Opus Postumum Research Articles

The ‘Starting-point’ in Kant’s Opus postumum: About 23 of the Early Leaves of the Ⅳth Fascicle

The ‘Starting-point’ in Kant’s Opus postumum: About 23 of the Early Leaves of the Ⅳth Fascicle

Introduction to Cosmological Aesthetics: The Kantian Sublime and Nietzschean Dionysian

This paper is founded on a close reading of Kant’s Opus Postumum in order both to explore the essential motivation that drove Kant to write a last comprehensive magnum opus (after having completed his critical philosophy) and, by doing so, to show the essential link between his aesthetics and the idea of Ubergang, the title of this last work. For this work contains not only his dynamical theory of matter defining motion as preliminary to the notions of space and time, and the advanced version of his philosophy of natural science, but also his arguments for the phenomenal validity of the metaphysical foundations (or the essential unity of the theoretical and practical reason), his teachings on the aesthetic human faculties of judgment and Anschauung (sense-intuition), and the discernment of the transcendental philosophy from Platonic idealism carrying it to a cosmological level, i.e. Kant’s insertion of the concept of cosmotheoros. Since the process of transition is an aesthetic process based on human senses, intuitions and judgments, the argument will follow that in order to explicate Ubergang, we need to reconcile cosmology, as the oldest branch of philosophy dealing with the interactions between the cosmic forces and the ways they affect human life, with aesthetics, as the youngest branch of philosophy dealing with how we sense, intuit and judge the form and motion of matter. Therefore, in the last analysis, Ubergang becomes rather a cosmologic-aesthetic principle similar to the Heraclitean logos. Another building block of the paper is the fruitful comparison between the Kantian sublime and Nietzschean Dionysian, which are going to be construed as the aesthetic theories on human understanding representing the transition from nature to art. For they are not only conceptual – aesthetic but also dynamic – cosmological theories due to their reference both to nature and to human nature.

A reconstruction of Kant's Ether Deduction in Übergang 11

This paper is an attempt to reconstruct a valid and arguably sound version of Kant's Ether Deduction from Ubergang 11 of the Opus postumum (OP). I argue that Kant's Ether Deduction establishes the ...

Kant's Transcendental Proof of Realism (review)

Reviewed by: Kant’s Transcendental Proof of Realism Brandon C. Look Kenneth R. Westphal . Kant’s Transcendental Proof of Realism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. x + 299. Cloth, $80.00. Westphal's book is a rich and exciting contribution to the field of Kant studies. Its claims run counter to much contemporary discussion of Kant's theoretical philosophy and indeed challenge some of Kant's fundamental doctrines, but the arguments are very compelling and therefore likely to force us to rethink both the Critique of Pure Reason [CPR] and Kant's relevance to contemporary epistemology. The central point of this work is that, if we follow Kant's injunction to engage in reflection on our cognitive capacities, then we will be led not to Kantian transcendental idealism but to an unqualified realism about objects and events in space and time. The book's first three chapters are devoted to analyzing Kant's methodology and the much-overlooked idea of transcendental affinity. Westphal focuses on the Kantian duty of engaging in "transcendental reflection," which is "the action through which I make the comparison of representations in general with the cognitive power in which they are situated, and through which I distinguish whether they are to be compared with one another as belonging to pure understanding or to sensible intuition" (CPR, A 261/B 317). And he adds to this the more general methodological obligation of "epistemic reflection," or the duty to determine precisely our cognitive capacities and incapacities. If, then, we reflect on our representations, their origins in sensibility and the understanding, and on our powers to know things of ourselves and the world in general, then certain puzzles arise—puzzles that were confronted by Kant (and Hume and Hegel) but that have not received the attention they have deserved. Chief among these puzzles is our ability to identify single objects and events and track them in space through time. But, as Westphal is keen to point out, identifying any particular over time requires that we be able to re-identify that particular. Now, while this puzzle is addressed by Kant in the Transcendental Deduction and Analogies of Experience, it is important to see that there is a material condition necessary for the possibility of self-conscious experience of the world that is not fleshed out in great detail by Kant and seems to be completely overlooked in the literature on Kant, namely, "the presupposition of diversity in nature" and the homogeneity of its objects among themselves (CPR, A 657/B 685). In other words, the fact that we are able to associate our various sensations with each other at all (and thereby identify and re-identify objects) is due to their "transcendental affinity." And it is Westphal's contention that "on Kant's own principles, the transcendental affinity of the manifold of sensory intuition can only be reconstructed, but not constructed, by intellectual syntheses of the understanding" (91). Therefore, pace Kant, who held that only his transcendental idealism could explain the possibility of experience, Westphal argues that transcendental idealism runs afoul of many of Kant's own arguments and observations in the Transcendental Aesthetic and Transcendental Analytic and, more important, that transcendental affinity provides grounds for "realism sans phrase" (the author's phrase) about objects and events in space and time, and for the view that our mental states are determined by external objects. As Westphal puts it in his conclusion: "Kant's analysis of transcendental affinity is in fact a transcendental argument for mental content externalism" (266). [End Page 665] The second part of Westphal's argument revolves around a detailed examination of Kant's theses about transeunt causality and the nature of matter as expressed not only in the Critique of Pure Reason, but also in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science and the Opus postumum. Roughly the problem is this: in order to have an adequately grounded metaphysics of nature, Kant needs not only the results of the Analogies of Experience, the transcendental causal thesis that every event has a cause, but also the metaphysical causal thesis that every physical event has an external physical cause. But, according to Westphal, in the Metaphysical Foundations...

Empirical Consciousness Explained: Self-Affection, (Self-)Consciousness and Perception in the B Deduction

Few of Kant's doctrines are as difficult to understand as that of self-affection. Its brief career in the published literature consists principally in its unheralded introduction in the Transcendental Aesthetic and unexpected reappearance at a key moment in the Deduction chapter in the second (B) edition of the firstCritique. After blazing its trail, self-affection retreats into the background, with a discussion befitting its importance occurring only in the unfinishedOpus postumum. This step out of the limelight, however, belies the doctrine's continued importance for Kant; indeed, Kant seemed to think that in self-affection was to be found the key to the project that occupied him in his last years. Thus, ‘the possibility of the transition from the metaphysical foundations of natural science to physics does not consist in the fact that the subject is empirically affected but rather that it affects itself’ (Opus postumum, 22: 405). As he continued to struggle with this doctrine and with the pivot-point on which to work this vital transition, Kant himself would surely come to rue his confident statement in the B Deduction: ‘I do not see how one can find so many difficulties in the fact that inner sense is affected by ourselves’ (B156n).

Problematical and critical idealism. The new discussion about the 'cogito' in Kant's "opus postumum"

Problematical and critical idealism. The new discussion about the 'cogito' in Kant's "opus postumum"

Critical Idealism in the Eyes of Kant's Contemporaries

Critical Idealism in the Eyes of Kant's Contemporaries BRIGITTE SASSEN THE IDEALISMDEBATESbetween Kant and his contemporaries were protracted and vehement. Interestingly, all parties in the debates--Kant's critics, defenders , and Kant himself--began with basically the same conception of (material/ empirical) idealism as a position that is either skeptical with regard to the independent existence of the external world (alternatively referred to, by Kant, as problematic, skeptical, or Cartesian idealism), or that denies the existence of material substance outright (dogmatic or Berkeleyan idealism, for Kant).' Positions quickly diverge, however, when it comes to transcendental idealism. Kant's critics argued consistently that transcendental idealism reduces to material idealism. Kant rejected these arguments, insisting, in turn, that transcendental idealism is the only escape from material idealism. 2Nonetheless, he was influenced by these criticisms. He repeatedly returns to the differentiation between transcendental and material idealism in the years following 1781,3 and he casts these differences ' This is a paraphrase of the definition that appears in the introductory paragraph of the BRefutation (B275). Kant's contemporaries might not have bothered to make the differentiation between skeptical and dogmatic idealism, but they certainly agreed with the general terms in which Kant describes idealism. His definition is closely echoed by Ernst Plamer, one of Kant's critics and an apparently generally respected historian of philosophy (PhilosophischeAphorismen, vol. I [Leipzig: Schwickert 1793], w 409- i 1) to whom even Kant's defenders referred. See, for instance, J. G. Schaumann, who attributes his definition of Berkeleyan idealism to an earlier version of the Aphorismen(Utherdie transcendentaleAesthetic[Leipzig: Weidmann, 1789], 133). References to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (KdrF) are to the pagination of the first and second original editions. References to Kant's other works are to the pagination of the Prussian academy edition of Kant's collected writings, cited as 'Ak' with volume in Roman and page in Arabic numerals. All translations are my own. 9For instance, Prolegomena,w Remark III, Ak. IV, 292. s In the ProlegomenaKant turns to the issue of idealism twice (in addition to the arguments from the A-edition that are paraphrased), first in Remarks II and III following w 3 (Ak. IV, 28894 ), and then more specifically in the Appendix (Ak. IV, 372-76). The B-edition of the Critiqut has the Refutation of Idealism (KdrV, B274-79), of course, as well as the elucidation of that argument in the Preface (KdrV, Bxxxix-xli, note). In addition, there are a number of handwritten [4~1] 429 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 35:3 JULY 1997 in what appear to be increasingly realist terms. However, while it is clear that Kant was annoyed by the numerous idealism charges and his critics' persistence in, as he saw matters, misunderstanding his thought on this and other issues, it remains unclear just how seriously he took the substance of their criticisms. I want to go some distance in answering this question by considering the development of Kant's treatment of idealism notjust text-internally,4 but by placing it in the context of the criticisms with which he was faced. These criticisms come in basically two groups. The first group contains critiques of the A-edition of the first Critique and of the Prolegomena. Among them are the famous G6ttingen or Feder/Garve review,5 Garve's original version of the review,6 and various other materials that pertain less directly to the idealism problem.7 In the second group are specific criticisms of the B-edition, notes. Prior to the Prolegomena, R5642 (AL XVIII, 279-82 ) stands out as Kant's first reaction to the idealism charge. In the years following the second edition of the Critique, there is a surprising amount of material: R5653-5654, dated t785-9o but see note 96 (Ak. XVIII, 3o5-13); R63126316 , dated t79o-9t (Ak. XVIII, 612-623); a recently found discussion loosely dated 1793 (Reinhard Brandt, "Eine neu aufgefundene Reflexion Kants 'Vom inneren Sinne' (Loses Blatt Leningrad 1)" in Reinhard Brandt/Werner Stark eds., Neue Autographen und Dokumente zu Kants Leben, Schriften und Vorlesungen [Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, t987], 1-3o); and additional remarks scattered throughout the Nacldafl and Opus Postumum...

Kant and Newton

The transcendental philosophy of Kant (1724-1804) has been considered to be one reliable justification for the classical mechanics established by Newton (1642-1727) in the 17th century. Such a viewpoint used to be accepted as common sense in learned circles. Kant was born in Königsberg and studied Newton's physics at the university of his birth place. Since that time he became devoted to the physics of Newton, and furthermore he even obtained the nick name“Newton in Königsberg”.In those days (1755) Kant anonymously published Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels. At the beginning of this book, he said expressly that he had written it in accordance with the physical principles of Newton. Such a comment proved that he was a sincere Newtonian. Kant's earnest devotion to Newton, however, could not remain permanently, because in his old age Kant became unable to admit the term“natural philosophy, ”as used in the usual term Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, 1687. Using a few words in his Opus postumum Kant pointed out that Newton has fallen into the error of terminology (Kants Gesammelte Schriften, Akademie Ausgabe XXI, Opus postumum Erste Hälfte, 1936, pp. 190, 230, 510, etc.).According to Kant, using“natural philosophy”is nothing but a tautology or a contradiction. Therefore, natural philosophy must be corrected to natural “science”. Then, the concept of natural“philosophy”will disappear and the correct Principia in two different forms ought to take respectively the place of Newton's Principia as follows.X Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica1 Scientiae naturalis principia philosophica2 Scientiae naturalis principia mathematicaHowever, was Newton's terminology of natural philosophy really erroneous? It was not necessarily the truth of the matter. The philosophy of Kant was transcendental. Accordingly philosophy should be neither defined nor qualified, although it could define all other things. From the viewpoint of transcendental philosophy it seemed to Kant that natural science must substitute for natural philosophy. Thus Kant separated philosophy from science here, and the concept of natural science came into existence. Such being the case I can not approve easily Kant's criticism of Newton's Principia. Moreover, the English had not yet the term“natural science”apart from natural philosophy. The term of natural science first appeared there in 1840. Nevertheless, Newton continued to be called“our philosopher”until later years.Since the era of ancient Greek civilization, the idea of philosophy viz. science had been a traditional expression of European thought. Kant, however, separated science from philosophy against the historical tradition in Europe. But all the pioneers of early modern science like Descartes, Kepler, Galileo, Pascal, etc. were always indeed, the philosophers. Needless to say, Newton certainly associated himself with them as well.After the separation between science and philosophy, science has unfortunately developed without philosophy and philosophy also has developed without science. But many of the results brought about expressly by scientific technology are not only undesirable, but also very confusing. An urgent question of today must be the realization of a newly constructive philosophy of science in a practical way.Philosophy without science is empty, Science without philosophy is blind.

La storia della filosofia secondo Kant (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 535 ception because Reid's aesthetics are part of his over-all philosophy of perception. Unfortunately , he neglects altogether a number of important and interesting topics in aesthetics which Reid discussed, e.g., eloquence, the improvement and progress of taste, the nature of expression in various of the fine arts, and the different ways the different fine arts are aesthetically pleasing. The elements of Kivy's exposition of Reid's theory of perception are derived wholly from Reid's Inquiry into the Human Mind. Except for one footnote he ignores entirely Reid's later statement of his theory of perception in the Essays on the Intellectual Powers o[ Man. Odder still is Kivy's studied failure to discuss the relation of Reid's work on aesthetics in the Lectures on the Fine Arts to his essay "Of Taste" in the Intellectual Powers where Reid's aesthetic theories get their fullest, and only published, statement. Professor Kivy's justification for his peculiar focus is that he regards the Lectures on the Fine Arts as belonging to the same stage of Reid's philosophical development as the Inquiry into the Human Mind. I find this unconvincing. Reid's Philosophical Orations (1753; 1756; 1759; 1762) were delivered at an even earlier period in Reid's career than the Lectures on the Fine Arts and they contain important discussions of characteristic Reidian doctrines which are neglected in the Inquiry but which get taken up and discussed in detail in the Intellectual Powers. The fact seems to be that there is very little that in any rich sense can be called development in Reid's philosophy. His later works are not so much developments of his early views as amplifications and elaborations of them, so Kivy might well have utilized the Intellectual Powers to the advantage of himself and his readers. Various accounts of Reid's aesthetic theories are to be found in works on 18th century British aesthetics, but Kivy's Introduction exceeds them all in interest and importance. He argues, correctly I believe, that Reid's work on aesthetics deepened the epistemological significance of the fine arts in ways which only Kant was to surpass later in the century . Kivy's demonstration of Reid's proto-Kantianism in aesthetics will be of great interest to historians of ideas, and aestheticians will be interested in this account of how Reid attempted to relate aesthetic perception to the rest of human experience through an objectivist theory of aesthetic qualities which connects aesthetic qualities with an epistemological and ontological analysis of the primary/secondary quality distinction. Even so, Professor Kivy's neglect of the special topics in aesthetics which Reid discusses is a censurable defect. D. D. TODD Simon Fraser University La storia della filosofia secondo Kant. By Sergio Givone. (Milano: U. Mursica & Co., 1972. Pp. 197) This study, sponsored by the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Turin and supported by the Italian National Council for Research, is an examination of Kant's conception of the history of philosophy. The author deals with the problem in four stages: (1) the interrelation of philosophy and the history of philosophy; (2) Kant's philosophy as foundation of the history of philosophy; (3) the problem of that foundation as "the destiny of reason"; and (4) an attempt to reconstruct a history of philosophy on the basis of the fragmentary Kantian interpretation as a progressive manifestation of reason. The author bases his discussions on Kant's writings from the Dissertation of 1770 to the Opus postumum, stressing the teleological theme in all of Kant's works. The first problem---(1) above--the author discusses largely in connection with the early and the late sections of the Critique o[ Pure Reason (B8 to B27, B860 to B864), and the Prolegomena. He finds (a) that the period of the Enlightenment in the history of philosophy coincides in time with the period of Enlightenment in history in general; and (b) 536 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY that Kant gives us both, a mechanistic and a teleological interpretation of history, the one being a complement of the other (p. 43). In discussing the second theme--(2) above the author keys his analysis to...

Hegel's Dialektik: Fünf hermeneutische Studien (review)

416 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY (pp. 321-430). Again the "Erste Einleitung" together with "Gebrauch teleologischer Prinzipien" and the third Critique provide the basis for the discussion; but references to the Opus postumum are also quite numerous and provide supportive evidence. The first topic being discussed is the interrelation of machanisms and purposiveness. Kant himself had argued that "in an animal body many parts can be conceived as concretions according to mechanical laws.... Yet the cause which brings together the required matter, modifies it, forms it, and puts it in its appropriate place, must always be judged of teleologically" (p. 324). This leads the author to a discussion of "external" and "relative" purposiveness (pp. 357-382); but the key to it all is Kant's statement in the third Critique that the principle involved here (which is at the same time a definition of the organism) is this: "An organized product of nature is one in which every part is reciprocally purpose and means." Nothing is without purpose, nor can it be ascribed to a blind mechanism of nature (p. 409). Corresponding formulations and arguments abound in the Opus postumum (pp. 411-425). But in the Opus also Kant goes beyond the third Critique, asserting, for example, that "the principle of the possibility of such bodies [i.e., of organisms] must be immaterial because it is possible only through purposes." And Kant wondered whether this "immaterial principle....encompasses the whole universe" and, "as world-soul (which must not be called spirit)," underlies all life, or whether there are several such principles subordinate to one another as levels of determination (p. 422). The author's "ultimate observation ": Kant has "decisively refuted any purely speculative philosophy" even as far as the ground of observable purposiveness is concerned. W. H. WERKMEISTER Florida State University Hegels Dialektik: Fiinf hermeneutische Studien. By Hans-Georg Gadamer. (Tfibingen: T. C. B. Mohr, 1971. Pp. 96) Three studies---bridge-pieces of an unwritten work--form the core of this small book. These contain analyses of portions of Hegel's Phiinomenologie des Geistes and Wissenschaft der Logik. They are: "Hegel und die antike Dialektik," "Hegel: die verkehrte Welt," and "Die Idee der Hegelschen Logik." Two previously unpublished Vortriige, "Hegel und die Heidelberger Romantik," treating Hegel's Heidelberg period, and "Hegel und Heidegger," complete the collection. According to Professor Gadamer, what Hegel correctly saw in the Greeks is that which he in general recognized in philosophy, the speculative element. Commensurate with this, he saw that the propositions of philosophy cannot be understood as judgments in the sense of the logic of predication. "Kant recognized the necessity through which reason involves itself in contradictions. Kant's successors, Fichte, Schelling, Schleiermacher and Hegel took up the proof of the necessity of such dialectic, overcame the negative valuation of dialectic and thereby recognized the peculiar possibility of reason reaching beyond the limits of the understanding" (p. 7). Even though the reach of Hegel's reason beyond the understanding did not attain to the Begriff in its concreteness, on the author's analysis, and even though, as a consequence , "dialectic must take itself back [sich zuriicknehmen] into hermeneutics," Hegel occupies a special position in this undertaking. Gadamer's historical interpretation of Hegel's inverted world also pertains to the development of the concept of motion in that here also dynamics figures importantly. In this account, Hegel portrays the moment of the recognition of the concept of power as the truth of perception. Consciousness of perception, which is exhibited for the philosophical BOOK REVIEWS 417 consciousness, experiences the truth. The philosophical consciousness must recognize that behind the properties in truth stand powers, which work out their effects in relation to one another. Science, which, because it goes behind this externality to inquire of the laws which govern the powers, here is called understanding, grasps much better what the truth of reality is. (p. 35) Precisely this is the actual world, which consists in that it ever undergoes change, permanently becoming different. Permanence is then no longer the mere contradictory to vanishing, but it is itself the truth of vanishing. This is the thesis of the inverted world. (p. 36) The true world is... the truth conceived...

Kant's Moral Philosophy (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 123 Kant's Moral Philosophy. By H. B. Acton. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1970. Pp. 71. Paper $1.95) As part of an introductory series entitled "New Studies in Ethics," this brief study of Kant's ethics is a fine job of condensation which does pretty much what it is intended to do. The concentration, as one would expect, is on Kant's Grundlegung, with occasional references to the Lectures on Ethics, The Doctrine o[ Virtue, and the Critique o/ Practical Reason. A brief introduction to the background and influences on Kant's ethics is provided which indicates Kant's sympathy with the doctrine of moral sentiment in his essay, Enquiry into the Distinctness o/ the Fundamental Propositions o/Natural Theology and Morality. In discussing the essential principles of Kantian ethics, H. B. Acton deals with the attempt to expunge all "sensuous motives" from ethical prescription, including the denial of the moral value of actions done from a "pathological" (emotional or passional) motive . En passant, reference is made to Kant's notion that one should act out of reverence or respect (Achtung) for the moral law, a "moral feeling" which only a rational being aware of the moral law can have (p. 14). What is not mentioned is that this notion of respect seems to have an empirical or psychologistic content which seems to undermine Kant's intention to construct "a pure moral philosophy." Kant's long footnote referring to the use of "respect" does not quite obviate the charge of empirical reference (Acton suggests that it does) since it is said that "respect . ... is not a feeling received through influence, but is sel/-wrought by a rational concept" (Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic o/ Morals, trans. T. K. Abbott [Chicago, 1949], p. 19, note 1). It seems that one could have "respect" for a principle of compassion which would conform to Kant's requirements. In subsequent sections Acton deals briefly (and in a somewhat cursory manner) with the distinction between hypothetical and categorical imperatives, duties to oneself, and (quite substantially) with the question of universalizability. In this latter discussion, reference is made to the social consequences of universalizing certain maxims (p. 25), but no reference is made to the illogical consequences of universalizing such maxims even though Kant explicitly states that one could not universalize a maxim that one may borrow money with a false promise to repay it because "it could never hold as a universal law of nature and be consistent with itself; rather it must necessarily contradict itself" (ibid., p. 45). While Acton agrees with Paton that Kant puts his arguments coneerning universalizing certain maxims in a "prudential way" (p. 26), he only mentions in passing the influence which Kant's conception of nature has on his ethics (p. 48), despite the fact that Kant construes universalizability in ethics as analogous to the form of "universal laws of nature." Despite this omission, Acton does include lucid discussions of the empirical content in Kant's appeal to the "means" which individuals have to perform right actions (pp. 30-31), the question whether one is motivated by "the mere form of a universal legislation," the "law giving" nature of moral principles (p. 38), and the influence of certain notions in Rousseau's thought on Kant's ethics (p. 43). In the concluding chapters of this work Aeton proffers a good exposition of Kant's conception of freedom and the moral argument for immortality. Perhaps one may question whether Acton is correct in asserting that Kant entirely rejected the notion that God "made" the moral law (p. 53). For one could appeal to the Opus postumum for counterevidence. Thus, Kant avers that "the categorical imperative represents human duties as divine commandments" (p. 570) and that "the concept of God is the Idea of a moral being which, as such, judges and issues universal commands" (p. 614). On this point, Acton refers without comment to Kant's view that neither man nor God is the author of moral laws (Lectures on Ethics) and subsequently states that, for Kant, man obeys a law he recognizes as his when he obeys the moral law (p. 53). It 124...

Kants Erfahrungsbegriff: Quellengeschichtliche und Bedeutungsanalytische Untersuchungen (review)

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...

Lectures on the Essence of Religion, and: The Essence of Faith According to Luther (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 101 the elements of all our cognition," and, "though all our knowledge begins with experience , it does not follow that it all arises out of experience." The senses contribute the "matter" of experience, but it is the understanding that makes "the representation of an object possible at all." Kant speaks vaguely of experience as "a synthetic combination of intuitions." The thrust of his argument is that "experience is possible only through the representation of a necessary connection of perceptions." It is "constitutive," however, only when "informed" through sense perceptions. So far Kant has identified experience with the particulars of sense perception. But there is another interpretation in the first Critique. As Kant puts it, there is "only one experience in which all perceptions are represented as in one thorough-going context according to law." In this sense, the term 'experience' can be used only in the singular: No matter how many perceptions may be "given," their interconnections occur only in one and the same experience. But this thesis of the singularity of experience is rather strange in light of Kant's initial position. Still, he explains it as the "totality concept" and the "context" of all perceptions. Kant's favorite expression is "field of experience" (CPR, B 13); and in this sense experience is the ground which supports the progress in human cognition. He who proceeds on this basis is "in the world." Kant himself formulates the principle of the unity of experience as the exclusion of everything that destroys the unity of the form of experience. The context of the perceptual objects is complete, thanks to the principle of causality; and this principle is constitutive of nature. Kant thus states that "nature is the one and only all-inclusive experience taken as the totality and the context of appearances." Nature is thus conceived as nothing other than the all-inclusive concept and context of a singular experience. It follows that a sphere beyond experience in this sense is conceivable but not knowable. The idea of an absolute whole of appearances is inherently contradictory; for the whole itself is not given, but given as a task. That is to say, it is a regulative idea of experience. Part IV of Holzhey's book is concerned primarily with problems of a philosophical anthropology and adds nothing of significance to the arguments already presented. The author does not take into consideration the arguments of the Opus postumum. But it is clear from what has been presented that the development of Kant's thinking, as related to the problem of experience, moves from an essentially Humean position to something radically different. The book under review gives us a step by step progression of this development and thus places our interpretation of Kant's transcendentalism in a new light. We now see the progression of Kant's thoughts as a progressive coming to terms with the problem of what experience really is. For the students of Kant's philosophy, neglect of this book would therefore be a serious blunder. W. H. WERKMEISTER Florida State University Lectures on the Essence of Religion. By Ludwig Feuerbach. Trans. by Ralph Manheim. (New York, Evanston, and London: Harper and Row, 1967. Pp. xv+ 359. $9.50) The Essence of Faith According to Luther. By Ludwig Feuerbach. Trans. by Melvin Cherno. (New York, Evanston, and London: Harper and Row, 1967. Pp. 127. $4.50) In these two translations readers of English now have, respectively, the richest overview of his thinking about religion that Ludwig Feuerbach wrote and the only 102 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY essay that he devoted to interpreting a particular theologian. There is more to these volumes than this, as I hope to show. First, though, I wish to note a Gestalt in which they seem to be involved. Suddenly, in the late 1960s, more writings by Feuerbach have appeared in English than appeared in over a century after Marian Evans published her rendering of Das Wesen des Christenturns in 1854. A translation of Das Wesen der Religion appeared in 1873, the year after Feuerbach died. (That brief essay of 1845 is the basis from which he developed the above Lectures.) It was not until 1966...

Kant on the Existence of God in the "Opus Postumum"

Kant on the Existence of God in the "Opus Postumum"

Kant's Presumed Repudiation of the “Moral Argument” in the Opus Postumum: An Examination of Adickes’ Interpretation

Until comparatively recently the complete text of the Opus Postutmum has not been available to students of the Kantian philosophy.Prior to the publication of Adickes’ commentary on this material in 1920, students of Kant were almost wholly dependent upon Reicke's incomplete and markedly inadequate edition of 1882–84.2 Adickes’ commentary, with its abundance of quoted passages, provided an access to a great deal of material hitherto unavailable. But it was not until the publication of the Academy Edition in 1936 that the complete text became available for independent study. Because of the recent publication of the full text, most accounts of Kant's position in the Opus Postumum have depended upon Reicke's inadequate edition or, as has been more frequently the case, upon Adickes’ commentary.3 In view of the considerable influence it has had upon Kant interpretation, Adickes’ analysis of the Opus Postumum warrants a careful and critical examination.