Kant und das Problem der Dinge an sich (review)

Abstract

374 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY the color but nothing of the figure or magnitude of the object.''2 On the surface it would appear that Reid is making the elementary blunder of assuming that a blurry shape is no shape at all. Although this point is particularly important in discussing the ontological status of visible figure, Daniels passes over this problem without even commenting on the "merit of [Reid's] thought experiment." My own view is that Reid's problem here is caused by his unquestioning adoption of Berkeley's principle that a sensation can resemble nothing but another sensation (premise 2, above). Since in Reid's geometry of visible figure, visible figure does in certain cases resemble real (tangible) figure, it is crucial for Reid to argue that visible figure is not a sensation. Although he believes visible figure to be "real and external to the mind" he never does actually explain what its ontological status is, and Daniels does not solve this problem either. The point is that Reid employs dubious arguments to prove the independence of color from figure, and he puts visible figure in some questionable ontological status, all just to preserve Berkeley's view that sensations can only resemble other sensations. Perhaps he would have been better off to reject premise 2 also. In conclusion, then, this book is informative, interesting, and well written; one wishes only that it were longer. It should be a starting place for future work on Reid, as well as a useful source in the history of mathematics, psychology, and epistemology. Its faults are in what is left unsaid more than in what is said, and it will provide suggestive insights towards the reading of an undeservedly neglected philosopher. JOHN IMMERWAHR Villanova University Kant und das Problem der Dinge an sich. By Gerold Prauss. (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, 1974. Pp. 238. DM 39. Paper) In the literature that immediately followed the publication of Kant's first Critique, throughout German Idealism, later nineteenth-century neo-Kantianism, and even contemporary versions of Kant, one single issue seemed continually most problematic in successfully formulating a coherent, systematic critical philosophy. This, of course, was the problem of "things in themselves," a presupposition without which, as Jacobi first complained, one could not enter the Kantian system, but with which, one could not remain. Simply put, the ambitious attempt of Prauss's new book is to resolve that issue once and for all. His main line of argument throughout is to claim that all of the various paradoxes generated in the literature depend, in one way or another, on a missapprehension of the correct "transcendental-philosophic" meaning of "things in themselves," in favor of a non-Kantian "transcendent-metaphysical" interpretation. Prauss's case is that once the correct nature of Kant's complex "non-empirical science of the empirical" is made clear, all the "metaphysical" and "empirical" paradoxes associated with the doctrine of things in themselves vanish. His first step toward that end is simply to point out that the traditional Kant literature , from the start, biases its case by an emphasis on the very phrase, "thing in itself" (Ding an sich), with its "metaphysical" connotations, an emphasis not supported in Kant's texts. To demonstrate this bias, Prauss simply counts up all the occurences of the phrase in the relevant Kantian passages. He finds that of the 295 occurences, only 37, or 13% use the short phrase, Ding an sich. He finally shows that the only clearcut uses of this "short form" number a mere 6% of the total. The other 94% mention, in one way or another, Ding an sich selbst, which Prauss argues is an expression of 2 Inquiry, p. 118. BOOK REVIEWS 375 the correct Kantian formulation, "things---considered in themselves" (Dinge--an sich selbst betrachtet). The Kant literature, by ignoring this far more frequent formulation in favor of the simpler "things in themselves," confuses the correct, transcendental meaning of "in itself." That is, the traditional difficulties all ignore the fact that "an sich" is an "adverbial" qualification, modifying our mode of considering things, rather than an adjectival expression, qualifying "the things." This adverbial interpretation then raises three problems for the remainder...