowable Xs is replaced by an idealistic monism.
Philosophical trends from the rationalism of Fichte and Hegel to the
anti-rationalism of Schopenhauer and Heidegger endeavor to explain away the thing
in itself and revise Kant’s philosophy, whether through some idea of the self, the
absolute idea, the will to live, or a priori imagination. An additional line of inter-
pretation that follows logical positivism also tries to revise Kant on this contentious
point. The verifiability principle of logical positivism holds that human knowledge
comes from experience, and that experience must always relate to observation and
measurement in the observable world that is organized by science. However, the
objective world beyond our observation is unknowable. Besides, they say, the
question of whether or not such a world exists is a meaningless one. Obviously, read
in this way, one would not only reiterate Kant but also regress to Hume.
In short, neither the spirit of Fichte and Hegel, nor the will of Schopenhauer can
resolve the difficulty raised by Kant’s thing in itself. In the same way, neither Kemp
Smith nor Heidegger and the logical positivists can plausibly rely on the concept of
imagination—be it ontological or psychological imagination—to resolve the diffi-
culty of Kant’s thing in itself. The key to all these “unknowable” and “unan-
swerable” difficulties is not to be found in concepts like spirit, will, or imagination.

7.3 “Human Beings Must Prove the Truth of Their

Thinking in Practice”

What is the key to this difficulty, the correct solution to all these “unknowables” in
Kant’s philosophy? And what is the common root of sensibility and understanding
that Kant is vaguely aware of and yet cannot give an answer for? It is neither
absolute spirit nor imagination.
Imagination, despite being an important topic worthy of further investigation, is
not the solution to the difficulties of the thing in itself and epistemology. The
fundamental ground can only be practice.
The term “practice” is fashionable in contemporary philosophy, and is a con-
troversial term as well. What really is practice and how does it differ from the
animal’s life activities? As mentioned in previous chapters, as the ground of
knowledge and the measure of truth, practice is a historical particular. Whether in
sensibility or reason, whether as ideas of time, space, or mathematics, whether as

37
There are still scholars today who believe that the thing in itself is the “I in itself.” The former is
placed in the object by the latter. The I in itself is an Existential Reality, while the thing in itself is
Subsistent Reality, and the “I in itself” is the “thinking I.” Miller (1956).
7.3 “Human Beings Must Prove the Truth of Their Thinking in Practice” 201

formal logic or dialectic, the practice that forms the ground of knowledge is his-
torically particular practice and objective sociality. In my view, the question of the
possibility of knowledge can be answered only through an answer to the more
basic question of the possibility of human social practice. The essence of human
knowledge can be resolved only through a historical and particular analysis of
human practice. The subject of knowledge is not the individual, and the starting
point of knowledge is not passive sense perception. The subject of knowledge is the
social collective, hence the starting point of knowledge can only be historically
particular, social, practical activities. The essence unique to the human being
emerges precisely from here. The secret of the two famous classical definitions of
the human being—“the human being is a tool-making animal” and “the human
being is a rational animal”—is found in their unity on the ground of social
practice. The faculties of sensibility (notions of time and space) and reason (formal
logic, mathematics, dialectical categories), which are unique to human knowledge,
are neither transcendental nor unknowable; they emerge and become sedimented
through practice over long history, and eventually become the cognitive structure of
the human subject. Armed with the laws and forms of practice, the subject cognizes,
constitutes, and comprehends the object. Kant’s two unknowable Xs should be
eliminated, and their opposition can be unified in practice. Practice reveals the
essence of the first X (the thing in itself as the transcendental object) and constitutes
the second X (the thing in itself as the transcendental self). Practice allows the thing
in itself to become “mine,” and allows the unknowable to become knowable.
Hence, practice is by no means merely the abstract and subjective activities of
individual consciousness.
Marx states that “man must prove the truth—i.e., the reality and power, the
this-sidedness of his thinking in practice.”38 Engels comments that “in Kant’s time
our knowledge of natural objects was indeed so fragmentary that he might well
suspect, behind the little we knew about each of them, a mysterious ‘thing in itself.’
But one after another these ungraspable things have been grasped, analysed, and,
what is more, reproduced by the giant progress of science; and what we can
produce, we certainly cannot consider as unknowable.”39 Engels says of Kant’s
unknowable that “the most telling refutation of this as of all other philosophical
crotchets is practice—namely, experiment and industry. If we are able to prove the
correctness of our conception of a natural process by making it ourselves, bringing
it into being out of its conditions and making it serve our own purposes into the
bargain, then there is an end to the Kantian ungraspable ‘thing in itself.’”40
These arguments of Marx and Engels illuminate the question of why the ideas of
substance, the thing in itself, and the unknowable come into being, from Locke and

38
Theses on Feuerbach. Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
39
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Introduction to the English Edition. Marx Engels Internet
Archive 1994.
40
Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy. Marx Engels Internet Archive
1994.
202 7 Epistemology: VI. Things in Themselves

French materialism to Kant. In epistemology, this thought reflects the level of

development of industry and science in their time, the historical level of human
social practice. Locke states that “the dominion of man, in this little world of his
own understanding, being much the same as it is in the great world of visible things;
wherein his power, however managed by art and skill, reaches no farther than to
compound and divide the materials that are made to his hand; but can do nothing
towards the making the least particle of new matter, or destroying one atom of what
is already in being.”41 Surely, man can only alter the modality of matter, but can
neither bring forth or destroy matter in the philosophical sense, nor create matter
from nothing. However, the important point is that Locke’s thought objectively
reflects the level and limitation of the social practice of his time. In his time, men
indeed could not create new matter, but could only compound and divide the
materials at hand, and could not destroy a single atom.
Human knowledge of the things in nature was at this time fragmentary and
superficial, and industry and science were in their elementary stages. Hence the
materialism of the time set great store on observation and its starting point could only
be sense perception. This is one of the reasons that there arose in philosophy ideas
like the so-called unknowable substance (Locke), the nature of things (d’Holbach),
and the thing in itself (Kant). Modern industry and science, striding with colossal
steps, are far beyond “compounding and dividing the materials that are made to his
hand.” Men are not only able to smash atomic nuclei, but are even able to create new
materials by altering the modality of matter, e.g., new organic chemical compounds,
while scientific experimental inventions, such as the high-energy particle accelera-
tor, have gone beyond what individual sense perception and classical forms of
cognition such as observation and induction could achieve.
So as to guide observation and to further human knowledge, modern industry
and technology have increasingly become expressions of social practice as we use
the power of the material world to spontaneously interfere with nature on the most
fundamental level (atom, neutron). Such accomplishments increasingly confirm that
the thing in itself has been successfully linked to human social practice and become
ours. Engels’ argument precisely illustrates the point, stated by Marx in the Theses
on Feuerbach, that it is only in practice that man can prove the truth, namely, “the
reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking.”42 This practice is social
practice, i.e., industry and science; while “this-sidedness” is the opposite of Kant’s
unknowable “that-sidedness.” Therefore, the vulgar view of Engels’ criticism of
Kant, which is that he regards Kant’s doctrine as meaningless and without value in
philosophy, should be shunned. We have explained in Chap. 4 how Engels stresses
that human practical activities alone can prove the objective necessity of causality.
Here Engels again underlines that only practical human activities, rather than the
individual experience of the senses, can fundamentally further human knowledge.
These two points are intimately related; indeed, they are the same.

41
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 63.
42
Theses on Feuerbach, Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
7.3 “Human Beings Must Prove the Truth of Their Thinking in Practice” 203

Practice is identical neither with sense experience nor with observation. It is an

objective feature of history considered as a totality. The starting point of knowledge
is not perception and observation but practice (e.g., scientific experiment), of which
perception and observation are the results and verifications. This is why I stress that
one should adopt the perspective of social practice in the use and making of
material tools, rather than that of sense experience or language in the theory of
human knowledge.
Therefore, anthropological-ontological questions should receive due attention.
Anthropological ontology underlines the practical relations that human beings
bear to the actual world. Anthropological ontology is a philosophy of subjectivity.
As mentioned earlier, it consists of two aspects. One is the external objective
progress of the human subject, which is marked by the development of the mode of
social production and the advancement of technology, and indeed the development
of the whole history of material civilization. The other aspect is the internal pro-
gress of the human subject, which establishes psychological functions (e.g., intel-
ligence, will, and aesthetic sensibility), as well as materialized forms (e.g., the arts
and philosophy), hence our entire spiritual civilization. These two aspects, with the
former as their ground, are thoroughly interrelated, despite a certain independent,
voluntary development. This bilateral development of the human being indicates
two aspects: nature evolving the human being, and human beings humanizing
nature (see Chap. 10). It is a transformation of outer as well as inner nature. The
contribution of Kant’s philosophy lies in its emphasis on the second aspect, and his
exhaustive exposition of the psychological structure of the subject, including his
development of the questions of knowledge, ethics, and aesthetics. My intention
here is to appreciate the modern significance of the questions raised by Kant and to
set out a new direction one can take to resolve them. Such is my criticism of the
Kantian critical philosophy.

7.4 The Thing in Itself as an Idea of Reason

Kant’s thing in itself is not just the unknowable limit of knowledge. Were the thing
in itself only that, it would be legitimate to question whether philosophy even needs
this thing in itself.
Kant claims that both the possibility and the impossibility of the existence of the
noumenon (the thing in itself) are unknowable. “Since we are without a determinate
concept of them,” he says, “this is a question which can only be answered in an
indeterminate manner.”43 Kant’s insistence that the thing in itself is unknowable but
nevertheless exists suggests that the thing in itself, although unknowable, is perhaps
an object of thought. In the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure
Reason, when pointing out that “we can therefore have no knowledge of any object

43
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A282/B344.
204 7 Epistemology: VI. Things in Themselves

as thing in itself, but only in so far as it is an object of sensible intuition, that is, an
appearance,” Kant emphasizes that “our further contention must also be duly borne
in mind, namely, that though we cannot know these objects as things in themselves,
we must yet be in position at least to think them as things in themselves.”44 He
maintains that our distinction between appearances and noumena already implicitly
regards the latter solely as an object of the understanding and thought rather than of
sensible intuition. Hence, he says, we “entitle them intelligible entities (nou-
mena).”45 In other words, the thing in itself exists as an object of thought affirmed
by intelligence. This existence is opposed to that of the sensible beings of
appearance; and as an object of the understanding it is the ground of appearances,
that is, the noumenon that is distinct from but also the ground of appearances. Kant
presents a negative as well as a positive concept of the noumenon.
The negative meaning refers to the fact that the thing in itself is not an object of
sensible intuition, which is the idea of the limit-point of knowledge that we dis-
cussed earlier. The positive meaning of the thing in itself understands it as a
possible object of non-sensible intuition. Take note that Kant means it can be such
an object, not that it definitely is one. If that second meaning is the predominant
one, then there can be an object of knowledge of the intellectual intuition that exists
as the thing in itself. However, we can merely think that, and not actually, con-
cretely, scientifically, or philosophically know it to be true, for human beings do not
have such intuitive understanding. Nevertheless, this conception is important for a
reason I shall explain.
Kant argues:
If by “noumenon” we mean a thing so far as it is not an object of our sensible intuition and
so abstract from our mode of intuiting it, this is a noumenon in the negative sense of the
term. But if we understand by it an object of a non-sensible intuition, we thereby pre-
suppose a special mode of intuition, namely, the intellectual, which is not that which we
possess and of which we cannot comprehend even the possibility. This would be “nou-
menon” in the positive sense of the term.46

Kant rejects the possibility of knowing the existence of the thing in itself, while
affirming that its existence can be thought and presumed. In so doing, this existence
is made fundamentally different from its existence in the first meaning, which
proffers sources for sensibility, and is precisely the direct opposition of the latter. It
is not the limitation of knowledge in the second meaning, rather it is the sublation of
this limitation. Hence it is no longer the materialistic thing in itself which functions
as the source of sensibility (i.e., objective material existence independent of human
beings), nor the negative thing in itself which is purely the limitation of the
knowledge of sensibility and the understanding (and its existence is unknowable). It
is but the thing in itself of positive existence which cannot be known, but can only
be thought. The noumenon is an object to which the understanding cannot apply the

44
Ibid., Bxxvi.
45
Ibid., B306.
46
Ibid., B307.
7.4 The Thing in Itself as an Idea of Reason 205

categories and principles (substance, causality, actuality, etc.) that it applies to the
experience of the senses. However, when the understanding employs these cate-
gories to think it (that is, transcendently applies the categories of the understanding
to it), the thing in itself becomes a hypothetical object capable of guiding the
understanding in its empirical use.
In the sections on the antinomies and the transcendental ideal, Kant claims that
ideas of reason, such as God, free will, and the soul, are precisely what unify the
understanding and guide it to the maximum of unity and systematicity. This is the
third meaning we distinguished earlier for the thing in itself in epistemology. These
ideas of pure reason:
…have an excellent, and indeed indispensably necessary, regulative employment, namely,
that of directing the understanding towards a certain goal upon which the routes marked out
by all its rules converge, as upon their point of intersection. This point is indeed a mere
idea, a focus imaginarius, from which, since it lies quite outside the bounds of possible
experience, the concepts of the understanding do not in reality proceed.47
The hypothetical employment of reason has, therefore, as its aim the systematic unity of the
knowledge of the understanding, and this unity is the criterion of the truth of its rules. The
systematic unity (as a mere idea) is, however, only a projected unity, to be regarded not as
given in itself, but as a problem only. This unity aids us in discovering a principle for the
understanding in its manifold and special modes of employment, directing its attention to
cases which are not given, and thus rendering it more coherent.48

In Kant’s view, examples—such as chemists reducing salts into the two cate-
gories of acid and alkali in pursuit of ever more fundamental matter or the principle
of parsimony according to which entities shouldn’t be multiplied needlessly—
illustrate the favorable employment of ideas of reason to guide our investigation of
nature. This applies even to the idea of God. It is beneficial in the investigation of
nature to presuppose an ultimate cause and purpose for everything in the world—
such as ideas of reason, God, the soul, and the freedom of the will—so as to achieve
the maximum of unity, completion, and order in experience. Such is the role of
regulative principles, which differ from constitutive principles, used by the
understanding to act on sensibility and constitute knowledge.
The term “regulative” is paired with the term “constitutive.” Constitutive prin-
ciples are what the understanding employs to act on sensibility and constitute
knowledge, while regulative principles are what reason employs to guide the
understanding. Kant’s distinctions between categories and ideas, and constitutive
and regulative principles are of great importance in his critical philosophy. The
categories and constitutive principles are scientific principles that act on sense
experience to constitute knowledge; while the ideas and regulative principles guide
and regulate cognition, but cannot themselves act on sense experience to constitute
knowledge. They are not scientific principles, but important philosophical princi-
ples of methodology:

47
Ibid., A644/B672.
48
Ibid., A647/B675.
206 7 Epistemology: VI. Things in Themselves

But although an absolute totality of experience is not possible, nonetheless the idea of a
totality of cognition according to principles in general is what alone can provide it with a
special kind of unity, namely that of a system, without which unity our cognition is nothing
but piecework.49
These ideas therefore have a completely different determination of their use from that of the
categories, through which (and through the principles built upon them) experience itself
first became possible. […] but [pure reason] merely demands completeness in the use of the
understanding in the connection of experience. […] Nonetheless, in order to represent these
principles determinately, reason conceives of them as the cognition of an object, cognition
of which is completely determined with respect to these rules – though the object is only an
idea – so as to bring cognition through the understanding as close as possible to the
completeness that this idea signifies.50

Kant points out that regulative principles and ideas of reason, though beneficial
to cognition, cannot replace scientific investigation, because:
…in this field of enquiry, if instead of looking for causes in the universal laws of material
mechanism, we appeal directly to the unsearchable decree of supreme wisdom, all those
ends which are exhibited in nature, together with the many ends which are only ascribed by
us to nature, make our investigation of the causes a very easy task, and so enable us to
regard the labour of reason as completed, when, as a matter of fact, we have merely
dispensed with its employment.51

Kant maintains that although we:

…have a regulative principle of the systematic unity of teleological connection—a con-
nection which we do not, however, predetermine. What we may presume to do is to follow
out the physico-mechanical connection in accordance with universal laws, in the hope of
discovering what the teleological connection actually is.52

As these passages make plain, Kant takes the ideas of reason to be regulative
rather than constitutive principles, in order to distinguish ideas of reason from the
forms of sensible intuition and the categories of the understanding. Ideas of reason,
including that of God, are objects of neither knowledge nor science. Kant explains
that “the idea of systematic unity should be used only as a regulative principle to
guide us in seeking for such unity in the connection of things, according to uni-
versal laws of nature.”53 Hence, what science pursues is the relation determined by
a causality of nature, whereas “the idea of a supreme being” (God) is merely a
regulative principle of reason enjoining our inquiries to proceed as if every event in
the world were an effect of a necessary and sufficient cause. However, ideas of
reason such as a final cause or a supreme intelligence can do no more than merely
guide empirical enquiry, and do not replace it.

49
Prolegomena, §56.
50
Ibid., §44.
51
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A691/B719.
52
Ibid., A691-692/B719-720.
53
Ibid., A692/B720.
7.4 The Thing in Itself as an Idea of Reason 207

One can neither directly deduce nor argue from knowledge of the empirical
world that a final cause of nature or a supreme intelligence actually exists, nor are
these ideas any kind of metaphysical source or ground of empirical knowledge.
In his work “On the Volcanoes on the Moon” (1785), Kant claims: “I think it
unacceptable to come to a halt and in desperation invoke an immediate divine
decree as an explanation.” Discussing nature as a whole, he acknowledges that “this
latter must admittedly form the conclusion of our investigation when we talk of
nature as a whole; but in every epoch of nature, since no one of them can be shown
by direct observation to be absolutely the first, we are not relieved of the obligation
to search among the causes of things as far as is possible for us.”54 Consequently,
then, on the one hand Kant held that since “the world is a sum of appearances,”
there “must therefore be some transcendental ground of the appearances.”55 In other
words, there should be a transcendent object, which is thinkable only by the pure
understanding and unreachable by sensibility, as the ground of the world of
appearances. This is the thing in itself in its third meaning, i.e., an idea of reason.
On the other hand, Kant holds that the transcendental ground of the world of
appearances is not substance, and the merely hypothetical idea of the supreme cause
of nature cannot be substantialized. Hence, the positive sense of the thing in itself is
merely an ideal thing and not an actual object, “for we were not justified in
assuming above nature a being with those qualities.”56
The conflict between the thing in itself and the world of appearances evolves into
an opposition that is more than the opposition between an unknowable objective
material world and appearances. This opposition is between the purely rational idea
of the unconditional and unlimited absolute totality, on the one hand, and the
conditioned, limited experience of the understanding operating on the material of
sensibility, on the other. The application of this idea leads us to seek the maximum
unity, system, order, and completeness of empirical knowledge, thus opposing
closure and the acceptance of the status quo in science. Such is the gist of the third
meaning that we have distinguished for the notion of the thing in itself.
In proposing the ideas of reason as ideal sources for the unity and completeness
of empirical knowledge, Kant deals with the question of the unity of the world in an
idealistic fashion. To him, the unity does not lie in its materiality, but in the
existence of a merely hypothetical idea of reason. The inquiry of natural science
into the materiality of the world is supposedly carried out under the regulation of
this transcendental idea. Thus the opposition between rational ideas of totality (the
thing in itself) and limited empirical knowledge is also the opposition between
absolute and relative truth.
Kant’s thing in itself eventually appears as the ground for the unity of the things
in the world as well as scientific inquiry. Kant regards the advancement of
knowledge as under the guidance of ideas of reason such as God, free will, and the

54
“On the Volcanoes on the Moon,” 8:76.
55
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A696/B724.
56
Ibid., A700/B728.
208 7 Epistemology: VI. Things in Themselves

soul. These ideas are within sight but beyond reach, thinkable but unknowable. The
absolute truth, as a thing in itself, is the unreachable far-side of knowledge.
Such is the exposition of the threefold meaning of the thing in itself in the
domain of knowledge.
Hegel criticizes every aspect of Kant’s conception of the thing in itself.
I mentioned that Hegel adopts the transcendental ego to eradicate the thing in itself,
and this eradication takes advantage of precisely this third meaning. Hegel severely
criticizes Kant’s subjective ideas, saying that the thing in itself is an empty product
of abstract thought. To Hegel, ideas have to be the unity of concepts and objec-
tivity. In The Science of Logic, ideas belong to a higher level stage of cognition than
Kant’s categories of the understanding. There is neither an end of knowledge nor an
unreachable far side, but only the conformity of actuality with concepts, which is
truth. In opposition to Kant, Hegel maintains that human knowledge can obtain the
objective truth of reality itself. To Hegel, this truth is knowledge of God, which he
understands as the self-knowledge of the absolute idea. He criticizes Kant’s doc-
trine of the unknowable thing in itself and emphasizes that ideas of reason are
knowable, though knowledge is solely God’s. Hence, as Lenin points out: “Kant
disparages knowledge in order to make way for faith [whereas] Hegel exalts
knowledge, asserting that knowledge is knowledge of God.”57
The third meaning of Kant’s thing in itself raises an important issue, over which
various schools of philosophy have had much debate. Neo-Kantians such as
Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp, who concentrate their efforts on the third
meaning of Kant’s thing in itself, exaggerate Kant’s view of the thing in itself as the
mere limit of endless experience. They claim that there is no thing in itself behind
the sensible material. They say that the thing in itself is merely the ideal, infinitely
remote end of advancing cognition. The thing in itself is not a fixed being but a
regulating direction, which guides an endlessly developing but never finally com-
plete knowledge. In so doing, these Neo-Kantians completely eliminate the idea of
the thing in itself as the source of sensibility and merge the second and third
meanings into one. The thing in itself is seen as a requirement and regulation of
thought. What got C. S. Peirce interested in Kant’s dialectics was the thought that,
in accordance with regulative principles, all the fundamental scientific laws can
be seen as hypotheses. These views all arise from the third meaning of the thing
in itself.
Kant holds that the thing in itself is unknowable yet exists, and he makes it the
incomprehensible source of sensible material. He also regards it as an ideal that
regulates the understanding and allows knowledge to expand infinitely. This
interpretation is more significant than the view that regards the thing in itself as a
merely negative limit concept for experience and knowledge. From the perspective
of the theory of practice, the ongoing development of human industry endlessly
furnishes new objects and topics for people to learn about and problems to solve.
All the more so in the domain of human society and history.

57
Lenin (1994).
7.4 The Thing in Itself as an Idea of Reason 209

The objective world consists not only of beings but also becomings, which
means that knowledge cannot possibly have an end. Instead, the human being is
unrelentingly moving from relative truth toward absolute truth, without ever finally
reaching that end. It is meaningful to presuppose the objective existence of an
absolute truth, just as it is to assume the objective existence of a thing in itself and
to postulate that human knowledge approaches absolute truth in its historical
movement over successive generations. Practice, as a real material activity, brings
about the unity of knowledge as well as that of consciousness. In pursuit of its
relative truth, practice ceaselessly approaches absolute truth. Lenin comments that:
“From the subjective idea, man advances towards objective truth through ‘practice’
(and technique).”58And “man by his practice proves the objective correctness of his
ideas, concepts, knowledge, science.”59 Human beings can obtain knowledge of
truth through practice. The thing in itself, which for Kant is within sight yet beyond
our reach, and is thinkable yet unknowable, can in fact be known gradually through
practice. The first and third meanings that Kant gives to the thing in itself, although
it is still unknowable as noumenon, are unified on the ground of a materialistic
theory of practice.

7.5 From Epistemology to Ethics

Kant’s thing in itself undergoes an intricate change, from the source of sensibility
and the limit of the understanding to a regulative principle of methodology, and
eventually steps out of the domain of epistemology to enter the field of ethics and
practical reason. Kant explains that “without reason [there is] no coherent
employment of the understanding, and in the absence of this no sufficient criterion
of empirical truth.”60 The unity of sensibility depends on the understanding and the
unity of the understanding depends on reason, while the ideas of reason and the
transcendental ideal (God) become the ultimate criteria of truth and the ideal end of
knowledge. Therefore, everything is united in transcendental reason. However, as
regulative principles, ideas of reason only have the methodological function of
guiding the understanding to seek the maximum unity of empirical knowledge, and
cannot act on the experience of the senses. Therefore, the thing in itself retains its
negative meaning as a limit-concept for knowledge. In Kant’s mind it is not yet,
although is indeed rather close to, the positive idea of the noumenon.
Kant maintains that the true positive noumenon is not an object of knowledge but
rather of practice and practical reason, which relates not to science but to ethics.61

58
Ibid.
59
Ibid.
60
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A651/B679.
61
The differences between the school of ontology and the Neo-Kantians is expressed in their
divergent emphases on the positive and negative meanings of the noumenon.
210 7 Epistemology: VI. Things in Themselves

The positive sense of Kant’s noumenon is that of an unknowable yet thinkable

object, meaning an object of thought that cannot be proven by sensible intuition.
Consequently, its existence becomes a matter of faith, and Kant proceeds from
transcendental ideas and the ideal of epistemology to the practical reason of ethics.
Kant believes that it is only in ethics that we can appreciate the true contribution of
the thing in itself in philosophy. Only in the domain of practical reason do ideas of
reason like freedom, the soul, and God exhibit their true importance. These entities,
though they can never become objects of knowledge in the empirical world of
appearance, nevertheless not only act on that world but even regulate the whole of
empirical nature.62 A noumenal, supersensible world is opposed to the world of
sensibility or appearance, and is not only superior to it but also acts on it.63 In the
Critique of Judgment, Kant connects nature, which is ruled by mechanism, with
moral and cultural man by means of teleology, claiming that the cultural man is the
moral man as well as the ultimate end of nature. In the “Transcendental Doctrine of
Method” section of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant states that “it is evident that
the ultimate intention of nature in her wise provision for us has indeed, in the
constitution of our reason, been directed to moral interests.”64 The ultimate end of
nature is the human world and the moral man who transcends nature.
Thus Kant’s thing in itself, which is originally an idea of reason in epistemology,
eventually becomes a moral substance in ethics. The conception of the thing in
itself evolves from an unknowable non-empirical presumption with neither practical
use nor objective reality (the third meaning in epistemology), to a positive deter-
mination that has important practical functions as well as objective reality in ethics,
and even enters the domains of belief (religion) and aesthetics. The ideas of reason,
which in the domain of knowledge cannot be given in sense experience and the
world of appearances, can not only act upon the world of experience, but can thus
emerge as the lawgiver and commander of the sensible world. Kant states that “it is
a mere idea, though at the same time a practical idea, which really can have, as it
ought to have, an influence upon the sensible world, to bring that world, as far as
may be possible, into conformity with the idea. The idea of a moral world has,
therefore, objective reality.”65

62
Consequently, some scholars identify Kant with Berkeley, and believe that since the thing in
itself, as God, eventually becomes noumenon, acting upon the world of appearances, it can also be
the source of knowledge. They thus cancel the first meaning of the thing in itself, and eliminate the
difference with Berkeley. However, what Kant says of practical reason is irrelevent to knowledge.
Therefore, the materialistic sense of the thing in itself cannot be entirely eliminated.
63
In a letter to Tieftrunk, December 11, 1797, Kant wrote: “[since the sensible would otherwise
lack a non-sensible counterpart, and this would indicate a logical defect in our classification], the
idea belongs to pure practical cognition, which is detached from all empirical conditions. The
sphere of non-sensible objects is thus not quite empty, though from the point of view of theoretical
knowledge such objects must be viewed as transcendent” (Kant, Immanuel, and Arnulf Zweig,
Philosophical Correspondence 1759–1799, 538).
64
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A801/B829.
65
Ibid., B808/B836.
7.5 From Epistemology to Ethics 211

Here the noumenon, as the ground and cause of appearances, goes beyond its
epistemological function to confirm the superiority of ethics over scientific
knowledge and of practical over theoretical reason. For instance, A is the cause of B
in the world of appearances, and contains the rational sense that ethics is superior to
knowledge and that practical reason is superior to theoretical reason (see Chaps. 9
and 10). Hence Kant feels the need to point out once again in the final part of the
Critique of Pure Reason that “reason has a presentiment of objects which possess a
great interest for it. But when it follows the path of pure speculation, in order to
approach them, they fly before it. Presumably it may look for better fortune in the
only other path which still remains open to it, that of its practical employment.”66
Additionally, “even after reason has failed in all its ambitious attempts to pass
beyond the limits of all experience, there is still enough left to satisfy us, so far as
our practical standpoint is concerned.”67
In other words, although reason’s attempt to seek knowledge of absolute entities
like God, free will, and the soul in the domain of speculative theory finally failed, it
succeeded in the domain of practical reason. This shift of the thing in itself from
epistemology to ethics has enormous implications. Kant declares the existence of
God to be unknowable for science while still finding a necessary, rational place for
God in the practical domain. In the preface to the second edition of the Critique of
Pure Reason, Kant expressly states that “I have therefore found it necessary to deny
knowledge in order to make room for faith.”68 The epistemologically negative
sense of the thing in itself (as an unknowable limit) makes possible its new positive
sense for practice. Thus the whole system of critical philosophy undergoes a
transition from epistemology to morality. The dualism and transcendental idealism
of Kant’s epistemology is subordinated to his ethics. Kant’s doctrine of the thing in
itself, as the pivot of the critical philosophy, thus separates science from ethics,
knowledge from action, and nature from human beings.
Existentialism and logical positivism, which are the most in vogue among con-
temporary philosophical schools, have developed this separation. Karl Jaspers holds
that faith is the absolute essence of human existence and can never be replaced by
knowledge. Commentators of the ontological school, under the powerful influence
of Heidegger, hold that Kant’s self-consciousness is not merely logical but is in fact
the moral self of the Critique of Practical Reason,69 and the significance of the self
lies in the freedom of the will, free choice, and the free determination of its relation
with the world. Such a reading gives an anti-rationalistic and mystical significance to
the transcendental self’s gobbling up of the transcendental object.
The logical positivists also deny that ethics and morality belong to the domain of
knowledge and science. Commentators influenced by this school interpret the
distinction between the thing in itself and appearances not as a distinction between

66
Ibid., A796/B824.
67
Ibid., A828/B856.
68
Ibid., Bxxx-xxxi.
69
See Martin, Kant’s Metaphysics and Theory of Science, Chap 5.
212 7 Epistemology: VI. Things in Themselves

two different entities but as two ways of description. That is, it is a distinction
between two kinds of languages, one of which is appropriate to science and the
other to morality. They also claim that Kant’s achievement lies in his clarifying the
domain of objects that scientific language can reach.70 However, since Kant has
already presented the idea of the two-aspect view of noumena and appearances, or
the two-world view, the logical positivists and existentialists propose nothing
new.71 The relation between the human being as the subject of knowledge and as
the subject of practice lies at the heart of a serious problem. Kant is aware of this
problem and raises it in the fashion of idealism. However he does not resolve it but
instead emphasizes its difficulty, since the solution can be neither Platonic (two
worlds) nor Aristotelian (two ways of describing one world).
Some scholars have proposed that Kant’s conception of the thing in itself
changes along with the development of the question. The thing in itself is, as it
were, like Proteus, the old Greek man of the sea who assumes different shapes to
escape questions.72 As mentioned earlier, this change, from being the source of
sensibility to a limit-concept for knowledge, and from being an idea of reason to the
ground of morality, bends toward Fichte and Hegel. Some scholars point out that in
Kant’s Opus Postumum the thing in itself as transcendental object is no longer of
importance, and the thinking and acting self, which establishes everything, becomes
newly salient. The thing in itself becomes the self that is presupposed by thought
and is objectivized in order to constitute objects. This is certainly what Fichte
expressed in his conception of the ego establishing non-ego. However, in his late
years, Kant fiercely opposed Fichte’s thought and inclination, declaring that his
own views had never altered.73
Many scholars are put in a dilemma by Kant’s conflicting attitudes and find it
difficult to determine whether his doctrine of the thing in itself truly remained
unchanged. In my view, Kant does indeed remain true to his dualistic thought. He
does not abandon the conception of the thing in itself as an external being inde-
pendent of consciousness and acting on sensibility. However, because he fails to
resolve the relation between practice and knowledge, the logical development of his
thought actually leads him in the direction of Fichte and Hegel.
Only after Hegel eliminated the thing in itself with his absolute idealism, which
was in turn attacked by the theory of practice, did the question raised by Kant
finally find an answer. The thing in itself, as a moral entity and idea of reason, can
only be understood on the ground of social practice. Kant’s conception of the thing
in itself eventually links to the fundamental question of social ethics. Wittgenstein
states that “we feel that even if all possible scientific questions [were] answered, the

70
See T. D. Weldon, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Karl Popper’s dichotomy between facts
(science) and norms (ethics) does not essentially go beyond this thought.
71
On the two-world view, see Kant’s inaugural dissertation and his letter to Christian Garve and
Jacob Beck in 1783. Also see Critique of Pure Reason, Bxviii-xix note, Bxxvii, and A45-46/
B62-63.
72
See Richard Kröner, Kant’s Weltanschauung.
73
See Kant’s (1799).
7.5 From Epistemology to Ethics 213

problems of life have still not been touched at all. Of course there is then no
question left, and just this is the answer.”74 Wittgenstein holds that the task for
philosophy is to demarcate a boundary for thought and make clear what can and
cannot be thought or said. He maintains that traditional philosophy misused lan-
guage and created nothing but nonsense. Nevertheless, Wittgenstein does not
oppose metaphysics, but rather banishes it to the domain of art, religion, and poetry,
which to him respond to important riddles about life. But these riddles surpass the
limits of linguistic significance and cannot become objects of scientific knowledge.
Essentially, Wittgenstein’s idea is not fundamentally different from those of Hume
and Kant. The distinction lies in Wittgenstein’s reducing philosophy to egoism and
mysticism. Eventually, he falls for the idea of doing nothing, leaving everything as
it is. “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”75 This great
philosopher profoundly betrays a typical Western attitude toward social laws and
the objective point of view, demanding that we avoid talking about them. Although
Wittgenstein later stressed the intimate relation between language and social life, he
nevertheless limits all his investigations to facts about language. But the theory of
practice demands that we go further and embark upon the untrod path of anthro-
pological and historical ontology.

References

D’Holbach. 1994. The System of Nature, vol. 2. Marx Engels Internet Archive.
Kant and Berkeley. 1973. Kant Study, vol. 3, 315.
Kant, Immanuel, and Henry E. Allison. 1973. The Kant-Eberhard Controversy, 159. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press.
Kant, Immanuel, and Arnulf Zweig. 1999. Correspondence. Cambridge, 133. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Kant’s. 1999. Open Letter on Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, August 7.
Lenin. 1994. Philosophical Notebooks. Marx Engels Internet Archive.
Miller, Oscar W. 1956. The Kantian Thing-in-Itself: Or, The Creative Mind, 132. New York:
Philosophical Library.

74
Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.52.
75
Ibid., 7.
Chapter 8
Ethics: I. Moral Laws

8.1 Against Empirical Eudaemonism

Ethics is another component of the Kantian philosophical system. In the course of

developing his ideas, Kant’s inquiry shifted from Newton to Rousseau, from natural
science and its philosophical significance to the spiritual world of humankind. In
constructing the critical philosophy, Kant placed ethics on a higher plane than
epistemology, although the latter is the starting point of his philosophy.
Whether Kant’s philosophy is mainly about epistemology or ethics has been
heatedly disputed. The continental school of ontology and Neo-Kantianism—as rep-
resented by Ernst Cassirer, who is rather influential in Britain and the United States—
diverge on this as well as other issues. Gottfried Martin states: “Neo-Kantianism
restricted the systematic task of philosophy to theory of knowledge, and consequently
extended this restriction to the philosophy of Kant and to its interpretation. The
ontological school contests this restriction. It contests in general that philosophy
exhausts itself in theory of knowledge, and it contests in particular that the philosophy
of Kant exhausts itself in this way.”1 In Britain and the United States, Kant scholars,
including Lewis White Beck, also emphasize the priority of Kant’s ethics. I am in
accord with the latter school on this issue and would like to add that Kant’s private
attitude also confirms the superiority of ethics over epistemology.
We discussed in the previous chapter how, in epistemology, the thing in itself is
located on the far, unreachable side of knowledge. However, Kant also states that
that far side reverts to a “this side” when we turn to ethics, where the thing in itself
finally reveals its power to act on reality. As Kant says, he denies knowledge for the
sake of elevating morality. The supreme dignity of this-sidedness is all the more
manifest because that far side is simply impossible to reach by any kind of scientific
or metaphysical cognition. Because pure reason cannot achieve its infinite, com-
plete, and unified ideal in the objective, empirical world that is studied in episte-
1
Quoted from Scott-Taggart, “Recent Work on the Philosophy of Kant,” Kant Studies Today, ed.
Lewis W. Beck.

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 215

Z. Li, A New Approach to Kant, Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy
of Traditions and Cultures 27, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0239-8_8
216 8 Ethics: I. Moral Laws

mology, the argument for the existence of God, freedom, and immortality can only
be made on the ground of the subjective spiritual world of ethics.
The critique of theoretical reason shows that knowledge cannot be separated
from experience, while the critique of practical reason shows that the norms of
morality must be separated from experience. The application of theoretical reason to
reality is actually not pure, despite Kant’s title for his book, while the application of
practical reason is indeed pure, despite the book not being entitled a critique of pure
practical reason. If Kant wished to have fully parallel titles, then the two books
should have been entitled the Critique of Theoretical Reason and the Critique of
Practical Reason, or the Critique of Pure Theoretical Reason and the Critique of
Pure Practical Reason. The thesis of the former book is to argue that theoretical
reason cannot surpass the bounds of experience. Should it attempt to do so, it must
then be severely criticized. The task of the Critique of Practical Reason is to show
that pure reason does have a practical function and that there is no worry in this
domain of it trespassing beyond its proper limits. This is why Kant thinks that the
“Critique of Practical Reason” is an appropriate title.2
The Critique of Pure Reason mainly dwells on the theory of knowledge.
However, it already contains the central theme of ethics; therefore, it is appropriate
not to use the term “theoretical reason,” but instead a term—pure reason—that is
non-parallel with the term “practical reason.”
Theoretical and practical reason are completely cut off from each other, but they
are still the same pure reason and constitute its two aspects. Kant explains that “it
can in the end be only one and the same reason that is distinguished merely in its
application.”3 They both have their distinctive domains, namely, determining uni-
versal necessary transcendental principles in knowledge and ethics, yet their
underlying nature remains the same. Having said that, there is a difference in the
arguments of these two works. Theoretical reason proceeds from sensibility to the
understanding, then to reason; while practical reason proceeds in the opposite
direction, from principles (moral laws) to the concepts of good and evil, then finally
to sense experience. Let us put this distinction into a chart:
Pure reason divides into: (1) theoretical reason, whose critique moves from an
analysis of sensibility and the forms of intuition to the categories of the under-
standing and finally to the ideas of pure reason and their dialectic; and (2) practical
reason, whose critique moves from an analysis of moral laws (=freedom) to the
concepts of good and evil, to sensibility in the form of moral feelings. Kant states
that in practical philosophy “we shall commence with the principles and proceed to
the concepts, and only then, if possible, to the senses; whereas in the case of the
speculative reason we began with the senses and had to end with the principles.”4

2
Beck maintains that Kant also criticizes practical reason, for instance, in the antinomies of pure
practical reason, and that this makes Kant’s exposition internally inconsistent. In my opinion, the
nature of the antinomies of practical reason is essentially different from that of the antinomies of
theoretical reason.
3
Kant and Gregor (1998).
4
Kant and Abbott (1898, 25).
8.1 Against Empirical Eudaemonism 217

Why does Kant need a different approach? Because what ethics first examines is
the relation between reason and the will, and Kant not only wishes to keep reason
free of restraint from experience but also to cast off the restriction to sense expe-
rience, which requires that practical reason be differentiated from theoretical reason.
This point confirms theoretical reason’s demand for sense experience as well as
practical reason’s demand for autonomy from experience. When expounding on
theoretical reason, Kant raises the question of “how a priori synthetic judgments are
possible” in order to seek the universal, necessary, objective validity of knowledge,
and he demands that we distinguish this from subjective empirical habits or
judgments of perception. When expounding on practical reason, he also wishes to
have universal, necessary, objective validity for objective moral laws, and he
demands that we distinguish this from any sort of mere prudent concern with
experience. In epistemology, he presupposes the empirical existence of a priori
synthetic judgments (e.g., in mathematics and physics), and raises the question of
their conditions of possibility. In ethics, he affirms that freedom in the form of a
universal necessary moral law which, although transcendental, is abundantly
manifest in our experience of morality, and he seeks to understand its conditions of
possibility. Therefore, he wishes to prove its nature and manifestation. Thus while
Kant pursues a transcendental universal principle in the domain of empirical
appearances, he also sees that this principle shares common ground with the
principle of morality. If we put Kant’s works on epistemology and ethics side by
side, an interesting symmetry becomes evident:
In epistemology, we have thematic progress from the Prolegomena to Any
Future Metaphysics (1783) to the Critique of Pure Reason (1781, 1787) to the
Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786) and finally to the unfinished
Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. In ethics, we have a parallel
development from the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) to the
Critique of Practical Reason (1788) to The Metaphysics of Morals (1797) and
finally to Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798).
This summary shows the development of Kant’s philosophy from the abstract to
the particular. The first two books in both categories concern the fundamental
principles of transcendental or critical philosophy, while the second pair of books
concern the application of these fundamental principles to daily life. For instance,
The Metaphysics of Morals expounds on the application of universal moral laws “to
deal objectively with the particular nature of man as known only by experience, in
order to show in it the consequences of these universal moral principles.”5 The work
is an analysis of practical reason as well as a medium for empirical abstractions, and
is comparable to the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, which concerns
the theory of science, including expositions on natural law and psychology that make
the book not “pure.” The same point applies to the Anthropology from a Pragmatic
Point of View, which deals with particular empirical content involving such topics as
the differences among nations and individuals. Thus the first two books on ethics

5
Kant, and Mary J. Gregor, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 5.
218 8 Ethics: I. Moral Laws

establish universal necessary transcendental moral laws, and together with the first
two books on epistemology they form the essential works of Kant’s critical
philosophy.
The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is more or less comparable to the
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, and is written mainly in an analytic style,
proceeding from moral experience in daily life to its transcendental premises. The
Critique of Practical Reason, on the other hand, is comparable to the Critique of
Pure Reason, and is written in a synthetic style, proceeding from analysis of
transcendental principles. The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals has
received more attention than the Critique of Practical Reason for the reason that it
contains contents that are more commonplace and diverse (contrary to the reception
of the Prolegomena and the Critique of Pure Reason). Some philosophers,
including Schopenhauer and John Silber, regard the Critique of Practical Reason as
inferior by far to the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. However, this view
makes no sense, because apart from its lacking an explication of the thought that
“man is an end in himself,” the content and structure of the Critique of Practical
Reason is more meticulous and precise than that of the Groundwork of the
Metaphysics of Morals. In this chapter, our discussion will be mainly based on the
Critique of Practical Reason, with some references to the Groundwork of the
Metaphysics of Morals.
We have now brought out the contrast between Kant’s two writing styles. As to
the content, Kant’s critique of ethics, like that of epistemology, is directed at the
dual tradition of rationalism and empiricism. However, while in his epistemology
Kant emphasizes especially the criticism of rationalism, the critique of ethics
principally focuses on empiricism. Kant maintains that, unlike the circumstance that
epistemology faces, in ethics, empiricism—which “cuts up at the roots the morality
of intentions” and destroys everything that most distinguishes morality—is the
greatest threat and eliminates the moral characteristics that mark morality. Besides,
even rationalistic ethics with its faith in God eventually leads to experience.6 This is
why he demands that we draw a clear line to exclude any empirical approach to
ethics. As a result, as Kant states, “the first question here then is whether pure
reason of itself alone suffices to determine the will, or whether it can be a ground of
determination only as dependent on empirical conditions.”7 In other words, the first
task of a thorough inquiry is to examine the question whether experience or reason
is the fundamental ground of morality.
The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals categorizes the moral theories of
empiricism and rationalism into empirical principles dedicated to eudaimonia and
rational principles dedicated to perfection. In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant
further classifies these according to different material principles of morality. The table
below exhaustively demonstrates all possible cases of material principles of morality:8

6
Kant and Abbott (1898, 93).
7
Ibid.,143.
8
Ibid., 181–182.
8.1 Against Empirical Eudaemonism 219

SUBJECTIVE
EXTERNAL
Education (Montaigne)
Civil Constitution (Mandeville)
INTERNAL
Physical sensations (Epicurus)
Moral feeling (Hutcheson)
OBJECTIVE
INTERNAL
Perfection (Wolff and the Stoics)
EXTERNAL
Will of God (Crucius and other theological moralists)

Kant explains that the subjective theories “are all empirical and evidently
incapable of furnishing the universal principle of morality.”9 The reason is that they
are determined either by external norms, education, or government; or by innate
human nature, instinctive needs, or physiological desires such as those for happi-
ness or the removal of pain; or by particular moral feelings (e.g., the Englishmen
Shaftesbury and Hutcheson hold that man has an innate sixth sense, a disinterested
moral sense and also a sense of beauty, which can immediately discern and judge
good and evil no less than beauty and ugliness). To Kant, these doctrines more or
less either directly or indirectly attribute moral principles to experience, which has
the unintended effect of making these principles (even the moral feelings mentioned
above are mere experiences of the senses) subjective and arbitrary rather than
universal, necessary, and objectively valid.
On the other hand, the objective theories are based on rationalism, which to Kant
means that while they demand an objective universality from ethics in the form of
“perfection,” they cannot actually determine what they would have to do in order to
be practical principles. Moral perfection, when used to determine morality, reduces
to a meaningless, empty tautology.
Generally speaking, “perfection” refers to the fulfillment or achievement of an
end, though as an internal quality of human beings it should refer to the perfection
of talent or skill.10 However, “talents and the improvement of them, because they
contribute to the advantages of life; or the will of God, if agreement with it be taken
as the object of the will, without any antecedent independent practical principle, can

9
Ibid., 182.
10
There is a lot of shifting in different periods of Kant’s thoughts concerning the relation between
perfection and morality. In the pre-critical period, he combines the Wolffian school and the Brithish
aesthetical doctrine of moral sense, and proposes that perfection means doing one’s best. As a moral
principle, perfection becomes a form. After 1770, Kant replaces perfection with self-legislation and
rejects the doctrine of moral sense. In the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, perfection, as
heteronomy, becomes an empty tautology, while in the Critique of Practical Reason, perfection is
listed among the principles of happiness and criticized. In The Metaphysics of Morals, however, when
expounding on the perfection of moral practice, Kant connects it with morality again.
220 8 Ethics: I. Moral Laws

be motives only by reason of the happiness expected therefrom.”11 In other words,

perfection is reduced to empirical happiness, even if the will of God is treated as a
moral principle. It is for the sake of a blessing that man worships God.
In a nutshell, Kant holds that the objective principles of morality upheld by
rationalism eventually reduce to the subjective happiness of empiricism. Therefore
he need only criticize empiricism, in particular, empirical eudaimonism. Epicurus,
who is warmly commended in the Critique of Pure Reason, becomes the major
target of Kant’s second Critique. Yet Epicurus is merely a convenient target that
Kant sets up for the sake of argument, while his real intention is to attack French
materialism, which is a more prominent modern proponent of eudaimonism. In the
Lectures on Ethics, Kant also presents a table similar to the one we just examined.
On that table, Helvétius, a major representative of French materialism in ethical
theory, occupies the place of Epicurus, which indicates that Epicurus is a mere
cover for Kant’s real object of criticism, which is French materialism. This is the
real situation of philosophical struggle at the time.
French materialism begins from sensualism, holding that good and evil are
fundamentally happiness and pain, which are materially based on feelings. It is
human nature to avoid pain and seek happiness, our supposedly universal interest.
Human beings commit evil deeds because such deeds are advantageous. Here, the
phrase “human beings” refers to individuals. Morality thus reduces to individual
interest. D’Holbach states that “it is the essence of man to love himself; to tend to
his own conservation; to seek to render his existence happy: thus interest, or the
desire of happiness, is the only real motive of all his actions.”12 Morality is thus
nothing more than people’s interrelated common interests. For Helvétius, “the same
interest which influences the judgment we form of actions […] makes us consider
them as virtuous, vicious, or allowable.”13 He says that “whatever disinterested love
we may affect to have, without interest to love virtue, there is no virtue.”14 French
materialism holds that social and public interests, which are based on individual
interests, are the source of moral principles. These materialists call on people to
renounce the fabrications of religion and build up an ethical science on the ground
of enlightened self-interest. Self-interest is natural and material, resembling the
material content and experiential forms of evidence used in the natural sciences.
Helvétius claims that one should “imitate the method of experimental physics to
establish ethics.”15
French materialists attempt to ground ethics on the receptivity of sense organs,
and proceed from notions such as pain, happiness, interest to establish moral
principles. This is the exposition of the moral theory of empirical eudaimonism.

11
Kant, and Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on
the Theory of Ethics, 183.
12
The System of Nature, vol 1, chap 15. Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
13
Helvétius (1970).
14
Helvétius (1969).
15
Helvétius, De L'esprit: Or, Essays On the Mind and Its Several Faculties.
8.1 Against Empirical Eudaemonism 221

Kant opposes this theory with the argument that happiness does not have
objective criteria.
No matter what sort of happiness, be it low or high, sensuous or rational, joy or
mere pleasant feeling, these conceptions of happiness are arbitrary one and all. “The
same man may return unread an instructive book which he cannot again obtain, in
order not to miss a hunt; he may depart in the midst of a fine speech, in order not to
be late for dinner; he may leave a rational conversation, such as he otherwise values
highly, to take his place at the gaming-table; he may even repulse a poor man whom
he at other times takes pleasure in benefiting, because he has only just enough
money in his pocket to pay for his admission to the theatre.”16 Therefore, “it is
every man’s own special feeling of pleasure and pain that decides in what he is to
place his happiness.”17 That which one person regards as happiness might be a pain
to another. Everyone and every historical time has its divergent interpretation of
happiness, which is determined by contingent empirical conditions. There cannot be
universal, necessary, objective content or common criteria.
Kant further points out that happiness is essentially an animal will to live, or a
human nature that avoids pain and seeks happiness. What eudaimonism promotes
is, in fact, a human being’s animal nature. Even higher-level happiness and pleasure
are fundamentally built on the empirical ground of natural sensibility and animal
nature. Therefore, instinct is a more reliable guide to happiness than is reason. That
is why we often see that those who work hard are actually not as happy and joyous
as those who muddle away their days. There is simply no objective universal
validity in the pursuit of happiness, which therefore cannot be a universal, neces-
sary, moral principle and cannot establish any moral law. Kant thinks that any sort
of happiness, regardless of its source (pleasure, talent, health, wealth, power, and so
on), has nothing to do with morality. Talent, virtue, and happiness have their values
that are independent of external values, but they are not the moral good.
Since moral principles that derive from experience cannot be universal, neces-
sary moral laws, Kant claims that only the universal legislative form itself, which is
universal law, is the supreme principle of morality. The legislative form is the true
principle of morality and calls upon us to reject all empirical qualities and sensible
content. Kant explains that “a will which can have its law in nothing but the mere
legislative form of the maxim is a free will […] a free will must find its principle of
determination in the law, and yet independently of the matter of the law. But,
besides the matter of the law, nothing is contained in it except the legislative form.
It is the legislative form, then, contained in the maxim, which can alone constitute a
principle of determination of the [free] will.”18 Kant’s argument on this point
revolves around the refutation of empirical eudaimonism. If we can set nuance
aside, this refutation can be summarized in a table:

16
Kant, and Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on
the Theory of Ethics, 153.
17
Ibid., 157.
18
Ibid., 163.
222 8 Ethics: I. Moral Laws

Eudaimonism: subjective maxim—empirical—happiness—material—human nature—

hypothetical imperatives—desires—effect—instrument—heteronomy—necessary causality—
the world of phenomena.
Kant: objective law—transcendental—morality—legislative form—reason—categorical
imperative—obligation—motive—purpose—autonomy—free will—noumena.

Empirical eudaimonism reduces morality to the pursuit of happiness, and regards

it as human nature. Kant, on the other hand, argues that such a view, which resorts
to human nature, be it natural or social, innate or acquired, cannot establish uni-
versal necessary moral laws. These are possible only by resorting to pure reason
and transcending human nature. Everyone has a different idea of happiness, but
moral laws are properly valid for any rational being, They take the form of cate-
gorical imperatives that every rational being is unconditionally compelled to obey.
This makes morality fundamentally different from hypothetical imperatives, which
are based on individual interests or happiness, and which are always conditional
and relative. Kant argues that “if the action were good merely as a means to
something else, then the imperative is hypothetical; if it is represented as good in
itself, hence necessary, as the principle of the will, in a will that in itself accords
with reason, then it is categorical.”19 He illustrates his point with the observation
that we often tell someone to work hard and live frugally so that he will not suffer
poverty in old age, or we might do this or that good deed because we want to be
praised or profit from it. In such cases, the principle of our deed is a merely
hypothetical imperative of the conditional “if …, then” form. Only a principle of
action that does not mix with empirical desires, feelings, or wishes as its premise or
condition can be the unconditional, categorical imperative of pure practical reason.
A hypothetical imperative is subjectively determined, and one can refuse to obey it
without falling into any inconsistency. For instance, we might perversely but not
inconsistently prefer to be poor in old age than to live frugally when young, or we
could demur from the profit held out by the performance of a certain act and quite
consistently not do it. Therefore, these principles are conditional and relative,
whereas a properly moral principle must be an unconditional imperative that
demands compliance. Even if no one actually obeys the imperative, it is nonetheless
a moral principle with objective, universal validity. Kant holds that the categorical
imperative has this power because it does not arise from sense experience, or from
considerations of individual happiness, but from pure reason. It is the practical
power of pure reason.
Practical reason, which is the ground of moral laws, is not an abstract principle
or law in a cognitive sense, but relates to the will and action on which our daily
actions are dependent, rather than the understanding or knowledge. Hence, Kant
often identifies practical reason with the will. For Kant, will is a rational power
because it is based on reason. It is different from the blind and mysterious but
actually animalistic will to live that Schopenhauer develops into a cosmic being.
Kant conceives of will as a super-biological quality. His Copernican Revolution in

19
Kant, and Mary J. Gregor, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 25.
8.1 Against Empirical Eudaemonism 223

ethics shifts the moral ground from external empirical objects to the will of the
transcendental subject. In the beginning of Chap. 1 of the Groundwork of the
Metaphysics of Morals, Kant states that “there is nothing it is possible to think of
anywhere in the world, or indeed anything at all outside it, that can be held to be
good without limitation, excepting only a good will.”20 So what is this “good will”?
Simply, the absolute obedience to moral laws that originates from pure reason.
Kant believes that the essence of ethics can be grasped only by an investigation
of the moral determinations that express the form of good will.
In order to understand good will, we must discuss the notion of obligation. This
notion contains the concept of good will and stands in sharp contrast to the natural
desires and interests of eudaimonism. Obligation requires that one do what ought to
be done, that is, to obey the categorical imperative. A good will is a will that acts
from duty and obligation. However, if an action is done merely to accord with an
obligation, then that will cannot be called good. For instance, if not from a con-
sideration of his duty but rather merely that of his own long-term interest, a shop-
keeper refrains from deceiving his customers, then although his action is in
accordance with obligation, it is not a moral act. Preserving one’s life is an obli-
gation, but it is also a natural need. Most people cherish life for the latter reason,
which deprives their action of moral significance. Or again, should pain and disaster
render life so burdensome that one would rather die, yet one still carries on with a
strong will instead of committing suicide, this action really was performed for the
sake of obligation and not just in accordance with obligation. Therefore it has moral
value. To be kind to other people out of compassion (love) or to do good deeds for
some ulterior purpose or in the expectation of a good result are all cases of actions
not done for the sake of obligation, and therefore cannot be counted as moral actions.
Evidently, moral obligation is not only distinct from self-interest, but is even in
opposition to it, which makes obligation something truly sublime. Moral laws can
move us only because we possess a rational will that can be motivated to act from
the mere form of a categorical imperative. That same rational will obliges us to
restrain, suppress, and overcome our merely biological existence, including our
wishes and happiness. Kant states that “everything in nature works in accordance
with laws. Only a rational being has the faculty to act in accordance with the
representation of laws, i.e., in accordance with principles, or a will.”21 The origin of
morality does not lie in human nature, i.e., love or hate or happiness. On the
contrary, morality differentiates rational human existence from the survival instinct
or pleasure principle of the animal because it often requires a voluntary sacrifice of
love, hate, happiness, or even life itself; disregards interests and results; and refuses
to submit to natural needs, desires, or wishes. The sacrifice of our sensuous being
for the sake of our rational nature is admirable and honorable.
We make this sacrifice neither for spiritual reputation, pleasure, or satisfaction,
as the French materialists claim, nor for God’s blessing or reward, as theologians

20
Ibid., 7.
21
Ibid., 61.
224 8 Ethics: I. Moral Laws

and rationalists believe. It is simply to obey the moral law that categorically ought
to be obeyed. Empirical human emotions, interests, desires, purposes, and concern
for results must all be abandoned.
What Kant takes pains to make salient is the formal features of such moral
action. This is the keystone of his ethics. Kant confesses that Rousseau taught him
to respect the ordinary man. In fact, morality does not depend on any profound
knowledge, but simply on the will that restrains selfish desires and wishes. To Kant,
the fact that man can voluntarily constrain himself, that there are certain things he
simply will not do, is the very essence and vital expression of our rational will.
Animals do not have such a will, while gods do not need one, having no desires that
need to be constrained. Only the dutiful acts of a sensuous human being demon-
strate this will.
Such action also fully proves the practical power that pure reason possesses.
Morality is not an illusion, but is a reality that human beings abide by daily. “It is
itself a duty to have such a metaphysics, and every human being also has it within
himself, though in general only in an obscure way.”22
Kant holds that ordinary man unknowingly uses metaphysical criteria for
making decisions in everyday life. Although Kant denies there is an organ of moral
sense, nonetheless he sees the human capacity to discern and fulfill our obligations
as a proof of his argument.23 This attitude is actually rather close to the doctrine of
the inner sense, with the difference that what the doctrine of the inner sense attri-
butes to an innate conscience Kant attributes to supersensible reason. It is not
individuality, conscience, instinct, human nature, or natural feelings, but
self-consciousness, universality, and objective reason that Kant emphasizes. In
contrast to eudaimonism, he comprehends more accurately, if perhaps also more
abstractly, the formal distinction between morality and non-morality, which
becomes the basis of all his reasoning. In the last part on methodology (which is in
fact a theory of moral education), from the conclusion of the Critique of Practical
Reason, Kant once again highlights this point:
Yet virtue is here worth so much only because it costs so much, not because it brings any
profit. All the admiration, and even the endeavour to resemble this character, rest wholly on
the purity of the moral principle, which can only be strikingly shown by removing from the
springs of action everything that men may regard as part of happiness. Morality, then, must
have the more power over the human heart the more purely it is exhibited.24
[Morality] infinitely elevates my worth as an intelligence by my personality, in which the
moral law reveals to me a life independent of animality and even of the whole sensible
world, at least so far as may be inferred from the destination assigned to my existence by
this law, a destination not restricted to conditions and limits of this life, but reaching into
the infinite.25

22
The Metaphysics of Morals. Preface to “The Metaphysical Elements of Ethics”.
23
See Critique of Practical Reason.
24
Kant, and Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on
the Theory of Ethics, 367.
25
Ibid., 377.
8.2 Universal Legislative Forms 225

8.2 Universal Legislative Forms

What does Kant mean by formal moral principles, the moral laws, and the cate-
gorical imperative? He stipulated a basic rule, which he called the “Fundamental
Law of the Pure Practical Reason,” which states: “Act so that the maxim of your
will can always at the same time hold good as a principle of universal legislation.”26
In the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant formulates this rule in
simpler language: “What kind of law can it be, whose representation, without even
taking account of the effect expected from it, must determine the will, so that it can
be called good absolutely and without limitation? Since I have robbed the will of
every impulse that could have arisen from the obedience to any law, there is nothing
left over except the universal lawfulness of the action in general which alone is to
serve the will as its principle, i.e., I ought never to conduct myself except so that I
could also will that my maxim become a universal law.”27 “This principle is
therefore also its supreme law: ‘Act always in accordance with that maxim whose
universality as law you can at the same time will.’”28
The “maxim” these passages refer to requires that the empirical content of
properly moral decisions must have such a form as can make the maxim or rule of
our action universally binding on any rational agent. Just as any instance of logical
reasoning must be in accordance with the forms of formal logic (e.g., syllogism) so
as to guarantee the validity of the reasoning, so must moral conclusions be in
accordance with the legislative forms to guarantee their validity.
Therefore, the moral law and the categorical imperative demand that our
empirical decisions and maxims have universal validity. Kant always employs
transcendental forms to regulate empirical content, and in so doing the universal
moral laws become legislative forms. To Kant, whether a man’s action is moral or
not depends on whether its principle or maxim can consistently become a universal
principle binding on all rational agents. In the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of
Morals, he elaborates on this point with several examples. Before presenting his
examples, Kant paraphrases the principle mentioned above: “So act as if the maxim
of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature.”29 In the
first example, Kant asks if, when from misery and despair a man decides to commit
suicide, that decision is moral. Kant believes that the answer depends on whether
the maxim of his action could become a universal law of nature, which Kant
believes is not possible. “One soon sees that a nature whose law it was to destroy
life through the same sensation whose vocation it is to impel the furtherance of life
would contradict itself, and thus could not subsist as nature; hence that maxim

26
Ibid., 377.
27
Kant, and Mary J. Gregor, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 15.
28
Ibid., 44.
29
Ibid., 31.
226 8 Ethics: I. Moral Laws

could not possibly obtain as a universal law of nature, and consequently it entirely
contradicts the supreme principle of all duty.”30
In the second example, Kant asks if, when a person in financial distress makes
promises with the intention of not keeping them, his action can be right. It cannot
be, he says, for “it could never be valid as a universal law of nature and still agree
with itself, but rather it would necessarily contradict itself.”31 The action is immoral
because the promises are lies, and if everybody lied to escape distress, the very
fabric of rational action would be fatally compromised for all. The third example is
about a person who prefers to indulge his appetites rather than trouble himself to
develop his natural talents. The fourth example is about a person who sees poor
people struggling in great hardship and refuses to help them even though he could.
All these maxims of action are immoral because they cannot become universal laws
of nature. Although it is possible, in the third example, to assume a natural law, that
is, to allow the wasting of natural talent, Kant believes that a rational being would
necessarily not wish to have such a law. The fourth example does not negate human
existence, but it would be self- contradictory were it to become a universal law of
nature. It is quite possible that the person who refuses to help others might someday
need help himself. The universal form of his own maxim to withhold assistance
from others would thus lead to his own distress.
Elucidating these four examples has become an occasion for long-winded
arguments among Kant’s commentators. A much disputed question is whether the
universal consistency Kant insists on is truly self-contradictory in the sense of
purely formal logic. Obviously, universalizing the maxims of the first and the third
examples does not lead to a formal contradiction. However, if these maxims are not
purely formal logical contradictions, does that mean something empirical has been
added? Let us illustrate with one of the most debated examples: Kant’s second
example about insincere promises. The utilitarian John Stuart Mill argued that since
“the trustworthiness of human assertion … [is] the principal support of all present
social well-being […] we feel that the violation, for a present advantage, of a rule of
such transcendant expediency, is not expedient.”32 In other words, to lie for the
sake of immediate interest is immoral, because it is not in accordance with the
fundamental interests of society. Such utilitarianism is actually the same thing as
the moral view of eudaimonism, which of course is the opposite of Kant’s view.
Kant believes that it is wrong to lie, because if such a maxim were to become a
universal law of nature, it would be self-contradictory, inasmuch as one promises
something one has no intention of doing. However, is that truly a logical contra-
diction? Obviously, it is not. Just as with the other examples, the second does not
truly lead to a formal contradiction. Kant in fact unconsciously brings in a principle
of psychology and teleology. For instance, why is the failure to develop one’s

30
Ibid., 38–9.
31
Ibid., 39.
32
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism. British utilitarianism as represented by Jeremy Bentham and
Mill is a British version of the eudaimonism of French materialism.
8.2 Universal Legislative Forms 227

natural talent or a decision to commit suicide immoral? Kant is not explicit about
this question, which in fact depends on a material principle of teleology (see
Chap. 10). That the moral law of universal legislation itself is paraphrased as a
“universal law of nature” also contains the same issue. Kant repeatedly emphasizes
that the ground of obligation “is to be sought not in the nature of the human being
or the circumstances of the world in which he is placed, but a priori solely in
concepts of pure reason,”33 and demands that it be distinguished from any empirical
principle. However, he fails to establish this conclusion philosophically and must
fail because it cannot be done. Kant’s moral law is said to be transcendental and
beyond the laws of empirical nature, but as soon as it touches on social phenomena,
he inevitably sneaks in determinations of a non-formal, substantial, even empirical
nature.
So these four examples have caused all sorts of trouble for Kant’s commentators,
who have offered all sorts of explanations, all of which are, in my opinion, either
self-contradictory or otherwise inconsistent. In my opinion, the significance of these
four examples lies in the inconsistency they reveal in Kant’s idea of moral law. The
Critique of Practical Reason, being even more abstrusely theoretical, is more
obscure and its contradictions better hidden than in the Groundwork of the
Metaphysics of Morals, which is delivered in relatively simple language. In addi-
tion, Kant regards the four examples as obligations toward others and oneself, and
as complete and incomplete obligations. Complete obligations, such as not to lie
and not to commit suicide, are phrased in the negation; while incomplete obliga-
tions, such as developing one’s talent and helping others, are affirmatively phrased.
To put it in a modern idiom, the former is a strong command, while the latter is a
soft command. Obligations toward others refers to lying to others and helping
others, while obligations toward oneself refers to suicide and the development of
one’s natural talents. Kant also categorizes hypothetical imperatives and categorical
imperatives into questions, skills and rules, wise advice, and moral commands, etc.
All these are categories of forms, which are rather complicated and tedious, and of
little account. Kant intends to emphasize “the determination of the will” in his
theory of moral principles. Not just the form but the motive must admit of uni-
versalization. To say that Kant’s ethics is a doctrine of motivation rather than of
consequences is not to say that he assumes that morality requires a good nature,
which is just the sort of material principle that he forbids in moral theory. What
Kant emphasizes is the form of motivation, the form of the maxim, which must be
universal. Morality resides neither in actual utilitarian consequences, nor in
admirable motives like love for others or the worship of God. It is true that this
purely formal doctrine of motivation is rather empty, and some scholars regard
universalizability as a merely necessary but not sufficient condition of morality.
This law alone obviously cannot resolve the problem. Therefore Kant posits a
second law, which in fact becomes the pivot of his ethics.

33
Kant, and Mary J. Gregor, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 3.
228 8 Ethics: I. Moral Laws

8.3 The Human Being as the End

The second version of the categorical imperative states, “Act so that you use
humanity, as much in your own person as in the person of every other, always at the
same time as end and never merely as means.”34 To Kant, human beings “are
objective ends,” which he explains as:
…things whose existence in itself is an end, and specifically an end such that no other end
can be set in place of it, to which it should do service merely as means, because without this
nothing at all of absolute worth would be encountered anywhere; but if all worth were
conditioned, hence contingent, then for reason no supreme practical principle could any-
where be encountered.
If, then, there is supposed to be a supreme practical principle, and in regard to the human
will a categorical imperative, then it must be such from the representation of that which,
being necessarily an end for everyone, because it is an end in itself, constitutes an objective
principle of the will, hence can serve as a universal practical law. The ground of this
principle is: Rational nature exists as end in itself.35

He argues that there is an objective ground for a rational person to obey the
categorical imperative because good will does not regulate itself according to any
subjective ends, which presuppose the natural proclivity of the agent in order to
have value—a value that would be entirely relative. Good will is regulated solely by
objective ends with absolute value. The a priori synthetic relation between the
categorical imperative and the will of a rational being makes obligation possible.
Kant originally postulates only one moral law, then deduces the second version
of his categorical imperative from the first. He also expounds on the relation
between these two formulations, puzzling over whether they are mutually consis-
tent. This part of the discussion is extremely musty and has always provoked a lot
of abstruse debate. I do not want to get entangled in subtleties because the important
point is that Kant’s moral law, however abstract and formalistic, must finally
revolve around the human being. The most concrete and intelligible form of the
categorical imperative is implemented in the principle of “the human being as the
end.” As a result, the human being provides a ground for the categorical imperative
and the moral law. In fact, Kant argues that as a sensuous being, a human being has
only a relative value; but, as a rational being, a human being is an end in itself.
Therefore, “the human being as the end” is the transcendental principle that has
universal validity applicable to any empirical condition, and is the clearest form of
the moral law.
Precisely because human beings, as ends in themselves, are all equal, the uni-
versal legislation and universal validity demanded by the categorical imperative are
possible, though this also implies that we have moral obligations toward others but
none toward animals or gods. Kant again cites the fourth example from his first
version of the categorical imperative to explain why acts such as suicide, lying,

34
Kant, and Mary J. Gregor, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 46–47.
35
Ibid., 47.
8.3 The Human Being as the End 229

wasting one’s talents, and not helping others violate the principle of the human
being as an end in itself. One uses oneself (in the case of suicide) or others (in the
case of lying and cheating) merely as means. Commodities, he says, have a price,
while a human being has a dignity that is beyond any price regardless of our use to
others. As a natural being, the human being is not superior to the other animals; but
as a rational being, the human being has a dignity beyond all price.36 The worth of a
human being cannot be estimated in terms of interest or utility. No material wealth
or treasure is comparable to the existence of a human being, even if the former is
sometimes more useful. The utilitarian John Stuart Mill believes that it is right to
persecute and slaughter barbarians because the goal of that violence is progressive,
while the means is only used to serve a noble end. Kant also touches on this topic:
“There are plausible enough arguments for the use of violence on the grounds that it
is in the best interest of the world as whole. […] But all these supposedly good
intentions cannot wash away the stain of injustice in the means used for them.”37
For Kant, the use of violence for a noble goal is immoral because it is not in
accordance with the principle of the human being as an end in itself. Evidently,
when Kant states that the human being is the end, he is not thinking like a utili-
tarian, and still proceeds from the abstract regulation of the pure reason.
Nevertheless, the significance of this proposition in Kant’s ethics lies precisely
in its not being “pure,” but in presenting the demands and trends in a particular
society and reflecting the age of the French Revolution. Kant demands indepen-
dence, freedom, and equality from the old order, raising the banner of pure reason
and the human being as an end in itself. The ruling class of his time treated the
people as worthless animals, mere tools, waging wars for no cause, and slaugh-
tering the innocent for trivial personal reasons or for sport. Kant sighed with pity
and sorely regretted that “many rulers treat their objects as if they were merely an
element of natural order.”38 That is, as if they were not members of the kingdom of
ends, and might instead be used as mere means to achieve the ruler’s desires. It is
under such historical circumstances that Kant presents the doctrine of the human
being as an end. This doctrine has the substantial content of human rights and
democracy, which we shall discuss in detail in the next chapter on Kant’s political
views.39
The moral law can be expressed in at least two ways. The first states that one
must act so that one’s action can become a principle of universal legislation. This
principle is the premise of ethical action, and as that premise it is an objective
principle beyond ethical action. The second states that one must act only on maxims
that have the form of universal legislation, that “your determination makes your
action become an action that can form universal legislation.” This principle belongs

36
The Metaphysics of Morals, “the Metaphysical Elements of the Doctrine of Virtue,” §11.
37
Ibid., §62.
38
“Perpetual Peace.”.
39
It should be noted that Kant carries these abstract principles of ethics over to some particular
experiences, such as pedagogy. See Kant, “On Pedagogy.”.
230 8 Ethics: I. Moral Laws

to ethics itself instead of being beyond it, and is subjective. Kant sets forth no strict
distinction between these two meanings or statements. However, with regard to his
basic doctrine of treating the moral law as superhuman pure reason, it can be said
that he is inclined to favor the first formulation. In the same way, the doctrine of the
human being as an end in itself also has two meanings, depending on whether we
refer to individuals or to humanity as a whole. In his ethical works, Kant obviously
refers to the human being in the second sense, although as an implicit historical
concept, the first meaning is in fact more important (see Chap. 10).
Consequently, a contradiction between the two formulations of his moral law
arises, that is, between the first meaning of the first law and the second meaning of
the second law. On the one hand, the essential feature of the moral law is pure
practical reason, which is indifferent to the contingent existence of human beings
and demands unconditional obedience, and which makes the individual the means
of realizing reason’s moral law. On the other hand, that moral law is said to demand
that the human being must always be treated as an end in itself. A one-sided
emphasis on certain aspects of the two formulations of the moral law has caused
some scholars to regard Kant as a militarist and authoritarian who advocates
absolute obedience, while others see him as a libertarian and individualist who
champions independence and human dignity.40
However, Kant himself attempts to employ a third formulation of the categorical
imperative to unite these two aspects.

8.4 The Autonomy of the Will

According to the third formulation, the categorical imperative is “the idea of the
will of every rational being as a will-giving universal law.”41 This is Kant’s famous
“autonomy of the will.” Moral agents legislate for themselves. The passive formula
“I ought to act in such and such a way” turns into the conscious thought that “I
determine to act in such and such a way.” Kant explains:
That in the order of ends, man (and with him every rational being) is an end in himself, that
is, that he can never be used merely as a means by any (not even by God) without being at
the same time an end also himself, that therefore human being in our person must be holy to
ourselves, this follows now of itself because he is the subject of the moral law, in other
words, of that which is holy in itself […] For this moral law is founded on the autonomy of
his will, as a free will which by its universal laws must necessarily be able to agree with that
to which it is to submit itself.42

40
Modern scholarship has also come up with similar interpretations of Rousseau as either
authoritarian or libertarian.
41
Kant, and Mary J. Gregor, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 45.
42
Kant, and Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on
the Theory of Ethics, 332.
8.4 The Autonomy of the Will 231

In the “Principles of Pure Practical Reason,” the first chapter of Book I of the
Critique of Practical Reason, Kant sets forth four theorems that are not deduced
from the empirical, or from happiness, matter, or heteronomy; that is, they come
from affirmative moral laws to the transcendental, obligatory, formal, and autono-
mous, and thus reach the summit of Kant’s ethical principles.
The term “autonomy” contrasts with “heteronomy.” Heteronomy implies that the
will is determined by other factors such as those Kant listed in the beginning of the
chapter as material incentives: circumstances, happiness, conscience (inner sense),
divine will, and so on. For Kant, all these motives belong to heteronomy, which
renders the action of the will obedient to external factors, rather than to autonomy,
which legislates to itself, and such motives are therefore without moral value. For
instance, conscience, which proceeds from a particular moral feeling, depends on
sensibility to discern, judge, and regulate morality, and ultimately reduces morality
to satisfaction, pleasure, and happiness. Therefore it cannot be autonomous, but
rather heteronomous.
Kant argues that a person’s autonomous will is neither a slave to desires (animal
nature), nor an instrument of the gods; it is neither driven by pleasure, happiness,
and desire, nor controlled by divine will, fate, and conscience. A human being is
neither a mere thing nor a god, but a master who obeys its own legislation. The
moral law arises from absolute obedience as well as self-legislation. It is universally
valid because it treats human beings as ends in themselves. This is the autonomy of
the will, that is, moral freedom.
Kant explicitly states that the three formulations of the moral law are identical
and that they all point at the same center from different directions. The center is the
concept of freedom. All the analyses and arguments Kant sets forth about the moral
law culminate in the concept of freedom, which, in Kant’s ethics, is the complement
to the concept of necessity in his epistemology. Reason legislates for nature, laying
down the law of necessity, and reason legislates in human freedom and moral
action. Freedom is the manifestation of pure reason in moral action.
As a supersensible power of reason, the moral law is a universal, necessary,
categorical imperative and its essence is freedom (the first formulation). The human
being is the end rather than means. As a rational being, the human being is free (the
second formulation); while the autonomy of the will (the third formulation) is the
direct manifestation of freedom. “The concept of freedom is the key to the definition
of autonomy of the will.”43 The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals employs
an analytic method that is illustrated by reflections on everyday moral experience
and eventually reaches the concept of freedom; while the Critique of Practical
Reason, which is written in a synthetic method, proceeds from abstract principles
and concludes that the concept of freedom is “the keystone of the whole building”
in the system of pure reason and the ground for the concepts of the immortality of
the soul and the existence of God.44

43
Kant, and Mary J. Gregor, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 94.
44
See the preface to the Critique of Practical Reason.
232 8 Ethics: I. Moral Laws

We have seen in the previous two chapters that freedom in theoretical reason is
an unreachable idea on the far side of human cognition. It cannot be proved by the
experience of the senses. The natural phenomenon of the human being as a sen-
suous being is entirely subordinate in the chain of necessary causality that is
without any trace of freedom. On the other hand, just as Kant argued in the anti-
nomy of freedom and necessity, this does not altogether eliminate the concept of
freedom or exclude its noumenal reality, which remains possible although prob-
lematic and scientifically incapable of demonstration. Now, in the Critique of
Practical Reason, in the moral domain cut off from empirical desire and all sensible
elements, freedom emerges as the practical moral autonomy of the will. “Here first
is explained the enigma of the critical philosophy, viz.: how we deny objective
reality to the supersensible use of the categories in speculation and yet admit this
reality with respect to the objects of pure practical reason.”45
Kant affirms the objective reality of freedom in the moral law, which he could
not have done in the domain of theoretical reason. However, this freedom is not
abstracted or deduced from empirical facts of conduct. From empirical facts only
necessary causality can be abstracted or deduced. The empirical facts of moral
conduct can only prove the reality of freedom.
Freedom does not belong solely to transcendental reason, which is irrelevant to
everyday human life. We see freedom in action when we observe real, everyday
moral conduct, even though, as an empirical perception, this experience is not a
scientific proof of free will. It is in good will—people’s actions in absolute obe-
dience to the moral law—that freedom manifests its supreme dignity. On the one
hand, then, freedom is the source of the categorical imperative and the ground and
premise of the moral law, while on the other hand, obedience to the moral law
expresses a freedom that would be entirely unknown to us apart from moral action.
Kant in effect makes freedom an effective cause in the world of appearances; it is
a “causality by means of a law which cannot be reduced to any physical law of the
sensible world.”46 Causality is originally a category of epistemology. A causality
that is unrestricted by experience is a meaningless, empty concept in the theory of
knowledge, as we saw in previous chapters. However, such a concept has great
importance in the practical sphere. As causa noumenon, freedom has practical
reality. “The notion of a being that has freedom of the will is the notion of a causa
noumenon.”47 This freedom is unrestricted by experience yet can act on reality. The
category of causality, which is applicable only to appearances in epistemology, is
applicable to noumena in ethics. This is a causa noumenon of objects of
non-knowledge, that is, the cause of human freedom which is beyond the limitation
of causality, i.e., autonomy of the will in morality. In the whole system of critical
philosophy, this is the reason why morality is superior to knowledge, practical

45
Kant, and Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on
the Theory of Ethics, 128.
46
Ibid.,198.
47
Ibid., 205.
8.4 The Autonomy of the Will 233

reason is superior to theoretical reason, unknowable noumena can act upon

appearances, and a free human as a rational being (as a noumenon) is superior to a
human as a being of nature. The superiority of morality to knowledge and of
noumena to appearance lies in people’s freedom of the will as expressed in their
actions, their conscious decisions, and choices. It is also the case for that which is
beyond causality, that “he who knows the impracticable nature of the times and yet
will be doing in them,” in order to conform to the demand of reason. This is a very
important thought in Kant’s critical philosophy, which not only anticipates Fichte’s
use of the ego as an agent to establish the non-ego but also Hegel’s emphasis on the
idea directing the world process, and influences the entire future of ethical thought.
Just as the basic concepts in the Critique of Pure Reason have multiple layers of
meaning, the basic concepts here, especially those of the will and freedom, have at
least two meanings. In The Metaphysics of Morals, Kant explicitly sets forth two
meanings of “the will.” One is Wille, referring to practical reason per se; the other is
Willkür, referring to the self-conscious will of action. The former is the will of
universal legislation, the latter is the will of individual conduct. The former cannot
exist without the latter. Legislation without the law being carried out would be
empty; and without the will of pure practical reason, individual choice loses moral
significance. However, in the Critique of Practical Reason and the Groundwork of
the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant did not make a strict distinction, and the two
meanings are often confused.
The term “freedom” also has a twofold meaning, referring to the moral law as a
whole as well as to the conduct of an individual will.48 In the Critique of Pure
Reason, the term “freedom” already has these two meanings. On the one hand, as
an unknowable thing in itself it is beyond natural causality (the negative meaning);
on the other hand, as a noumenon superior to appearance, it becomes a free
causality, a causa noumenon. These two aspects are also evident in the Critique of
Practical Reason and the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. As the
freedom of the moral law, Kant underlines its transcendence of natural causality,
while as the freedom of individual conduct, he underlines its spontaneity, i.e., it can
be found in the natural causality of experience. In other words, its efficacy is as a
causa noumenon. The freedom of the moral law is practical reason per se, which is
a mere form with no relation to sensuous experience, while the freedom of indi-
vidual action is a spontaneity capable of action in the world of sensuous appear-
ance, even though its essence lies beyond those appearances. True autonomy of the
will requires that transcendental, universal, abstract principles be expressed in
empirical individual action, where there can be autonomy of the will. When the two
aspects are discussed together, the freedom or autonomy of the will is a tran-
scendental practical capacity (i.e., the moral law of universal form) possessed by
pure reason, which categorically and necessarily legislates for itself in individual
action.

48
See Lewis White Beck, A Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason.
234 8 Ethics: I. Moral Laws

It is evident that while Kant treats freedom—moral law—as supersensible pure

reason, nevertheless ethics must be implemented in the human world of sensuous
appearances. If human beings were divine, then all actions would be “right” or
“good” and there would not be any question of “ought.” That “ought” refers to the
necessity of obedience to the categorical imperative and the carrying out of obli-
gations. It precisely explains that the human being, who as a being belonging to the
sensible world, “ought to” (“must”) carry out the order of the noumenal world,
hence moral problems arise. As discussed above, morality originates with freedom
(reason), but “it is morality that first discovers to us the notion of freedom.”49 The
universal and the individual, the transcendental and the empirical, and reason and
sensibility are completely separated in theoretical reason, but are always inter-
mingled in practical reason. Kant argues that pure reason itself has practical power,
yet practice must rely on the sensuous experience of the individual who alone
endows that pure practical reason and its freedom with objective reality. This is the
fundamental reason why there are two different meanings for the concept of free-
dom and why their usages necessarily mingle. In his epistemology, Kant empha-
sizes that transcendental categories must not be separate from experience, yet he
eventually enters into dialectical illusions that are beyond experience. In his ethics,
Kant emphasizes that the moral law must be separate from experience, yet he looks
for the expression of that morality in the action of empirical, sensuous, individual
deeds. Only after Fichte, Schilling, and Hegel is this profound conflict in Kant
finally resolved after the fashion of idealism, to which topic we shall return in the
next chapter.
It must be noted that as Kant understands it, freedom does not imply an
empirical spontaneity in the actual world. Actions, as empirical objects of theo-
retical reason, are just as conditioned by natural causality as anything in nature,
without any trace of freedom, just as the French materialists emphasized. For them,
all human actions are mechanically and necessarily conditioned by the law of
causality, with no room for freedom. D’Holbach argues that a person who is thrown
out of the window acts in no different a manner than if he voluntarily jumps out.
The falling is the same in both cases and no less necessary for the intervention of
a voluntary choice. Kant thinks that such a view inevitably leads to the conclusion
that all moral and legal laws are useless. One may as well reprimand a stone that fell
and wounded a person as reprimand someone’s immoral choice. Criminals could
excuse their crimes by pleading that they were acting under the inexorable com-
pulsion of natural causality. Since all immoral or criminal actions would necessarily
be determined by circumstance, conditions, personality, habits, and so on, no one
would be responsible for their actions and there would be no ground for censure and
punishment.
The reason why Kant proposes his own theory is to denounce the moral view of
mechanical materialism. To him, as empirical objects of knowledge, all actions

49
Kant, and Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on
the Theory of Ethics, 164.
8.4 The Autonomy of the Will 235

indeed have causes and are carried out in time in full conformity with the law of
causality. However, there is always the further question as to whether or not the
agent, as a rational subject, obeyed the moral law in his action. When a person is in
his right mind and acts with full consciousness, the action is autonomous and free.
He can choose to do it or not, and can choose to do it in this or that way. Although a
cause can be found in his final decision, there is freedom for him while he makes
the decision and choice. He can choose to abide by the moral law or not. Hence he
is morally responsible for his action, which is up to him, regardless of circum-
stances or pressure from external or internal conditions. “He judges, therefore, that
he can do a certain thing because he is conscious that he ought, and he recognizes
that he is free.”50
A human being is different from a machine no less than he is different from a
natural animal. In not being blindly or mechanically governed by the law of
causality, our actions are decided and chosen with consciousness and will. As a
sensuous being in the world of appearances, human beings are necessarily subject
to the conditions of time, and their actions are merely parts of the mechanical
system of nature, in conformity with the law of causality.
However, as a noumenal rational being, we are aware of our independence from
all such natural conditions and we are capable of self-legislating rationality. Since
morality is superior to knowledge, as the noumenon is to appearance, freedom, as a
cause, can interfere in nature. As Kant says, I can because I ought to. “Can” means
that I can act in the empirical world, while “ought” refers to my freedom of choice.
The freedom Kant emphasizes is entirely devoid of content and meaning in terms of
empirical psychology. Empirical psychology and consciousness are governed by
natural causality in time, and entirely different from transcendental freedom, which
is beyond both time and laws of causality. This freedom is the supreme principle of
Kant’s doctrine of morality.

8.5 “Kant Only Talked About the Good Will”

Although as Kant himself admits, in his proposed solution for reconciling

appearance and noumenon, or necessity and freedom, “great difficulties present
themselves which seem to render such a combination impracticable.”51 However,
he claims that there is no better solution. The ideas of moral law and obligation built
upon such a conception of freedom, which is entirely separated from experience and
natural causality, are not only a bit mystical, but also lack particular content.
Although Hegel says that “Kant’s philosophy is sublime inasmuch as it asserts the
conformity of duty and reason,”52 he nevertheless sharply criticizes Kant’s ethics

50
Ibid., 165.
51
Ibid., 271.
52
Hegel, Allen W. Wood, and Hugh Barr Nisbet, Elements of the Philosophy of Right,163.
236 8 Ethics: I. Moral Laws

on this ground. Hegel acknowledges that Kant made freedom of reason the ground
for the moral law; that it is “a great advance when the principle is established that
freedom is the ultimate pivot on which man turns; it is the highest point, which
cannot be impressed by anything at all, so that man can accept nothing as authority
insofar as it is directed against his freedom.”53 However, “even if it is stated that it
is concrete in itself, there is the further consideration that this freedom is at first only
the negative of everything else; no bond, nothing external, lays me under an
obligation. It is to this extent indeterminate; it is the identity of the will with itself,
its at-homeness with itself. But what is the content of this law? Here we at once
come back to the lack of content. For the sole form of this principle is nothing more
or less than agreement with itself, universality.”54
Hegel calls Kant’s ethics “empty formalism” because it supplies no criterion for
deciding whether or not a given act is morally obligatory.55 He regards the uni-
versality of the categorical imperative as without content and ridicules it, saying
that “if there is no such thing as property, then it is not respected.”56 Hegel attempts
to translate Kant’s idea of morality from the timeless sphere of pure practical reason
into the historical world of social experience. He idealistically matches Kant’s
transcendental noumenon, freedom, and form to empirical phenomenon, necessity,
and content; and under the logical process of the idealistic, absolute idea, he
connects and unites the regulation of Kant’s transcendental principle of morality,
which is beyond time, with empirical ethical phenomena such as family, civil
society, nation, etc., which are within time. Hegel abandoned the moral charac-
teristics which Kant firmly insisted on. He only considered ethical morality from its
historical aspect, and turned Kant’s internal moral spirit into external ethical norms.
Hegel’s critique of Kant from his idealistic point of view is superior to many later
critics who often merely quibble over whether Kant is a formalist or not. In fact,
Kant is not merely a formalist in ethical theory. In The Metaphysics of Morals, he
specifically presents particular explanations and definitions concerning what is right
or moral.
The main point of Kant’s formalism is that his basic definition of moral law is
not dependent on social and historical conditions. What is indeed “formalistic”
about Kant’s theory is that his basic definition of the moral law is utterly isolated
from social and historical conditions. However, that does not imply that Kant is
ignorant of facts, for example, the relativity of ethics in different cultures. Such
works as the Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View prove that Kant, who
sets great store by experience and is familiar with history, is well aware of these
facts. It is because he wishes to emphasize the grave question of anthropological
ontology—the conscious capacity of human nature—that he separates the universal

53
Hegel, E. S. Haldane and Frances H. Simson, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy.
54
Ibid.
55
Hegel, Allen W. Wood, and Hugh Barr Nisbet, Elements of the Philosophy of Right.
56
Hegel, E. S. Haldane and Frances H. Simson, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy,
461.
8.5 “Kant Only Talked About the Good Will” 237

form from concrete social circumstances and the empirical conditions of time and
space.
The morality of different historical times is often quite different, yet when
individuals are in conflict with the collective interest, every class or group demands,
for the interest of the whole, that individual members sacrifice their private interests
for the greater good.
Revolutionaries are willing to risk death to accomplish their goal, and would
rather die than submit. Fascists and religious extremists also instill in their followers
the moral teaching “die for the righteous cause,” and many loyal followers have
sacrificed their lives for this teaching.
It is true that Kant’s universal legislative form would indeed be empty if it were
merely an external norm without any particular historical effectiveness. However,
Kant’s contribution and the significance of his ethics are found precisely in his
having raised, in however formalistic a way, the question of the cultural-
psychological structure of universal moral necessity. This structure, as a historical
sediment of culture, specifically belongs to the human being. The structure mani-
fests itself in the forms of intuition and the categories of understanding, as well as in
consciousness of the moral law. However, Hegel, Marx, and later Marxists have
neglected this important aspect. As I pointed out in our discussion of epistemology,
Hegel and Marx fail to understand that what Kant proposed is the universal capacity
of human nature, i.e., the cultural-psychological structure, and he continues this
project in what he says about “pure form” in his ethics.
In all these cases, what Kant proposed is the solidification of reason, that is, the
absolute government of reason over sensibility. Anthropological ontology
acknowledges Kant’s great contribution, but also holds that these psychological
structures are not a transcendental reason but rather the accumulation and sedi-
mentation of experience over the long history of human beings. In other words, the
empirical turns into the transcendental, history constructs reason, and psychology
becomes ontology. The sedimentation of social experience constitutes the inner
psychological substance of humankind, corresponding to the external techno-social
substance that is constituted by human history.
Hegel regards Kant’s moral law as empty formalism, but merely breaking away
from specific content is itself a certain content. Marx and Engels comment that Kant
“made the materially motivated determinations of the will of the French bourgeoisie
into pure self-determinations of ‘freedom of the will’, of the will in and for itself, of
the human will, and so converted it into purely ideological conceptual determina-
tions and moral postulates.”57 So dignified are the moral laws, categorical imper-
atives, and freedom of the will in Kant’s mind that they are indeed an abstract
German version of the will of the French bourgeois revolution. For instance, the
idea that the human being is an end in itself, which is the heart of Kant’s ethics, is

57
The German Ideology. Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
238 8 Ethics: I. Moral Laws

not a psychological form, but represents a Germanization of Rousseau’s thought.

Hegel also points out that:
Even Rousseau represented the absolute to be found in freedom; Kant has the same
principle, but taken rather from the theoretic side. […] France possesses the sense of
actuality, of promptitude; because in that country conception passes more immediately into
action, men have there applied themselves more practically to the affairs of actuality. […]
In Germany the same principle asserted the rights of consciousness on its own account, but
it has been worked out in a merely theoretic way. We have commotions of every kind
within us and around us, but through them all the German head quietly keeps its nightcap
on and silently carries on its operations beneath it.58

The French had a political revolution while the Germans had a philosophical
revolution. Rousseau’s freedom and will are directly connected with human feel-
ings and emotions, while Kant’s freedom and will are an entirely super-human pure
reason, with a nevertheless healthy ideality and universality. If we compare
Rousseau’s Social Contract with Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason, we see
clearly the transformation and distinctive characters of the two nations.
In the Social Contract, Rousseau underscores the people’s right to resist tyranny,
and demands a republic based on a social contract and terms of full equality. “Each
of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of
the general will.”59 And “what man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty
and an unlimited right to everything he tries to get and succeeds in getting; what he
gains is civil liberty and the proprietorship of all he possesses.” Over and above all
that we acquire from the civil state, he says, we must add moral liberty, “which
alone makes him truly master of himself; for the mere impulse of appetite is slavery,
while obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty.”60 The people
first legislate, then obey laws they themselves prescribe.
Rousseau’s basic ideas about the opposition to servitude and the demand for
equality are the genuine background and inner significance of Kant’s ideas of
universal legislation, the human being as an end in itself, and the autonomy of the
will. In France, however, both the materialists, who advocated sensual eudai-
monism, and Rousseau, who championed the conscience of the natural man,
eventually reduced moral questions to political issues in the bitter class struggle of
the time. Just as Plekhanov discerned, morality for them “passed entirely into
politics.”61 In Germany the opposite was true, “the impotent German burghers did
not get any further than ‘good will.’ Kant was satisfied with ‘good will’ alone, even
if it remained entirely without result […] Kant’s good will fully corresponds to the
impotence, depression and wretchedness of the German burghers.”62

58
Hegel, E. S. Haldane and Frances H. Simson, Hegel’s Lectures On the History of Philosophy,
425.
59
Rousseau and Gourevitch (1997).
60
Ibid., 54.
61
Plekhanov (1994).
62
The German Ideology. Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
8.5 “Kant Only Talked About the Good Will” 239

Rousseau does not subordinate morality to politics; on the contrary, politics

becomes a part of morality. Rousseau’s general will (a political conception)
becomes the universal legislative form (a moral idea), and Rousseau’s sovereign
principle of free citizenship become the autonomy of the will.63 Marx comments
that “the condition of Germany at the end of the [eighteenth] century is completely
reflected in Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason.”64 As the forerunner of political
revolution in France and Germany, Kant’s philosophy was “the German theory of
the French Revolution.” The opposite of Marx’s view might actually be true; that is,
precisely because of its underdevelopment, depravity, and impotence, the revolu-
tionary reality that is charged with blood, violence, and disgrace can be overlooked
or even retrospectively sublimated and purified in the minds of outstanding people
and in moral theories that are full of ideals, light, and sublimity.
In a letter to Kant thanking him for sending a copy of his Religion within the
Boundaries of Mere Reason, J. G. C. Kiesewetter wrote that “a system of duties and
of various rights (for example, the right of property) is so fraught with difficulties,
not successfully solved by any previous system, that everyone is truly anxious to
see your system of morality appear, and all the more so just now, since the French
Revolution has stimulated a mass of such questions anew. I believe that there are
many interesting things to be said about the rationality of the basic principles on
which the French Republic bases itself, if only it were prudent to write about such
things.” Indeed, after published Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason,
Kant wrote a series of important treatises including “The End of All Things,”
“Perpetual Peace,” “The Conflict of the Faculties,” and The Metaphysics of Morals.
These works show that Kant’s philosophical revolution is the sublime quintessence
of the rational principles of the French Revolution. Despite the fact that Kant wrote
his moral philosophy before the Revolution, he had not cut himself off from reality.

8.6 The Concepts of Good and Evil and Moral Feeling

If we were to say that “truth” (that the object is in conformity with knowledge) is
the question that Kant discusses in epistemology, that is, in the Critique of Pure
Reason, then “the good” (the moral law in conformity with actions) is the topic of
Kant’s ethics, that is, the Critique of Practical Reason. The moral law is merely
supersensible pure form, and when it involves actions in reality, the question of
good and evil arises. This is why Kant states that, as concepts, good and evil are the
objects of practical reason. The term “object” here does not mean natural things or
causality in time and space, but rather “the idea of an object as an effect possible to

63
In his later treatises on politics and rights, Kant expressed these ideas of Rousseau’s in a mild
reformist tone. See the next chapter. Both the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and the
Critique of Practical Reason were written before the French Revolution.
64
The German Ideology. Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
240 8 Ethics: I. Moral Laws

be produced through freedom … [and] only the relation of the will to the action by
which the object or its opposite would be realized.”65 In other words, good and evil
are effects brought about by freedom in determining human action, where the
“object” means action per se and its effect. Here the question arises as to where the
concepts of good and evil come from.
Kant believes that these concepts cannot be derived from experience, but can
only arise from transcendental reason and the moral law.
First comes the moral law, then concepts of good and evil, and this order cannot
be reversed. Kant argues that “the concept of good and evil must not be determined
before the moral law (which seems as if it must be the foundation), but only after it
and by means of it.”66 Additionally, “we should have found that it is not the concept
of good as an object that determines the moral law and makes it possible, but that,
on the contrary, it is the moral law that first determines the concept of good and
makes it possible, so far as it deserves the name of good absolutely.”67 To suppose
that the concept of good determined the moral law would reduce that law to
empirical eudaimonism, where good and evil are associated with the sense expe-
rience of happiness and pain. “The philosopher who thought himself obliged to
make a feeling of pleasure the foundation of his practical judgments would call that
good which is a means to the pleasant, and evil, what is a cause of unpleasantness
and pain.”68
Hence, good and evil are not merely happiness (pleasure) or misfortune (pain).
The concepts of good and evil apply first all to action, referring to the fact whether
or not an action as an object (an actual object), that manifests the moral law. This is
the thesis that Kant argues over and over again in his ethics, and illustrates with the
example of the ancient Greek Stoic “who in the severest paroxysms of gout cried
out: ‘Pain, however thou tormentest me, I will never admit that thou art an evil
(kakov, malum)’: he was right. A bad thing it certainly was, and his cry betrayed
that; but that any evil attached to him thereby, this he had no reason whatever to
admit, for pain did not in the least diminish the worth of his person, but only that of
his condition. If he had been conscious of a single lie, it would have lowered his
pride, but pain served only to raise it, when he was conscious that he had not
deserved it by any unrighteous action by which he had rendered himself worthy of
punishment.”69
For Kant, a human being, as a sensible and actual existence, needs to look out
for misfortune and take care of happiness for the sake of his natural existence and
development. It is also necessary that his reason carefully examines the conditions
of misfortune and happiness.

65
Kant, and Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on
the Theory of Ethics, 209.
66
Ibid., 271.
67
Ibid., 219.
68
Ibid., 211.
69
Ibid., 214.
8.6 The Concepts of Good and Evil and Moral Feeling 241

However, a human being is more than a biological being, and the distinction
between human beings and animals, as between the freedom of the will and the
determination by natural causality, lie precisely in the question of whether the will
determines human action to obey the moral law or follows natural need or pleasure
and pain. Kant argues:
Man is a being who, as belonging to the world of sense, has wants, and so far his reason has
an office which it cannot refuse, namely, to attend to the interest of his sensible nature, and
to form practical maxims, even with a view to the happiness of this life, and if possible even
to that of a future. But he is not so completely an animal as to be indifferent to what reason
says on its own account, and to use it merely as an instrument for the satisfaction of his
wants as a sensible being. For the possession of reason would not raise his worth above that
of the brutes, if it is to serve him only for the same purpose that instinct serves in them; it
would in that case be only a particular method which nature had employed to equip man for
the same ends for which it has qualified brutes, without qualifying him for any higher
purpose. No doubt once this arrangement of nature has been made for him he requires
reason in order to take into consideration his weal and woe, but besides this he possesses it
for a higher purpose also, namely, not only to take into consideration what is good or evil in
itself, about which only pure reason, uninfluenced by any sensible interest, can judge, but
also to distinguish this estimate thoroughly from the former and to make it the supreme
condition thereof.70

I quote this long passage not only because its unusual clarity serves well in place
of my own tedious explanation, but also because it raises the question of the
summum bonum and the conflict between our obedience to the moral law and the
pursuit of happiness, which will be the topic of the next chapter. Kant sees the
distinction between good and evil on the one hand, and the natural weal and woe of
the animal on the other, as confirming human beings’ essential difference from the
beasts. It is evident that good and evil are not natural attributes revealed in sense
experience. Good means obedience to the moral law, while evil means the maxims
of action that are deliberately chosen in violation of the moral law. Kant explains
that “the proposition: Man is bad, can only mean: He is conscious of the moral law,
and yet has adopted into his maxim (occasional) deviation therefrom. He is by
nature bad is equivalent to saying: This holds of him considered as a species; not as
if such a quality could be inferred from the specific conception of man (that of man
in general) (for then it would be necessary).”71
Evil is an individual propensity against society. We shall have occasion to return
to this statement in the next chapter when we discuss Kant’s view of history. What
should be noted here is that Kant stresses that morality and good actions are
irrelevant to happiness and pleasure, even to the point of deprecating the latter so as
to render the former all the more glorious. Chinese Neo-Confucians, who advocate
maintaining the heavenly principles and eradicating human desires, also believe that
the good of the heavenly principles is irrelevant or even antagonistic to sensible
happiness or desire. This view, in its psychological form, is rather similar to Kant’s

70
Ibid., 216.
71
Ibid., 400.
242 8 Ethics: I. Moral Laws

view. However, the society, historical time, and specific social class content of the
two views are entirely different. Chinese Neo-Confucianism identifies the heavenly
principles (the moral law) with a Confucian ethical code, especially the three car-
dinal guides and five constant virtues, and the social norms of feudalism constitute
the specific content of the good and the heavenly principles; whereas Kant’s phi-
losophy places freedom, equality, and human rights at the heart of the moral law.72
Kant’s philosophy exhibits the German idiosyncrasy that inclines him to attack
the eudaimonism and empiricism of French materialism while seeking a compro-
mise with mysticism. He holds that mysticism “proposes to provide for the moral
concepts actual intuitions, which, however, are not sensible (intuitions of an
invisible Kingdom of God), and thus plunges into the transcendent.” Nevertheless,
when compared to empiricism, which “cuts up at the roots the morality of inten-
tions,” such mysticism “is quite reconcilable with the purity and sublimity of the
moral law.”73
In his epistemology Kant employs an “idealism of form (transcendental)” in
distinction to an “idealism of matter.” In his ethics he also resorts to a “rationalism
of form” to mark his distinction from the “rationalism of matter.” In both cases,
Kant raises the banner of reason against empiricism. Notwithstanding the similarity
of the two approaches, in his epistemology Kant proceeds from sensibility to
concepts of the understanding, and finally to reason, while in his ethics he proceeds
from reason (the moral law, that is, freedom) to concepts (good and evil) and finally
to sensibility in the form of moral feelings. When the moral law is directed to
specific objects, it determines the meaning and content of the concepts of good and
evil; and when it affects people’s empirical, subjective mental states, it becomes
moral feeling. Just as Kant holds that good and evil cannot precede the moral law,
but rather the reverse, so he emphasizes that moral feeling cannot precede the moral
law, but rather the reverse. And as he distinguishes good and evil from pleasure and
pain, Kant also distinguishes moral feeling from other feelings such as compassion
and conscience that would seem rather specious as moral feelings.
Kant holds that our love, hatred, and all other impulses are based on feelings and
are nothing but self-interest. This self-interest in turn can be categorized into
“self-love,” “arrogance,” etc. Kant believes that these cannot possibly be moral
feelings. “There is here in the subject no antecedent feeling tending to morality.”74
In other words, moral feeling attempts to restrain such sentiments as self-love and
arrogance. Only with these sentiments restrained can the positive moral feelings of
reason emerge. Such a feeling, he says, “may also be called a feeling of respect for
the moral law.”75 This feeling, arising from the recognition that the objective moral

72
See my “Essay on Neo-Confucianism,” Chinese Social Science, vol. 1, 1982 for a comparison
between Neo-Confucianism and Kant’s philosophy.
73
Kant, and Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on
the Theory of Ethics, 404.
74
Ibid., 239.
75
Ibid., 239.
8.6 The Concepts of Good and Evil and Moral Feeling 243

law is superior to subjective impulse, is based on rational judgment and arouses a

feeling of respect. Moral feeling arises from neither an innate inner sense, nor from
conscience or natural desire, but only from the influence and effect of the moral law
on our mental state.
Therefore, this moral feeling of “respect” is not at all the same as happiness. On
the contrary, it comes with a bit of pain because the feeling of respect implies a
sense of inferiority before the moral law, and requires the suppression of
self-interest. On the other hand, awareness of the sublime moral law towering above
oneself and above one’s animal nature induces feelings of admiration and aston-
ishment, while restraining self-interest in deference to the moral law conveys a
sense of pride in one’s being able to rise above the world. There are unhappy,
painful feelings due to the suppression of self-interest, yet also proud, noble feel-
ings because one is able to achieve such a suppression. Kant holds that these two
psychological factors, negative and positive, constitute the features of moral feeling,
which is not a matter of natural likes and dislikes but a conscious, rational feeling.
Contrary to empiricism, which regards intelligence as the slave of feelings, Kant
maintains that reason rather than desire governs our moral actions, and that reason
rather than human nature is the source and origin of morality. Therefore, it can be
said that the moral feeling is an emotional product of reason’s overcoming the
naturalness of human nature, and morality’s overcoming desire. To French mate-
rialists, human nature is naturality.
A god would have no need of moral feeling. Only in the human heart is moral
feeling required to motivate obedience to the moral law. The moral feeling of
respect, characterized by dignity, also only applies to human beings and not to mere
things. Things can be admired because of their magnificence or magnitude, and
human beings can also excite such feelings as admiration, fear, and love because of
our talent, knowledge, courage, happiness, and wealth. But what arouses the moral
feeling of respect is only our moral character. As Kant says:
A man also may be an object to me of love, fear, or admiration, even to astonishment, and
yet not be an object of respect. His jocose humour, his courage and strength, his power
from the rank he has amongst others, may inspire me with sentiments of this kind, but still
inner respect for him is wanting. Fontenelle says, “I bow before a great man, but my mind
does not bow.” I would add, before an humble plain man, in whom I perceive uprightness
of character in a higher degree than I am conscious of in myself—my mind bows whether I
choose it or not, and though I bear my head never so high that he may not forget my
superior rank. Why is this? Because his example exhibits to me a law that humbles my
self-conceit when I compare it with my conduct: a law, the practicability of obedience to
which I see proved by fact before my eyes.76

Kant points out that even without any outward sign of respect, “we cannot help
feeling it inwardly.”77 It is because the moral feeling of respect arises from the
sublimity of the moral law, the categorical imperative, and duty. Kant sings the
praises of the idea of duty:

76
Ibid., 241.
77
Ibid.
244 8 Ethics: I. Moral Laws

Thou sublime and mighty name that dost embrace nothing charming or insinuating, but
requirest submission, and yet seekest not to move the will by threatening aught that would
arouse natural aversion or terror, but merely holdest forth a law which of itself finds
entrance into the mind, […] a law before which all inclinations are dumb, even though they
secretly counterwork it; what origin is there worthy of thee? […] It can be nothing less than
a power which elevates man above himself (as a part of the world of sense), […] This
power is nothing but personality, that is, freedom and independence on the mechanism of
nature.78

These infectious lines, rare in Kant’s abstract and dry critical philosophy,79
betray his contempt for powerful aristocrats and his longing for freedom and
independence, and they reflect the spirit of the age of revolution, even if the
emotion expressed in these lines is cut off from particular social content. It is said
that in his lectures on ethics, the audience was moved to tears by Kant’s exposition
on the moral law and moral feeling. The Critique of Practical Reason was pub-
lished a year before the tumultuous unfolding of the revolutionary reality in France
in 1789.
The colossal contribution Kant made in ethics is his unrelenting insistence that
morality is not rooted in happiness, pleasure, or self-interest, but rather solely in the
categorical imperative, which transcends empirical sensibility. Human action is
obliged to obey the categorical imperative. As stated earlier, this view reveals
morality as a social totality demanding, regulating, and commanding the con-
sciousness of the individual. The power of morality shines all the brighter when it is
in conflict with happiness, pleasure, and private interest. This thought of Kant’s is
very profound because it reveals the essential character of morality. From the
viewpoint of cultural anthropology and folklore, taboo can be seen as the moral law
of primitive society. The well-known anthropologist Richard Leakey holds that the
key for the evolution from ape to human is the sharing of food and work.80 The
Chinese sage Xunzi also said the same thing about the difference between human
beings and animals, that li (rite) was invented to mediate differences among people
and to reinforce sharing.81 Is not li an early form of ethical morality that demands
self-control in the service of “returning to the rites”? From the perspective of child

78
Ibid., 257.
79
Kemp Smith compared the two critiques and commented that “in the Critique of Pure Reason
Kant is meticulously scrupulous in testing the validity of each link in his argument. Constantly
he retraces his steps; and in many of his chief problems he halts between competing solutions.
Kant’s sceptical spirit is awake, and it refuses to cease from its questionings. In the Critique of
Practical Reason, on the other hand, there is an austere simplicity of argument, which advances,
without looking to right or left, from a few simple principles direct to their ultimate consequences”
(Smith 1930).
80
See Leakey and Lewin (1977).
81
Xunzi: “How did ritual principle arise? I say that men are born with desires which, if not
satisfied, cannot but lead men to seek to satisfy them. If in seeking to satisfy their desires men
observe no measure and apportion things without limits, then it would be impossible for them not
to contend over the means to satisfy their desires” (“Discouse on Ritual Principles,” trans. John
Knoblock).
8.6 The Concepts of Good and Evil and Moral Feeling 245

psychology, obedience to social orders (which are universal and rational) restrains
natural desires (which are individual and sensible), while not being dominated by
appetitive desires is the beginning of the cultivation of the moral will and moral
feeling. Both forms of discipline gain support from empirical facts. Certainly this
topic is also related to issues of ethical absolutism and relativism, to which we shall
direction our attention in the next chapter.

References

Helvétius. 1969. A Treatise on Man: His Intellectual Faculties and His Education, 319. New
York: B. Franklin.
Helvétius. 1970. De L’esprit: Or, Essays on the Mind and its Several Faculties, xxiv. New York:
B. Franklin.
Kant, and Thomas Kingsmill Abbott. 1898. Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works
on the Theory of Ethics. New York: Longmans, Green and co.
Kant, and Mary J. Gregor. 1998. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 5. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Leakey, Richard E., and Roger Lewin. 1977. Origins: What New Discoveries Reveal about the
Emergence of our Species and its Possible Future. New York: Dutton.
Plekhanov. 1994. The Development of the Monist View of History. Marx Engels Internet Archive.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, and Victor Gourevitch. 1997. Rousseau: The Social Contract’ and Other
Later Political Writings, 50. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Smith, Norman Kemp. 1930. A Commentary to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, ix. London:
Macmillan.
Chapter 9
Ethics: II. Views on Religion, Politics,
and History

9.1 The Antinomies of Practical Reason and the Summum

Bonum

Kant sees the moral law as a categorical imperative not because we are rational
beings but because we are sensible, biological beings who need practical reason to
restrain natural desire. On the other hand, since it is human nature to pursue
happiness and satisfy natural desires, it is also our duty to look after our own
well-being. Practical reason does not demand from us that we cast happiness aside.
The resolution of this contradiction is the gist of the Dialectic of Pure Practical
Reason.
In epistemology, theoretical reason cannot transcend experience without falling
into dialectical illusions and antimonies, even if such an effort of transcendence is
an inevitable tendency of our minds. In ethics, practical reason as the moral law
must not be jumbled up with experience, as such a confusion results in another sort
of antimony in the domain of practice; even though it is once again inevitable that
something transcendent (the moral law) should cast a shadow over experience, for
in no other way can it have any meaning in concrete, empirical everyday life. The
antimony of happiness and virtue arises because the moral law and practical reason
must apply to a sensuous, natural being. Kant attempts to use the concept of
summum bonum to resolve this antimony. Certainly, the term “happiness” refers to
an existential state of physical and mental pleasure relative to the human being’s
sensuous nature.
Theoretical reason requires purely rational ideas to regulate the pursuit of
unconditional totality, and in the same way, practical reason requires a rational idea of
the summum bonum (highest good) to regulate its own pursuit of totality. This
summum bonum, the supreme and unconditional good, includes virtue and happiness.
Virtue only becomes the “highest good” when it is combined with happiness. But this
is only one of its aspects, it is not the summum bonum. The summum bonum must
include an unconditional totality that takes happiness into account. This combination,

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 247

Z. Li, A New Approach to Kant, Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy
of Traditions and Cultures 27, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0239-8_9
248 9 Ethics: II. Views on Religion, Politics, and History

the totality of virtue and happiness, is the highest end of ethics and of every finite
rational being.
Practical reason demands the unity of morality and happiness, even though
experience is not able to ensure their necessary connection. The relation between
morality and happiness is neither a priori analytic nor posteriori synthetic. If it were
analytic, it would be a logical identity, in which case the injunction to virtue would
be no different than an injunction to happiness, which is not at all the case. If their
connection were synthetic and a posteriori, that is, in accordance with the law of
causality, it would depend on empirical regularity and could not be established as
universal or necessary. The Stoics and Epicureans of ancient Greece represent two
distinctive views on the relation of morality to happiness. The Stoics held that virtue
is the good itself and happiness is merely the subject consciously doing virtuous
deeds. Consequently they defined virtue as the summum bonum. The Epicureans
saw happiness (pleasure) as the summum bonum, while virtue was merely a means
to attain happiness. Both schools saw virtue and happiness as either the same or
causally related, and Kant faults both schools.
In the previous chapter we explained Kant’s opposition to the Epicureans’
method of proceeding from empirical principles to deduce morality from happiness.
On the other hand, Kant also rejects the effort to deduce happiness from morality,
because happiness happens in accordance with objective laws of causality, which
are entirely different from the moral law. The moral law cannot interfere with the
coming and going of happiness. As Kant points out, experience gives abundant
evidence that virtue and happiness often diverge rather than going hand in hand.
The virtuous are not necessarily happy, while happy people can be wicked.
Therefore, on the one hand, unlike the Epicureans, Kant holds that morality
cannot be based on happiness; on the other hand, unlike the Stoics, he believes that
happiness is not a necessary product of morality. Morality and happiness simply
have no inevitable connection in empirical reality, and to think that they do, or
must, merely leads to antinomy:
Consequently either the desire of happiness must be the motive to maxims of virtue, or the
maxim of virtue must be the efficient cause of happiness. The first is absolutely impossible,
because (as was proved in the Analytic) maxims that place the determining principle of the
will in the desire of personal happiness are not moral at all, and no virtue can be founded on
them. But the second is also impossible, because the practical connection of causes and
effects in the world, as the result of the determination of the will, does not depend upon the
moral dispositions of the will, but on the knowledge of the law of nature and the physical
power to use them for one’s purposes; consequently we cannot expect in the world by the
most punctilious observance of the moral laws any necessary connection of happiness with
virtue adequate to the summum bonum.1

To the French materialism, as Plekhanov commented, “the new morality rein-

stated the flesh, reinstated the rights of the passions, and made society responsible
for the misfortunes of its members […] to set up the Kingdom of Heaven here on

1
Kant, and Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on
the Theory of Ethics, 304.
9.1 The Antinomies of Practical Reason and the Summum Bonum 249

Earth. Therein lay its revolutionary side.”2 For Kant, the opposite is true. Morality
has nothing to do with happiness, and does not establish the kingdom of heaven on
earth, but raises happiness up to heaven.
Kant was faithful to the purity of the moral law, but he was not able to evade the
question of pursuing worldly happiness in this life. We have seen in the previous
chapter that Kant used the development of one’s talents and the extension of help to
others as examples of moral duty. This point is made all the more prominent and
clear when compared to his procedure in The Metaphysics of Morals, where he
argues using additional empirical materials. In the Anthropology from a Pragmatic
Point of View, Kant proposes the “physical good” as a natural good (as opposed to
the moral good, that is, good will). This approach smuggles the moral principle of
matter into the pure form of the moral law, which Kant calls the anthropological
principle of happiness. In other words, it is both the goal of human natural existence
to develop our talents and to help others, and a good in itself as well. Hence, there
are two kinds of the good for Kant. One of these is limited to form, i.e., the moral
law and the moral good, which arises from pure reason and constitutes the heart of
Kant’s ethics; the other is material, i.e., happiness, about which Kant does not say
as much as we might wish, though his most useful discussion comes in his views on
human history. Most of Kant’s commentators overlook or ignore this latter aspect.
However, from the point of view of the history of philosophy, it has been rather
important. It is precisely this aspect that turns Kant’s antimony into Hegel’s pro-
found historical dialectic and turns subjective illusion into objective logic. We shall
return to this point later.
Near the end of the Critique of Pure Reason, in the section entitled “The Ideal of
the Highest Good as a Determining Ground of the Ultimate End of Pure Reason,”
Kant states that “all the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical,
combine in the three following questions: What can I know? What ought I to do?
What may I hope?”3 The first question is merely speculative, the second purely
practical, and the third both practical and theoretical. The first is a question of
epistemology, the second one of ethics, while the third belongs to religion. Kant
admits that “all hoping is directed to happiness.”4 Ethics does not aim at happiness,
however, and “it is only when religion is added that there also comes in the hope of
participating some day in happiness in proportion as we have endeavoured to be not
unworthy of it.”5 This is why in the Critique of Practical Reason the summum
bonum, which is the unity of virtue and happiness, becomes the final settling place
of Kant’s ethics and points toward religion. The concept of the summum bonum,
however, is not the heart of Kant’s ethics, as is maintained by John Silber.6 In fact,

2
Essays on the History of Materialism. Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
3
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A805/B833.
4
Ibid., A805/B833.
5
Kant, and Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on
the Theory of Ethics, 329.
6
See Silber (1963).
250 9 Ethics: II. Views on Religion, Politics, and History

the heart of Kant’s ethics is the moral law. While the concept of the summum
bonum is ultimately of religious significance, it seems to me that its importance lies
in its exposing the conflict in Kant’s ethics and in the whole development of his
thought, a conflict that is inevitable when trying to coordinate or combine the
supersensible realm of pure reason with sensible human activities. Kant’s solution
to the conflict is to return to faith and religion.
Hegel, however, finds a historical solution.
Kant maintains that the relation between virtue and happiness is neither a pos-
teriori synthetic, nor a priori analytic. Their relation can only be found in the a priori
synthetic summum bonum. In the Critique of Pure Reason, he proposed the dis-
tinction between noumena and appearances to resolve the antimony of freedom and
necessity. Kant again employs this method to resolve the antimony between virtue
and happiness. That happiness cannot produce virtue, and that virtue cannot pro-
duce happiness is true only relative to empirical causality in the sensible world.
However, it is possible for virtue to produce happiness in the noumenal order of the
supersensible world. “As I am not only justified in thinking that I exist also as a
noumenon in a world of the understanding, but even have in the moral law a purely
intellectual determining principle of my causality (in the sensible world), it is not
impossible that morality of mind should have a connection as cause with happiness
(as an effect in the sensible world) if not immediate yet mediate (viz., through an
intelligent author of nature), and moreover necessary.”7 Such unity is rare in the
sensible world, and only in the supersensible world of the understanding can the
unity be considered necessary. In setting forth the so-called postulates of practical
reason, namely, the immortality of the soul and the existence of God, Kant
emphasizes once again that practical reason is superior to theoretical reason. These
postulates, he says, are the necessary postulates for the realization of the summum
bonum.
Kant holds that a human being’s moral action presupposes the freedom of the
will, that holiness presupposes the immortality of the soul, and that the attainment
of the summum bonum presupposes the existence of God. Consequently, what is
banished by theoretical reason is invited back again by practical reason. Kant
maintains that freedom, immortality, and God are necessary for practical faith in
human action. The possibility of these postulates “no human intelligence will ever
fathom, but the truth of which, on the other hand, no sophistry will ever wrest from
the conviction even of the commonest man.”8 Kant’s frequent resort to the con-
victions of the common people is actually a return to religion. Illusory ideas that
cannot be proved in theory become moral premises in order to enjoy objective
reality in practice. Although Kant is aware that such faith cannot be knowledge, he
is convinced that it is based on a veritable “need” that is no less compulsive than
scientific knowledge. As Kant himself puts it: “That it is only in an endless progress

7
Kant, and Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on
the Theory of Ethics, 305.
8
Ibid., 336.
9.1 The Antinomies of Practical Reason and the Summum Bonum 251

that we can attain perfect accordance with the moral law, is of the greatest use, not
merely for the present purpose of supplementing the impotence of speculative
reason, but also with respect to religion.”9
The postulate of the immortality of the soul is necessary for moral perfection,10
whereas the postulate of the existence of God is required to unite virtue and hap-
piness. Only virtue can give us the happiness we deserve, and such happiness can
only be received from the hand of God. While the existence of God is the cause of
our obtaining the happiness that is commensurate with our virtue. Originally, ethics
dwelt solely in the moral law and rejected the question of happiness. Only religion
gives us the hope that some day we may have the happiness that virtue has made us
worthy of. But since this happiness is often unattainable in this life, its reality
depends on the reality of the kingdom of heaven in the future. Therefore, all these
beliefs require faith in God. The unity of virtue and happiness, since it can neither
be realized in the finite sensible world nor proved by theoretical reason, can only be
entrusted to the summum bonum, while the guarantee of the summum bonum
depends entirely on the existence of God. Therefore this postulate is a necessary
condition for the possibility of the summum bonum. Kant explains that “faith
demanded by practical reason can be called hypothesis.”11 The existence of God
becomes a “faith of pure practical reason.” Kant thus ends his critique of practical
reason and enters the realm of religion. He claims that “in this manner, the moral
laws lead through the conception of the summum bonum as the object and final end
of pure practical reason to religion.”12 Kant argues that “ethics issues, then,
inevitably in religion by extending itself to the idea of an Omnipotent Moral
Lawgiver, in whose will, that is the end of the creation, which at the same time can
and ought to be likewise mankind’s chief end.”13 Both Kant and Hegel raise
Christian doctrines high. After comparing the doctrines of Christianity with the

9
Ibid., 318.
10
The summum bonum is the unity of virtue and happiness. In order to achieve the summum
bonum, the highest good of virtue must be first achieved, that is, one must pursue moral perfection
first of all. However, morality cannot be exhausted and must endlesssly progress, while we human
beings are mortal. Therefore, only with the faith that our character can and will continue forever
can the perfect unity of the individual will and the moral law be achieved. Kant explains that “he
may hope for a further unbroken continuance of the same, however long his existence may last,
even beyond this life, and thus he may hope, not indeed here, nor in any imaginable point of his
future existence, but only in the endlessness of his duration” (Critique of Practical Reason). Some
commentators criticize Kant for speaking of reality and infinite progress in the same breath, since
such reality can never actually be realized. Others attempt to save Kant by resorting to ideas about
mathematical infinity (see S.Körner’s Kant). Kant’s definition is actually rather clear, that it is “an
idea that can be contained only in an endless progress and its totality, and consequently is never
fully attained by a creature” (Kant, and Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, Kant’s Critique of Practical
Reason and Other Works on the Theory of Ethics, 320).
11
“What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?” II.
12
Kant, and Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on
the Theory of Ethics, 328.
13
Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason.
252 9 Ethics: II. Views on Religion, Politics, and History

ideas of the Greek schools, Kant believes that Christianity is the superior morality,
with a higher level of holiness than the prudence of the Epicureans or the wisdom of
the Stoics.14 In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant expounded on the distinction
among knowledge, faith, and opinion, while in the Lectures on Logic, he also stated
that to know is to judge something and hold it to be true with certainty, to opine is
to judge something incompletely, while to believe is to accept something without a
subjective necessity according to logical concepts, therefore it has subjective
binding force.
Hegel goes further. As an absolute idealist he is not content with Kant’s doctrine
of morality-religion, which has only a subjective binding force, nor is he content
with the hypothetical nature of Kant’s whole treatment of the summum bonum.
Hegel argues that it is totally unrealistic for Kant to resort to the concept of sum-
mum bonum to resolve the conflict between moral form and natural desire. “[The
postulate] allows the conflict to remain as it is all the time, and expresses only in the
abstract that the reconciliation ought to come about. […] God is to him, therefore,
only a faith, a belief, which is only subjectively and not absolutely true.”15 Hegel
maintains that Kant’s postulate “contradicts the fact that morality really consists in
reverence for the law simply for its own sake.”16 In fact, what Hegel opposed is not
that Kant advocates religious faith, but rather that he does not go further, but merely
attempts to establish the existence of God as a reasonable matter of subjective faith.
Hegel holds that the existence of God, instead of lingering in the realm of subjective
belief, has genuine objective reality. Hegel compares Jacobi with Kant, com-
menting that even though, as a way to regulate God, the question of what God is
cannot be answered with the infinite, universal, and undetermined; and even though
it is empty and futile to worship, with an undetermined immediacy (i.e., faith), an
unknowable God, “to know God is the only end of Religion.”17 Hegel’s religious as
well as political views are more conservative than those of Kant. His God, as
absolute idea, is not the object of a subjective faith, but rather the master of all
objective things in the world. After having exposed the internal conflict of Kant’s
moral law and the postulated existence of God, Hegel criticizes from an idealistic
point of view all that Kant accomplished.18

14
Kant, and Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on
the Theory of Ethics.
15
Hegel et al. (1996).
16
Ibid., 614.
17
Ibid., 73.
18
Hegel is also a Lutheran and opposed to idolatry and superstition. His mock question of whether
or not a mouse that nibbled on the host should be seen as having received the sacrament is
well-known. Nevertheless, he appears to be more religious than Kant.
9.2 Religious Views 253

9.2 Religious Views

Now we shift from Kant’s postulate of the existence of God in ethics to his main
views on religion. Let us commence with some precautions. Although Kant sees
freedom, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God as the three pos-
tulates of practical reason, the question of freedom is rather different from that of
immortality or divine existence. As pointed out in the previous chapter, freedom
and the moral law are two sides of the same coin. Freedom is the transcendental
ground of the moral law. But faith in God is not a presupposition of the moral law.
The summum bonum and our longing for happiness in heavenly paradise cannot be
the cause that impels us to do virtuous deeds. After all, the moral law and faith in
God are two different things. Kant explains time and again that “the Christian
principle of morality itself is not theological (so as to be heteronomy), but is
autonomy of pure practical reason, since it does not make the knowledge of God
and His will the foundation of these laws.”19 Even faith in God cannot be an
external order imposed on people; it is only because religion can promote morality
in a way that is consistent with the voluntary determination of reason that divine
commands are not the “arbitrary ordinances of a foreign will and contingent in
themselves, but [are] essential laws of every freedom of the will in itself, which,
nevertheless, must be regarded as commands of the Supreme Being.”20 Thus, on the
one hand, Kant meets reality halfway, adopting a compromised attitude toward
religion; on the other hand, he identifies religion with morality and attempts to
revise and improve conventional Christianity. Religion was a sensitive political
issue in Europe at that time, and the bourgeoisie’s resistance to feudalism mostly
began with religion. Kant consciously emphasizes that “the main point of the
enlightenment” lies” primarily in religious matters.”21 This attitude forms a critical
backdrop to his critical philosophy.
F. Paulsen comments: “Indeed, one may in a certain sense regard Kant as the
finisher of what Luther had begun.”22 Luther’s reformation replaced an external
church with an inner faith, while Kant went further, replacing traditional Christian
precepts with pure moral law. To Kant, faith in God is based on consciousness of
morality, rather than the moral law being based on faith in God. Kant firmly refutes
traditional schools of theology, insisting that the only possible theology is a moral
one.
I maintain that all attempts to employ reason in theology in any merely speculative manner
are altogether fruitless and by their very nature null and void, and that the principles of its
employments in the study of nature do not lead to any theology whatsoever. Consequently,

19
Kant, and Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on
the Theory of Ethics, 328.
20
Kant, and Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on
the Theory of Ethics, 328.
21
“What is Enlightenment?”.
22
Paulsen (1902, 7).
254 9 Ethics: II. Views on Religion, Politics, and History

the only theology of reason which is possible is that which is based upon moral laws or
seeks guidance from them.23

Reason cannot find God anywhere else but in moral action. This moral theology
is not a theological ethics, because theological ethics must first of all have the
existence of God as the premise of morality, while moral theology “is a conviction
of the existence of a supreme being— a conviction which bases itself on moral
laws.”24 The moral law does not need the guarantee of religion and the existence of
God, whereas the sole evidence or proof of the reasonableness of religion and God
rests on the moral law. People in the Middle Ages believed that the good was the
will of God, and they were required to believe in and obey an external authority
(God) that was beyond even moral consciousness. Kant attacks this view. The God
who punishes and rewards the believer in the traditional view obviously clashes
with the autonomy of the will that Kant emphasizes. Although Kant postulates the
existence of God, this God is merely an embodiment of morality: “If ethics
recognise in the Holiness of its Law an object of the greatest veneration, it doth
farther, when on the immediate desire to possess something by means of an action,
in the same way as the law is always an object of reverence.”25 In his later years
Kant made this point repeatedly:
So that mankind neither requires the idea of any Superior Person to enable him to inves-
tigate his duty, nor does he need any incentive or spring to its execution other than the law
itself.26
This is not by any means to say that man is entitled, and still less that he is bound, to believe
in, as real, any such Supreme Being, answering to the idea, to which conscience inevitably
points; for the idea is given him not objectively by speculative reason, but subjectively
only, by practical reason obliging itself to act conformably to this representation.27
One cannot provide objective reality for any theoretical idea, or prove it, except for the idea
of freedom, because this is the condition of the moral law, whose reality is an axiom. The
reality of the idea God can only be proved by means of this idea, and hence only with a
practical purpose, i.e., to act as if there is a God, and hence only for this purpose.28
God is not a being outside me, but merely a thought in me. God is self-positing
moral-practical reason.29

In the Critique of Practical Reason, he states that “two things fill the mind with
ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we
reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within.” This line is
also carved on Kant’s tombstone. The sublime causality of ideas in nature directing

23
Kant, and Kemp Smith, Critique of Pure Reason, A636/B664.
24
Ibid, A632/B660.
25
Kant and Semple (1838).
26
Ibid.
27
Kant and Calderwood (1871).
28
Kant, J. Michael Young, Lectures on Logic, 591.
29
Kant and Förster (1993).
9.2 Religious Views 255

ideas (see next chapter) and the sublimity of the moral law in the heart of man are
the greatest objects of Kant’s reverence, they are indeed the “God” that Kant holds
in reverent awe.
Although morality and religion become two sides of the same coin in Kant’s
theory (i.e., morality is religion, and religion is morality), he knows from personal
feeling that religion cannot be entirely identified with morality. Religion has a
particular feeling and power of its own that morality does not possess.30 Kant did
not develop this thought in his philosophical system, but it is no accident that he
never entirely repudiates religious faith.
Indeed, he wishes to defend it as a subjective need. He state that: “I believe that a
possible union of Christianity with the purest practical reason is possible.”31
Although Kant theoretically identifies religion with morality, he still retains its
independent value in practice. Yet despite the fact that he acknowledges this
independence, he nonetheless demands religion’s reform. Unlike the French
materialists, he does not attempted to overthrow religion with a merry laugh or an
angry curse. On the other hand, he demands the reform of some basic religious
doctrines and proposes a religion of reason. Since God is merely the moral law felt
in the human heart, supernatural mysteries such as miracles, revelations, and
blessings can neither prove the existence of God, nor have any moral value, and
should not be believed or promulgated.
Kant holds that Christian doctrines such as the Trinity, Resurrection, and final
judgment go beyond the reasonable bounds of faith. He argues: “The resurrection and
ascension […] cannot come within the sphere of a religion within the bounds of
reason […] The hypothesis of the spiritualism of Intelligence is much more conso-
nant to reason. Here the body lies neglected in the dust, while the living person still
survives. The soul of the man, stripped of its sensuous appendages, can be wafted to
the realms of celestial beatitude, without being present locally in any part of space s
illimitable expanse.”32 In other words, the Resurrection is not to be credited and
immorality only belongs to the soul. The Last Judgment is also impossible, terrible,
and an irreducible transcendent mystery. Kant comments on the mysticism of the
Chinese sage Laozi, who he thinks believed that the highest good was in nothing-
ness, which strove “in dark rooms with eyes closed to experience and contemplate
nihility.”33 The human being is swollen by the abyss of gods, however; timeless
means endless. Christianity sets great store by the notion of original sin, but Kant
holds that “whatever the origin of the moral evil of humanity may be, assuredly, of
all representations, the most improper and inept is that whereby its propagation over
the race is figured as if it descended to us by inheritance from our first parents.”34 As
to the Trinity, Kant argues that insofar as moral practice is concerned there is no

30
J.Webb, Kant’s Philosophy of Religion.
31
Letter to C. F. Stäudlin, May 4, 1973, Kant and Zweig (1986).
32
Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason.
33
End of All Things.
34
Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, book 1.
256 9 Ethics: II. Views on Religion, Politics, and History

difference between believing in a three- or ten-fold godhead. The Bible should be

stripped of its cloak of mystery and read from a moral point of view in order to reveal
its rational significance and universal validity.
Kant firmly rejects all mysticism as something beyond the scope of the moral
law and reasonable faith. He states that to elevate faith over morality is superstition
rather than religion. If virtue requires the worship of God, then God becomes an
idol and religion becomes blind worship. Pure moral faith is something higher,
more mature, and more reasonable than faith in the church. The church is a useful
means of religious education for a human being in its infancy, though it is no longer
necessary, and even becomes an obstacle when this human being has reached
maturity. When people conform with morality merely to find favor (as they sup-
pose) with God, morality is ruined. Kant admires the pedagogic method that does
not merely teach children religious rites,35 and opposes the situation in which
theology lords it over philosophy, though time and again he raises the question of
whether philosophy, traditionally religion’s ancillary, should perhaps carry the
torch and walk ahead of its former master.36
Kant defines what he thinks are the reasonable regulations for religion in terms
of the four categories of quantity, quality, relation, and modality. For instance, the
category of quality emphasizes pure morality, which is non-superstitious or ecstatic;
and the category of relation emphasizes the freedom of members of the church,
which should be a voluntary and long-lasting spiritual union. The church should be
an institution of ethical morality, rather than a compulsive force of blind obedience.
Kant argues: “When to the worship of God is allotted the foremost place to which
virtue is postponed, then is such deity an idol […] Religion is now idolatry.”37
Supposedly, Kant never attended church during his life, detested religious rituals,
and advocated a theory that was very different from the interests of the Christian
doctrine, church, and theology of his time. He was eventually reprimanded by the
authorities, and his works on the religion of reason were banned from publication.38
Evidently, philosophical discussion of religion brought about his political
suppression.
It is clear that Kant indeed raised the banner of moral religion, opposing deism,
anthropomorphism, the existence of God as a metaphysical substance, and the
imposition of the church on people in order to subject them to its absolute authority.
He advocated a turn from the external authority of the church to an inner faith, and
from traditional religious doctrines to the moral law. According to Kant’s moral

35
See Kant’s letter to Christian Heinrich Wolke, March 23, 1776.
36
See “Conflict of the Faculties” and “Perpetual Peace.”.
37
Religion Within the Bounds of Mere reason, book 3, V.
38
Kant received a cabinet order from Frederick William II, which stated that “our most high person
has long observed with great displeasure how you misuse your philosophy to distort and disparage
many of the cardinal and basic teachings of the Holy Scripture and Christianity [ …] We demand
that you give at once a most conscientious account of yourself [ …] Failing this, you must expect
unpleasant measures for your continuing obstinacy.” The pressure was so great that Kant had to
suspend his teaching on religious issues.
9.2 Religious Views 257

philosophy, human beings are free. They are ends in themselves and never merely a
means, not even for God, and they properly obey only a moral law that they
themselves have legislated. Responding to the call of the French Revolution, Kant’s
religious and ethical views demonstrated his break from the church and the the-
ology that controlled minds in Europe for a very long time.
On the other hand, Kant also opposed atheism and pantheism, the latter being a
theory that identified God with nature, as in Spinoza. Kant once stated that
attempting to use prayer to influence God is immoral, and that the truly faithful
would not even affirm the existence of God. However, why should one pray if one
is not sure of the existence of God? If religion is merely the same thing as morality,
why does one need religion at all? Obviously, Kant did not actually and fully equate
religion and morality. Religion is above morality and concerns questions such as
“What can I hope?” as well as the anticipated unity of virtue and happiness in the
summum bonum. Kant thinks that, without an organized albeit reasonable form of
religion, people would turn to superstition or become atheists.39 It is indeed for the
sake of resisting atheism that Kant preserves moral religion within the bounds of
reason. While French materialism adamantly cast down religion, Kant retained faith
in the God that he practically equated with the moral law. This is why Kant’s
philosophy, although censured by the Catholic church, is welcomed by the
Protestant church. Zeller once commented that for fifty years Kant’s philosophy
was championed by most German theologists. It is also for this reason that in the
period of Restoration after the fall of Napoleon, Kant’s doctrine was extolled, as it
seemed to elevate a tenuous, even teetering church that had been severely blasted
by French materialism.
Paulsen comments that Kant’s morality “is nothing but the translation of this
Christianity from the religious language to the language of reflection: in place of
God we have pure reason, instead of the ten commandments the moral law, and in
place of heaven the intelligible world.”40 First religion was turned into morality,
then morality was turned into religion.
Therefore it seems appropriate to cite Marx’s criticism of Martin Luther, which
also applies to Kant:
Luther, we grant, overcame bondage out of devotion by replacing it by bondage out of
conviction. He shattered faith in authority because he restored the authority of faith. He
turned priests into laymen because he turned laymen into priests. He freed man from outer
religiosity because he made religiosity the inner man. He freed the body from chains
because he enchained the heart.41

What is important today is the former aspect of Kant’s doctrine. In the Critique
of Pure Reason, the “Supreme Being” is merely a regulative ideal of theoretical
reason, while in the Critique of Practical Reason, this supreme being is in effect the
moral law itself. Both are practical attitudes that promote human action, and are

39
See “What Does it Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?” II.
40
Paulsen (1902, 339).
41
Marx (1994).
258 9 Ethics: II. Views on Religion, Politics, and History

necessary requirements without being proved by experience.42 In science, the

postulate of the Supreme Being is an incentive for us to investigate nature without
respite, while in moral theory it is a merely practical postulate that rationalizes the
unity of virtue and happiness. Without this postulate, knowledge and ethics alike
would be inconceivable and unachievable.
There is, therefore, science on the one hand, and religion on the other; and the
morality of legislative form and the summum bonum as the unity of virtue and
happiness. The summum bonum, as the moral ideal should not have a need for
happiness, while the moral law itself is the categorical imperative; the happiness of
the human being, as a sensuous being, cannot be easily be dismissed, because it is
human nature to hope for happiness. Hence, morality must completely dismiss
happiness on the one hand, and the highest concept of morality, the summum
bonum, must contain happiness on the other. This is a striking contradiction, and its
origin is in its wanting of the power of material practice.
Kant’s view of religion is intimately associated with his political views. Religion
is the link between philosophy and politics in his time, and Kant’s political views
can be seen as the genuine content and actual interpretation of his religious and
philosophical ideas.

9.3 Views on Right and Politics

Kant was an ardent observer of the French Revolution, and even after many
Germans became disappointed by it he remained faithful to the enlightened ideals
he thought the Revolution embodied. Some called him “the last Jacobin.” However,
as mentioned in Chap. 1, Kant was actually not a radical revolutionary Jacobin but
a reformist who demanded reform of the undeveloped German condition. Kant’s
very abstract moral theory is also expressed in his political stance, and the true
significance of his philosophy cannot be grasped without understanding his political
views. Kant not only wrote many political treatises, but also devoted the opening of
the first part of The Metaphysics of Morals to the theory of law and politics. He
entitled his theory of the law a “political ethics,” and regarded a transcendental
principle of politics as universally necessary. Kant held that it was not the law that
should adapt to politics, but rather politics to law. Not, of course, any particular
laws, but rather the essential conditions for any properly valid positive law, which is
the moral law itself. The moral theory is about duty to oneself, while the theory of
law is about duty to others.
Kant holds that law is the outer casing of morality, the “universal necessity” in
social and political life, which makes the theory of law an essential part of Kant’s
ethics. The moral theory is about duty to oneself, while the theory of law is about
duty to others. Kant maintains that moral law is internal and self-conscious, while

42
See W. H. Walsh, Kant’s Moral Theology.
9.3 Views on Right and Politics 259

positive law is external and compulsory. Morality involves motives, while law only
concerns external action regardless of intention. For example, it is immoral for me
to not take other people’s freedom into consideration, even though such neglect is
permitted by law.
The theory of law becomes a part of ethics because it relates to freedom.
Morality is affirmative, promoting people’s action, while law is negative, restricting
people’s conduct. Nevertheless, this restriction and compulsion expands the scope
of rational freedom. Kant holds that compulsion is entirely consistent with freedom,
because people voluntarily give up their unrestricted freedom to obey the law of the
general will, which is not arbitrarily determined by a monarch or any individual.
Only in this way can the individual obtain true freedom, as well as security against
others. In other words, it is reasonable to submit to law for the sake of attaining
greater freedom.43 Kant explains, “it is not to be said that the individual in the State
has sacrificed a part of his inborn external Freedom for a particular purpose; but he
has abandoned his wild lawless Freedom wholly, in order to find all his proper
Freedom again entire and undiminished, but in the form of a regulated order of
dependence, that is, in a Civil state regulated by laws of Right. This relation of
Dependence thus arises out of his own regulative law-giving Will.”44
Consequently, “Strict Right may be also represented as the possibility of a universal
reciprocal Compulsion in harmony with the Freedom of all according to universal
Laws.”45 Kant’s philosophy of law and political views are designed to establish a
political system that allows for peaceful coexistence between individual freedom
and the freedom of others.
Like Hobbes and Rousseau, Kant thinks that there is no genuine freedom in the
primitive state of nature, and that only when everybody gives up a certain amount
of that primitive freedom to unite voluntarily under the law can the individual attain
true freedom.46 Where Kant differs from Hobbes and Rousseau is that he does not
think it took a historical contract to unify people into the first society that had
positive law. Kant holds that human beings have always been social and involved in
some form of social organization. The state and law must be based on a tran-
scendental principle of reason, while experience is of no use. The general principle
of the Law of Right is “that Freedom of mine which may coexist with the freedom
of all others according to a universal Law.”47 In other words, we must restrict some
of our freedom in order to really secure a complete freedom. Although this

43
Kant also developed this idea in his theory of education: “It is of chief importance to observe that
discipline be not slavish, but that the child always feel his freedom, in such a manner, however,
that he does not hinder the freedom of others” (Lecture-notes on Pedagogy).
44
Kant and Hastie (1887).
45
Ibid., 47.
46
Rousseau takes over Hobbes’s theory and regards Hobbes as a great philosopher. He agrees with
Hobbes, who opposes the effort to beautify primitive society. Since human beings have only
self-preservatory instincts, society at the very beginning must have been as Hobbes described.
47
The Philosophy of Law: An Exposition of the Fundamental Principles of Jurisprudence as the
Science of Right.
260 9 Ethics: II. Views on Religion, Politics, and History

restriction flows from people’s voluntary self-legislation, it is not a social contract,

but rather a transcendental principle and an idea of pure practical reason.
The idea of a contract as the base for a political system of sovereign citizens,
which is not a fact but is rather the “general will” consisting of the will of indi-
viduals, cannot be proved by history but only be seen as an idea of reason.48 Kant
explicitly defines Rousseau’s vague concept of the “general will” as the will of
reason rather than the will of the majority. Its universal necessity also comes from
reason rather than experience, while the goal of this unification cannot be merely
that of happiness. Every one has their own conception of happiness, while freedom
and equality have a truly universal appeal. Kant points out that since people can be
happy in a country that has very little freedom, it is evident that freedom does not
come from happiness. It must have an origin of its own in reason.
Hegel devotes much effort to developing Kant’s view on freedom, proposing
that the state is based on reason rather than social contract, and that it represents a
certain stage in the development of the idea. Hegel maintains that “it is the rational
destiny of human beings to live within a state,” and “since the state is objective
spirit, it is only through being a member of the state that the individual himself has
objectivity, truth, and ethical life.”49 Kant initiated the transformation of
social-contract thought as we find it in Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau into a doctrine
of reason transcending the individual, but Hegel is the one who truly develops this
theory. One the one hand, this theory has a stronger historical spirit than that of
Rousseau because it abandons naive ideas regarding the origin of the state as a
product of individual contract and insists that the state is a necessary stage of
development; on the other hand, however, he replaces the unequivocal individu-
alism of Locke with an obscure totalism emphasizing centralized power. From this
point of view, Hegel’s view is certainly favorable to militarism and it served the
Prussian state. Hegel’s philosophy of law is the necessary deduction of a philo-
sophical system that substantializes self-consciousness.50
Kant’s view is different in several ways from Hegel’s. Kant emphasizes the
human being as an end in itself, and this valorizes individualism and the
Enlightenment, while Hegel’s absolute spirit leads to totalitarianism and a retreat
from the Enlightenment emphasis on external ethical norms. In Kant, what is
prominent is his ideal, while in Hegel it is reality. Kant defends rather than

48
“On the Common saying.”.
49
Hegel et al. (1991).
50
In Kant’s later years, Romantic trends swept across Europe, with Fichte and Hegel on one side
(although Hegel was not subjectively inclined toward Romanticism), and Herder, who was against
the universal law of history, and Jacobi, who set great store by intuition, on the other.
The Enlightenment, in which Kant fervently believed, was banished from stage of thought.
Kant was standing at a turning point of ideas. Rousseau’s general will and the rejection of the
division of legislative, executive, and judicial powers can lead to romanticism as well as to
totalitarianism. It can be said that Locke was the true representative of liberalism and
individualism.
9.3 Views on Right and Politics 261

abandons the doctrine of innate human rights. He maintains that “the civil condi-
tion, regarded merely as a rightful condition, is based a priori on the following
principles:
1. The freedom of every member of the society as a human being.
2. His equality with every other as a subject.
3. The independence of every member of a commonwealth as a citizen.”51
Kant sets great store by Rousseau’s democratic idea and firmly advocates it. He
opposes feudal privilege and absolute monarchy,52 no less than enlightened
autocracy, or even the rule of a wise monarch who loves the people as his or her
own children. Kant believes that such forms of rule actually abolish freedom. He is
against any form of institution in which one person legislates while the people have
no rights. He adamantly champions parliamentarism, and advocates Rousseau’s
ideas of freedom as obedience to one’s own legislation and the equality of all
citizens. Even in his lectures on geography, Kant spends more time discussing such
enduring phenomena as production, customs, trade, commerce, and population than
he does on power struggles among the nations. All these inclinations demonstrate
the enlightened aspect of Kant’s thought and his opposition to the ideas of the
ancient feudal system.
Kant was indeed a reformer. Through his view that an individual is free only
through obedience to the law, Kant reveals his tendency ultimately to conform with
his society’s status quo while tinkering with details of reform. He says, “any
resistance to the supreme legislative power, any incitement to have the subjects’
dissatisfaction become active, any insurrection that breaks out in rebellion, is the
highest and most punishable crime within a commonwealth, because it destroys its
foundation. And this prohibition is unconditional so that even if that power or its
agent, the head of state, has gone so far as to violate the original contract,” the
people do not have the right to rebel.53 Kant also warns against confusing a
republican constitution with democracy. The former is a form of sovereignty while
the latter is a form of government.
Depending on the relationship between the mode of administration with the
sovereign legislative power, the government is either democratic or despotic. Kant
believes that the form of sovereignty is the most important element; the form of
sovereignty is monarchial, aristocratic, or democratic depending on whether power
lies in the hands of a single individual, a minority, or the majority. He advocates
republican parliamentarism, but republican government can coexist with monarchy
so long as an open-minded monarch is willing to respect a constitution that

51
“On the Common Saying,” II.
52
Kant states that “Hobbes is of the opposite opinion. According to him a head of state has no
obligation to the people by the contract and cannot do a citizen any wrong (he may make what
arrangements he wants about him). This proposition would be quite correct if a wrong were taken
to mean an injury that gives the injured party a coercive right against the one who wronged him;
but stated so generally, the proposition is appalling” (“On the Common Saying”).
53
“On the Common Saying,” II.
262 9 Ethics: II. Views on Religion, Politics, and History

embodies the general will. It is best, however, to separate the legislative from the
executive power, and Kant believe that “a state may exercise a republican rule, even
though by its present constitution it has a despotic sovereignty.”54 He thinks that
democracy is necessarily despotic because it guarantees the general will, which it
sacrifices to the will of a mere majority. In sum, Kant’s political views oppose
feudalism and firmly advocate parliamentarism. He is a reformer rather than a
revolutionary, “making an effort to let evolution take the place of revolution.” His
basic demand is for the separation of powers (trias politica) and the people’s
sovereignty, while his basic political line is to vigorously advocate progressive
reform and oppose revolutionary violence. Therefore, Kant defends rather than
rejects the present order, but demands reform. He wrote an essay that in its title
asked the question “In What Order Alone Can Progress toward the Better Be
Expected?” The answer, he says, “is not by the movement of things from bottom to
top, but from top to bottom.”55 Hence, Kant rests his hope on education.
The autonomy of will celebrated in Kant’s ethical theory finds its fullest
implementation in the law of right and in politics: freedom of speech instead of
freedom of rebellion; freedom of passive resistance instead of freedom of active
revolt; freedom of peaceful vote instead of freedom of violent revolution. As a
subject, one must obey, while as an intellectual one should enjoy the freedom to
critique. It seems to us that all of these ideas of Kant can cause no alarm, and are
probably healthier than revolutionary ideas. This also applies to his idea of equality.
Kant acknowledges that the “thoroughgoing equality of individuals within a state,
as its subjects, is quite consistent with the greatest inequality in terms of the
quantity and degree of their possessions, whether in physical or mental superiority
over others or in external goods and in rights generally (of which there can be
many) relatively to others.”56
Political equality does not require or even necessarily advance economic
equality. In his theory of citizenship, he distinguishes active and passive forms.
Active citizens are not economically dependent on others; they are independent and
therefore the enjoy the rights of citizens in politics. Passive citizens, such as hired
labourers, servants, women, apprentices, private tutors, and serfs, are exploited and
oppressed, and because they “depend on others for their living and protection,” they
cannot express their true wishes and are therefore “unable to have citizen inde-
pendence.”57 Independence, freedom, and equality are the terms of the
Enlightenment and still bear the mark of that time. Modern political equality was
achieved only after a long struggle and gradual social development. Kant’s ethical
thesis that the human being is an end in itself was also realized only after a long

54
“Perpetual Peace.”.
55
“The Conflict of the Faculties.”.
56
“On the Common Saying”.
57
The French Constitution of 1791 also defined active and passive citizens, following the defi-
nitions of 1789. It gives the active citizen the right to vote, though only citizens who paid a certain
amount of direct tax to the state could have this right. Hired labourers were excluded.
9.3 Views on Right and Politics 263

historical struggle. Kant states that “an illegitimate child comes into the world
outside of the law which properly regulates marriage, and it is thus born beyond the
pale or constitutional protection of the law. Such a child is introduced, as it were,
like prohibited goods, into the commonwealth, and as it has no legal right to
existence in this way, its destruction might also be ignored;”58 He further maintains
that a person can become a mere instrument at the disposal of another person (the
state or another citizen).The idea of the human being as an end in itself was the
midwife of modern capitalism, which put into practice the idea that a human being
is indeed a commodity, while the idea that a human being may be treated as a mere
instrument was fully developed only in capitalistic society. Such is the irony of
history. However, compared to feudalism, capitalistic society has indeed made
rapid progress.
There are more ideas in Kant’s theory of the law of right, such as his distinction
between ownership (property) as noumenon (legal approbation of the citizen
society) and mere empirical possession as phenomenon; and his doctrine of pun-
ishment as the retaliation a criminal brings on himself for his misdeed (because
punishment can never be used merely as a means to promote some other good for
the criminal himself or for civil society. It must always be inflicted upon him only
because he has committed a crime. For a human being can never be treated merely
as a means to the purposes of another person). All these ideas influenced Hegel’s
later thought. Kant lived in the tempestuous years on the eve of French Revolution,
absorbing Rousseau’s progressive ideas and translating the political theories of the
revolutionary bourgeoisie into a moral system of reform. These doctrines of posi-
tive law and politics are deductions from Kant’s abstract transcendental moral
system and supply what concrete historical content this transcendental system
enjoys.

9.4 Views on History

Kant’s ethics is not only intimately related to his religious and politics views but
also to his views on history, while his view of history is the culmination of his
political thought.
In the Critique of Pure Reason, as mentioned earlier, Kant raised three questions,
namely, “What can I know? What ought I to do? What I may hope?” In his
advanced years, Kant added another question, “What is the human being?” Kant
states that “metaphysics answers the first question, morals the second, religion the
third, and anthropology the fourth. Fundamentally, however, we could reckon all of
this as anthropology, because the first three questions relate to the last one.”59
Although he had lectured on this topic for twenty years, and the Anthropology from

58
Kant and Reiss (1991, 150).
59
Kant, J. Michael Young, Lectures on Logic, 538.
264 9 Ethics: II. Views on Religion, Politics, and History

a Pragmatic Point of View, which was published in his late years, contains mainly
general remarks on psychology, there is not much internal connection with his
views on history.
Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that Kant made a transition from natural science to
ethics, and that his works on ethics, aesthetics, and teleology (in the third Critique)
were written at the same time that he wrote treatises on politics, history, and
religion.
This fact reveals that Kant was contemplating from every aspect various prob-
lems concerning the human being. Among these problems is the problem of
anthropological history.60 This question is no longer concerned with abstract forms
of epistemology and ethics. It contains some important ideas that were missing from
the three Critiques that were vigorously promulgated later by Hegel. In my view,
the relation and importance of these ideas to Kant’s whole system of philosophy are
noteworthy. Kant answered his question about the human being in terms of the
universal, necessary capacity of human nature (i.e., a cultural-psychological
structure), and then, with the question of what is the human being, went further to
connect these thoughts to human history. At this point, however, Kant encountered
the impassable rift and conflict between the transcendental and the empirical. Some
scholars regard Kant’s view on history as a fourth Critique. To Kant, however,
there was not and could not possibly be a fourth Critique, which would have
destroyed the carefully wrought architectonic of his system.
Nevertheless, his view of history is remarkable.
This view is mainly presented in his treatise Idea for a Universal History from a
Cosmopolitan Perspective (1784). In this work, Kant philosophically examines the
progress of world history and argues for an idea of historical development that
inevitably moves toward a beautiful society that, after a long and tortuous history of
conflict, sacrifice, and struggle, arises and gives full play to all human talents. Such
a society will be a society of sovereign citizens with a bright prospect for harmo-
nious, happy, free civil life and international perpetual peace. This treatise abounds
with an optimistic Enlightenment spirit, and still exudes invigorating power today.
It is noteworthy that, in the treatise, Kant develops a view that is contradictory to
the view he had repeatedly taken since his first work.
Kant expressly points out that human progress and the development of civi-
lization are accomplished through the play of conflicting material and economical
interests. He says:
Human beings have an inclination to associate with one another because in such a condition
they feel themselves to be more human, that is to say, more in a position to develop their
natural predispositions. But they also have a strong tendency to isolate themselves, because
they encounter in themselves the unsociable trait that predisposes them to want to direct

60
Frederick P. Van de Pitte holds that teleology is more important than reason in Kant’s system,
that it is the incentive power and pivot of Kant’s philosophy, and is certainly inseparable from
anthropology. Human fate and morality is the end, while theoretical reason is merely a means, and
that, therefore, anthropology is the true ground of Kant’s philosophy. See Kant as Philosophical
Anthropologist (1971).
9.4 Views on History 265

everything only to their own ends and hence to expect to encounter resistance everywhere,
just as they know that they themselves tend to resist others. It is this resistance that awakens
all human powers and causes human beings to overcome their tendency to idleness and,
driven by lust for honor, power, or property, to establish a position for themselves among
their fellows, whom they can neither endure nor do without. Here the first true steps are
taken from brutishness to culture, which consists, actually, in the social worth of human
beings. And here all of the talents are gradually developed, taste is formed, and, even,
through continual enlightenment, the beginning of a foundation is laid for a manner of
thinking which is able, over time, to transform the primitive natural predisposition for moral
discernment into definite practical principles and, in this way, to ultimately transform an
agreement to society that initially had been pathologically coerced into a moral whole.
Without those characteristics of unsociability, which are indeed quite unattractive in
themselves, and which give rise to the resistance that each person necessarily encounters in
his selfish presumptuousness, human beings would live the arcadian life of shepherds, in
full harmony, contentment, and mutual love. But all human talents would thus lie eternally
dormant, and human beings, as good-natured as the sheep that they put out to pasture,
would thus give their own lives hardly more worth than that of their domesticated animals.
They would fail to fill the void with regard to the purpose for which they, as rational nature,
were created. For this reason one should thank nature for their quarrelsomeness, for their
jealously competitive vanity, and for their insatiable appetite for property and even for
power! Without these all of the excellent natural human predispositions would lie in eternal
slumber, undeveloped. Humans desire harmony, but nature knows better what is good for
their species: it wills discord.61

Kant’s ethics revolve around human beings and he proposes that the human
being is an end in itself. In this treatise, he expressly poses the grave question of
what the human being is.
Certainly, his conception of the human being is neither the natural man of
Rousseau nor the individual of a primitive society. Rousseau began with natural
man, whereas Kant begins with civilized man. However, this civilized man does not
belong to a particular empirical group or class, but is instead the transcendental self
of the critical philosophy. This transcendental self is a human being who transcends
biology. Kant maintains that human beings manifest a transcendental sociality that
inclines people to associate with one another, as well as an unsociality that inclines
individuals to pursue their different desires and wishes. This unsociality is the origin
of so-called evil.
Evil does not refer to natural human desire but rather to the willfulness that
pursues individual interests to the extent of violating universal legislation. The
thesis that human nature (the individual) is evil is to be understood in these terms.62
However, this kind of evil propels the development of history and the progress of
the human being, and gives free rein to human intelligence and skill in their
competition and struggle with one other. Kant illustrates his view by using the
example of trees in a forest: every tree needs other trees, since each, in seeking to
take air and sunlight from the others, must strive upward. It thereby realizes a

61
“Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Perspective.”.
62
This quasi-mystical doctrine that human nature is evil is common to the Christian doctrine of
original sin of and to Freud’s psychology. This is a topic that is well worth further investigation.
266 9 Ethics: II. Views on Religion, Politics, and History

beautiful, upright stature, while those trees that live in isolated freedom grow
stunted and twisted. On the one hand, therefore, the human being’s natural talent
can develop fully only among others, rather than in the isolated individual. While
on the other hand, talent develops only in competition with others. Agreeing with
Adam Smith, Kant acknowledges that competition is the basis of society and drives
the progress of civilization; a civil society is a competitive society.63 The society
Kant envisions is a capitalistic society, though at the time, Kant could not have
foreseen a truly industrial society, and his civic society remains based on agricul-
ture. His idea, however, anticipates the demand of the newly emerging bourgeoisie
and the characteristics of free competition in the bourgeois class. He celebrates the
coming of this social system and is full of optimism for its future.
Hegel also views evil as individual and subjective, and argues that “in that finite
sphere man pursues ends of his own and draws from himself the material of his
conduct. While he pursues these aims to the uttermost, while his knowledge and his
will seek himself, his own narrow self apart from the universal, he is evil; and his
evil is to be subjective.”64 That evil drives historical development is a well-known
view of Hegel’s, and one that Engels greatly admired. It can be said that Hegel
developed these ideas from Kant, and that their actual ground is the emerging
bourgeoisie social system of free competition.
Kant states: “The history of nature begins therefore with the good, for it is the
work of God. The history of freedom begins with evil, for it is the work of the
human being.”65 Starting with the good means that, by nature, the human being
gradually turns from evil to the good in a progressive movement; while beginning
with evil means the awakening of reason, which entices individuals to leave the
innocent life in Eden as described in the Bible and to begin to make their own
choices and to struggle for private interests, bringing suffering, fear, and worry “for
the individual, who looks only to himself in the exercise of his freedom.”66 This is
why the history of freedom begins with evil, which produces historical plays full of
stupidity, ignorance, and emptiness. There seems to be no rational plan; however, a
law of reason is implicitly at work since, as Kant says, “this epoch also saw the
beginning of human inequality, that abundant source of so much evil but also of

63
“The greatest problem for the human race, to the solution of which Nature drives man, is the
achievement of a universal civic society which administers law among men.
The highest purpose of Nature, which is the development of all the capacities which can be
achieved by mankind, is attainable only in society, and more specifically in the society with the
greatest freedom. Such a society is one in which there is mutual opposition among the members,
together with the most exact definition of freedom and fixing of its limits so that it may be
consistent with the freedom of others. Nature demands that humankind should itself achieve this
goal like all its other destined goals. Thus a society in which freedom under external laws is
associated in the highest degree with irresistible power, i.e., a perfectly just civic constitution”
(“Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View”). This argument can be read in
reference to Kant’s political views, and there is an obvious relation between them.
64
Hegel, Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Science: Logic, §24.
65
Nisbet (1991).
66
Ibid.
9.4 Views on History 267

everything good.”67 The consequence of our activity is usually not what we expect.
We wish for harmony but end up with war and hostility; we pursue happiness and
brave hardships and dangers, yet life is so short and happiness hard to find.
Besides, war brings tremendous damage and crime. Kant states that “we have to
admit that the greatest evils which oppress civilised nations are the result of war.”68
But war is often a necessary means of progress. Kant believes that: “So long as
human culture remains at its present stage, war is therefore an indispensable means
of advancing it further.”69 In the Critique of Judgment, he explicitly states that
“though war is an undesigned enterprise of men […] yet is it [perhaps] a
deep-hidden and designed enterprise of supreme wisdom.”70 Underneath the
ignorant, chaotic veneer of human activity, law and purpose are visible.
Although people complain about present conditions, they do not really want to
go back to a primitive state. Kant emphasizes renovation and the progress of
science, culture, education, and the political system, and holds that the general trend
of history is toward an ideal political system that has a constitutional republic
within and perpetual peace without, and that is the externalization of human
morality. Since nature endows human beings with reason, it must have the purpose
of realizing this reason, which is why the trend of history is a movement toward
ever greater rationality. Kant explains that: “The history of mankind can be seen, in
the large, as the realization of Nature’s secret plan to bring forth a perfectly con-
stituted state as the only condition in which the capacities of mankind can be fully
developed, and also bring forth that external relation among states which is per-
fectly adequate to this end.”71 On the other hand, “this task of establishing a
universal and lasting peace is not just a part of the theory of right within the limits
of pure reason, but its entire ultimate purpose.”72 This perpetual peace cannot be
achieved by one nation’s conquering others and in that way uniting the world. (“No
State Shall by Force Interfere with the Constitution or Government of Another
State”73 is one of Kant’s main theses.) Instead, the goal of perpetual peace requires
establishing a republican political system internally in each nation (“The Civil
Constitution of Every State Should Be Republican”74), and a rational regime of
international law to regulate relations among these states. A republican political
system and an enlightened citizenry within the separate countries are the premises
of international perpetual peace. With that structure in place, people would be

67
Ibid., 230.
68
Ibid., 231.
69
Ibid., 232.
70
Kant, and J. H. Bernard, Critique of Judgment, 239.
71
“Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View.”.
72
Kant and Reiss (1991, 174).
73
“Perpetual Peace” (1795–1796).
74
Ibid.
268 9 Ethics: II. Views on Religion, Politics, and History

unwilling to go to war.75 Meanwhile, the economic interests of international trade

would oblige countries to foster peace (although not from moral motives). Even if
war were imminent, countries would try to mediate and seek a peaceful alliance to
prevent it since the foreign policies of a country are related to its domestic policies.
We have to say that these views were extraordinary two hundred years ago.
Kant’s view of history begins with “unsocial sociality” and ends with “perpetual
peace.” In other words, it begins with “evil” and ends with “good.” Empirical
history confirms the human being’s moral substance, while the fully moral person
becomes the final end of human history.
Most importantly, Kant differs from most moralists by maintaining that this end
is obtained not through individual moral cultivation but by the progress of history
and a reformed political system that allows morality to gradually achieve perfection.
The individual’s selfish pursuit of happiness is merely a means for achieving this
great goal, which infinitely exceeds the selfish individuals who inadvertently bring
it about. The progress of history cannot be measured by happiness.
Nevertheless, a wide gap exists between Kant’s view of history and his for-
malistic moral theory. Morality is noumenal, while history is phenomenal, although
in the Critique of Judgment (see next chapter), Kant attempts to link the two by
defining the ultimate end of nature as the cultural and moral man, and by com-
municating natural causality, which progresses in time, as non-temporal morality in
the idea of teleology. While Kant raised questions concerning the contradictions
and the unity of morality and politics,76 he did not explicitly deal with the relation
between morality and history, which rendered those contradiction all the more
evident. The republican political system that Kant hoped for and anticipated cannot
be established by morality alone. On the contrary, morality can only fully develop
under a good political system.77 Nor is legal conduct determined by morality, but
actually often repays good with evil, allowing an immoral person to nevertheless be
a perfectly law-abiding citizen. The realization of perpetual peace is nevertheless a
moral duty, even though it depends on historical developments that are beyond the
good will of any one person. History progresses toward morality. But as an
unknowable noumenon, morality is on the far shore that natural causality can never
reach. Pure reason is the good and freedom, but its realization has to pass through
evil. In “Perpetual Peace,” Kant dwells on the positive effect of war and “nature’s

75
“On the other hand, in a constitution which is not republican, and under which the subjects are
not citizens, a declaration of war is the easiest thing in the world to decide upon, because war does
not require of the ruler, who is the proprietor and not a member of the state, the least sacrifice of
the pleasures of his table, the chase, his country houses, his court functions, and the like. He may,
therefore, resolve on war as on a pleasure party for the most trivial reasons, and with perfect
indifference leave the justification which decency requires to the diplomatic corps who are ever
ready to provide it.” Ibid.
76
“Perpetual peace, which is in this case desired not merely as a physical good, but rather also as a
condition that arises from the recognition of duty” (“Perpetual Peace”).
77
“So that a good national constitution cannot be expected to arise from morality, but, rather, quite
the opposite, a people’s good moral condition is to be expected only under a good constitution”
(“Perpetual Peace”).
9.4 Views on History 269

clever plan,” while the so dignified and absolute moral law has no actual effect on
history. What affects reality is the opposite of morality—evil.
Kant emphasizes historical progress and believes that the human being cannot
and would not want to return to the primitive state. His estimation of human
civilization and the future is full of optimistic faith. “The destiny of the human race
as a whole is incessant progress,”78 he says, and that “this course represents a
pregression from worse to better for the species as a whole.”79 On the other hand,
these bright prospects are teleological ideas that cannot be empirically established.
“Here, therefore, is a proposition valid for the most rigorous theory, in spite of all
skeptics, and not just a well-meaning and practically commendable proposition: the
human race has always been in progress toward the better and will continue to be so
henceforth.”80
Kant’s view of history, as he himself admits, is a merely teleological idea that
cannot be proved by experience. So are his ideas of “the perpetual existence of the
human race” and of “nature’s secret plan,” as well as his conviction that “the
question of progress cannot be directly solved by experience.”81 Kant stresses that
the possibility of the earth being crushed by other planets cannot be excluded from
empirical science, nor can experience prove whether our society is progressing or
regressing. Therefore, all these views of history we have discussed are, like the
existence of God and the immortality of the soul, not objective laws but merely
subjective ideas that cannot be empirically proved.
Kant believes that morality is superior to history and that, ultimately, history is
rationally subordinated to morality. While he emphasizes the independence, sub-
limity, and absoluteness of morality as the capacity of human nature, he cannot
make his moral theory and his vision of history go hand in hand together philo-
sophically. Kant’s three Critiques concentrate on the universal, necessary, tran-
scendental capacity of human nature, while his many treatises on history, politics,
and anthropology focus on empirical description and elucidation. The relation
between these two categories of writings is intricate, particularly the connection
between the internal capacity of human nature and the external experience of
history, which is not dealt with thoroughly and philosophically.
Kant’s view of history is based on human beings, rather than the individual and
history, that is, on empirical fact rather than transcendental principle. He stresses
conflict and war, which are consequences of economic interests, modes of pro-
duction, and the private possession of land (Kant applies this theory to interpret
Cain’s murdering Abel in the Bible). These empirical causes drive the development
of the human race and the progress of civilization to their appointed goal of

78
Kant and Hans Siegbert Reiss, “Review of Herder, Ideas for the Philosophy of the History of
Mankind,” Kant: Political Writings, 220.
79
Ibid., 220.
80
Kant, Allen W. Wood, and George Di Giovanni, “The Conflict of the Faculties,” Religion and
Rational Theology, 250.
81
Ibid.
270 9 Ethics: II. Views on Religion, Politics, and History

morality and autonomy, which he believes to have their conformity in law, and
eventually to reach moral reality. However, here also lies the root of conflict, and
even contradiction, in Kant’s overall philosophical view. He emphasizes that all of
these are merely regulative, teleological ideas of history’s great goal and purpose to
encourage people, say, to struggle for perpetual peace. But they are definitely not
scientific knowledge. And yet, Kant nevertheless wishes to become the Newton of
history, and that would mean breaking out of his system of critical philosophy,
discarding transcendental reason, and proceeding from empirical anthropology.
Kant certainly could not go that far. Kant’s view of teleology is very important (see
next section), because it focuses on the historical resolution of the question “What is
the human being?” It is regrettable that Kant said he would not bury his head among
old parchments in the archives. He did not investigate history in the meticulous
manner that he did natural science. His view of history contains many important
ideas which regrettably did not form a systematic philosophy. However, system-
ization was brought about by Hegel, whose idealism objectivized Kant’s subjective
ideas.
As pointed out earlier, French materialism began from enlightened bourgeois
individualism, emphasizing that the ground of morality, politics, and history is
individual sensible happiness and taking the promotion of individual happiness as
the measure of historical progress. These thinkers demanded that history be
explained and regulated solely in terms of natural causality. In contrast, Kant raised
the banner of supersensuous reason as the moral law and the human being as
subordinate to this universal reason, which is quite distant from the rationality
championed by the Enlightenment. Moral views based on the individual (such as
those of Locke, Rousseau, and the French materialists) are revised on the sup-
posedly more rational basis of what is, in fact, a rather obscure idea of ideal totality.
The sensible and particular individual disappears into the non-individual, even
anti-individual “transcendental” rationality. A supersensuous reason, rather than the
sensuous human individual, becomes the subject of world history.
As in the case of epistemology, the turn that Kant commenced was completed
idealistically by Hegel. Hegel turned Kant’s moral laws and the faculty of pure
practical reason into the absolute idea, and gave Kant’s moral “ought” an onto-
logical construal that made these imperatives a force of historical movement. All
these changes are contrary to Kant’s original intention. Nature (causality), which in
Kant is opposed to reason, is made to merge with reason and become an exter-
nalized element of its historical movement. To Hegel, what is important is not to
prove the necessity of an unattainable “perpetual peace,” rather, it is to prove the
historical necessity (rationality) of the present ethical and civil society and its state.
To Hegel, morality is abstract and meaningless unless it is actualized in social
behavior and the culture and law of a specific historical period. Reason is the basis
not only of freedom, but also of nature and nature’s causality. Hegel therefore
brushed aside Kant’s formal theory of morality, as well as his ideas of the human
being as an end in itself and the ideal of perpetual peace, and brought ethics into his
dialectics of historical logic. Contrary to Kant, Hegel considered the basis of the
movement of world history as superior to morality. Instead of subordinating history
9.4 Views on History 271

to morality, morality is subordinated to history.82 This view dispenses with moral

forms and the independent significance and absolute value of the psychology of the
will. Consequently, human freedom does not depend on the choice of the will but
on knowledge of necessity (the law of causality) and obedience. To Hegel, Kant’s
conception of freedom was abstract and empty, and bereft of historical reality.
Hegel maintained that true freedom had to overcome everything partial, arbitrary,
and contingent in this merely subjective will.
Kant emphasizes that man is an end in himself, and his view of history contains a
hint of the individual as a mere instrument of history. In the Critique of Judgment,
Kant mentions the analogy between an organism and a society, where every
individual member is an end as well as an instrument, and where “each should be
determined as regards place and function by means of the Idea of the whole.”83 This
seems to imply that individual members are determined by the society as a whole,
yet Kant fundamentally supports individualism. By contrast, Hegel regards the
individual as an instrument of reason and understands morality from the perspective
of the full development of human history. Kant rejects natural causality in morality,
while Hegel turns back to causality, which nonetheless is not the natural causality
of French materialism based on individual sense experience but rather a historical
causality based on a rational idea of the completed totality of the real.
From Kant to Hegel, German idealism completed its negation of French mate-
rialism in the ethical domain. However, this negation is not a regression but a spiral
progression. Classical German idealism replaced the individual sensibility of
French materialism with a rational idea of totality, which was an important
development in the history of philosophy as well as in political thought. The
so-called rational totality is actually the social existence of human beings that have
transcended biological species. Kant saw reason as the form of subjective morality,
while Hegel saw it as the form of objective history; however, for both, reason was
obviously not the same as the biological nature and individuality of the older
materialism, which simply equated human rationality with our biological human
nature. Therefore, as in their epistemology, so in their thought concerning human
nature and history; Kant and Hegel stood on the opposite side of French materialism
and occupied a higher level in the spiral development of history. They idealistically
emphasized human human beings’ sociality, that is, our non-individual, non-natural

82
Hegel argues that “the history of the world moves on a higher level than that proper to morality. [ …]
The demands and accomplishments of the absolute and final aim of Spirit, the working of Providence,
lie above the obligations, responsibilities, and liabilities which are incumbent on the individuals in
regard to their morality. [ …] The deeds of the great men who are the individuals of world history thus
appear justified not only in their intrinsic, unconscious significance but also from the point of view of
world history. It is irrelevant and inappropriate from that point of view to raise moral claims against
world-historical acts and agents. They stand outside of morality. [ …] World history (if it wanted to)
could on principle altogether ignore the sphere of morality and its often mentioned difference with
politics. It could not only refrain from moral judgments—its principles and the necessary relations of
actions to them already are the judgment—but leave individuals entirely out of view and unmen-
tioned.” The Philosophy of History.
83
Kant, and J. H. Bernard, Critique of Judgment, 301.
272 9 Ethics: II. Views on Religion, Politics, and History

characteristics. Hence the ethical domain cannot be regulated and explained by

some natural quality (e.g., happiness) or natural law (e.g., mechanics), but must be
regulated and explained by social and historical laws. To Hegel, the logic of
absolute spirit fulfills these tasks.
That is how individualism, liberalism, and the Enlightenment thought of the
British and French bourgeoisie and their idea of the social contract turned into
historicism and totalitarianism, with transcendental reason as their banner. This is
an important turning point in thought, and Kant stands on its very pivot point. He is
the link between the past and the future, with its thought thoroughly interwoven into
his ideas on ethics, politics, and history.
We have to return once again to the center of Kant’s philosophy—the question
of the thing in itself. As we discussed in Chap. 7, Kant introduced a whole series of
“unknowables” in epistemology, even expressing his conviction that the ultimate
origin, essence, and ground of knowledge is unknowable. The same thing happened
in his practical thought. The origin, essence, and ground of the moral law and of
freedom, that is, the questions of why the human being is free and why there should
be morality are also unknowable. He states time and again:
The ground of the difficulty of comprehending the possibility of the categorical imperative,
i.e., of the moral law, is very great: the imperative is a synthetical proposition a priori; and
as we felt so much difficulty in comprehending the possibility of this kind of proposition in
speculative metaphysics, we may presume the difficulty will be no less in the practical.84
But how the hypothesis itself comes to be possible, is what no human reason can
comprehend.85
But reason would indeed overstep all bounds and limits were she to undertake an expla-
nation, how pure reason can be spontaneous and self-practical?—a problem perfectly
identical with this one, to explain how freedom of will is possible.86
To explain this, I say, how reason can be thus practical, is quite beyond the reach and grasp
of all human thought, and the labour and toil bestowed on any such inquiry is fruitless, and
thrown away.87
That it cannot make comprehensible the absolute necessity of an unconditioned practical
law, which unconditional necessity the categorical imperative must have.88
It cannot be further explained how this consciousness of the moral law, or, what is the same
thing, of freedom, is possible.89

84
Kant and Semple (1886).
85
Ibid., 75.
86
Ibid., 73.
87
Ibid., 75.
88
Ibid., 77–78.
89
Kant, and Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on
the Theory of Ethics, 46.
9.4 Views on History 273

For as to the question how a law can be directly and of itself a determining principle of the
will (which is the essence of morality), this is, for human reason, an insoluble problem and
identical with the question: how a free will is possible.90

Corresponding with his epistemology, when manifested in ethics, Kant’s phi-

losophy still retains its essential feature of unknowability. The unknowability of the
moral law, that is, the impossibility of scientifically or philosophically explaining
why freedom and indeed pure reason itself should exist is a good rather than a bad
thing.91 To put it briefly, the nature of pure reason as the common ground of
knowledge and ethics is unknowable. That is to say, the questions of what pure
reason really is, how it comes about or how it is possible, and why there should be
pure reason are unanswerable. Comparing theoretical and practical reason, Kant
states: “He who has been able to convince himself of the truth of the positions
occurring in the Analytic will take pleasure in such comparisons; for they justly
suggest the expectation that we may perhaps some day be able to discern the unity
of the whole faculty of reason (theoretical as well as practical) and be able to derive
all from one principle.”92
It has been remarked that “pure reason is seen as practical, while the relationship
between pure reason and practical reason yet remains an uncomprehensible mys-
tery.”93 It has also been suggested that, to Kant, the “one principle” is reason or
pure reason.94 However, it seems to me that Kant did not have this idea in mind.
What he meant was that reason or pure reason is unknowable. He wished that some
day he might discover the secret of reason, although he knew this was not really
possible.
The crux of Kant’s philosophy is the supreme position of transcendental reason,
which determines both human knowledge and the moral law. In epistemology, the
transcendental self, in the form of consciousness, becomes a legislator to nature,
which makes knowledge possible; while in ethics the transcendental self, as rational
existence, constitutes the ground of the categorical imperatives in moral action. The
transcendental self is originally an unknowable X (the thing in itself), though its
root is in pure reason. As mentioned earlier, this reason is neither that of earlier

90
Ibid., 74.
91
“When with all the effort of our reason we have only a very obscure and doubtful view into the
future, when the Governor of the world allows us only to conjecture his existence and his majesty,
not to behold them or prove them clearly; and on the other hand, the moral law within us, without
promising or threatening anything with certainty, demands of us disinterested respect; and only
when this respect has become active and dominant, does it allow us by means of it a prospect into
the world of the supersensible, and then only with weak glances: all this being so, there is room for
true moral disposition, immediately devoted to the law, and a rational creature can become worthy
of sharing in the summum bonum that corresponds to the worth of his person and not merely to his
actions” (Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 150).
92
Kant, and Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on
the Theory of Ethics, 93.
93
“Kant and Hegel on Practical Reason,” in Hegel’s History of Philosophy (1972).
94
See Lewis White Beck, A Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason.
274 9 Ethics: II. Views on Religion, Politics, and History

Enlightenment thought nor that of the old rationalism. This unique pure reason is
the banner that Kant, first and above all, raised in his philosophy.
Immediately after him, Hegel used this conception of reason as noumenon to
deduce and unify everything in the world. Reason controls, masters, and compre-
hends everything. Indeed, it is everything. However, the puzzle of what exactly this
reason is has always been shrouded in the thick mist of idealism. It inexplicably
contains everything—laws, truth, essence, actions, thoughts, unity, and so on. It is
the subject as well as the object. From time to time, in a series of confused
explications, one or another of these interpretations becomes more prominent than
the rest, and acquires a mystical aura. Schopenhauer had already commented on the
multiple meanings Kant implied in his use of the term “reason.” Recently, Brand
Blanshard revisited the question and listed several of the meanings of the term in his
Reason and Analysis.95
In my view, the term “reason” in classical German philosophy since Kant
basically refers to the social noumenon of the abstract human being. To the German
philosophers, “self” as well as “reason” have the sense of a sociality that surpasses
individual nature. The idea that the noumenon is superior to the phenomenon, that
ethics and religion are superior to science and knowledge, and the unknowable
thing in itself all refer in an abstract, idealistic manner to the human being as a
social rather than a natural existence, and underscore human spontaneity. In epis-
temology Kant emphasized the spontaneity of cognition (transcendental apper-
ception), while in ethics he emphasized spontaneous action (autonomy of the will).
To Hegel, spontaneity appears in the idealistic form of his dialectic as the unity of
the subject and object, which replaces the God of the Middle Ages and governs the
world in its stead. Hegel united sensibility, understanding, the moral law, and the
unknowable thing in itself in his Absolute Idea, which is the dialectical unity of the
subject and object based on the development of the whole of history, from which he
deduced everything material and spiritual. In this way, the unknowable thing in
itself and even pure reason are reduced to an idealistically mystified human history.
Kant’s human being who is an end in himself is no longer the individual natural
being, nor society as a whole, but instead becomes nothing less than the totality of
human history.
The puzzle can to some extent be clarified by comparing Kant’s view of history
with Hegel’s. Kant states, “Each, according to his own inclination, follows his own
purpose, often in opposition to others; yet each individual and people, as if fol-
lowing some guiding thread, go toward a natural but to each of them unknown goal;
all work toward furthering it, even if they would set little store by it if they did
know it.”96 This refers to “nature’s secret plan,” which we discussed earlier. Hegel
develops this thought of Kant’s, turning Kant’s subjective idea into an objective
idea of what he calls spirit. He says:

95
Brand Blanshard, Reason and Analysis, 1.
96
Kant and Behler (1986).
9.4 Views on History 275

It is the particular which exhausts itself in the struggle and part of which is destroyed. But
the universal results precisely from this struggle, from the destruction of the particular. It is
not the general Idea that involves itself in opposition and combat and exposes itself to
danger; it remains in the background, untouched and uninjured. This may be called the
cunning of Reason – that it sets the passions to work for itself […] The particular in most
cases is too trifling as compared with the universal; the individuals are sacrificed and
abandoned.97
Those manifestations of vitality on the part of individuals and peoples in which they seek
and satisfy their own purposes are, at the same time, the means and tools of a higher and
broader purpose of which they know nothing, which they realize unconsciously […] that
Reason governs the world and has consequently governed its history. […]
This connection implies that human actions in history produce additional results, beyond
their immediate purpose and attainment, beyond their immediate knowledge and desire.
They gratify their own interests; but something more is thereby accomplished, which is
latent in the action though not present in their consciousness and not included in their
design.98

For Hegel, reason is itself the absolute spirit. It realizes itself by means of human
desires and conflicts of interests in the progress of history. Marx and Engels set
great store by Hegel’s view. In Capital, when discussing how human beings use
labor to realize their purpose, Marx quotes in a footnote the following paragraph
from Hegel:
Reason is just as cunning as she is powerful. Her cunning consists principally in her
mediating activity, which, by causing objects to act and re-act on each other in accordance
with their own nature, in this way, without any direct interference in the process, carries out
reason’s intentions.99

Engels comments:
Men make their own history, whatever its outcome may be, in that each person follows his
own consciously desired end […] But, on the one hand, we have seen that the many
individual wills active in history for the most part produce results quite other than those
intended—often quite the opposite.
The philosophy of history, particularly as represented by Hegel, recognizes that the
ostensible and also the really operating impetus of men who act in history are by no means
the ultimate causes of historical events; that behind these impetus are other impetus, which
have to be discovered. But it does not seek these powers in history itself, it imports them
rather from outside, from philosophical ideology, into history.100

97
Hegel (1953).
98
Ibid.
99
Engels (1994b).
100
Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy. Marx Engels Internet Archive
1994.
276 9 Ethics: II. Views on Religion, Politics, and History

9.5 “The Good Is Understood to Be Man’s Practice”

Kant shifted the key of historical progress from the individual to the human being,
turning from subjective consciousness to the objective divine will (nature’s secret
plan). Receiving Kant’s legacy, Hegel established the soul of his dialectic with a
grand historical sense of the human being as a totality. Nevertheless, his thought
lacked a substantial material ground.
Feuerbach criticized Hegel from the perspective of sensible reality, but his
thought lacks a view of history as totality. We discussed (Chap. 5) how Feuerbach
attempted to replace the universality of reason as conceived by Kant and Hegel with
the universality of individual sensibility, but his thought remains stuck in a passive
perception of French materialism, i.e., within the bounds of individual animality
(which does not have historical universality), hence sensibility cannot be compre-
hended as practice—as the spontaneity of the subject. Hence, he fails to criticize
Hegel from a historical point of view (subjective practical activity as a totality).
Marx carefully evaluated Hegel’s view of history, which he criticized from the
materialistic standpoint of human practice, as seeing everything upside down. Marx
stressed that the investigation of historical development should proceed from
human society itself, instead of in an ideological and external manner. Whether it is
the concept of abstract reason and the transcendental self, or the postulate of the
absolute idea and the human being as an end, these must all be taken up from the
perspective of historically specific social life, and especially the contradiction
between productive forces and relations of production, and between the economic
base and the cultural superstructure.
Some animals also have a highly organized social life and engage in collective
activities; however, because they lack the essential base of making and using tools
they cannot establish a society like that of human beings and they lack social con-
sciousness as well as language. That is why human society differs from the natural
man that Hobbes and Rousseau conceived, no less than from the life of any animal
species. It is precisely because human beings make and use tools that they take a
merely animal form of sociality and develop it into the organization of human
society, developing both language and social consciousness. From then on, the laws
of society rather than laws of biological nature control the development of the human
being. “The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of
social, political and intellectual life”;101 “Mankind must first of all eat, drink, have
shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion … [and] the
production of the immediate material means of subsistence and consequently the
degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch
form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and

101
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
9.5 “The Good Is Understood to Be Man’s Practice” 277

even ideas on the religion, of the people concerned have been evolved.”102 The
masses shoulder the responsibilities of material production and are the subject of
social practice. “All social life is essentially practical.”103
Marxism sees social production as the basic practical activities that fundamen-
tally drive the progress of history and the development of an epoch. Only from the
fundamental viewpoint of practical philosophy can the puzzle of reason in classical
German philosophy be exposed and criticized. Therefore, social practice is not only
the fundamental ground of knowledge but also that of ethics, morality, politics, and
history. Our criticism of Kant’s epistemology in previous chapters is made from this
standpoint, and so will be our criticism of Kant’s ethics. In his Philosophical
Notebooks Lenin quotes a passage from Hegel’s works:
This determinateness, which is contained in the Notion, and is equal to it, and includes
within itself the demand of the individual external actuality, is the Good. It appears with the
dignity of absoluteness, because it is the totality of the Notion within itself—the objective
in the form simultaneously of free unity and subjectivity.104

And he comments:
The essence: The “good is a “demand of external actuality,” i.e., by the “good” is
understood man’s practice = the demand (1) also of external actuality (2).105

And another paragraph from Hegel:

Presupposed to it (the Good) is the objective world, in the presupposition of which the
subjectivity and finitude of the Good consists and which, as being other, pursues its own
course; and in it even the realisation of the Good is exposed to obstacles, and may even be
made impossible.106

Then Lenin remarks:

The “objective world” “pursues its own course,” and man’s practice, confronted by this
objective world, encounters “obstacles in the realisation” of the End, even “impossibility.”107

The good depends neither on Kant’s otherworldly pure reason, nor on Hegel’s
absolute idea, but solely on practice. This good is the essential historical nature of
human social practice as a totality. In other words, social practice itself (the basis of
human existence and development) is the good and all other goods derive from it.
Therefore, social practice (e.g., production), which preserves the society and pro-
motes historical development, is also the origin of morality. Based on this view, the
historically sedimented crystallization of rational human nature is the subjective
psychological vehicle of the good. Morality is always historically specific and

102
Engels (1994a).
103
“Theses on Feuerbach.” Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
104
Philosophical Notebooks. Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
105
Ibid.
106
Ibid.
107
Ibid.
278 9 Ethics: II. Views on Religion, Politics, and History

contextualized by historical development, and its laws, demands, and commands

are historical and particular. Such seemingly idiosyncratic features as greed and the
desire for power are abstractly regarded as evil from a moral viewpoint, but must be
analyzed and evaluated in the context of their objective historical situation.
Kant and Hegel both saw that evil was often a driving force of history, and that
what is seen abstractly as morally evil may not always be so when we consider
history as a whole. When the bourgeoisie and its representatives were pursuing their
desire for power, they were often seen as evil from a moral point of view. However,
seen from another perspective they drove the progress of history. This is a kind of
“antinomy of history.”108 The ruling class often condemns the rebels opposed to the
old system as evil and praises abstract moral teachings as good.
However, many moral theories attempt to pose the question of whether human
nature is good or evil from a perspective that supposedly transcends history, though
that is a mistake; for any explanation of the struggle and development of human
history and good and evil must be based on the conflicts and developments arising
from material production.
Marx discovered the material history of the development of human society
independently of individual subjective will, and set great store on historical events
and the objective basis of human behavior, impartially examining the causal rela-
tionship of history and reality. He also emphasized human spontaneity. The great
difference between the causality of history and the causality of nature is the result of
human spontaneity, consciousness, and purpose. On the one hand, then, historical
progress is as objective and independent of subjective will as the causality of nature
is, while on the other hand, human beings are free because their purposeful activity
depends on their thought. Some human activities may suffer temporary failures or
setbacks, but taken all together these activities create history and give the idea of the
moral good what objective positive value it has.
Marx writes: “World history would indeed be very easy to make, if the struggle
were taken up only on condition of infallibly favorable chances.”109 We should not
be dissuaded by temporary success or failure, but stand fast on the basis of the
whole overall trend of social development, and keep up the ethical spirit of “dare to
fight, and dare to win,” which is the ethical principle of historical materialism.
It is also the case with the relation between the whole and the individual. However
much we emphasize the individual as an end, and the freedom and development of
individuality, human beings are nonetheless governed by objective history, and it
would be impossible—as impossible as trying to get oneself off the ground by
grasping one’s own hair—to completely surpass history and to break from historical
time. In the kingdom of freedom—before the arrival of Communism—the devel-
opment of human beings as a race and the development of the individual are
sometimes locked in hostile conflict. It is often necessary to sacrifice the individual
for the sake of the development of human beings. Morality is the attitude and action

See my essay “A Reevaluation of Confucius,” Chinese Social Sciences, 2 (1980).

108

109
Letter to Kugelmann, April 17, 1871. Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
9.5 “The Good Is Understood to Be Man’s Practice” 279

that accepts this truth and is dedicated to promoting historical development.

Referring to the economist David Ricardo, Marx said:
He wants production for the sake of production and this with good reason. To assert, as
sentimental opponents of Ricardo’s did, that production as such is not the object, is to
forget that production for its own sake means nothing but the development of human
productive forces, in other words the development of the richness of human nature as an
end in itself. To oppose the welfare of the individual to this end, as Sismondi does, is to
assert that the development of the species must be arrested in order to safeguard the welfare
of the individual, so that, for instance, no war may be waged in which at all events some
individuals perish. […] Apart from the barrenness of such edifying reflections, they reveal a
failure to understand the fact that, although at first the development of the capacities of the
human species takes place at the cost of the majority of human individuals and even classes,
in the end it breaks through this contradiction and coincides with the development of the
individual; the higher development of individuality is thus only achieved by a historical
process during which individuals are sacrificed for the interests of the species in the human
kingdom, as in the animal and plant kingdoms, always assert themselves at the cost of the
interests of individuals.”110

This view is almost identical with what Kant expressed in his writings on the
philosophy of history.
It is blind submission to see the individual’s voluntary sacrifice as a means for
the sake of the kingdom of freedom—the realization of Communism—and it is
illusory to prattle on about ideas such as the human being as an end and individual
freedom without seeing objective historical progress. Only after having compre-
hended the whole process of human social development can human actions be
rightly understood and freedom historically and concretely realized. Kant’s
thoughts on the autonomy of the will and the human being as an end in itself will
not have subjective ethical power or profound historical content in any other way
than on the ground of historical materialism.

9.6 Kantianism in Social Theory

In Chap. 4, we briefly touched on the Kantian inclination that characterized the

theory of causality in the natural sciences in the 1930s, and we shall now deal with
the same trend in social theory. However, this domain is so vast, the issues so
complicated, and the theoretical schools and their representatives so numerous that
we can make only a rough sketch. Lacking dialectical unity between subjective
human spontaneity and objective historicity, various schools of philosophy,
assuming different metaphysical positions, often exaggerated one aspect and
blocked out others. Hegel mainly emphasized the objective nature of morality, and
knowledge of and conformity with laws of necessity, while Kant emphasized
subjective responsibility and free choice, because the human being is not a spiritual

110
Theories of Surplus Value. Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
280 9 Ethics: II. Views on Religion, Politics, and History

machine. Hegel emphasized logic and causality, while Kant emphasized will and
freedom. If we were to say that Kant’s ethics was an idealistic subjectivism, then
Hegel’s dialectics tended toward vulgar objectivism (although Hegel is not a
fatalist, and stresses individual activity and will).
European historicists in the latter nineteenth century treated morality as the
subject of folklore and sociology. This method was actually derived from Hegel’s
objectivism, though not necessarily as a direct development from Hegel, whom in
fact these theorists often criticized from a positivistic point of view. They stressed
the origin of morality from a causal nexus that served a particular social and
historical condition, and turned Hegel’s somewhat mystical view of history into a
relativistic positivism that eventually evolved into an increasingly popular moral
relativism.
Moral relativism and the doctrine of cultural types, such as in the work of Ruth
Benedict, held that there are no universal, necessary moral norms or laws. Different
nations and cultures have their diverse moral norms, which are actually relatively
reasonable. But there is no question of better or worse norms in an absolute sense.
Primitive tribes practiced headhunting, people in the Middle Ages practiced
asceticism, and we moderns adopt different norms for sexual behavior. All these
diverse norms and practices serve their distinctive social life and order, and have
their historical particularity in accordance with reason. This school was, on the one
hand, progressive in its political view; it protected the cultures and moral values of
small and weak ethnic groups and resisted colonialism (though it was not without
its reactionary tendency). Their theoretical doctrines were, however, rather shallow.
They reduced morality to folklore, overlooked common subjective features of moral
behavior, showed no regard for the formal meanings of the heritage of universal
moral norms as an accomplishment of human history, dismissed the very idea of
human nature, and attached no importance to free choice and spontaneity, which
have always been important elements in modern philosophical moral theory.
Contrary to Hegel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche developed Kant’s subjectivism,
whether in terms of a blind will to live or a Dionysian spirit as the determinate force
of history. Nietzsche said that his spirit was Schopenhauer’s will and also Kant’s
faith. They turned Kant’s practical reason and absolute imperative into something
totally irrational. Existentialism opposed materialism’s treatment of human beings
as things, emphasized free choice and self-reliance, and opposed determinism,
insisting that human beings are free and that subjectivity is essential.
Nevertheless, they abandoned objective historical determination, consequently
their theories led either to mere idle talk or rash action. However, let us review
some of the main trends of moral theory that are more directly derived from Kant’s
thought.
With Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, the empirical eudaimonism to
which Kant was opposed became the major school, dominating the field of soci-
ology and ethics for a long time (particularly in Britain and the United States) under
the name of utilitarianism with its motto of the greatest good for the greatest
number. Mill held that happiness is the measure of morality: “The doctrine that the
basis of morals is utility, or the greatest happiness principle, holds that actions are
9.6 Kantianism in Social Theory 281

right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong in proportion as they

tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By ‘happiness’ is meant pleasure and the
absence of pain.”111 Nevertheless, Mill eventually ended up with social feelings
(i.e., conscience) as the impetus of moral action and the basis of moral theory,
turning the objective interest of French materialism into subjective feelings.
This turn to subjective idealism is even more pronounced in the school of human
relations. Ralph Barton Perry held that things “derive value from their being
desired, and possess value in proportion as they are desired.”112 Additionally, “It is
not to be argued from the fact that whenever values are found they stand in relation
to the finding of them. It is to be argued only from the fact that whenever values are
found they stand in relation to some desire or interest, the present finding being
itself entirely negligible.”113 In other words, moral value and the good do not
belong to things in themselves, but rather have a relation to human desires, needs,
wishes, pleasures, and happiness, that is, an association with our subjective wishes.
Thus is the question of moral good and evil in the social domain reduced to
empirical psychology.
Modern Western ethics began its career by opposing psychologism. G. E. Moore
was the first to propose the good as an indefinable objective quality. That is to say,
the good cannot be defined by other things. Just as the quality “yellow” cannot be
defined but only shown in perceptually intuited examples, so the good can only be
directly intuited and not conceptually defined in independent terms. However, this
intuitive good is not a natural quality and cannot be confirmed by mathematical
analysis or empirical induction. We are left with nothing but an indefinable intu-
ition, which seems to reduce the approach to the inner moral sense theory of
Shaftesbury that Kant already criticized. What Moore began passed through the
hands of A. J. Ayer, I. A. Richards, C. L. Stevenson, and R. M. Hare in the 1940s,
when analytic moral theory was all the rage in philosophy, though it was already
showing signs of decline. Its characteristic is to make a detailed analysis of moral
language, emphasizing its formal difference from scientific language. Language has
different uses and functions. One of them is the statement, which is appropriate for
scientific and everyday use, while another is the imperative, commanding action,
which is the logical form of moral language. The latter use is meaningful but not
descriptive, effective yet not descriptive; it expresses a feeling or attitude, a com-
mand, a demand, a persuasion, a comment, an encouragement.
This approach divided into emotionalism (Stevenson), intuitionism (Ross,
Prichard), and the doctrine of imperatives (Hare). Some of these philosophers
regard the good as an objective quality, while others consider it a subjective atti-
tude, but their general inclination is to stress the distinction between knowledge
(science) and action (ethics). Therefore, it can be said that they actually return to
Hume. Meanwhile, because their theory is not an empirical psychology, they can

111
Mill (2002).
112
Perry (1912).
113
Ibid., 335.
282 9 Ethics: II. Views on Religion, Politics, and History

also be seen as having returned to Kant. Hare, who thinks that the consistency and
universality of moral language regardless of content can be a moral standard, shares
some of Kant’s convictions, though while his method appears impartial and precise,
it is really rather shallow. If Bentham and Mill restored French eudaimonism, then
capitalistic moral theory since Moore is a revival of Kantianism, the most profound
expression of which is in the work of John Rawls.
Wittgenstein’s thought is more profound than all the theories mentioned above.
He distinguished the empirical moral level (relative values) of everyday life from
that of transcendental absolute value, maintaining that only the latter was the proper
object of ethics. Transcendental absolute value is unspeakable and difficult to
fathom, and is a sort of mystery unrestrained by social history. Indeed, for
Wittgenstein the very existence of the world and life was mysterious. This con-
viction of Wittgenstein’s exposes a problem, namely, that morality with its long
history certainly appears to have some sort of human universality, yet also seems
transcendent and mysterious. Ethical relativism disregards this absoluteness among
its relativities, despite the fact that human beings have been drawing increasingly
close to one another in accordance with an objective historical progress. The world
increasingly becomes smaller, and cultures are increasingly merging. This is also
the case with morality. The diverse lifestyles of the world’s peoples are gradually
assimilating in response to the objective developmental history of material civi-
lization. This process of assimilation accumulates and preserves the material legacy
of human civilization as a whole. Could it be possible that no accumulated and
preserved spiritual norms and principles are common to human beings? Indeed, as
we have pointed out in a previous chapter, moral norms and standards are always
marked with the historical particularity of time and class, and keep pace with
changes in society. There is no abstract universal morality, certainly not in terms of
content. But while the particular content of morality can be diverse, it can also have
a common or at least similar universal form, and this form is more than a superficial
similarity of language.
Kant’s imperatives, e.g., against lying, suicide, laziness, and selfishness, have
been passed on for many generations and in many societies despite historically
particular differences of social class. They seem to enjoy a kind of universality, but
what kind? I believe it involves cultural-psychological structure. Although Kant and
his commentators stress the non-psychological, transcendental metaphysical nature
of morality (see Chap. 8), the psychology they have in mind is empirical content
involving motives, pleasure, desires, wishes, and feelings; while in the forms of
cultural psychology, we pay closer attention to moral norms as the structure of the
will, and the sedimentation of reason as the important form of continuity. It might
be possible that an individual experience of the permanence and absolute value of
this cultural-psychological form was what Wittgenstein felt as a mystery. It might
also be possible that it is the formally universal categorical imperative that Kant had
in mind—that is, the subjective cultural construction of the will and the historical
sedimentation of reason—which is the proper understanding of human nature and
the meaning of the slogan that the human being makes itself.
9.6 Kantianism in Social Theory 283

The social theories of the working class movement also manifest the influence of
Kantianism in the nineteenth century. Neo-Kantianism had become an ideological
trend ever since the 1870s, when Otto Liebmann shouted his slogan, “Back to
Kant!” This return to Kant was mainly effective in reviving Kant’s epistemology, as
for example in the theories of Hermann Helmholtz and Hermann Cohen. Cohen
regarded Kant as the true founder of German socialism, and thought that the cat-
egorical imperative could be realized only in a socialistic society that had elimi-
nated exploitation and valued the human being as an end and never as a mere
means. The leaders of the Second International also thought that a Social
Democratic Party would fulfill Kant’s ethical ideal. They saw socialism as the
moral ideal and exploitation as a moral evil. Max Adler, a representative of the
Austrian school of Marxism, viewed Kant’s philosophy as the origin of modern
socialism, and regarded socialism as a moral teaching whose first lessons concerned
the need for an economic program that expressed the moral law.
These thinkers and their movements drew revolutionary nourishment from
Kant’s conception of faith. Eduard Bernstein, one of the representatives of the
Second International, argued that “Social Democracy needs a Kant to judge the
received judgment and subject it to the most trenchant criticism, to show where its
apparent materialism is the highest and therefore most easily misleading ideology,
and to show contempt for the ideal and the magnifying of material factors until they
become omnipotent forces of evolution is a self-deception.”114 He found that “the
level of economic development reached today leaves ideological and especially
ethical factors greater scope for independent activity than was formerly the
case.”115 While he would not, as he says, “make the victory of socialism depend on
its ‘immanent economic necessity.’ On the contrary, I hold that it is neither possible
nor necessary to give the victory of socialism a purely materialistic basis.”116
Kautsky and Plekhanov criticized Bernstein’s theory and developed a fatalistic
objectivism. They maintained that the moral ideals and feelings of the proletariat
“have nothing do to with scientific socialism.” Kautsky argued that “scientific
socialism…is the scientific examination of the laws of the development and
movement of the social organism […] Thus even with Marx occasionally in his
scientific research there breaks through the influence of a moral ideal. But he always
endeavors rightly to banish it where he can. Because the moral ideal becomes a
source of error in science, when it takes it on itself to point out its aims.
Science has only to do with the recognition of the necessary.”117 However, this
at times exaggerated scientific emphasis often slides into positivism. Kautsky
claimed that he was not good at philosophy, and wanted to replace Marxism with
Darwinism. He resorted to the “social instinct” of animals to explain human

114
The Preconditions for Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993), 209.
115
Ibid., 19–20.
116
Ibid.
117
Kautsky and Askew (1909).
284 9 Ethics: II. Views on Religion, Politics, and History

morality. Kautsky wrote that herd animals already have feelings, volition, and
actions that are entirely identical with the moral feelings, volition, and actions that
humankind is acknowledged to possess.118 Criticizing Kant, he inquired about
where the sense of duty that drives hens and chimpanzees to risk their own lives to
protect their young and the sense of duty that impels the stallion to fight with the
wolf in wilderness in protection of its herd come from.119 Kautsky held that the
sense of duty springs from “social instinct.” He thus completely eliminated the
essential feature of human morality, which is conscious autonomy, and turned it
into an instinct also possessed by animals. Despite the pretense of a critical
appropriation of Kantianism, this scientific doctrine of social instinct actually
regresses to the philosophical state before Kant. Although human morality may
possibly have a biological, evolutionary origin, the conscious action of the subject’s
will is very different from animal instinct. It is cultivated and formed by history (in
terms of the human being as a whole) and education (in terms of the individual),
rather than being the product of natural evolution.
The connection between Kantian ethics and concrete reality can seem remote,
and its complicated history in later philosophy may seem confusing. In terms of the
questions they raised and their specific doctrines, many of these theories have not
surpassed the scope of Kant’s philosophy. Therefore, in my view, Kant’s ethics no
less than his epistemology remains valuable for our time. The problem is that while
his work can lead to valuable new theories such as that of Rawls, the theory of the
will, and moralism, it can also reinforce the grave defects of subjectivism in some
lines of Marxist social thought, including the effort to set Marx in opposition to
Engels, or to regard Marx’s theory as a structuralist, pluralistic, or subjective
dialectics of practice while dismissing the doctrine of Engels as evolutionary
positivism and economic determinism. The early Marx becomes the antagonist of
the later Marx who is denigrated as a positivist, and is unlike the early Marx, who
was truly a materialist dialectician and humanitarian. These interpretations propose
a Marx who was opposed to Engels’ historical determinism,120 in the belief that it
would defeat revolutionary activity and make a mockery of freedom to emphasize
the determination of history through the internal conflicts of the modes of pro-
duction. The human being itself would be overlooked, replaced by ideas of
mechanism, fatalism, and positivism rather than dialectical materialism. However,
what these critics dismiss as dialectics is, as a matter of fact, the practical activity of
criticism. Worst of all, they do not objectively analyze and strictly define this
critical activity. As a result, for all their practical activity, they overlooked the
requirement that criticism be soundly based on an analysis of social production.
Accordingly, dialectics becomes a mere subjectivism.

118
Kautsky, Historical Materialism [trans. Cannot locate the quot].
119
Ibid., vol. 1, book 3, Chap. 9 [trans. Cannot locate the quot].
120
The American socialist Alvin W. Gouldner went even further, proposing new interpretations of
two doctrines of Marxism, one the determinism of scientific Marxism, the other the critical
Marxism of the theory of practice, with Engels the founder of the former, and Marx the latter.
9.6 Kantianism in Social Theory 285

Some schools of the theory of practice hold that “practice” refers to to all critical
activities, i.e., dialectics. They stress individualism rather than the progress of
material life, without investigating the origin of human alienation from the per-
spective of historical practice. They instead subjectively demand individual free-
dom and liberation, substitute cultural criticism for material practice, and emphasize
the superiority of ideology over realistic economic reform. This trend of individ-
ualism, voluntarism, and anti-historicism, from Lukacs121 to Marcuse and Sartre,122
was all the rage for a time in the sixties and seventies of the twentieth century. It
shared features with the student movement of the time, which was a violent
resistance against the alienating phenomena of capitalistic rule in the twentieth
century, as well as a romantic protest against the then galloping development of
scientific knowledge. Advocates of these theories ignored the fact that human
practice must first of all be a productive activity in a certain social context. Only
from this practical foundation could the rest spring up. Therefore, one ought to first
scientifically examine the objective causality of this foundation. However, such an
examination is exactly the historical materialism which is loathed most of all by
proponents of the “theory of practice.” Such are the circumstances abroad. At home
[in China], the left-leaning trend of thought, from the late 1950s to the Cultural
Revolution, reached its highest form, with slogans such as “The more we dare, the
more the land will yield” (which was popular during the Great Leap Forward in
1958) and “Revolution erupts from the depths of the soul” (popular during the

121
Lukacs himself acknowledged the subjectivistic errors he made in his early years (see his
Introduction to History and Class Consciousness, 1967). His erronous theory is nonetheless
revered as a classic by many people, and there are indeed many important and well-founded
arguments in his great work. In my opinion, it is the late Lukacs, the author of the Ontology of
Social Being, who is most worthy of attention and study. People criticize him for turning back to
the “normative” line of Marx-Engels-Lenin in this book. But I think that he rightly stresses the
making of tools and physical labor, and raises some important questions concerning the value of
use and purpose. These views, which are completely different from his early emphasis on sub-
jectivity, testify that this extraordinary thinker reached his final philosophical conclusion only after
long years of accumulating personal experience. Interestingly, while the discussions in my book on
the importance of making tools and productive labor, anthropological ontology, and the ontology
of social being have much in common with the views of late Lukacs (although I was not
acquainted with Lukacs’s later works at the time of writing), there are many differences too. For
instance, the question I raise concerning subjective cultural and psychological structure and his-
torical sedimentation. I leave it to interested readers to analyze the similarities and differences
between us.
122
In the Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre states that “if we do not wish the dialectic to
become a divine law again, a metaphysical fate, it must proceed from individuals and not from
some kind of supra-individual ensemble.” Here, dialectic is equated with an “essential intuition of
individual practice,” the “individual objectivize itself in creating life,” and so on. Although he
proposes to replace “rigid, non-individual, and inhuman” Marxism with “the particular is history
and praxis is dialectics,” the richness and particularity of human existence vanishes from his
account, which actually converges on the capitalistic thesis of Karl Popper. In The Poverty of
Historicism and The Open Society and Its Enemies, Popper opposes Marx’s historical determin-
ism, stresses that there is no determined historical laws to which human beings must conform, and
says that Marx’s criticism of capitalism is merely a moral criticism.
286 9 Ethics: II. Views on Religion, Politics, and History

Cultural Revolution), and all sort of views, theories, and actions that laid emphasis
on cultural criticism, class consciousness, spiritual pursuit, and morality. All these
ideas are rather close to Marxist trends of thought in the West. Therefore one cannot
be surprised when Western scholars compare Mao’s doctrine developed in his late
years with that of Antonio Gramsci, despite the differences of their social condi-
tions, or that some Western Marxists highly praise our Cultural Revolution. Their
general theoretical tendencies are comparable and display the same subjective
moral fantasy that is a sort of distorted Kantianism.
Western Marxism stresses totality, and focuses on a thorough criticism and
negation of modern capitalistic society. Some people hold that the critique of daily
life is the key to the reformation of society, while they also hold that ideas take
precedence, and that cultural revolution and theoretical criticism are more important
than economic reform. These people, when talking philosophy, are fond of
employing the term praxis to refer to all human activities. It is precisely because of
this, as I have repeatedly pointed out, that we must refer to the making and use of
tools to define the basic meaning of practice, so as to unify the theory of practice
with historical materialism.
I think that this was Engels’ contribution. Marx proceeded from philosophy to
historical materialism, whereas Engels reached the same destination from the study
of economics.123 It is not surprising that their theoretical bent should differ since
their dispositions, characters, academic training, interests, and talents were very
different. However, it would be inconsistent with historical truth if the differences
were exaggerated, because they agreed with each other in their historical materi-
alism. Engels contributed much theoretical thought that Marx praised.
Engels later defined practice as “experiment and industry,” and even wrote the
essay on “The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man.” For this
reason I would say that the basic concept of Marxist philosophy is practice rather
than praxis, for the unity of the theory of practice and historical materialism is
found nowhere else (see Chap. 5). Some Western Marxists separate Marx from
Engels, and the early Marx from the later Marx. However, these interpretations
isolate the theory of practice from historical materialism. This bitter lesson should
all the more be borne in the Chinese mind, that historical materialism is the theory
of practice and that these two philosophical ideas must not be severed. What would
be the consequence of such a severance? A theory of practice deprived of historical
materialism often turns into subjective voluntarism. We hold dear the theory of
practice in China, and the Great Leap Forward of 1958 was indeed great practice.
However, the Leap was against historical law and caused the death of thousands
and thousands of innocent people. A philosophical proposal that appears far
removed from reality can actually be a matter of people’s life and death. The
Cultural Revolution is another tragic instance of this same point.
Kautsky’s Darwinism, Plekhanov’s French materialism, and the Western
Marxism of the present day have their various approaches to Marxism, but to one

123
See A. Cornu, Karl Marx et Friedrich Engels, vol. 1.
9.6 Kantianism in Social Theory 287

degree or another they all bluntly oppose the objective history of society to the free
activities of subjective practice that they expect to purposefully and consciously
change the world. None of them have made any investigation of the complex
dialectical relationship between the objective progress of history, which is inde-
pendent of the subjective will of human beings, and the millions of individuals who
freely create history.
From the point of view of objective progress, all human activities belong to the
category of causality and have their specific necessity. Nevertheless, from a sub-
jective point of view, it is only by fully realizing morality that we can effectively
and consciously comprehend and reform the world. The choices one makes can be
predicted and explained by the law of causality.
However, it is no less important to remember that with moral discipline the agent
has the freedom to purposefully and consciously obey or resist what causality
determines. Accordingly, human beings actively create their history and take
moral responsibility for their choices and decisions.
Kant raised the contradictory relationship between the subject and the object,
and stressed the absolute value of subjective morality as the central theme of his
ethics. Seen from the point of view of Marxist philosophy, a society is not merely
an object but also a subject, and not merely a subject but also an object. Hence,
neither thoroughgoing objectivism nor subjectivism are correct, nor is it right to
oppose historical materialism to a theory of practice that emphasizes the subject’s
spontaneous activities. While history has its contingencies (necessity without
contingency would be an inexplicable mystery), in surveying its totality, particu-
larly from the perspective of economic development, an objective progress can be
discerned. To discuss practice in isolation from historical progress is to indulge in
empty talk and exalt a merely empirical psychology, as if psychology rather than
economy (modes and relations of production) were the impetus of history.
Historical materialism unveils the objective history of society, in particular, that of
economic development. Bringing in the psychological dimension of subjective
activity does not diminish but rather deepens its significance, since only on this
foundation can freedom and necessity, and subjective activity and objective history
be unified. Freedom would no longer be Kant’s causality transcending moral will,
nor Hegel’s absolute knowledge of causal necessity. Only self-conscious action
charged with historical responsibility is true ethical freedom, and that is what Marx
emphasizes as the unity of subjective spontaneity and historical objectivity, of the
revolutionary and the scientific, and of lofty inspiration and hard-headed
practicality.
Kant deserves praise for an a priori cultural-psychological form of the sedi-
mentation of reason that is universal, sublime, and absolute. His moral theory is
rooted in actual history, and shows his awareness of history’s largest vistas. The
tragedies inflicted by subjectivism, moralism, and voluntarism (in China, at least)
ought to be reasonably evaluated. Earlier I posed the question of whether we should
have Kant or Hegel. I hold that, after having dispelled these subjectivistic trends, we
still need Kantian ethics and the universality and idealism they promote. This
universality and idealism are based on experience and are applicable and knowable,
288 9 Ethics: II. Views on Religion, Politics, and History

rather than being mere transcendental illusions or a utopianism of the Absolute

Idea. The universals of Kant’s proposed republic, which is based on sensible
experience, respect for the individual, human rights, and the ideal of world peace,
are more important than Hegel’s notion, which he proposed, of the Prussian state as
the absolute realization of history.
A question that deserves further discussion is what we should make of the way
in which German philosophy after Kant and Goethe—from Fitchte, Schilling, and
Hegel to Nietzsche, Weber, Heidegger, and Schmitt, and including various schools
of romanticism that were glorious for a time—while having made great achieve-
ments, has also taken an anti-rational path of madness in the course of Germany’s
transformation from undeveloped, weak, and scattered states to a unified, strong,
and prosperous nation. Hitler’s ascendence and his nationwide support (including
that of a great many of the intelligentsia, such as Heidegger, Heisenberg, and
Schmitt) were not accidental. I think it is a grave lesson to be learned from the
history of German philosophy. By contrast to these post-Kantian developments,
Kant’s ethics and political philosophy are healthier in their emphases on engaging
with empirical epistemology and promoting the freedom of the individual and the
humane ideal of perpetual peace. These thoughts should be carried forward on the
ground of the theory of practice, namely, anthropological, historical ontology.124

References

Engels. 1994a. Speech at the Grave of Karl Marx. Marx Engels Internet Archive.
Engels, Frederick (Ed.). 1994b. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, trans. Samuel Moore
and Edward Aveling, vol. 1. Marx Engels Internet Archive.
Hegel. 1953. A General Introduction to the Philosophy of History, trans. Robert S. Hartman, 44.
Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill.
Hegel, Allen W. Wood, and Hugh Barr Nisbet. 1991. Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 159,
276. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Hegel, E.S. Haldane, and Frances H. Simson. 1996. Hegel’s Lectures on the History of
Philosophy, 492. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Kant, and J.W.B. Semple. 1838. Religion Within the Boundary of Pure Reason, 1. Edinburgh:
Thomas Clark.
Kant, and Henry Calderwood. 1871. The Metaphysic of Ethics, 280. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.
Kant, and J.W. Semple. 1886. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 33. Edinburgh: T. &
T. Clark.
Kant, and W. Hastie. 1887. The Philosophy of Law: An Exposition of the Fundamental Principles
of Jurisprudence as the Science of Right, 170. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.

124
The theory of practice, or historical materialism, has its scientific aspect in general sociology,
when it examines issues concerning forces of production, relations of production, economic base
and superstructure, and the state, culture, and family. Corresponding to the theory of practice is the
philosophical aspect of historical materialism, that is, the advancement of epistemology, ethics,
and aesthetics, including the theory of techno-social structure (the objective aspect of anthropo-
logical subjectivity) and cultural-psychological structure (the subjective aspect of anthropological
subjectivity) with the principles of historical materialism running through them.
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Kant, and Hans Siegbert Reiss. 1991. The Metaphysics of Morals. In Kant: Political Writings.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kant, and Eckart Förster. 1993. Opus Postumum, 249. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kant, Immanuel, and Arnulf Zweig. 1986. Philosophical Correspondence 1759–1799, 205.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kant, Immanuel, and Ernst Behler. 1986. Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan
Perspective. In Philosophical Writings, 250. New York: Continuum.
Kautsky, Karl, and John B. Askew. 1909. Ethics and the Materialist Conception of History,
202–203. Chicaco: Charles H. Herr & Company.
Marx. 1994. Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Marx Engels Internet Archive.
Mill, John Stuart. 2002. Utilitarianism, 7. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
Nisbet, H.B. (Trans.). 1991. Conjectural Beginnings of Human History (1786). In Kant’s Political
Writings, 227. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Paulsen, Friedrich. 1902. Immanuel Kant, His Life and Doctrine. New York: Scribner.
Perry, Ralph Barton. 1912. Present Philosophical Tendencies, 333. New York: Longmans,
Green & Co.
Silber, John. 1963, April. The Importance of the Highest Good in Kant’s Ethics. Ethics 7: 3.
Chapter 10
Aesthetics and Teleology

10.1 Critique of Judgment

Epistemology (truth) and ethics (good) constitute the two main aspects of Kant’s
philosophy. The former deals with the phenomena of natural causality, while the
later deals with the noumena of free will. Phenomena and noumena are, in fact,
necessity and freedom, and knowledge and morality in Kant’s philosophy, and
constantly engage in confrontation. While theoretical reason (cognition) is unable to
reach the moral realm, practical reason (ethics) can act in the cognitive realm. Kant
is compelled to seek a mediation between the two branches of his system in order to
elucidate their interaction. The search for this medium forms the capstone of the
critical philosophy. In Chap. 9, we mentioned his declaration that “Two things fill
the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and
steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law
within me.” Nevertheless, the unification of the realms of nature and freedom are
only first explained in the Critique of Judgment.
Kant states in the introduction to the Critique of Judgment that: “Here, then, I
end my whole critical undertaking.”1 Compared to the abundant scholarship on the
first two Critiques, very few studies have appeared on the third Critique, despite its
importance to the whole system of Kant’s philosophy. Mediating between
Rousseau and Hegel, the heart, the starting point, and indeed the foundation of the
whole system of Kant’s philosophy is the social man, though his account differs
from that of Rousseau, Spinoza, French materialism, and all the more from the ideas
of the medieval period. Kant’s idea of social man also differs from that of Hegel,
who submerges the individual human being in a system of absolute idealism. Kant’s
human has sociality (albeit abstract) as its transcendental essence, even while
remaining a natural, sensuous individual (see Chap. 9). In Kant’s epistemology,
precisely because human beings have such an existence, they possess only a sen-

1
Kant, and J. H. Bernard, Critique of Judgment, 6.

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 291

Z. Li, A New Approach to Kant, Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy
of Traditions and Cultures 27, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0239-8_10
292 10 Aesthetics and Teleology

suous, not an intellectual, intuition. This raises the fundamental question about
where the universal necessity of knowledge comes from. Similarly, in Kant’s ethics,
precisely because the human being is such a sensuous being, it is not angelic but on
the contrary driven by desire, which raises the fundamental question of the human’s
obligation to obey moral laws. What Kant discussed in dealing with the problem of
the relation between reason and the senses is, in fact, the relation between totality
and the individual, or, in other words, society (universal necessity) and nature (the
sensible individual). When Kant undertakes to mediate the blunt opposition
between cognition and morality, what he actually intends to do is resolve this
critical relation. The first two Critiques and especially the question of their relation
to each other puts this problem at the forefront, compelling Kant to write the third
Critique. In this work, the central position of the human being is more saliently and
profoundly presented. The answer to the question “What is the human being?”
which Kant proposed in his later years, is to be found in this book.
The ultimate approach to resolving the confrontation between nature and society,
cognition and morality, and sense and reason, and finally to unify them all is to
discern a transition between them and locate a bridge to effect their mediation. The
transition from the first to the second term in each case is a historical development
process from the natural to the moral human being. This bridge or medium for the
unification of these opposites is the power of judgment.
Judgment is not an autonomous faculty. Unlike understanding, it is not a source
of concepts; and unlike reason, it provides no ideas. It is merely a psychological
function that seeks a relation between the universal and the particular. Kant further
distinguishes two kinds of judgment. One of these is explained in the Critique of
Pure Reason, and is a faculty that judges whether a particular thing falls under a
given universal law or not. Kant calls this determinant judgment. He often remarks
that making such judgments is a sort of innate capacity that can only be cultivated,
not taught. One often sees learned scholars who have a thorough understanding of
abstract universal laws (which can be taught), yet are incapable of applying them to
particular circumstances and judging whether such and such a thing falls under such
and such a law. That means they lack determinant judgment. Determinant judgment
can be trained and cultivated through practice with examples.2
The other sort of judgment is called reflective judgment. The particulars in this
case are determined and the task of judgment is to seek out the universal. This is the
sort of judgment involved in an aesthetic judgment of beauty or in a teleological
judgment of purpose. Reflective judgment does not judge particular cases on the
ground of universal concepts or laws; instead, it moves from particular cases and
feelings in search of the universal. The difference between reflective and determi-
nant judgments is also the difference between aesthetic taste or feeling and scientific
cognition.3 Reflective judgment is a natural endowment and training is of little
help. Kant states, “the power of judgment is of two kinds: the determinative or the

2
Kant, and Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, Critique of Pure Reason, A134/B173.
3
This belongs to the discussion on imagery thinking, which I discuss later.
10.1 Critique of Judgment 293

reflective power of judgment. The former goes from the universal to the particular,
the second from the particular to the universal. The latter has only subjective
validity, for the universal to which it proceeds from the particular is only empirical
universality—a mere analogue of the logical.”4 Kant believes that reflective judg-
ment can communicate understanding (i.e., knowledge) and reason (i.e., morality).
It possesses qualities of understanding as well as those of reason, yet is identical
with neither.
At the beginning of the Critique of Judgment, he explains the importance of this
book in his philosophy by summarizing his whole system:
Now even if an immeasurable gulf is fixed between the sensible realm of the concept of
nature and the supersensible realm of the concept of freedom, so that no transition is
possible from the first to the second (by means of the theoretical use of reason), just as if
they were two different worlds of which the first could have no influence upon the second,
yet the second is meant to have an influence upon the first. The concept of freedom is meant
to actualise in the world of sense the purpose proposed by its laws, and consequently nature
must be so thought that the conformity to law of its form, at least harmonises with the
possibility of the purposes to be effected in it according to laws of freedom.—There must,
therefore, be a ground of the unity of the supersensible, which lies at the ground of nature,
with that which the concept of freedom practically contains; and the concept of this ground,
although it does not attain either theoretically or practically to a knowledge of the same, and
hence has no peculiar realm, nevertheless makes possible the transition from the mode of
thought according to the principles of the one to that according to the principles of the
other.5

The Critique of Pure Reason investigates transcendental categories and princi-

ples of understanding, including their constitutive and regulative functions, while
the Critique of Practical Reason investigates transcendental principles of reason in
practice, that is, moral laws. So what transcendental principles of reflective judg-
ment does the Critique of Judgment intend to investigate? Kant’s answer is the
formal purposiveness of nature.
This transcendental concept of a purposiveness of nature is neither a natural concept nor a
concept of freedom, because it ascribes nothing to the object (of nature), but only represents
the peculiar way in which we must proceed in reflection upon the objects of nature in
reference to a thoroughly connected experience, and is consequently a subjective principle
(maxim) of the judgment.6

Moreover:
Although, therefore, the understanding can determine nothing a priori in respect of objects,
it must, in order to trace out these empirical so-called laws, place at the ground of all
reflection upon objects an a priori principle, viz. that a cognizable order of nature is possible
in accordance with these laws.7

4
Kant, and J. Michael Young, Lectures on Logic, 625.
5
Kant, and J. H. Bernard, Critique of Judgment, 12.
6
Ibid., 20.
7
Ibid., 21.
294 10 Aesthetics and Teleology

Nature would merely be an infinite quantitative accumulation of objects linked

by mechanical causality if we had to rely solely on the categories of understanding
to cognize nature. To fully understand nature we need to grasp the internal relation
among its parts, and between its parts and the whole. This requires grasping an
interaction among causalities. Causes not only determine effects, they are also
determined by effects, and to grasp this interrelation we require the idea of a
purpose. The concept of the purposiveness of nature is indispensable in order to
comprehend the nature of living things, animals and plants, and to grasp the whole
natural world as an organic system. However, the purposiveness of nature, appre-
ciating nature as an organic system, cannot be established by empirical evidence.
Formal purposiveness is not an objective quality of natural objects; instead, it is a
subjective transcendental principle that we must adopt as a prerequisite for cog-
nizing nature. This formal purposiveness of nature is not a principle that belongs to
nature itself, nor a sort of moral law that determines human actions, but rather a
requisite regulative principle for investigating nature and unifying experience. It
belongs neither to understanding (knowledge), nor to reason (morality), but is
merely a transcendental principle of reflective judgment. Considered as the tran-
scendental regulative principle mediating between knowledge and morality, the
formal purposiveness of nature mediates between phenomena and noumena, or
between the nature cognized in science and the moral laws of practice. Kant holds
that, in aesthetics and arts, phenomena (nature) reveal that the noumenal signifi-
cance of nature is to serve the moral perfection of the human being; and beauty
becomes what he calls the symbol of morality, whereas in nature, the whole of
nature is for the existence of the moral human.
Kant distinguishes four types of teleological judgment. First, formal and sub-
jective judgment, such as aesthetic judgment; second, formal and objective judg-
ment, such as certain mathematical propositions, e.g., circles in contrast to triangles;
third, material and subjective judgment, such as the various goals a person might
have; fourth, material and objective judgment, which concerns the purpose of
nature. He also distinguishes between internal and external purpose. External
purpose is a thing’s purposive relation to something else lying external to it, while
internal purpose is of the thing itself and its own ends. This internal purpose is both
cause and effect, an organic relation of parts and wholes, where all the parts are
interdependent, and mutually relate as cause and effect. This is the purpose char-
acteristic of organized beings, living systems that constantly adjust themselves to
maintain their adaptation to their environment. A work of fine art also possesses this
internal, non-mechanical purpose.
With the term “purpose,” Kant refers mainly to internal purpose or what he calls
an organized being, an organic system. Hence, among the four categories of tele-
ological judgment, the first and fourth, namely, the subjective purpose of aesthetic
judgment and the objective purpose of organized beings, make the link between
sensuous nature and rational freedom. Kant therefore divides his Critique of
Judgment into two parts, namely, a Critique of Aesthetic Judgment and a Critique
of Teleological Judgment. The first part on aesthetic judgment deals with the forms
of objects that have the power to stimulate our cognitive faculties and arouse a
10.1 Critique of Judgment 295

certain purposive pleasure. However, this purposiveness of the beautiful is without

any specific objective purpose. Kant calls it formal or subjective purpose. The
second main division of the third Critique concerns purposive judgment applied to
the structure and existence of naturally organized beings (animals and plants). This
is an objective purposiveness. So the first sort of judgment, corresponding to the
first main division of the work, concerns an aesthetic (emotional) presentation of
purposiveness.8 The second sort is a logical (conceptual) presentation of purpo-
siveness in naturally organized (living) beings. To describe something in nature as
objectively purposive does not mean that the object itself does indeed have a
purpose of its own or in itself. The description is regulative and methodological. We
consider the thing as if it had a purpose, and relentlessly pursue an understanding of
the mutual causality of its parts. Nor is subjective purposiveness similar to the
subjective judgment of perception in epistemology. It concerns merely individual
subjective feelings, though it demands a certain universal necessity for such feel-
ings, which Kant believes possess a peculiar universality that does not involve any
concept or the existence of objective purposes, but only the form of objects and
subjective feelings (pleasant or unpleasant). Such reflective judgment is aesthetic
judgment.
The critique of aesthetic judgment, the theme of the first part of the Critique of
Judgment, explicates the middle link among the three psychological functions of
understanding, feeling, and the will, and forms the bridge between the first two
Critiques. This part of the book also has its own relatively independent content and
value. In it, Kant raises and resolves a series of fundamental questions concerning
philosophical aesthetics. Although Kant’s appreciation of specific works of fine art
might not be very insightful,9 his theory nevertheless surpasses that of more fas-
tidious connoisseurs in its capacity to accurately comprehend the formal features of
aesthetic experience. The Critique of Judgment has been influential in modern
European literary criticism, and has become a very important work in philosophical
aesthetics, surpassing even Hegel’s Philosophy of Fine Art.

8
Kant originally was opposed to using the term “aesthetic” for matters of taste (Baumgarten first
used the term in this sense). For reference, see the Critique of Pure Reason, first edition. In the
second edition he has acquiesced to this use, with the reservation that it is partially transcendental
and partially psychological. At the time of writing the Critique of Judgment, Kant wholeheartedly
adopted this use.
9
The works of art referred to in the Critique of Judgment are rather ordinary. This weakness of
Kant’s has been ridiculed by many latecomers. Some have remarked that Kant showed the wisdom
of self-knowledge when he declined the invitation to lecture on poetics at the University of Berlin.
However, this sort of remark is quite one-sided.
296 10 Aesthetics and Teleology

10.2 Analytic of the Beautiful

One of the essential characteristics of Kant’s philosophy is to analyze very precisely

those features of empirical experience that direct our attention to the essential
problems. For example, in epistemology, Kant considers our experience of
geometry and the historical accomplishment of Newton’s three laws of motion, and
poses his famous question about the possibility of synthetic judgments a priori. In
ethics, he begins with the empirical features of moral action, especially its differ-
ence from action in pursuit of happiness, and discovers pure practical reason. And
now in aesthetics, Kant begins with pleasure or aesthetic feeling and proceeds to his
intricate and insightful analysis of the beautiful. There are many psychological
elements in Kant’s philosophical system and all the more so in his analysis of
aesthetic judgment. While he stresses the difference between his analytic of the
beautiful and empirical psychology, nonetheless his analysis is in large part a theory
of aesthetic psychology.
What Kant calls aesthetic judgment is what we more commonly call apprecia-
tion, appraisal, or taste. He says, “the judgment of taste is aesthetical.”10 Since he
also thinks that such judgments do, in a complicated way, involve the under-
standing and its categories, he thinks it is appropriate to analyze judgments of
beauty through the four categories of understanding that he articulated in his
epistemology, namely, quantity, quality, relation, and modality.
Accordingly, he divides his analytic of taste, or judgments of beauty, into four
moments. The first moment is quality, and its principle states: “Taste is the faculty
of judging of an object or a method of representing it by an entirely disinterested
satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The object of such satisfaction is called beautiful.”11
The second moment of a judgment of beauty is quantity: “The beautiful is that
which pleases universally, without a concept.”12 The third moment is relation:
“Beauty is the form of the purposiveness of an object, so far as this is perceived in it
without any representation of a purpose.”13 The fourth moment is modality: “The
beautiful is that which without any concept is cognized as the object of a necessary
satisfaction.”14
The first moment of quality mainly distinguishes aesthetic satisfaction from
other kinds. Kant emphasizes the difference between aesthetic satisfaction in the
judgment of taste from the satisfaction that arises from the gratification of animal
desires and appetites, such as for food and drink. Aesthetic satisfaction also differs
from the spiritual satisfaction one feels after having done a good deed, which
depends on moral principles. Both physiological and moral satisfactions are con-
nected with the existence of an object, whereas aesthetic satisfaction is related to the

10
Kant, and J. H. Bernard, Critique of Judgment, 37.
11
Ibid., 45.
12
Ibid., 54.
13
Ibid., 73.
14
Ibid., 77.
10.2 Analytic of the Beautiful 297

form of an object. One takes satisfaction in the mere perceived form of an object,
rather than its actual existence. Thus Kant holds that aesthetic feeling and judgment
transcend all interests, including moral and physiological ones. Aesthetic pleasure is
a disinterested and free pleasure in the mere form of an object. For instance, the
pleasure one feels in appreciating a work of art is fundamentally different from the
pleasure one might feel in actually possessing it. Only the former is properly
aesthetic pleasure. In the same way, arts that give pleasure by satisfying appetitive
desires (such as cooking) differ from the fine arts, which are a source of genuinely
aesthetic pleasure.
According to Kant’s philosophy, only a person who is both sensuous and
rational can enjoy aesthetic pleasure. Therefore, it is evident that this pleasure
expresses the existential nature of man as a unity of sensuality and reason. Since an
aesthetic judgment involves the form of an object, with its sensual pleasure aroused
by this form and not induced by rational volution of the subject, these judgments
must be associated with some sensible object. On the other hand, as the aesthetic
judgment relates solely to the appearance or sensible form of an object and has
nothing to do with its actual existence, it does not depend on a connection with
subjective desire, but appeals uniquely to the rationality of the subject. Aesthetic
feeling is therefore a sensible pleasure related to reason. Kant explains:
The Pleasant, the Beautiful, and the Good, designate then, three different relations of
representations to the feeling of pleasure and pain, in reference to which we distinguish
from each other objects or methods of representing them. […] Pleasantness concerns
irrational animals also; but beauty only concerns men, i.e. animal, but still rational, beings
—not merely quâ rational (e.g., spirits), but quâ animal also; and the good concerns every
rational being in general.15
An object of inclination, and one that is proposed to our desire by a law of reason, leave us
no freedom in forming for ourselves anywhere an object of pleasure.16

Appetitive pleasure and moral good are determined and imposed by the exis-
tence of an object, whether the objects of eating or drinking or of moral actions, and
the existence of a subject, whether the biological existence of a sensuous being or
the moral action of a rational being.
Aesthetic pleasure involves only the form of an object, and presupposes the
subject’s rational capacity for disinterested freedom.17 That is to say, the aesthetic
judgment of taste relates solely to the form of the object and not to its actual
existence. What Kant expounds in the analytic of the beautiful is in fact the

15
Ibid., §5, 44.
16
Ibid.
17
This is why some scholars hold that Kant’s aesthetic judgment is not a judgment about any
object, but merely about some subjective feelings (see H. W. Cassier, A Commentary on Kant's
Critique of Judgment); or that the object of taste is merely a grammatical object rather than an
object for taste to judge (see S. T. Petock, Kant, Beauty and the Object of Taste). These criticisms
are not justified, because aesthetic pleasure arises from a coordination between imagination and
understanding, which must be engendered by the form of an external object.
298 10 Aesthetics and Teleology

fundamental question concerning human beings and nature that we touched on at

the beginning of this book. Since this question arises from the unity-in-opposition
of human beings and nature, or reason as the internal subject and nature as the
external object of the senses, in this respect his treatment of the question belongs
both to the theory of aesthetics and to general philosophy.
The structure of the first two Critiques is in accordance with the order of cat-
egories listed in the Analytic, starting with the category of quantity and moving on
to that of quality. In the third Critique, however, Kant immediately engages with
the category of quality. Commentaries have not adequately elucidated the reason
why Kant takes this approach. It seems to me that the importance of the question
itself demands Kant to uncharacteristically break with his usual approach.
Fundamentally, it is also because of this reason that the Critique of Judgment has
been more influential than Hegel’s Philosophy of Fine Art. Nonetheless, Kant’s
undertaking to unify human beings and nature, reason and senses, morality and
cognition within the confines of conventional aesthetics is not feasible. We will
return to this discussion later.
The second moment of quantity is mainly an explanation of why beauty can
universally arouse pleasure without relying on concepts. Aesthetic judgments of
taste demand universal validity no less than cognitive judgments do. However, the
universal validity of a logical cognition is objective, whereas that of the judgment of
taste is subjective. This radically distinguishes a properly aesthetic judgment of
taste from a subjective taste of sensible experience, which commands no universal
validity. For instance, you might prefer apples to pears while I prefer pears to
apples. Our diverse tastes do not cause dispute and people typically do not demand
agreement on such matters. No one would require your preference in such cases to
be universally valid. However, that does not hold for a properly aesthetic judgment
of taste. A judgment of beauty demands the same universal validity as cognitive
judgments of truth do. No rational argument can be made concerning the taste of
food, whereas there is good and bad aesthetic taste (although still without the
possibility of rational argument). Although aesthetic taste is singular (“In respect of
logical quantity all judgments of taste are singular judgments.”18), it has a special
sort of universality (“The judgment of taste carries with it an aesthetical quantity of
universality, i.e., of validity for everyone.”19). This is why Kant calls aesthetic taste
judgment, and this usage represents a singular development in the history of
philosophical aesthetics.
The crucial question in regard to taste concerns which of the two, judging the
object or feeling the pleasure, comes first. Does judgment arise from pleasure, or
vice versa? Kant states that “the solution of this question is the key to the Critique
of Taste.”20 If judgment arises from pleasure, then the judgment would only be
individual, empirical, and biological, and the feeling of pleasure would depend on

18
Kant, and J. H. Bernard, Critique of Judgment, §8, 49.
19
Ibid.
20
Ibid., §9, 51.
10.2 Analytic of the Beautiful 299

the disposition of our organs. For instance, to regard an object as delicious and in
that sense “tasty” is not an aesthetic judgment of taste since it concerns nothing but
a sensuous pleasure arising from the gratification of appetite. Only a judgment
capable of arousing pleasure universally, for all, can be called an aesthetic judg-
ment. Aesthetic universality arises only from judgment, because pleasure, as a
subjective psychological feeling, cannot guarantee universality.
The universality of aesthetic judgment does, however, differ from logical
judgment in not depending solely on concepts. For instance, when a person feels
beauty (e.g., in perceiving a flower), he makes an aesthetic judgment, “this flower is
beautiful.” This judgment appears to resemble a logical judgment, as if he cognizes
beauty as an objective quality of the flower, applies a concept of the understanding,
and demands that others agree with him, just as one would in the case of cognitive
judgment. However, such a demand is out of place. Aesthetic judgment concerns a
merely subjective pleasure rather than logical knowledge. You cannot compel
another person to feel that the flower is beautiful. Even if you try to persuade him
with a detailed description, or even if he agrees with your opinion, it is still up to
him to feel the beauty or not. It is evident that one cannot persuade another person
to feel beauty by means of reason. Therefore, although an aesthetic judgment
demands universality, the universality of everyone’s judging the flower to be
beautiful is fundamentally different from the universality of objective cognition in a
logical judgment. Logical knowledge is purely a function of the understanding, and
is determined by concepts, whereas aesthetic judgment, although demanding uni-
versal validity, remains a subjective feeling not determined by concepts.
Aesthetic judgment cannot be described as the mere application of concepts, but
rather involves the coordination of many psychological functions. Kant explains,
“the judgment is called aesthetic just because its determining ground is not a
concept, but the feeling (of internal sense) of that harmony in the play of the mental
powers, so far as it can be felt in sensation.”21 Additionally, “the cognitive powers,
which are involved by this representation, are here in free play, because no
determinate concept limits them to a particular rule of cognition. Hence, the state of
mind in this representation must be a feeling of the free play of the representative
powers in a given representation with reference to a cognition in general.”22 In
other words, aesthetic judgment differs from logical judgment in that the latter
employs definitive categories of understanding to confine and regulate the imagi-
nation and to make it comply with a concept in order to produce the abstract
knowledge of understanding.
In aesthetic judgment, imagination and understanding are in a harmonious and
free play.
Their free play transcends sensibility yet cannot be separated from it, and moves
toward concepts, yet without attaining to a definitive concept. This is the cause of
the special pleasure of beauty, such that “only where the Imagination in its freedom

Ibid., §15, 65.

21

Ibid., §9, 52.

22
300 10 Aesthetics and Teleology

awakens the understanding, and is put by it into regular play without the aid of
concepts, does the representation communicate itself not as a thought but as an
internal feeling of a purposive state of the mind.”23 It is evident that, as Kant
describes it, aesthetic pleasure is a product of our mental powers (chiefly imagi-
nation and understanding) when they enter into the mutual relation of a free and
harmonious state of mind. In this case, the relation between these two powers is not
rigid, but rather it is in an uncertain, wavering, almost oscillating movement. The
particular meaning of the so-called reflective judgment is found here. It is precisely
for this reason that aesthetic pleasure differs from any other sensuous pleasure,
which does not contain a judgment, as well as from any conceptual knowledge,
since this kind of knowledge is not reflective judgment. The statement “This flower
is fragrant” is a judgment of the sense organs; the statement “This flower is
beautiful” is an aesthetic judgment of taste; and the statement “This flower is a
plant” is a logical judgment and is objectively universal. In other words, the first
statement concerns sensuous pleasure, the second aesthetic taste, and the third
logical cognition.
I mentioned that the “quality” of aesthetic taste is, as Kant says, “without
interest, yet it gives pleasure,” while the quantity is “without concept, yet it has
universality.” Generally speaking, the feeling of pleasure is always connected with
our interests, while universality is connected with a concept. However, aesthetics is
precisely the opposite in both cases. Thus it reveals the particularity of the psy-
chological states involved. If it can be said that “quality” reveals the relation
between human beings and nature, then “quantity” reveals the psychological aspect
of the same relation. The former is more of a purely philosophical matter, while the
latter is psychological. We therefore have to ask about the mental powers that
aesthetic judgments require. Their particularity constitutes the heart and soul of the
creation and appreciation of fine art. Ancient Chinese literary theory also held that
the relation between imagination and understanding in fine art is an uncertain and
free play. For instance, The Poetics of Cang Lang tells us that in appreciating fine
writing we must “grasp a passage without clinging to a too literal interpretation, nor
following a too logical sequence of things of events.” The thought that lies behind
Chinese literary theory is the same as that of Kant. Later on, this question becomes
one of imagery thinking (artistic creation) and aesthetic feeling (artistic apprecia-
tion), and certainly reaches to the essence of art and literature.
The third moment of the analytic of taste is “relation.” Purpose or purposiveness
is either external, such as some utilitarian function, or internal, such as moral good.
As I said earlier, aesthetic judgments do not deal with any particular purpose, but
only with what Kant calls merely formal purposiveness, so-called purposiveness
without a purpose or purposive form without purpose, since it has nothing to do
with the pleasure that arises from morality, utility, and desire, nor does it have any
logical conceptual activity. It is nonetheless not a specific objective purpose, but a
subjective purposiveness. On the other hand, with respect to aesthetics, as the free

Ibid., §40, 138.

23
10.2 Analytic of the Beautiful 301

play of imagination and understanding towards an uncertain concept, Kant gives the
example of a horse. A horse that is strong and fit, with all its parts organically
interdependent, may give one an impression of a certain objective purpose to its
existence. This thought is not an aesthetic judgment of taste, however, for the
animal really is fit for human use. There is nothing merely formal about its pur-
posiveness, and this is not a case of purposiveness without a purpose. On the other
hand, looking at a flower, one does not need to be a biologist in order to perceive
that apart from the organic function of its various parts, the flower also arouses a
pleasant feeling as if it were meant to be looked at and aesthetically enjoyed, even
though, of course, it would be impossible to objectively confirm that it was pro-
duced for such a purpose. In such a case, Kant says that the pleasure arises from the
harmonious free play between the external form of the flower and our mental
powers. This is purposiveness without purpose, or aesthetic purposiveness.
The purposiveness of an aesthetic judgment is subjective and without any par-
ticular objective purpose. Kant explains:
An object, or a state of mind, or even an action, is called purposive, although its possibility
does not necessarily presuppose the representation of a purpose […] There can be, then,
purposiveness without purpose, so far as we do not place the causes of this form in a will,
but yet can only make the explanation of its possibility intelligible to ourselves by deriving
it from a will. Again, we are not always forced to regard what we observe (in respect of its
possibility) from the point of view of reason. Thus we can at least observe a purposiveness
according to form, without basing it on a purpose.24

Philosophically, purpose is distinct from purposiveness without purpose, since

the latter refers to a whole organized being whose mutually interdependent parts are
not subordinate to any particular external purpose. It forms a unique relation, and in
fact is a unique form of unity between human beings and nature, as I will discuss
more fully later on.
The terms “disinterested” and “without concept” are of the utmost importance in
characterizing aesthetic psychology. British empiricists before Kant touched on
these topics in their discussion of taste,25 and Kant builds on their work, which he
raises to a higher philosophical level by emphasizing purposiveness without pur-
pose as the central theme of the analytic of the beautiful. It is also in this third
moment of his analysis that Kant poses the question of the ideal of beauty, which
we will be in a better position to explain when we turn later to his discussion of
mechanism and teleology.
The fourth moment of the analytic of taste is modality. We understand that a
judgment of beauty is neither a purely logical nor an empirical judgment but rather,
as Kant says, a “judgment that has no definite law of understanding” despite laying

24
Ibid., §10, 55–6.
25
In The History of Western Aesthetics, Zhu Guanqian writes, “Kant’s arguments, taken severally,
are mostly already inherited from his predeccessors. Let us take a few examples, the argument
Kant makes on beauty that it does not involve desire, concepts, or morality, was definitively stated
by St. Thomas in the middle ages. Britain HutcheSon and Mendelssohn also held the same view.”
For further reference, see Stonitz (1960).
302 10 Aesthetics and Teleology

a claim to being universally valid. How is that possible? Such a judgment must in
some way be necessary, yet this necessity comes from neither concepts nor expe-
rience. Kant eventually explains that it arises from a transcendental faculty of
common sense. He explains: “It is only under the presupposition that there is a
common sense (by which we do not understand an external sense, but the effect
resulting from the free play of our cognitive powers)—it is only under this pre-
supposition, I say, that the judgment of taste can be laid down.”26
Kant’s postulation of this transcendental common sense relies on people tending
to feel the same way about the thing, but the real basis for the subjective necessity
of judgments of taste is the association that Kant conceives between this tran-
scendental common sense and the collective reason of human beings, which he
identifies with sociality. Here is his explanation:
Under the sensus communis [common sense] we must include the Idea of a communal
sense, i.e., of a faculty of judgment, which in its reflection takes account (a priori) of the
mode of representation of all other men in thought; in order as it were to compare its
judgment with the collective reason of humanity, and thus to escape the illusion arising
from the private conditions that could be so easily taken for objective, which would
injuriously affect the judgment.27

Additionally:
Empirically an interest in the beautiful arises only in society. If we admit the impulse to
society as natural to man, and his fitness for it, and his propension towards it, i.e. socia-
bility, as a requisite for man as a being destined for society, and so as a property belonging
to humanity, we cannot escape from regarding taste as a faculty for judging everything in
respect of which we can communicate our feeling to all other men, and so as a means of
furthering that which every one’s natural inclination desires.28

Kant illustrates aesthetic common sense with the example of a person on a

deserted island, who, he thinks, would not adorn himself or his surroundings merely
for his own sake. Here, at the crossroads of aesthetic feeling and psychological
form, Kant discovers the intersection between psychology and society, sensibility
and morality, and indeed between human beings and nature. This “common sense”
he refers to is not physiological but social. Evidently the concept of sociability is
somewhat more informative than the concept of transcendental sociability that Kant
postulates in his philosophy of history. It is not just a transcendental idea but also
sensible, and the sensible is always connected with human beings, though in this
case it is also a transcendental idea (the human being’s sociability) that demands the
expression of the human being’s sociability in sensuous material, namely, the
beautiful object. Kant’s theory of human nature diverges greatly from that of the
French materialists, as well as from Hegel’s thought, which tends to obliterate
everything individual and sensuous. Kant seeks instead to unify nature and
human beings, sensuality and rationality, in the concrete individual. This is an

26
Kant, and J. H. Bernard, Critique of Judgment, §20, 75.
27
Ibid., §40, 136.
28
Ibid., §41, 139.
10.2 Analytic of the Beautiful 303

important point. In attributing the source of aesthetic pleasure to sociality he takes a

step beyond his predecessors.
From the viewpoint of the history of aesthetics, Kant’s analytic of beauty, like
his analyses in epistemology and ethics, reflects, on the one hand, his disagreement
with British empiricism, for which aesthetic feeling is pleasure; and on the other
hand, his disagreement with continental rationalism and its contention that beauty
requires a judgment of “perfection,” which was the view held by Wolff and
Baumgarten.29 As always, Kant attempts to reconcile these two positions. Aesthetic
judgment becomes a bridge between epistemology and ethics. The two ends of this
bridge are his chapters on the Analytic of the Beautiful and the Analytic of the
Sublime, complemented by two further sections on Beauty in Form and Beauty as a
Symbol of Morality. They make up the two steps of the whole transition. Namely, a
transition within the transition on the transitional bridge, which is intricately pre-
sented in Kant’s aesthetics as a transition from the beautiful to the sublime, from
pure beauty to dependent beauty, and from formal beauty to artistic beauty. To
follow this transition, we now must turn to his analysis of judgments of the sublime.

10.3 Analytic of the Sublime

Sublimity is an aesthetic phenomenon. Violent storms, raging torrents, vast deserts,

turbulent waves, forlorn ruins—a very peculiar psychology is at work in such
experiences. There is pain, yet pleasure, pleasure, yet pain. From Longinus in
antiquity to Boileau in the seventeenth century, discussions of the sublime mainly
concern literary style. In the eighteenth century, British philosophers began to use
the word “sublime” to describe natural objects, but their descriptions and analyses
remained empirical and psychological. For instance, Edmund Burke holds that the
feeling of the sublime contains fear, while others claim that this feeling is one of
elevation following suppression. Kant raises these seemingly empirical descriptions
to a philosophical height, arguing that the sublime is a singular aesthetic phe-
nomenon.30 His theory attracted great attention and had significant influence on fine
art, in part due to the fact that the work was published at the time when European
Romanticism was budding. Kant holds that the characteristic of the sublime is
formlessness. He describes objects that are irregular, unconfined, rough, bleak, and
that exhibit an infinite expansiveness (such as the starry sky, great ocean waves, or
craggy mountain vastness) as the mathematical sublime. In another appearance, the
sublime exhibits an unassailable power of force. “Bold, overhanging, and as it were

29
Wolff claims that his philosophy deals only with human beings’ higher capacities and most
distinctive concepts. He holds that aesthetics belongs to sensibility, which is common to human
beings and other animals, and therefore excludes it from philosophy. Baumgarten holds that
aesthetics deals with sensible perfection, and his theory fills the blank left by Wolff’s dismissal of
aesthetics.
30
See Kant, Critique of Judgment.
304 10 Aesthetics and Teleology

threatening, rocks; clouds piled up in the sky, moving with lightning flashes and
thunder peals; volcanoes in all their violence of destruction; hurricanes with their
track of devastation; the boundless ocean in a state of tumult; the lofty waterfall of a
mighty river, and such like.”31 This is the dynamical sublime. These two kinds of
sublime are essentially the same and their division is due to Kant’s fondness for
architectonic dichotomies.
Kant holds that the mathematical sublime is due to the massive expanse or extent
of a natural object that surpasses the capacity of imagination, thereby arousing in
the subject a demand for a rational idea in order to wholly comprehend the object.
However, the rational idea does not have determinate content, being simply an
indeterminate form of subjective purposiveness. Therefore its application is prop-
erly an aesthetic judgment. In the case of the dynamical sublime, the conflict among
aesthetic feelings is all the more salient. On the one hand, imagination is too weak
to adapt to a natural object, so great is its dynamic power; consequently, the subject
feels fear. Yet the imagination demands a rational idea to comprehend and dominate
the object, and the initial feeling of fear transforms into pleasure at the realization of
one’s own dignity and courage. Beauty is a harmonious play between imagination
and understanding that produces a relatively calm and quiet aesthetic feeling, with
quality as the most prominent category. Whereas the sublime is a confrontation
between imagination and reason, which produces a feeling, manifesting rational
ideas in sensibility and expressing the power of morality and practical reason, that is
somewhat violent and whose most prominent category is quantity.
Kant states:
The irresistibility of its might, while making us recognise our own [physical] impotence,
considered as beings of nature, discloses to us a faculty of judging independently of, and a
superiority over, nature […] Thus, humanity in our person remains unhumiliated, though
the individual might have to submit to this dominion. In this way nature is not judged to be
sublime in our aesthetical judgments, in so far as it excites fear; but because it calls up that
power in us (which is not nature) of regarding as small the things about which we are
solicitous (goods, health, and life), and of regarding its might (to which we are no doubt
subjected in respect of these things), as nevertheless without any dominion over us and our
personality to which we must bow where our highest fundamental propositions, and their
assertion or abandonment, are concerned. Therefore nature is here called sublime merely
because it elevates the Imagination to a presentation of those cases in which the mind can
make felt the proper sublimity of its destination, in comparison with nature itself.32

The natural world has magnitude and might, as for example in some enormous
and powerful natural object which, acting upon the imagination, awakens the
spiritual power of the human being to a confrontation. Moral power mentally
overcomes the object and thereby arouses pleasure. Therefore, the pleasure comes
from the subject’s rejoicing over his own rational power and dignity, which pro-
duces the aesthetic feeling of sublimity. Although capable of destroying a natural
human being, who is subject to natural forces, nature cannot dominate its reason or

Kant, and J. H. Bernard, Critique of Judgment, §28, 110.

31

Ibid., §28, 101.

32
10.3 Analytic of the Sublime 305

its spirit, which, on the contrary, overcome these challenges of nature. The sense of
the sublime is exactly the feeling the subject experiences in the struggle between his
moral power and natural forces. However, this feeling is yet to become genuine
moral feeling (see Chap. 8), it is still a formal aesthetic judgment about a natural
object. Natural forces (whether magnitude or might) only present their formless
forms (irregular mass or unregulated power), which, while threatening, are at the
same time fascinating; and our response remains aesthetic rather than moral (for
instance, when a person looks at a storm rather than being in a storm), and therefore
still belongs to the aesthetic realm. It is still a subjective purposive form rather than
a moral action. Nonetheless, aesthetic feeling and judgment do, in this case,
approach moral feeling and judgment. When Kant turns from the analysis of the
beautiful to the analysis of the sublime, his thought still lingers on the mediating
ground of aesthetic judgment, although his exposition has in fact already advanced
beyond this point, having advanced from the free activities of our cognitive powers
(imagination and understanding) towards incomparably sublime moral ideas; hence
from objective objects to subjective spirit and from nature to human beings. Now
the human being is no longer merely a natural, sensuous individual, but rather a
social, rational power of moral action.
The aesthetic experience of the sublime inspires a multitude of cultivated or
spiritual thoughts and feelings due to its involvement with a rational idea. “Thus the
wide ocean, agitated by the storm, cannot be called sublime. Its aspect is horrible;
and the mind must be already filled with manifold ideas if it is to be determined by
such an intuition to a feeling itself sublime, as it is incited to abandon sensibility
and to busy itself with ideas that involve higher purposiveness.”33 Moreover,
“without development of moral ideas, that which we, prepared by culture, call
sublime presents itself to the uneducated man merely as terrible.”34 In order to
appreciate the sublime, to arouse aesthetic feelings toward the wilderness, the starry
sky, or a great storm, the subject needs to have been prepared through a high level
of moral cultivation. To appreciate the beautiful it suffices to give attention to the
form of an object, while the appreciation of the sublime requires awakening rational
ideas; in other words, it requires the moral power of a spiritual subject to respond to
a formless object that is not at all in accordance with formal beauty. Therefore, the
sublime is more subjective than the beautiful. Beauty depends on certain features of
objective form, whereas the objective formlessness of the sublime, which lacks the
demarcated form of beauty, awakens subjective reason. What the subject feels in
the formless form of an object is no longer objective nature but rather the subjective
spirit itself, which reconciles the antagonism of object and subject, cognition and
ethics, nature and human beings.

Ibid., §23, 84.

33

Ibid., §29, 105.

34
306 10 Aesthetics and Teleology

Kant believes that sublimity is evoked solely by scenes in nature.35 However, his
real thought is that the proper object of these feelings is the human spirit itself. It is
evident that for Kant the true object of feelings of both beauty and the sublime is
our own mind. This stance diverges from the one he held in the first Critique, where
he took the more usual line that beauty and sublimity were natural qualities and
relations of the object.36 This divergence is not, however, a regression in Kant’s
thought, but rather a progression. Kant has become aware of the relation between
the beautiful, the sublime, and the human being, although his presentation is, of
course, thoroughly idealistic.
Like the analytic of the beautiful, the analytic of the sublime begins from
descriptions of psychological phenomena and moves toward philosophical ideal-
ism. To Kant, neither sublimity nor beauty enjoy an objective existence, they are
subjective effects in subjective consciousness and, while implicitly tinged with
objective sociality, remain thoroughly subjective.

10.4 The Ideal of Beauty, Aesthetic Ideas, and Fine Art

The transition from the beautiful to the sublime is a transition from cognition to
ethics in the aesthetical realm, while the move from free to dependent beauty is
another mode of this same transition. Before discussing the sublime, Kant first
distinguishes free and dependent beauty. He illustrates free beauty with examples
such as flowers, birds, seashells, decorative wallpaper, and musical fantasies
without themes or words.37 These are pure formal beauty. The examples demon-
strate Kant’s conception of the standard of beauty and meet the requirements he
proposed in the analytic of the beautiful, such as disinterestedness and purposive-
ness without purpose.
It would seem natural to assume that free beauty is Kant’s ideal. However, the
reverse is the case. He holds that the ideal of beauty is not this free beauty, but
rather the dependent form. The expression of dependent beauty requires the use of
concepts and contains cognizable content that mobilize concepts of the under-
standing and ideas of purpose. The beauty of practically any of the works of art
familiar to and discussed by Kant possesses this dependent beauty, which pre-
supposes some purpose for the object and in accordance with which it is produced.
Therefore, it has moral and even objective social content. For instance, the beautiful
form of the human body or of a horse is an example of dependent beauty because its
physical structure evokes some idea of objective purpose. The pleasure such objects

35
Kant does cite man-made pyramids as an example of the mathematically sublime, because his
intention is to demonstrate the massiveness of natural objects. Therefore there is no contradiction.
36
See Universal Natural History and Theory of Heaven, and Observations on the Feeling of the
Beautiful and Sublime.
37
Kant, and J. H. Bernard, Critique of Judgment, §16, 66.
10.4 The Ideal of Beauty, Aesthetic Ideas, and Fine Art 307

arouse is not simply aesthetic, but also intellectual or moral pleasure. This is what
Kant describes as “the unification of taste with reason, i.e., of the beautiful with the
good.”38
He believes that such unification is not only harmless but also beneficial to
aesthetic culture. If an object is considered simply in respect of its form, then the
subject forms an aesthetic judgment of free beauty, whereas if the purpose of an
object is taken into account, the judgment would concern dependent beauty. The
same object is often appreciated from these two perspectives, and may arouse quite
varied aesthetic feelings. An object can be appreciated simply as a pure form, that
is, in respect of its lines and composition (free beauty); it can also be appreciated in
respect of its content (dependent beauty), though Kant regards the dependent
variety as the ideal of beauty.
In the Critique of Pure Reason, the ideal that Kant referred to was the image of a
rational idea. This ideal and rational ideas are inseparable. In the Critique of
Judgment, Kant also states that “idea properly means a rational concept, and ideal
the representation of an individual being regarded as adequate to an idea.”39 A
rational idea can be expressed neither through sensibility nor concepts of under-
standing, but rather only through individual images of the ideal of beauty, which
can be said to be the supreme manifestation of an indeterminate rational idea.
The ideal of beauty must be distinguished from any empirical idea of the merely
normal.
Such empirical conceptions, which refer to a common standard within a certain
range of experience, are basically a mean:
The imagination can, in all probability, actually though unconsciously let one image glide
into another, and thus by the concurrence of several of the same kind come by an average,
which serves as the common standard of all. Every one has seen a thousand full-grown
men. Now if you wish to judge of their normal size, estimating it by means of comparison,
the imagination (as I think) allows a great number of images (perhaps the whole thousand)
to fall on one another. If I am allowed to apply here the analogy of optical presentation, it is
in the space where most of them are combined and inside the contour, where the place is
illuminated with the most vivid colours, that the average size is cognisable; which, both in
height and breadth, is equally far removed from the extreme bounds of the greatest and
smallest stature. And this is the stature of a beautiful man.40

Our [Chinese] ancients set the same standard for a beautiful man, that he is so
perfect that he would be too tall if he were one inch taller, and he would be too short
if he were one inch shorter. The empirical, aesthetic idea of the norm is the
definitive rule for the image attained through imagination. For instance, different
ethnic groups and different ages have different conceptions of beauty. Such dif-
fering conceptions do not involve any moral idea, but are entirely an empirical
paradigm. However, the ideal of beauty is different from this empirical norm, since
it presents a rational idea in an individual, even if the idea is vague and

38
Ibid., §16, 67.
39
Ibid., §17, 69.
40
Ibid., §17, 71.
308 10 Aesthetics and Teleology

indeterminate. Since the ideal of beauty requires the presentation of rational ideas,
human beings alone are qualified for the task. Flowers, landscapes, and even works
of fine art are not qualified to become the ideal of beauty.
I have discussed in previous chapters how rational ideas do not fall within the
scope of natural causality or constitute objects of scientific knowledge, since they
are moral entities beyond empirical scope. Kant repeatedly states that “the ideal […]
we can only expect in the human figure. […] To make its connexion with all which
our reason unites with the morally good in the idea of the highest purposiveness
[…] a judgment in accordance with an ideal of beauty is not a mere judgment of
taste.”41 In other words, it is no longer free beauty, or pure aesthetics, but a
judgment of taste that is intellectual as well. Before proceeding to the discussion of
art, Kant sets aside a chapter to discuss the intellectual interest in the beautiful. He
says that “it is not merely the form of the product of nature which pleases
[someone], but its very presence pleases him.”42 In this way, “the mind cannot
ponder upon the beauty of nature without finding itself at the same time interested
therein. But this interest is akin to moral, and he who takes such an interest in the
beauties of nature can do so only in so far as he previously has firmly established
his interest in the morally good.”43 Kant keenly observes that the aesthetic pleasure
that arises from the appreciation of nature is not merely an aesthetic feeling for the
form, and the beauty of nature is not limited to formal beauty, but is also an
intellectual feeling toward the presence of nature, i.e., admiration for the objective
existence of the purposiveness of nature.
This appreciation of the objective purposive existence of nature goes beyond
subjective aesthetic form to approach the objective purposive existence of nature,
which is the bridge leading to moral being. Kant’s intention in writing the Critique
of Judgment is to find a link between sensible nature (Newton’s natural causality)
and supersensible nature, that is, morality (Rousseau’s human freedom). The
mediating link is aesthetic judgment (subjective purposiveness), which Kant
eventually calls a subjective analogy of morality. The categories of understanding
become sensible illustrations by means of schemata so as to become knowledge,
while moral ideas find sensuous illustrations by means of aesthetic “symbols.” Kant
explains that “taste is at bottom a faculty for judging of the sensible illustration of
moral ideas (by means of a certain analogy involved in our reflection upon both
these).”44 Natural objects become analogues of certain rational ideas and are
thereby received with a feeling of beauty.
Accordingly, Kant sets down his well-known definition of beauty as a symbol of
morality.45 For instance, white is a symbol of the moral idea of purity. Our ancient
[Chinese] arts also made pine trees, chrysanthemum, bamboo, and wintersweet into

41
Ibid., §17, 72–3.
42
Ibid., §42, 141.
43
Ibid., 143.
44
Ibid., §60, 202.
45
Ibid., §59, 196.
10.4 The Ideal of Beauty, Aesthetic Ideas, and Fine Art 309

symbols of the noble character of the perfected person, a practice that coincidentally
corresponds to Kant’s theory.
To Kant, here lies also the essence of art. Art is dependent rather than free
beauty.
Accordingly, art is not merely a beautiful presentation but transmits reason and
presents the ideal of beauty in a form expressing purposiveness without purpose.
Kant explains the ideal of beauty in the analytic of the beautiful, but proposes the
concept of aesthetic ideas in the discussion of artistic creation. These two concepts
are in fact one thing, where the ideal of beauty is conceived from the perspective of
appreciation and judgments of taste, and aesthetic ideas come into the theory when
Kant tries to understand the psychology of creation and artistic genius. Both are
moments in the transition to morality. Kant elaborates on this point: “By an aes-
thetic idea I understand that representation of the imagination which occasions
much thought, without, however, any definite thought, i.e., any concept, being
capable of being adequate to it; it consequently cannot be completely compassed
and made intelligible by language.”46 Additionally: “The imagination is here cre-
ative, and it brings the faculty of intellectual ideas (reason) into movement; i.e., a
movement, occasioned by a representation, towards more thought (though
belonging, no doubt, to the concept of the object) than can be grasped in the
representation or made clear.”47
Thus, these aesthetic ideas are capable of exhibiting infinite content in a finite
image. These are called ideas because they exceed both what can be empirically
experienced and, indeed, the categories of the understanding altogether. They point
instead toward the moral world beyond experience and natural causality. However,
an aesthetic idea is not a pure idea of reason, because it does not separate the
individual and totality, or imagination (sensibility) and understanding. It represents
the infinite (reason) in a finite image (sensibility) that cannot be expressed or
explained by any determinate concepts. Ordinary rational ideas, although they are
beyond experience, are nonetheless determinate concepts, whereas aesthetic ideas
are different.
There is no end to their message. In other words, aesthetic ideas cannot be fully
expressed by any determinate concept. Chinese art and literary criticism emphasizes
doctrines such as: “There is an end to the words, but no end to their message”;
“Leave no trace of effort, just as the antelope sleeps dangling from a tree by its
antlers for fear of leaving footprint for hunters”; “The flavor is beyond salt and
vinegar”; “The idea is conceived before it is written down, and the meaning of
words is to be found outside of the text”; and “The image is bigger than the idea.”48

46
Ibid., §49, 156.
47
Ibid., §49, 158.
48
In the art of language (literature), we can cite theories of multi-interpretation and the inexpli-
cability of mythology, and the belief that the Book of Songs cannot be exhausted by exegesis. In
other forms of art, such as music, this characteristic is even more prominent.
310 10 Aesthetics and Teleology

Kant believes that fine art succeeds when it presents rational ideas that are
beyond experience, such as free will, immortality of the soul, and the existence of
God, in empirical images, such as those of death, love, and tranquility, in order to
create through fine art a “second nature” that does not appear to be a product of our
artifice (though we know that it is). In other words, its purpose is not revealed
directly, it is a form of purposiveness without purpose, just as in the case of nature.
Therefore, it arouses aesthetic feeling. Consequently, aesthetic feelings refer to the
purposive interest of understanding, which is different from appreciating the merely
formal beauty of nature, and they belong properly to the realm of fine art. Kant
explains:
Such representations of the imagination we may call ideas, partly because they at least
strive after something which lies beyond the bounds of experience, and so seek to
approximate to a presentation of concepts of reason (intellectual ideas), thus giving to the
latter the appearance of objective reality—but especially because no concept can be fully
adequate to them as internal intuitions. The poet ventures to realize for sense rational ideas
of invisible beings, the kingdom of the blessed, hell, eternity, creation, etc.; or even if he
deals with things of which there are examples in experience—e.g. death, envy and all vices,
also love, fame, and the like—he tries, by means of imagination, which emulates the play of
reason in its quest after a maximum, to go beyond the limits of experience and to present
them to sense with a completeness of which there is no example in nature. It is, properly
speaking, in the art of the poet, that the faculty of aesthetical Ideas can manifest itself in its
full standard. But this faculty, considered in itself, is properly only a talent (of the
imagination).49

This is not to dress rational ideas up in imaginary garments. On the contrary, it is

the image that approaches the idea however vaguely. This is where artistic creation
differs from scientific thinking. Kant calls it “genius.” He believes that science does
not require genius, that only artistic creation does.50 Because science is intellectual
understanding guided by categories and principles it can be taught and learned.
Anyone who follows its laws and principles can attain some scientific achievement.
But art, as the presentation of the aesthetic ideal, does not have laws, but proceeds as
if “following laws though there is no law.” It has purposiveness without purpose,
cannot be taught or learned, and is entirely without fixed laws or principles. It is
simply the artist himself who finds the aesthetic idea, grasps and presents that which

49
Kant, and J. H. Bernard, Critique of Judgment, §49, 157–8.
50
In the lectures of his later years, Kant expands on the account of genius. He distinguishes
invention from discovery, maintaining that the talent for invention is genius, explaining that this
name of “genius” “is attributed only to an artist, consequently to one who knows how to make
something, not to him who merely stores information and knows about many things. It is also not
attributed to an artist who merely imitates, but it is attributed to one who has been inspired to create
something original in his work; finally, it is attributed to this artist only when his creation is
exemplary, that is, when it is worthy to be imitated as an example.” He adds that “the proper field
for a genius is the imagination, because imagination is creative, and just because it is less subject to
the coercion of rules than other faculties, it is more capable of originality.” “But the genius is a
man not only of wide range of mind but also of intensive intellectual greatness, who is
epoch-making in everything he undertakes (like Newton and Leibniz).” Kant (2006).
10.4 The Ideal of Beauty, Aesthetic Ideas, and Fine Art 311

has the content of rational ideas yet cannot be cognized and represented by concepts,
and thus creates the ideal beauty of fine art. His work is at once classical and original.
Inimitable originality and classical universality are the two characteristics of
genius in the fine arts. Ideas of pure reason, although scientifically unprovable, can
be contemplated and talked about, whereas aesthetic ideas can only be felt and
imagined (see Chaps. 6 and 7). It is the accomplishment of genius in the fine arts to
make a sensible presentation of the “supersensible substrate.” Therefore, Kant’s
conception of genius is different from the extraordinary and mysterious genius
emphasized by the Romantics. He mainly refers to a method without paradigm. In
creating the aesthetic form of purposiveness without purpose, the artistry of genius
expresses moral ideas, which is a unique psychological function of artistic creation.
Kant also believes that taste is more important than genius. “If, then, in the conflict
of these two properties in a product something must be sacrificed, it should be
rather on the side of genius.”51 His reason is that taste involves the form that makes
the beautiful beautiful, whereas genius mainly involves the content of ideas.
Without the former, that is, lacking aesthetic form, a work of fine art could not exist,
while without the latter, such a work would still be possible, albeit mediocre and
without vital force and spirit. Furthermore, although Kant holds that genius is not
simply the same as artistic skill, the cultivation of such skills nevertheless trains and
harnesses genius in order that it may bring forth a work of fine art.
Since the production of fine art has a purpose and requires rational ideas to attain
a tasteful aesthetic form, fine art cannot be a purely aesthetic activity. But the
creation of fine art is neither scientific cognition nor technology, since both require
definite purposes and serve definite external purposes. Instead, the creation of fine
art is undertaken solely for the pleasure of cognitive free play, which is purposive
despite being without purpose.
On the one hand, aesthetically, the purpose of art does not lie within itself, its
integrity itself is its purpose. On the other hand, fine art does indeed have the
function or purpose of promoting the human being. In this sense, it obeys an
external purpose even though the beauty of fine art remains grounded in the pre-
sentation of purposiveness without any particular purpose. It is not a formal free
beauty, yet depends on the achievement of dependent beauty.52 A work of fine art is
necessarily formed after nature, without evincing any trace of artificiality; yet its
content must belong to morality (rational ideas) while its form is aesthetic (pur-
posiveness without purpose). Thus does fine art express the unity-in-opposition of
nature and human beings, law and freedom, aesthetic feeling and reason, taste and
genius, judgment and imagination. To Kant, freedom is the essential feature of fine
art and indeed all aesthetics. His terms such as “free play of imagination and
understanding” and “purposiveness without purpose” underline the distinction of

51
Kant, and J. H. Bernard, Critique of Judgment, 206.
The categories of fine art and the aesthetic are by no means identical, but they do overlap. Some
52

works of fine art have no aesthetic value, while some objects of beauty are not works of fine art.
Therefore, aesthetics cannot simply be equated with the philosophy of art.
312 10 Aesthetics and Teleology

aesthetic activities from all other human activities and psychological functions,
including science, technology, and morality. Establishing these concepts is the main
task in the analytic of the beautiful. The ancient Chinese also discussed art and
literature in much the same vein as Kant did, especially with respect to what he says
about artistic and aesthetic psychology, but the Chinese literati did not elevate the
discussion to a philosophical level.
In order to meet the architectonic requirements of his philosophical system, Kant
proceeds from his analytic of aesthetic judgment to a dialectic of aesthetic judg-
ment, where he sets forth the antinomy of taste. On the one hand, taste is not based
on concepts, otherwise any controversy that might arise concerning beauty could be
resolved in principle by an appropriate proof (thesis). On the other hand, however,
taste seems to be somehow based on concepts, for otherwise we would have no
right to demand others’ agreement with our judgment (antithesis). Empirical aes-
thetics rejects concepts, advocating that beauty lies in sensual pleasure, while
idealistic aesthetics holds that beauty lies in a perfection that presupposes a concept
and its presentation in sensible cognition. The former regards aesthetics as purely
subjective and the latter regards it as purely objective, but for precisely that reason
neither can resolve the antinomy of taste. Kant’s resolution is rather simple. The
concept referred to in the thesis is a determinate logical concept, while the concept
referred to in the antithesis is a vague concept related by imagination. Accordingly,
both sides are in a way right, and aesthetics is neither mere subjective pleasure nor
an objective cognition through a concept. The full solution of the antinomy requires
reference to a supersensible world, as I will discuss further below.53
This antinomy of taste is far less important than the antinomies in the first two
Critiques for the sense of paradox that this antinomy creates is not strong. A more
profound paradox arises from the contradiction between free and dependent beauty,
between the beautiful and the sublime, between aesthetics and fine art, and between
taste and genius, namely, the contradiction between form and representation. On the
one hand, what makes the beautiful beautiful is disinterested purposiveness without
purpose. These are the essential features of free beauty and the aesthetic judgment
of taste. On the other hand, dependent beauty, the sublime, and fine art and genius
genuinely possess higher aesthetic significance and value because they involve
purposes, rational ideas, and moral content, and because they enable the transition
from nature (sensibility) to morality (reason). Kant’s aesthetics concludes with
this unfulfilled endeavor to reconcile the oppositions between formalism and
representationalism.
The formalistic and representationalist aspects of Kant’s aesthetics had signifi-
cant influence on later generations, and both aspects have their successors. Kant’s

53
“The antinomies force us against our will to look beyond the sensible and to seek in the
supersensible the point of union for all our a priori faculties; because no other expedient is left to
make our reason harmonious with itself.” “The subjective principle, viz. the indefinite idea of the
supersensible in us, can only be put forward as the sole key to the puzzle of this faculty whose
sources are hidden from us: it can be made no further intelligible” (Kant, Critique of Judgment,
§57, 187).
10.4 The Ideal of Beauty, Aesthetic Ideas, and Fine Art 313

formalism becomes the forefather of various modern formalisms with such

well-known slogans as “art for art’s sake,” “significant form” and “psychical dis-
tance.” His representationalism is the forerunner of trends of Romanticism and
anti-rationalism. In the nineteenth century, Schelling, Hegel, and the ferocious
movement of Romanticism promoted the infinite idea as a leading characteristic of
art, and discussions of the sublime and genius became central. On the other hand,
Johann Friedrich Herbart, Robert Zimmermann, and Eduard Hanslick developed
Kant’s formalism, reducing beauty to the relation and play of lines and sounds.
Aesthetic theories of the twentieth century continue both lines of thought.
Representationalism developed into theories concerning anti-rational sexual desire
(Freud), experience (Dewey), and the collective unconscious (Jung), and fine art
entirely lost its aesthetic quality and meaning. Aesthetic formalism was advocated
by Bullough with his concept of psychical distance, Charles Bell, and Robert Fry
with his idea of significant form. In these accounts, aesthetics reduces to a theory of
fine art. Formalism has been the more prominent of the two trends in modern times
and this is perhaps the most lasting legacy of Kant’s aesthetics.
We see, then, that Kant’s aesthetics raises a series of important questions, from
aesthetic psychology to artistic creation, from the analytic of the beautiful to the
aesthetic idea, from the psychological characteristics of the sublime to beauty as the
symbol of morality, the important idea of analogy,54 and his idea of the priority of
form over sensuous qualities like color.55 All of these are indeed central concerns of
aesthetics and the philosophy of fine art, and explain why such a dry, abstract book
has become exceptionally influential in the history of aesthetics and among so many
different schools of art and literary theory.

10.5 Organized Beings

Aesthetic judgment concerns a merely subjective purposiveness. When comparing

art with nature, Kant points out that art is after all an artificial product, its purposive
form created by human beings. But this is not the case with the beauty of nature

54
Analogy as a psychological function particular to human beings has yet to be fully studied and
evaluated. In my opinion, the free, creative capacity of non-logical deduction and of non-empirical
induction is closely linked with analogy. It is not found in either machines or (non-human)
animals, but only in daily human life, including the use of language, scientific knowledge, and, in
particular, in artistic creation. Analogy is not simply a connection between concepts. It is asso-
ciated with many psychological capacities, such as emotion and imagination. Human language
allows for tremendous solidification and improvement in what analogy can accomplish in the
domain of thought no less than in practice. It is also for this reason that simile is an aesthetic
element in literature and one of the earliest literary techniques.
55
Kant believes that the pleasure of colors depends on the senses, whereas that of lines does not.
Therefore, the line truly has aesthetic value. This remark is indeed insightful, and can be compared
with characteristics of Chinese art. Hegel, on the other hand, only focuses on colors (see Hegel’s
Philosophy of Fine Art.).
314 10 Aesthetics and Teleology

because, as he says, “the beauty of nature, i.e., its connexion with the free play of
our cognitive faculties in apprehending and judging of its appearance, can be
regarded as a kind of objective purposiveness of nature in its whole [content] as a
system of which man is a member.”56 In considering natural beauty, we begin with
the appreciation of its mere form, but eventually pass on to the admiration of its
objective purposiveness. Therefore, in the beginning of Part Two of the Critique of
Judgment, the Critique of Teleological Judgment, Kant states that “in the very
necessity of that which is purposive, and is constituted just as if it were designedly
intended for our use—but at the same time seems to belong originally to the being
of things without any reference to our use—lies the ground of our great admiration
of nature.”57 General opinion holds that the two parts of the Critique of Judgment
are mutually exclusive, but, in fact, Kant attempts to connect and relate them. The
point of intersection comes when the beauty of nature is finally seen as the symbol
of morality and morality is understood as the final purpose of nature, that is, when
nature is seen as purposively approaching the moral human being. Nature has the
moral human as its final purpose.
I have pointed out that Kant divides purposiveness into two kinds: relative or
external purposiveness, and internal purposiveness. The former refers to a thing that
exists for the sake of another, such as the old teleology that held that the purpose of
the existence of a mouse is for a cat to eat, or that plants and animals exist for the
benefit of human beings. Kant was opposed to this sort of teleology;58 instead, he
emphasized the internal purposiveness of nature. An example of this purposiveness
is the organized being of plants and animals.
Kant had already proposed in an earlier work that living nature is
non-mechanical and cannot be explained by the mechanical causality of Newton’s
laws. In the Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, he states that the
tiny caterpillar is more complicated and difficult to understand than the solar sys-
tem. Thirty years later, after having studied the adaptation of plants and animals,
Kant not only maintained his older view but also believed that another Newton
would never arise to explain organic life by mechanical laws because organic
phenomena can be illuminated only in a way that is entirely different from
mechanical causality. Living, organized beings are just what Kant describes when
he says that “a thing exists as a natural purpose, if it is both cause and effect of
itself.”59 A living organized being, as a representative of natural purpose, is just the
case.
An organized being has three features. First, its parts can only exist through their
reference to the whole. “For a thing to be a natural purpose in the first place it is
requisite that its parts (as regards their being and their form) are only possible

56
Kant, and J. H. Bernard, Critique of Judgment, §67, 227.
57
Ibid., §62, 209–10.
58
Ibid., §63, 215.
59
Ibid., §64, 217.
10.5 Organized Beings 315

through their reference to the whole.”60 For instance, if a hand is chopped off from
the body, it is no longer a hand. Second, every part is reciprocally a cause and an
effect, a means and an end for others. “Its parts should so combine in the unity of a
whole that they are reciprocally cause and effect of each other’s form.”61 Third, it
has a self-organizing function and can reproduce itself. This is the most important
of the three features because human artifacts, for example, a watch, also have the
first two features, but definitely not the third, according to which for a living thing
“its parts are all organs reciprocally producing each other. […] Only a product of
such a kind can be called a natural purpose, and this because it is an organized and
self-organizing being.”62 Accordingly it is capable of developing and reproducing
on its own, unlike artifacts, which have to be designed and produced by others. That
is why it differs from a watch, which has the casuality of mechanical movement and
the requirement of an external designer and maker. Kant illustrates with the
example of a tree, which produces foliage that both depends on it and also
reproduces its own species form. “While the leaves are products of the tree they also
in turn give support to it.”63 Therefore, the whole, as a unified system, is more than
the mere sum of its parts, but actually produces those parts. This is important.
Mechanical laws concern action and reaction but do not assume the whole as a
purpose and therefore cannot explain the reciprocal relation between parts and
whole in organized beings, where the parts depend on the whole for their existence.
Kant believes that it is useful to adopt a teleological view of the whole when we
study natural phenomena and attempt to reveal the secrets of nature. We do not ask
why waves (inorganic things) persistently beat the shore because such a puzzle is a
metaphysical question without scientific value, whereas to ask why bird’s wings
(organic things) are located or shaped as they are, or why some parts of plants or
animals are structured in such and such a way, that is, to inquire after their purpose,
is a useful, even indispensible guide in science for advancing its investigations.
Kant explains that organized beings “first afford objective reality to the concept
of a purpose of nature, as distinguished from a practical purpose; and so they give to
the science of nature the basis for a teleology.”64 This confirms that mere
mechanical laws will not suffice for a full scientific account of nature, and have to
be supplemented by a teleological principle.
However, such a teleological principle is not derived from experience, nor can it
be discovered in nature. Kant emphasizes in the Critique of Pure Reason that “the
whole” is an idea that simply cannot be proven by experience. The whole, as a way
to comprehend organized being, is also a kind of subjective rational idea. The
teleology of the whole is a sort of analogy, using Kant’s term, a regulative rather

60
Ibid., §65, 219.
61
Ibid.
62
Ibid., 220.
63
Ibid., §64. 218.
64
Ibid., §65. 222.
316 10 Aesthetics and Teleology

than a constitutive principle (see Chap. 6), a transcendental principle of reflection

rather than a determinant judgment.65

10.6 Antinomy of Mechanics and Teleology

We come finally to Kant’s antinomy of teleological judgment:

The first maxim of judgment is the thesis: All production of material things and their forms
must be judged to be possible according to merely mechanical laws.
The second maxim is the antithesis: Some products of material nature cannot be judged to
be possible according to merely mechanical laws. (To judge them requires quite a different
law of causality, namely, that of final causes.)
If these regulative principles of investigation are converted into constitutive principles of
the possibility of objects, they will run thus:
Thesis: All production of material things is possible according to merely mechanical laws.
Antithesis: Some production of material things is not possible according to merely
mechanical laws.66

In his review of some of the ideas about teleology in the history of philosophy,
Kant calls the view that treats the final causes of nature as unintentional the idealism
of natural purposes, and the view that treats natural purposes as intentional the
realism of natural purposes. Epicurus, Democritus, and Spinoza belong to the
former group, while Aristotle’s hylozoism and theistic creationism belong to the
latter. Kant believes that philosophers like Epicurus use the laws of motion in their
attempt to explain everything in nature, whereas Spinoza holds that the infinite
totality of nature as a whole necessarily determines everything within nature;
purposiveness thus becomes either natural contingency (Epicurus) or natural
fatalism (Spinoza). The former is identified with lifeless matter, while the latter with
an immaterial God, and purpose is either identified with natural causality or natural
necessity, and is in fact still conceived mechanically. On the other hand, hylozoism
and theism cannot find any proof to support their ideas. Kant believes that the
phenomena of life bluntly contradict the inertia that is an essential characteristic of
matter. On the other hand, it is nonsense to enroll a living God as designer and
maker. Are natural things, for instance, colorful flowers and symmetrical snow-
flakes, really made deliberately by nature or God for our amusement? Kant cannot
bring himself to agree with the realism of final causes. This review of earlier ideas is
supposed to accentuate the antinomy of teleological judgment. Mechanism and

65
Kant’s letter to K. L. Reinhold, 28 Dec.1787: “So now I recognize three parts of philosophy,
each of which has its a priori principles, which can be enumerated and for which one can delimit
precisely the knowledge that may be based on them: theoretical philosophy, teleology, and
practical philosophy, of which the second is, to be sure, the least rich in a priori grounds of
determination.” Kant and Zweig (1986).
66
Kant, and J. H. Bernard, Critique of Judgment, §70, 243.
10.6 Antinomy of Mechanics and Teleology 317

theism see the final causes of nature as principles of objective reality, but since
mechanics and purpose are incompatible, only one or the other can be true. Therein
lies the antinomy. The final outcome would force us to choose either mechanism,
hylozoism, or theism, although none of these alternatives are seriously viable.
Kant believes that the antinomy can be easily solved if it is treated as a question
of judgment, for the thesis and antithesis are compatible if each is regarded as a
merely regulative principle. We can use both maxims at the same time to guide us
in discussion and investigation. On the one hand, all that the thesis implies when
understood regulatively is that, as Kant says, “I must always reflect upon [phe-
nomena] according to the principle of the mere mechanism of nature, and conse-
quently investigate this as far as I can; because unless this lies at the basis of
investigation, there can be no proper knowledge of nature at all.”67 Such an
engagement would not hinder our accordance with the antithesis in thinking of
nature as a whole, when it is appropriate to let thought be regulated by the principle
of final causes. This does not mean the maxim of mechanism is invalid; on the
contrary, we are told “to follow it as far as we can.”68 Kant thus affirms that nature
has only a mechanical causality, that all its secrets can be examined and revealed by
means of mechanical laws of causality, that there are no truly final causes in natural
things and in nature as a whole. As a principle of reflective judgment, teleology can
only guide us subjectively and cannot lead to genuine scientific knowledge.
Principles of teleology merely render things comprehensible to thinking, rather
than determining an object of empirical knowledge, which always depends on
making them cognizable (see Chaps. 6 and 7 for distinctions between thought
and cognition). In order to know things, we need to resort to mechanical laws
of causality.
Mechanism and teleology are therefore two subjective points of view that can be
applied at the same time without contradiction. In investigating a thing, we can
consider it as having some purpose, while at the same time we expect that purpose
ultimately to give way to a mechanical explanation. Kant repeatedly states that the
principle of teleology cannot be used as an objective constitutive principle, but
merely as a subjective regulative one, which does not exclude the mechanical
principle (which can itself be regulative as well as constitutive). For instance, to say
that the purpose of the heart is to circulate the blood is a merely regulative principle
useful to cardiac research, but it cannot explain what makes the heart beat. The
relation between the heartbeat and blood circulation remains a mechanical one.
Kant astutely observes that, on the one hand, it is difficult, even impossible, to
explain organized beings by mechanical laws, while on the other hand a super-
sensible purposive principle cannot be established by any possible experience. As a
result, Kant has to locate it in a subjective realm as a regulative principle of
reflective judgment. Thus, on the one hand, he maintains that organized beings
cannot be explained by mechanics and we must resort to teleology, while on the

67
Ibid.
68
Ibid.
318 10 Aesthetics and Teleology

other hand, teleology is a mere regulative principle that cannot explain the par-
ticular features of organized beings, for which there is no alternative to mechanism.
Debate on this issue still swirls in the discipline of natural science, in particular,
in biology. One school, under the influence of modern industrial technology and
cybernetics, maintains that all of the phenomena of life can eventually be explained
in terms of physics and chemistry, and accuses their opponents of hylozoism and
mysticism, while the other side criticizes mechanism as overly reductive. Are they
not rehashing the question Kant posed two hundred years ago?69 The origin and
essential characteristics of life remain controversial in modern natural science.
Kant’s regulative version of natural teleology is one possible line to take in this
debate, while structuralism offers another, as do cybernetics and the theory of
self-organizing systems. For instance, there are feedback theory, self-organizing
theory, and the theory of the whole being more than the sum of its parts. However,
the right approach and answer to the question still await the strenuous effort of
biologists. The composition of organic life from the inorganic is a stronghold to
thoroughly refute all mystic teleology. As to which approach would be the best
remains unknown and must await further research.
From the mechanical movement of matter to the phenomena of life to social
phenomena, each level has its distinct quality. It is impossible to reduce the higher
level to a lower level.
However, that does not tell us precisely what quality of the higher level is
responsible for this resistance to reduction. Obviously, it is not some mysterious
purpose, but we can at least hope that it can be found in a singular formal structure
of materials on the lower level. Therefore, reductionism in science is actually the
healthier option, and has made far more extensive progress than anti-reductionism,
to say nothing of theories of a mysterious vital force.
Differences in structure can produce a qualitative difference—for instance, some
particular structures in a living body have self-adjusting mechanisms—and is a
subject that deserves further research from the perspectives of both philosophy and
science. Kant’s design in replacing objective constitutive teleology with a regula-
tive principle of method is in fact to raise this issue. Just as aesthetic judgment has
its independent contents and questions concerning, for instance, aesthetic psy-
chology, artistic creation, the ideal of beauty, and the appropriate classification of
the fine arts, so teleological judgment also has its independent contents and ques-
tions concerning, for instance, the characteristics of organized beings and the theory
of evolution.

69
If Erwin Schrödinger’s book What is Life? can be seen as representative of the first trend,
explaining biological and physiological phenomena in terms of biology, then Bohr’s comple-
mentarity principle can be said to represent the latter trend. Bohr (2011). He states further that “as
long as for practical or epistemological reasons one speak of life, such teleological terms will be
used in complementing the terminology of molecular biology. This circumstance, however, does
not imply any limitation in the application to biology of the well-established principles of atomic
physics.” Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge, 26. This view is indeed very close to that of
Kant’s.
10.7 Human Beings as the Final End of Nature 319

10.7 Human Beings as the Final End of Nature

Kant is certainly interested in scientific research, but it was not with a view to
investigating scientific problems that he wrote the Critique of Judgment. Rather, his
plan was to find a way of mediating between cognition and morality, or nature and
human beings, in other words, between the topics of the first two Critiques.
Aesthetic judgment and the merely formal purposiveness of nature are associated
with subjective aesthetic pleasure, while teleology and the objective purposiveness
of nature are associated with human beings and rational moral freedom.
Kant opposes teleological investigations of nature that dismiss mechanism
because “when we lose ourselves with this way of explanation in the transcendent,
whither natural knowledge cannot follow, reason is seduced into poetical extrav-
agance, which it is its peculiar destination to avoid.”70 On the other hand, “in the
rational investigation of the possibility of natural forms through their causes, pur-
posiveness shows itself quite undeniably as the reference to a different kind of
causality—to do this must make reason fantastic, and send it wandering among
chimeras of unthinkable natural faculties; just as a mere teleological mode of
explanation which takes no account of natural mechanism makes it visionary.”71 To
ask why a thing exists raises the question of purpose. However, it is not possible to
find an explanation within nature itself. This holds for non-organized beings no less
than for the organized, and indeed for nature as a whole.
The reason that organized beings seem to exemplify natural teleology lies in the
way their organic constitution seems to evince a plan or design, and while nature as
a whole is not an organized being, teleology is in this case a sort of analogy, and the
orderly organization and evolution of nature can be said to hint at (rather than
prove) a supersensible rational being at its ground. In the Critique of Pure Reason,
Kant mentioned the abstract possibility of a rational intuition unattainable by
human beings. This supra-empirical hypothesis belongs on the other shore of
ontology, which is non-empirical and scientifically indemonstrable. In the Critique
of Judgment, Kant again maintains that mechanism and teleology could be unified
in a rational intuition unattainable by human beings. In other words, natural beings
and organic laws could perhaps be said to belong to the unknowable supersensible
world where mechanism and teleology become one thing, and where the cause of
the world might finally find an explanation. The proposal implies that, from the
viewpoint of teleology, nature could, hypothetically, have an artificer. Such a
teleological hypothesis would no longer be a merely regulative principle for dis-
covery, for it postulates the real existence of a supersensible substrate of nature.
Kant explains:
We can in no way prove the impossibility of the production of organised natural products
by the mere mechanism of nature, because we cannot see into the first inner ground of the

Kant, and J. H. Bernard, Critique of Judgment, §78, 259.

70

71
Ibid., 260.
320 10 Aesthetics and Teleology

infinite multiplicity of the particular laws of nature, which are contingent for us since they
are only empirically known; and so we cannot arrive at the inner all-sufficient principle of
the possibility of a nature (a principle which lies in the supersensible).72
We cannot otherwise think and make comprehensible the purposiveness which must lie at
the bottom of our cognition of the internal possibility of many natural things, than by
representing it and the world in general as a product of an intelligent cause, [a God].73

All these possibilities are still within the subjective scope of reflective rather than
constitutive judgment. Kant asks:
Does it prove that there is such an intelligent Being? No. […] Objectively we cannot
therefore lay down the proposition, there is an intelligent original Being; but only sub-
jectively, for the use of our judgment in its reflection upon the purposes in nature, which
can be thought according to no other principle than that of a designing causality of a highest
cause.74

At this point, Kant’s philosophy does indeed exhibit a vague mystical inclination
that leans toward fideism. It is precisely this that constitutes the transition from
cognition to morality.
When Kant emphasizes objective natural purpose, his focus is not simply on
organized beings. Rather, he uses organized beings to reinforce his thesis that there
is an important if difficult question to be raised concerning the reason for the very
existence of nature. From inorganic substance to the phenomena of life to human
beings, nature unfolds as if it had a purpose, and this is indeed Kant’s focus. Does it
make sense to assume an ultimate purpose of nature?
Kant believes that the great variety of life and its seemingly ingenious and
reasonable arrangement would be meaningless and without purpose were it not for
the existence of human beings. “Without man the whole creation would be a mere
waste, in vain, and without final purpose.”75 Human beings are the ultimate purpose
of nature’s ceaseless creation. Kant points out that reference to the human being
here does not refer to our cognition. The world does not become meaningful in
becoming the object of human contemplation. Nor does that reference to the human
being refer to our happiness. Each individual takes a subjective view of happiness,
which is not the ultimate purpose of the creation of the world. This idea is in the
vein of Chinese sage Laozi, who said that “nature is unkind, it treats all things like
straw dogs.” Nature grants no more special favor to human happiness than to the
good of other animals, and the many natural disasters that all living things, human
beings not excepted, amply demonstrate that point.
When Kant says that human beings are the ultimate purpose of nature as a
whole, he is referring to the so-called cultural-moral human. To propose this being
as the ultimate purpose of nature has several layers of meaning. First, the cultural
human being implies that human beings are able to shake off the restrictions of

72
Ibid., §71, 235.
73
Ibid., §75, 247.
74
Ibid., 246–7.
75
Ibid., §86, 293.
10.7 Human Beings as the Final End of Nature 321

natural desire and rise above them. Human beings are also able to utilize technology
in accordance with free will in order to realize their own purposes.
Therefore, human beings are a cultural phenomenon. “The production of the
aptitude of a rational being for arbitrary purposes in general (consequently in his
freedom) is culture. Therefore, culture alone can be the ultimate purpose which we
have cause for ascribing to nature in respect to the human race (not man’s earthly
happiness or the fact that he is the chief instrument of instituting order and harmony
in irrational nature external to himself).”76
However, not every culture has conditions that are conducive to its becoming the
ultimate purpose of nature; a culture can only become this ultimate purpose through
the promotion of morality. We have touched on this point when discussing Kant’s
view of history, when we saw that for him struggles among individuals and wars
among nations are the hidden means by which nature presses our culture and talents
to reach their highest point, and moves human beings forward toward their obscure
purpose. For instance, although the arts and sciences are, as Rousseau said, unable
to improve human morality, they do make human society more cultivated and
individuals more civilized. These arts and sciences release us “from the tyranny of
sense-perception, and thus prepare men for a lordship, in which reason alone shall
have authority; whilst the evils with which we are visited, partly by nature, partly by
the intolerant selfishness of men, summon, strengthen, and harden the powers of the
soul not to submit to them, and so make us feel an aptitude for higher purposes,
which lies hidden in us.”77 This is how culture can promote human spiritual nature
and thereby contribute to the elevation of rational and moral power.
Kant sees the value and purpose of life not as residing in happiness, but rather in
action, and not in being a link in the chain of nature, “but in the freedom of his
faculty of desire—i.e., a good will—…[by which] alone his being can have an
absolute worth, and in reference to which the being of the world can have a final
purpose.”78 In other words, the ultimate purpose of nature is a morally autonomous
human being, when the “human being is seen as final reality.” Only the man who
obeys moral laws is endowed with the supersensible capacity for freedom.
The human being, as this unconditional moral agent, is the ultimate purpose and
destination of phenomenal nature, and only as a result of this are such questions as
why the world exists at all and what is its purpose laid to rest through the hypothesis
of a noumenal supersensible substrate because it is itself the purpose, the noume-
non, the supersensible substrate. Accordingly, the abyss between the two shores,
phenomena and noumena, is bridged. Thus we arrive at the conclusion of Kant’s
teleology, which is also the conclusion of Kant’s whole philosophical system. The
natural causality championed by Newton and the moral autonomy and dignity
championed by Rousseau are finally unified and made consistent.

76
Ibid., §83, 281.
77
Ibid., 284.
78
Ibid., §86, 293.
322 10 Aesthetics and Teleology

Kant’s teleology is not scientific, for it provides no objective principle or cog-

nition. On the other hand, neither is it theological. It is, he thinks, erroneous to
suppose that theology could be deduced from teleology or, as he puts it,
“physico-theology is a misunderstood physical teleology.”79 On the other hand,
when discussing various views of teleology in the history of philosophy, Kant
favors theism, which he considers to be more refined than other views. He is also in
sympathy with natural theology, believing that it can be a useful preliminary to
moral theology, though no more than a prelude. Kant is opposed to theological
morality but advocates moral theology. His use of the term “theology” implicitly
refers to the social domain, while science refer strictly to nature.
Reason as the essence of the human being is the supersensible ground of
morality. The unknowable world of noumena is the foundation for Kant’s moral
theology, while a regulative, methodological teleology forms the bridge that unites
the phenomenal world with moral theology. Hence, as he says, “the existence of
rational beings under moral laws can therefore alone be thought as the final purpose
of the being of the world.”80 Consequently, “we must assume a moral World-Cause
(an Author of the world), in order to set before ourselves a final purpose consis-
tently with the moral law; and in so far as the latter is necessary, so far (i.e., in the
same degree and on the same ground) the former also must be necessarily assumed;
i.e., we must admit that there is a God.”81 Here Kant acknowledges a moral leg-
islator beyond the world, and this is Kant’s moral god.82 The god that is deduced
from moral teleology is entirely different from the god deduced from natural tele-
ology, which Kant utterly dismisses.
In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant treated the existence of God as a
necessary hypothesis uniting virtue and happiness. In the Critique of Judgment the
same hypothesis is again found to be necessary. The argument in the earlier work
tended toward the objective, while in the later work teleology is treated as a merely

79
Ibid., §85, 292.
80
Ibid., §87, 300.
81
Ibid., 301.
82
Kant argues in “Perpetual Peace” that “the concept of intervention or concurrence (concursus) in
producing an effect in the world of sense must be given up, though it is quite usual in the schools.
[…] We fall into this self-contradiction, for example, when we say that next to God it was the
physician who cured the ill, as if God had been his helper. For causa solitaria non iuvat; God is the
author of the physician and all his medicines, and if we insist on ascending to the highest but
theoretically inconceivable first cause, the effect must be ascribed entirely to Him. Or we can
ascribe it entirely to the physician, so far as we consider the occurrence as explicable in a chain of
causes under the order of nature. But besides being self-contradictory, such a mode of thought
brings an end to all definite principles in judging an effect. In a morally practical point of view,
however, which is directed exclusively to the supersensuous, the concept of the divine concursus is
quite suitable and even necessary. We find this, for instance, in the belief that God will compensate
for our own lack of justice, provided our intention was genuine; that He will do so by means that
are inconceivable to us, and that therefore we should not relent in our endeavor after the good. But
it is self-evident that no one should try to explain a good action (as an event in the world) as a
result of this concursus, for this would be a vain theoretical knowledge of the supersensuous and
therefore absurd.”
10.7 Human Beings as the Final End of Nature 323

reflective judgment and God becomes a thoroughly subjective hypothesis—a

subjective need of human beings. The God of the Critique of Judgment diverges
greatly from the God of the Critique of Pure Reason as well as the Critique of
Practical Reason. Its introduction serves neither cognition (a regulative principle
for discovering nature), nor the supreme good (happiness commensurate with vir-
tue), but rather action, “simply in a subjective point of view for religion, i.e., the
practical or moral use of our reason.”83 In the Critique of Practical Reason, God
finally and straightforwardly loses objective quality and becomes the hypothetical
object of merely subjective belief. Kant’s system of critical philosophy starts with
his refutation of the traditional proofs of God’s existence, though he nevertheless
eventually ends up with the necessity of the existence of God as a subjective faith.
Some readers think that Kant finally abandons the idea of God by making God into
the subjective moral ideal. To put it in Kant’s own terms, it is subjectively nec-
essary to believe in God in order to meet a need of morality—practical reason.
Voltaire, who always ridicules and rebukes the church and organized religion also
said that if God did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. In the time of the
French Revolution, the radical Robespierre also attempted to create a god for the
people to worship. His reason was the same as Voltaire’s, namely, to provide
people with something that they supposedly need for unified moral action.
Dostoyevsky also expresses the thought in his novels that if there were no God
people would have no scruples and everything would be permitted.
These examples all illustrate that, in the end, belief in God is needed to order
society, and to organize, mobilize, control, restrain and regulate action by means of
a subjective faith and an object of worship. The various forms of theism in world
history, with their ideas of God and the creation of the world, indirectly and
fundamentally contribute to this purpose. The assumption of Kant’s moral theology,
that there is a god that cannot be proved yet must be believed in, effectively
eradicates some of the illusions theism has promoted while also straightforwardly
revealing the underlying problem.
Kant wrote the Critique of Judgment in an effort to mediate between cognition
and ethics, or nature and human beings. In the end, however, he has to return to
God’s embrace. Kant was unable to substantially advance the unification of nature
and human beings. His discussion of teleology did not touch on the use of tools,
which makes his argument rather inadequate; nor did he return to the thesis of the
human being legislating for nature, which was at the center of his epistemology.
What is emphasized in this third Critique is the subjective activity of social practice,
and especially the idea that a morally autonomous human being is the very purpose
of nature. However, it is not teleology, but rather a mechanical process of the
evolution of species and the contingent survival of the fittest that produced the
human race. Yet with freedom extended by the making and using of tools, human
beings break through the evolutionary law of biological species and step onto a

83
Kant, and J. H. Bernard, Critique of Judgment, 335.
324 10 Aesthetics and Teleology

unique path of endless development. This is the essence of the doctrine that nature
evolves toward human beings.
Nature evolving toward human beings is a profound philosophical thesis, and it
is also the essential character of aesthetics, since the unity of opposites between
nature and human beings is historically sedimented in the phenomena of aesthetic
psychology. It is this specific sensible achievement that marks the differences
between human beings and other animals, manifesting both nature’s humanization
and human beings’ naturalization. From the perspective of a materialistic theory of
practice, there is no need for teleology in order to mediate between cognition and
ethics, nature and human beings, or society and the individual. All that is needed is
aesthetics. Among truth, the good, and the beautiful, the historical interaction
between truth and the good is a function of the unity between them, which is
provided by the beautiful. The question of the beautiful is not merely one of the
appreciation of works of fine art and artistic creation. It is instead a question
that concerns the humanization of nature, and is a fundamental philosophical
and historical problem. This is the reason why aesthetics is about more than
merely art or the psychology of creation and appreciation.
Kant noticed this problem, but satisfied himself with a subjective, idealistic
solution, treating aesthetics as subjective purposive form. Since this solution cannot
advance the humanization of nature, he is compelled to bring up the rear with the
analytic of teleological judgment.84 However, Kant’s aesthetic views are of greater
philosophical value than his views about teleology.
Kant’s subjective, idealistic aesthetics was picked up and revised by Schiller in a
more objective tone. Schiller’s revision also proceeds from the philosophical thesis
of reconciling nature and human beings, or sensibility and reason, and is not limited
to narrowly aesthetic or artistic questions, but is deeply engaged with social and
even political content. Where Kant solved his problem of the unity of human beings
and nature with his idea of subjective aesthetic purposiveness, Schiller replaces
Kant’s solution with a unity of sensuous and rational impulses:
Now from this source issue for man two opposite exigencies, the two fundamental laws of
sensuous-rational nature. The first has for its object absolute reality; it must make a world of
what is only form, manifest all that in it is only a force. The second law has for its object
absolute formality; it must destroy in him all that is only world, and carry out harmony in
all changes. In other terms, he must manifest all that is internal, and give form to all that is
external.85

Additionally:
This twofold labour or task, which consists in making the necessary pass into reality in us
and in making out of us reality subject to the law of necessity, is urged upon us as a duty by

84
Originally, the Critique of Judgment was limited to questions of aesthetics. Kant wrote the part
about teleological judgment as an appendix. In the first edition, most of the critique of teleology,
from section 76 on, was under the subheading “Appendix.” The subheading was removed in the
second edition.
85
Schiller (2005).
10.7 Human Beings as the Final End of Nature 325

two opposing forces, which are justly styled impulsions or instincts, because they impel us
to realise their object.86

In other words, rational form (moral man) should acquire sensible content so as
to become a concrete, historical reality, while the heterogeneous world of sense
(nature) should acquire rational form so as to make it obedient to human necessity.
In Schiller’s hands, the interaction and transformation of nature and human beings
becomes something quite realistic.
Unfortunately, Schiller insists on following Kant in expecting aesthetic educa-
tion to elevate the natural human being to the moral human being. Therefore, in
spite of his effort in bring Kant’s idea into real life and society, Schiller does not
grasp the material practices of real life and society. His attempt to replace the
practices that would actually be required to transform the world with aesthetic
education belongs to idealism.
Hegel, regarded a substantial absolute idea as the end of everything, with nature
and the human being unified in the historical progress of spirit, which ceaselessly
rises upward. Organized beings in nature are a mere link in the developing series of
the absolute idea, and the profound relationship between nature and human beings
occupies little space in Hegel’s aesthetic theory.
The beautiful is the sensible manifestation of the idea. Hegel focuses only on
how spirit and idea are historically realized, while nature is mere material for this
spiritual history. If it can be said that the dialectic of history as totality is Hegel’s
strength, his weakness is to submerge individuality and sensibility. On the other
hand, Kant preserves the Enlightenment’s promotion of individuality and sensi-
bility. The divergence is most prominent in their aesthetics, because historical
totality is always superior to the individual, as is reason to sensibility, while as a
historical achievement, totality and reason have to become sedimented and pre-
served in the life of the sensuous individual. Therein lies the profound significance
of aesthetic phenomena.
Hegel’s aesthetics is different from that of Kant and Schiller in being mainly a
theory of art. His aesthetics is a speculative work of the history of art, or perhaps an
art-historical work of speculative philosophy. Kant’s aesthetics is entirely different.
Goethe admired Kant very much, and felt that he himself was engaged in the same
pursuit. But it is no accident that Goethe is rather displeased with Hegel.87 Goethe’s
very realistic concern with sensible nature inevitably leads him to severe criticism
of Hegel’s speculative philosophy, which holds sensible reality in contempt and
even gobbles it up in a rationalistic system.
It is Feuerbach more than Hegel who genuinely inherits the aesthetic doctrines of
Kant and Schiller and their endeavor to unify nature and human beings. Feuerbach
restores the due position of sensibility, to which he looks for the unification of
nature and human beings. He states, “‘Art presents the truth by means of the
sensuous’—Properly understood and expressed, this means that art presents the

86
Ibid., 38.
87
See the Conversations of Goethe by Johann Peter Eckerman, also my discussion in Chap. 1.
326 10 Aesthetics and Teleology

truth of the sensuous.”88 However, Feuerbach believes that the truth of the sensuous
is an empty “love” because it has not yet acquired historical particularity, and is
instead a rather abstract thing that is cut off from its time and society. As Luxun
remarked, “Love is possible only when one lives a real life.” Real life practice
always has all sorts of historically particular content. Feuerbach sees only the
sensuous man and is blind to the practical man. However, the practical man is not
merely a sensuous man of nature but also a man engaged in utterly realistic
activities. That is to say, he is a man who lives in a historically particular society at
a historically particular moment in time. Feuerbach is not aware of these nuances,
nor does he apprehend the practical ground on which the unity of nature and human
beings is historically realized. This is why Chernyshevsky, Feuerbach’s Russian
successor, was also unable to launch a thorough criticism of classical German
idealistic aesthetics, whose founder was none other than Kant.89

10.8 “Man also Produces in Accordance with the Laws

of Beauty”

Kant’s doctrines that nature evolves towards human beings, and that the ultimate
purpose of nature is the moral and cultural self-production of an autonomous human
being show nature in the service of human practice. Laws of nature ultimately serve
human purposes and, by means of practice, human beings can control nature and
make it serve these purposes. Kant’s exposition seems to mean that nature as a
whole can only have meaning and value insofar as it advances the highest purposes
of human beings. However, what he actually implies is that human beings make use
of nature’s causality to realize purposes that are not given in mere nature itself. The
reciprocal, interdependent, co-penetrating relationship between the human subject
and the natural object (nature) are an outcome of a long-term historical practice of
human beings’ transformation of the world.
Now we have to return to “the mysterious stuff” that leads Kant’s philosophy to
fideism. As I have pointed out, in the Critique of Pure Reason Kant often mentions
an intuitive intellect or intellectual intuition unavailable to human beings. Human
understanding and sensuous intuition are fundamentally isolated. Understanding

88
Feuerbach (1972).
89
Chernyshevsky’s doctrine, that beauty is life, has not awakened any response in western aes-
thetics, but has been more influential than any other western theories in Chinese aesthetics and in
theories of art and literature, particularly since the 1950s. His widespread influence in China is due
to the need of the then revolutionary arts and life outlook. Chernyshevsky uses the term “life” to
refer to life and life force. It also contains the aspect of social life, but its essential meaning is
abstract anthropologism, and even its biological aspect. In China, this layer of essential meaning of
the term has been lost, and what has been stressed is social life and its the class content (such as the
examples Chernyshevsky uses to illustrate the beautiful: the beauty of a young aristocratic lady
and that of a peasant woman).
10.8 “Man also Produces in Accordance with the Laws of Beauty” 327

comes from the subject, which is universal yet empty, while intuition comes from
the sensible object, which is particular yet passive. These two must be connected or
there is no cognition. This is one of the basic propositions in Kant’s epistemology.
However, he repeatedly states that the possibility of their unity should not be
excluded, which seems to imply the real possibility of an intuitive intellect or
intellectual intuition that unites reason and sensibility, the universal and the par-
ticular, thought and being, into one. To intellectual intuition, noumena and phe-
nomena are indistinguishable, and nothing that exists is flatly unknowable, as Kant
said of the thing in itself. Kant is actually trying to solve this problem in all three
Critiques, in what he says concerning the intelligible world and the unity of
mechanism and teleology in a supersensible substrate.
What exactly is the problem? It seems evident that Kant’s attraction to the
possibility of intuitive intellect or intellectual intuition is what leads him toward
fideism. If this attraction were removed, it would then become evident that what
really concerns him is the possible identity of thought and being. Kant’s dualism,
with its central concept of the thing in itself, severs this identity if the thing in itself
is unknowable, cognition cannot be transformed into being and the identity of
thought and being would seem to require the mysticism of Kant’s intelligible world
as the only condition under which they might finally become one. Then possibility
would be actuality, the universal would be the particular, reason would be sensi-
bility, noumena would be phenomena, what “ought to be” would really be so, and
teleology and mechanism would be made fully consistent. Thought would not only
cognize being, but actually create it. These ideas have a markedly mystical aura.
Fichte takes over from Kant the concept of intellectual intuition in order to
rebuild speculative metaphysics. Schelling goes even further with his “identity
philosophy,” developed directly from Kant’s conceptions of organized being in
nature and intuitive intellect.90 While Hegel develops his thought of the “concrete
universal” as the absolute idea that finally overcomes all contradictions. Hegel
writes, “the highest truth, truth as such, is the resolution of the highest opposition
and contradiction. In it validity and power are swept away from the opposition
between freedom and necessity, between spirit and nature, between knowledge and
its object, between law and impulse, from opposition and contradiction as such,
whatever forms they may take. Their validity and power as opposition and con-
tradiction is gone.”91 With Hegel, the thesis of an identity between thought and
being is developed into a dialectic of reciprocal, transformable historical links, and
acquires a profound significance. Henceforth, the unity of thought and being

90
“It is by means of such an intuition that we first bring forth the intelligence, as it were, entirely
out of itself; by such an intuition, therefore, that we also first resolve the entire [the supreme]
problem of transcendental philosophy […] the intuition itself; and, to judge beforehand, it can be
no other than the intuition of art” (Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism, 218). The
mystical understanding of intuition, proposed by Schelling, was developed by Schopenhauer,
Nietzsche, Dilthey, and the school of phenomenology. For further discussion, see Georg Lukacs,
The Destruction of Reason.
91
Hegel (1998).
328 10 Aesthetics and Teleology

becomes a grave theme and indeed the essence of classical German philosophy.
Nevertheless, this unity is in the spirit of idealism, and everything concrete and
particular that it promised disappears in the absolute unity of this idealistic
metaphysics.
Marx turns the question of the unity of thought and being in classical German
philosophy upside down and presents a materialistic answer. He undertakes his
investigation of the community between thought and being, spirit and material,
from the perspective of material practice. This practice turns consciousness and
purposes into actuality by relying on objective laws of nature and transforms
thought into being in a way that changes nature. Lenin remarks, “Man’s con-
sciousness not only reflects the objective world, but creates it.”92 Human activities
are conscious and purposeful. Human beings use their knowledge of the laws of
nature to realize their purposes, while those purposes in turn arise from nature and
are constrained by it. The important point, however, lies in the idea that “purposes
unite with objectivity through means,” thereby producing effects whose significance
goes far beyond the finite ends that individuals may pursue. Lenin quotes Hegel’s
argument: “To that extent the means are higher than the finite ends of external
usefulness: the plough is more honorable than those immediate enjoyments which
are procured by it, and serve as ends. The instrument is preserved, while the
immediate enjoyments pass away. In his tools man possesses power over external
nature. Although as regards his ends, he frequently is subjected to it.”93 Lenin
repeatedly points out “the germs of historical materialism in Hegel.”94
In the social practice of generation after generation, human beings have created a
civilization that is by far more important than the mere natural existence of their
species. Originally, human beings began to make and use tools to sustain their
existence by conforming to and exploiting the laws of nature, but because their
purposes unite with objectivity through the means they have constructed, human
beings achieved an indelible historical result that reached beyond the particular
existential purposes that were operating at the origin. The external material aspect
of this achievement is scientific civilization, from the primitive stone tool to modern
industry. This is what I have been calling the aspect of techno-social structure. The
inner psychological aspect of the achievement is the formal structure that
internalizes, condenses, and sediments in intelligence, the will, and aesthetic
feeling. This is what I have named the aspect of cultural-psychological struc-
ture. Its materialized forms are the sciences and arts of all different ages and
societies. Individual life and the subjective purpose of survival are finite and obey
nature, whereas human history, that is, social practice and its achievements, tran-
scend nature and are everlasting.
In Kant’s theory, the unity of thought and being is realized in the intelligent
world, while in Hegel’s theory, its realization is the absolute idea. These idealistic

92
Lenin (1994).
93
Ibid.
94
Ibid.
10.8 “Man also Produces in Accordance with the Laws of Beauty” 329

theories inevitably opened the door to mysticism, fideism, teleology, religion, and
God. For Marx the unity of thought and being is thought historically, materialis-
tically, as the achievement of the humanization of nature. His theory is a profound
historical materialism and theory of practice, and points toward the aesthetic realm.
The humanization of nature is not the work of gods, or God, or any church, but
rather of the history of practice of millions of people in collective society. Not only
does external nature serve the human world, the human being as a natural, physical
being transcends animal instinct and attains its distinctive social form in society. As
a result, a series of extra-biological attributes spring up from the ground of natural
human existence. Aesthetic feeling and the problems and opportunities of aesthetic
culture address these extra-biological needs and enjoyments. In the same way that
extra-biological limbs (tools) introduce profound new dimensions in epistemology,
language, and thought, the extra-biological structure of fully human morality and
rational autonomy also emerges. All of these results are peculiar to human beings,
distinguished from the social products and social character of other animals.
Human nature is thus the unity of biological and extra-biological attributes. The
extra-biological attributes of rational cognition and moral autonomy express a kind
of rationalization of sensuous existence, while in aesthetic culture these
extra-biological innovations become sedimented in that same sensuous nature and
gradually change it. Nevertheless, all these manifestations exhibit the supremacy of
extra-biological attributes over natural sensuous existence. An exception, however,
is aesthetic culture, where the extra-biological attributes dissolve into, become
sedimented, and profoundly change human sensuous nature. Its essence is a plea-
surable sense of freedom and its effects range across all culture and even ordinary
daily life.95Food no longer merely satisfies hunger, but transforms into the deli-
cacies of the gourmet. Sex no longer merely guarantees the reproduction of the
species but becomes an expression of love.96 In our need for travel and arts, reason
permeates sensibility, as the individual becomes historical and nature is socialized.
It is in the sensibility yet beyond sensibility, it is in forms (nature) yet beyond the
forms. This is the profound significance of nature’s humanization as the ground of
beauty. A totality, or society, and reason penetrate deeply into the nature and
sensibility of the individual human being. Marx points out that while the standpoint
of the old materialism was civil society, “the standpoint of the new is human
society, or social humanity.”97 Marx’s materialism is different from older versions
in its ideal of human liberation. Liberation is not confined merely to economic and
political demands, but extends to all kinds of alienating conditions, while beauty is
the opposite of all alienation. When Schiller proposes “the impulse of play” as the
key to aesthetic and artistic culture, he foresees Marx’s thought. Human beings

95
See John Dewey, Art as Experience.
96
In his Conjectural Beginning of Human History, Kant also mentions this point as if to make a
guess at the answer, writing that “from merely sensual to spiritual attractions, from mere animal
desire gradually to love, and along with this from the feeling of the merely agreeable, to a taste for
beauty, at first only for beauty in man but at length for beauty in nature as well.”
97
Theses on Feuerbach. Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
330 10 Aesthetics and Teleology

acquire genuine freedom only in aesthetic play, engaged in creative works and
social practice.
From this aesthetic perspective, I think that the usual sequence—Kant–Hegel–
Marx—which has been prevalent for some time now cannot be entirely right.
Instead, the sequence should be: Kant–Schiller–Marx. The common thought that
runs through the three of them is their emphasis on sensibility. They analyze the
unity between sensibility and reason without ignoring the natural functions of
sensibility, which are to shape, cultivate, and transform material existence. Clinging
to sensibility means not breaking away from the concrete reality of individual life
and its historical particularity. For Kant, however, sensibility is mere abstract
psychology, while for Schiller sensibility is abstract humanity. He sought the unity
of human beings and nature, or sensibility and reason, in aesthetic education, which
he expected to elevate the natural human being to its destined moral autonomy.
Schiller’s doctrine does, however, remain an idealistic utopia due to his inadequate
historical view.
Marx analyzes the problem of liberation and autonomy from the perspectives of
labor, practice, and social production, which allows him to place Schiller’s “aes-
thetic education” on the firm ground of historical materialism. This is the direction
in which to look for the fundamental solution, and it is why Marxist aesthetics does
not begin from consciousness or even from the fine arts, but rather from social
practice and the philosophical question of the humanization of nature. Marx’s
conception of this humanization has been erroneously interpreted in many scholarly
works, which have misread him as referring merely to consciousness or the fine
arts.
However, Marxist aesthetics is most fundamentally about labor, that is, material
production. In other words, it is about the essential social practice of human
beings.98 For Marx, “society is the complete unity of man with nature,” and “the
whole of what is called world history is nothing more than the creation of man
through human labor, and the development of nature for man.”99 He also argues
that “industry is the real historical relationship of nature, and hence of natural
science, to man. If it is then conceived as the exoteric revelation of man’s essential
powers, the human essence of nature or the natural essence of man can also be
understood.”100
He means that through industry and the sciences, human beings cognize and
transform nature, overcoming the opposition between human beings and nature
through particular historical and social practices. This is not a mechanical theory of
cultural evolution, nor is it a mystical teleology. It is a theory of practice and the
materialistic unity of thought and being, which is the correct answer to the question
of the unity of human beings and nature. In the course of long historical social

98
Works of art or natural objects that solicit human emotions are merely reflections of the
humanization of nature.
99
Marx (1994a).
100
Ibid.
10.8 “Man also Produces in Accordance with the Laws of Beauty” 331

practice, human purposes become an objective force and nature becomes human-
ized. Human beings win control over nature, and nature becomes “human’s inor-
ganic body,”101 whereas the human becomes master who controls and governs
nature. Nature and human beings, truth and the good, sensibility and reason, laws
and purposes, and necessity and freedom all finally become so many unified
opposites. It is only in Marx’s theory that this unity is fully realized. Truth and the
good, laws and purposes, truly penetrate into each other and blend with each other.
Reason sediments in sensibility, content sediments in form, and natural forms are
transformed into the free forms of beauty, which is thus the fundamental ground on
which to achieve the final unity of all these opposites.102 Aesthetics as a whole
embraces the unity of subjective psychology and the sedimentation of structure in
social history, as manifested in synthetic psychological functions, including per-
ception, understanding, imagination, and emotions, and in different arrangements
and collaborations among the various elements of aesthetic experience and artistic
styles.103
While the exact form of this thought may eventually be expressed in the lan-
guage of science and the DNA’s double helix, let us for the time being rely on the
language of classical philosophy, and say that beauty is the unity of truth and the
good manifest as free sensible form in objective nature; and that aesthetics is the
unity of truth and the good manifest as the free experience of subjective psychology
in vision, hearing, and imagination.104 Formal beauty is the harmonious state of
unity among the formerly contradictory, while the fundamental ground for the
sublime lies neither in nature nor in the individual human soul (as Kant said), but
rather in social practice. Great works of fine art have often sought to characterize the
sublime in representations of the fierce struggle of people with ideals and integrity,
and of the multitude marching forward without hesitation, as those behind take up
the position of those who fall in front, a dauntless, heroic self-sacrifice. When
nature has been historically subdued by human social practice,105 the sublime in

101
Ibid.
102
For further discussion, see my Essays on Aesthetics: Three Theses of Aesthetics, (Shanghai: Art
and Literature Publishing House, 1980).
103
For further discussion, see my Essays on Aesthetics: Between the Imaginary and the Actual, the
Hidden and the Visible.
104
Kant holds that the free play between imagination and understanding, which results in aethetical
pleasure, is unknowable. This requires him to introduce the mystical concept of formal purpo-
siveness to solve the problem. Modern psychology has not yet scientifically elucidated the
problem, though we may hope that in the future it will do so.
105
The words “subdue” and “transform” are not used in a narrow or plain sense. They do not mean
that human beings directly transform the object. On the contrary, sublime natural objects are often
landscapes or natural elements that are untouched by human beings. For instance, the starry sky,
vast expanses of wilderness, the ocean or a volcano. Therefore the expressions “to subdue” and “to
transform” refer, to certain extent, to nature as a whole at a certain historical stage of human
development. The wilderness or a volcano or storm can become objects of appreciation only when
they no longer threaten to devastate human society. The more sophisticated a civilization, the more
capable it is of appreciating the sublime. In a primitive society at a low stage of social
332 10 Aesthetics and Teleology

nature no longer expresses a merely passive observation that arouses passion. The
source of this sublimity is neither nature itself nor the individual human soul but the
power and achievement of social practice. This objective sociality is the essence of
beauty, whether as beautiful form or the sublime, and artistic beauty is its
expression.
The objectivity of beauty and its unity with subjective aesthetic pleasure can be
seen in all its wonderful diversity, from creative human activities expressing the
unity of purposiveness and conformity to natural law, to artistic enjoyment and the
disinterested appreciation of nature. If we look forward to the eventual abolition of
class struggle, exploitation, and oppression, the purpose of human labor is no longer
mere subsistence, nor is human effort dominated by the forces of alienation or
forced into the narrow confines of a competitive pursuit of food, power, status,
wealth, and vanity. We can expect that as human beings gradually shake off their
dependence on monotonous forms of labor, work and other practical activities can
be expected to exhibit human creativity and individual richness and beauty in
abundance.
The scientific significance of the conception of the human being as an end in
itself will also be expressed in a fundamental transformation. Social wealth will no
longer depend on the hours that people work but rather the hours in which they
enjoy free play. Artistic, scientific, and other creative work will become the index of
social development, while we might also look forward to discovering wholly new
human powers and potentials. “Free time—which is both idle time and time for
higher activity—has naturally transformed its possessor into a different subject, and
he then enters into the direct production process as this different subject. This
process is then both discipline, as regards the human being in the process of
becoming, and, at the same time, practice, experimental science, and materially
creative and objectifying science.”106
Only a small priestly elite in primitive society and the intellectual class in
capitalist society have been able to enjoy free time, a high status, and a significant
role in social life. In future societies, these can be expected to become the usual
conditions of social labor. Communism will finally be realized only when these
conditions become the universal, or at least the predominant working conditions in
society. Living a jolly life with a full belly is not Communism. As Marx observed
long ago, Communism is a realm of freedom that is distinct from the prehistoric
realm of necessity. Its historical realization will not only liberate human beings
from poverty and all alienating conditions; it will also liberate the individual from
the confines of social class and the demand that he make of himself no more than a
mere appendage to the harsh conditions of an immature means of production. This
liberation from alienation in all its aspects will become an objective trend in the

development, landscapes and other natural objects often become objects of fear, worship, mysti-
fication, and anthropomorphism, rather then being sublime in the aesthetic sense.
106
Marx (1994b).
10.8 “Man also Produces in Accordance with the Laws of Beauty” 333

development of human society and economy, while the ideal of beauty will become
an object of joyful striving for the great majority, if not indeed for all human beings.
The unified ground of objective beauty and subjective aesthetic consciousness
that Kant attributes to a “supersensible substrate” is more realistically and materi-
alistically comprehended as the victory of the unity of human beings with nature.
This is the true significance of the concept that nature evolves toward human
beings, and it is the product of society as well as of history. Beauty and subjective
aesthetic feeling no less that stone tools and modern industry express the ideal
pursued in the humanization of nature, which is an internal transformation of both
nature and humankind. Civilization will set the standard for individual psychology,
and beauty and the fine arts will set the standard for industry and civilization. The
nature of beauty and that of essence and destiny of human being are thus intimately
related. Human nature is neither the result of mere biological evolution nor the
mysterious transcendence of pure reason, but rather the outcome of concrete his-
torical practice, and so is the nature of beauty.
The nature of beauty indicates the production of human practice in the world.
Marx states, “An animal forms only in accordance with the standard and the need of
the species to which it belongs, whilst man knows how to produce in accordance
with the standard of every species, and knows how to apply everywhere the
inherent standard to the object. Man therefore also forms objects in accordance with
the laws of beauty.”107 As we have seen, Kant and Schiller also discuss the unity of
human beings with nature, although they lack historical materialism’s resources for
explaining how this unification can actually come to fruition in the evolution of
nature toward human beings and the reciprocal humanization of nature. This is why
they are unable to present a correct exposition of the nature of beauty.
The rapid development of modern science and technology have made automatic
and computerized production increasingly widespread, as machines replace the
functions of human beings. Science and technology are no longer mere extensions
of our limbs but also of our brains; they are not mere helpers, but take over
important functions in material production.
Under these circumstances, the pessimistic thought that perhaps human beings
are dominated by technology has also become widespread, with new theories
advocating the replacement of historical materialism with a psychological analysis
that is also (supposedly) a theory of revolution, and that promises liberation from
the “hegemony of reason” characteristic of modern industrial technology. The
materialism of consumption, as well as loneliness, melancholy, boredom, anxiety,
and feelings of purposelessness and fear are also on the rise, and find a reflection in
modern art.
People seldom find spiritual sustenance in religion anymore, while advanced
technology has even estranged people from the loving human relationships and
reciprocal caring they used to enjoy in the workplace and in daily life. People fall
into all kinds of alienated conditions. All aspects of life—the workplace and private

107
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
334 10 Aesthetics and Teleology

life, production and consumption, desire and enjoyment, need and consciousness,
emotion and thought—seem to be alienated, manipulated, and dominated by
technology, which has replaced the alienation of pre-capitalist society that enslaved
people in hegemonic structures of power mystified by an idolatrous religion. The
old question Rousseau posed (the antagonism of civilization, science, and morality)
is raised again and again by Heidegger, Sartre, and Marcuse.
The old question of the relationship between human beings and nature also finds
a new form that emphasizes the tension between society and the individual.108 As
discussed in the previous chapter, the individual consciousness that was submerged
by Hegel’s totalizing idealism ferociously raises its head anew, and is rapidly
growing under modern living conditions. The significance of the individual is
increasingly prominent. Under modern conditions, the individual acutely feels his
irreducible singularity and demands liberation from the impersonal conditions of a
social totality that eliminates the significance of the individual and replaces it with a
mystified form of individuality driven by an obsession with consumption.
All these well-discussed theses of existentialism and Marcuse’s conception of
one-dimensional man are a call for liberation from the alienating power of modern
scientific technology. They are also an expression of the philosophical contradiction
that has severed human beings and nature, no less than individuals and society,
under modern capitalism.
However, the contradiction should be attributed to class exploitation and ruling
social conditions, rather than to the rapid growth of scientific technology and
material prosperity. Martin Buber emphasized the relation “I-thou” over “me-it” as
the truest form of human existence. Ancient Chinese teachings, including the idea
of the human being as an integral part of nature and the harmonious dao of daily
life, not only confirm that the truth of human existence lies not in the relation
between the individual and God, but rather in the human relationship to the actual
world and in the harmony of human beings and nature. Of course this was an ideal
that emerged in China’s ancient agricultural society of small-scale production.109
The alienation emphasized by the existentialist philosophers arises from the
indifferent interpersonal relationships that dominate the present stage of highly
developed capitalist society. Liberation from alienation, a search for the true value
of life, and the richness of individual existence become a demand. Living beings
originally had no singular, unduplicable character, and it was only with the advance
of material society that individuals became aware of their own singularity, which
means that this individuality is not in conflict with society but is rather one of its
chief products. The true significance of individuality is to be found in an enriched
sociality.

108
In the “Speculative Beginning of Human History,” Kant optimistically raises this question of
the conflict between sociality (civilization) and naturality (instinct, animality). For instance, nat-
urality enables human beings to demand marriage and reproduction upon reaching a certain age,
while social civilization demands postponing the deadline.
109
For further discussion, see my essays on the history of ancient Chinese thought.
10.8 “Man also Produces in Accordance with the Laws of Beauty” 335

Modern philosophy expresses the epochal thesis that the human being and
nature, the individual and society, must be unified. As the pace of advance
quickens, individual singularity, richness and diversity, which were first exhibited
by fine art, can be expected to find their fullest development in all aspects of social
life and the fullest potential of individuality can be expected to become a leading
characteristic of future society.
In a bold, inspiring remark, Marx stated:
Communism as the positive transcendence of private property as human self-estrangement,
and therefore as the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man; Communism
therefore as the complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e., human) being – a return
accomplished consciously and embracing the entire wealth of previous development. This
Communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed
humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and
nature and between man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and
essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity,
between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it
knows itself to be this solution…. Natural science will in time incorporate into itself the
science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itself natural science: there
will be one science.110

The terms “human essence” and “humanism” should be taken as referring to

particular social and historical qualities that have potential in nature yet transcend
nature in their historical realization. This is not the old theories of human essence
and humanism, which were reductive and abstract.111 Only on the ground of a
historical materialist understanding of the naturalization of human beings and the
humanization of nature can these questions find a satisfying theoretical answer. This
answer is found nowhere else than in future society, which Marx and Engels
optimistically yet also realistically describe as “an association in which the free
development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”112
Human beings are on the way from the realm of necessity to the realm of
freedom, which is the world of the beautiful. The historical realization of this great
goal depends on the elimination of exploitation and oppression in all forms, wiping
out their influence and residues in economy, politics, technology, psychology, and
ideology. Beauty is realized only through historical practice. The whole history of
human beings confirms that a beautiful world is attainable, although only after
much suffering and hardship.
I conclude this book by returning to Kant’s grand question, “What is the human
being?” His first three questions—What can I know? What should I do? What can I
hope for?—are eventually summed up in the final question, namely, what is the
human being? As we have seen, Kant pursued this question from epistemological,

110
Marx (1994c).
111
Including Herbet Marcuse’s theory. In opposing the natural to the social, Marcuse fails to see
that the important aspect, in regard to the historical achievement of the human being, is a sociality
that is sedimented in nature and forms the basis for the unity of society with nature.
112
The Communist Manifesto, Marx Engels Internet Archive 1994.
336 10 Aesthetics and Teleology

ethical, and aesthetic perspectives, seeking his answer in the cultural-psychological

structure of universal necessary human mental powers, which he regarded as the
main attribute and backbone of human nature. However, the answer to the question
of how universal necessary human functions are possible is attributed to pure
reason, which in fact does not solve the problem. The question of what the human
being is still remains a puzzle. Therefore, it is left to anthropo-historical ontology—
which advocates that “experience turns into transcendence, history constructs rea-
son, psychology becomes ontology”—to continue further investigation.

References

Bohr. 2011. The Strict Application of Those Concepts which are Adapted to Our Description of
Inanimate Nature Might Stand in a Relationship of Exclusion to the Consideration of the Laws
of Phenomena of Life. In Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Feuerbach. 1927. Principles of Philosophy of the Future, trans. M. Vogel, 57. Indianapolis, IN:
Hackett.
Hegel. 1998. The Lectures on the Philosophy of Fine Art, 100. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Kant. 2006. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Robert B. Louden, 123, 124,
126, §57, §59. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kant, Immanuel, and Arnulf Zweig. 1986. Philosophical Correspondence 1759–1799, 128.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lenin. 1994. Philosophical Notebooks. Marx Engels Internet Archive.
Marx. 1994a. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. Marx Engels Internet Archive.
Marx. 1994b. Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy. Marx Engels Internet Archive.
Marx. 1994c. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Marx Engels Internet Archive.
Schiller. 2005. Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, 37. Raleigh: Hayes Barton Press.
Stonitz, Jerome.1960. The Sources of the Doctrine of Aesthetic Disinterestedness Aesthetics and
Art Criticism.
Postscript

Since I was originally trained in the fields of aesthetics and the history of Chinese
thought, I ought to give a brief account as to why I set out to write this book.
I was greatly interested in Kant’s philosophy in my early years but never
intended to launch into a study of it. In 1972, when I was undergoing training at the
Cadre School in Minggang (a town in Henan province in central China), it was
possible for me to sneak a look at a book in the few spare moments that were left to
us, and I used this opportunity several times to read the Critique of Pure Reason,
which I had brought with me by stealth. In the autumn of the same year, after
having been dismissed from the Cadre School, I was left with nothing to do in my
intellectual field because the swaggering Gang of Four had us all under their will.
After Yao Wenyuan, one of the Gang of Four, became influential and promoted
“the struggle between Confucianism and Legalism,” I could not continue my
research either in aesthetics or on the history of Chinese thought. All I could do to
vent my discontent was to keep to myself away from political issues and busy
myself with writing this book. However, I had to work in fits and starts because I
suffered from liver and heart diseases. I finally completed the book around the time
of the Tangshan earthquake in 1976. There is a distinct sort of pleasure in writing
while crouched under a bed during a rumbling earthquake!
In the time of the tyranny of the Gang of Four, so many difficulties had to be
faced that one could not get hold of even the most common books for reference.
Therefore I had to do without the necessary bibliography. In those days of hardship,
some comrades offered encouragement, others helped to borrow books for me. To
your lofty friendship and great kindness, I extend the profound gratitude of a heart
loyal and pure.
The preparation of this book required many years, but the actual research and
writing were rather hurried, which accounts for many slips in regard to content,

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 337

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of Traditions and Cultures 27, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0239-8
338 Postscript

wording, and argument. My writing style was obviously infected by the redundant,
dry, and obscure style of the Critique of Pure Reason. Important themes were
overlooked or underdeveloped, which I hope to remedy as I have occasion to revise
and expand the work. Monographs on Kant’s philosophy are very few in China, and
it appears that even in the international literature no one has given a reading of Kant
from the perspective of the theory of practice. This book intends to raise some
questions to serve as a modest spur to further insights.
Beijing, October 1976
Postscript to the Second Edition

Thirty thousand copies of the first edition of this book were printed. Wow, I mused
at the time, I won’t have a chance to correct all the errors in my book for ten years!
Surprisingly, the book sold out very quickly, and now it is going into a second
edition. In addition to many enthusiastic letters from young readers, I also noticed
that scholarly essays of rather professional quality, though not on Kant’s philoso-
phy, were quoting and repeating some statements from my book in academic
journals such as Chinese Social Science. Honestly, I was rather pleased in my heart,
even though I was not acquainted with these authors. Not that I thought this book
merited so much attention, but these responses could be seen as a suitable reply to
others who tried their best to make troubles for the book. As Luxun said, the
malicious are artful, and sometimes their art is effective.
I have many a time in my life fallen victim to small acts of malice, rumors, and
endless tedious difficulties deliberately instigated by people who abuse their power.
Although these things were indeed “small,” I nonetheless often felt suffocated. This
ill fate proved unescapable even in later years. Therefore, I take the occasion of the
second edition of this book to voice a couple of unseemly words, in order first of all
to breathe freely for a while and warm myself, and secondly to let younger readers
who support and care for me know that academic life can be full of twists and turns
and that one can expect to be pestered by non-academic demons and monsters.
However, a line that Marx quoted has been for me like a magic amulet, and is useful
to bear in mind: Stick to your own path, and let others do the talking.
I remember chatting about scholarly publications with an American professor
who was amazed that in China so many copies of a philosophical book could be
printed. Surely he forgot that we have a huge population. Nonetheless, 30,000
copies is still an amazing number, and it led me to recall Engels’ statement that even
in a time when the whole society was given over to superficial pragmatism, the
German working class retained their interest in theory and became the successors of
classical German philosophy. I believe that the Chinese of the present day, par-
ticularly the younger generation, maintain their enthusiasm for theory and their
interest in philosophy. This is noteworthy and meritorious. Only when there is a
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 339
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340 Postscript to the Second Edition

strong desire to learn and for theoretical discussion can one transcend vulgarity;
cultivate a forward-looking mind; prepare for the future; and serve the people, the
homeland, and the cause of socialism with a clear mind.
I recall that it was also because of my steadfast interest in theoretical knowledge
during the Cultural Revolution that I started to write this book. Many times com-
rades have inquired as to the circumstances of my writing at that time in our recent
history. These circumstances were briefly mentioned in the postscript to the first
edition, and I would like to add a few more details.
As I explained in the original postscript, I was seeking refuge in writing this
book. Time should not be wasted, and as it was not permissable to do research in
my own field, I took advantage of the trend for criticizing Lin Biao, Confucius, and
transcendentalism to study Kant. I had heard that some general had taken the
Critique of Pure Reason with him to read while he was campaigning. When I was
sent to the Cadre School, I had to minimize my luggage, and in my choice of a book
to accompany me I followed the model of the general. “This book is not too heavy,”
I thought, “but difficult enough to be time-consuming reading.” Perhaps in hard
times like that, one should read some difficult books.
After having returned from the Cadre School in 1972, I began to write a book on
Kant with the notes I had taken. At that time, I was convinced that Jiang Qing and
his collaborators would surely fall, but did not dare to think that it would happen as
soon as it did. Therefore I didn’t plan to have my book published in the near future.
Since I was not working for publication, I did not feel obliged to be in unison with
the politically correct views of the time. Besides, very few treatises on Kant were to
be seen in China after the Liberation, and our Marxists had long ago pronounced a
caricatured negative interpretation of Kant’s philosophy. Others regarded Kant’s
philosophy as ingenious, albeit mysterious and abstruse beyond human compre-
hension. All these phenomena spurred me to produce a book that would, in simple
language, comprehensively introduce the reader to Kant’s philosophy. Another
motive for my writing was an attempt to change the oblivious indifference to Kant
in our academies.
Unfortunately, my German was not good. Twice I had attempted to learn
German, first when I was studying at Beijing University in the 1950s, and then after
having left the university. However, all I could do with the little German I had was
to rely on a dictionary to read a bit of Engels. Later on, I lost even that little bit of
German. The same thing happened with my Russian. Therefore I had to rely on
English translations. I was also aware that “a nobleman’s mansion is deep like the
sea, inaccessible to the common man,” and knew that the multitude of books on
Kant in German, French, English, and other languages would reach to the roof and
cause cows hitched to their their carts to perspire. To adequately canvass and absorb
all this research would consume the rest of my life. On the other hand, however, I
enjoyed the work so much that I did not mind if I had to spend my whole life
studying Kant. I had heard that one needed half a life to truly understand even one
of Kant’s books, or even one of the questions of one of his books.
Postscript to the Second Edition 341

Aren’t there already enough treatises on the Critique of Pure Reason? Those
books are probably the bona fide monographs on Kant, and their authors the bona
fide experts.
I intended neither to write a monograph nor to be an expert. I could not have
succeeded even if I had tried, nor did I wish to. My aim was to fill in a gap in the
field. It seemed to me that no one had done the work required to introduce Kant,
and I thought I could share what little knowledge I had acquired to contribute an
elementary introduction. That was all I had in mind. In my original draft of the
postscript to the first edition, I said that I was just an amateur giving a guest
performance, but my editor comrade thought this line was a mere formality and
deleted it. In fact, I wasn’t affecting humbleness but expressing a fact.
Another impetus urged me to give this guest performance. I was deeply
immersed in Marxist philosophy at the time and couldn’t bear to see Marxism
ravaged beyond recognition. I wanted to connect the study of Kant’s philosophy
with that of Marxism because, on the one hand, Marxism evolved from Kant and
Hegel, while on the other hand, I was convinced that Kant’s philosophy should
remain an influence in shaping thought in contemporary scientific and cultural
fields. Hence, it seemed worthwhile to inquire into how to criticize and learn from
Kant’s philosophy, how to combine it with modern natural science and theoretical
questions we learned from Western philosophy, and how to preserve and develop
Marxist philosophy. Of course no one book could resolve all these questions, but I
thought at the time that it would have far-reaching significance if some words of
mine were able to attract people’s attention and induce them to pursue the questions
further.
I could see that the study of Marxist philosophy, both at home and abroad, was
dominated by subjectivism, the theory of the will, and ethical theories. These
theories differed from each other because of their diverse social and class back-
grounds and diverse class bases, but they all had this common inclination. Under
the banners of “revolutionary critique of culture” and “spontaneous class con-
sciousness,” Marxism was turned into a theory that championed impetuous action.
That is why I tirelessly emphasized themes of practice; the defining practice as the
making and use of tools; historical materialism; and the criticism of Western
Marxism.
Shouldn’t we give further thought to the theoretical level of the slogan of the
Great Leap Forward: “the more we dare, the more the land will yield”; and the
slogan of the Cultural Revolution: “revolution erupts from the depths of the soul”?
Did not dialectics teach us that there are two sides to everything, that even eating
watermelon is practice, that philosophy is nothing but struggle and revolution? I
contemplated these questions by means of a discourse on Kant’s philosophy, and
ventured to express something of my own opinion while respecting the boundary of
objectivity. Consequently, although the introduction to Kant’s philosophy occupies
more space in the book than my commentary does, my purpose in writing the book
was to communicate the latter.
342 Postscript to the Second Edition

It was beyond my imagination that, barely a year after I sent the manuscript to a
publisher, a discussion in China epitomized in the slogan “practice is the sole
criterion for testing truth” would dramatically highlight the importance of practice
in Marxist philosophy. I reserved my opinion as to the academic value of the
discussion, for instance, whether some people truly understood such basic concepts
as practice, truth, and criterion. But the discussion itself was of secondary impor-
tance. What was significant was the political influence and liberating effect on
thought of the discussion. This far-reaching significance went well beyond anything
a book like mine might dream of achieving.
My book has many limitations. I confessed to them in the postscript to the first
edition and wished to revise and expand them here. However, after I sent out the
manuscript in the autumn of 1976, I resumed my research on aesthetics and the
history of Chinese thought, and did not find time to touch the colossal monster of
Kant. While an old pursuit was neglected, new knowledge was not acquired. That
remains the case to this day. Naturally, while I was in the United States I was able
to read books, including books on Kant by the “grand masters” in Hong Kong and
Taiwan. I have also had the opportunity in the United States to discuss with Chinese
and non-Chinese scholars, who either read or didn’t read my book. They all seem to
acknowledge that my “guest performance” was credible. That is why I have agreed
to reprint the book. I have also sincerely asked Chinese professors who read
German well and are experts in classical German philosophy for advice concerning
revision, though I heard nothing back from them. However, I know very well that,
as I said in the postscript to the first edition, the book is marred by many slips in
regard to content, wording, and argument, and perhaps there are additional errors as
well. It is solely due to the want of time and strength that the introductory part of the
book is still in its original state, and the promise I made in the postscript to the first
edition remains unfulfilled. For that I owe the reader an apology.
Once in New York City I told a well-known Chinese professor that a doctoral
student at Harvard University wished to translate my book into German. He
remarked that an English translation would be better, and that I should leave the
introductory part as it is and revise the commentary. He considered my commentary
overly sketchy, and especially disapproved of my dismissal of Western Marxism.
He was certainly not alone in this opinion. But I didn’t revise the commentary much
for the second edition for two reasons. First, I do indeed have many thoughts that I
would like to have an occasion to voice, but as these thoughts are irrelevant to
Kant’s philosophy, I have to exercise self-restrain lest a minor issue take prece-
dence over a major one. After all, this book is about Kant, and irrelevant remarks
should find their own proper place.
Second, I still maintain the correctness of all the criticisms I made in the book,
including those of Western Marxism. I did not entirely dismiss Western Marxism,
and I freely concede that Western Marxists have done a lot to expose modern
Western capitalism and to raise valuable questions about human nature. However, I
still think that the essence of their definition, interpretation, and elaboration of the
idea of practice remains embroiled in subjectivism.
Postscript to the Second Edition 343

However, I did make some revisions and supplements to my commentary. The

main change is that in the first edition I stressed the meaning of practice as the
making and using of tools in order to emphasize the Marxist theory that material
production is the basis of social existence and cultural activity. I still hold the same
conviction, though I have come to think that attention to spiritual civilization should
also find a central place in Marxist philosophy. Marxism is not just a philosophy of
revolution, but also a philosophy of construction. A philosophical account of the
construction of a spiritual civilization cannot avoid questions concerning what I
have called the cultural-psychological structure, as well as the critique of cultural
heritage, the sedimentation of history, human nature, subjectivity, and so on.
Marxist philosophy is indispensable in the search for answers to all these questions.
Furthermore, Marxist philosophy itself would be advanced by treating these
questions, including criticizing various erroneous theories presented by disciplines
in the humanities, and taking up some of the important achievements of modern
natural science and social science. In this respect, the questions raised in Kant’s
philosophy are still a valuable reference. I proposed this opinion in the first edition,
for instance in the discussion of Piaget’s theory. In this edition, I hope the point is
all the more clear and prominent. It may seem hackneyed these days to talk about
building a spiritual civilization. However, doing so is by no means an easy task. On
the contrary, it is an extremely difficult and complicated project to truly compre-
hend its grave significance in philosophy, and to accurately relate it to the devel-
oping direction of both contemporary science and society.
I am pleased to learn that many people in China have begun to acknowledge and
study Piaget, while others have started to study Western Marxism. Some comrades
focus on the philosophy of science, including the work of Karl Popper, Thomas
Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, and Marx Wartofsky. There are also a few who have noticed
Michael Polanyi. All these texts have changed their view of Kant’s philosophy.
Certainly many worthwhile opinions and debates have been overlooked, and some
aspects, problems, and representatives of new trends, including cultural anthro-
pology, hermeneutics, ordinary language philosophy, Derrida, Levi-Strauss,
Habermas, and others have been neglected. But all in all, we have made much
progress. I am confident that more and better works on Kant’s philosophy as well as
on the other questions, philosophers, and theories mentioned in my book will
appear in good time.
I look forward to this future with joyful expectation. I took on what others ought
to have done, and now it is time for me to conclude this guest performance. Some
day, if time allows, I would be more than happy to again take up questions con-
cerning Kant and other questions that I have raised in this book.
In the original postscript to the first edition I quoted a poem by Gong Zizhen.
I decided to omit it after hearing the wise advice of a kind-hearted comrade. Ever
since childhood I had been fond of some of Gong’s seven-character quatrains, and
the one I had originally intended to cite was one of my favorites. I thought that
perhaps I could finally include it in the new preface, but then, after further hesi-
tation, I decided I had better not, because it would certainly provoke some people’s
344 Postscript to the Second Edition

contempt and invite further trouble for myself. I will have another occasion some
day. Instead, allow me to conclude with two different poems by Gong:
A moment, neither of missing someone nor lost in Zen meditation, Dreaming of returning,
tears trickle down my cheeks.

The floral patterns are tranquil on the vase, the smoke of incense in the burner has dis-
persed, Seeking my original heart of six and twenty years.

Ghosts wailed in dark night when the ancients first made written characters, Sorrows gather
in the people who learn to read and write.

I am neither fearful of ghosts nor sorrowful,

Yet the flame glows a phantom green when by my oil lamp I amend the sacred scroll.

Beijing, September 1983

Postscript to the Sixth, Thirtieth Anniversary
Edition

The manuscript of A New Approach to Kant was completed in October 1976,

published by the People’s Publishing House in March 1979, and reprinted in 1984.
The third edition was issued by Anhui Arts and Literature Publishing House in
1994. In 1994, the San Min Book Company in Taipei published a fourth edition,
and in 2003, the Press of the Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences published the fifth
edition. This edition, which will be published by SDX Joint Publishing Company,
is now the sixth. Counting on my fingers, I realized that it has been thirty years
since I completed the manuscript.
I would have liked to take the opportunity to revise the book each time when it
was reprinted. As I said in the postscript to the second edition, I preferred always to
leave my introductory part untouched but to add or delete from the commentary.
I have followed this course in each new edition. This book was written at a time
when it was believed that philosophy was essentially epistemology and that was the
most important aspect of Kantian studies, and that is why I devoted most my energy
to the first Critique, which occupies five of the ten chapters of the book.
Unfortunately, since completing the book I have not continued to pursue episte-
mology, so I have left most of the introduction and commentary relating to the first
Critique in its original form with only a few deletions. The sections on aesthetics
and Kant’s life also remain the same. The sections on ethics, politics, and the
philosophy of history, however, have been significantly revised in both interpre-
tation and style. For instance, my treatment of the notion of the thing in itself as
well as the question of whether we should accord greater importance to Kant or to
Hegel have been modified to clarify the basis of my preference for Kant’s way of
dealing with these problems. However, nothing in these revisions contradicts the
anthropological ontology I laid out in the first edition, with its ground in practice
and my emphasis on the importance of making and using of tools, while the thesis
of cultural-psychological structure has been made more salient. Nonetheless, since
it is a republication, excessive revision would be inappropriate. So I have tried to
preserve the book’s original state. As I said in the preface to the Taiwan edition, it is
always best to preserve the old look and acknowledge the law of the mutual
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346 Postscript to the Sixth, Thirtieth Anniversary Edition

causation of all action. I was confident that readers could penetrate to the situation
of the time when I wrote the book.
Zhou Liquan, a colleague in the Division of Philosophy at the Chinese Academy
of Social Sciences, told me that a scholarly work in the humanities that has cir-
culated for twenty years has indeed done well. I have always carried this remark in
my heart and made it the goal of my struggle. However, it is beyond my expectation
that a book written during the Cultural Revolution could survive for thirty years and
be reprinted in a sixth edition today. Pirate editions are also common in both
Taiwan and mainland China. This phenomenon, which actually proves that the
sales have been fair, pleases me very much. Alas, as time hurtles past, the mind and
body are both declining day by day. I am already past seventy-six, and can no
longer bend over a desk for uninterrupted hours. This is probably the last oppor-
tunity I will have to revise the book. I would have liked to be more meticulous and
thorough, including standardizing the footnotes. But as one who is advanced in
years, I have been unable to do work equal to my ambition.
Kant was convivial and fond of parties and conversation. But I lack such social
skills, and rarely take the initiative to connect with the world. Looking back on the
solitude in which this book was originally written, the scenes, while still vivid,
seem to be from another life. The climate of the time, the ways of life, social
circumstances, academic environment, and ideas and thought of China today are
entirely different from my former days. My mind remains in that monotonous and
lonesome mood that has little changed in so many decades, particularly in these last
fifteen years of living abroad. Thus were the years whiled away, and if there
remains something of that regretful melancholy, it must simply be my personality.
In the Postscript to the second edition I quoted two poems by Gong Zizhen as a
conclusion. This time I want to conclude with two of my favorite lines, because
they seem to be appropriate both to myself and to my book.
I moan about the swift change of morning into evening, and groan about the endless toil of
human life (Tao Qian).

To investigate nothingness to apprehend things, to knock on solitude to find a soul mate

(Lu Ji).

Boulder, Colorado, July 2006

Appendix
Advancing Along with Marx and Kant

Interview with Shu Wei, editor of the sixth, thirtieth anniversary edition.
Shu: Since completing the manuscript of A New Approach to Kant in 1976, and
its publication in 1979, the most significant revision you did was for the revised
edition of 1984, which was published by the People’s Press. You also revised some
of the wording for later editions. However, the revision you made to the sixth,
thirtieth anniversary edition seems to be more extensive. What was the focus of
your revision this time?
Li: My aim was to highlight Kant’s last question, “What is the human being?”
and to emphasize defining what I describe as the cultural-psychological structure as
the main feature and backbone of human nature, as what makes human beings
human beings. No one has ever given an answer to the question of what the human
being is, and the concept of “human nature” has been employed in an extremely
vague and confused fashion. I myself find the definition I gave in this new edition
very important, even if there remains more to say on the vast topic of human nature.
The most significant changes are in Chap. 9, where I more explicitly express my
admiration for Kant’s argument on the “revolution of farewell,” freedom of speech,
progressive reformation, republican government, and perpetual peace. I also bring
up again the old question of who we should more greatly esteem, Kant or Hegel,
discuss the so-called Back to Kant movement, and develop my conviction that
Kant’s thought, striving for universality and ideality from an anthropological per-
spective, is a more vital and lasting contribution than anything Hegel did, and
remains superior to present trends concerning radical individualism and suspicion
of universality.
I said in the postscript to the second edition of 1983 that I could not and did not
want to be a Kant expert. I did not intend to produce a monograph on Kant when I
wrote the book, but rather merely to intimate something of my own philosophy by
means of associating Kant with Marx. This revision also tries to make this intention
clear. Nevertheless, this is a book on Kant, and I should not devote too much space to
my own thoughts. Fortunately, I’ve had the opportunity to write several other books.

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348 Appendix: Advancing Along with Marx and Kant

Shu: While the theme of the book is Kant’s philosophy, you present an overall
interpretation of classical German philosophy, particularly emphasizing your
understanding of the central theme running through from Kant and Hegel to Marx,
which had a great impact in the academy in the 1980s. I remember that Xie Xialing,
of Fudan University in Shanghai, continued your line of thought in his book Kant’s
Sublation of Ontology (1987). He analyzed Kant’s doctrine of “self,” proposing a
distinction between the “me” and “I,” and emphasizing the relevance of Marxist
historical materialism to Kant’s philosophy. At the same time, many young scholars
of the 1980s vehemently criticized you for suppressing and even revoking the
sensuous “me” with your historical and anthropological, practical “I.” How do you
see that debate now?
Li: The doctrine of “I” and “me” in A New Approach to Kant is in fact the same
as the one I developed in my book Historical Ontology, namely, that the human
being has developed from a condition in which the individual exists for the whole
society to one in which the whole society exists for the individual, that is, for the
advancement of individuality. Emphasizing the latter aspect and negating the for-
mer would be unhistorical, while emphasizing the former and negating the later
would be anti-historical. Liberalism, with its theory of natural right, mainly stresses
the existence of the whole for the sake of the individual. Such a one-sided view is
unhistorical. Communitarianism emphasizes the existence of the individual for the
whole, which can be described as an anti-modern trend in China, and therefore I call
it anti-historical (it is otherwise in the West).
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx said, “the free development of each is the
condition for the free development of all.” He also said that “the higher develop-
ment of individuality is thus only achieved by a historical process during which
individuals are sacrificed for the interests of the species in the human kingdom [ …
] because these interests of the species coincide only with the interests of certain
individuals, and it is this coincidence which constitutes the strength of these
privileged individuals” (Theory of Surplus Value). Kant stated that “a universal
cosmopolitan condition, which Nature has as her ultimate purpose, will come into
being as the womb wherein all the original capacities of the human race can
develop.” He also pointed out that this ultimate purpose could only be actualized
through the socialization of the non-social, as well as through opposition, struggle,
war, vanity, greed, desire for power, and the sacrifice of the individual (“me”),
which could only be a long historical process. In this regard, Kant, Hegel, and Marx
shared the same view, with the difference that Hegel and Marx regarded the his-
torical movement as an irrefutable objective law, while Kant regarded it as a
teleological idea that could inspire people but could not be an object of scientific
knowledge. Comparing all these views closely convinced me that Kant was right.
Regrettably, I didn’t expand on this important point in the latest edition.
Shu: German idealism commencing with Kant represents a summit in the
development of modern philosophy, while the publication of A New Approach to
Kant in the 1980s represents the depth of thought concerning questions of
modernity in the Chinese academy. Meanwhile, in the last thirty years, European
and American academics have shown increasing interest in the study of Kant and
Appendix: Advancing Along with Marx and Kant 349

Hegel. The phenomenon seems to be an effort to return to German idealism as a

suitable context for a thorough examination of questions concerning modernity.
The approach of European and American scholars in recent years even seems to
echo your own thought thirty years ago. How do you see this trend?
Li: I’d like to elaborate on this topic. I am indeed very pleased to see that the
approach of Western Kant scholarship in recent years is quite close to mine in A
New Approach to Kant from thirty years ago. This approach turns from the tradi-
tional emphasis on Kant’s transcendental doctrine, individualism, rationalism, and
the first and second Critiques to an emphasis on Kant’s empiricism, collectivism,
sensualism, the third Critique, and Kant’s views on politics, history, and religion. In
other words, it is a shift to an interpretation of Kant that emphasizes his anthro-
pology and philosophy of history.
Some years ago, I read two books written by eminent Kant scholars, Kant on
Freedom, Law, and Happiness by Paul Guyer, and Kant’s Ethical Thought by
Allen Wood. I was surprised to see that the subtitle of one section in Wood’s book
is called “Kant’s Historical Materialism.” He states that “Kant’s theory of history is
proto-Marxist” (245), and thinks that while Kant did not develop ideas of class
struggle and the abolition of private ownership and state, Kant understands, with
Marx, the basis of history as the development of people’s socially productive
powers, their collective capacities to produce their means of subsistence in dis-
tinctive ways that vary with historical conditions. Throughout history these
capacities change and grow, and human history therefore passes through different
stages, which correspond to the dominant mode of productive activity. Along with
Marx, Kant also views history as a scene not only of conflict and strife but of
deepening inequality and oppression. And as in Marx’s theory of history, the root of
this conflict is a struggle between groups of people with antagonistic economic
interests, where the different groups represent different stages in human beings’
economic development (244).
Allen Wood, who also wrote Karl Marx, is certainly sympathetic to Marxism.
Paul Guyer is not affected by personal favor, yet he is also unsatisfied with the
traditional approach to Kant’s ethics, which depends on the Groundwork of the
Metaphysic of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason, and attends almost
exclusively to reason, the individual, and the categorical imperative while over-
looking Kant’s massive discussion of sense experience. In the beginning of his
book Kant on Freedom, Law, and Happiness, Guyer straightaway quotes Kant’s
words that reason is merely instrumental, stressing that despite the acknowledged
centrality of the categorical imperative, nevertheless morality, freedom, and hap-
piness are intimately connected with human beings and are by no means secondary
or subordinate. At the end of the book, he stresses again that “the possibility of
freedom must be not only accessible to human reason through the consciousness of
the moral law but also palpable to human sensibility through the experience of
nature, artistic genius, and human history.”1 Many of the interpretations in the

1
Guyer (2000).
350 Appendix: Advancing Along with Marx and Kant

books by Wood and Guyer are consistent with the opinions I presented in A New
Approach to Kant, including the idea that universal necessity is objective sociality,
that reason arises through the advance of society rather than abiding in an immu-
table transcendental domain, or in other words that the empirical turns into the
transcendental, and history constructs reason. They also agree with the emphasis I
placed on aesthetics, sensible feeling, and the philosophy of history.
At the outset of modernization two hundred years ago it was indeed necessary to
shake off the religion of the Middle Ages and the reign of theology, in order to build
up the morality of modern society. Kant offered sacrifices to the idol of pure reason
that took the place of God, resisted pre-modern authority with the theory of an
autonomous free will, and broke out a new path for the freedom of the individual as
demanded by modernity. However, ever since Nietzsche declaimed the death of
God, the ugly features of modernity are exposed daily, and liberalism and indi-
vidualism have opened the door to post-modern nihilism.
Despite the fact that many Kant scholars are still entangled in trivial debates
concerning the transcendental, the individual, and reason, a philosophical turn is
nonetheless inevitable. In his Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, John
Rawls argues that Kant’s Kingdom of Ends is the perpetual peace of republican
alliances, while Guyer believes that Kant’s conception of the summum bonum refers
to the happiness of humanity rather than the happiness of the individual. Roger
Sullivan argues that “because the moral law appears to us as sacred as if it were
God’s will, reverence for that law, Kant wrote, leads us to religion, which he
defined as the performance of our duties as conscientiously as if they were divine
commands.” I stated in the postscript to the first edition of my book that God in the
third Critique is merely human subjective belief, and that everything Kant says
there concerning God revolves around the human being and especially the funda-
mental issue of its future.
All these thoughts lead to an answer to the question of the human being in terms
of a perspective at once historical and anthropological that is philosophically ori-
ented toward the human future. In my discussion of Kant’s philosophy of history, I
pointed out that the historical course may seem disorderly from the perspective of
the individual, even though from the perspective of the totality, a slow, regular
progress can be discerned. This is Kant’s “secret plan of nature.” He thought that
“the greatest problem for the human species, the solution for which nature compels
him to seek, is that of attaining a civil society which can administer justice uni-
versally.” The result would be that “perpetual peace” in an alliance of republican
states. Kant also believed that commercialism and capital interests rather than
individual morality would be the impetus for the elimination of war and the real-
ization of that perpetual peace he dreamed of.
All these thoughts can be directly related to our contemporary reality. Therefore
it is evident that the new approach—which proceeds from the transcendental to the
empirical; from the individual to the human race; and from pure reason, which is
irrelevant to experience and human happiness to the human being as noumenon;
historical progress; world peace; and collective happiness (first of all the happiness
of material conditions)—would naturally diverge from that of traditional Kantian
Appendix: Advancing Along with Marx and Kant 351

scholarship. The anthropological perspective I proposed thirty years ago in A New

Approach to Kant, which emphasizes Marx’s humanization of nature and proposes
the idea of the using and making of tools to explain “how knowledge is possible, is
one such new approach.”
Shu: In recently years, Hegelian studies in Europe and the United States give
particular attention to Hegel’s continuation of Kant’s philosophical questions. For
instance, Robert Pippin and Terry Pinkard, influential figures in Hegelian studies,
stress the comprehension of Kant’s transcendental apperception and the
self-consciousness in order to grasp the crucial question of Hegel’s idealism. Their
emphasis agrees with your discourse on self-consciousness, which is doubtless the
key chapter of your book. You raised the question of subjectivity in this chapter,
and elaborated on the arguments around the issue of subjectivity.
The “Copernican turn” of modern thought promotes the status of the human
being as the subject, yet it also conspicuously displays the confrontation between
human beings and nature, as well as the profound tensions and confused struggles
of the modern world. For instance, you pointed out the fractured state of relations
between nature and freedom, the antinomy of historical progress and ethical ideals,
and the confrontation between interest and morality. Seen against this backdrop of
thought, your “philosophy of construction,” and your thesis that we ought to unite
science and morality, material civilization and spiritual culture, collective univer-
sality and the potential of the individual, as well as your treatment of the question
that you emphasized as the true meaning of Kant’s philosophy in this revised
edition, namely, “What is the human being?” all direct our attention to the fun-
damental cultural and moral import of Kant’s philosophy. All these arguments
should be revisited and deserve careful consideration.
Chinese academics have always regarded classical German philosophy as an
important field of study, even though in the last ten years, the social sciences,
especially economics, and varieties of post-modern thought have tended to prevail,
while the study of classical German philosophy has come to seem less important,
good mainly as a dependable “bowl of rice” for a small number of experts. It is no
longer the focus of universal interest in the Chinese academy. Would I be wrong to
assume that in this revised edition you want to reaffirm the value of classical
German philosophy?
Li: I have stressed that I’m not a Kant expert. Kant could never have been my
“rice bowl.” Because I’m not restrained in that respect, I could speak my mind more
freely. I believe that the tradition of Kant–Hegel–Marx, which raised the question
concerning the fate of the human being (including the individual), stands on more
solid ground and is more important than the questions and arguments presented by
later generations, including the academic stars of the present. Last year, I said
somewhere that Foucault and Derrida are hardly comparable to Marx, not to
mention Kant. The universality Kant pursued, due to its formalism of transcen-
dental reason, and lacking the realistic material foundation of the existence and
development of the human being, turns into Hegel’s concrete universal, which he
pursued in his conception of the absolute idea, even to the point of regarding the
Kingdom of Prussia as the summit of ethical culture. Contemporary globalization
352 Appendix: Advancing Along with Marx and Kant

could be read as a new, genuine basis for the universality Kant pursued. This idea of
a cosmopolitan civil society under the rule of law and with the free development of
individual genius could be a future ideal for the whole world.
It was on the basis of this vision of historical progress that I proposed the
antinomy of history and ethics, which is a continuation of the tradition of Kant–
Hegel–Marx, including even that question about the “I” and the “me.” But I
combined it with elements from Chinese tradition and supplied two further points.
First, the art of measure. In the tragic course of the antinomy, I emphasized the
imperative to comprehend changing standards in different historical stages and
levels, in order to deal with issues concerning efficiency, fairness, liberty, con-
straint, economic development, environmental degradation, and so on. Second,
Kant blends harmoniously with the Chinese tradition of “the supreme accomplishes
virtue,” as both emphasize the autonomous, absolute value of morality. This view is
different from Hegel and Marx, who were ethical relativists and attributed morality
to history. Consequently, my return to Kant through the mediation of our Chinese
tradition extends a new dignity to the individual “me.”
My revision takes aim at the post-modern ideological trend, which seems to me
to be destroying everything. Nevertheless, I don’t agree with Western conservatism,
which rejects the Enlightenment and declaims a return to the classical thought of
Plato, nor do I side with the Chinese classicists, who advocate the three cardinal
virtues and indulge in nostalgia for the past. I still believe in my constructive
approach to a philosophy of construction. We should strive for a bright future for
the human being and the free individual, and the best hope for that is to maintain the
priority of rationality that was the theme of the Enlightenment, and combine it with
elements of Chinese tradition purged of its ills and given an appropriate historical
attitude. That is what I mean by the phrase “the perspective of the human being, the
insight of the Chinese.”
Shu: Your admiration for classical German philosophy, with its theme of the
cultural-moral human being, raises many further questions. For instance, the
approach of Kant’s moral theology and religion of reason seems to have had a
profound influence on New Confucians in Taiwan and Hong Kong (e.g., Mou
Zongsan). Mou sets great store by Kant’s philosophy, and speaks often of the
metaphysics of morality, the supremacy of morality, and so on. He equates “mind
as substance” with “nature as substance,” opposing the separation of nature from
freedom, and spares no effort in arguing for the harmony between the moral and
cosmological orders. On the other hand, your critical interpretation of Kant’s phi-
losophy, which stresses historical (productive) practice, seems to emphasize
emotion-intuition and aesthetics as the bridge between the two. Your way of linking
Kant’s philosophy with Chinese tradition therefore seems to differ significantly
from that of the New Confucians in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and you have indeed
criticized them, proposing “Western substance, Chinese application” and a “fourth
stage of Confucianism.” Your theory has also been criticized by some young
scholars. For instance, Liu Xiaofeng vehemently advocates the absolute transcen-
dental divinity of salvation. He too criticized the moral ideal of reason in history
proposed by the New Confucians no less than your aesthetic vision, which he
Appendix: Advancing Along with Marx and Kant 353

considers to be an aesthetic escapism that is indifferent to human suffering. How do

you view the criticism now?
Li: I was amazed that Mou Zongsan spent so much time translating Kant’s three
Critiques, yet completely misunderstood or maybe deliberately distorted the basic
concepts of Kant’s philosophy, such as intellectual intuition and immanent tran-
scendence. I’m not going to go into more detail about the concept of immanent
transcendence because my essay “On the Fourth Stage of Confucianism” has
elaborated on this. As to intellectual intuition, I argued in my essay “On Pragmatic
Reason and the Culture of Optimism” that Kant rejects mysticism, believing that
only God is possessed of the intellectual intuition that rises above the distinction
between noumenon and phenomenon. However, Mou Zongsan holds that the
human being also enjoys this intellectual intuition. Kant situated his discussion of
the concept squarely in his epistemology, while Mou transplants it into the meta-
physics of morality. What Mou calls “intellectual intuition” does not concern
knowledge and logic, but rather the mystical experience of a religion of morality
(see my Pragmatic Reason and Optimistic Culture, Joint Publishing, 2005, 96).
Kant did indeed advocate moral theology, but he adamantly opposed theological
morality and the identification of the rational law of morality with religion and
mystical experience. That is one of the reasons I emphasize the distinction between
religious morality and modern social morality. The former is a matter of private
belief (personal morality) and mystical experience, while the later is public reason
(common morality), and has nothing to do with religion or mystical experience.
This is what I mean by “the right is prior to the good.” Despite the fact that different
religions and cultures have different conceptions and criteria, the Good can not only
regulate but also constitute the substance of modern rights. Therefore, my con-
ception is entirely different from Mou’s adherence to the tradition of “inward sage
and outward king.”
The Chinese tradition is a shamanistic tradition, and its teaching of “one world”
in which man is an integral part of nature differs from the “two-world theory,”
which emphasizes the split between mind and body. The “one world” teaching
celebrates the living and does not believe in an “original sin” that requires
redemption. Chinese tradition cares for the sufferings of this world, as confirmed by
such well-known mottos as “the people are my brothers, the creation is part of me,”
“save the people in the midst of fire and water,” and “worry ahead of the people,
and enjoy the fruits after the people.” The moral aspiration of our tradition has
always been to create the Great Harmony here on earth, rather than pursue a selfish
immortality of the soul or a private spiritual salvation and transcendence.
My “philosophy of eating” is an attack on those who prate about “spiritual life,”
“salvation of the soul,” and “transcendence of the mind,” but look down on,
overlook, and even despise material life. I deliberately employ these vulgar and
coarse words “chi fan” (eating) to upset them. I said that I studied and flexibly apply
Wittgenstein’s thesis that the meaning of language lies in its use. Like my proposal
for “Western substance, Chinese application” (as opposed to “Chinese substance,
Chinese application”), and “the fourth stage of Confucianism” (as opposed to “the
third stage of Confucianism”), what I call “the philosophy of eating” is a verbal
354 Appendix: Advancing Along with Marx and Kant

provocation as well as having an important implication for what I am trying to say

in philosophy. When talking about life, I believe we ought first of all to talk about
the material life of human beings, that is, the basic necessities of everyday life.
A human being must first of all be alive and survive in material life before there is
any discussion of spiritual life and the salvation of the soul. In Chinese tradition,
spiritual life and the salvation of the soul do not necessarily refer to Christianity or
other religions. Instead, these concepts belong to an aesthetic vision of the universe.
This aesthetic vision is encapsulated in traditional mottos like “the accumulation of
good by means of the beautiful,” and other mottos of ours that emphasize great
moral temperance and the spirit of self-sacrifice, such as “knowing the impracti-
cable nature of the times, yet willing to act,” and “sacrificing life to complete virtue,
letting life go to choose righteousness.” Much more is at stake in this vision than
mere sensuous pleasure, and it cannot be dismissed as a merely carefree, disin-
terested state. Kant answered his question concerning the essence of the human
being with his vision of the cultural-moral human being, while I propose instead the
modified vision of the human being as at once cultural, moral, and imbued with
aesthetic value.
Shu: To my mind, A New Approach to Kant, written thirty years ago, and your
essays on the history of traditional Chinese thought, such as “Reevaluation of
Confucius” (1980), and The Journey of Beauty (1981) are intimately connected.
They seem to form a systematic whole, and your critique of Kant’s philosophy is
closely related to your unique interpretation of traditional Chinese thought. In
recent years, you have written a good deal about historical ontology, pragmatic
reason, the culture of optimism, the shamanistic tradition, and emotion as sub-
stance. On the one hand, you grasp the problems of Western thought with a critical
mind; on the other hand, you creatively contemplate the future of Chinese civi-
lization. It seems that you set great store by critique and creativity. Am I right?
Li: Yes. These two aspects, a skeptical and critical attitude combined with an
emphasis on the value of creation and construction complement one another.
I would not dare to say that my critique of Kant’s critical philosophy lays the
foundation, but that is the goal for which I strive. I have proposed many concepts
that should form a sort ground for a philosophical perspective.
Although my argument was often sketchy and left out details, nonetheless I
believe that the purport of my thought was made quite clear.
(Originally published in the literary magazine Dushu, issue 1, 2007, with some
revision.)

Reference
Guyer, Paul. 2000. Kant On Freedom, Law, and Happiness, 434. New York: Cambridge
University Press.