Kant's Critique of Judgement · Immanuel Kant
EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
It has been urged by Kirchmann and others that this distinction between Technic and Mechanism, on which Kant lays so much stress, has been disproved by the progress of modern science. The doctrines, usually associated with the name of Darwin, of Natural Selection and Survival of the Fittest, quite sufficiently explain, it is said, on mechanical principles the semblance of purpose with which nature mocks us. The presence of order is not due to any purpose behind the natural operation, but to the inevitable disappearance of the disorderly. It would be absurd, of course, to claim for Kant that he anticipated the Darwinian doctrines of development; and yet passages are not wanting in his writings in which he takes a view of the continuity of species with which modern science would have little fault to find. “Nature organises itself and its organised products in every species, no doubt after one general pattern but yet with suitable deviations, which self-preservation demands according to circumstances” (p. 279).
“The analogy of forms, which with all their differences seem to have been produced according to a common original type, strengthens our suspicions of an actual relationship between them in their production from a common parent, through the gradual approximation of one animal genus to another--from those in which the principle of purposes seems to be best authenticated, _i.e._ from man, down to the polype and again from this down to mosses and lichens, and finally to crude matter. And so the whole Technic of nature, which is so incomprehensible to us in organised beings that we believe ourselves compelled to think a different principle for it, seems to be derived from matter and its powers according to mechanical laws (like those by which it works in the formation of crystals)” (p. 337). Such a theory he calls “a daring venture of reason,” and its coincidences with modern science are real and striking. But he is careful to add that such a theory, even if established, would not eliminate purpose from the universe; it would indeed suggest that certain special processes having the semblance of purpose may be elucidated on mechanical principles, but on the whole, purposive operation on the part of Mother Nature it would still be needful to assume (p. 338). “No finite Reason can hope to understand the production of even a blade of grass by mere mechanical causes” (p. 326). “It is absurd to hope that another Newton will arise in the future who shall make comprehensible by us the production of a blade of grass according to natural laws which no design has ordered” (p. 312).
Crude materialism thus affording no explanation of the purposiveness in nature, we go on to ask what other theories are logically possible. We may dismiss at once the doctrine of Hylozoism, according to which the purposes in nature are explained in reference to a world-soul, which is the inner principle of the material universe and constitutes its life. For such a doctrine is self-contradictory, inasmuch as lifelessness, _inertia_, is the essential characteristic of matter, and to talk of living matter is absurd (p. 304). A much more plausible system is that of Spinoza, who aimed at establishing the ideality of the principle of natural purposes. He regarded the world whole as a complex of manifold determinations inhering in a single simple substance; and thus reduced our concepts of the purposive in nature to our own consciousness of existing in an all-embracing Being. But on reflection we see that this does not so much explain as explain away the purposiveness of nature; it gives us an unity of inherence _in_ one Substance, but not an unity of causal dependence _on_ one Substance (p. 303). And this latter would be necessary in order to explain the unity of purpose which nature exhibits in its phenomenal working. Spinozism, therefore, does not give what it pretends to give; it puts us off with a vague and unfruitful unity of ground, when what we seek is a unity that shall itself contain the causes of the differences manifest in nature.
We have left then as the only remaining possible doctrine, Theism, which represents natural purposes as produced in accordance with the Will and Design of an Intelligent Author and Governor of Nature. This theory is, in the first place, “superior to all other grounds of explanation” (p. 305), for it gives a full solution of the problem before us and enables us to maintain the reality of the _Zweckmässigkeit_ of nature. “Teleology finds the consummation of its investigations only in Theology” (p. 311). To represent the world and the natural purposes therein as produced by an intelligent Cause is “completely satisfactory from every human point of view for both the speculative and practical use of our Reason” (p. 312). Thus the contemplation of natural purposes, _i.e._ the common Argument from Design, enables us to reach a highest Understanding as Cause of the world “in accordance with the principles of the reflective Judgement, _i.e._ _in accordance with the constitution of our human faculty of cognition_” (p. 416).
It is in this qualifying clause that Kant’s negative attitude in respect of Theism betrays itself. He regards it as a necessary assumption for the guidance of scientific investigation, no less than for the practical needs of morals; but he does not admit that we can claim for it objective validity. In the language of the Critique of Pure Reason, the Idea of God furnishes a regulative, not a constitutive principle of Reason; or as he prefers to put it in the present work, it is valid only for the reflective, not for the determinant Judgement. We are not justified, Kant maintains, in asserting dogmatically that God exists; there is only permitted to us the limited formula “We cannot otherwise conceive the purposiveness which must lie at the basis of our cognition of the internal possibility of many natural things, than by representing it and the world in general as produced by an intelligent cause, _i.e._ a God” (p. 312). We ask then, whence arises this impossibility of objective statement? It is in the true Kantian spirit to assert that no synthetical proposition can be made with reference to what lies above and behind the world of sense; but there is a difficulty in carrying out this principle into details. Kant’s refusal to infer a designing Hand behind the apparent order of nature is based, he tells us, on the fact that the concept of a “natural purpose” is one that cannot be justified to the speculative Reason. For all we know it may only indicate our way of looking at things, and may point to no corresponding objective reality. That we are forced by the limited nature of our faculties to view nature as working towards ends, as purposive, does not prove that it is really so. We cannot justify such pretended insight into what is behind the veil.
It is to be observed, however, that precisely similar arguments might be urged against our affirmation of purpose, design, will, as the spring of the actions of other human beings.[3] For let us consider why it is that, mind being assumed as the basis of our own individual consciousness, we go on to attribute minds of like character to other men. We see that the external behaviour of other men is similar to our own, and that the most reasonable way of accounting for such behaviour is to suppose that they have minds like ourselves, that they are possessed of an active and spontaneously energising faculty, which is the seat of their personality. But it is instructive to observe that neither on Kantian principles nor on any other can we _demonstrate_ this; to cross the chasm which separates one man’s personality from another’s requires a venture of faith just as emphatically as any theological formula. I can by no means _prove_ to the determinant Judgement that the complex of sensations which I constantly experience, and which I call the Prime Minister, is anything more than a well-ordered machine.
It is improbable that this is the case--highly improbable; but the falsity of such an hypothesis cannot be proved in the same way that we would prove the falsity of the assertion that two and two make five. But then though the hypothesis cannot be thus ruled out of court by demonstration of its absurdity, it is not the simplest hypothesis, nor is it that one which best accounts for the facts. The assumption, on the other hand, that the men whom I meet every day have minds like my own, perfectly accounts for all the facts, and is a very simple assumption. It merely extends by induction the sphere of a force which I already know to exist. Or in other words, crude materialism not giving me an intelligent account of my own individual consciousness, I recognise mind, νοῦς, as a _vera causa_, as something which really does produce effects in the field of experience, and which therefore I may legitimately put forward as the cause of those actions of other men which externally so much resemble my own. But, as has been said before, this argument, though entirely convincing to any sane person, is not demonstrative; in Kantian language and on Kantian principles the reasoning here used would seem to be valid only for the reflective and not for the determinant Judgement. If the principle of design or conscious adaptation of means to ends be not a constitutive principle of experience, but only a regulative principle introduced to account for the facts, what right have we to put it forward dogmatically as affording an explanation of the actions of other human beings?
It cannot be said that Kant’s attempted answer to such a defence of the Design Argument is quite conclusive. In § 90 of the _Methodology_ (p. 399) he pleads that though it is perfectly legitimate to argue by analogy from our own minds to the minds of other men,--nay further, although we may conclude from those actions of the lower animals which display plan, that they are not, as Descartes alleged, mere machines--yet it is not legitimate to conclude from the apparent presence of design in the operations of nature that a conscious mind directs those operations. For, he argues, that in comparing the actions of men and the lower animals, or in comparing the actions of one man with those of another, we are not pressing our analogy beyond the limits of experience. Men and beasts alike are finite living beings, subject to the limitations of finite existence; and hence the law which governs the one series of operations may be regarded by analogy as sufficiently explaining the other series. But the power at the basis of Nature is utterly above definition or comprehension, and we are going beyond our legitimate province if we venture to ascribe to it a mode of operation with which we are only conversant in the case of beings subject to the conditions of space and time. He urges in short that when speaking about man and his mind we thoroughly understand what we are talking about; but in speaking of the Mind of Deity we are dealing with something of which we have no experience, and of which therefore we have no right to predicate anything.
But it is apparent that, as has been pointed out, even when we infer the existence of another finite mind from certain observed operations, we are making an inference about something which is as mysterious an _x_ as anything can be. Mind is not a thing that is subject to the laws and conditions of the world of sense; it is “_in_ the world but not _of_ the world.” And so to infer the existence of the mind of any individual except myself is a quite different kind of inference from that by which, for example, we infer the presence of an electro-magnet in a given field. The action of the latter we understand to a large extent; but we do not understand the action of mind, which yet we know from daily experience of ourselves does produce effects in the phenomenal world, often permanent and important effects. Briefly, the action of mind upon matter (to use the ordinary phraseology for the sake of clearness) is--we may assume for our present purpose--an established fact. Hence the causality of mind is a _vera causa_; we bring it in to account for the actions of other human beings, and by precisely the same process of reasoning we invoke it to explain the operations of nature.
And it is altogether beside the point to urge, as Kant does incessantly, that in the latter case the intelligence inferred is _infinite_; in the former only _finite_. All that the Design Argument undertakes to prove is that mind lies at the basis of nature. It is quite beyond its province to say whether this mind is finite or infinite; and thus Kant’s criticisms on p. 364 are somewhat wide of the mark. There is always a difficulty in any argument which tries to establish the operation of mind anywhere, for mind cannot be seen or touched or felt; but the difficulty is not peculiar to that particular form of argument with which theological interests are involved. The real plausibility of this objection arises from a vague idea, often present to us when we speak of _infinite_ wisdom or _infinite_ intelligence, namely that the epithet _infinite_ in some way alters the meaning of the attributes to which it is applied. But the truth is that the word _infinite_, when applied to wisdom or knowledge or any other intellectual or moral quality, can only properly have reference to the number of acts of wisdom or knowledge that we suppose to have been performed. The only sense in which we have any right to speak of _infinite_ wisdom is that it is that which performs an infinite number of wise acts. And so when we speak of infinite _intelligence_, we have not the slightest warrant, either in logic or in common sense, for supposing that such intelligence is not similar in kind to that finite intelligence which we know in man.
To understand Kant’s attitude fully, we must also take into consideration the great weight that he attaches to the Moral Argument for the existence of God. The positive side of his teaching on Theism is summed up in the following sentence (p. 388): “For the theoretical reflective Judgement physical Teleology sufficiently proves from the purposes of Nature an intelligent world-cause; for the practical Judgement moral Teleology establishes it by the concept of a final purpose, which it is forced to ascribe to creation.” That side of his system which is akin to Agnosticism finds expression in his determined refusal to admit anything more than this. The existence of God is for him a “thing of faith”; and is not a fact of knowledge, strictly so called. “Faith” he holds (p. 409) “is the moral attitude of Reason as to belief in that which is unattainable by theoretical cognition. It is therefore the constant principle of the mind to assume as true that which it is necessary to presuppose as condition of the possibility of the highest moral final purpose.” As he says elsewhere (Introduction to Logic, ix. p. 60), “That man is morally _unbelieving_ who does not accept that which, though _impossible_ to know, is _morally necessary_ to suppose.” And as far as he goes a Theist may agree with him, and he has done yeoman’s service to Theism by his insistence on the absolute impossibility of any other working hypothesis as an explanation of the phenomena of nature. But I have endeavoured to indicate at what points he does not seem to me to have gone as far as even his own declared principles would justify him in going. If the existence of a Supreme Mind be a “thing of faith,” this may with equal justice be said of the finite minds of the men all around us; and his attempt to show that the argument from analogy is here without foundation is not convincing.
Kant, however, in the Critique of Judgement is sadly fettered by the chains that he himself had forged, and frequently chafes under the restraints they impose. He indicates more than once a point of view higher than that of the Critique of Pure Reason, from which the phenomena of life and mind may be contemplated. He had already hinted in that work that the supersensible substrate of the ego and the non-ego might be identical. “Both kinds of objects differ from each other, not internally, but only so far as the one _appears_ external to the other; possibly what is at the basis of phenomenal matter as a thing in itself may not be so heterogeneous after all as we imagine.”[4] This hypothesis which remains a bare undeveloped possibility in the earlier work is put forward as a positive doctrine in the Critique of Judgement. “There must,” says Kant, “be a ground of the _unity_ of the supersensible, which lies at the basis of nature, with that which the concept of freedom practically contains” (Introduction, p. 13). That is to say, he maintains that to explain the phenomena of organic life and the purposiveness of nature we must hold that the world of sense is not disparate from and opposed to the world of thought, but that _nature is the development of freedom_. The connexion of nature and freedom is suggested by, nay is involved in, the notion of natural adaptation; and although we can arrive at no knowledge of the supersensible substrate of both, yet such a common ground there must be. This principle is the starting-point of the systems which followed that of Kant; and the philosophy of later Idealism is little more than a development of the principle in its consequences.
He approaches the same doctrine by a different path in the Critique of the Teleological Judgement (§ 77), where he argues that the distinction between the mechanical and the teleological working of nature, upon which so much stress has been justly laid, depends for its validity upon the peculiar character of our Understanding. When we give what may be called a mechanical elucidation of any natural phenomenon, we begin with its parts, and from what we know of them we explain the whole. But in the case of certain objects, _e.g._ organised bodies, this cannot be done. In their case we can only account for the parts by a reference to the whole. Now, were it possible for us to perceive a whole before its parts and derive the latter from the former,[5] then an organism would be capable of being understood and would be an object of knowledge in the strictest sense. But our Understanding is not able to do this, and its inadequacy for such a task leads us to conceive the possibility of an Understanding, not discursive like ours, but intuitive, for which knowledge of the whole would precede that of the parts.
“It is at least possible to consider the material world as mere phenomenon, and to think as its substrate something like a thing in itself (which is not phenomenon), and to attach to this a corresponding intellectual intuition. Thus there would be, although incognisable by us, a supersensible real ground for nature, to which we ourselves belong” (p. 325). Hence, although Mechanism and Technic must not be confused and must ever stand side by side in our scientific investigation of natural law, yet must they be regarded as coalescing in a single higher principle incognisable by us. The ground of union is “the supersensible substrate of nature of which we can determine nothing positively, except that it is the being in itself of which we merely know the phenomenon.” Thus, then, it appears that the whole force of Kant’s main argument has proceeded upon an assumption, viz. the permanent opposition between Sense and Understanding, which the progress of the argument has shown to be unsound. “Kant seems,” says Goethe,[6] “to have woven a certain element of irony into his method. For, while at one time he seemed to be bent on limiting our faculties of knowledge in the narrowest way, at another time he pointed, as it were with a side gesture, beyond the limits which he himself had drawn.”
The fact of adaptation of means to ends observable in nature seems to break down the barrier between Nature and Freedom; and if we once relinquish the distinction between Mechanism and Technic in the operations of nature we are led to the Idea of an absolute Being, who manifests Himself by action which, though necessary, is yet the outcome of perfect freedom. Kant, however, though he approaches such a position more than once, can never be said to have risen to it. He deprecates unceasingly the attempt to combine principles of nature with the principles of freedom as a task beyond the modest capacity of human reason; and while strenuously insisting on the practical force of the Moral Argument for the Being of God, which is found in the witness of man’s conscience, will not admit that it can in any way be regarded as strengthening the theoretical arguments adduced by Teleology. The two lines of proof, he holds, are quite distinct; and nothing but confusion and intellectual disaster can result from the effort to combine them. The moral proof stands by itself, and it needs no such crutches as the argument from Design can offer. But, as Mr. Kennedy has pointed out in his acute criticism[7] of the Kantian doctrine of Theism, it would not be possible to combine a theoretical _disbelief_ in God with a frank acceptance of the practical belief of His existence borne in upon us by the Moral Law. Kant himself admits this: “A dogmatical _unbelief_,” he says (p. 411), “cannot subsist together with a moral maxim dominant in the mental attitude.” That is, though the theoretical argument be incomplete, we cannot reject the conclusion to which it leads, for this is confirmed by the moral necessities of conscience.
Wer Gott nicht fühlt in sich und allen Lebenskreisen, Dem werdet Ihr Ihn nicht beweisen mit Beweisen. * * * * * I give at the end of this Introduction a Glossary of the chief philosophical terms used by Kant; I have tried to render them by the same English equivalents all through the work, in order to preserve, as far as may be, the exactness of expression in the original. I am conscious that this makes the translation clumsy in many places, but have thought it best to sacrifice elegance to precision. This course is the more necessary to adopt, as Kant cannot be understood unless his nice verbal distinctions be attended to. Thus _real_ means quite a different thing from _wirklich_; _Hang_ from _Neigung_; _Rührung_ from _Affekt_ or _Leidenschaft_; _Anschauung_ from _Empfindung_ or _Wahrnehmung_; _Endzweck_ from _letzter Zweck_; _Idee_ from _Vorstellung_; _Eigenschaft_ from _Attribut_ or _Beschaffenheit_; _Schranke_ from _Grenze_; _überreden_ from _überzeugen_, etc. I am not satisfied with “gratification” and “grief” as the English equivalents for _Vergnügen_ and _Schmerz_; but it is necessary to distinguish these words from _Lust_ and _Unlust_, and “mental pleasure,” “mental pain,” which would nearly hit the sense, are awkward. Again, the constant rendering of _schön_ by beautiful involves the expression “beautiful art” instead of the more usual phrase “fine art.” _Purposive_ is an ugly word, but it has come into use lately; and its employment enables us to preserve the connexion between _Zweck_ and _zweckmässig_. I have printed _Judgement_ with a capital letter when it signifies the _faculty_, with a small initial when it signifies the _act_, of judging. And in like manner I distinguish _Objekt_ from _Gegenstand_, by printing the word “Object,” when it represents the former, with a large initial.
The text I have followed is, in the main, that printed by Hartenstein; but occasionally Rosenkranz preserves the better reading. All important variants between the First and Second Editions have been indicated at the foot of the page. A few notes have been added, which are enclosed in square brackets, to distinguish them from those which formed part of the original work. I have in general quoted Kant’s _Introduction to Logic_ and _Critique of Practical Reason_ in Dr. Abbott’s translations. My best thanks are due to Rev. J. H. Kennedy and Mr. F. Purser for much valuable aid during the passage of this translation through the press. And I am under even greater obligations to Mr. Mahaffy, who was good enough to read through the whole of the proof; by his acute and learned criticisms many errors have been avoided. Others I have no doubt still remain, but for these I must be accounted alone responsible.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.