Kant's Problem of Causality and the Ding-An-Sich

Abstract

Kant's Copernican Revolution in philosophy was mainly a response to the thought of the British Empiricists. He wanted to ground certain con cepts and precepts that the British Empiricists had nearly destroyed. We can say that the Copernican Revolution in philosophy addressed probems with the ego, justice and the Good, and so on. The aspect of the Coperni can Revolution with which I am concerned in this essay is Kant's view of the necessityof cause and effect relationships. My concern in this essay is to show that Kant is not committed to the problem of transcendental cau sality. In short, some philosophers have claimed that Kant must be com mitted to holding the following contradiction: There is no causal agency known outside of the realm of categorial judgment, yet appearances must becausedby thingsin themselves, whicharenotcategorially judged. Kant, in one breath, states that judgements of cause and effect hold only of ap pearances, while stating at other times that things in themselves must be the cause of our appearances. I will argue that Kant can escape this difficulty. In order to remove the apparent contradiction, I will show that Kant can claim that things in them selves need not be the cause of our appearances. Rather, they provide the ground for appearances. Even though Kantdoes indeedsometimes speak as though things in themselves should be the cause of appearances, it will be shown that, ultimately,he is not committed to this language. Therefore, Kant will not be committed to the contradiction. First,I shouldlike to exposethe problem as it is in the Critique ofPure Reason. Kant states in the Transcendental Deduction section of the Cri tique ofPureReason: All attempts to derive these pure concepts of the understanding ['cause and effect' is a pure concept of the understanding] from experience, and so to ascribe to them a merely empirical origin, are entirely vain and useless.1 From where are thepureconcepts of the un derstanding derived? Kant states, ...I maintain that the categories...are