Scepticism and the Development of the Transcendental Dialectic

Abstract Kant's response to scepticism in the Critique of Pure Reason is complex and remarkably nuanced, although it is rarely recognized as such. In this paper, I argue that recent attempts to flesh out the details of this response by Paul Guyer and Michael Forster do not go far enough. Although they are right to draw a distinction between Humean and Pyrrhonian scepticism and locate Kant's response to the latter in the Transcendental Dialectic, their accounts fail to capture two important aspects of this response. The first is that Kant's response to Pyrrhonian scepticism is also a response to Hume. The second is that aspects of this response are decidedly positive. In particular, I argue (1) that Kant believed Hume's scepticism manifested important elements of Pyrrhonian scepticism and (2) that both Pyrrhonian scepticism and Hume had a significant positive influence on the development of the Transcendental Dialectic. Keywords: KantHumetranscendental dialecticPyrrhonian scepticismcritique of metaphysicstranscendental illusion Notes *Citations from the Critique of Pure Reason use the standard A/B format to refer to the pages of the first (A) and second (B) editions. Citations from Kant's other works use the volume number and pagination of the Kant's gesammelte Schriften, edited by the Royal Prussian (later German, then Berlin-Brandenburg) Academy of the Sciences. 29 vols. (Berlin, 1900—). I have used the translations of Kant's works listed in the bibliography, in some cases with slight modifications. All other translations are my own. 1See Paul Guyer, Knowledge, Reason, and Taste: Kant's Response to Hume (Princeton, 2008), 22–70 and Michael Forster, Kant and Scepticism (Princeton, 2008). 2See Critique B 127–8 and Prolegomena 4:262. 3For a reading that emphasizes a different aspect of Hume's relation to Pyrrhonian scepticism, see Robert Stern, ‘Metaphysical Dogmatism, Humean Scepticism, Kantian Criticism’, Kantian Review 11 (2006): 102–116, who is responding to an earlier version of Guyer's views in Paul Guyer, ‘Kant on Common Sense and Scepticism’, Kantian Review 7 (2003): 1–37. 4Kant actually appears to have given been somewhat ambivalent about who should count as the founder of Academic scepticism. The Philippi Logic (24:337), Vienna Logic (24:803), and Jäsche Logic (9:30) all suggest that Speusippus, the first of Plato's successors, is the founder of Academic scepticism. But the Blomberg Logic suggests that Plato was the founder, and the Busolt Logic and Dohna-Wundlacken Logic take the view that Arcesilaus, the second of Plato's successors, is the true founder (24:209, 646, 700). 5See Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I.xxxiii. Sextus is mentioned in the Vienne Logic (24:803), the Jäsche Logic (9:31), and in a passage from another logic transcript interpolated into the Metaphysic L2 (28:539), always as a compiler of the sceptical views of others. Nevertheless, it is not clear how familiar Kant was with Sextus's writings. He never mentions any of them by name and could have easily based his comments about them on secondary sources. One source is certainly Albrecht Haller's translation of J.H.S. Formey's unpublished Le triomphe de l'évidence, which appeared as Prüfung der Secte, die an allem zweifelt (Göttingen, 1751) and includes a summary of Outlines of Pyrrhonism. Kant recommended Haller's translation along with J.G. Sulzer's four-volume edition of Hume's works to his students interested in learning more about scepticism ‘of modern times’ (24:218). See Tonelli, ‘Kant und die antiken Sceptiker’, 9–7 and 105–8 for discussion of other possible secondary sources. 6For latter expressions of the view that Academic scepticism is actually a form of dogmatism, see Busolt Logic 24:646 and Dohna-Wundlacken Logic 24:699, both of which are from the early 1790's. 7Kant's term for this form of doubt is ‘Zweifel des Aufschubs’, as opposed to dogmatic doubt, which he refers to as ‘Zweifel des Entscheidens’. In interpreting Kant's lectures, it is important to keep track of the uses of ‘Aufschub’, ‘entscheiden’ and their cognates since doing so is often the only sure way to tell what form of scepticism a given passage describes. 8See, for example, Sextus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I.xii. 9See also Blomberg Logic 24:159, 161, 211 and Philippi Logic 24:330. 10See, for example, Blomberg Logic 24:99 and Philippi Logic 24:327. 11Forster, Kant and Scepticism, 19 suggests that logic is also excluded from the scope of Pyrrhonian scepticism on Kant's account. However, I can find no evidence for this claim in the passages Forster cites or in any others from the logic lectures. Indeed, there are passages from the Pölitz Logic and Vienna Logic in which the sceptics (among them Hume) are referred to as ‘anti-logicians’, and this would seem to indicate that Kant believes the sceptics are opposed to if not necessarily sceptical of logic (24:509, 805). However, I suspect that there is simply too little evidence to settle this point definitively. 12In the logic lectures, Kant also recognizes a modern sceptical tradition, which he identifies with Voltaire, Bayle, and, especially, Hume. However, he does not provide a general characterization of modern scepticism but instead prefers to describe modern sceptics in terms of their relation to the ancient sceptical tradition. See Herder Logic 24:4, Blomberg Logic 24:36, 210f., 217, Philippi Logic 24:330, Pölitz Logic 24:509, Vienna Logic 24:803–4, and Jäsche Logic 9:31. 13Here I disagree with Forster, Kant and Scepticism, 103 n 21, who claims that the discussion of Pyrrhonian scepticism in the Blomberg Logic shows that Kant thought of Hume ‘as in effect merely an inferior Pyrronist’. As I have already suggested, Hume's scepticism is not entirely Pyrrhonian by Kant's standards. But I find nothing in the Blomberg Logic to suggest that Kant believed Hume's scepticism was an inferior form of Pyrrhonian scepticism. Indeed, as I believe the passage I am about to discuss from the Critique makes clear, Kant thought of Hume as the contemporary standard bearer of the Pyrrhonian sceptical method. Forster also claims that Hume never uses the sceptical method and that Kant was simply mistaken when he said that he did. But he does not consider Hume's comments in the parts of the first Enquiry and Dialogues I reference in note 16, below. Regarding the claim that Kant thought of Hume as an inferior Pyrrhonian, I suspect that Forster is reading the passage from 24:210–11 as a warning that Hume should not be thought of as a Pyrrhonian sceptic, whereas I read it as a warning that he should not be confused with an Academic sceptic. 14Kant's description of the sceptical use of reason is also consistent with his description of the sceptical method at A424/B451, which I discuss in section three. 15See Axii and A761/B789. 16While it is not essential to my argument, it is also worth noting that interpreting Hume's scepticism as Pyrrhonian in the way Kant does is more plausible than it may initially appear. Hume explicitly discusses Pyrrhonian scepticism in the first Enquiry and Dialogues and does so in ways that suggest the affinities with Pyrrhonian scepticism that Kant identifies. Both works describe the mind's tendency to reflect on questions it cannot answer and that, for this reason, lead to uncertainty and conflict within the field of metaphysics. And both assign Pyrrhonian scepticism the positive role of counterbalancing this tendency and making it easier for us to limit our speculations to questions of what Hume calls ‘common life’ and ‘daily practice’. Moreover, the effects Hume hopes to elicit by using Pyrrhonian arguments are consistent with Kant's conception of the scope of Pyrrhonian scepticism. Hume is emphatic that these arguments have no lasting effect on our common sense beliefs about the world or, indeed, on any of our beliefs about matters of fact. Instead, the kinds of questions he believes exposure to Pyrrhonian arguments will help us eliminate are the abstract theoretical questions that, for Kant, fell under the category of dogma or ‘truths of reason’. Finally, Hume is clear in both works that the claims of mathematics and morals are not affected by Pyrrhonian argument. See Enquiry, Section XII, Part 3 and Dialogues, Part 1. 17Here I except Kant's brief discussion of sceptical idealism in the A-edition fourth paralogism. This discussion does not occur in the B-edition Paralogisms and, more importantly, concerns sceptical idealism and not scepticism per se. 18Lothar Kreimendahl, Kant—Der Durchbruch von 1769 (Köln, 1990) argues that Kant was awakened from his dogmatic slumber in 1769 by Hamann's translation of Treatise 1.4.7 and that this translation was instrumental in his discovery of the antinomies. What I am claiming here is consistent with Kreimendahl's thesis (as well as other theses about the cause and date of Kant's awakening) but clearly distinct from it, namely that Kant employs a method in the Antinomies that can be traced to the Pyrrhonians but whose most prominent contemporary exponent he believes is Hume. 19Kant's use of the sceptical method in the Antinomy is rarely discussed in the literature. Ludwig Weber, Das Distinktionsverfahren im mittelalterlichen Denken und Kants sceptische Methode (Meisenheim am Glan, 1976), 168–74 and Rudolph Enno, Scepsis bei Kant: Ein Beitrag zur Interpretation der Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Munich, 1978), 63–5 and 81–4 are two exceptions. 20Kant's discussion of this illusion, which he calls transcendental illusion, is in the Introduction of the Transcendental Dialectic (A293–309/B349–366). For an illuminating discussion of these notoriously difficult passages, see Michelle Grier, Kant's Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion (New York, 2001), 101–139. 21Kant discusses these ideas in the first section of the Antinomies (A409–419/B435–446). For elaboration, see Grier, Transcendental Illusion, 172–229. 22See Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge (New York, 1987), 385–415 and, for a more sympathetic reading, Henry Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism, revised and enlarged edition (New Haven, 2004), 384–395. 23As we will see in the next section, Kant's early account of a critique of metaphysics is one target of this criticism. 24See, for example, Norman Kemp Smith, A Commentary to Kant's ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ (New York, 1918), 431–440 and Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, 387–404. 25For discussion of the development of the first step of Kant's critique in the 1770s, see Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, 11–70 and Wolfgang Carl, Der schweigende Kant: Die Entwürfe zu einer Deduktion der Kategorien von 1781 (Göttingen, 1989). 26Kant distinguishes between transcendental illusion and the deception associated with it. The former is a natural and ineliminable tendency to misuse the categories by attempting to cognize the objects supposed to correspond to the ideas of reason (God, the soul, and the world-whole). The latter is any instance of this misuse, that is, any theoretical judgment about one of these objects. Just as we can refrain from judging that an oar that appears bent really is so, Kant's view in the Critique is that we can be subject to transcendental illusion without being deceived by it. See A297/B354 and A708–12/B736–40. 27See A57–62/B82–86. 28See also the very telegraphic R4460, dated to 1772, and R4275, dated to the period 1770–1. 29Kant does not introduce the term ‘transcendental illusion’ until late in the decade and even then only uses it to describe the account he develops in the Critique. For this reason, I will use ‘metaphysical illusion’ to designate early versions of his account of what induces us to make illegitimate metaphysical claims, including the version of this account found in the Inaugural Dissertation. 30For a more detailed discussion of Kant's account of illusion in the Inaugural Dissertation, see Grier, Transcendental Illusion, 48–66. 31It may seem that the ‘Simplicity of the thinking subject’ does not correspond to any of the antinomies but is, instead, a forerunner of the second paralogism. But in the Critique, Kant also suggests that the thesis of the second antinomy asserts the simplicity of the soul. In discussing the non-logical reasons we have for preferring the theses of the antinomies to their antitheses, Kant comments ‘that the world has a beginning, that my thinking self is of a simple and therefore incorruptible nature, that this self is likewise free and elevated above natural compulsion in its voluntary actions, and finally, that the whole order of things constituting the world descends from an original being, from which it borrows all its unity and purposive connectedness—these are so many cornerstones of morality and religion' (A466/B494, my emphasis). 32R4930, dated to the period 1776 to 1778, is the first to document Kant's mature conception of transcendental illusion and to mention the term ‘transcendental illusion’. R5552–R5555, all dated to the period 1778 to 1779, present the dialectical inferences of reason in their mature, tripartite form. Unfortunately, these notes do not give us any clear indication of what caused Kant to change his conception of transcendental illusion or the structure of the Dialectic. 33See, for example Friedrich Paulsen, Versuch einer Entwickelungsgeschichte der Kantischen Erkenntnistheorie (Leipzig, 1875), 37–100, Benno Erdmann, ed. Reflexionen Kants zur kritischen Philosophie (Leipzig, 1884), XVII-XXIII, Tonelli, ‘Kant und die antiken Sceptiker’, 110, Weber, Distinktionsverfahren, 128–35, and Forster, Kant and Scepticism, 19. Forster is alone among these commentators in explicitly characterizing this phase as Pyrrhonian. 34See, for example, K.L Reinhold, Ueber das Fundament des philosophischen Wissens (Jena, 1791), 45–70. For discussion of Reinhold's reading of Kant and its influence on subsequent Kant interpretation, see Karl Ameriks, Kant and the Fate of Autonomy (New York, 2000). 35Manfred Kuehn, ‘Kant's Transcendental Deduction: A Limited Defense of Hume,’ in New essays on Kant, edited by Bernard den Ouden and Marcia Moen (New York, 1987), Gary Hatfield, ‘The Prolegomena and the Critiques of Pure Reason,’ in Kant und die Berliner Aufklärung, edited by R. P. Horstmann V. Gerhardt, and R. Schumacher (Berlin, 2001), and Wayne Waxman, Kant and the Empiricists: Understanding Understanding (New York, 2005) have all argued in different ways that the affinities between Kant and Hume are at least as important as the differences. I discuss my reservations about Waxman's reading and present my own, more modest one in ‘Sensibilism, Psychologism, and Kant's Debt to Hume,' Kantian Review 16 (2011) No. 3: 325–349. 36See A760/B788, 4:259n, 360, and 5:13. 37See Aviii-xii, A761/B789, and 20:262–4. 38Forster, Kant and Scepticism,14 makes this claim is a different context. 39See Kuehn, ‘Kant's Transcendental Deduction,’ and Hatfield, ‘The Prolegomena and the Critiques’. 40I examine the relation of the Discipline of Pure Reason, first part of the Doctrine of Method, to the rest of the Critique in my ‘Kant and the Discipline of Reason,' European Journal of Philosophy (forthcoming). 41I am grateful to Mike Beaney, Karen Detlefsen, Scott Edgar, Paul Guyer, Gary Hatfield, Adrienne Martin, Andrew Roche, Daniel Southerland, two anonymous referees, and the participants of the 2008 Atlantic Canada Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy and 2008 North American Kant Society's Midwest Study Group for comments on earlier versions of this article.

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