Logik / Logic

Dina Emundts, Sally Sedgwick, Dina Emundts, Sally Sedgwick

• Verlag: De Gruyter
• Jahr: 2017
• ISBN:
  9783110518955
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Filosofia
• Thema: Idealismo in filosofia

Volume 12 of the International Yearbook of German Idealism is dedicated to the theme of logic. The volume begins with essays on Kant. Kant acknowledges that there are various kinds of logic, and he considers it necessary to distinguish his transcendental logic from other kinds of logic. The contributions of E. Carson, T. Rosenkoetter, C. Tolley and G. Zöller discuss Kant on different kinds of logic, and they examine developments in the logic of his critical philosophy. Logic of course plays a central role in Hegel's philosophy as well. Among the most important interpretative tasks is that of exploring the aim, structure and content of his logic. We include essays on Hegel's logic by S. Houlgate, L. Illetterati, R. Pippin and P. Redding. The role of logic in the systems of Fichte and Schelling is less obvious. The contributions of C. Asmuth, A. Nuzzo and S. Schwenzfeuer are above all dedicated to determining the place of logic within the systems of the two philosophers. The essays of our authors A. Koch and P. Schwab take a more comparative look at the role of logic within German idealism as a whole.

I. Beiträge/Essays

Günter Zöller

Conditions of Objectivity. Kant’s Critical Conception of Transcendental Logic

Abstract. This paper presents a systematic reconstruction of Kant’s project of a transcendental philosophy in general and a transcendental logic in particular. The focus is on Kant’s account of the a priori conditions for the cognitive reference to objects. The paper proceeds in four sections, each addressing a defining feature of transcendental philosophy, especially of transcendental logic, by means of contrast with an alternative, correlated or opposed feature also involved in Kant’s transcendental project. Section 1 differentiates between the transcendental and the a priori, section 2 distinguishes the logical from the psychological, section 3 contrasts the logical and the aesthetic, while section 4 links the transcendental and the empirical.

Dieser Beitrag liefert eine systematische Rekonstruktion von Kants Projekt einer Transzendentalphilosophie im Allgemeinen und einer Transzendentallogik im Besonderen. Der Schwerpunkt liegt auf Kants Theorie der apriorischen Bedingungen für die kognitive Beziehung auf Gegenstände. Der Beitrag verfährt in vier systematischen Schritten, deren jeder ein definitorisches Wesensmerkmal der Transzendentalphilosophie und speziell der Transzendentallogik im kontrastierenden Vergleich mit alternativen, korrelierten oder opponierten Merkmalen behandelt. Der erste Abschnitt differenziert zwischen dem Transzendentalen und dem Apriorischen. Der zweite Abschnitt unterscheidet das Logische vom Psychologischen. Der dritte Abschnitt kontrastiert das Logische und das Ästhetische, während der vierte Abschnitt das Transzendentale mit dem Empirischen in Zusammenhang bringt.

That from the earliest times logic has traveled this secure course [of a science] can be seen from the fact that since the time of Aristotle it has not had to go a single step backwards […]. What is further remarkable about logic is that until now it has also been unable to take a single step forward, and therefore seems to all appearance to be finished and complete.

(B VIII; Kant 1998, p. 106)

Kant’s summary assessment of logic in its history since Aristotle, as conveyed in the opening quotation, suggests a static science essentially completed by its founder that serves as the object of envy for other disciplines not yet on the “secure course” (B VII; Kant 1998, p. 106) of a science. Yet the picture portrayed by Kant of the non-history of logic seems to be belied by his own extensive contributions to logic, as recorded in the transcripts of his lectures on logic, in the logic material from his literary remains (Ak. 24.1 and 24.2; Ak. 16; Kant 1992; Kant 1998a) and in pertinent parts of his published work (A 70–76/B 95–101; Kant 1998, p. 206–210), which have become the object of extensive scholarly and philosophical investigation in recent years.1 More importantly, the very work in the Preface of which Kant offers his assessment of logic’s early and lasting closure, viz., the Critique of Pure Reason, contains – under the heading of “transcendental logic” – a substantial enlargement of logic in scope as well as conception that goes not only beyond Aristotle but even exceeds the presentational improvements introduced into logic by Kant’s immediate predecessors in German academic philosophy.2

But as already indicated by the cautiously inserted qualifications “seems” and “to all appearance” in the opening quotation by Kant, the closed and complete character of logic since Aristotle might prove deceptive in the face of altogether novel developments in logic that could change the confines and the conception of this scientific discipline. To be sure, Kant is not about to revolutionize logic by merging it with mathematics in the way that modern, formalized logic did since Frege a century after Kant. Rather, the growth of logic beyond Aristotle intimated in the opening passage from the Critique of Pure Reason can be taken to allude to Kant’s introduction of transcendental logic as the doctrinal core of the first Critique, located in the comprehensive center part of the work, preceded only by the Transcendental Aesthetic and succeeded only by the Transcendental Doctrine of Method. Commentators and interpreters of the first Critique, from Paton (1957) and Grayeff (1959) through Pinder (1979 and 1986) to Tolley (2012) typically have sought to integrate Kant’s logical novelty, transcendental logic, into the typology of logic outlined by Kant in the Introduction to the section so entitled.3

In particular, transcendental logic tends to be portrayed as a logic that shares with logic generically conceived (“logic in general”) the abstraction from the specifics of content and the focus on the rules of thinking – modernly speaking, of concern with (formal) validity rather than (material) truth – and, moreover, as sharing with standard, Aristotelian logic qua “pure logic” the pointed disregard of subjective, psychological conditions for the actual application of the logical rules.Yet unlike Aristotelian logic, which holds comprehensively of all kinds of objects, making it “general” in addition to “pure” (“general […] pure logic”; A 53/B 77; Kant 1998, p. 194), transcendental logic, on the customary account provided in the literature, has a special object domain, objects a priori, or a “transcendental content” (A 79/B 105; Kant 1998, p. 211), making it a domainspecific or content-specific pure logic.4

The longstanding reading of Kant’s transcendental logic as a pure logic with a special object or content domain notwithstanding, Kant himself does not call transcendental logic a “special logic.” To be sure, he distinguishes transcendental logic from “general logic,” while stressing their shared, non-empirical (“pure”) character. But the logical typology offered immediately prior to the introduction of the very idea of a transcendental logic should not be taken to suggest that the novel kind of logic about to be introduced by Kant can be easily accommodated by the traditional taxonomy reflecting the kinds of logic distinguished so far. Instead, Kant’s twofold intersecting distinctions among logic (pure – applied, general – special) should be seen to allow a concise classification of traditional, Aristotelian logic as general pure logic, which then can serve as the reference point for the comparative and contrastive introduction of transcendental logic in its difference from “general pure logic” as well as in its variance from the established classificatory logical scheme altogether. On Kant’s construal, transcendental logic, while sharing the feature of purity with Aristotelian logic, departs from the latter, not through some specific, extensionally limited object or content domain that would make it “special” in the sense of objector content-specific, but through the mode or manner in which it addresses objects in its domain, as concisely conveyed by Kant’s initial approach to the very idea of a transcendental logic, which is predicated on“a difference between pure and empirical thinking of objects” (A 55/B 79–80; Kant 1998, p. 196, transl. modified).

The following systematic reconstruction of Kant’s project of transcendental philosophy in general and of transcendental logic in particular argues for an adverbial rather substantival understanding of the reference to objects peculiar to transcendental philosophy, according to which transcendental logic does not involve special, a priori objects or contents but involves a special way of referring to objects, viz., a priori. To that effect, the account provided proceeds in four sections, which each address a crucial, defining feature of transcendental philosophy, especially of transcendental logic, by means of contrast with an alternative, correlated or opposed feature also involved in the transcendental project. In particular, section 1 differentiates between the transcendental and the a priori, section 2 distinguishes the logical from the psychological, section 3 contrasts the logical and the aesthetic, while section 4 links the transcendental and the empirical. The scope and intent of the reconstruction offered is strategic and comprehensive, aiming at a succinct portrayal of Kant’s overall project in transcendental philosophy and in its doctrinal core – transcendental logic – as undertaken in the Critique of Pure Reason. Its purpose is to provide a clearer understanding of what is specific and unique about Kant’s original introduction of transcendental logic. Its goal is to distinguish Kant’s project of transcendental logic from the subsequent inflationary extension and expansion it received at the hands of selfdeclared students, followers and emendators, beginning with the exponents of German idealism, for all of whom Kant’s “transcendental critique” (A 12/B 26; Kant 1998, p. 150) is at once the point of origin, the object of critique and the occasion for alternative attempts.

1The Transcendental and the A Priori

Entrenched doxography and neo-Kantian appropriations alike have tended to reduce Kant’s project, first founded in the Critique of Pure Reason, of a transcendental aesthetic-cum-transcendental logic (“transcendental philosophy”; A 12/ B 26; Kant 1998, p. 149) to an answer to the key question “How are synthetic judgments a priori possible?”. While Kant himself provides this summary formula for his transcendental project, originally in the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (Ak. 4, p. 276; Kant 2004, p. 81)5 and subsequently in the Introduction to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (B 19; Kant 1998, p. 146), the question so posed is not entirely suited for defining transcendental philosophy, and a fortiori transcendental logic, as conceived in the first Critique. By its sheer generality, the formulaic question exceeds the confines of transcendental philosophy, which is restricted to the theoretical cognition of what there is, at the exclusion of the practical cognition of what one ought to do (or will) and the aesthetic cognition qua taste of what one ought to like (or dislike).

To be sure, both the Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790) are presented by Kant himself as further areas of inquiry demarcated by the question concerning the possibility of synthetic judgments, or propositions, a priori – and as admitting affirmative answers to it (Ak. 5, p. 31; Kant 1996, p. 164; Ak. 5, p. 289; Kant 2000, p. 169). But the presence, even prominence of the transcendental question type outside the first Critique does not amount to a subsequent extension of transcendental philosophy, and of transcendental logic along with it, to critical moral philosophy and to critical aesthetics. The general question as posed in the first Critique solely concerns the theoretical determination of objects for purposes of cognition, with the further proviso that the cognitive elements involved are entirely (“purely”) a priori (B 3; Kant 1998, p. 137), at the exclusion of empirical elements, and moreover devoid of practical and aesthetic features involving desire and feeling (A 14–15/ B 28–29; Kant 1998, p. 151). The project in the first Critique of a transcendental philosophy in the strict sense, and of transcendental logic within it, remains limited to critical theoretical philosophy.

Furthermore, even within the confines of the first Critique and its summary presentation in the Prolegomena, the transcendental (transcendental-logical) question “How are synthetic judgments a priori possible?” is a mere stand-in for three specifically different questions, each providing its own answer and drawing on specifically different cognitive resources. In particular, the first Critique distinguishes three kinds of synthetic judgment a priori, one involving mathematical concepts and judgments based on intuition, another featuring concepts and judgments about spatio-temporal, natural objects, and yet another one involving concepts and (complex) judgments about pure objects of thought (B 20–22; Kant 1998, 147 f.; Ak. 4, p. 280; Kant 2004, p. 84) – in short mathematical, natural-scientific (“physiological”; Ak. 5, pp. 303, 306; Kant 2004, pp. 109, 111) and metaphysical judgments. Moreover, the answers to the three questions differ widely: from the appeal to (quasi‐) visual rendition (“construction”; A 713/B 741; Kant 1998, p. 630) in the case of math...

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Inhalt
• Vorwort
• Preface
• Einleitung
• Introduction
• I. Beiträge/Essays
• II. Rezensionen/Reviews
• III. Anhang/Appendix
• Autoren/Authors
• Hinweis an die Verlage/Letter to Publishers