The Conception of Things in Themselves in the Critical Philosophy Exegetical Issues

Chapter 1: The Conception of Things in Themselves in the Critical Philosophy: Exegetical Issues Introduction Within recent years Immanuel Kant's conception of things in themselves has been at the center of a highly contentious debate regarding the proper meaning and import of Kant's transcendental idealism, that is, what, properly speaking, transcendental idealism is, or what it amounts to Henry Allison made this point in a relatively recent article entitled “Transcendental Realism, Empirical Realism, and Transcendental Idealism” (which was largely devoted to this very issue), when he says that “The debate regarding the interpretation of Kant's idealism is usually seen as turning on the best way to understand his transcendental distinction between appearances and things in themselves.”1 What this suggests is that one cannot advance an interpretation of Kantian transcendental idealism without first advancing an interpretation of the transcendental distinction between appearances and things in themselves (TD), since how one interprets the former is a direct result of how one interprets the latter That is, how one interprets Kant's TD directly governs how one understands the fundamental character of Kantian transcendentalism So, in light of the centrality of the TD to the controversy surrounding Kant's transcendental idealism as a whole, it is not surprising that one of the aims of this thesis is to come to terms with that very issue, of how best to understand the idea of things in themselves within the context of Kant's theoretical philosophy Not only is this far from an easy task to begin with, but it is compounded by the fact that, since there is obviously no consensus on exactly what Kant meant with his formulation of the TD, or on exactly what the TD ultimately amounts to, multiple schools of thought have arisen for the sole purpose of tackling that very issue With this basic understanding that there is no easy answer to the question of what exactly Kant intended his formulation of the TD to mean, it becomes clear that, as we attempt to arrive at the heart of what the TD really consists in, we must first come to grips with exactly what these various exegetical schools of thought have to say about the TD, of how it must be understood within the broader context of Kantian transcendentalism: for it is only then that will we be in a position to sufficiently address the concerns, textual as well as systematic, that have arisen in reference to the particular Kantian concept under consideration As I noted, there are many different interpretations of the precise meaning of Kant's TD, ranging (as we will see) from straightforward ontological interpretations which paint Kant as a 1 Henry E Allison, “Transcendental Realism, Empirical Realism, and Transcendental Idealism,” Kantian Review 11 (2006): traditional, Berkeleian metaphysician for whom the external, mind-independent world is nothing over and above a series of our mental representations, to more revolutionary interpretations which see Kant not as an “honest-to-goodness, old fashioned” idealist who doubts the existence of the external world, but rather as a bona fide direct realist for whom there really are external objects – in this case, appearances, not things in themselves – which causally “affect” us in a straightforwardly empiricist sense Each of these interpretations will therefore be dealt with in the forthcoming stages of this thesis; it must also be noted here that common-sense suggests that they cannot carry an equal amount of exegetical weight, either in regards to their textual consistency or in regards to their architectonic plausibility for that matter, and the most important implication this has for our purposes is that we will eventually have to decide which readings, if any, justice to the fundamental import and significance of Kantian transcendentalism Moreover, since there is obviously no conceivable way I can establish exactly what the TD amounts to within the context of Kantianism proper in a vacuum, as it were, independent of the various exegetical schools of thought which have as their concern the TD, as I see it, the simplest way of dealing with the exegetical issues related to Kant's TD is simply to pose the all-important question: is there a reading of the TD that fits the texts, and remains true to the more fundamental philosophical concerns of Kantianism in general? This question will no doubt form the basis of the first part of my thesis, which is concerned with finding, within contemporary philosophical studies on Kant, a prima facie plausible reading of the TD This chapter will consist of three parts In part 1, I will introduce the two conceptions at the heart of Kant's doctrine of the TD, appearances and things in themselves, with particular emphasis on the latter In part 2, I will introduce the various interpretations of Kantian idealism in relation to the TD, each of which will then (in part 3) be considered in relation to the texts Part 1: An Introduction to Kant's Conceptions of Appearances and Things in Themselves As I indicated above, in the first part of this chapter I will introduce, by way of explication, the two central Kantian concepts at the heart of the aforecited question, which we saw forms the basis of our critical and exegetical evaluation of the meaning and import of Kant's TD The concepts to which I here refer are nothing other than appearances and things in themselves So, to that end, we should now consider these two concepts within the Critical context of transcendental idealism itself 2 See Graham Bird, The Revolutionary Kant: A Commentary on the Critique of Pure Reason (Chicago: Open Court, 2006), xii-xiv, where Bird first introduces his distinction between traditionalist and revolutionary accounts of Kantianism Early on in the “Transcendental Aesthetic” at A20/B34 Kant provides us with a definition of the notion of appearances (Erscheinungen), or rather “things that appear,” one of the most important conceptions of his entire “Critical” framework, in terms of the idea of a spatio-temporal object of an empirical intuition; simply put, appearances, in other words, can best be understood as things or objects as we experience them under the a priori conditions of a possible experience As we come to learn in the Critique of Pure Reason (CPR), an appearance is something that conforms to the formal-categorial structure of a possible experience, which essentially means two things: in the first place, it means that appearances are objects that conform to the basic a priori forms of space and time, or to put it differently, appearances are spatio-temporal objects; secondly, it means that appearances are objects that are made intelligible by means of the most basic concepts of our human understanding, the categories, which is to say that they are objects that can be made sense of in terms of such concepts as unity, plurality, reality, negation, and the like Another way of putting this is by saying that Kant takes the concept of appearances to signify nothing over and above the ordinary empirical constituents of our shared, spatio-temporal reality, with the result that appearances can include, on the one hand, such mundane spatio-temporal items such as tables, chairs, and computers, that is, items with which we are all intimately familiar, but it also means that they can include such things as atoms, neurons, and supernovas, for instance, items of modern scientific discovery with which we are not so intimately familiar In the end, what is important for our purposes is that, because appearances conform to both the subjective a priori forms of our empirical intuition, as well as to the most basic a priori (and thus once again subjective) categories of our understanding, appearances are obviously things that factor into our knowledge-claims about the state of reality, and it is for that reason that we can say of them that they are things that are ultimately cognizable by us Crudely put, the concept of appearances is the concept of things that we can know Additionally, one must remember that, beginning at A22/B37 of CPR, Kant draws a distinction between inner sense on one hand, and outer sense on the other, each of which becomes associated with its own corresponding form of empirical intuition; the form of time becomes associated with inner sense, whereas the form of space becomes associated with the form of outer sense Kant asserts that, By means of outer sense, a property of our mind, we represent to ourselves objects as outside us, and all without exception in space In space, their shape, magnitude, and relation to one another are determined or determinable Inner sense, by means of which the mind intuits itself or its inner state, yields indeed no intuition of the soul itself as an object; but there is nevertheless a determinate form [namely time] in which alone the intuition of inner states is possible, and everything which belongs to inner determinations is therefore represented in relations of time Time cannot be outwardly intuited, any more than space can be intuited as something in us.3 Laying aside the fact that this distinction will soon prove to be crucial in the following chapter, for our present purposes what this implies is that spatio-temporal appearances include, among other things, inner, and therefore wholly mind-dependent, mental items, the contents of which form the basis of our most complex thoughts and emotions, as well as outer, wholly material, items like computers, cell-phones, and cars, for instance The reason this is important is because this is where Kant first begins to distance himself from Berkeley or a Berkeleian-type phenomenalism, the latter being a metaphysical and epistemological position which doubts the existence of anything and everything that is not immediately perceived or perceivable by us And, as we will come to learn in the next chapter, many accounts of the TD will suffer for just that reason: they fail to account for this fundamental distinction between inner and outer sense, which, as we just saw, plays an important role in Kant's account of the nature of appearances There is no doubt that, in comparison with Kant's account of the conception of appearances, which we have already considered in some detail, his account of the conception of things in themselves (Dinge an Sich) is much more complex and nuanced To begin with, as we will shortly see, we cannot even say with absolute certainty that things in themselves actually exist, that is, that there really is something, to be exact, a non-spatial, atemporal, and non-categorial form of being to which the concept of the thing in itself refers Nevertheless, we can say with a considerable degree of certainty that the concept of things in themselves (or things as they are in themselves) is, very generally, the concept of something, let us say once again, a form of being, that exists completely apart from, independent of, and without any reference to, our experience, and the consequent result is that things in themselves thereby essentially become understandable in terms of a form of being that fails to conform to any of the a priori subjective conditions of a possible experience More specifically, things in themselves refer to a form of being that exists outside the empirical realm of spatio-temporal reality, and for that very reason they denote a form of being to which the a priori forms of space and time cannot apply; furthermore, they cannot be subsumed under, conform to, or in any sense be rendered intelligible by means of, the subjective a priori categories of our understanding such as substance/attribute, cause and effect, unity, and reality, naming a few The important point is that, by virtue of the status of things in themselves as prima facie mindindependent items of some mysterious non-spatial, atemporal, and non-categorial sort, the concept of things in themselves is the concept of a thing that is fundamentally unknowable to us; simply put, if things in themselves were to exist, they would be so different from anything we have ever CPR, A22-23/B37 experienced (or for that matter, could ever experience) that we would not be in a position to know anything about them Despite the fact that we are in no position to make any substantive pronouncements about the precise meaning of the TD, of what it amounts to and how it can best be understood in light of Kantian idealism proper, one can nevertheless see key themes emerging in many contemporary accounts of the TD, particularly with respect to Kant's doctrine of things in themselves Let's be clear, though: I am certainly not saying that all of these themes or theses are entirely unobjectionable; in fact, we will shortly see that some contemporary Kantian interpreters reject the very first and most basic thesis, the thesis that things in themselves actually exist, that is, that the concept of such things refers to something that really exists However, what I am saying is that most Kantian interpreters attempt to justice to these theses in some way Even though we have already touched upon most of them, it is certainly important at this stage to make them as clear and explicit as possible To that end, then, I have provided a list of them, viz., a list of what many take to be the four essential features or elements of Kant's commitment to the conception of things as they are in themselves, which can be encapsulated in terms of the following four theses, and which I have entitled the existential thesis, the non-formal, non-categorial thesis, the discursivity thesis, and finally, the inscrutability thesis, respectively Things in themselves exist [See CPR, Bxx] Things in themselves are necessarily non-spatial, atemporal things of some kind, which cannot be understood in terms of the pure a priori concepts of the understanding (i.e., the categories) [See CPR, A30/B45 and A39/B56] Human cognition is discursive, meaning that it requires both sensible intuitions, as well as concepts [See CPR, A51-52/B75-76] (From 1, 2, and 3) Things in themselves cannot be known by us [See CPR, Bxxvi, A30/B45, and A44/B61].4 To be sure, the first two theses are metaphysical in character and import, whereas the final two are epistemological, where the conclusion logically follows the combination of the first three theses In the end, all I want the reader to take from this philosophical outline at this point is that, once we Cf Rae Langton, Kantian Humility: Our Ignorance of Things in Themselves (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 7-14, and James Van Cleve, Problems from Kant (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 135 It must be noted that both Langton and Van Cleve outline what they take to be the essential theses or elements of Kant's doctrine of things in themselves The major difference between theirs and mine is that they both assume that the noumenal realm of things in themselves somehow causes or affects us, “giving rise to the representations through which phenomena are represented and constituted,” as Van Cleve says The causal thesis, as I call it, is a controversial claim, and one which I not particularly accept Now, even though we will come to see that it is not the only thesis with respect to Kant's doctrine of things in themselves that I reject, it is simply too controversial a claim to include it in my list of the essential theses inherent to Kant's doctrine of things in themselves combine the fact that things in themselves supposedly exist in some metaphysically-robust sense of term, with the additional facts that they can be neither formal nor categorial – as both the a priori forms of intuition as well as the pure a priori categories of our understanding apply only to objects of sense that are immediately given to us – and that our knowledge is discursive in that it requires both sensible particulars as well as general concepts, it follows that things in themselves are things of a fundamentally inscrutable sort However, there are of course fundamental problems with the above account, the first of which centers round the conclusion, the inscrutability thesis, according to which things in themselves represent a form of being of which we cannot obtain any determinate knowledge For, so the argument goes, if things in themselves were genuinely inscrutable to us, common-sense says that we certainly could not know that they exist, and we certainly could not know that they exist in such a way that they not conform to either the a priori forms of our empirical intuition or to the pure a priori categories of thought Another way of putting this point is to claim that, insofar as one accepts the veracity of the conclusion above, one thereby rejects the veracity of both premises and 2, for one might ask: on what grounds can we claim that things in themselves exist, and exist in some non-formal, non-categorial way, moreover, if we cannot even claim to have any determinate knowledge of such things in the first place? Now, at least in my mind, there are some relatively simple ways of rebutting this criticism, where the most common is to claim that it is only synthetic claims about things in themselves that Kant rejects as illegitimate, which essentially means that we are free to make as many analytic claims about the status and/or character of things in themselves as their concept warrants The implication here is that, notwithstanding claim 1, which says that things in themselves exist, all of the aforementioned claims listed above, meaning claims and 3, as well as the conclusion 4, are wholly legitimate because they express merely analytic truths about the status and/or character of things in themselves With this understanding that many of the above theses can be derived purely from the concept of things as they are in themselves as such, some Kantian scholars have sought to dispel the worry noted above by effectively claiming that, since the concept of things in themselves is nothing more than the concept of a non-spatio-temporal, non-categorial object of some sort, to claim that we cannot obtain any determinate knowledge of things in themselves is to state a merely analytic truth about such things Now, while I agree with this line of argument as far as it goes, the problem becomes compounded once we take into account the second major issue in respect to the above account, which is in a very important respect a more forceful expression of our current problem A far more serious critical issue arises, however, when we recall that things in themselves are supposed to be things that lie wholly beyond the categories of our thought, that is, the a priori, and therefore most fundamental, concepts of the human understanding by means of which the external, mind-independent world is made intelligible to us According to Graham Priest, one of the implications of the Kantian theory that the categories can only be employed within the field of a possible experience, and can therefore only be applied to objects within that field (viz., phenomena), is not just that we cannot know things in themselves (or noumena) – what Priest refers to as being beyond the limit of cognition – but more importantly, and more controversially, that neither can we make meaningful statements about things in themselves nor form coherent thoughts (or ideas) of such things – in this latter sense, things in themselves are beyond both the limit of expression as well as the limit of conception In order to adequately understand the rationale behind Priest's view that we can neither say anything meaningful about, nor even form coherent thoughts (or ideas) of, Kant's notion of things in themselves (or noumena), we must first explore exactly why he thinks we cannot know them As we can see here, there is a close connection between the way in which things in themselves are beyond the limit of our cognition on one hand, and the way in which they are both beyond the limit of expression as well as the limit of conception on the other hand Very basically, the reason things in themselves (or noumena) are unknowable, in Kant's eyes, is that their status as non-categorial things or objects of some kind logically prohibits them from factoring into any putative knowledge-claim That is, to know such and such about x is to make a claim or a judgement regarding x, and to make a claim or a judgement regarding x is to implement (at least some of) the various categories, thereby rendering x intelligible to us Even the most basic – or what some might call the most “primitive” – form of cognitive awareness requires the implementation of the categories, for even the most basic form of cognitive awareness requires us to make meaningful judgements about the objects of that awareness So, with this in mind, the thought, it seems to me, is that, if things in themselves are non-categorial in the respect that they exist outside the field of the logical employment of the categories, it follows that we cannot even obtain the most basic form of knowledge of them – whatever that might amount to – for the simple reason that we cannot even make a meaningful statement about them For, to make a meaningful statement about them would be to implement the various categories, which is impossible See Graham Priest, Beyond the Limits of Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 88-91 Things in themselves (or noumena) are also beyond the limit of iteration, according to Priest – which we shall not concerns ourselves with here Priest defines the limit of the iterable as “some operation that is applied over and over again as far as possible.” The most notable case of something being beyond the limit of the iterable, according to Priest, is the mathematical (ordinal) infinite Very basically, as far as I understand it, the thought seems to be that the mathematical infinite is at the limit of the iterable given that it is always possible to add something to our conception of an infinite totality But I'm afraid I cannot say much more on this here See Graham Priest, Beyond the Limits of Thought, 79-113, for more on this Having already explained why things in themselves are beyond the limit of our cognition, it is not too difficult to see why some might argue that they are beyond the limit of expression as well – the idea that we cannot say (or express) anything about them So the argument goes: if we cannot make meaningful statements about things in themselves without employing any of the categories, and if things themselves are things which are outside the categories in some respect, then it follows that we cannot make any meaningful statements about things in themselves As such, Kant's notion of things in themselves is beyond the limit of the expressible Yet, I would argue that the central argument Priest uses to illustrate the contradictory – or rather incoherent – nature of Kant's doctrine of things in themselves in relation to some of the broader theoretical concerns of CPR itself is not in terms of the idea that we cannot make any meaningful statements about things in themselves, but rather in terms of the idea that we cannot even form any coherent thoughts, ideas, or concepts of such things, of what things in themselves may ultimately be like In this way, Priest alleges that the Kantian notion of things in themselves is beyond the limit of conception In short, the reason Kant's doctrine of things in themselves is ultimately incoherent, according to Priest, is that even the notion of a (negative) noumenon as a merely problematic concept our understanding forms in relation to non-sensible modes of intuiting things – that is, a concept which refers to a problematically instantiated object – violates the noncategorial thesis of things in themselves For, as Priest puts it: But to say that there are (or even may be) things about which we cannot judge is to make a judgement about them; specifically, it existentially quantifies over them, and so applies the Category of plurality The 'legitimate' notion is therefore just as illegitimate as the illegitimate one … Hence Kant is caught squarely in the contradiction inherent in the limits of thought And let me emphasize again: this is not a contradiction of the kind of which one finds so many in the Critique: a result of carelessness or of changes of view; it is a contradiction which is occasioned by the very objects of the theory.7 If it is incoherent, based on Kant's own theory of the categories, for one not only to make any meaningful statements about things in themselves – that such things are non-formal, non-categorial, and that we cannot obtain any knowledge of them – but for one to entertain even the barest possibility that such things may in fact exist, that there may be certain things which not relate to our sensible form of intuition, then Kant's doctrine of things in themselves is incoherent lock, stock, and barrel One might object to Priest's account of the Kantian doctrine of things in themselves on the grounds that, as evidenced in various parts of CPR, Kant insists that, provided our thoughts not logically contradict themselves, there are very few restrictions on what one might “think,” Priest, Beyond the Limits of Thought, 91 “conceive,” or even “hypothesize.” For example, in the “Transcendental Doctrine of Elements,” Kant makes his famous remark that: “Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.”8 For our present purposes, what is noteworthy about this passage is that Kant never says that thoughts without content are logically contradictory or impossible, only that they are empty, meaning, devoid of any putative reference Most importantly, this is not to say that we cannot have such thoughts, that we cannot have the thought of a merely “problematically” instantiated item; but it is to say that such a thought is vacuous in the ordinary sense of the term in that it does not refer to anything within the field of a possible experience, and as such, it does not, as Kant would say, refer to an object which is actually given to us My view, in the end, is that this passage is evidence of Kant's considered view that, in the event that our concepts (or thoughts) not objectively refer to anything within the field of a possible experience, they are nevertheless still coherent thoughts, they are still thoughts of possible objects – barring, of course, any logical contradictions inherent in those thoughts This is exactly what Kant is saying in the following note to CPR, Bxxvi where he remarks: To know an object I must be able to prove its possibility, either from its actuality as attested by experience, or a priori by means of reason But I can think whatever I please, provided only that I not contradict myself, that is, provided my concept is a possible thought This suffices for the possibility of the concept, even though I may not be able to answer for there being, in the sum of all possibilities, an object corresponding to it But something more is required before I can ascribe to such a concept objective validity, that is, real possibility; the former possibility is merely logical This something more need not, however, be sought in the theoretical sources of knowledge; it may lie in those that are practical.9 Kant's suggestion here is just that so long as our concept of the thing in itself, of a negative noumenon that is, is the thought of a possible object in the respect that it does not logically contradict itself, the concept of the thing in itself is by no means impossible, and the consequent upshot for the Kantian is that there is no contradiction in us entertaining thoughts about such things As such, Kant's doctrine of things in themselves – which turns out to be the doctrine of negative noumena, as we will see – is not in any way embroiled in the logical contradictions and incoherences that Priest alleges As we have seen, the major problem with Priest's account of how Kant's notion of things in themselves violates the limit of conception stems in large part from a misunderstanding, on Priest's part, of the complexities and nuances of Kant's theory of judgement in relation to the categories of thought Essentially, in restricting the field of the possible employment of the categories within that of a possible experience, Kant in effect thereby implicitly leaves open the (logical) possibility that 9 CPR, A51/B75 CPR, Bxxvin we may think whatever we please, provided, of course, our thought of a possible object is a coherent thought in that it does not contradict itself To quote Robert Hanna at this point: By contrast, all judgments that are not objectively valid are “empty” (leer) or truthvalueless Nevertheless it must be noted that for Kant empty judgments can still be rationally intelligible and not nonsensical, if all the concepts contained within them are at least logically consistent or “thinkable” (Bxxvi n.) In this way, e.g., some judgments containing concepts of noumenal objects (things-in-themselves, or real essences) or noumenal subjects (rational-agents-in-themselves, or persons) are anthropocentrically empirically referentially meaningless and truth-valueless, hence empty, yet also are rationally intelligible and even essential both to Kant's theoretical metaphysics (A254-255/B309-310, A650-654/B678-682) and to his metaphysics of freedom and morality (A530-558/B566-586).10 In the end, then, Priest's account of the contradictory nature of Kant's conception of things as they are in themselves largely fails as an interpretation of the real, Critical Kant, for, as I have said, it fails to justice to the complexities and nuances of Kant's theory of judgement, of whether it is possible to think a merely “problematic” object without at the same time employing the forms of judgement, and in turn the various categories Since Kant remains committed to the view that it is possible for us to entertain such thoughts, for us to have the thought of an object that may only “problematically” exist, it is certainly by no means unintelligible or incoherent for him to advance a theory of the TD in which things in themselves are necessary only in the regulative sense in marking off the territory of the knowable We have therefore considered, in a preliminary way, how Kant introduces the concept of things in themselves, and how this does not immediately fall foul of a fatal difficulty – though of course many puzzles still remain, as we will come to as we proceed But first I will set out the main ways in which Kant's TD have been understood Part 2: An Enumeration and Explication of Four Transcendental Construals of Kant's TD As I understand it, there are only four possible interpretations of what Kant's TD can be said to amount to; and in what follows, I will enumerate them in chronological order, that is, according to the temporal order in which they were formulated in response to the problematic surrounding the TD, of what the TD means, and how it can be understood In chronological order, these transcendental construals are: first, the traditional ontological construal (which includes both the two-object view as well as the two-worlds view); second, the methodological construal; third, the 10 10 Robert Hanna, “Kant's Theory of Judgement,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (July 2004), accessed April 4, 2013, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-judgment/ object are located But, on the other hand, we also saw that, if we take a methodological view in respect to the TD, the criticism fails, and this because such views not understand the thing in itself in the way that the other views do, as the putative “Grund” of our immanent experience, causally connected with that experience in a way that underscores the sense in which the TD was intended to denote a contrast between appearance and reality The end result is that there is no longer any need for us to “go transcendent” in our search for the essences of things, and we could thus remain firmly within the realm of the empirical in doing so Moreover, in the highly unlikely event that things in themselves exist, their nature would be such that they would require their own unique essences, which essentially means that there would then exist two classes of object, with two sets of essences: phenomena with phenomenal essences, and noumena with noumenal essences To the extent that the essences of phenomena would manifest themselves in the realm of those very phenomena, essences would in fact appear Part 3: An Assessment of the Limit Criticism We have one criticism left to tackle in our assessment of Hegel's critique of Kantian things in themselves, and this is the limit criticism As with both the indeterminacy criticism and the essence criticism, in assessing the extent to which Kant's view of things in themselves, on each of the transcendental readings I have here formulated, violates the limit criticism, I start by very briefly repeating what the central theme(s) of the limit criticism consist in, and then I consider what this means against the backdrop of each transcendental reading of Kant's TD Very basically, in the last chapter, we saw that the nature of a limit is such, in Hegel's view, that one seemingly cannot be put in place without transcending it Take, for example, a physical limit, say, the outer limit of the known universe Hegel's claim is not that one has to physically go beyond the exact point at which the universe comes to an end in order to know that there is a limit to the universe Rather it is the less-controversial claim that a limit is only a limit to something if that something can, in a different context and under different conditions, go beyond that limit – being held fixed to one place is a limit to a man, not to a plant precisely because the man, and not the plant, is in itself not a stationary being, and as such, can move about in such a way that being held fixed to one particular place would ordinarily be considered a restriction Hegel's claim, then, can be summarized in terms of the idea that that which is limited in a certain context presupposes or points to that which is un-limited or un-restricted in that very same context So, insofar as the Kantian doctrine of things in themselves is concerned, the limit criticism consists in the notion that such things could not be identified as the determinate limit of our cognition, the determinate point at 192 which our cognition of reality stops, unless we could proceed beyond things in themselves, and obtain knowledge of what Hegel famously terms the “Absolute,” that which stands opposed to things in themselves by which things in themselves can be determined as the limit of our cognition Otherwise put, if our cognition was limited in the respect that we cannot obtain knowledge of things in themselves as Kant believes, then it must also be the case that our cognition is un-limited in this way as well to the extent that we can, under different conditions, obtain knowledge of such things Let's assume, as we have always done, that Hegel's arguments on this score are sound, that there is something inherently problematic about establishing a limit to something given the fact that that which is limited presupposes that which is un-limited If this were the case, then it is obvious that Kant cannot posit things in themselves as the determinate limit of our cognition without committing a blatant contradiction So, with this very general background of the issues confronting any putative act of establishing a limit to something, one can now clearly see that the limit criticism turns precisely on whether things in themselves are posited by Kant as the determinate limit of our cognition in each of the relevant cases before us: simply put, if they are, then that particular reading of Kant violates the principle, central to the limit criticism, that a limit cannot be established without that limit being simultaneously transcended, but if they are not, and Kant does not posit things in themselves in this way, then he certainly does not violate the aforementioned principle and thus he cannot be said, on this particular reading, to be open to the limit criticism as such If this is all that is required in order for the Hegelian's limit criticism to stick, then we need not go into too much detail here, as we have done in the past, for it is obvious that all of the metaphysical views succumb to the limit criticism while the methodological view does not This is because, unlike the merely formal methodological view which remains committed to the merely formal thesis that the notion of things in themselves amounts to a secondary way of considering the objects of our experience, which is entailed by the discursive nature of our cognition, all the metaphysical views remain committed in some fashion to the wholly metaphysical thesis that things in themselves exist (which is what makes them metaphysical) in a way that suggests that they function as the limit of our cognition, the determinate point at which our cognition of things can go no further In other words, on a methodological view of things in themselves, the underlying significance of the Kantian conception of such things lies in the fact that it points to a way of considering the objects of our empirical experience which allows us to diagnose, as well as provide a therapy for, what Kant takes to be some of the major metaphysical-logical errors in traditional metaphysics, and so there is no longer any transcendent reality, on this view, as there is on each of the metaphysical views, existing above and beyond our immanent experience, which we cannot cognize, and which thus functions as the determinate limit of our cognition 193 Nevertheless, perhaps I'm being a bit hasty here: for we must never forget that, based on a methodological reading of Kant's TD, even though the primary import of the conception of things in themselves is merely formal or conceptual in that it represents a non-discursive way of considering things (sensible objects), which is entailed by the wholly discursive nature of our cognition as a faculty of knowledge requiring both sensible particulars as well as general concepts, there is still the hypothetical possibility that such a conception might refer to an existent thing after all When it comes to Kantian exegesis, however anti-metaphysical methodological views of the TD purport to be, they nevertheless leave enough space in their metaphysics for the potential that things as they are in themselves may actually exist Moreover, if they were to exist, since they would clearly be unknowable to us, things in themselves would still function as the determinate limit of our cognition on methodological views, and the important implication this has for the methodological theorist within the context of the limit criticism is that their preferred view of things in themselves can potentially succumb to the limits charge Simply put, in light of the fact that they problematically postulate the actual existence of things in themselves, methodological views of the TD problematically succumb to the limits charge as such As a result, the Hegelian can maintain at this point that the limit criticism has some force even on a methodological view of the TD One final remark before we conclude our investigation into the overall force of the limit criticism, considered against the backdrop of the various transcendental readings of the TD: in line with our general approach of taking Hegel's arguments to be logically sound, thus far we have been assuming that Hegel was correct about the nature of a limit, that is, that there is something inherently problematic about the nature of a limit such that one cannot be put into place without it thereby being transcended or passed over But one might respond that, in doing so, I have failed to justice to the full complexities of the Kantian position on this score, among which is the fact that the existence of such things as the Antinomies of Pure Reason, metaphysical-logical puzzles which we cannot solve and which are inextricably linked to our particular (discursive) mode of understanding, suggest that it is entirely possible, despite what Hegel may have thought, that we can indeed know there is a limit to something, in this case, our cognition, from a purely internal perspective which does not presuppose any such transcendence of the actual limit Put another way, in light of the existence of the Antinomies, we can certainly know that our cognition is limited without knowing what it is that limits it, standing opposed to our cognition by which our cognition is shown to be limited, in the respect that it is incapable of grasping the “Absolute,” or all there is Most importantly, this means that the conceptual grounds on which the limit criticism as such rests are a bit shaky indeed, to say the least Thus, one might think of Kant's Antinomies as marking a “limit,” but from the inside, as it were: we are faced by such Antinomies because we have worked 194 up to the extent of our cognitive capacities, while at the same time finding that we cannot transcend that limit Although this may initially seem to be a decisive objection against the limit criticism as such, particularly against those arguments Hegel uses to derive the conclusion that the Kantian postulation of things in themselves as the limit of our cognition is somehow contradictory, this is not necessarily the case, as we will now see This is because the only way we can determine whether this objection is decisive or not is to examine the Kantian Antinomies so as to come to some conclusion as regards to whether they show what Kant thinks they show, namely, that there are legitimately irresolvable problems confronting our cognitive faculties, problems which not just appear to be irresolvable but actually are irresolvable, and which are inextricably bound up in the very nature of our cognition itself That is, we would have to see whether the formal Antinomial arguments are good or not, and since doing this would obviously take us far beyond the purview of the present chapter, such an investigation cannot be undertaken at this time, which means that we have to essentially leave the debate as it stands, without coming to any determinate view as regards to the strength of this particular argument To conclude our analysis of the extent to which Hegel's limit criticism applies to Kant's “actual” views on things in themselves, specifically on the various interpretations of such things, a few remarks are in order First, insofar as the metaphysical interpretations of the TD are concerned, our conclusion was that each of these readings ultimately succumbs to the limit charge – the charge that there is something problematic about any project of setting a limit to something given the fact that the nature of a limit is such that a limit cannot be put in place without in the process transcending that limit – precisely because they set up Kant's conception of things in themselves in such a way that it putatively acts as the limit of our cognition, or the point at which our cognition of reality stops This is suggested in the very metaphysical nature of these interpretations of the TD as ones which stress the sense, which they regard as particularly well-entrenched in the Kantian theoretical philosophy, in which Kant was committed to the actual existence of things in themselves, that is, things which are intrinsically non-spatio-temporal which we cannot cognize Second, insofar as the methodological view of the TD is concerned, our conclusion was much more favorable in that we saw that the methodological view doesn't assume that Kant was committed to the actual existence of things in themselves, and in this way averts the limit criticism by never actually positing a limit to our knowledge as such The most we could say about this view in the present context is that it merely “problematically” succumbs to it for it merely “problematically” posits the existence of intelligible objects (noumena) beyond the realm of our empirical experience which we cannot cognize 195 Conclusion We come now to the final stage of this chapter, where I will very briefly summarize our conclusions with respect to the overall force of Hegel's critique of Kant's concept of things in themselves, and more specifically, with respect to the extent to which the three main criticisms Hegel had with the concept of things in themselves as such hold insofar as the “real” Critical Kant is concerned That is, since we have seen that there are four major views of just how the “real” Critical Kant is to be understood, in summarizing the overall force of the Hegelian critique of things as they are in themselves, what we are essentially doing is summarizing the extent to which the three major criticisms of such things (viz., the indeterminacy criticism, the essence criticism, and finally, the limit criticism) hold against the backdrop of the four major competing interpretations of Kant's TD, which we have seen are the traditional ontological view, the aspect view, the intrinsic nature view, and the methodological view – the methodological view being the one which I have here defended as the only textually and systematically plausible interpretation of Kantianism as such The important question is therefore whether any of the aforementioned criticisms can be seen to have considerable argumentative force when they are considered against the backdrop of the various interpretations of Kant's TD as such, in which case they would thereby constitute major hurdles for any philosopher broadly ascribing to some form of Kantian idealism Perhaps we could put this another way: any of Hegel's three main criticisms against the thing in itself hold if we take Kant, first, as a traditional metaphysician for whom things in themselves represent a discrete class of object; second, as an outwardly Critical philosopher who nevertheless remains committed to their being a way things are in themselves, independent from the way we experience them, which we cannot cognize; third, as a closet Leibnizian monadologist for whom the thing in itself is understood in terms of a substantia noumenon, the underlying substance of the world which has two distinct sets of properties (the extrinsic and relational, and the intrinsic and non-relational), where phenomena are the extrinsic causal powers of substances; and fourth, as a direct realist for whom there necessarily exists only one type of object, the spatio-temporal objects of our sensory experience, which we are made directly aware of in that experience, but where there are two ways of considering these objects: either as appearances or as things in themselves, in which case they are taken as objects of sense, which conform to both the a priori forms as well as the a priori categories, or as objects of reason (intelligibilia) which conform to neither the a priori forms of our intuition nor to the a priori categories of the understanding, where Kant accepts the first way and rejects the second Essentially, our conclusion can be put rather straightforwardly in the following 196 terms: for reasons we have already discussed, all of these interpretations succumb to the indeterminacy criticism except the intrinsic nature reading; all of them succumb to the essence criticism except the methodological reading; and finally, all of them succumb to the limit criticism except (to some extent) the methodological reading However, with this basic understanding that Hegel's criticisms of things in themselves have much less force when this notion is interpreted methodologically, in terms of our overall assessment of this highly controversial, yet at the same time central, concept of Kant's Critical philosophy, what does this all mean? What does it mean that Hegel's three criticisms of things in themselves (the indeterminacy criticism, the essence criticism, and the limit criticism) succeed more often than they fail, in the respect that they actually apply to Kant's conception of things in themselves, given the various ways in which such things can be construed? It means, first of all, that not only is the methodological reading of things in themselves the most plausible (both textually as well as philosophically) reading of such things within the narrow framework of Kantian transcendental idealism, its major themes and principles, against which the plausibility of each of the various interpretations of things in themselves can be measured (which was our conclusion from the first part of this thesis), but that it is also the best reading insofar as Hegel's critique of things in themselves is concerned; that is to say, it is the reading against which the fewest number of Hegelian criticisms ultimately hold water, further reinforcing the methodological view of Kant's TD as the only appropriate view to take with respect to what Kantian transcendental idealism ultimately consists in Moreover, it suggests that Hegel's rejection of the Kantian conception of things in themselves was a bit misplaced, given the fact that it was based on an overly metaphysical (and thus ultimately misguided) misreading of the thing in itself as a concept which refers to a necessarily existent item, existing somehow beyond the realm of a possible experience, which we cannot cognize (If it wasn't, then Hegel's criticisms of the Kantian conception of things in themselves would have done more justice to the merely formal methodological nature of the concept as one which does not refer to a necessarily instantiated or existent item, but rather to a merely problematically instantiated or existent item, an item which we cannot be sure whether it exists or not) As it stands, though, Hegel's criticisms of things in themselves (except, of course, the indeterminacy criticism which holds equally well on an epistemological or methodological view of the TD) retain much more argumentative force on the metaphysical readings of the TD than they on the merely formal, methodological reading of the TD, showing that Hegel's view of things in themselves was based in 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Review 12 no (2007): 1-39 203 204 205 206 ... but, instead of outlining the intrinsic nature reading's conception of things in themselves in terms of the philosophical outline, noted above, which most accounts of Kant's doctrine of the TD... discussion of the texts in relation to the intrinsic nature reading, I must make one final point Central to the intrinsic nature reading of the TD is the claim that the Kantian notion of things in themselves. .. between the aspect reading of the TD, and the ontological reading of the TD, is that the former conceives of things in themselves in terms of a mind-independent aspect of our reality, which is intrinsically