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Bechler/Legitimation

3.1. Actualism and Critical Idealism.......................................................2

3.1.1 How is a priori information possible?..................................23.1.2 Kant’s three refutations of a priori informativity................43.1. 3. Kant’s solution: “synthetic” information and form...........73.1. 4. Mathematics as mere form - the first information

drainage..........................................................................................93.1.5. Pure physics as a mere form – the second drainage......123.1.6. The ontological basis of emptiness.................................173.1.7 From subjectivity to certainty..........................................193.1.8. Summing up: skepticism, completeness and emptiness. 213.1.9. What, then, is the syntheticity of the a priori?................253.1.10. Syntheticity and informativity - the great confusion.....27

3.2 A system of non-informativity............................................................31

3.2.1. Syntheticity of the a priori as a rule of construction........313.2.2. Emptiness and non-Euclidean geometry.......................353.2.3. Mathematics as construction and definition....................373.2.4. Mathematics as an “arbitrary synthesis”.........................393.2.5. Nature as a story and a unified dream............................443.2.6. Man legislates to nature..................................................473.2.7. Internalizing truth - demolishing the bridge to reality......483.2.8. Flight from madness.........................................................51

3.3. Critical Idealism and Actualistic Ethics............................................53

3.3.1. Actualistic ethics..............................................................533.3.2. Hume’s ethical nihilism...................................................543.3.3. Kant awakens from his ethical slumbers.........................563.3.4 The pure formality of Kant’s moral principles....................593.3.5. The moral law as a law of nature....................................623.3.6. Moral truth is coherence...................................................643.3.7. Despair: Kant glues content.............................................683.3.8. and conjures an absolute end..........................................703.3.9. and covers up a contradiction..........................................72

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3.3.10. “The objective is the subjective itself” - Hegel’s critique......................................................................................................75

3.1. Actualism and Critical Idealism

3.1.1 How is a priori information possible?

About Hume’s influence Kant wrote in words that gained fame:

I openly confess, the suggestion of David Hume was the very thing, which

many years ago first interrupted my dogmatic slumber, and gave my

investigations in the field of speculative philosophy quite a new direction.

(Prolegomena:7)

Something is going on. Why “I confess”? Why “openly”? And what is the meaning of

“the suggestion of David Hume”? Well, after Kant published his principal book The

Critique of Pure Reason (1781), some reviewers pointed out the close kinship

between his theory and what was then called “the idealism of Berkeley and Hume”. In

order to repel this accusation, Kant wrote his Prolegomena to Any Future

Metaphysics (1783) and after he confessed in the introduction that Hume “interrupted

my dogmatic slumber”, he followed up with a qualification:

I was far from following him in the conclusions at which he arrived by

regarding, not the whole of his problem, but a part, which by itself can give us

no information. (Ibid.)

Kant could argue in this manner and could keep on believing in this because

he never actually read Hume’s principal work but only some translated passages from

it, and so he never became closely acquainted with Hume’s critique of the concepts of

substance and the ego as well as his construction theory. As a consequence, he could

represent his own uniqueness as the one who first saw that Hume’s problem of

causality is merely a special case of a general problem, which Kant formulated first,

and whose solution was the philosophy he created. This problem he formulated thus:

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How are synthetic propositions a priori possible? (Ibid: §5)

The concept “synthetic propositions” was coined by Kant to mean a proposition

which is not “analytic”, and by “analytic” he meant a proposition whose subject is

logically non-separable from the predicate, or, “the predicate is contained in the

subject”. He now argued that contrary to laws which are logically true, such as “the

whole is greater than its part”, “magnitudes which are equal to another magnitude are

equal to each other” (laws which are classified in Euclid’s geometry as “general

notions” and were also called “axioms”) which are clearly analytic (there is no

meaning in the notion of a part except in connection with a whole and so on) none of

the propositions of geometry are analytic, and hence they are “synthetic”.

But he argued also that all the theorems of mathematics are certain and

necessary, for a simple reason: they are certain and necessary for us. It is a

psychological fact undoubted even today, that we are not able to describe to ourselves

what the negation of a geometrical theorem could mean. For example, we are unable

to imagine how two points in a plane would look, through which more than one

straight line passes. It is a fact that in order to imagine such a thing we are forced to

“bend” the plane. And since no certainty and necessity cannot be obtained by

experience, as Hume’s argument sufficiently showed, Kant argued that it follows that

all the theorems of mathematics are independent of experience and are logically

“prior” to it: the theorems of mathematics are not only non-analytic, they are also

non- empiric: they are synthetic and a priori. This, then, was the full formulation of

what he called “Hume’s problem”, i.e., how is it possible to explain such a unique

fact?

This fact became even more peculiar when Kant discovered that mathematics

is able to link separate concepts only through what he called “intuition” and this, as

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far as it is possible to extract from his words, is the imagination in which we draw to

ourselves pictures and drawings. Since such mathematical “intuition” does not

employ our eyes, Kant called it “pure”:

So we find that all mathematical cognition has this peculiarity: it must first

exhibit its concept in intuition (Anschauung) and indeed a priori, therefore in a

visual form which is not empirical, but pure. Without this, mathematics cannot

take a single step; hence its judgments are always visual, viz., “intuitive”; ...

this observation on the nature of mathematics gives us a clue to the first and

highest condition of its possibility, which is, that some non-sensuous

visualization (called pure intuition or reine anschauung) must form its basis, in

which all its concepts can be exhibited or constructed, in concreto and yet a

priori. (Ibid:§7)

Kant used this discovery in order to explain and sometimes to prove the “synthetic”

character of mathematics. Because its meaning was that it is impossible to prove

mathematical theorems merely by analyzing their concepts, and therefore that the

theorems are not analytical; the subject concept in each such theorem does not

contain in its meaning the predicate concept, and so the subject and predicate are

separate from each other.

3.1.2 Kant’s three refutations of a priori informativity

Thus was created a paradoxical concept - “a priori intuition”. What does such

an intuition mean and how is it possible? If it is an intuition (be it as internal and pure

as it may) it is an intuition of something - “of an object”, but since it is a priori as

well, it is necessary that this object did not exist prior to the intuition, that is,

separately from it. And therefore, it is obvious that the object of an a priori intuition

must exist only as an effect of the intuition, for otherwise it would be an a posteriori

intuition, an empiric intuition into what already exists. And so a dilemma emerged -

either mathematical intuition is indeed an intuition, and then it must have its object

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existing before it and separately from it, and then it cannot be a priori. Or it is a

priori but then it is not intuition, i.e., no intuiting of any object at all. And so Kant

formulated it:

The question now is “how is it possible to intuit anything a priori?” An intuition

is such a representation as immediately depends upon the presence of the

object. Hence it seems impossible to intuit from the outset a priori, because

intuition would in that event take place without either a former or a present

object to refer to, and by consequence could not be intuition. ...but how can

the intuition of the object precede the object itself? (Prolegomena: §8)

This was the first difficulty which Kant had to face as a consequence of viewing

mathematics as both a priori and “synthetic”.

The second difficulty was the notion that an a priori knowledge of facts is

possible. Kant opposed this vehemently, fully accepting Hume’s empiricist thesis

(e.g., Critique A765/ B793) that there is no a priori information. That is to say, there

is no description of things which is possibly true in the world and therefore also

possibly false in the world - as informative descriptions usually are - and which is

nevertheless a priori true, that is, true independently of the state of the world and

logically prior to it. And against whoever doubted this, Kant posed the question:

...I should be glad to know how can it be possible to know the constitution of

things a priori, i.e., before we have any acquaintance with them and before

they are presented to us? (ibid: §11)

similarly, he explained that if we assume that that we know the objects of experience

by our concepts, then

I am perplexed again as to how we can know anything a priori in regard to the

objects ( Critique, second preface : xvi).

And he included the same empiricist demand in one of his formulations of the essence

of his idealism :

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The principle that throughout dominates and determines my idealism is[..]: “ All

cognition of things merely from pure understanding or pure reason is nothing

but shere illusion, and only in experience is there truth”. ( Prolegomena:

Appendix, 151 in the open court edition)

There can be no doubt , therefore, that Kant denied the possibility of a priori true

information1, and so that he had to face the second difficulty - if mathematics is based

on an a priori intuition, how can it possibly be informative as well?

And a third difficulty which now emerged as a consequence of accepting that

mathematics is synthetic and a priori was this: even if this pure or a priori intuition

provides information, how can it possibly be certain information? How does the fact

that this intuition is now internal, (i.e., not by means of our flesh eyes) save it from

the well-known fate of all observation as a source of information - lack of certainty

and lack of necessity? As Hume taught him, no kind of observation, whether internal

or external, can possibly present to us the necessity of an informative link, i.e., the

necessary link between two facts or two “ideas” which are separate and mutually

independent. And therefore, all that intuition is able to do is only to show us that

things are such and such, but never that this is necessarily so. But mathematics deals

only with things which are interconnected by necessity. And so, this third difficulty

was, if the synthetic of mathematics carries certainty, how can it possibly be based

on any intuition at all?

3.1. 3. Kant’s solution: “synthetic” information and form

Kant solved these three difficulties in one spectacular move, and this is the essence of

all that will be called in the future his Copernican Revolution:

1 The notion that Kant’s a priori does indeed contain information is still accepted among commentators, see, e.g. H. Bergman’s 1973:138 to the effect that “it follows that that we can know the basic laws of experience without asking experience. Empiricism failed to see this.”.

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Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects.

But all attempts to extend our knowledge of object by establishing something

in regard to them a priori, by means of concepts, have, on this assumption,

ended in failure. We must therefore make trial whether we may not have more

success in the tasks of metaphysics if we suppose that objects must conform

to our knowledge. This would agree better with what is desired, namely, that it

should be possible to have knowledge of objects a priori, determining

something in regard to them prior to their being given. (Critique, preface to 2nd

edition:xvi)

The model of this new strategy, Kant explained, is the first Copernican revolution, in

which change of reference system led to success. Similarly in this case of explaining

the fact that there exists synthetic yet a priori kind of knowledge such as

mathematics:

A similar experiment can be tried in metaphysics as regards the intuition of

objects. If intuition must conform to the constitution of the objects, I do not see

how we could know anything of the latter a priori; but if the object (as object of

our senses) must conform to the constitution of our faculty of intuition, I have

no difficulty in conceiving such a possibility. (ibid.:xvii)

Accordingly he concluded from his difficulties that even though mathematics is

“synthetic” it cannot contain any information about the world. His hypothesis was

that the “syntheticity” of mathematics expresses merely that mathematics deals

strictly with the “form of phenomena” and with nothing concerning their contents.

This hypothesis was, therefore, the essence of his solution to the first difficulty - the

paradoxicality of a priori intuition.

His considerations on his way to this hypothesis were based on the accepted

principles of empiricism concerning informative knowledge of the world and mainly

on the principle that every information which we attribute to the separate world is

doubtful and by its nature lacks necessity. He explained that even if we could intuit

directly the world, even then it would be incomprehensible how intuiting an object

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present to us can produce in us knowing this object in itself, “since its properties

cannot migrate into my faculty of representation” (Prolegomena §9). That is, even in

the case of such direct intuition, there would be some doubt about the correspondence

or conformity of the image within me and the object out there. And therefore, any

information we attribute to the world is necessarily doubtful, even when the evidence

reaches us by some super-empirical ways. Afortiori, when the evidence exists in us a

priori, independently of any possible experience. That is to say, if I have no direct

intuition of the world as it is in itself,

there is no reason that can be imagined of a relation between my

representation and the object, unless it depends upon a direct inspiration

(Prolegomena §9)

and if there is no reason to assume such a mystical relation, there is also no reason to

assume the certainty and necessity of the image within me. And therefore, if this

intuition, on which mathematics is based, contains some content, i.e., information

about the world, then mathematics could not be certain and necessary, and therefore it

would not be a priori. But since there is certainty and necessity in any theorem of

mathematics, i.e., since it is a priori, it can not possibly contain information about the

world. Now, on the one side, as Kant concluded, this means that this pure intuition

deals merely with the form of perceptual experience and not with its contents:

Therefore in one way only can my intuition (Anschauung) anticipate the

actuality of the object, and be a cognition a priori, i.e., if my intuition contains

nothing but the form of sensibility, antedating in my subjectivity all the actual

impressions through which I am affected by objects. (Ibid.: §9)

Mathematics contains, therefore, only the form of phenomena but nothing of their

contents. This is the straightforward voiding mathematics of information about the

world and this voiding was Kant’s explanation of the fact that mathematics, even

though it is based on intuition, is certain and necessary, i.e., is a science a priori.

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But now it became urgent to explain something new and no less peculiar -

how is it possible that even such a form, (i.e., the theorems of mathematics) applies

necessarily to the objects of our experience? To meet this, Kant created the second

component of his hypothesis: the form of mathematics describes not the form of

things in themselves. This at once neutralizes the informativity of mathematics, and

so answrs the puzzle from the impossibility of a priori information. Moreover, Kant

added the further component of Copernican strategy, this form is only of our

sensuous faculty - it is the form of human sensibility. And so,

we shall easily comprehend, and at the same time indisputably prove, that all

external objects of our world of sense must necessarily coincide in the most

rigorous way with the propositions of geometry; because sensibility by means

of its form of external intuition, i.e., by space, the space with which the

geometer is occupied, makes those objects at all possible as mere

appearances. (Ibid.: §13 Remark I)

3.1. 4. Mathematics as mere form - the first information drainage

Mathematics reflects, therefore, the form of one of our faculties - our sensibility - and

not the form of the separate world. And this explains also the fact that it applies

necessarily to the phenomena : first, this faculty does not contain information about

the phenomena at all, and second, it is the form of the faculty which makes the

phenomena possible for us. The only information which mathematics contains,

maybe, is not about triangles and circles etc., but strictly about ourselves, about the

form of the faculty which makes the phenomena possible at all. In other words, the

form of phenomena originates in and is the form of the faculty which makes them

possible, our sensibility. In what sense is this sensibility the necessary condition of

the phenomena, that which makes them possible? In the sense that sensibility

determines the form of the stream of sensations which it receives.

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Contrary to the world in itself, the phenomena are inseparable from our

faculties and our sensibility, for the simple reason that only our sensibility makes it

possible, i.e., creates the world of phenomena in an important sense: by being a

precondition (i.e., a priori) for the perceivablity of anything as experience and

phenomena, and therefore our sensibility does not at all determine any content.

Sensibility is not any content (information) but merely form (formation). Hence the a

priori in mathematics:

As soon as space and time count for nothing more than formal conditions of

our sensibility, while the objects count merely as phenomena, then the form of

the phenomenon, i.e., pure intuition, can by all means be represented as

proceeding from themselves, that is, a priori. (Prolegomena §11)

This is the main reason why “mere form” does not re-introduce the same difficulty

which it is designed to solve. Otherwise, apparently, the same question could be

raised anew: how can mathematics be even mere form of all possible experience if it

is a form a priori? Obviously Kant’s intention was that the form a priori does not

raise this difficulty, and the reason is that this form is not information about the

world. Sensibility creates the form of experience merely by forcing our sensations to

be presented in our subjective space and time according to our subjective laws of

geometry and arithmetic.

The subjectivity of space and time and therefore of mathematics as a whole

means exactly that all these are inseparate from human mind - they have no separate

existence whatsoever. Kant explained that this subjectivity or inseparability is the

necessary condition for the conservation of certainty in mathematics. For were space

to possess any separate existence, such as space in itself, doubt would have to be

raised about geometry - for why should a bunch of a priori theorems be true about

space in itself? In that case

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the space of the geometer would be considered a mere fiction, and it would

not be credited with objective validity because we cannot see how things must

of necessity agree with an image of them, which we make spontaneously and

previous to our acquaintance with them. (ibid: §13 remark I)

The space of geometry “would be considered a mere fiction” because even though it

is created spontaneously and a priori - before the necessary “acquaintance” with

space in itself - it is nevertheless supposed to fit it necessarily. But such doubt would

be in place only if space in itself were supposed to exist, i.e., separately from our

senses. And, therefore, only on the condition that it does not exist, no such doubt is

possible. Kant is saying here, therefore, that if geometry is presented as information

about space in itself, then the fact that geometry is a priori puts in doubt its objective

validity. And therefore such doubt would not rise if (1) there is no space in itself and

(2) the space of geometry does not “denote” a separate object and does not “intend” at

all to be a copy of anything else (i.e., of space in itself). And since both of these hold

together, all is to the best. Our senses witness only phenomena, and geometric space

is no copy of anything.

Mathematics is, therefore. that part of our cognition of the world which is

neither true nor false, but is merely the form and organization of all that can be a

phenomenon for us. Thus were solved the first two difficulties - the paradoxality of

objectless intuition and of information a priori. Since space and time are merely the

forms of experience and contain nothing concerning the contents of experience, it

follows that neither do the objects of this intuition (points, lines, circles, etc.) exist

prior to and separately from it. They are nothing but the properties of this intuition,

and therefore they do not embody information about the world.

The third difficulty - how can intuition, being as pure as it may, provide

certainty and necessity - was solved by the same ploy as well: intuition can indeed

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provide certainty and necessity, in so far as it has nothing to do with information, i.e.,

it does not apply to contents but merely to the form of phenomena. Kant summed up

his solution thus:

The problem of the present section is therefore solved: Pure mathematics as

synthetic cognition a priori is only possible by referring to no other objects than

those of the senses. (Ibid.: §11)

And so the hard core of the solution’s main question - how is the synthetic a priori

possible in the case of mathematics - was that synthetic a priori cognition is possible

only on the condition that it is not a cognition of information but merely an

expression of the properties of the intuition itself, which are the subjective conditions

for any possible cognition. Kant named these subjective conditions “mere form”, and

this form has no content. This is the solution which he now summed up by declaring

that the objects which these synthetic a priori cognitions denote are the objects of

experience and not the objects in themselves.

3.1.5. Pure physics as a mere form – the second drainage

Having solved the mathematical branch of the question - how are synthetic a priori

judgments possible - he went on and employed the same solution also in its physical

branch. The principle of causality was just one of the synthetic a priori judgments of

physics (as Hume showed) and Kant proceeded to construct a systematic list of all of

them. For this construction, he firstly arranged a systematic classification of all the

kinds of judgments we use in our thought and speech, and then showed that each kind

of judgment is based on employing some concept not derived from experience, i.e.,

concept a priori (such as the concepts cause, necessary connection, substance and its

existence, possibility) but whose employment is a necessary condition for our

judgments about experience. This list he named “the table of categories” or “the pure

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concepts of reason”, and the non-analytic judgments which use only them he called

“the pure (or general) laws of nature”. These were the synthetic a priori principles on

which physical science is constructed as a necessary condition of its possibility. Such

principles are, for example, “the quantity of matter is conserved in all changes in the

material world”, “in every transference of motion from one body to another the action

and reaction are equal”, “all changes take place according to the law of cause and

effect”.

“Hume’s problem” in its new general formulation was, therefore, how is the

pure science of nature (i.e., the list of these principles) possible? And the intention

was - how to explain the fact that these principles apply to physical nature with a

necessity as intense as that of mathematical necessity but are nevertheless not

analytical? And Kant’s solution, just as in the mathematical issue, was that the pure

science of nature is possible, i.e., applies to the world, just to the extent that this is the

world of experience, and just to the extent that this pure science of nature deals with

the “mere form” of experience and not its content:

For example, I easily comprehend the concept of cause as a concept

necessarily belonging to the mere form of experience, and its possibility [I

comprehend] as a synthetic union of perceptions in consciousness generally.

(Prolegomena: §29)

Three elements appear constantly together in these solutions: the principles apply to

experience only, and not to things in themselves; in respect of the mere form of

experience, and not in respect of its content; they are unifying syntheses of sensations,

and do not copy any separate state of things. The link between these three elements is

hardly short of identity - each expresses the other two. To apply to mere experience

means to refer to mere form and to be a unifying synthesis and so with the other

combinations. Each expresses the remaining two, and what all of them express is the

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informative emptiness of each and all the synthetic a priori principles. Moreover,

Kant explicitly pointed out this emptiness when he explained in famous words that

“thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.”

(Critique:A51/B75). I will return to this issue later on and so I’ll leave it at that for

now. Kant regarded this “mere form”ality (and its other equivalent formulations) “a

complete solution to Hume’s problem”:

This complete (though to its originator unexpected) solution of Hume’s

problem, rescues for the pure concepts of understanding their a priori origin,

and for the universal laws of nature their validity as laws of the

understanding ... but with a completely reversed mode of connection which

never occurred to Hume, not by deriving them from experience, but by

deriving experience from them. (Ibid.: §30)

Kant declared here his implicit concurrence with Berkeley and Hume regarding the

equal subjective status of primary and secondary qualities. And he also used this total

subjectivity to explain the necessity with which the propositions of pure mathematics

and pure science of nature apply to the phenomena. This kinship to Berkeley and

Hume sharply points at the huge anti-informationist revolution that reached here its

peak: the informationist tradition, since the ancient Greek atomists, through Descartes

and Galileo to Newton, regarded mathematical properties as the essence of

objectivity, and all that remains after abstracting from the object all that is subjective.

Descartes, for example, argued that the mathematical properties are the limits of

abstraction - it is impossible to abstract from the object its geometrical form, its

location, its state of motion, and its number (is it one or many). Therefore,

mathematics is what records and copies the objective essence of the world, what the

world is in itself, separately from its appearance to our cognition. This tradition

argued that the essence of the world in itself is the mathematical information about it

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(“nature is written in the language of mathematics”, as Galileo said) and it this thesis

that created the Newtonian physics and the scientific tradition it established.

Kant was a son of this tradition - until he realised that it constituted a kind of

sleep, “dogmatic slumbers”, which confuses dreams with reality. This “dogmatic

slumber” was, therefore, no less than the identification of the mathematical and

physical properties of the world (as Newtonian science uncovered them) with its

separate, or substantial, or objective properties - the properties of the world in itself.

Waking up from this dogmatic slumber was, therefore, Kant’s discovery that it is

necessary to eliminate all primary qualities and include them in the secondary

qualities, i.e., those properties which do not belong to the objects but are created by

our perceptions. And so, with a mixture of a heavy Prussian humour and ironic phony

innocence, Kant wrote:

Long before Locke’s time, but assuredly since him, it has been generally

assumed and granted...that many of the predicates of external things may be

said to belong not to the things in themselves, and to have no proper

existence outside our representation. Heat, colour, and taste, for instance, are

of this kind. Now, if I go further, and for weighty reasons rank as mere

appearances the remaining qualities of bodies also, which are called primary,

such as extension, place, and in general space, with all that which belongs to

it (impenetrability or materiality, space, etc.) - no one in the least can adduce

the reason of its being inadmissible. (ibid.: §13 remark II)

But in spite of all this disingeniousness, this step was much more than the simple

declaration that “all the properties which constitute the intuition of a body belong

merely to its appearance” (ibid. emphasis in the origin). Its aim was paradoxical -

saving the objective validity of pure mathematics and the science of nature. As we

saw, Kant’s argument was that only the full subjectivization of both will enable to

explain their certainty and necessity and so, allegedly, their objectivity:

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My doctrine of the ideality of space and of time, therefore, far from reducing

the whole sensible world to mere illusion, is the only means of securing the

application of one of the most important cognitions (that which mathematics

propounds a priori) to actual objects and of preventing its being regarded as

mere illusion; ...we have been able to show the unquestionable validity of

mathematics with regard to all the objects of the sensible world just because

they are mere appearances. (Ibid.:§13 note 3)

And similarly in regard of the pure science of nature -

This solution rescues for the pure concepts of the understanding their a priori origin, and for the universal laws of nature their validity, as laws of the

understanding. (Ibid.: §30)

again, presumably, “just because they [the objects they are valid about] are mere

appearances”, as before. So, it is this “mere appearance” status that saves “the whole

sensible world from being reduced to mere illusion”. As against Galileo’s “explaining

the wonder by miracle” to capture the essence of his potentialistic science, we may

say that what does the same for Kant’s enterprise is his saving our world from total

illusion by total subjectivity and appearance, and saving the certainty of science by

emptying it of information.

3.1.6. The ontological basis of emptiness

Whereas Descartes and Newton argued that mathematics and mathematical physics

are possible because the world in itself is mathematical, Kant now explained that the

truth is the other way round: these two are possible as certain and necessary, i.e., as a

priori, only because they have no connection at all to the world in itself, that is to say,

only because the world in itself possesses no mathematical property. For only then is

it possible to argue that the business of pure mathematics and physics cannot at all be

copying the world in itself, and therefore their business is necessarily only the

conferring of some subjective form on the phenomena. But subjectivity in itself is not

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sufficient for saving pure mathematics and physics. It must be a special kind of

subjectivity, which is crucially different from the subjectivity of “heat, colour, and

taste”.

Because even though the secondary qualities of the potentialistic tradition

indeed “do not belong to the things themselves but only to their phenomena”, it

would be misleading to say that in that tradition they also “have no real existence

outside our perceptions”. For “heat, color and taste” in the potentialistic tradition are

our reactions to things which have real existence separate from our perceptions. As a

consequence, it could also be assumed that there is some sufficiently exact mapping

(or correspondence, under some conditions,) between the real things and the reactions

they cause in us. When I sense the color red, there exists a real well-defined thing

separately from me which causes this sensation - physics calls it a light-ray and it

attempts to guess what are the physical properties which caused this sensation (wave-

lengths, particle-velocity, etc.). And even though my sensing of red is not always

caused by a light-ray (when I am hallucinating) nevertheless we do learn by our

experience to distinguish between the cases. And therefore, sensing red can signify to

me separate objects which cause it.

Kant, on the other hand, was forced to eliminate completely any such possible

correspondence or mapping between his new secondary qualities and the separate

world, as we shall see. But already now it is important to see that pure or general

mathematical and physical qualities according to his theory are not linked to the

separate world by any such mapping. Our forms of sensibility, i.e., space and time

and their mathematics, and the pure concepts of understanding, are not some passive

reaction to a stimulus having its source in the separate world. As we have seen (2.3.3

above), Kant argued that since the world in itself is not present for me, “no reason of

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a relation between my representation of the object and the object can be imagined”

(Prolegomena §9). By now, however, there can be no such relation if mathematics

and pure science of nature possess certainty and necessity. Our sensibility, Kant

argued, is “spontaneous”, it is not a reaction but a characteristic independent active

faculty, it contains no passivity, it is completely active: space and time and

mathematical structures in them are our creations ex nihilo - this is the exact sense of

their being a priori. They and likewise all the pure concepts of understanding exist in

us without any sense experience, and therefore without any involvement of the

external world.

But for this reason it is impossible that the mathematical and physical

structure which we confer on our sensations, should correspond to anything real and

separate from us. And therefore the status of those pure mathematical and physical

properties of the phenomena is for Kant not at all like the status of the secondary

qualities for Locke, but is more like the qualities we meet in our dreams.

Kant’s waking from the dogmatic slumber was his discovery that our

cognition is some kind of a slumber replete with a dream - a mathematical and

scientific dream, but a dream nevertheless, because all the qualities appearing it it,

and not just colors and tastes but the pure mathematical and physical qualities as well,

are subjective without any correspondence to a separate world. And this was so even

though Kant emphasized that it is necessary to assume the existence of such a

separate world, the world of things in themselves.

3.1.7 From subjectivity to certainty

Geometric space is not an entity separate from human reason but strictly the

subjective condition for the possibility of sense experience (like the sense of vision

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for the experience of red, say), meaning that it forms experience according to its own

rules. If space were a separate entity, its role in human cognition would be that of

hypothesis or fiction and all knowledge about it would be infected with doubt. And

so, only on the condition and only because there is no separate space, and only on the

condition and because space is something constructed by sensibility, “the subjective

basis”, that geometrical space is neither hypothetical nor fiction and so certainty is

saved:

All external appearances...must necessarily and most rigidly agree with the

propositions of the geometer, which he draws not from any fictitious concept,

but from the subjective basis of all external phenomena, which is sensibility

itself. In no other way can geometry be made secure as to the undoubted

objective reality of its propositions. (Prolegomena: §13, remark I)

Intuition a priori is possible because its objects are not present and are not given to

this intuition, but rather they are constructed by intuition. Intuition a priori is creative

or constructive intuition:

The possibility of a circle is given in the definition of the circle, since the circle

is actually constructed by means of the definition, that is, it is exhibited in

intuition, not actually on paper (empirically) but in the imagination (a priori). (Letter to Herz, May 26 1789, Correspondence:155)

We create all the objects of geometry, and this creative process - which is of course a

priori - is itself the intuition or a priori observation of these objects. And since these

objects do not exist separately from the intuition, and since every possible experience

is poured into these geometrical forms as conditions for its being a phenomenon and

experience, and only because of these, “can geometry be made secure as to the

undoubted objective reality of its propositions”. Thus, for example, there is no

meaning at all to the questions about the nature of the actual real line as against the

mathematical line: it is meaningless to ask whether “a line in nature” is not built of

points as the geometric line is not built of points. (Prolegomena: §13 remark I).

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And when this solution was applied to physics as well, the full intensity of this

active subjectivism became fully clear: it was necessary now to explain and declare

that all the general laws of nature are nothing but the laws of understanding which

according to its nature creates the form of the phenomena:

Even the main proposition expounded throughout this section - - that universal

laws of nature can be distinctly known a priori -- leads naturally to the

proposition: that the highest legislation of nature must lie in ourselves, i.e., in

our understanding, and that we must not seek the universal laws of nature in

nature by means of experience, but conversely must seek nature, as to its

universal conformity to law, in the conditions of the possibility of experience,

which lie in our sensibility and in our understanding. For how were it otherwise

possible to know a priori these laws, as they are not rules of analytical

cognition, but truly synthetical extensions of it? (Ibid.: §36)

Kant saw, therefore, the subjectivist conclusion (“the highest legislation of nature

must lie in ourselves”) as following by itself, i.e., trivially and therefore

“necessarily”, just from the assumption that there is a priori cognition of the laws of

nature. He regarded the a priori cognition of anything as incompatible with the

possibility that such a thing could be separate from us. And therefore, in order to be

properly impressed by the intensity of the revolution here, it is sufficient to remember

that Kant regarded Newton’s three laws of motion as the concrete cases of three a

priori principles, of which pure understanding is their only origin (formulated in the

three “analogies of experience”, Critique B219ff.)

3.1.8. Summing up: skepticism, completeness and emptiness

Even though in the potentialistic tradition the irrationality inherent in the notion of

empirical science was clear from the start, the picture of the science which came to be

constructed on the basis of this irrationality was full of hope. This picture provided a

clear-cut answer to the question - in what can the progress of science and of scientific

20


knowledge express itself? And into this picture that tradition introduced the inherent

irrationality of all informative knowledge, not as source of worry and despair from

empirical science but, on the contrary, as a sane answer to skepticism. Its

revolutionary idea in this case was that skepticism is founded on a wrong headed

conception of knowledge which as a complete system, knowledge that has an answer

for every possible question. This is a false concept of knowledge, the tradition of the

scientific revolution explained, because it contradicts the essence of informative

knowledge. For since the essence of informativity is the joining or bonding of things

which are alien to each other in regard of their essences and concepts, informative

knowledge is necessarily based on the assumption that the world is a contingent thing.

In such a world its parts are linked to each other even though there is no logical link

between them, so that they could just as well be linked otherwise. Locke, for

example, argued that since the basic laws of nature are contingent laws, they will

remain necessarily unexplained forever irrespectively of the progress and depth of the

scientific knowledge achieved. But that they are contingent he assumed as a

necessary condition for their informativity and therefore for the science constructed

on them. (Locke, Essay, IV, ch.iv, §7).

In other words, informative science is necessarily incomplete, and some of its

most important facts will remain necessarily non explainable - for ever.

The essential point of idealism is that incomplete science is no science at all.

For idealism any incompleteness constitutes a sufficient reason for casting total doubt

upon this science and for a philosophical demand for a complete overhaul of science.

And so it follows for the idealist that real science and informativity are incompatible

because of the basic doubt inherent in any information. This doubt and its implied

skepticism follows from the fact that even if all physical objects were somehow

21


given to us by direct perceptive cognition, there would still remain the principal doubt

about the very foundations of the science, i.e., about the most fundamental axioms of

the science, the laws from which it derives its explanations. So long as these laws,

axioms and primary assumptions are not explained as well, the idealist regards them

(justifiably) as sources of doubt. And therefore, the critique of idealism is directed

always against the incompleteness of every informative science - on the fact that not

everything in it is explained by it. Thus, it was clear to Kant that if the laws of nature

are not logically necessary (as Hume showed him) i.e., that if they are informative

propositions, there is no escape from skepticism.

Berkeley and Hume started Kant’s Copernican Revolution, therefore, not so

much by having discovered something about the concepts of causality and substance -

all their analyses of causality and substance were rather outmoded issues already at

the middle of the 17th century - but only because they expressed the urge for the

return to Aristotle’s ideal of complete science, and to certainty via informative

emptiness as the aim of science. When Kant woke from his dogmatic slumber, he

proceeded to implement the maximal possible drainage of informativity out of

science. His answer to Hume was not, therefore, intended as a refutation. It was rather

a full agreement, enlargement and deepening of Hume’s argument in order to

construct a new presentation of science as a complete structure, and therefore as a

fully non-informative system.

In the writings Kant published the drainage plan failed. He made it clear that

there are in science some laws which are merely empirical, and by that he meant what

Locke called contingent (and what we call informative). But on the other hand all the

fundamental laws of nature became necessary laws for human cognition. And Kant

demonstrated their necessity by another activation of his argument about the pure

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formality of mathematics, now however in regard to the pure laws of nature: “the

answer to Hume” Kant explained, is in changing the very meaning of the basic laws

of nature. They are not to be viewed as informative propositions about the world (as

Newton interpreted them) but as our subjective rules of formation of our experience,

and therefore as merely subjective formal propositions, which apply to the

phenomena only.

These two limitation-words “merely” and “only”, which are constantly

repeated by Kant, are of crucial importance. The basic laws of nature (those which

Kant called “general” or “pure”) are “mere form” because they do not report nor

contain any phenomenal content. All the content of phenomena is given by what Kant

called “sensations” and no further content is contributed by the understanding or

sensibility. In this respect Kant was, as we saw already (2.3.2 above) a tough

empiricist - certainly tougher than Locke ( who assumed we are in possession of a

priori yet informative knowledge, i.e., of some moral laws, (Essay iv,ch.8 §8; ch.3

§31; ch. 6 §13).) and at least as tough as Hume. He made it very clear that it is

impossible to have a priori contents, i.e., there just is no a priori information. All

information possible for us is only a posteriori, and so it followed that all a priori is

non-informative. This is the meaning of the “merely” in his declaration that they are

merely laws of form. In short, the general laws of nature, exactly like the laws of

mathematics, do not contain information about the world, as he declared clearly:

Apart from all question of what the content of the alteration is, that is, what the

state which is altered may be, the form of every alteration, the condition under

which, as coming to be of another state, it can alone take place, and so the

succession of the states themselves (the happenings), can still be considered

a priori according to the law of causality and of the conditions of time.

(Critique: A207/B252)

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In this way Kant solved for himself the apparent contradiction between the a priori

status of pure mathematical and physical propositions and the fact that they look

informative, i.e., are not analytic but synthetic. The direct conclusion is that to be

synthetic is just to be non-analytic, but this is not the same as to carry information

about the world.

The pure laws do indeed contain information, but this is not about the separate

world or even about points and lines and triangles. It is however information about

the nature of human faculties, “sensibility” and “understanding”. And only as a

consequence of this does the synthetic a priori also have a predictive function of a

certain kind: even though it has no predictive capability about the contents of

phenomena, it does constitute a prediction about their possible form. However, in so

far as they tell us something about human faculties, they are obviously empirical

hypotheses about the nature of man, but then they are, as obviously, not a priori but

strictly a posteriori. Nor did Kant ever deny this.

3.1.9. What, then, is the syntheticity of the a priori?

As we saw now, Kant made his stand concerning information perfectly clear: the only

way in which we can obtain it is by experience. His stand about information was,

therefore, much more extreme than Locke’s, the founder of the new empiricism of the

scientific revolution( see previous section). Kant resisted any crack in the principle of

informativity: the only way to obtain information about the content of phenomena is

the empirical way:

How anything can be altered, and how it should be possible that upon one

state in a given moment an opposite state may follow in the next moment - of

this we have not, a priori, the least conception. For that we require knowledge

of actual forces, which can only be given empirically, as, for instance, of the

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moving forces, or what amounts to the same thing, of certain successive

appearances, as motions, which indicate such forces. (ibid)

So if we possess non-empiric a priori cognitions, the only possible meaning of this is

that they are cognitions about the mere form of experience, and do not contain any

cognition about its content. Form is not content, and only because of that it can be

known a priori.

The question which we have now to solve is - is there not contradiction

between the fact that the principles a priori are “synthetic” and empiricism’s principle

of informativity? We have to understand, in other words, what was the meaning of

Kant’s answer to this question, when he said: the synthetic a priori principles do not

describe anything except the form of experience, or, in other words - they apply only

to the phenomena (experience). We have to understand also why these two were for

Kant different formulations of the same idea. Why for the principles to apply only to

the phenomena and not to the world in itself; to signify only the form of phenomena

and not their contents; to constitute only the condition of the possibility of experience

– why all these are the same explanation to the same fact, that the a priori principles

are synthetic but do not contain any information about the world.

These explanations must show that the “syntheticity” of the principles is

linked to the fact that they are mere form, conditions of the possibility only, of the

phenomena only. But what exactly is the link? Kant failed to explain this crucial point

in any detail, and thereby caused a strange confusion in the interpretations given to

his theory since the second half of the 19th century until today, and another confusion

in our understanding of the essence of the philosophy of science in our century.

The first confusion caused philosophers to hold that the scientific revolution

in the 20th century refuted Kant’s philosophy, an opinion accepted by practically

25


everybody even today. The second confusion resulted from the first, and consists in

the widely spread belief that Einstein’s and Bohr’s and Heisenberg’s scientific

revolutions established an anti-Kantian philosophy of science.

These confusions had their root in an error about the meaning of syntheticity

of the principles in Kant’s theory — because contrary to the clarifications which Kant

himself pronounced, as we saw, the syntheticity of the principles was taken as

informativity. And this mistake was made possible for two reasons. First, Kant used

the word “synthetic” in at least three distinct senses, but failed to point this out.

Second, he was careful not to explain the link between the syntheticity of the

principles and their being merely the form and merely conditions of possibility and

merely applicable to the phenomena. I’ll sketch out now these two sources of present

day confusion.

3.1.10. Syntheticity and informativity - the great confusion

The ( at least) three different concepts Kant denoted by the single term “synthetic”

(failing even to point this out) were these. In one sense a judgment is synthetic if the

predicate is not included in the subject. In another sense it is synthetic when it is not

“clarificatory” but rather “ampliative”. And yet another sense of “synthetic” is

informative about the world. The first sense is a necessary condition for the rest, and

the second sense is a necessary condition for the third. But neither is a sufficient

condition for the others. Thus, not every “ampliative” judgment is also informative,

and this was the crucial detail which Kant failed to point out to his readers. For

example, definitions for him are synthetic, since the subject does not contain the

predicate, not having existed at all prior to the definition. Hence, a definition is

synthetic in the first sense and therefore also in the second - the definition “amplifies”

26


in the trivial sense of adding the predicate to the subject. But it is not necessarily also

informative about the world. For if concepts do not exist separately, then no

information about the world can be supplied by the definition. And since Kant in fact

held such ontology about concepts, the fact that definitions are “ampliative” says

nothing about their informativity. Consequently, he didn’t bother to point out the

difference between the syntheticity of principles a priori and that of principles a

posteriori. But he obviously distinguished between them, for he explicitly stated, as

we saw, that only a judgment a posteriori can be informative, thus making it clear

that he regarded all his principles a priori non-informative. This is where he also

made his distinction between merely formal and contentual (or material) syntheticity.

Thus, when the synthetic is a priori, it is non-informative and “merely formal”. All

the synthetic a priori principles, i.e., all pure mathematics and science of nature, do

not carry information about the world, though they are synthetic.

Now, this was a distinction which he clarified and emphasized only in the

Prolegomena, but kept it invisible in the Critique. And what led to this neglect was

his focusing on another matter - the applicability of concepts and judgments. It was

clear to him that these are meaningful just in case they can be applied in experience,

and that this is possible only if we have some “intuition”, some kind of experience,

which includes and exemplifies them.

Thus, only because we have pure intuition which contains the concept

“triangle” can we apply it also in our sense-experience, and only thus is it meaningful

to us. A concept like “biangle” is meaningless for us, although it is not self-

contradictory, for it can not be included in any intuition and so cannot be applied in

sense-experience. This insight he formulated in “the principle of synthetic judgments”

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which declares that what serves as the ground for any synthetic judgment is some

intuition linking the subject to the predicate (Critique B195).

The gist of his message here was that since the truth of a synthetic judgment

cannot be grounded in an analysis of its concepts, it must be grounded in some

experience. In the case of an empirical judgment, this is some sense-experience. He

concluded that this is also case concerning any a priori judgment, i.e., this must be

still based on an experience, but a non-sensual one, and he called it pure vision, or

“intuition”. The typical example is our intuition of some geometrical object and

concept, e.g., triangle. We possess this special faculty which enables us to activate

our pure vision and construct in it any triangle and make various constructions and

pure experiments with it and then derive from this pure experience several

conclusions about triangles. The object we then construct is neither right angled nor

acute nor flat angled, but is rather a superposition of these. Kant argued, accordingly,

that this pure experience is the ground of all geometrical theorems and proofs.

And, since such pure intuition is the only guarantee that a concept is

meaningful for us and that it is applicable to sense experience, its absence indicates

that the concept is meaningless for us, even though the concept may still be free from

internal contradiction and so denote some logically possible realm of objects.

But what all this implied was exactly what caused Kant to write the

Prolegomena in order to disperse all doubts in this matter: what could mistakenly be

taken to be implied in this “principle of synthetic judgments” was that synthetic a

priori judgments are just as informative as synthetic a posteriori ones. And it was in

order to avert just this error, that Kant in the Prolegomena clarified the informativity

situation: even though intuition is the ground of all synthetic judgments, still the fact

that those that are a priori are grounded in pure intuition only, immediately entails

28


that they are non-informative about the world. This was what he declared in his

formality thesis - pure intuition is intuition of forms only, and these contain no

contents about the world.

But in spite of what he explained in the Prolegomena, what stamped the

tradition that he generated was the issue of intuition. The conclusion which this

tradition drew was that a refutation of the need and necessity for intuition in

mathematics would also refutes some center pillar of Kant’s philosophy.

And so the emergence of non-Euclidean geometry came to be perceived as a

crushing refutation of the syntheticity thesis because it was clear that pure intuition

loses here its function and yet a certain and exact geometry is constructed. This

“refutation” went on in the rigorization of the calculus by Bolzano, Cauchy,

Weierstrass and Dedekind, for here this branch of pure mathematics was grounded on

definitions and concepts of logic only, without involving any intuition at all.

All this commotion is to be blamed on Kant, for he emphasized in the Critique

one side-issue ─ intuition ─ but completely neglected a central issue ─ the mere

formality, i.e., the strict non-informativity of his synthetic a priori. And all his cries

and protests in the Prolegomena were of no avail. The tradition was shunted into a

side-track from which it never emerged.

Consequently, this allegedly anti-Kantian tradition failed to perceive that in

fact it retraced Kant’s steps one by one in the matter of formality, the informative

vacuity, and all that ensues from them. The formality thesis is independent of the

syntheticity thesis ─ mere formality can just as easily connect with pure

understanding and its concepts as with pure intuition and its objects (and maybe even

more easily).

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What was central to Kant’s philosophy was not the thesis of intuition but

exactly the thesis of formality - since only by its means it succeeded in solving

“Hume’s problem” ─ the central problem of his Critique ─ in all its generality. For

his answer to the question “how is the synthetic a priori possible?” crystallized

around the mere formality of the synthetic a priori with no connection to pure

intuition at all: the synthetic a priori is possible only in so far as it is merely formal,

intuition or not, and to the measure that it is contentual it becomes impossible again

and no intuition or its elimination can prevent this.

This is the reason that instead of refuting Kant, the future evolution of science

kept confirming him more and more until it became finally half-aware of this in its

“linguistic turn”, according to which even what we use to regard as contents are

nothing but form - strictly a by-product of our language.

3.2 A system of non-informativity

3.2.1. Syntheticity of the a priori as a rule of construction

The interpretation that is almost self-evident in this context is that the principles are

“synthetic” not only because they are not analytic, but mainly because they are the

principles of synthesis by which the human mind synthesizes the phenomena out of

the sensations which it receives. The notion that the phenomena are not something

which exists separately from the mind, and the notion that our mind constructs the

phenomena out of the sense “material” which it receives from the outside, these are of

course parts of Kant’s Copernican revolution, but are not its essence. Clearly present

already in Hume’s philosophy, the revolutionary innovation in Kant’s theory was

concentrated in the idea that all that is constant and necessary in the world of

phenomena, such as material objects and laws of nature and mathematics, is so only

30


for one reason – it is merely the product of the synthesis which the human mind

effects by its synthesis-principles

A good example is the logical status of material objects. Continuously with

Hume, Kant made it clear that these are neither given in our perceptions, nor are they

the causes of our perception. His conclusion was that material objects, far from being

the causes of perceptions, are in fact merely their effects, i.e., the effects of our

synthesizing operation:

Neither bodies nor motions are anything outside us; both alike are mere

representations in us and it is not, therefore, the motion of matter that

produces representations in us; the motion itself is representation only, as is

also the matter which makes itself known in this way. (Critique: A387)

Obviously then, this complete subjectivity of the synthesis not only immediately

entails the informative vacuity of the principles but it also clarifies the exact meaning

of their synthetic status: this is the syntheticity which belongs to rules of construction

according to which we build anything. An example will clarify in what way

construction rules are subjective and consequently empty of information, even though

they are not analytic proposition.

Each of the rules of a game, such as chess, is obviously not an analytic

proposition since its subject does not contain its predicate. The reason for this is that

the concept of the subject does not exist at all before this rule was made. And

therefore clearly neither is the negation of a chess rule a self-contradiction. Hence the

rule is synthetic. But it is also necessary and universal, because it is one of the rules

which define or construct the game. The game of chess contains necessarily each of

its rules, and when one of them is replaced by a new and different one, the game is no

longer chess. Obviously the rules of chess are certain, for it is meaningless to doubt

their truth. Another example is the rules of grammar, especially when an artificial

31


language is concerned. All the considerations regarding the rules of chess apply here

as well, and therefore the rules of grammar are synthetic propositions, they are

necessary, universal and certain.

It is easy to see how necessity and certainty emerged in the rules of chess and

grammar as a consequence of their informative emptiness. First, obviously the rules

of chess and of grammar are empty of information. The sign of this is that the rule

that the knight in chess moves in such and such way cannot be false, it is necessarily

true, for since the game has no separate existence from us, it has no possible formal

properties which we did not first install. Only things which possess separate existence

from us can happen to possess aspects hidden from us, properties which are different

and contrary to what we know about them, and therefore each proposition about them

stands a chance of turning out to be false.

It will be agreed, I believe, that all information must be a description which

may be false of some state of things. That is – a proposition is informative only on the

condition that there exists a possible world (i.e., there is a possibility) in which it is

false. The meaning is simple - a proposition contains information about some world

only on the condition that it is possible to imagine it to be false, i.e., it is possible to

imagine or describe a world almost identical to the one we live in, with the sole

difference that it does not contain this proposition. But rules of construction of a

game cannot possibly be different from those we determined, because we decided

what chess is, and therefore any other game is not chess. And in sum, because the

game is non-separate from us, there is no possibility that some day we will discover

another game of chess in which the rules of moving the knight are different, and in

general, a game of chess with a different logical form than ours. This is the reason

why all the rules of any game are necessarily true, i.e., they do not contain any

32


information about things separate from us. The synthetic a priori principles of the

understanding are our rules of construction, according to which we construct for

ourselves our experience. Therefore it is clear that the necessity and certainty in them

spring directly from this meaning of syntheticity as construction or as the

determination of the rules of construction. And therefore, if the principles which Kant

discovered as the foundations of Newtonian scientific thought are indeed rules of

grammar according to which we synthesize the Newtonian experience from the noise

of sense data, then they are necessarily a priori propositions, and their fit to

experience and the phenomena is necessary, as Kant explained (2.3.14-15 below). In

respect of such fit, the principles look, therefore, as part of laws of nature: “these

principles are indeed the laws of nature.” (Prolegomena §25).

But since as a result of the syntheticity in the sense of construction-rules it

follows that the a prioricity of the principles means such necessary fit to experience,

it follows that the necessity with which the phenomena obey the laws of nature, is

essentially different from the necessity by which the phenomena obey the empirical

laws of nature, the laws a posteriori. The necessity of the a priori laws is a logical

necessity, in the sense that they constitute a necessary condition for any cognition,

whereas the necessity of the a posteriori laws is a physical necessity. The crucial

difference between them is their informativity: logical necessity creates a non-

informative link, whereas physical necessity creates an informative one. And

therefore, if indeed the laws of nature are principles a priori, then explaining the

phenomena by their means will be a non-informative explanation. Thus, the

explanation that the stone moves so and so as a consequence of the law of inertia, will

be a logically necessary proposition: there is no logical possibility that the law of

inertia will be synthetic a priori but the stone will not obey it, exactly as there is no

33


logical possibility that in the game of chess the knight will not be moving according

to the rule. And therefore even though the negation of a synthetic a priori principle is

not a self-contradiction, i.e., apparently it is not logically necessary, there is self-

contradiction in the assumption that such a principle can be refuted by facts which are

part of human experience. This experience is a game which proceeds according to

rules created by human mind (i.e., its understanding and sensibility) as a consequence

of its nature. And just as there are no chess games which differ in their rules, so there

is no human experience which is different from what it is now. Obviously there are

other games, and Kant suggested that there may exist an experience of a different

kind for creatures of a different nature. In this respect, nature as synthesized by

human mind is a necessary world. To think another human world is to think a

contradiction.

Kant’s answer to Hume was, therefore, this: the a priori science of nature is

possible only in so far as this science is a synthesis of nature. Because if it is a

synthesis of nature, then it is a complete science and the nature it creates is necessary

and contains no contingency. It is impossible anymore now to suggest that nature

could have been different from what our cognition determined it to be, for then it

would not be given to “cognition” and therefore it would not be “nature” anymore.

What then was the significance of the Kantian revolution for the possible

development of science? For instance, is it possible now to discover geometries that

are different from the one we already know, i.e., Euclidean geometry? As we shall

soon see, Kant argued that it is certainly possible. But if so, how can it also be held,

as it is usually done today, that the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries and their

embedding, during the 20th century, into physics, constitutes a refutation of the whole

of Kant’s philosophy?

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3.2.2. Emptiness and non-Euclidean geometry

Kant used to say that synthetic propositions may obtain “objective reality”, and he

linked this with our “pure intuition” of their contents, i.e., as we describe and draw it

(triangles, circles, lines, numbers etc.) in our imagination. Since mathematics is only

(part of the) rules of synthesis of experience, it is as logically arbitrary as chess: the

only limitation on its construction, except for logical consistency, is our nature. The

difference between the experience constructed or synthesized by the rules of

Euclidean geometry and the one constructed by the rules of non-Euclidean geometry

will be only this: the one will accord with our nature and therefore will possess

“objective reality”, whereas the other will not. And since the bottom line is that it is

our nature that constructs experience and “objective reality” for us, this reality for us

is Euclidean.

What Kant called “objective reality” was what characterizes “real possibility”,

contrary to mere logical possibility. And what shows that a concept denotes a real

possibility is the fact, so he argued, that we are able to imagine it.

It is, indeed, a necessary logical condition that a concept of the possible must

not contain any contradiction; but this is not by any means sufficient to

determine the objective reality of the concept, that is, the possibility of such an

object as is thought through the concept. (Critique A220/ B268)

Non-Euclidean geometry he did not consider “objective reality” even though he

made it clear that he regarded it as non-self-contradictory. And because it contains no

contradiction, it is possible, but this is nothing but logical possibility and not real

possibility. For we are unable to imagine its contents, i.e., we are unable to imagine,

for example, two straight lines which contain an area. That’s why the proposition

(which says they can contain an area) has no “objective reality”:

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Thus there is no contradiction in the concept of a figure which is enclosed

within two straight lines, since the concept of two straight lines and of their

coming together contain no negation of a figure. The impossibility arises not

from the concept in itself, but in connection with its construction in space, that is, from the conditions of space and its determination. ( ibid.)

Therefore, the “objective reality” of a concept is the possibility of a “suitable object”,

and the possibility of an object was identical for Kant with the actual construction

(“in connection with its construction in space” or in time) of the object in “pure

intuition”, i.e., in the special faculty of imagination which we possess of creating for

ourselves an object corresponding to the concept:

To construct a concept means to exhibit a priori the intuition which

corresponds to the object. (Critique: A713 /B741).

This construction of the object in pure intuition is the synthesis of the object

corresponding to the concept, and only such a synthesis is able to show that the

mathematical concept which “the understanding has arbitrarily created” is not “an

empty, objectless concept”. (Letter to Rehberg, Correspondence:167)

3.2.3. Mathematics as construction and definition

Did the physics of our century refute this thesis of Kant by having embedded into

itself non-Euclidean geometry? It is important to see that a central component in our

answer will be the informative emptiness of mathematics. For it is clear that if

mathematics is informatively empty, one geometry cannot refute or contradict

another, exactly as chess cannot refute football. They constitute different worlds

inhabited by creatures of different nature.

We saw that Kant argued that mathematical propositions are a priori because

they are certain, necessary and universal. Let us see now a deeper level in which he

explained why mathematical propositions are such - i.e., what causes them to be a

priori, necessary and certain?

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Kant argued that it is impossible to prove any geometrical axiom, but not

because it is a self-evident truth, but only because it contains nothing but “the

procedure ... through which we first generate the concept” (A234/B287). That is to

say, the axiom is a synthesis of an object in our imagination and the sticking of a

concept onto it. The axiom is not an informative proposition about the world. It is

rather a kind of a definition which constructs an object. Such definitions are not

informative because they cannot possibly be either true or false (if they are

consistent). They are mere syntheses. This is exactly the reason why the negations of

the Euclidean by the non- Euclidean synthesis is not self-contradictory. And the

axioms are not informative, “one thing is not said about another thing”, to use

Aristotle’s and Locke’s words, because there is simply no “other thing” as yet: the

objects about which they speak do not yet exist and therefore, the concepts appearing

in the axioms have no definite contents prior to the axioms and separate from them .

Accordingly, Kant made it clear that the concept “straight line”, for example,

does not contain, in itself, that is, prior to all axioms, the notion of uniformity of

direction or the non- containment of area. And therefore, even such a proposition as

“a straight line can contain an area” is not a self-contradiction, and for the same

reason, i.e., the concept straight line has no definite content prior to its synthesis,

because its object has not yet been constructed. Had such an object existed ahead, the

concept “straight line” would possess a prior content, and then one of the components

of this content could be something like uniformity of direction. Only on this condition

can containing an area be contradictory to this content. And since Kant argued that it

is not a contradiction, he did not think that this is one of the components of the

content of the concept. But this consideration applies equally to any other alleged

property of the straight line. Hence the concept cannot possess any content prior to its

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synthesis by the axiom. In other words, an axiom is the constructive definition of the

mathematical object and is therefore the “first generation of the concept”:

In mathematics a postulate means the practical proposition which contains

nothing save the synthesis through which we first give ourselves an object and

generate its concept ... such a proposition cannot be proved, since the

procedure which it demands is exactly that through which we first generate the

concept of such a figure. (Critique:A234/ B287)

Similarly he argued that he couldn’t see how the concept 12 is contained in the

concept of the sum of 7 and 5, and therefore, he argued, the proposition 12=5+7 is

synthetic. It follows that he would not have seen any self-contradiction in the

proposition 125+7 and this is possible only on the condition that some at least of the

concepts involved here possess no definite content prior to their being here “first

generated”. In other words, there are no ideas which are separate and possess well-

defined contents, which are constant and eternal, and which our intuition scans and

reports about them in the axioms of mathematics. There are no Platonic ideas separate

from us, just as there are no Cartesian or Lockean ideas in our minds. The principles

of mathematics are true only in virtue of being syntheses, i.e., constructive definitions

of concepts and their corresponding objects. They are true, therefore, exactly as

definitions are true according to Aristotle, i.e., just as propositions are true in which

one thing is not said about another thing.

Kant asked - if the triangle about which the theorems of geometry speak were

something that exists separately from our thought about it, how were it then possible

to say that what exists in our understanding as a necessary component of the triangle

exists also necessarily in that separate triangle itself? (Critique A48/ B65). If space

were separate from our form of intuition, we could never possess any a priori yet not

analytic judgements about the objects given to us (Critique A48/B66). This entails

that space and time “are nothing but the subjective conditions” of intuition as the

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necessary forms of every possible experience (A48/B66). And so there are no

geometric objects which exist separately from our subjectivity, and the objective

reality which a geometrical objects possesses is such only for us, and only because it

was constructed by us in our pure intuition, i.e., according to the subjective conditions

which we enforce upon it.

3.2.4. Mathematics as an “arbitrary synthesis”

When Kant proceeded to explain why the principles of pure understanding are limited

to experience only, and why there is no way of discovering information a priori, he

took time to explain why it appears to us that mathematics is informative, even

though it is a priori. We think that in mathematics we produce knowledge out of

given concepts, but in fact this is not so - rather “mathematical knowledge is the

knowledge gained by reason from the construction of concepts”. (Critique

A713/B741). This “construction” of the concept is in fact the construction of the

object corresponding to it, and this object we construct a priori in our intuition, and it

has to be general even though it is a “single object”, i.e., it must “express universal

validity for all possible intuitions which fall under the same concept” (ibid). And

because mathematics constructs its objects a priori, “in imagination alone, in pure

intuition, or in accordance therewith also on paper in empirical intuition” (ibid.) it can

represent the universal by the particular, and so gain knowledge about it:

When the concept is mathematical, as in the concept of a triangle, I am in a

position to construct the concept, that is, to give it a priori in intuition, and in

this way to obtain knowledge which is at once synthetic and rational. (Critique A722/B750)

But such a priori knowledge is possible, Kant continued, only because it belongs to

the “formal element of sense experience” (i.e., and not to the sensible material

element) and

39


as regards the formal element, we can determine our concepts in a priori intuition, in as much as we create for ourselves in space and time, through a

homogeneous synthesis, the objects themselves. (Critique A723/B751)

And so, only because the mathematical concepts are not given, but we create them a

priori by constructing objects in pure intuition, we can know about them with

certainty, but not beyond the mere concepts. Kant explained that because it now

follow that it is impossible to similarly define the concepts of experience but it is also

impossible to define concepts which are not experiential if they are already given to

us a priori, (because then their contents are fixed ahead,) it follows also that the only

concepts which are thus definable

are arbitrarily invented concepts. A concept which I have invented I can

always define; for since it is not given to me either by the nature of

understanding or by experience, but is such as I have myself deliberately

made it to be, I must know what I have intended to think in using it. (Ibid.:

A729/B755)

And now it becomes clear, that when he used the verb “create” or “construct” in order

to describe the manner in which mathematical concepts are determined, Kant meant

exactly this – creation out of nothing which, therefore, is not limited by any prior

content of the concept. As a consequence of this special nature of mathematical

concepts, real definitions, i.e., definitions which determine the content completely

(their properties are clear and adequate) are possible only in mathematics. And so,

doubt about their truth is impossible. Kant explained that such “determination” is not

derived from anything else and therefore is in no need of proof. Such “complete and

original” definitions are possible only on one condition - they must be completely

arbitrary:

And so there remains, therefore, no concept which allows of definition except

only those which allow but arbitrary synthesis which admits of a priori construction. Consequently mathematics is the only science that has

40


definitions. For the objects which it thinks, it exhibits a priori in intuition, and

this object cannot contain either more or less than the concept, since it is

through the definition that the concept of the object is given - and given

originally, that is, without its being necessary to derive the definition from any

other source. (Ibid.: A730/B758)

This arbitrariness of the synthesis, through which the concepts and objects of

mathematics are constructed, is what is unique to the mathematical a priori. As a

consequence of this it is clear that all the content of the concept is created by the

definition:

In mathematics, on the other hand, we have no concept whatsoever prior to

the definition, through which the concept itself is first given.(ibid.:A731/B759).

And because this arbitrariness entails that all the contents of the concept is given by

its definition, it is meaningless to raise the possibility of an error in the definition:

Mathematical definitions can never be in error. For since the concept is first

given through the definition, it includes nothing except precisely what the

definition intends should be understood by it. (Ibid.)

It may be important to underline the fact that Kant regarded this arbitrary creation of

the concepts of mathematics as the special significance of its syntheticality, and the

clearest evidence that its definitions are not analyses of concepts, i.e., are not

analytical. For analysis of a concept is possible only if its content is already fixed, but

as a result, he explained, every analysis can be mistake. And therefore whereas

“analytic definitions can be mistaken in many ways” “no error can enter into the

content of a synthetic definition, i.e., the creative definition of mathematics.

Consequently, even though Kant used to refer to mathematical propositions as

knowledge a priori, he also made it clear that it is not real knowledge, because it

belongs merely to the form of phenomena, i.e., it contains no information about the

world but merely about the possibility of its appearances. And knowledge of mere

possibilities is not real knowledge:

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Through the determination of pure intuition we can acquire a priori knowledge

of objects, as in mathematics, but only in regard to their form, as appearances;

whether there can be things which must be intuited in that form, is still left

undecided. Mathematical concepts are not, therefore, by themselves, knowledge except on the supposition that there are things which allow of

being presented to us only in accordance with the form of that

intuition ...consequently, the pure concepts of understanding, even when they

are applied to a priori intuitions, as in mathematics, yield knowledge only in so

far as these intuitions - and therefore indirectly by their means the pure

concepts also - can be applied to empirical intuitions. (ibid.:B147)

In such passages (and many similar ones) Kant made it clear that he regarded the

necessity and certainty of pure mathematics as entailed by the fact that it does not

constitute information (“cognition”, “knowledge”). It seems that this pure formality,

this informative emptiness about the content of phenomena and the way in which

mathematics determines all its concepts arbitrarily – are different aspects of one

thing: the arbitrariness of the concept determination springs from this that they are

constructed or created “originally”, i.e., without any model; the fact that such

syntheses are a priori is the same fact; and the informative emptiness is again another

side of the same fact. And therefore, the model-less construction is a definite criterion

for informative emptiness, be it a construction of concepts, or of their objects, or of

experience according to these concepts.

But this is exactly the case also regarding the synthetic a priori principles, i.e.,

the general laws of nature. And therefore, the source of their certainty and necessity

may possibly be also the fact that these laws are a kind of definitions which construct

their concepts. There is no way of evading this conclusion if “awakening from the

dogmatic slumber” was the recognition that there just is no model (“dogma”)

separately from us to which the general laws of nature must correspond. But Kant

failed to argue this case with the same clarity he explained the status of mathematics.

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Instead we have his sharp declaration concerning the non existence of a pre-existent

model to which the laws of nature must correspond. This thesis may be called “man

legislating to nature” and its presentation intends to serve as a clear cut evidence for

the claim that Kant held that the source of certainty and necessity of the general laws

of nature is the fact that they define and construct all the natural objects to which they

refer. It follows at once that not only the criterion but also the only possible meaning

of scientific truth is internal coherence. A new harmony now appeared in the world of

philosophy.

3.2.5. Nature as a story and a unified dream

It followed now that since it is possible to know a priori the laws of nature, they

cannot possibly be informative, and hence that they are solely the product of the

mind, i.e., that man creates the phenomena of nature in a way similar to the one he

creates the facts of mathematics:

The main proposition expounded throughout this section - that universal laws

of nature can be distinctly cognised a priori - leads naturally to the proposition:

that the highest legislation of nature must lie in ourselves, i.e., in our

understanding, and that we must not seek the universal laws of nature in

nature, by means of experience, but conversely must seek nature, as to its

universal conformity to law, in the conditions of the possibility of experience,

which lie in our sensibility and in our understanding. (Prolegomena: §36)

That is to say, the essence of experience are the pure laws of nature, and its origin is

the understanding in which they reside, and only because of this can they be

discovered and disposed a priori, independently of any experience.

Thus Kant answered two questions - how is a pure science of nature possible,

and how is nature itself, as experience regulated by universal laws, possible. He

answered both with the same formula - the universal laws of nature are a priori

because they are restricted to experience and do not concern the thing in itself. It is

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important therefore to see that this formula implicitly contains the whole detailed

answer, i.e., since the universal laws of nature are limited to the phenomena only,

they are also what creates the phenomena, exactly as the author creates his narrative

and its persona:

The understanding does not derive its laws (a priori) from, but prescribes it to

nature. (Ibid.)

And so that we may have no doubt that this description (the “dictation” of laws to

nature by the understanding) is not metaphoric at all but that it is meant simpliciter,

Kant introduced a detailed example. The circle by its nature is such that straight lines

cutting it are cut into segments inside and outside it in a constant ratio. Kant asked:

Does this law lie in the circle or in the understanding, that is, does this figure

independently of the understanding, contain in itself the ground of the law, or

does the understanding, having constructed according to its concepts

(according to the equality of the radii) the figure itself, introduce into it this law

of the cords cutting one another in geometrical proportion? (Ibid: 38)

And then he asked a parallel question in regard to Newton’s law of gravitation,

“which seems to be necessarily inherent in the very nature of things, and hence is

usually propounded as cognizable a priori”:

Do the laws of nature lie in space and does the understanding learn them by

merely endeavouring to find out the enormous wealth of meaning that lies in

space; or do they inhere in the understanding and in the way in which it

determines space according to the conditions of the synthetical unity in which

its concepts are all centered? (Ibid)

And his answer to both questions was that space is so homogeneous and lacking in

determination, that there is no sense in looking into it for the source of the laws of

nature and therefore,

that which determines space to assume the form of a circle or the figures of a

cone and a sphere is the understanding, so far as it contains the ground of the

unity of their constructions. (Ibid.)

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The understanding is the source of the laws of nature, such as the law of gravitation,

because only thus is it possible to explain what Kant called “the unity of nature”, i.e.,

the fact that the nature which appears in experience is not a chaotic formless buzz of

perceptions but is rather solid and steady entity well-connected by lawfulness into a

coherent structure. This unity, the Kantian heir to the Copernican harmony, will

assume the roles of this harmony, with the crucial difference that now it is the product

of human understanding:

The unity of the object is entirely determined by the understanding, and on

conditions which lie in its own nature; and thus the understanding is the origin

of the universal order of nature, in that it comprehends all appearances under

its own laws, and thereby first constructs, a priorily, experience (as to its form),

by means of which whatever is to be cognized only by experience, is

necessarily subjected to its laws. ... the understanding, whilst it makes

experience possible, thereby insisting that the sensuous world is either not an

object of experience at all or must be nature.(ibid)

Nature is possible exactly for the same reason that the science of nature is possible –

because nature is mere phenomena and the pure science of nature is merely the formal

laws of phenomena, and the phenomena get their form by the understanding which

constructs them according to its own inherent laws. The world in itself as well as the

homogeneous space are formless entities, lacking in “determination”. It is only the

human understanding that confers upon them their forms, their natures, their lives.

And so they obey it by necessity because it refuses to accept into its realm anything

which has not adopted itself to its rules absolutely. Just so the author forces his

stories and persona upon his world, and his will and imagination upon his stories and

persona, by an absolute forcing: either there is no experience or experience will be

nature, i.e., a unified and coherent entity.

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3.2.6. Man legislates to nature

Kant made this issue crystal clear in the first edition of his Critique. And since this

edition became later on modified, it might be useful to bring out the relevant texts in

their fullness:

Thus the order and regularity in the appearances which we entitle “nature” we

ourselves introduce. We could never find them in appearances, had not we

ourselves, or the nature of our mind, originally set them there. (Critique A 125)

“The order and regularity” express the lawfulness of the phenomena, and therefore

“nature” as containing necessary connections. Since this necessity does not reveal

itself in a posteriori phenomena, and since Kant held that we must not assume “a pre-

established harmony” between the creatures of our mind and nature, it followed for

him that the only possibility of explaining the existence of nature, is the legislation

which the understanding legislates to it:

The highest of the laws of nature, under which the others all stand, issue a priori from the understanding itself. They are not borrowed from experience;

on the contrary they have to confer upon appearances their conformity to law,

and so to make experience possible. Thus the understanding is something

more than a power of formulating rules in comparison of appearances; it is

itself the law giver of nature. (Ibid.: A126)

The conclusion that the understanding is “the law giver of nature” explained for Kant

the fact that nature constitutes a unity which is expressed not only in the necessary

connections between separate things, but also in the interaction between all the parts

of phenomena. Such interaction became, therefore, the highest law of nature which

the understanding legislates, and this image of unified nature became central in his

philosophy:

Save through the understanding, nature, that is, synthetic unity of the manifold

of appearances according to rules, would not exist at all (for appearances, as

such, cannot exist outside us - they exist only in our sensibility); and this

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nature, as object of knowledge in an experience, with everything which it may

contain, is only possible in the unity of apperception. (Ibid: A127)

Kant knew well the danger in these conclusions, but he could not give them up, at

least in the first edition of the Critique and in the Prolegomena:

However exaggerated and absurd it may sound, to say that the understanding

is itself the source of the laws of nature, and so of its formal unity, such an

assertion is nonetheless correct, and is in keeping with the object to which it

refers, namely, experience.(ibid)

But we can see now that the first thesis, that the laws of mathematics and of nature

are synthetic a priori, could not but issue in such an “exaggerated and absurd” thesis

– these two are just different formulations of the same thesis, if explaining the world

cannot use anymore the assumption that it was created by an infinite understanding

and power: if the world contains necessity (unity, lawfulness, order) and if necessity

cannot link separate objects (as Hume argued), then it was introduced into the world

from outside, and since not by anything like an omnipotent god, then by some other

mind which created it - human mind.

3.2.7. Internalizing truth - demolishing the bridge to reality

Kant’s Copernican revolution ended, therefore, with a harmony ruling the world but

now it was a harmony of new kind - it was not the “best artisan of all” who created it

but a minor artisan. And because it is the human mind that creates the unity of nature

and also knows it and produces this cognition as mathematics and physical science,

it follows that this harmony has no other source – the harmony we come to know in

physical science and the harmony which we project upon nature are one and the same

harmony, just as our knowledge and our projection are one and the same action.

Within this framework an error in our knowledge of nature becomes meaningless –

just as there is no separate and prior model so there is no meaning to such possible

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error. And therefore, harmony stops serving as a criterion of truth, and becomes now

the only possible definition of truth. And obviously this is truth of a new kind - it is

characterized completely by the harmonic fit of all the parts of the “system” to each

other. Kant’s Copernican revolution ended, therefore, with the appearance of the

“coherence” concept of truth of the “system” of the world which the understanding

creates as the synthetic unity of perception. Kant formulated this conclusion in the

same passage that introduced the thesis of the internality of all human thought, a

thesis that was to fixate thought for the next two centuries:

But pure reason is a sphere so separate and self-contained, that we cannot

touch a part without affecting all the rest. We can therefore do nothing without

first determining the position of each part, and its relation to the rest; for, as our

judgment cannot be corrected by anything without, the validity and use of

every part depends upon the relation in which it stands to all the rest within the

domain of reason. So also in the structure of an organized body, the end of

each member can only be deduced from the full conception of the whole.

(Prolegomena: p14)

We observe here Kant’s introduction of the notion of being “inside” a conceptual

system, along with the thesis that for our conceptual system nothing “outside” it is

relevant to it. Since this system is a “self-contained and separate sphere”, it creates all

the concepts and their meanings from within and so there is nothing against which to

compare and test them. Since meanings are strictly internal, they depend only on each

other and so there cannot be any external and independent standard for the truth of the

propositions of this “self-contained sphere”. The truth-value of each principle and

judgment of pure reason, and so of any proposition of the pure science of nature, is

fixed within this sphere only and depends only on its fit with all its other

propositions. Thus was created the modern model of internal truth, the thesis of the

impossibility of apprehending from the outside, and the vile notion that we are stuck

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hopelessly inside the cocoon of our conceptual system and are logically unable to

think and understand otherwise than we actually do. The “incommensurability”

thesis, i.e., that different theories lack any common measure and so are unable to

mesh in an intelligent dispute, will be adopted first by Hilbert and then by the logical

positivists, leading to the peak of absurdity in Quine and Kuhn.

Kant did not formulate this conclusion in the Critique but in his Lectures on

Logic he presented a similar argument, even though without a clear commitment, and

without a conceptual connection with the Critique. This being the case, the argument

fits any philosophy, but its special importance is in the fact that it is necessarily

entailed by Kant’s philosophy:

now I can compare the object with my cognition only by cognizing it. My

cognition thus shall confirm itself, which is yet far from sufficient for truth. For

since the object is outside me and the cognition in me, I can judge only whether my cognition of the object agrees with my cognition of the object. (Logic: 55)

Truth as correspondence to an external object is a possible only in so far as this object

has properties separate from our cognition, as the standard potentialist (Descartes,

Locke, Newton) argues. But Kant rejected this. And therefore truth cannot be a

relation to an external object in his philosophy. Truth is necessarily a property

internal to a system of cognitions, a relation of internal consistency or “coherence”.

This argument (or “such a circle in explanation called dialelus”, ibid.) will appear

within a short while in the tradition that arose out of Kant, and it will constitute the

philosophical core of logical positivism and of the later Wittgenstein.

3.2.8. Flight from madness

In so far as possible, we choose confusion over madness. This is a standard human

preference, and is itself a sign of our sanity. When confusion intensifies we flee from

49


it – to madness. The transition is continuous and imperceptible, and the clear sign to

its having fruited is that there is no more contingency in our world, everything clicks

into place, coherence is complete.

Kant too preferred confusion most of his life. And therefore he could not rest

with the idea that human understanding is the highest legislator to nature, an idea in

which madness shows so clearly. Our natural dogmatism, which is the representative

of common sense, revolts against such an idea in the name of sanity, and Kant

expressed it clearly when he declared that even though our understanding is the

supreme legislator to nature, such legislation could not have been possible if nature

did not contain by itself and in itself some kind of order. And when, in the wake of

the first edition of the Critique he was perceived by his readers as just a complicated

version of Berkeley and Hume, he hastened to reduce the volume of his declarations

about the legislating reason in the popular summary which he published, the

Prolegomena, and two years later, towards the publication of the second edition of

the Critique, he purified it of most of the offending passages of the kind quoted

above. This urge for sanity received expression in the increased confusion in his

Critique of Judgement, published three years later. Here he explained that the success

of reason in legislating for nature depends maybe on the world more than he had

thought until now. For it is not at all necessary

that nature is, in terms of its empirical laws, a system which the human

cognitive power can grasp, and that the form of systematic coherence of its

appearances in an experience, and hence experience itself as a system, is

possible for human beings. For the empirical laws might be so diverse and

heterogeneous that... we could never bring these empirical laws themselves

under a common principle and so to the unity characteristic of kinship. We

would be unable to do this if ... the laws as well as the natural forms

conforming to them, were infinitely diverse and heterogeneous and manifested

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themselves to us as a crude chaotic aggregate without the slightest trace of a

system. (First introduction to the Critique of Judgement:397-8)

This appears also with small changes in the introduction he did publish. But doubts of

this kind cannot be solved by yet another transcendental principle, as Kant chose to

do here, a principle a priori which declares that nature will continue to appear as

coherent also in its empirical laws. Not only this but the pure formality of the pure

laws of understanding is now at doubt - because it is possible now to conceive of

some nature in itself so chaotic that no a priori legislation would be able to make it

coherent. And therefore it follows that such a legislation is possible not because it is

purely formal, as Kant until now argued, but because its content corresponds exactly

to the self-content of nature. The whole Kantian enterprise and its Copernican

revolution were now implicitly but clearly denied and rejected by this argument.

Kant showed here for one brief moment his doubts and the confusion which never let

go, and then repressed them again. The idea of the systematic unity and coherence as

the essence of truth remained to rule over thought.

But from now on the uniqueness of the harmony will lose its significance -

because if there is no model to which truth is supposed to correspond, there is no

possible reason for the parts of the world not to be arranged by human mind in

various different harmonies, each as coherent as the other. Coherence truth, as against

truth as correspondence or a copy of a model, cannot logically differentiate between

“right” coherence and “wrong” one. Every order, every “system”, every organization

will be equally true. The slippery slope was now ready, and thought began sliding

along with increasing acceleration.

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3.3. Critical Idealism and Actualistic Ethics

3.3.1. Actualistic ethics

If the only real things are those given in our experience, as the actualsitic thesis

claims, then all the rest of the things about which we talk are mere fictions and have

no reality. Thus, for example, not merely space and time and motion but also laws of

nature are fictitious entities. Their only existence is subjective, like the sweet and pain

and red. Therefore, all sciences, from mathematics through physics to psychology, are

equally structures dealing with pseudo-explanations which cannot claim any

informativity. All sciences are tautological or empty of information in so far as they

explain, but in so far as they do not explain but merely describe and organize the

phenomena, their information is absolutely subjective.

But this actualistic thesis leads to yet one more step – if laws of nature lack

any reality, obviously no reality can be attributed to the laws of ethics apart from the

merely subjective core which they express. The conclusion that actualistic ethics must

be merely subjectivist was first perceived by Hume, and even though both Kant and

Hegel made some efforts, each in his own way, to cover up this result, it keeps

popping up after a short enquiry, and the ethical nihilism entailed by it cannot be

hidden.

3.3.2. Hume’s ethical nihilism

Following his analysis of the causal law, Hume clarified that there can be no

distinction between force and its action (see p.106 above). Thus neither is there any

meaning for the actualist in the distinction between the value, the will, and the action.

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All of these are just one entity and no internal division is possible here, since this

entity is just the action itself. And thus, in an analysis which replicated that of the

idea of necessary connection, Hume proceeded to show that the moral value “evil” is

nothing separate from our feelings:

But can there be any difficulty in proving, that vice and virtue are not matters of

fact, whose existence we can infer by reason? Take any action allowed to be

vicious: willful murder for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can

find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call “vice”. In whichever

way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts.

There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you as

long as you consider the object. You never can find it, till you turn your

reflection into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which

arises in you, towards this action. Here is a matter of fact; but it is the object of

feeling, not of reason. It lies in yourself, not in the object. So that when you

pronounce any action or character to be vicious, you mean nothing, but that

from the constitution of your nature you have a feeling or sentiment of blame

from the contemplation of it. (Treatise:468-9)

Exactly as there is no fact in the world which is the necessary connection, and

consequently it is nothing separate from the “determination of the mind”, just so there

is nothing factual in the world which can be denoted by vice, separately from our

feeling of “disapprobation”. Consequently, Hume went on, all moral values are

merely subjective states which do not correspond to any object or fact which are

separate from us, and therefore their status is exactly that of secondary qualities:

Vice and virtue, therefore, may be compared to sounds, colours, heat and

cold, which, according to modern philosophy, are not qualities in objects, but

perceptions in the mind: and this discovery in morals, like that other in physics,

is to be regarded as a considerable advancement of the speculative sciences.

(ibid:469)

The inevitable conclusion, which Hume avoided mentioning, is that this “discovery”

and the practical meaning of this “considerable advancement” is that actualistic ethics

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cannot possibly be normative, since any value judgment taken as the justification of

action becomes an empty or identical proposition. For the moral value is now

identical to the will, the will to the action, hence the moral value and action are

necessarily identical. To explain then that the action was done because it is good

means strictly to say that the action was done because it was done. An immediate

consequence is that any action is good or virtuous for whoever did it, since we

logically cannot possibly will, and therefore do, things which are evil in our eyes.

And so, any moral judgment of anyone except the actor cannot possibly be significant

or meaningful for him, whereas all his actions fully correspond (since they are

identical) to his judgments. There is therefore no “measure” according to which a

person can direct his actions.

But since a society of people can survive only when there is some kind of

coordination between their actions, and such coordination cannot be moral, as we

saw, it follows that any such coordination and the establishment of a live society can

come about only by a force which compels people to act according to some laws and

not according to their wills and passions. There is no place, therefore, for argument

and philosophical consideration concerning good and evil, and the only master is

force. This was Hume’s conclusion - reason has no role in our practical life, and in

fact it serves merely as the slave of sentiment, and so too should be the case:

Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions, and can never

pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. (ibid: 415)

Passion then is the force which determines action, and similarly there must be some

kind of force which determines the social coordination of actions. Such force is

necessarily the only thing that can possibly create such a coordination. Actualism

must finish in this conclusion - moral values are “fiction of the imagination”, and the

only fact that really exists is the action done as a consequence of force or passion that

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compelled doing it. Hume’s actualism starts as an innocent argument concerning

commonsense about the non-reality of the theoretical entities of physics and

mathematics, which implies scientific nihilism, and it necessarily ends with an

absolute moral nihilism and in a justification of force and passion dominating over

reason. A reflection of this actualistic ontology is its theory of explanation - since

there are no laws or forces in physics, all its explanations are necessarily empty of

information, and since there are no laws or values in ethics, all ethical judgements are

necessarily empty of normativity and therefore are disguised identity statements.

Informational emptiness leads to normative emptiness and this leads to the actual

primacy of force and passions in our world. This is the strongest justification ever

created for the ethics of the Mafia, of the SS, and of murder squads all over the

world.

3.3.3. Kant awakens from his ethical slumbers

Even though we do not know about Kant’s awakening from a “dogmatic slumbers” in

his ethical theory, the Kantian ethical theory is indeed the inevitable conclusion of the

actualism which was the essence of Kant’s revolution. This claim might sound very

strange, for seemingly Kant’s theory of ethics is the contrary pole from Hume’s

ethical nihilism. But even a short analysis will show that there is no such negation

possible, and that in fact it does not exist. Kant’s ethical theory was an obvious

nihilistic ethics, and the declaration with which Kant opened his analysis hints at this:

It is impossible to think of anything at all in the world, or indeed even beyond it,

that could be considered good without limitation except a good will. (Groundwork: 49)

Hence, there is no meaning or existence of the good in itself, the good as a value,

neither within this world nor outside it. What exists and therefore can only be

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meaningful as such a good, is something human, which is inseparate from man, i.e.,

his will. This is the first and crucial step in Kant’s actualism and all the rest will be

derived from this. And the first thing that was already derived from it is the emptiness

of this thesis: obviously not every will is an embodiment of the good, if there are bad

and vicious wills. What, then, distinguishes between them and the embodiment of the

good? If there is nothing outside man that is the good and in comparison to which it is

possible to say that this will is good, it follows at once that the good will is its own

criterion. Hence the emptiness of the thesis: obviously all it says is merely that the

good will is absolutely good because only it is the absolutely good. The main thing

remains hidden: what is that property which singles out any will as good? To this

question not only would Kant never respond but, moreover, he never undertook to

deal with it.

However, he emphasized quite clearly, in order to remove any doubt, that the

good will is good independently of the consequences or benefits caused by it, “not

because of what it effects or accomplishes, not because of its fitness to attain some

proposed end”. Moreover even if this will could no way be accomplished,

nevertheless “like a jewel, it would still shine by itself, as something that has its full

worth in itself. Usefulness or fruitfulness can neither add anything to this worth nor

take anything away from it “ (ibid: 50). And to sum up this emphasis we may use

Kant’s declaration that the good will is only good “because of its volition, that is, it is

good in itself and, regarded for itself” (ibid: 50).

The feature that characterizes the good will as good is its “absoluteness”: will

is the only thing that is good in every respect, independently of any respect. This is

the meaning of the words “in itself” - it is not good in one respect but bad in

another, as all the rest of the good things in our world. As will become immediately

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clear, this is also the property which constitutes the whole content of the good. All the

rest of the properties about to emerge will not be contents.

Among the peculiar consequences of this fact, is the conclusion that the good

will would continue being good even if all the consequences following from it are

bad. For if there is no further content in goodness except its absoluteness, it is quite

possible that Hitler’s will was good will, and then it was absolute good even though it

caused directly genocide, murder of children and women, devilish tortures,

destruction of whole cultures and civilizations etc. As we know, most of the German

nation viewed the matter exactly thus: Hitler’s will was the good will, and all the

results, be they terrible as they may, detract nothing from this absolute goodness of

Hitler’s will.

Though no more contents will be added to this absolute good, Kant

formulated three necessary conditions that an action must satisfy in order to be

regarded as morally good. First, it must be done out of awareness or consciousness of

the duty in doing it (and not just because of tendency, or pleasure, or benefit etc, even

though these do not detract). This awareness of duty Kant called the “moral content”

of the action (ibid: 53), and we’ll return to it soon. The second necessary condition is

that the action was done according to a principle or a rule. And therefore, the “moral

value” of an action is independent, as we saw, of its consequences, but is dependent

only on the quality of the principle that leads the will. And these two conditions Kant

summed up in the third necessary condition – the duty, in consequence of which the

action was done, is the necessity to act out of respect for the law.

But as long as we do not know the content of the principle according to which

the will must direct itself and of the law out of respect to which the action is

necessitated, we do not know what is the content that turns the will into a good will.

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As long as we do not know these contents, any principle and any law could be what

turns any will into the absolute good. In other words, the conditions which Kant

formulated for an action to be moral and the will to it as absolute good, are merely

formal conditions, containing no content. And therefore, this supreme good – the

good will – is not delimited by any contents, for the time being. At this stage it is

sufficient, for example, for a mass-murderer to have acted out of respect for some law

and for his will to have been determined by some principle – for this law and these

actions to become absolute good.

3.3.4 The pure formality of Kant’s moral principles

And here emerges a fascinating fact: Kant’s indeed regarded the moral principle as

mere form. Moreover, he regarded the mere formality of the principle as entailed by

the absoluteness of the will, i.e., by the fact that the consequences of the action lack

any weight regarding the morality of will. His considerations were, approximately,

these: since the good action is acted out of respect for duty and law, its ethical content

cannot be determined by outcomes. Such considerations of outcomes Kant called “a

posteriori principles”, and so it resulted that the good will must be determined strictly

by an a priori principle. But exactly as the a posteriori is a matter of content, so the a

priori is merely a formal affair:

For, the will stands between its a priori principle, which is formal, and its a posteriori incentive, which is material, as at a cross-roads; and since it must

still be determined by something, it must be determined by the formal principle

of volition as such when an action is done from duty, where every material

principle has been withdrawn from it. (Ibid:55)

The a priori principle and law according to which the will is determined Kant called a

“categorial imperative” because this is an imperative of pure reason and therefore

cannot be “hypothetical”, i.e., it is not conditioned by any experience and is not

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aimed at the attainment of any target. The meaning of “categorical” is, approximately,

“absolute”. Even though this absolute imperative is a priori, it is not analytical but a

“practical synthetic judgement”, Kant argued, because the link “that connects it

immediately with the concept of the will of a rational being is something that is not

contained in it” (ibid:72). Since the categorical imperative is created by pure reason,

its nature and status are the same as the rest of the principles of pure reason in respect

of its being synthetic and a priori, and therefore also in respect of its being merely

formal. Only so can the categorical imperative be a necessary proposition, i.e., to

apply not merely to “human beings but to all rational beings as such, not merely

under contingent conditions and with exceptions but with absolute necessity”

(ibid:62). And vice versa – since the categorical imperative must be necessary and

universal, it must also be purely a priori, for

It is clear that no experience could give occasion to infer even the possibility of

such apodictic laws...and how should laws of the determination of our will be

taken as laws of the determination of the will of rational beings as such, and

for ours only as rational beings, if they were merely empirical and did not have

their origin completely a priori in pure but practical reason? (Ibid:62-3)

But from their being a priori it follows now, as we saw that it followed for the rest of

the pure principles of theoretical pure reason, that they do not contain any content but

merely determine form. An so the categorical imperative

Has to do not with the matter of the action and what is to result from it, but with

the form and the principle from which the action itself follows... this imperative

may be called the imperative of morality. (Ibid:69)

This is the conclusion and central thesis of Kant’s ethical philosophy, and it is

important to stop here and absorb its full meaning. Kant made it clear here with an

intensity which will eliminate any doubt about his meaning and intention, that the

supreme moral principle is strictly a formal principle and therefore, does not contain

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any content and information. Since this mere formality is entailed by the absoluteness

and necessity of the categorical imperative, it follows that this imperative necessarily

Is nothing but the universality of a law as such; and this conformity alone is

what the imperative properly represents as necessary. (Ibid:73)לבדוק

הגרמניIn other words, the categorical imperative, being strictly formal, cannot tell us

anything about the content of the practical rule (“maxime”) which directs me here

and now but only about the logical form of such a rule. And what it says, therefore, is

merely is that this practical rule must conform to the universal law, i.e., a law which

applies to any rational being. This therefore is merely formal proposition, it is a

priori, and of course is not analytical. Thus the principle of pure practical reason, i.e.,

the categorical imperative, is derived from the concept of the categorical imperative,

and Kant formulated it at once thus:

There is, therefore, only a single categorical imperative, and it is this: act only

in accordance with that maxim which you can at the same time will that it

become a universal law. (ibid:73)

3.3.5. The moral law as a law of nature

The concept “general law” appearing here, does not refer to laws of state legislated by

the authorities. Its intention is far reaching and fateful, for it hints at the concept of

“general law of nature” which played a central role in the critique of theoretical pure

reason. We saw that all the universal or general laws of nature are laws of this pure

reason because they are all synthetic a priori. We saw how their informational

emptiness is entailed and how the meaning of this syntheticity, and the possibility of

such laws, is that they are the rules of the synthesis through which reason synthesizes

nature itself as a coherent system, i.e., as experience. This conclusion was summed up

in the thesis that man legislates to nature, or, in other words – the laws of nature

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possess no reality separate from man. Their only reality is subjective in the sense that

through these rules, originating in man himself, he creates experience out of the chaos

of sensations.

And this is also the situation concerning the pure law of morality which Kant

discovered. In fact it is a law of nature in the same sense, i.e., even though its only

origin is man and even though it possesses no separate reality, it is the rule which

enables reason to create experience out of the given chaos. Only, this experience now

are the phenomena of social behavior, but the categorical imperative dominates social

life in the same sense in which the laws of nature dominate the phenomena of nature,

i.e., in the subjective sense only. In order for there to be a moral world, we have to

synthesize, or construct for ourselves, the practical moral life, and the rule of this

synthesis is the categorical imperative, in the sense that only actions obeying that rule

constitute unity and therefore, a moral world.

Kant explained, therefore, that because “what is properly called nature in the

most general sense (as regards its form)... is the existence of things in so far as it is

determined in accordance with universal laws”, it follows that the categorical

imperative is a law of nature in this formal sense:

Therefore the universal imperative of duty can also go as follows: act as if the

maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature.

(Ibid:73)

The universal law that was here formulated is a law about lawfulness, i.e., about the

necessary method of choosing actions. Lawfulness demands that all action embodies

universality and necessity, i.e., only on the condition that it is a special case of a law

of nature. Kant aimed to declare thereby that exactly as the phenomena of nature, so

also our actions can at all be explained and understood only on the condition that they

embody universal lawfulness. The reason is purely logical: a action that does not

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embody universal law, expresses limited law, but limited lawfulness is self-

contradictory and therefore such an action annihilates its own meaning. The

illustrations Kant used are illuminating: a person who wants to commit suicide and

justifies it by arguing that even though the duty of preserving life is a universal law,

nevertheless it has exceptions, as in his case. And similarly a person borrowing

money with full knowledge that he won’t be able to repay its debt, justifying this by

using the same consideration – even though the duty of keeping promises and

agreements is a universal law, nevertheless it has exceptions (e.g., when there is no

choice and it is necessary to lie etc). Kant argued that the categorical imperative

“immediately shows” that such considerations contradict themselves and therefore do

not embody possible laws of nature:

It is then seen at once that a nature whose laws would be to destroy life itself

by means of the same feeling whose destination is to impel towards the further

ends of life would contradict itself and would therefore not subsist as nature.

(Ibid:74)

And similarly concerning the breaking of a promise, when we seek to answer the

question “whether it is right?” by examining “how would it be if my maxim became

a universal law”:

I then see at once that it would never hold as a universal law of nature and be

consistent with itself but must necessarily contradict itself. For the universality

of such a law ... would make the promise and the end one might have in it

itself impossible. (ibid:74)

That is, a law concerning promises and their keeping, which includes exceptions,

necessarily contradicts itself, entailing that the very concept of promise loses its

meaning. In a world which is ruled by such a law, promises and all that is involved in

them (“the end one might have in it”) do not exist.

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3.3.6. Moral truth is coherence

It could be asked regarding this example – what is morally wrong in a world devoid

of the institution of promises? It could be the case that it is an uncomfortable and

harsh world, but what does that have to do with its morality? And the same goes for

every example Kant offered.

Since utility considerations must not be used here, it seems that Kant’s best

possible answer was that the categorical imperative determines morality exactly by

the being a test or criterion of the possibility of morality concepts, and that this was

exactly his meaning in saying that this law is strictly formal. Thus, a world in which

promises are broken, is not immoral on that count, but it is simply a world in which

the concept of promise does not apply. Since this argument is valid, so Kant would

have continued, for any concept of our practical life, then if our practical life includes

the concept of promise, say, then it does not include also the possibility of breaking a

promise. In short – the categorical imperative shows us that either our world contains

a concept of promise, and then there is no meaning at all in breaking a promise, or

our world does not contain this concept at all. But one thing is impossible – for our

world both to contain the concept of promise and also the concept of exceptions to the

law which defines it. In other words – in so far as we are rational beings, we cannot

even contemplate a world in which there are promises but also their breakings.

By underlining that the categorical imperative does not include anything about

the content of the ethical world but is strictly about its form, Kant implied a far

reaching conclusion: a moral law is a coherent law, creating a coherent nature, and

nothing more. Exactly as man legislates to nature and creates it by its legislation, so

also does he create and is the master of the moral law which is part of nature. And the

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criterion of reality for both these aspects of nature is the same – coherence and

synthetic unity.

But this entailed also the reverse: every coherent world, i.e., every world that

is possible for us, is a moral world. Or, in other words, there isn’t and cannot be a

world which is not moral.

This is the reason why Kant explained that if we tend to excuse ourselves

from following some practical rule by the exception excuse, it is impossible for us

also to will that this rule would be broken: but this is not because of our moral nature,

but merely for the simple logical reason that it is logically impossible to will a

contradiction for it is logically impossible to conceive it. And therefore,

If we now attend to ourselves in any transgression of a duty, we find that we

do not really will that our maxim should become a universal law, since this is

impossible for us,... consequently if we weigh all cases from one and the same

point of view, namely, that of reason, we would find a contradiction in our will,

namely, that a certain principle be objectively necessary as a universal law

and yet subjectively not hold universally but allow exceptions. (ibid:75-6)

Thus, such will is impossible, whereas in so far as it exists or is possible, it is

necessarily a good will. For by existing it is a rational will, i.e., it is a will to actualize

something coherent within a coherent world and therefore it is determined by a

universal and necessary law. It follows that a really existent will necessarily fits the

universal or absolute imperative. And since the absolute imperative is the only and

supreme law of this formal morality, rational will is necessarily also good.

The same goes for the world or nature. In so far as it is real for us it is

determined by universal and necessary laws, and therefore it is necessarily coherent.

This is the only kind of world that is possible as the aim of an actual or real will. And

because a real will is necessarily good (i.e., it necessarily fits the laws of nature) the

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world which it wills, the coherent world dominated by the synthetic unity of reason,

is necessarily a good world.

This brought us to two conclusions which are the complete expression of the

informational emptiness of Kant’s moral philosophy. We began by pointing out the

emptiness of Kant’s opening statements – the only absolutely good thing is the good

will – and now we reached the root of this emptiness. It is the consequence of the

mere formality of the absolute imperative, whereas this formality is the consequence

of the complete subjectivity of the world and the laws of nature, and the order of

consequence is this: only because the general laws of nature are subjective, are they

possible, and therefore, only because nature itself is subjective it is real for us as a

coherent experience. Hence, our practical experience is real for us only in so far as it

is coherent, i.e., determined by necessary and universal laws. And since these are

necessarily a priori laws, they are strictly formal and subjective. From this pure

formality of the law which constructs the world of practical experience it follows at

once that every coherent world, regardless of its contingent content, fits necessarily

the categorical imperative and therefore every coherent world, i.e., a lawful world, is

a world which contains only morally good contents. And since real will is possible

only in so far as it is a coherent will for a coherent world, it follows that any real will

is good and, therefore, is absolute good.

Exactly as coherence became Kant’s necessary and sufficient criterion of

truth, so it becomes now the criterion of the good will, and therefore of a good world.

This was, therefore, the ethical outcome of the Kantian revolution in philosophy: the

absolute good is not some model existing separately from man (like the idea of the

good in Plato) and according to which we have to direct our actions and judgments.

To believe that there is such a separate model is to be deep in a moral dogmatic

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slumber. Waking up from this ethical slumber is realizing that the absolute good, just

as truth, is a creation of man and does not have any reality separately from him. This

inseparability of truth and good from man is the full meaning of the complete

subjectivity of both. And just as the fact that all people see the sky as blue and the

grass as green does not turn the subjectivity of blue and green into objectivity, so is

the case with truth and good – these are subjective at least as the blue and green, and

in fact even more: for (contrary to the case of the blue and green) there is in the

separate world nothing corresponding to truth and good in any sense. And so, even

though the subjectivity referred to here is not that of human passions or urgings or

whims, nevertheless it is absolute subjectivity because it is non-separate from man

and nothing corresponds to it in the separate world.

3.3.7. Despair: Kant glues content

This is the apex and the logical exhaustive expression of Kant’s ethics. But not of

Kant himself. He was driven, maybe as the result of the so clearly nihilistic

implication of his ethics, to glue on to it another end and another apex, something

which will transform it into an emotionally acceptable doctrine. It was almost

inevitable that this appendage will be some content so as to counteract and cancel out

its pure formality. And it was also inevitable that this content would be not of the

argumentative but rather of the preaching kind. As we saw, something similar

happened to the most important actualistic ethical theories before Kant – Spinoza's

and Aristotle’s.

The pure or absolute will, we saw, is determined strictly by its formal

property – fitting a universal and necessary law out of respect for this law. We saw

that this pure formality just means the irrelevance of the content of this universal law.

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Be this content whatever it may, in so far and only to the extent that the practical rule

is chosen and adopted as the embodiment of the universal law, does action according

to it possess absolute ethical significance. Kant explained that the aim of this will is

the law itself, for this is not some private human will but the will of universal reason,

which must fit all possible creatures possessing reason whoever they are.

Consequently, it cannot contain specific human ends or designs, and certainly not

private inclinations. Such human and private designs Kant called

only relative; for only their mere relation to a specially constituted faculty of

desire on the part of the object gives them their worth, which can therefore

furnish no universal principles, no principles valid and necessary for all

rational beings and also for every volition, that is, no practical laws (ibid:78).

The issue should have been left at this point, and the idea of an a priori ethics which

is yet not merely formal should have been buried and eliminated. But Kant broke

through this logical barrier, and this breakthrough was done with arbitrariness and

contradicting the strict logic that dominated the analysis to this point. Kant explained

that if there were an absolute end, i.e., an end which is independent of “the special

natural constitution of humanity” but which must rather “hold necessarily for the will

of every rational being” (ibid:76), then it could be regarded as part of the form of the

moral law (since it would then be absolutely universal) and yet would nevertheless

transform the law into “material”, i.e., informative. For only by some such device

would the categorical imperative succeed in sifting out some of the possible worlds

and declare them non moral. The problem was - how could such an absolute end, i.e.,

one which does not itself serve as a means to some further end, nor expresses the

natural passions of a specific being, be possible in a world created by human reason

and inseparate from it? In short, how can there be an absolute entity in a world which

is completely relative to man?

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However, Kant needed this desperately and, need being the mother of all

discovery, he also discovered it and rushed to declare it stripped of any argument or

justification, but merely as a factual discovery, as the vehemence of his formulation

indicates:

Now I say that the human being and in general every rational being exists as

an end in itself, not merely as a means... instead he must in all his

actions...always be regarded at the same time as an end. ...These beings,

therefore, are not merely subjective ends,... but rather objective ends , that is,

beings the existence of which is in itself an end. (Ibid:79 - 94?? אבל תיקנת

כמו זה בעבריתי( The only argument Kant succeeded constructing for this notion was an argument from

despair: either man is an absolute end or there is no such end in our world, and then

no practical absolute principle would exist for reason:

Since without it nothing of absolute worth would be found anywhere; but if all

worth were conditional and therefore contingent then no supreme practical

principle for reason could be found anywhere. (ibid:94)

And so, his only target in the discovery of absolute end was to overcome the

conclusion that “all worth or value is contingent”, i.e., overcome the ethical nihilism

entailed by the pure formality of the absolute imperative. Kant implied here very

clearly that without some further limiting principle, every coherent world is ethically

equally good since it would fit perfectly the absolute imperative. He also knew that

by now it was far too late in the day to fix this, because this nihilistic outcome (every

value and every good is merely contingent) had been embedded within his basic

thesis: if values are non-separate from man, and he is what creates them and legislates

to the moral world, then all values are relative to him and his reason, and therefore

absolute value is a meaningless concept.

And so, the new idea that man is an absolute value, cannot possibly be

assimilated into the metaphysics of Kantian morality. It is thrown into the deal

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arbitrarily, and it contradicts this metaphysics and therefore cannot be possibly part of

it. And this incompatibility is visibly posted by the royal decree, so un Kantian, “now

I say” and by the argument from despair, the only argument Kant managed to

assemble for absolute end – either this or chaos. He declared here his awareness that

the clear outcome of the thesis of man as legislator to the moral world is moral

nihilism and that only some deus ex machina could prevent this.

3.3.8. and conjures an absolute end

In assimilating the new absolute end into his actualistic world, in which the

only ends possible are relative to man, Kant performed a repetition of Aristotle’s and

Spinoza's desperate solutions (See 1.5.16, and 2.zzzzz). The typical change that

occurred was that Aristotle’s and Spinoza's gods were explicitly replaced now by

man. Neither of them was ready to admit that in their ontologies the creator of nature

and its classification via the system of universals (what represented the concept of

laws of nature in their systems) is man. Consequently, the arbitrariness of this

supreme and separate end in their systems remains invisible. But with Kant, whose

whole Copernican revolution was distilled in this discovery – and whose ethics was

merely its natural extension – it was quite clear and visible that rational man was now

absolute and, moreover, this in virtue merely of an arbitrary human decision. Its true

aim and role emerged in Kant’s new formulation of the absolute imperative:

The practical imperative will therefore be the following: so act that you use

humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at

the same time as an end, never merely as a means. (Ibid:80)

Kant explained that this formulation is what injects a measure of content into the

categorical imperative, because the first formulation (which refers only to the

universality of every practical rule) presents its mere form (ibid:85-6). The new

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formulation, and the concept of man as an end, “must in every maxim serve as the

limiting condition of all merely relative and arbitrary ends” (ibid:86). That is, the

specific and only role of the concept of man as an end, is to save the absolute

imperative from its pure formality and therefore its informational emptiness. In other

words, the new end was Kant’s means of saving his system from the ethical nihilism

(“relativity and arbitrariness”) entailed by coherence as the only criterion of morality.

The main reason why absolute end is incompatible with Kant’s philosophy, is

that an end can be absolute and not merely “relative and arbitrary” only on the

condition that its reality does not depend on any other thing. Well, the reality of value

depends on the law that determines it, whereas the reality of this law depends on

man’s legislation and therefore is relative to it. Any end at all, within this rigorous

actualistic framework, can be real only in virtue of a law that legislates its reality.

And so, any end at all is necessarily relative, i.e., to man’s legislating this law.

But conversely too, it is sufficient for there to be one absolute end, for the

whole Kantian structure to collapse. For then there is no reason to reject the whole of

what Kant called “dogmatic” theory, i.e., that reality contains separate absolute values

and laws independent from man, such that man should obey by virtue of their

separateness and absoluteness, exactly as the dogmatic Plato thought. So too, and by

the same reason, it is sufficient that one separate form such as value exists, which is

also a separate end, for the whole of Aristotle’s and Spinoza's metaphysics to

crumble down.

3.3.9. and covers up a contradiction

Kant worked hard to overcome this self-contradiction in the concept of absolute end

within his actualistic framework of man the legislator, but it seems that all the

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arguments he attempted to formulate are worthless because they presuppose the exact

contrary of what he proved. One example will suffice.

By the concept “kingdom of ends” Kant denoted the moral world determined

by the supreme moral law, the categorical imperative. This is a world in analogy to

the “kingdom of nature” created by the universal laws of reason, which are also the

laws of nature. He called the moral world “the kingdom of ends” because it is a world

consisting strictly of rational beings, which are its absolute ends. Thus the concept

emphasizes the distinction from the kingdom of objects, i.e., the world of nature.

Using this concept he could now declare what was the essence of morality:

Morality consists, then, in the reference of all action to the law-giving by which

alone a kingdom of ends is possible. (ibid:84)

Up to the word “law giving” (i.e. “legislation”) this is the summary of the categorical

imperative in its first formulation. The rest then says that a kingdom of ends exists

only in so far as it is created by legislation. And so, we are still in the domain of

coherence as the only criterion of morality: not merely does human legislation

determine the realm of moral actions, but rather every and any such legislation would

determine some moral realm. Even if such legislation must be so contrived as to itself

define the realm of ends, this would still be no travesty on the realm of morality, for

these absolute ends are never given a priori. The absolute ends are only determined

by the legislation itself: we do not know the first thing about identifying absolute

ends before possessing some rule instructing us how to do this, but there can be no

prior limitation on the content of such a rule. And therefore, every practical rule will

determine its own absolute ends, be its content whatever it may, so long as it

possesses the logical form of a universal law and can therefore be embedded into the

categorical imperative.

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So, for example, if the practical rule I hold is, “extend your living space as

much as you can, so long as you do not hurt Germans”, this rule possesses absolute

moral content the moment it is declared as a universal law, and the realm of ends it

thus determines would then be the German nation. Another version of this

determination itself is any racist theory, which is a law of nature legislated by human

reason (be it Jewish, or German, or Japanese). For example, such a law could be the

following:

A philosophy of life which endeavors to give this earth to the best people - that

is, the highest humanity - must logically obey the same aristocratic principle

within this people and make sure that the leadership and the highest influence

in this people fall to the best minds. (Hitler: 443)

That the kingdom of ends to contain all and only rational beings, i.e., that rationality

is what turns any being into absolute end, does not belong to Kant’s philosophy but to

his deep humanism and to his private beliefs. For it remains unclear from what he

says, why it is reason and not feeling, or sensation, of life, or mathematical ability or

musical genius, and their likes, each by itself or any mixture of them, that determine

the kingdom of absolute ends, and Kant never brought any philosophical justification

for this belief. Thus, in the sequel Kant explained:

Now, morality is the condition under which alone a rational being can be an

end in itself, since only through this it is possible to be a law-giving member in

the kingdom of ends. Hence morality, and humanity in so far as it is capable of

morality, is that which alone has dignity. (Ibid [Groundwork]:84)

According to this, rationality is not quite sufficient to be “an end in itself” – one prior

condition must hold, which is “morality”, i.e., an action embodying universal law,

which man himself and of his free will legislated for himself. And so, it is not

rationality in itself nor humanity in itself that are “the end in itself”. Kant never

explained how he chose the properties of the end in itself - rationality, “morality”,

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and what else? But the main thing is that both these conditions are satisfied in that

Nazi example I brought according to which the practical rule is typically moral and

therefore only the German nation is an end in itself. Kant’s last sentence, saying that

only humanity as possessing moral capacity has “dignity” does not change the

situation, because according to the practical rule in the example it turns out that not

all human beings belong to “humanity in so far as it is capable of morality”.

Many efforts were made by Kant’s interpreters to overcome these

catastrophic conclusions and show that even his implied claim - that the first version

of the categorical imperative is formal whereas the second is material, and yet both

are equivalent to each other (ibid:85-6) – is understandable. These efforts have failed

until nowfor two reasons: First, they demand an extreme change in the meaning of

“end” and, second, they fail to satisfy Kant’s demand for the synthetic a priori status

of the moral law. 2

3.3.10. “The objective is the subjective itself” - Hegel’s critique

The internal contradiction within Kant’s ethical theory was a well-known matter

among its students, and one of them summed this up as follows:

The relation between the critique of pure reason and the critique of practical

reason is that all the conclusions of the old metaphysics which crumbled and

were destroyed in the critique of pure reason under the dialectical blows of the

antinomies and the paralogisms, are re-awakened into a new life in the critique

of practical reason. Out of the self-awareness of morality, out of the respect

which the moral ego has for itself, the belief in the immortality of soul is revived

and the existence of the god of justice and good. (Karl Rosenkranz in the

Complete works vol.viii p.vi)

2 See the most important and intensive attempt in O’niell 126-144. Here, for example, there

is no mention of the a priori demand.

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The ethical nihilism inherent in the pure formality of the categorical imperative was

one of the hubs round which revolved the critique of the Hegel, who raised Kant’s

idealism to a new form and new peak in the 19th century. He declared “that it is

impossible to make the transition to the determination of particular duties from the

above determination of duty as absence of contradiction, as formal correspondence

with itself”. What Kant did, Hegel hinted, was “bring here material from outside and

thereby arrive at particular duties”. But so long as this importation is not an inherent

part of Kant’s moral philosophy, his whole of effort is nothing but “an empty

formalism, and moral science - an empty rhetoric of duty for duty’s sake”, that is, a

contentless and meaningless duty. Hegel explained the link he perceived between the

“duty for duty’s sake” ethics and its formality and “emptiness”:

But if duty is to be willed merely as a duty and not because of its content, it is a

formal identity which necessarily excludes every content and determination.

(POR §135)

This informational emptiness of the supreme principle in Kant’s ethics, Hegel went

on to explain, is seen in the fact that

There is no criterion within that principle for deciding whether or not this

content is a duty. On the contrary, it is possible to justify any wrong or immoral

mode of action by this means....[Kant’s principle] does not in itself contain any

principle apart from formal identity and the absence of contradiction. (Ibid)

This criticism of the emptiness of Kant’s ethics Hegel added on to his criticism of the

subjectivity of nature as entailed by the subjectivity of the categories. He remarked

that according to Kant, the categories of the understanding do not contain any

content, and quoting Kant’s words (Critique B 75 see p. 121 above) He concluded

that

The understanding is active thought yet it has thoughts merely without real

content: “thoughts without content are void and empty”.(HOP iii 436)

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This emptiness, Hegel went on to emphasize, is then joined by the subjectivity of all

that is regarded as objective in Kant’s philosophy:

The objective, which ought to constitute the opposite to this subjective side, is

itself subjective likewise: [...] it remains shut up in the region of my self-

consciousness; the categories are only determinations of our thinking

understanding. Neither the one nor the other is consequently anything in itself

nor are both together knowledge, anything in itself. For it only knows

phenomena - a strange contradiction. (ibid:440)

Kant’s actualism was embodied in the thesis of man the legislator to nature and

morals: there is no reality in such things as space, time, and laws of nature before

they are objectified or actualised by man’s sensibility and understanding. Hegel’s

actualism was embodied in a different yet similar thesis: all reality is embodied

strictly in human society, so that anything that is actualized in human society is

reality, and philosophical truth itself is nothing but the reflection of its contingent

period: “each individual is in any case a child of his time; thus philosophy, too, is its

own time comprehended in thoughts “ (POR:21). And since there is no reality in

values separate from society, it follows that morality too is a historically changing

and developing affair. Hegel’s actualism, therefore, was the thesis that truth and

reality are relative to the society actualizing them, and there cannot be any other

meaning in truth and reality. What has in fact changed between Kant’s and Hegel’s

version of actualism was only the manner of the relativity of reality to man - the

relativity thesis itself remained.

From this it was that Hegel’s critique followed concerning the compulsion

element of Kant’s thesis of the categorical imperative. Kant emphasized that the

morality of an action cannot depend on the natural tendency of the actor but only and

strictly on his will which compels him to act according to universal law. Hegel

objected, demanding a stricter actualism, since this compulsion view of morality

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creates a chasm between what ought to be and what is, and this chasm must be

eliminated. Thus, for example, according to the Jewish religion of divine commands,

These express nothing more than what ought to be done, because they are

universal, but they do not express what is; and this fact indicates at once their

flaw [...] because the form of command implies an opposition between the

commander and some thing opposing his command. (ETW 215n)

That is, for the morality of an action to be complete, there must be an identity

between the will of the commander and the will of the obeyer, and in Hegel’s

language, there must be an identity between the ought and the is.

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