Kants Erfahrungsbegriff: Quellengeschichtliche und Bedeutungsanalytische Untersuchungen (review)

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 99 Treatise IV, Introduction.) He also fails to come to terms (here explicitly appealing to Frankena) with the many ways Hutcheson has of saying "The Apprehension of morally good Qualities, is the necessary Cause of Approbation, by our moral Sense..." (Treatise III, see. IV), nor does he seem to heed the fact that Hutcheson gives to the sense in general a basic cognitive role: "All our ideas, or the materials of our reasoning or judging are received by some immediate powers of perception internal or external, which we may call senses . . . reasoning or intellect seems to raise no new species of ideas" (Treatise IV, see. I). In conclusion, I shall merely mention two other important matters. I cannot agree with the claim (p. 77) that Hutcheson, when he speaks of the "reality of virtue," intends this to mean only that this is "an appropriate way to indicate the speaker's view of the moral significance of an action," i.e., that the speaker is merely "experiencing a unique kind of pleasure . . . and expressing this feeling by his verbal utterance," and thereby intending only "to evoke similar approval in others." This is to say that, for Hutcheson, virtue is at best subjective, while if there was anything he sought, and for which there is considerable textual evidence, it was a defense or proof of the objective reality of virtue. Also mistaken, I believe, is the suggestion that, for Hutcheson, "Exciting reasons" appeal only to self-interest, presupposing "motives stemming from selfish affections" (p. 19). Hutcheson is somewhat ambiguous about this in the Illustrations, leaving us to suppose (see. I) that the moral sense is not an instinct, and hence does not excite. But he is clear in the Inquiry, where he tells us (sec. VII) that the moral sense excites us to public good, and concludes with a not untypical comparison of the moral and external senses: Notwithstanding the mighty Reason we boast of above other Animals, its Processes are too slow, too full of doubt and hesitation, to serve us in every Exigency, either for our own Preservation, without the external Senses, or to direct our Actions for the Good of the Whole, without this moral Sense. Nor could we be so strongly determin'd at all times to what is most conducive to either of these Ends, without these expeditious Monitors, and importunate Sollicitors [the senses];... DAVID FATENORTON McGill University Kants Erfahrungsbegriff: Quellengeschichtliche und Bedeutungsanalytische Untersuchungen . By Helmut Holzhey. (Basel/Stuttgart: Schwabe & Co. Verlag, 1970. Pp. 330. SwFr. 32.--) It has been a conviction of long standing with me that, if Kant had defined the term 'experience' in the Critique of Pure Reason the way he consistently referred to it in the Opus postumum, much misunderstanding of his transcendental idealism might have been avoided. Two or three quotations from the Opus postumum may illustrate my point. In the VII, Convolute, VI, page i, we read: "The aggregate of perceptions as a system (based upon observation and experiment) is experience. It is an absolute unity of cognition and is not given but made. One can therefore not speak of experiences but only of experience." And page 4 : "There are no experiences but only a totality of possible perceptions insofar as this [totality] constitutes a system . . . which is not given but only thought as a principle." VII, Convolute VIII, page 2: "The idea of the whole of all possible perceptions connected in a system is experience. It is therefore inherently contradictory to speak of experiences. Experience is, subjectively, absolute 10() HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY unity." And page 93: "Experience is (1) an empirical consciousness, i. e., perception; (2) an aggregate of perceptions in accordance with a principle (observation and experlinen0 ; (3) a thorough-going formation of this aggregate into a complete system of perceptions .... Experience is the empirically absolute whole of sense perceptions insofar as their manifoldness is bound together asymtotically in One System. " Hence, page 103: "one cannot say that we have experience but that we make it." And transcendental philosophy, as he now sees it, is concerned with the principles that make the construction of such a system possible. Such principles, it is now obvious, cannot be derived from...