A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Philosophy

John Shand, John Shand

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781119210047
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Investigate the challenging and nuanced philosophy of the long nineteenth century from Kant to Bergson

Philosophy in the nineteenth century was characterized by new ways of thinking, a desperate searching for new truths. As science, art, and religion were transformed by social pressures and changing worldviews, old certainties fell away, leaving many with a terrifying sense of loss and a realization that our view of things needed to be profoundly rethought.

The Blackwell Companion to Nineteenth-Century Philosophy covers the developments, setbacks, upsets, and evolutions in the varied philosophy of the nineteenth century, beginning with an examination of Kant's Transcendental Idealism, instrumental in the fundamental philosophical shifts that marked the beginning of this new and radical age in the history of philosophy. Guiding readers chronologically and thematically through the progression of nineteenth-century thinking, this guide emphasizes clear explanation and analysis of the core ideas of nineteenth-century philosophy in an historically transitional period. It covers the most important philosophers of the era, including Hegel, Fichte, Schopenhauer, Mill, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Bradley, and philosophers whose work manifests the transition from the nineteenth century into the modern era, such as Sidgwick, Peirce, Husserl, Frege and Bergson.

The study of nineteenth-century philosophy offers us insight into the origin and creation of the modern era. In this volume, readers will have access to a thorough and clear understanding of philosophy that shaped our world.

1
Transcendental Idealism: Kant

JOHN J. CALLANAN

Introduction

Kant's philosophical project brings to a close one strand in the history of philosophy and inaugurates another. Kant himself presented the philosophical trends of the Early Modern period as culminating in his own Critical project. Similarly, the narrative of the subsequent development of philosophy in the nineteenth century is one whereby various elements of Kant's philosophy were either explicitly rejected or recovered. A notable feature of this succeeding trend is that Kant's particular philosophical position of transcendental idealism has been a less popular target for recovery than other broadly “Kantian” or “Critical” aspects of his thinking. It is arguably these latter aspects that constitute Kant’s more lasting influence. For this reason it is a worthwhile endeavor both to distinguish and connect the general tenor of Kant's revolutionary approach to philosophical thinking and the particular philosophical conclusions he formed as a result of that approach.

That task is fruitfully approached through a consideration of the question of the status of metaphysics as first outlined in the Critique of Pure Reason.¹ How to consider Kant's attitude to metaphysics is itself a somewhat vexed question however.² Kant's particular philosophical position manages to be somehow both distinctive and elusive. A central contention of his approach however is the claim that while metaphysics must surely concern things in general, and that this must surely include things independent of the minds of human beings, one must still take account of the human share even when considering such things. This is for the reason that while the subject matter of metaphysics can concern things independent of human minds, metaphysics considered as a practice is not independent of human minds. It is not a radical thought to maintain that metaphysics considered as a practice is shaped and restricted by the nature of the representational capacities of its practitioners. A more radical claim though is that how we conceive of the subject matter itself is determined by how we antecedently conceive of the practice. Many had previously claimed metaphysical results as a consequence of a recommendation regarding new metaphysical methodology. Such maneuvers are the explicit strategies of Bacon, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Leibniz, and others. Perhaps more groundbreaking is Kant's contention that once his particular methodological reorientation is made, then certain philosophical problems themselves receive answers by virtue of a reconceptualization of the questions.

What is transcendental idealism? There is a simple definition of transcendental idealism that captures one aspect of Kant's philosophical project. The simple definition involves a metaphysical thesis regarding the status of space and time and the distinction between “appearances” and “things in themselves.” Transcendental idealism claims that space and time are products of minds and not features of things in themselves (A369, A490–1/B518–19). Most would agree however that this definition does not capture some of the most important aspects of Kant's philosophical ambitions in the First Critique. Some other recognizably Kantian claims might be added. If one were to add a second radical metaphysical claim, namely that the laws of nature are themselves also the products of the human mind (A127–8), arguably one would have yet to touch on what is characteristic of the Kantian vision. One might persist by adding to these putatively metaphysical claims two further epistemological ones: firstly, the positive claim that objective representations of the world are possible with regard to the world of appearances, i.e. the world insofar as it is constituted by the products of the human mind (A39/B56); secondly, the notorious negative thesis that similarly objective representations of things as they are in themselves, i.e. of things as they are anyway, is impossible (A30/B45, A42/B59).³

Even after this one would still have grounds for complaining that the core of Kant's thought is inadequately characterized by this tetrad of claims. What characterizes the core of Kant's way of thinking is not his mere adherence to these claims but in the method by which he argues for them. That method involves reflections on the nature of metaphysical inquiry itself, reflections that involve radical claims regarding the character of the concepts with which one conducts such inquiry. Kant's metaphysical results involve claims regarding space, time, mathematics, extension, causation, substance, laws of nature, the self, God, the origin, age and size of the universe, the scientific method (and more); Kant's metaphysical methodology involves higher‐order reflections on the interconnections between the concepts of truth and reality, self and world, and subjectivity and objectivity.⁴ He argues for a specific understanding of these pairs of concepts, whereby one member of the pair cannot be understood in isolation from the other, and that this fact constrains what we might understand metaphysical inquiry as capable of achieving. One way of pursuing the topic of the meaning of Kant's “transcendental idealism” then is as a distinctive way of making metaphysical sense of things that is not identical to any of the particular results that he secured through the exercise of that methodology.⁵

This chapter will be structured as follows. In the following section I will outline Kant's so‐called “Copernican Turn,” which is key to the methodological shift that makes transcendental idealism possible. In the third section I discuss some of the key terminology of the Kantian project in the First Critique. In the forth section I detail how these concepts are put to positive use in validating certain traditional metaphysical concepts. In the fifth section I turn to the negative task of Kant's project, which shows that certain other traditional metaphysical concepts are in his view incapable of either vindication or refutation. In the sixth section I discuss how these negative restrictions of Kant's project are themselves geared towards a return to a positive register. This is that of making a conceptual space possible – that of the practical sphere – wherein some of these latter metaphysical concepts can be thought of as having a genuinely possible application, albeit one we cannot fully comprehend. Transcendental idealism secures the peculiar result of a providing a theoretical justification for the claim that certain concepts themselves cannot be proven (see A479/B507 – note). More surprising still is his ultimate conclusion that such concepts emerge as possessing an importance within the human being's existential orientation just on account of that justificatory lacuna. For Kant, the strategy of demonstrating certain concepts' lack of comprehensibility is part of the very task of showing how and why they must nevertheless be preserved as a perennial part of human beings' conceptual repertoire. I conclude in the seventh section with some reflections on the limitations and appeal of Kant's project.

Kant's overarching ambition is to provide a vindication of a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• Chronology of Nineteenth‐Century Philosophers
• Timeline of Philosophers
• Introduction
• 1 Transcendental Idealism
• 2 Theory of Science
• 3 Absolute Idealism
• 4 The World as Will and Representation
• 5 Historicizing Naturalism
• 6 The Single Individual is Higher than the Universal
• 7 The Rise of Liberal Utilitarianism
• 8 Critique of Religion
• 9 Historical Materialism
• 10 Philosophy and Historical Meaning
• 11 Late Utilitarian Moral Theory and Its Development
• 12 American Pragmatism
• 13 The Value of Our Values
• 14 British Idealism
• 15 Neo‐Kantianism
• 16 The Origins of Phenomenology in Austro‐German Philosophy
• 17 New Logic and the Seeds of Analytic Philosophy
• 18 Time, Memory and Creativity
• Index
• End User License Agreement