From Real Opposition to the Problem of Change

Giovanelli, Marco

doi:10.1007/978-94-007-0065-9_2

From Real Opposition to the Problem of Change

Marco Giovanelli²

Chapter
First Online: 01 January 2010

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Part of the book series: Studies in German Idealism ((SIGI,volume 11))

Abstract

As the preceding chapter has shown, the conception of phenomenal reality that Kant defends in the Anticipations of Perception finds its empirical application in the dynamism of the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. In Kant’s dynamism, agreement between “realities” is not constituted on the lines of a relation between non-contradictory concepts, but rather on the model of a relation between opposed forces that establish an equilibrium. The meaning of this concession and its philosophical implications cannot be understood without considering the central function that the evolution of Kantian thought assigned to the distinction between two forms of opposition: logical opposition (between concepts) and real opposition (between forces).

Kant’s term Veränderung is normally translated either as “change” or as “alteration.” I have used both terms interchangeably throughout the text.

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Notes

1.
^{Paul Guyer} ^{affirms the relation between the Anticipations of Perception and the distinction between logical opposition and real opposition: “Indeed, the whole argument of anticipations might be viewed as an illustration of a distinction between logical and real opposition with which Kant} ^{had been concerned since his 1763 essay, Negative Quantities. Precisely because reality and negation in objects, are not themselves logical contradictions but rather real states which may be in physical opposition, the differences between them may admit degrees” (Guyer. Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, 199).}
2.
^{English translation from Kant. “Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy.” 211.}
3.
^Ibid.
4.
^Ibid.
5.
^{English translation is from Ibid.}
6.
^{English translation from Ibid., 212.}
7.
^{Ibid., 214.}
8.
^Ibid.
9.
^{Ibid., 215. On the concept of real opposition and on the mathematical debate in Kant} ^{’s time on negative magnitudes, see Wolff, Michael. Der Begriff des Widerspruchs eine Studie zur Dialektik Kants und Hegels (Königstein: Hain, 1981), 62–82.}
10.
^{Kant. “Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy.” 224.}
11.
^{In mathematics it is usual to distinguish between “magnitude” (or length), “direction,” and “sense” (i.e., orientation along a given direction) of a vector. Kant normally} ^{uses the term Richtung to indicate both direction and sense. He recognizes that this could be confusing, however. In the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, he observes: “A body moving in a circle changes its direction continuously, … yet one says that it moves always in the same direction” (AA 4:483; my emphasis; English translation from Kant. “Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science.” 196.). The first use of the term “direction” is in accordance with the modern one. In the second case, Kant} ^{asks instead “what is … the side towards which the motion is directed” (AA 4:483; English translation from Kant. “Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science.” 196.), that is, in what sense the body is moving (dextrorotatory or levorotatory). In a passage of the Danziger Physik, Kant} ^{distinguishes more clearly between Direktion and Gegend (see AA 29: 113), that is to say, between “direction” and “sense.” The usual translation of “Gegend” by “regions,” especially in the title of Kant} ^{’s pre-critical writing, Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes derGegendenim Raume [Concerning the Ultimate Foundation of the Differentiation of Regions in Space], is completely misleading.}
12.
^{Kant. “Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy.” 223.}
13.
^{Ibid., 224. On Aepinus’s doctrine in a philosophical context, see Moiso} ^{, Francesco. “Magnetismus, Elektrizität, Galvanismus” in Schelling} ^{, HKA 1 (Ergänzungsband zu Werke 5 bis 9. Wissenschaftshistorischer Bericht zu Schellings} ^{naturphilosophischen Schriften 1797–1800), 4:254-. For more about Aepinus in general, see: Home, Roderick Weir. “Aepinus, the Tourmaline Crystal, and the Theory of Electricity and Magnetism,” Isis 67, no. 1 (1976): 21–30.}
14.
^{Among contributions dedicated specifically to the Amphiboliekapitel, see Broeken, Renate. Das Amphiboliekapitel der “Kritik der reinen Vernunft”: Der Übergang der Reflexion von der Ontologie zur Transzendentalphilosophie (Köln: Mosebach, 1970); Parkinson, George Henry R. “Kant as a Critic of Leibniz: the Amphiboly of Concepts of Reflection,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 35 (1981): 302–14; Hessbrüggen-Walter, Stefan. “Topik, Reflexion und Vorurteilskritik: Kants ‘Amphibolie der Reflexionsbegriffe’ im Kontext,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 86, no. 2 (2004): 146–75; Hess, Heinz-Jürgen. “Zu Kants Leibniz-Kritik in der ‘Amphibolie der Reflexionsbegriffe’.” In Beiträge zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft: 1781–1981. eds. Ingeborg Heidemann and Wolfgang Ritzel, 201–32. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1981); Funke, Gerhard. “Systematische Voraussetzungen der Leibniz-Kritik Kants im ‘Amphibolie-Kapitel.” In Akten des 4. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses. ed. Gerhard Funke. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1974).}
15.
^{English translation from Kant. Lectures on Metaphysics, 310.}
16.
^Ibid.
17.
^{Ibid., 324.}
18.
^{Ibid., 469.}
19.
^{English translation from Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Philosophical Papers and Letters. ed. Leroy E. Loemker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 2:602.}
20.
^{English translation from Kant. “Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy.” 2366.}
21.
^{See Gueroult, Martial. Leibniz. Dynamique et Metaphysique (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1967), 169n.}
22.
^{English translation from Kant. “What Real Progress Has Metaphysics Made in Germany since the Time of Leibniz and Wolff?”, 373.}
23.
^{This also shows that Kant} ^{’s thought is based on a simplification. Kant} ^{’s depiction of Leibniz} ^{seems to be employed as a typical-ideal model considering that in the Critique of Pure Reason itself, Kant} ^{cautiously notes, “Herr von Leibniz} ^{did not exactly announce this proposition [the reduction of the principle of sufficient reason to that of identity] with the pomp of a new principle,” but rather, “his successors expressly incorporated it into their Leibnizian-Wolffian doctrine” (B329). In fact, Leibniz} ^{is far from wanting to reduce the principle of sufficient reason to that of identity, a position that should be attributed to Christian Wolff} ^{and his successors instead.}
24.
^{“[W]hatever is, is good. … [E]vil … is not any substance.” Augustine. The Confessions of Saint Augustine, tr. Edward Bouverie Pusey (New York, NY: P. F. Coillier and Son Company, 1909), 115.}
25.
^Leibniz ^{himself admits the idea of “real opposition,” giving evil its own reality, in an early letter to Arnold Eckhard} ^{from 1677: “In our discussion, when you seemed to have said that what is perfect is that which is purely positive, I countered with the example of pain, which is no more the privation of pleasure than pleasure is the privation of pain” (GP I, 221); on the importance of this point, see Poma, Andrea. Impossibilità e necessità della teodicea: gli “Essais” di Leibniz (Milan: Mursia, 1995), 183. However, Leibniz} ^{seems to abandon this framework in later years, affirming the position well expressed by the ancient motto bonum ex causa integra, malum ex quolibet defectu that he cites in his Essais de Théodicée (see GP 6:122). Thus, one can accurately say that, for Leibniz} ^{, “bonum metaphysicum always consists of a positive, however limited this may be, whilst malum metaphysicum can consist of a lack, a deprivation, a limitation” (Martin, Gottfried. Leibniz: Logik und Metaphysik (Köln: Kölner Universitätsverlag, 1960), 135). Martin, Gottfried. Leibniz, Logic and Metaphysics, The Philosophy of Leibniz (New York: Garland, 1985), 108. For more details on this point, see Heinekamp, Albert. “Zu den Begriffen realitas, perfectio und bonum metaphysicum bei Leibniz.” In Akten des ersten Internationalen Leibniz-Kongresses: Hannover, 14–19. November 1966. (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1968), 207–22.}
26.
^{English translation from Kant, Immanuel. Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason and Other Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1998), 48.}
27.
^{Ibid., 64.}
28.
^{For more details on the evolution of Schelling} ^{’s thought concerning the problem of evil, see Riconda, Giuseppe. “Filosofia moderna e problematica del male nelle Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit di Schelling,” Paradosso (1993): 9–28.}
29.
^{Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von. Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom, SUNY Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy (Albany: SUNY, 2006), 315–6.}
30.
^{Ibid., 324.}
31.
^{Ibid., 327.}
32.
^{“In as much as the real is present as intensive, a continuous connection between reality and negation necessarily exists, such that negation is not opposed logically but really” (Haas. “Kants Qualitätsschematismus.” 163).}
33.
^{English translation from Kant. “Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics that Will be Able to Come Forward as Science.” 144.}
34.
^{English translation from Kant. “Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science.” 209.}
35.
^{English translation from Kant. Lectures on Metaphysics, 26.}
36.
^{English translation from Kant. “Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy.” 209.}
37.
^Kant ^{writes: “Now how in general anything can be altered, how it is possible that upon a state in one point of time an opposite one could follow in the next – of these we have a priori not the least concept. For this acquaintance with actual forces is required, which can only be given empirically, e.g., acquaintance with moving forces, or, what comes to the same thing, with certain successive appearances (as motions) which indicate such forces” (B252).}
38.
^{English translation from Kant. Lectures on Metaphysics, 323.}
39.
^{English translation from Kant, Immanuel. The Metaphysics of Morals, tr. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 91.}
40.
^{Ibid., 92. Brackets mine.}
41.
^{Ibid., 93.}
42.
^{Ibid., 91–.}
43.
^{Ibid., 93.}
44.
^{English translation from Kant. Lectures on Metaphysics, 324. The same idea underlies the text about negative magnitude: “All change consists in this: either something positive, which was not, is posited; or something positive, which was, is cancelled … I maintain, however, that if A arises, then, in a natural change occurring in the world, –A must also arise” (AA II, 194). English translation from Kant. “Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy.” 232.}
45.
^{English translation from Kant. The Metaphysics of Morals, 93.}
46.
^{The Dutch physicist Anton Brugmans} ^{arrives at this conclusion, regarding the magnet in particular, in his Tentamina Philosophica de materia magnetica (1765). In showing how a magnetic bar must pass through an intermediate point of indifference in the transition from one pole to the other, Brugmans} ^{claims to have deduced “this proposition a priori applying the law of continuity.” The citation is drawn from the German edition of Brugmans, Antonius. Philosophische Versuche über die magnetische Materie, und deren Wirkung in Eisen und Magnet, tr. Christian Gotthold Eschenbach (Leipzig: S. L. Crusius, 1784), 76.}
47.
^{This is a likely interpretation of the insertion “und der Ub” that appears in the original German.}
48.
^{English translation from Kant. Lectures on Metaphysics, 318.}
49.
^{English translation from Kant. Notes and Fragments: Logic, Metaphysics, Moral Philosophy, Aesthetics, 115.}
50.
^{English translation from Kant. “Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science.” 240.}
51.
^Ibid.
52.
^{A reflection from the late 1870s also testifies to this connection: “Principium of the mathematical cognition of appearances: All appearance has as intuition its extensive magnitude and as sensation its degree. For (as far as the latter is concerned) every sensation arises from non-being, since it is a modification. Thus through alteration. All alteration, however, proceeds from 0 to a through infinitely small steps” (AA 18:241; Refl. 5585) English translation from Kant. Notes and Fragments: Logic, Metaphysics, Moral Philosophy, Aesthetics, 247.}
53.
^Leibniz ^{’s philosophy offers the most philosophically pregnant expression of this solution to the problem. Leibniz} ^{himself defines alteration (mutatio) as “aggregatum duorum statuum contradictoriorum,” something that is impossible at first sight “quia non datur tertium inter contradictoria” (Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhem. Textes inédits d’après les manuscrits de la Bibliothèque provincale de Hanovre. ed. Gaston Grua (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1948), 1:323). If no mediation is possible between two contradictory states, then a quantitative consideration of the variation is presupposed, something whose course of change can be thought as a simple “more or less”, thus allowing one to conserve the relation between that which is found at the beginning of the process of transformation and that which is found at its conclusion: “If a thing alters so much that it exhausts itself (i.e., becomes nothing), and if that which is produced during the change is always alike, that which comes before will bigger and that which comes after will be smaller if it returns from nothing through the same alteration. If the result is always alike, that which comes first will be smaller, and that which comes after will be bigger. This is clear from what was stated before. And this can continue to infinity since, because of likeness, there is always the same relation” (Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Die Leibniz-Handschriften der Königlichen Öffentlichen Bibliothek zu Hannover. ed. Eduard Bodemann (Hildesheim: Olms, 1966). Reprint, Hannover, 1989, 35 I 12, n11). To master becoming means to find a conceptual tool with which it is possible to “think” that restricted zone where opposite states seem to be able to coexist precisely where they should annihilate each other. On Leibniz} ^{’s framing of the problem, see Pasini, Enrico. Il reale e l’immaginario: la fondazione del calcolo infinitesimale nel pensiero di Leibniz (Turin: Sonda, 1993), 24–28. Thus, if one admits that opposites “only differ in terms of more and less” (GM 2:119), then one can conceive of the possibility that “they always pass from the small to the big and vice versa through the middle, in degrees as in parts” (GM 5:30).}
54.
^{English translation from Hegel. Hegel’s Science of Logic, 273. Translation slightly altered by the author.}
55.
^{On April 7, 1789, Marcus Herz} ^{notified Kant} ^{of receiving by mail a “manuscript” from “Herr Salomon Maimon} ^{… containing penetrating reflections on the Kantian system” (AA 11:14). Kant} ^{, overburdened with the writing of the Critique of Judgment, wrote a letter on May 24, 1789 to Herz} ^{in which he states, “I had half decided to send the manuscript back immediately, with the aforementioned, totally adequate apology. But one glance at the work made me realize its excellence and that not only had none of my critics understood me and the main questions as well as Herr Maimon} ^{does but also very few men possess so much acumen for such deep investigations as he” (AA 11:49; see AA 11:48 for Kant} ^{’s letter to Maimon} ^{himself on May 26, 1789) English translation from Kant. Correspondence, 291, 311–12.}
56.
^{On the difference between Kant} ^{and Maimon} ^{on this point, see Freudenthal, Gideon. “Maimon’s Subversion of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. There are non Synthetic a priori Judgements in Physics.” In Salomon Maimon: rational dogmatist, empirical skeptic critical assessments. ed. Gideon Freudenthal, 144–75. (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 2003).}
57.
^{On this point, see Thielke, Peter. “Intuition and Diversity: Kant and Maimon on Space and Time.” In Salomon Maimon: Rational Dogmatist, Empirical Skeptic: Critical Assessments. ed. Gideon Freudenthal. (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 2003), 312–; Atlas, Samuel H. From Critical to Speculative Idealism; the Philosophy of Solomon Maimon (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1964), 109–23; Bergman, Samuel Hugo. The Philosophy of Solomon Maimon, tr. Noah J. Jacobs (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1967), 262–3.}
58.
^Leibniz ^{himself, in a letter to Guido Grandi (1713), indicates that this is the characteristic feature of infinitely small magnitudes: “interea infinite parva concipimus non ut nihila simpliciter et absolute, se ut nihila respectiva … id est ut evanescentia quidem in nihilum, retinentia tamen characterem ejus quod evanescit [We consider infinitely small quantities not as an absolute nothing, but as respective nothing: the quantities that vanish into nothing maintain the character of what is vanishing]” (GM 4:128).}
59.
^{English translation from Kant. Notes and Fragments: Logic, Metaphysics, Moral Philosophy, Aesthetics, 319.}
60.
^{Bendavid, Lazarus. Versuch einer logischen Auseinandersetzung des mathematischen Unendlichen (Berlin: Petit und Schöne, 1789).}
61.
^{On Bendavid, see Rosenkranz, Karl. “Geschichte der Kantischen Philosophie.” In Kants Werke. eds. Karl Rosenkranz and Friedrich Wilhelm Schubert. (Leipzig: Voss, 1842), 315. According to Rosenkranz (see Rosenkranz. “Geschichte der Kantischen Philosophie.” 315), Bendavid tried to disseminate Kantian Philosophy in Vienna (without much success) where, in 1795, he had already published his Bendavid, Lazarus. Vorlesungen über die Critik der reinen Vernunft. Fotomechan. Nachdr. ed (Brussels: Culture et Civilisation, 1968). Many other commentaries on Kant’s books followed, such as Bendavid, Lazarus. Vorlesungen über die Critik der Urtheilskraft. 2nd ed (Brussels: Culture et Civilisation, 1968).}
62.
^{Bendavid, Lazarus. Über die Parallellinien. In einem Schreiben an Herrn Hofrath Karsten (Berlin: Voss, 1786).}
63.
^{Bendavid. Versuch einer logischen Auseinandersetzung des mathematischen Unendlichen, 39.}
64.
^{Ibid., 44.}
65.
^{Ibid., 41.}
66.
^{Ibid., 77.}
67.
^{Ibid., 48.}
68.
^Ibid.
69.
^{Bendavid. Vorlesungen über die Critik der reinen Vernunft, 48.}
70.
^{Ibid., 93.}
71.
^Ibid.
72.
^{“Intensive magnitude is the differential of extensive magnitude and this in turn is the integral of the first” (MGW 2:122).}
73.
^{See above 14.}
74.
^{English translation from Hegel. Hegel’s Science of Logic, 233.}
75.
^{English translation from Fichte, Johann Gottlieb. “Foundations of the Entire Science of Knowledge.” In Science of Knowledge. eds. Peter Lauchlan Heath and John Lachs. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 186.}
76.
^{English translation from Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. The Difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy, tr. Henry S. Harris and Walter Cerf (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977), 157.}
77.
^{English translation from Ibid.}
78.
^{English translation from Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Faith and Knowledge: An English Translation of G. W. F. Hegel’s Glauben und Wissen, tr. Henry S. Harris (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996), 172.}
79.
^Ibid..

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Dr. Marco Giovanelli

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Giovanelli, M. (2011). From Real Opposition to the Problem of Change. In: Reality and Negation - Kant's Principle of Anticipations of Perception. Studies in German Idealism, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0065-9_2

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0065-9_2
Published: 08 October 2010
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