The Philosophy of the Enlightenment

John Hibben

• Publisher: Jovian Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781537818962
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophical Metaphysics

THE age of the Enlightenment has a peculiar interest and value for the student of the history of philosophy. The philosophical output of this period is unusually rich and significant, embracing as it does the classical writings of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Leibniz, Rousseau and Kant, and therefore may well be studied for the material which these separate contributions severally contain. But, more than this, the eighteenth-century philosophy is a period in which a great movement of thought is exhibited, and that, too, on a large and conspicuous stage. England, France, Germany form its settings. It begins with Locke and is completed in Kant. And whatever significance Kant may possess for the philosophical world to-day attaches also to this period, for this period served to open the way for the critical philosophy of the great master which is its appropriate culmination.

THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT

~

THE PHILOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT OF THE eighteenth century, as we have seen, discloses two underlying currents, the one of empiricism and the other of rationalism. These philosophical points of view represent two distinct types of mind which are radically different, and which would seem, on the surface at least, in irreconcilable opposition. From the standpoint of either one, a fire of criticism may be trained upon the other with most telling effect. And yet, notwithstanding this, each in turn reveals its own inherent inadequacy as a method of constructing a complete body of knowledge; and the historical development of the philosophical thought during this period clearly proves it. The many attempts, however, to solve the problem of knowledge, and the interminable controversies which they engendered, were not altogether futile and unsatisfactory. They helped at least to eliminate certain errors, and to establish here and there preliminary and partial statements of truth, whose complementary elements were to be disclosed later. They formed necessary stages in the development of a more complete and adequate solution of the philosophical problem, and they served also to prepare the way for a more profound insight by which the elements of opposition in clashing systems might be harmonised so as to reveal underlying relations of a truly reciprocal nature. The important office of reconciliation and reconstruction fell to the lot of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).

He was eminently equal to the task, for his was essentially a synoptical mind, that is, a mind which naturally tends to see things together, rather than apart; to see things as related which a merely surface observation would regard as wholly unrelated and disconnected.

In his first published work in 1746, Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte, Kant gives expression to a conviction which is particularly characteristic of his general point of view concerning opposed schools of thought: “We are in a way defending the honour of human reason when we reconcile it with itself in the persons of different writers of high intelligence, and discover the truth, which by such men is never entirely missed, even in their contradictory utterances.” This remark referred originally to Kant’s attempts to reconcile the different views of Descartes and Leibniz concerning the nature of vis viva, and yet it may be fairly regarded as typical of the attitude of thought which he maintained throughout the whole course of his philosophical studies. This mediating tendency in his thinking may be observed in a conspicuous manner in his efforts to harmonise the empirical and rationalistic methods in the pursuit of truth. And for our discussion this particular phase of his general point of view is most pertinent and significant. He recognised the natural limits which were inherently connected with either method, and yet at the same time he fully appreciated that the relations which they sustained one to the other might be regarded as complementary, each supplying that which had proved wanting in the other. Such a reconciliation, however, could be brought about only on a higher level of thought. It is a level difficult to attain, and yet eminently worth attaining. It is not gained however by unreflective minds. It is only the arduous labour of thought which achieves such an end as its reward. The different systems which the philosophy of the Aufklärung had produced all tended, in various ways, to separate the knowing mind from its object of knowledge, and to insinuate a wedge of cleavage between thought and reality. The many controversies had been like so many blows to drive the wedge deeper home. It was Kant’s function to bring together the separated elements and to restore them to their proper settings as parts of a unified whole. Kant was peculiarly fitted for this work of reconstruction, not merely on account of his natural habit of mind, that of seeing the congruence of the seemingly disparate elements of knowledge, but more particularly because in his own thinking he had passed through the various phases of thought which on a larger scale had characterised the philosophical movement of the eighteenth century. This would seem to illustrate, in the field of philosophy at least, the famous theory of recapitulation which Lessing insisted upon, that the path by which the race reaches its perfection every individual man must sooner or later traverse. The high vantage ground from which opposed philosophers could be discerned as friends rather than foes was not reached by Kant at a single bound. His thought passed through a natural process of evolution in which it is possible to note three distinct stages:

1.A period of rationalism.

2.A period of empiricism.

3.A period in which Kant endeavoured to effect a synthesis of these two opposed systems, which resulted in the so-called critical philosophy.

In the first period Kant was a follower of the prevalent Wolffian philosophy of his day. Even in this early period there were intimations of a spirit of protest on Kant’s part concerning the inadequate features of dogmatism. The chief work expressing the rationalistic attitude of his thought is that with which in 1755 he “habilitated” as privat-docent in the University of Königsberg, entitled Principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysiœ nova dilucidatio.

In the second period he reacted substantially from the Leibniz-Wolffian influences, as may be seen in the essays which he published in 1762-63, Die falsche Spitzfindigkeit der vier syllogistischen Figuren erWiesen; Der einzig mögliche Bweisgrund zu einer Demonstration vom Dasein Gottes; Untersuchung iiber die Deutlichkeit der Grundsötze der naturlichen Theologie und Moral; Versuch den Begriff der negativen Grössen in die Weltweisheit einzuführen.

In this period Kant questions the traditional demonstrations of metaphysics concerning the being of God; and takes the significant position that it is absolutely necessary that one should convince himself of the existence of God, but not so essential that one should demonstrate it. He draws the distinction, moreover, between the contradiction of concepts and the opposition of facts; and insists that, while two contradictory ideas cannot exist together in thought, it is quite possible that a negative force may neutralise a positive one, or modify it, in the world of actual facts. He appreciates also the difficulties in the traditional account of the nature of causation as contained in the Wolffian philosophy of the day, and in all of these essays there is a growing sceptical attitude toward all speculations which are not grounded in experience.

The break with Leibniz and a leaning toward the empiricism of Locke is even more strongly marked in Kant Träume eines Geistersehers erläutert durch Träume der Metaphysik, which he published in 1766. This is a still more decided protest against all theories in philosophy which transcend experience.

The third period begins in 1770 with the publication of Kant Inaugural Dissertation, Disputatio de mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis; and it extends to the year 1781, which marks the appearance of the great Kritik der reinen Vernunft. In this period we find a gradual development of his critical method. The point of view finally reached in the Kritik was the result of a slow process of the most earnest labour of thought extending over some eleven years, from 1770 to 1781. In the Dissertation there is an obvious tendency to regard the sensible and the intelligible worlds as wholly distinct. Leibniz had regarded the difference between the two worlds as consisting in the relative clearness of the knowledge which is given by them. According to Leibniz, sensation is only a confused form of thought. Kant, however, does not regard the difference as one of degree but of kind, and insists that the two spheres are distinct and separate. Kant at this period in the development of his philosophical system regards the intelligible world as constituting the world of reality, somewhat after the manner of Plato, and through its ideas he is convinced that one might determine, on the grounds of pure reason alone, the general nature and characteristic features of experience; that is, this point of view represented a strictly rationalistic interpretation of the world of knowledge. This position, however, brought to Kant certain misgivings which he could not satisfactorily explain. These are expressed in his famous letter to his friend Marcus Herz, of the 21st of February, 1772. He says in part: “I noted that something essential was wanting, something which I myself, in my long metaphysical researches, and all others, had left out of account, and which in fact gives the key to all the mysteries of metaphysics; for I asked myself on what rests the reference to the object of that which we call ideas in us? . . . Our understanding does not produce the object which it apprehends, nor is the object the cause of its ideas (in sensu reali).

“Thus the pure concepts of the understanding cannot be abstracted from the feelings of sense, nor are they simply the expression of the character of our passive receptivity.

0″They have their sources, indeed, in the nature of the soul, but they are neither the result of the action of the object upon it nor do they produce the object. In my Dissertation I was content to explain their nature in a negative way, and to say only that they are not modifications of the soul produced by the object. But now I must ask in what other way an idea is possible, which refers to an object, without being the effect of an impression from that object. I had asserted in the Dissertation that ideas of sense represent things as they appear, and ideas of the understanding represent things as they are. But how can these things be made known to us if not by the manner in which they affect us? And if the ideas of the understanding arise from the inner activity of thought, whence comes the agreement which such ideas must have with those objects which, however, they do not produce? And how can the axiomatic truths of the pure reason conform to these objects without this agreement being in any way dependent upon experience? In mathematics this is possible, for the objects with which it deals are quantities and can be so represented, simply because we are able to form ideas of them by taking a unit several times over. The mind actively constructs its ideas of quantity, and therefore we can understand how the fundamental principles underlying the concept of quantity can be developed in a purely a priori’ manner. But as regards the concept of quality, how is it possible for my understanding to form an idea of the nature of things with which idea the things themselves must of necessity agree; how shall it lay down real principles as to their possibility to which experience must exactly conform, and which nevertheless are independent of experience? Such a question always leaves the problem in obscurity as to how the possibility of conforming to the nature of things themselves can belong to the faculty of the understanding.”

This is the dilemma of the transition period of Kant’s thought, How can an idea in the mind refer to an external object? No satisfactory answer to this question was possible so long as the position of the Dissertation was maintained which separated the world of sense from the world of intellect. The new position of the Critique, however, no longer allows that these two spheres are separate and distinct, but regards them from the point of view of their reciprocal functions. Thus in the process of sense perception there must be the co-operative activity of the intellect; but, on the other hand, the activity of the intellect has play only within the sphere of experience, and is wholly unable to go beyond or back of that experience as it is disclosed in the ordinary phenomena which constitute the warp and woof of our lives. This position marks the new point of view established by the Critique, and represents the result of the evolution of Kant’s thought in this decade between the Dissertation and the publication of his great work in 1781.

The characterisation of Kant’s philosophy as “critical,” and his method as the “critical” method, admits of a various interpretation. And yet, amidst all the different shades of meaning of which the term is capable in the Kantian usage, there is, however, a fundamental meaning which is consistently maintained, whatever may be the more subtle nuances associated with it. The critical method is an examination of the knowing processes of the mind for the purpose of discovering some satisfactory basis of discrimination between the a priori and the a posteriori sources of knowledge; that is, between the material which the mind discovers to be necessary and universal, and the material which is given through particular experiences, and whose nature no activity of the mind could possibly forecast. The critical method seeks, therefore, to establish the exact scope and function of each of these two sources of knowledge.

In this sense the Critique of Pure Reason may be regarded as a logic of limits. It is essentially the function of our critical faculty to set defining boundaries and draw precise lines of discrimination, for it is only through a fine sense of discrimination that the true relations which underlie the surface appearance of things can be discovered. Moreover, discrimination does not necessarily set the objects of its inquiry in opposition the one to the other; it quite as often results in effecting their union as their separation. And in the case of the critical reflections of Kant the results are constructive rather than destructive. His argument was no polemic either against rationalism or empiricism. He held no brief for the exclusive interests of either one in the field of knowledge. Kant’s effort to determine the definite limits of these sources of knowledge was for the very purpose of establishing more clearly and precisely their co-ordinate functions and powers. The critical philosophy has an essentially irenic character; it seeks to harmonise rather than antagonise; to bring together rather than to hold apart; and to show that surface contradiction may merely conceal a more fundamental relation of complementary and reciprocal functions. However, this peculiar insight which is able to bring about a reconciliation of opposites is not possible on the lower levels of reflection. It is not something which is obvious, and even when finally apprehended, it is not easy to express or explain. Kant himself did not apprehend it at a glance, but only by a slow and patient evolution of thought.

There is another characterisation of the method of Kant’s philosophical inquiry, which, when understood, throws further light upon the task of interpreting the Critique; it is the designation of the Kantian method as the “transcendental” method, and the logic which supports it as the “transcendental” logic. The transcendental logic takes the point of view that there are certain universal and necessary elements in all knowledge, whose origin is to be found in the nature of our thought and not in the objects of experience themselves. The word transcendental does not imply that knowledge of this kind transcends experience; it refers rather to that unique kind of knowledge which is common to all experience, and without which experience would be impossible. Moreover, no single experience, nor any mass of experience, either individual or racial, is capable of revealing such knowledge, or of furnishing a sufficient ground for it. Because it determines experience, it cannot be the result of experience. We must the rather seek its source and warrant in the nature of those necessary and universal forms of thought which condition the very possibility of experience itself, as well as constitute its essential character and scope. Given the type of mind such as that which we possess, its nature determines the peculiar kind of experience of which we are capable. The characteristic features of the mind which determine the nature of experience in this respect are revealed to us in an a priori manner. The priority, however, according to Kant, is logical and not chronological. We do not first become aware of these principles of thought, and then observe them as they may be illustrated afterward in experience. But inasmuch as they appear constantly in every actual experience, and as it is impossible to eliminate them from any conceivable experience whatsoever, we therefore come to regard them as possessing a necessary and universal character which renders them a determining factor in all experience, and constitutes in this respect their essential priority.

Moreover, this a priori element in knowledge is not derived, on our part, by the analysis of some concept which we discover in the field of knowledge. It is not a rediscovery in our ideas of something previously obtained by experience. Experience, of course, records itself in ideas, and these ideas, in turn, when closely scrutinised, reveal truths whose particular origin in experience we may fail wholly to remember. The a priori element in knowledge has a clearer title, however, than this. There is a radical difference which Kant expresses by referring the a priori element to a synthetic rather than an analytic process of thought. The distinction between analytical and synthetical judgments is one which lies at the very centre of the entire argument of the Critique. In the analytical judgment the predicate is merely explicative, that is, it exhibits some obvious and essential characteristic of the subject; in the synthetical judgment, on the other hand, the predicate is ampliative, that is, it adds some characteristic attribute to the nature of the subject which no process of analysing the idea of the subject as known to us could ever possibly suggest. The synthetical judgment possesses the peculiar function of extending the content of our ideas, and thus increasing our store of knowledge. The fact that water under normal circumstances will boil at 212° F. is a synthetical judgment. It gives us exact information of which the bare concept of water by itself could never possibly disclose through any process of mental analysis, however subtle and acute it might be. And the same is true of all those judgments of experience by which our ideas are enlarged and the range of knowledge extended. The synthetic judgments of this type, therefore, all have an a posteriori origin. The information which they impart is given to us by the things which we actually see or hear or taste or touch. But the point which Kant suggests is the possibility of our forming any synthetic judgments which have a purely a priori origin, that is, judgments which thought itself discovers to be the necessary and indispensable conditions of the very possibility of any sense experience whatsoever. This is the central and most fundamental problem of the Critique. Upon it the entire discussion hinges. It is the attempt to furnish an answer to this question in all of its bearings that virtually constitutes the subject-matter of the critical philosophy. To understand the argument of the Critique it is necessary to appreciate fully the significance of this problem. And the significance of this problem will be the better appreciated if we consider it in the light of Hume’s insuperable difficulty concerning the nature of causation. Kant himself made Hume’s argument the point of departure for his discussion, both in the manner of stating the question concerning the possibility of synthetical judgments a priori, and also in his efforts to think out a satisfactory solution of the problem. In speaking of Hume in this connection Kant says: “How is it possible, says that acute man, that when a concept is given me, I can go beyond it and connect with it another which is not contained in it, and in such a manner as if the latter necessarily belonged to the former? Nothing but experience can furnish us with connections of that sort (this was his inference from that difficulty, which he held an impossibility), and all that supposed necessity, or, what is the same thing, all cognition a priori (held to be such) is nothing but a long habit of finding something true, and hence of holding subjective necessity to be objective.”

Hume contends that all the phenomena of experience are separate existences, and that separate existences, for the very reason that they are separate, cannot in themselves give any evidence of a necessary connection between them, and that the idea of necessary connection so indissolubly associated with the events of our experience is one which our minds, long immersed in custom, have projected upon experience without any objective warrant. Consequently, that which we thus read into the phenomena of li...