The Dragons of Philosophy and the Rebirth of Metaphysics

Daniel F. GillesSt. John's College

Those philosophical laborers after the noble model of Kant and Hegel have to determine and press into formulas, whether in the realm of logic or political (moral) thought or art, some great data of valuations – that is, former positings of values, creations of value which have become dominant and are for a time called "truths." It is for these investigators to make everything that has happened and been esteemed so far easy to look over, easy to think over, intelligible and manageable, to abbreviate everything long, even "time," and to overcome the entire past – an enormous and wonderful task in whose service every subtle pride, every tough will can certainly find satisfaction.

—Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil 211

Nothing is more usual and more natural for those, who pretend to discover any thing new to the world in philosophy and the sciences, than to insinuate the praises of their own systems, by decrying all those, which have been advanced before them.

—Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature p. xiii

Immanuel Kant, whose immense oeuvre embraces logic, metaphysics, ethics, and natural

science, and whose comprehensiveness rivals that of Aristotle, stands as the first great

systematizer of modern philosophy. In a “Copernican revolution of the mind”, Kant postulated

the critical principle: that we must determine the nature of the world, not through its own

properties, but through the properties of our minds that are required for our experience of it.

Informing all of human experience, the explanation and drawing out of this principle form a

critical system whose exposition occupied Kant from his publication of the Critique of Pure

Reason in 1781 to his death in 1804.

In an occurrence either tragic or serendipitous, depending on one's perspective, G. W. F.

Hegel published his Phenomenology of Spirit in 1807, a mere three years after Kant's death. The

beginning of an opus of philosophical work whose exhaustiveness rivals Kant's own, the

Phenomenology posited another new mode of thought: the dialectic. Though drawing on Plato's

concept of the same name, Hegel's dialectic was more than a dialogue between individuals. It

provided a way for philosophy to overcome any and all limited determinations of thought – not

least, the very principle of critical subjectivity at the center of Kant's system. After so brief a

reign, it seemed that Kantian philosophy was itself destined to be overthrown.

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Indeed, such was Hegel's aspiration. Bemoaning the decline of metaphysics after Kant,

Hegel takes issue with Kant's critical principle, and with the proofs which Kant used in the

Critique of Pure Reason to demonstrate the necessity thereof. For Kant, metaphysics is in

desperate need of a critical reformation, as displayed by the antinomies of pure reason. The

antinomies display errors that reason must inevitably fall into, in the form of a dialogue between

opposed thesis and antithesis. Evincing the inevitable failure of the past metaphysics which

regards objects as things in themselves, they point to the need for a critical approach. But Hegel,

though in agreement with Kant about past metaphysics's limitedness, believes the proper

response to this limitedness to be not a Kantian withdrawal into transcendental idealism (i.e., the

separation of appearances from things in themselves), but a dialectical overcoming of the thesis-

antithesis opposition. Kant's presentation of the antinomies' conflict as insoluble for reason,

which denies the possibility of such a dialectic, is for Hegel a flawed piece of argumentation,

though one whose importance is undeniable (Science of Logic 21.179-80, p. 190-1):

These Kantian antinomies will always remain an important part of Kantian philosophy. They, above all, caused the downfall of previous metaphysics and can be regarded as a main transition to more recent philosophy. However, despite its great service, Kant's exposition of these antinomies is very imperfect, both because it is internally awkward and eccentric and because of the inappropriateness of its result, which presupposes that cognition has no other forms of thought than finite categories.

Hegel disagrees with Kant both in his argumentation of the antinomies and in the conclusion that

he derives from them.

Together, Kant and Hegel do a great service to philosophy by raising metaphysics back

up from a quasi-mystical concern to an object of serious and systemic thought. But how will

metaphysics be reborn: through a Kantian critique or through a Hegelian dialectic? Because of

the importance of the Kantian antinomies, this question rests largely upon another one: Do Kant's

antinomies, and with them the need for a critical reform of metaphysics, fall to Hegel's critique?

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The antinomies of pure reason

Kant intends his antinomies to illustrate the nature of the battles within “the combat area

[which] we call metaphysics” (A1 viii). In these battles, the two combatants, thesis and antithesis,

each succeed in refuting the other's arguments, but neither succeeds in establishing his own

argument as irrefutable. As neither side can attain certainty, the only option for previous

metaphysics is an obstinate retreat to one side or the other of the antinomy, to skepticism or

dogmatism.

Kant attributes the failure of both sides to attain certainty to their assumption that the

objects of our experience (the appearances) are things in themselves. Kant summarizes his

argument thus (B 534-5):

If the world is a whole existing in itself, then it is either finite or infinite. Now, both of these alternatives are false … Hence it is also false that the world (the sum of all appearances) is a whole existing in itself.

By presupposing, as all previous metaphysicians have done, the reality of appearances (i.e., their

independence of our mode of knowing them), the thesis and antithesis fail to find solid ground,

and in their failure demonstrate the need to reject this presupposition. Hence the antinomies

serve as an “indirect proof” (B 534) of the transcendental ideality of appearances.

Hegel sees Kant's antinomies as presupposing their conclusions. For Hegel, the relevant

incorrect assumption is not that appearances are things in themselves, but the converse: that

things in themselves are mere appearances, and that we can only think them as such. This latter

1 Citations to the major works of Kant and Hegel are abbreviated as follows:A/B = Critique of Pure Reason (first/second editions). Kant, Immanuel, tr. Werner S. Pluhar. Critique of Pure

Reason. Hackett, 1996.EL = Encyclopedia Logic. Hegel, G.W.F, tr. T.F. Geraets, W.A. Suchting & H.S. Harris. The Encyclopedia Logic.

Hackett, 1991.PS = Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel, G.W.F., tr. Terry Pinkard. Phenomenology of Spirit. Unpublished draft, 2008.

<http://www.scribd.com/doc/76332018/T-Pinkard-Phenomenology-English-Text>SL = Science of Logic. Hegel, G.W.F., tr. George di Giovanni. The Science of Logic. Cambridge, 2010. Page

numbers are for Hegel, G.W.F., tr. A. V. Miller. The Science of Logic. Prometheus Books, 1998.

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assumption, made by Kant, taints what should be an objective examination of previous

metaphysical doctrines with the subjective idealism of Kant's own critical doctrine.

Kant, in the summary of his argument above, gives us reason to suspect the validity of

Hegel's critique by equating “the world” with “the sum of all appearances”. Does Kant in fact

presuppose the critical doctrine in his arguments for the antinomies? And if so, how can the

antinomies fairly play their proper role as an unavoidable problem for all prior metaphysics?

The second antinomy

Kant's second antinomy (B462-71) is the one most substantively addressed by Hegel. Let

us use Hegel's critique to examine the logic of Kant's arguments. The thesis of the antinomy

asserts that

Every composite substance in the world consists of simple parts, and nothing at all exists but the simple or what is composed of it.

The antithesis claims that

No composite thing in the world consists of simple parts, and there exists in the world nothing simple at all.

The proofs of both thesis and antithesis (as with all of the antinomies) are in the form of a

reductio ad absurdum, assuming the position of the opposite side and demonstrating a

contradiction. The thesis demonstrates that if composites did not consist of simples, composition

would either be impossible to annul (which goes against the nature of composition in

substances), or else, after it was annulled, there would remain nothing (which goes against the

very substantiality of substances). Hence composite substances must consist of simples.

Meanwhile, the antithesis shows that if composites consisted of simples, those simples would

occupy space and hence be composite. Hence composite substances must consist of composites.

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Hegel's general criticism is that the thesis and antithesis each merely assert “the two

opposed moments of a determination”, and that each argument “allegedly elicits the semblance

of proof while in fact hiding and rendering unrecognizable the merely assertorical character of

the claim” (SL 21.181, p. 192). In the case of the thesis, Hegel argues that Kant's proof is

circular. He says that the “nerve of the proof” (SL 21.184, p. 195) is Kant's parenthetical

assertion that “composition is only a contingent relation of substances – a relation without which

substances, as themselves permanent beings, must still subsist” (B463), which Kant uses to argue

that composition cannot be impossible to annul, if the composite in question is a substance.

Hence the thesis, “by assuming composition as the mode of connection of anything substantial,

dogmatically assumes the accidentality of this connection” (SL 21.187, p. 197). This assumption

“could have been immediately attached as proof to the thesis that the composite substance

consists of simple parts without the apagogic detour” (SL 21.183, p. 193), i.e., without the

reductio proof. As evidence that the thesis is assuming what it ought to prove, Hegel notes Kant's

citation of the above assumption, “that composition is merely an external state of them” (B465)

(the things in the world), as part of the conclusion for its argument.

The last point can perhaps be explained as a misreading of Kant on Hegel's part. Here is

the relevant portion of Kant's conclusion (B 464):

From this it follows directly that the things in the world are, one and all, simple beings; that composition is merely an external state of them …

Hegel seems to read the “of them” (“derselben”) as I have glossed it above – as referring to the

things in the world – in which case this second conclusion does appear identical with the

argument used in the proof. But perhaps Kant means its antecedent to instead be “simple

beings”2, in which case the thesis is not restating the argument but noting the result: that the

2 Guyer and Wood (Kant, Immanuel, tr. Paul Guyer & Allen F. Wood. Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge, 1998) translate the clause as “that composition is only an external state of these beings”, which at least testifies to the

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composite substance we began with in the assertion of the thesis is in fact composed of simples.

In line with this, one might distinguish between the two uses of “merely” / “only” (both

“nur”). In the proof it seems to refer to what type of relation composition is (“composition is

only a contingent relation of substances”, i.e., for substances composition is only a contingent

relation), while in the conclusion it refers to what composition is (“composition is merely an

external state of [simple beings]”, i.e., composition is nothing more than that). So the statement

in the conclusion of the thesis asserts that every composition and hence every composite thing is

composed of simples – an answer to the question of the antinomy – whereas the statement in the

argument cites the nature of composition in order to deduce that composition of substances

cannot be impossible to annul.

But is the thesis's argument justified on more than merely dogmatic grounds? The thesis

starts with the assumption that there are no simple substances, and then proceeds to annul all

composition, and then to show that this annulment results in the contradiction of already known

truths (including the above assumption). Hegel sees this assumption, which the argument

introduces parenthetically, as the linchpin of the proof. To examine Kant's assumptions, let us

take Hegel's suggestion and avoid detours by rewriting the proof as a direct one:

We have a composite substance before us. Since it is composite only insofar as it is made up of other things, we can decompose it, at least in our imagination. Let its composition be annulled. If its parts are still composite, let their composition be annulled, and so on; i.e., let all composition be annulled. We must be left with something, and it must itself be a substance, since substance is permanent. But what we are left with must be simple, since all composition has been annulled. Hence simple substances exist.

What assumptions does this proof rely on? There seem to be three main presuppositions:

1. Composition involves putting together other things (parts).

2. Composition is reversible, at least in thought (the composite can be broken down into its

grammatical viability of this interpretation.

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parts).

3. A composite substance is itself made up of other substances, and hence decomposition

does not change the substantiality of something.

The third assumption seems to be the most controversial. Rather than, say, an Aristotelian

composite of form and matter, for Kant substance is the substratum of presentation itself, the

matter of our (and of any possible) understanding (B 224 ff.). Composites are formed by putting

together appearances “in so far as they are outside one another and yet in connection” (B 261-2),

so there is no change from one type of being to another in composition. A composite substance,

if made up of simples, must be made up of simple substances (because of assumption 3).

Moreover, as the basis of the understanding, substance must be permanent and indestructible (B

228). From this account, the first and second assumptions also follow: we put together connected

appearances, which are themselves already appearances; and since we put them together

according to their connectedness, we can also take them apart by the same principle.

Hegel disagrees that any of these assumptions are necessary to prove what Kant's thesis

wishes to prove. Compositeness, according to Hegel, implies by its very definition composition

of something else, which cannot be the composite again but must be the simple (SL 21.182, p.

193):

If ink is said to consist of ink again, the meaning of the question regarding the something else of which the ink consists is missed; the question is not answered but is simply repeated … If the simple which is said to be the other of the composite is taken to be only a relatively simple which, for itself, is composite in turn, then the question stands as before. Figurative representation has in view, say, only this or that composite, to which this or that something might also be assigned as its simple element, although for itself the latter is a composite. But the issue here is the composite as such.”

To say that the composite as such is composed of simples is what Kant would call an analytical

proposition (one whose predicate follows directly from the definition of the subject). Hence the

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Kantian assumptions about substance are unnecessary and the proof of the thesis is an “apagogic

detour”.

Meanwhile, in the case of the antithesis, Hegel disagrees with the conclusion of the

proof, but again sees the argument as a detour into Kant's critical doctrine. The proof of the

antithesis is more explicit about its assumptions: that “all composition from substances is

possible only in space” (B 463) and that “anything real that occupies a space comprises a

manifold [of elements] outside one another and hence is composite” (B 464). Since the assumed

simple elements of the composite must be in space, they must be composite. For Hegel, the

entire proof comes down to the assumption “that everything substantial is spatial, but that space

does not consist of simple parts”, and with this assumed “the whole proof is already finished”

(21.185, p. 195). But in fact, according to Hegel, “the substances ought not to have been posited

in space” (SL 21.185, p. 196); only because of the critical tenet “that we have a concept of bodies

only as appearances” (21.186, p. 197) did we transpose the pure concept of substance into

empirical space and analyze it according to the Kantian doctrine of what space is.

The grounds of the antinomies

For Hegel, both thesis and antithesis deal with concepts which are unnecessarily

“entangled in … the representation of the world, space, time, matter, and so on” (SL 21.180, p.

191). The useful antinomy for Hegel is not between the truly and obviously contradictory

concepts of the simple and the composite but between the opposed but non-binary properties of

discreteness and continuity, which, unlike the former two concepts, represent the thought

determinations “considered purely in themselves” (SL 21.180, p. 192). In their conceptual purity,

discreteness and continuity are not ultimately opposed, but rather represent opposite

determinations which can be sublated into a unity.

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Kant seems to agree with Hegel that as abstract determinations, discreteness and

continuity lack the same sort of opposition as composite and simple, saying that since continuity

is “The property of magnitudes whereby no part in them is the smallest possible (i.e., no part is

simple)” (B 211), therefore magnitudes, because they are not substances, can be said definitively

to lack simple parts while remaining discrete. But whereas for Hegel the antinomy is more

properly between these ultimately reconcilable concepts, as pure and unentangled, this

entanglement is precisely what is essential to Kant's understanding of the antinomies, and what

for Kant causes the inevitable antinomy. Kant's thesis points out that in the case of substances,

composites must be ultimately composed of simples because of their substantial nature. His

antithesis points out that composites must be composed ad infinitum of composites, for the same

reason. It is because of the nature of the substrate that the antinomies occur – and it is by

examining that substrate that we can solve those antinomies. So the assertion that the substantial

substrate of the antinomies “bears no influence on the antinomy itself” is in fact quite the

opposite of the case: for Kant, it is precisely because we are thinking of these things as

substantial appearances that the antinomy of simple and composite occurs.

Kant is justified in using the substantial form of the simple-composite/discrete-

continuous opposition because the point of his critique is to analyze the nature of appearances,

including substances. Likewise, while Hegel's criticism of the apagogic nature of Kant's proofs

as hiding Kant's real assumptions may be valid from the standpoint of one coming across the

proofs ex novo through the lens of Hegel's system, we have seen that for someone who is

working through the consequences of Kant's system, those assumptions will have already been

shown to be true. It is natural that Kant would refer to them only parenthetically.

But by supporting the arguments in the antinomies on the grounds of the nature of

perception, have we merely pushed the dogmatism of the argument back from the thesis and

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antithesis to Kant himself by letting the argument rely upon Kant's own doctrine? Hegel argues

that the proofs of both sides are contaminated with critical presuppositions (SL 21.187, p. 197):

If we then look into the opposition of thesis and antithesis more accurately … we find that the proof of the antithesis, by transposing substances into space, dogmatically assumes continuity, just as the proof of the thesis, but assuming composition as the mode of connection of anything substantial, dogmatically assumes the accidentality of this connection …

We have justified the thesis on seemingly critical grounds, and found that the antithesis also

justifies itself in this way. Is this justification dogmatic? If Kant introduces the critical doctrine

into the arguments that are supposed to refute transcendental realism, then Hegel is right: it is not

only the thesis and antithesis that appear circular, but also Kant's larger claim that their

opposition constitutes an indirect proof of transcendental idealism.

One response would be to say that the thesis and antithesis merely represent a historical

viewpoint that illustrates reason's history as a “combat area”. In this case, we might be tempted

to say that the antinomies are simply designed to show that reason wishes to have things both

ways, and that the arguments need not have perfect rigor. But Kant rejects this notion, saying that

in the antinomies he has not sought to construct a “lawyer's proof” based on “fallacious

inferences” (B 458). The antinomies are intended not only to show the falsehoods that reason can

fall into, but also to show the necessity of reason falling into those falsehoods, if the distinction

between appearances and things in themselves is not taken into account. For this latter purpose

their arguments must be entirely valid, except for ignoring that distinction. Only in this way can

these otherwise “well-founded” (B 535) arguments serve as an indirect proof of the

transcendental ideality of appearances by disproving their common assumption, “that

appearances, or a world of sense comprising them all, are things in themselves” (B 535).

But do the presuppositions of the thesis and antithesis in fact stem from Kant's critical

tenets? It seems clear that they rely upon the nature of our experience. But perhaps this reliance

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can be distinguished from Kant's position, viz. that appearances are not things in themselves.

Though the thesis and antithesis rely upon the nature of appearances, they do not depend upon

appearances being separate from things in themselves. Indeed, as it turns out, they assume that

appearances are things in themselves. Rather than presupposing anything about whether

appearances are or are not things in themselves, Kant may be merely having the thesis and

antithesis begin with the neutral ground of appearance. Hence Kant's question is, “what types of

experiences can our minds hold?” His answer is that since the world (as experienced) cannot be

finite or infinite, neither can it exist (in our minds) as a thing in itself. But an argument that

ignores the specifications in the parentheses above is not relevant to Kant's question. Indeed,

Kant concludes that if we truly consider things in themselves, we can say nothing about them.

Despite what previous philosophers thought, their subject matter has not been things in

themselves. Rather, those philosophers have explored appearances as if they were things in

themselves. This is the line of thought which the antithetic of pure reason must recapitulate. But

to do this in a plausible way, we must begin with appearances. In Kant's metaphor, we begin

from “the terrain of experience” (B 7), which is known to be solid, and proceed to investigate

whether we can make sorties out into the “ocean” of “illusion” (B 295). Hence the transcendental

dialectic (the exposition of reason's errors, including the antinomies) must follow the

transcendental analytic (the deduction of the concepts with which we analyze the world). The

dialectic, taking up Hume's idea of “experimental philosophy” (Treatise of Human Nature xvi3),

is an “experiment with concepts and principles that we assume a priori” (B xviii) – the

“elementary concepts of the understanding” (B xxii n). As Kant says, the experiment is to see

whether assuming “that our experiential cognition conforms to objects as things in themselves”

(B xx) results in a contradiction. To perform this experiment in a scientific way, we must begin

3 Hume, David. Treatise of Human Nature. Prometheus Books, 1992.

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with the non-controversial ground of cognition, or “things insofar as we are acquainted with

them (i.e., insofar as they are given to us)” (B xx). Here, too, Kant follows upon Hume,

specifically his idea of a “science of man” whose “solid foundation … must be laid on

experience and observation” (Treatise xvi) and from which we can “voyage … upon that

boundless ocean” of philosophy (Treatise 263-4).

But why does Kant have his arguments begin from appearances if he wishes to refute the

metaphysicians who have failed to do so? Perhaps it is because, after Hume, it seems impossible

to find certainty, as the “knights” (B 450) of the combat ground wish to do, without addressing

the issue of whether things outside of us are real. Kant says that the antinomies are errors that

reason naturally falls into, so for post-Humean philosophy to ignore Hume would be to provide a

metaphysics that reason is no longer likely to find itself in. To some degree, dogmatism and

skepticism are simply impossible to refute. In the former case, a dogmatist's assertion that simply

refused to listen to Hume's critique would be impossible to refute by its own logic, though Kant

would claim that logic to be inconsistent with our experience; and in the latter case even Hegel

admits that some skeptics will simply toss everything “into the same empty abyss” (PS §79). But

for the philosopher who has honestly considered Hume's arguments, the neutral ground is the

objects of our experience, so there is nowhere else to begin the antinomies than with our

experience of the objects in question. We must have some philosophical basis to argue from or

else there will simply be dogmatism or skepticism, but that basis can only be the uncontroversial

matter of everyday experience. In Kant's metaphor, the analysis of this experience provides the

“good foundation” which Plato, in his metaphysical speculations, lacked (B9). Or, to use the

metaphor of the combat area, if the combatants emerge from slippery ground and fight on

slippery ground, then nothing can be said to have been shown except that we appear to have no

certainty at all. Instead, they must begin on the firm ground of what is known to us as thinking

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beings, and only by venturing out onto the unstable terrain of asserting the knowledge of things

in themselves lose their footing and fall into a battle without a victor.

Beginning anywhere other than with appearances would not allow us to consider the

substantial nature of the composites that the second antinomy deals with and rescue ourselves

from the combat ground of transcendental illusion. So Kant must walk a fine line between

making his proofs circular, by relying upon his own assumptions, or making them illegitimate,

by relying upon doctrinal falsehoods. We must be careful, in using the nature of appearances, not

to become dogmatic and assert critical doctrine. We can do this, in the case of the second

antinomy, by taking “substance” to refer not to substance as it is thought of in any particular

doctrine – including the critical – but as the minimum presupposed by our thought. In the critical

doctrine this is all that appearances are, but in the antinomies we must consider them as they

appear to us regardless of their possible reality. We can employ the same principles that Kant

justifies in the transcendental analytic through the nature of experience, but without asserting

their status as mere principles of thought. As Kant suggests by noting that Aristotle arrived at ten

of Kant's twelve categories of the understanding (B 107), the principles of thought are employed

by all philosophers, albeit in a confused way due to their being mistaken for principles of the

nature of things in themselves. What is at issue in the analytic is not so much the content of the

principles as their status; and in the dialectic we can continue to use these principles while

suspending our judgment as to whether or not they apply to things in themselves.

The second antinomy (part II)

Let us apply this idea of using our basic experiences to the second antinomy. The thing

we are considering is composite substance. To avoid controversies over whether substance

consists of Aquinian compounds, Lucretian atoms, Leibnizian monads, compounds of the four

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elements, or something else entirely, let us simply consider it as the matter of appearances. As an

appearance alone, what do we know about it as a composite? That it appears to have parts. But

what are its parts made up of? Are they themselves made up of parts, and so on ad infinitum – in

which case appearances seem to be ultimately made up of nothing at all? Or must there

ultimately be simple parts – in which case how can it appear to have parts (e.g., a left side and a

right side)? Both the two conclusions and the two objections seem true to the understanding

based on its usual application of rules to objects of experience. Hence we must either sublate

them by asserting reason's supremacy over the limits of the understanding, as Hegel does, or

withdraw the question as unanswerable by reason, following Kant.

We can now see why Kant equates “the world” with the sum of all appearances. The

thesis and antithesis represent positions that reason “must come upon” - not in the confused form

that it would have prior to Hume, where we take appearances for real things without noticing we

have done so, but directly and with the awareness that we are discussing substances “in the

world” (B 462), that is, in “the sum of all appearances”. In other words, the thesis and antithesis

represent in the most direct form the results of postulating the noumenal (things-in-themselves)

nature of appearances, rather than in the confused and unaware form of all philosophy prior to

Hume. Indeed, the form of each side's argument immediately demonstrates their presupposition,

beginning with the first sentence (B462-5):

THESIS

…For suppose that composite substances did not consist of simple parts. In that case...Now since this case contradicts the presupposition, there remains only the second case: viz., that the substantive composite in the world consists of simple parts.

ANTITHESIS

...Suppose that a composite thing (as substance) consists of simple parts. Now …

… therefore the simple would be a substantive composite – which is self-contradictory. [Hence no composite things consist of simple parts.]

By asserting that composite substances do or do not consist of simple parts, and that if one is

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false the other follows, the thesis and antithesis presuppose that the nature of composite

substances is known. Hence we see why Kant chooses to write the proofs of the thesis and

antithesis apagogically: to show that each proof is false from the very beginning, from the

reductio assumption that presupposes that we know the way things truly are.

We can also now see the reason for the apparently “lopsided, disjointed” (SL 21.1814),

“awkward and eccentric” (SL 21.180) nature of Kant's proof. We noted above that Hegel thinks

Kant's proof of the thesis can be reduced to two steps:

1. Composition of substances is accidental2. Therefore, the essence of substances is the simple

But the simplicity of this proof hides several of its own assumptions, which, if made explicit,

make the proof rather longer:

1. Composition of substances is accidental2. The accidental is not the essence of a substance3. Therefore the composite is not the essence of a substance4. There must be an essence of a substance5. Therefore something other than the composite is the essence of the substance6. The simple is the only thing other than the composite7. Therefore the essence of a substance is the simple

While the reasoning of this proof is clearer than that of Kant's, Kant's proof is clearer in a

different way. Kant begins with the composite – with the universal stuff of appearances on which

the understanding operates. He then proceeds to analyze the composite in the way that reason is

drawn to do – by extending the procedures (the concepts) of the understanding in order to

decompose it – and then examines what remains. He finds that what remains must be the simple,

because, as reason believes, of the nature of the concepts of the understanding (just as the proof

of the antithesis finds that what remains must be the composite because of those same concepts).

In essence, Kant presents a phenomenological proof of the way reason must think. Hegel's proof

4 All citations here are from the Quantity chapter of the Science of Logic, which runs from 21.176-21.193, with each German page being a little less than one page in my edition.

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is a logical proof which, while valid, does not represent the mirage that reason finds itself pulled

in to.

The deceptions of reason

We might wonder, why is reason drawn to these questions, where it inevitably finds itself

in error? Kant's analogy to empirical illusion in the world of the senses is helpful. We can

compare the antinomies to mirages, which we cannot avoid experiencing even though we know

of their falsity. However, we must be careful with the analogy, since Kant claims that truth and

error come not from the senses, but from the judgments we make about them (B 350). A mirage

is not in fact false unless we take it to accurately represent the position of an object. Similarly,

the understanding itself can never be false when operating according to its own laws. But

presumably, we can still call both mirages and certain of our understanding's principles

deceptive. Kant says that when sensibility “influences the understanding's acts themselves and

determines it to make judgments, [it] is a basis of error.” (B 351). In our experience, there seem

to be times when sensibility does not so influence the understanding; but at the times when it

does, it can be considered deceptive. Similarly, where reason influences the understanding to

transgress its bounds, it is transcendent, i.e., it deceives us into believing in the noumenal nature

of appearances.

Why then does the transcendent use (as distinguished from the transcendental use, which

is the use prior to experience) of the principles of the understanding occur to us? Kant says that

“in our reason … there lie basic rules and maxims of its use that have entirely the look of

objective principles” (B 353), suggesting that these maxims not only tend to occur but in fact are

already existing in us. In the First Preface, Kant attributes reason's deception to its having

“principles that it cannot avoid using in the course of experience, and that this experience at the

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same time sufficiently justifies it in using” (A vii), which then compel reason to “resort to

principles that go beyond all possible use in experience” (A viii). It is clear that there are two

different types of principles of reason, representing two different types of use of the principles of

the understanding. The first are the principles for the proper maintenance of the use of the

understanding. By using them, “our reason (as indeed its nature requires it to do) ascends ever

higher, to more remote conditions” (A vii-iii). But when the conditions run out, reason inevitably

wishes to take up other principles – the transcendent ones, which allow it to presuppose the

totality of the conditions as given to it and cognize things in themselves. So those principles

fulfill reason's desire for the highest possible answers – a desire which, though impossible to

fulfill, reason must have in order to lead us to categorize the understanding's principles

efficiently. The taking up of the transcendent principles occurs, as suggested by Kant's metaphors

of mirages, through a sort of laziness: just as our mind is fooled by the usual adequacy of taking

our visual representation of an object to represent its real size, so reason is deceived by its natural

use of the principles of the understanding to find the cause of an event or the condition of a

conditioned to think that the entire sequence of causes or conditions can be discovered if it so

desires. But in fact, in this way reason would be given, as a conclusion, what is is supposed to be

given to the understanding only as a task.

System and organism

Hence what at first seemed to be “sublime ideas” that “far surpass the value of all other

human science” (B 491) are in fact revealed to be deceptions, and the solutions to the “questions

for whose solution the mathematician would gladly give away his entire science” (B 491) are

shown not to belong to speculative reason. Yet this loss is also a gain. At the same time as he

frustrates theoretical reason's hopes for its own answers to these questions, Kant is able to satisfy

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“one of reason's most important concerns” (B xv) – the desire for metaphysics to become a

science – by in effect completing metaphysics. “Once metaphysics has been brought by this

critique onto the secure path of a science... it can complete its work and put it aside for the use of

posterity, as a capital that can never be increased” (B xxiii-iv). Moreover, the benefit of this

security is not only theoretical but also practical. A scientifically limited speculative reason will

prevent reason's expansion into the ethical realm that is the proper domain of practical reason,

and hence “cut off, at the very root, materialism, fatalism, atheism, … fanaticism, …

superstition, … idealism[,] and skepticism” (B xxxiv), producing a benefit not only for

philosophy but for the public.

Central to the security of Kant's metaphysics is the systematic nature of his work. For

Kant, “Human reason is by nature architectonic. I.e., it regards all cognitions as belonging to a

possible system” (B 502). The “systematic unity” which reason searches for is in fact “what turns

common cognition into science” (B 860). Hence Kant sees his Critique as reflecting the structure

of pure reason, where “everything is an organ, i.e., everything is there for the sake of each

member, and each individual member is there for the sake of all” (B xxxvii-iii). In Kant's own

system, “We obtain the same result whether we proceed from the minutest elements all the way

to the whole of pure reason”, or vice versa (B xxxviii), and “any attempt to alter even the

smallest part immediately gives rise to contradictions” (B xxxviii). Having created his own fine-

tuned web, Kant is hopeful “that this system will continue to maintain itself in this unchangeable

state” (B xxxviii) to perpetuity.

It is natural that Hegel would take this static system as a challenge. Accepting Kant's

system would mean leaving future metaphysicians with little to do but strengthen the ties of the

Kantian system, a pursuit which Kant says is “nothing more than the task of arranging everything

in the didactic manner according to their aims, yet without their being able to increase the

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content in the least” (A xx). As a testament to the efficacy of Kant's system, Hegel begins the

Science of Logic by noting that Kant's teaching that “the understanding ought not to be allowed

to soar above experience” (SL 21.5, p. 25) has led to “the downfall of metaphysics” (SL 21.6, p.

25). Nor has Kant's restriction of speculative reason led to a more ethical public; rather, after

Kant we find that a pure subjectivism in ethics has taken hold, with no guidance from reason at

all (EL Second Preface):

From the mistaken view that the inadequacy of finite categories to express truth entails the impossibility of objective cognition, we derive justification for pronouncing and denouncing according to our feelings and subjective opinions. Assurances present themselves in place of proofs … and the more uncritical they are, the more they count as “pure.” … “From the Evil One they are free, but the evil still remains”; and the evil is ten times worse than before, because they entrust themselves to it without any distrust or criticism.

Hegel is of course aware that Kant does not intend for reason to be removed from ethics, but

only for its speculative pretensions to be divorced from its practical use. Still, Kant's attempt to

“annul knowledge in order to make room for faith” (B xxx) is for Hegel misguided and indeed

paradoxical, since ethics and metaphysics are not isolated magisteria but are equally based “on

the development of thought and the concept” (Philosophy of Right, Preface, p. 65).

To reclaim the authority of metaphysics, Hegel attacks Kant's system by challenging its

very staticness. In the preface to the Phenomenology he criticizes the side of science which

asserts “immediate rationality and divinity” (PS §14), saying that its expansion “turns out not to

have come about by way of one and the same thing giving itself diverse shapes but rather by way

of the shapeless repetition of one and the same thing which is only externally applied to diverse

material and which contains only the tedious semblance of diversity” (PS §15). In contrast, says

Hegel, “The truth is the whole. But the whole is only the essence perfecting itself through its

development.” (PS §20). Hegel does not discard the idea of philosophy as a system – he refers to

5 Hegel, G.W.F, tr. T. M. Knox. Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Oxford, 1967.

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his own oeuvre as “the system of science” (SL 21.9, p. 29), and says that “The true shape in

which truth exists can only be the scientific system of that truth.” (PS §5). But this system must

be built from the ground up along the “self-constructing path” (SL 21.8, p. 28) of the dialectic, a

“spiritual movement” (SL 21.8, p. 28) in accordance with “an altogether new concept of

scientific procedure” (SL 21.7, p. 27). Moreover, its builder must “comprehend the diversity of

philosophical systems as the progressive development of truth” (PS §2). Though Kant clearly

intends his own system to have the qualities of an organism – reciprocity of parts, capacity for

self-repair – Hegel sees Kant's system as lacking the most essential quality of an organism:

motion, in the form of self-moving development into its mature form. The dialectic is a process

which carries its developmental tendency within itself, growing not through the outward

expansion of a single principle but through an upward growth in which principles, concepts, and

indeed whole systems are arrived at and then surpassed. In Hegel's analogy, the blossom replaces

the bud and the fruit replaces the blossom, each showing the previous “to be a false existence of

the plant” – but at the same time a necessary one. Previous systems are part of the natural

evolution of the organism, which itself is not so much systematic as metasystematic, embracing

all systems.

Accordingly, for Hegel the antinomies are not evidence of reason's failure, but a part of

its growth. Hegel acknowledges that Kant's antinomies are superior to the popular notion of a

dialectic, which produces a “semblance of contradictions” (EL §81) between two determinations

of the understanding and supposes the semblance to be false, in that they actually demonstrate

“how each abstract determination of the understanding, taken simply on its own terms, overturns

immediately into its opposite”. But Kant's conclusion, that the refutation of each side by the

other is evidence that we must withdraw to firmer ground, is criticized by Hegel as one where

“reason is not capable of cognizing the rational” (SL 21.40). Hegel might agree that if substances

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could be thought only according to Kant's concepts, then we would be stuck in uncertainty about

what things in themselves are like; but instead we are able to subsume the conflicting ideas about

things into a new concept, which itself has its antinomy, and so on, until we reach absolute

knowledge. Hence, whereas for Kant the antinomies are essential in the humbling of reason,

since “nothing but hitting upon a clear contradiction can stop our progress” (B 8), for Hegel each

new antinomy prompts reason to sublate the finitude of the previous determination and move

closer to the absolute. And unlike in Kant, where the four antinomies emerge from the division of

the categories of the understanding (B 490), for Hegel every concept contains an antinomy (SL

21.180, p. 191), and hence a dialectic, to be sublated.

The future of metaphysics

Kant and Hegel can both be seen as ultimately responding to Hume, but in different ways.

Kant embraces subjectivity while Hegel seeks to overcome it. Their disagreement is centered on

the principle noted above, that “cognition has no other forms of thought than finite categories”.

For Hegel, Kant's use of this principle as a solution to the antinomies “has no other result than to

make the so-called conflict into something subjective wherein, of course, the same illusion still

persists just as undispelled as before. A true solution can only consist in that two determinations

… have truth … only in their sublated being” (SL 21.181, p. 191). Hegel sees Kant's subjective

pivot as worthless, since subjective and objective, if anything more than “trick-words” (PS §76),

are concepts that themselves must be sublated. Kant's insistence that we begin with an analysis of

the objects of our mind as such is misguided, since the very divide between subject and object

needs to be overcome. We accomplish this overcoming through that same speculative reason

which Kant restrained, but which for Hegel contains the antinomy of the subjective and the

objective, and shows that they “are not only identical but also distinct” (and vice versa!) (EL

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§82). By shattering the distinction between subject and object we can restore speculative reason,

which “apprehends the unity of the determinations in their opposition” and “contains the very

antitheses at which the understanding stops short” (Encyclopedia Logic §82), to its rightful role

of subsuming the distinctions of the understanding (rather than being stymied by them), and can

put metaphysics, which Kant notes was once “called the queen of all the sciences” (A viii), back

upon her throne.

What would Kant's response to Hegel be? Hegel positions himself well to avoid being

labeled as just another dogmatist. Well aware of Kant's dismissal of the dogmatic tradition, he

takes care to position himself not as part of the “previous metaphysics” which Kant refuted but

as part of a “more recent philosophy”. Nor is this mere rhetoric: as we have shown, Hegel is not

merely systematic but metasystematic, propounding not a finite dogma but a doctrine of change

and progress.

Yet the Humean question remains open: how we can be certain that our reasoning

describes any real truth? In the introduction to the Phenomenology Hegel suggests a “mistrust of

this mistrust”, and points out in a general way that it itself presupposes a divide between

cognition and reality (P §74). This is all very well, but a mistrust of the mistrust hardly leaves us

with certainty; and though Hegel's project of ignoring the “trick-words” of Kantian philosophy

and instead describing the evolution of thought may provide a compelling alternative to Kant, it

is hard to see how it would compel the Kantian critic to give up his doubts.

In a way Kant and Hegel fall into the roles of skeptic and dogmatist, respectively, in each

other's respective systems. Kant might view Hegel as another dogmatist seduced by the

expansionist desires of reason – in this case, not in ignorance of the limits thereof, but in willful

spite of them. And Hegel sees an adherence to Kantian philosophy as an abyssal skepticism that

simply refuses to grasp its own positive negation, forever engaged in “the act of casting what is

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distinct and determinate into the abyss of the void” (P §16). But neither can succeed in entirely

rebuking the other, and hence Hegel and Kant must endlessly attack each other, like the two

dragons of Merlin's dream whose fighting undermines the foundations of Vortigern's castle. For

their disagreement concerns not merely what the right answers are, but the nature of the

questions that we must ask. Kant's question is whether the subject or the object is the determinant

of our reality; Hegel's, whether the subject is in fact separate from what is known. Whether or

not future metaphysics embraces either of these two thinkers' systems, it will have to deal with

these questions before the building of the castle of reason may proceed.

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