Abstract
There is much debate on how to understand Kant’s transcendental idealism in the context of the Critique of Pure Reason. Heidegger’s Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics offers an innovative reading of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, but is often overlooked due to the violence it allegedly does in its interpretation. This paper offers a Heideggerian-inspired phenomenological or ontological interpretation of transcendental idealism by drawing on Heidegger’s interpretation of the Critique. First, I draw a connection between the two uses of noumena in the Critique (boundary-concepts and regulative ideas) and, in doing so, draw attention to how the noumena relies on a concept of the proper which gains its meaning from outside the system. I then bring together Kant and Heidegger on the question of the place of truth and the role of the noumena. I claim not only that the ‘noumena’ reveals a ‘shrinking back’ from the ontological (onto-ethical) release of aletheia; but also, and as a consequence, that the ‘noumena’ does not represent ‘another world,’ but rather is the grounds of the constitution of the phenomenal world itself. Thus, I argue that the noumena is the being of the phenomena, and I do so through looking at objects, faculties, and ethics in the Critique. Finally, I claim that the understanding and reason must both be receptive: even the self-given is ultimately being given.
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Notes
I refer to the English translation pagination for this source.
When I write ‘noumena’ (with single quotes) I mean the concept of noumena (i.e., as singular). When I write noumena, I mean that to which the word refers.
Stang (2014: 124–30) points out that, because of Kantian humility, the problem is more than just a one-to-one connection (i.e., one cannot know that the connection is one-to-one), so that any of the following scenarios, amongst other permutations, are possible: two things in themselves constitute one appearance (one object), two things in themselves constitute one appearance at different times, or one thing in itself constitutes two appearances (two objects). Allais (2004: 659) points out that to take the position of numerical identity is to take noumena in a positive sense, which is a sense explicitly prohibited by Kant (2009: B308-9).
This book will be cited in the traditional manner, referencing both the A and B editions.
The claim that we are missing out on something is related to Kant’s claims that reason has a desire to extend beyond its limits towards the noumena (e.g., Kant 2009: A796/B824). See Stang (2018: s. 4.3.4) on this claim as an argument against Allison (1983). See also Allais (2004: 681) for a version of this claim and Langton (2006: 182–3) for a counterclaim to Allais.
Either as a way of being considered or as a set of properties.
Because the pure forms of intuition only take effect with appearances, they would not reach noumena. Schulting (2011: 15) presents this objection concisely. Stang (2018: s. 4.3.3) raises the point that just because we cannot say that the noumena are spatial does not mean that they are not spatial. But this objection still raises the question in what sense could these noumenal properties not be spatial.
See Heidegger (2008: 192/237) on care.
Regulative principles first appear in a different context, in the analogies of experience (Kant 2009: A179–80/B221–3). Whereas the principles for the axioms of intuition and the anticipations of perceptions are mathematical and constitutive, the principles for the analogies of experience and the postulates of empirical thought in general are dynamical and regulative. Kant returns to this distinction in his appendix to the transcendental dialectic, saying: “Principles of pure reason […] cannot be constitutive [….] [T]hey can have no object in concreto” (Kant 2009: A664/B692; Kant’s emphasis); such principles can only be regulative.
Derrida draws our attention to the impossibility of the concept of a center outside of the system which is nonetheless supposed to give orientability, meaning, or “free-play” to the system (Derrida 2005: 915–6). In the case of the noumena, ‘the’ center is actually numerous ‘objective’ points or nodes, unified by the ‘subjective’ center of reason: these points on the side of the object and the side of the subject are supposed to be outside the system. (Elsewhere, in the context of violence and securing, Derrida discusses the concept of the ‘proper’ using the same sort of “logic” (Derrida 1997: 111–2).) — And yet, with that said, things are undoubtedly what, as Heidegger puts it (1997: 21), we must ‘take in stride,’ i.e., beings which are ultimately inassimilable to ourselves. The question I am raising here is whether the noumena can be maintained as outside and mere limit-concepts of the system.
See also Dahlstrom (2010) who offers a sympathetic introduction to Heidegger’s arguments to people unfamiliar with Heidegger’s book and work. Dahlstrom argues for the centrality of Heidegger’s interpretation for continental philosophy’s interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason.
Both Carman (2010) and Käufer (2011) argue that Heidegger’s book can fruitfully be understood within the context of his disagreements with Neo-Kantianism, and they both argue that, ultimately, Heidegger cannot find the resources he needs to draw a clear line from himself to Kant, which either requires seeing the self as a concrete existing individual and not a transcendental subject (Käufer 2011: 196), or facticity and thrownness (Carman 2010: 132).
Citations for this work will give two page numbers separated by a slash: the first is the original German pagination, the second is the Macquarrie and Robinson English translation.
For this source, I refer to the English translation pagination.
That is, as the concealment described by aletheia, but also as what conceals aletheia itself.
See Heidegger (1997: 11) for a clear statement on this topic.
Likewise, Allais (2004: 681) says Kant’s appearance/thing in itself distinction “is not a distinction between ways of considering, but between the mind-independent and unknown intrinsic nature of things, and things as they are in our experience of them; this is surely a distinction that is both ontological and epistemological.” See also Angelova (2009: 59–60).
Angelova (2009: 56) writes: “What makes appearance possible is concealment.” She is discussing the concealment of the imagination as the hidden root, but the sentiment applies here.
But see Angelova (2009: 66–7) who sees Heidegger’s reading of Kant as in distinction to that of the German idealists: the latter tried to mend the gaps in Kant, whereas Heidegger’s reading tries to maintain gaps and limits through an emphasis on finitude and receptivity.
For this one reference, I cite the Stambaugh version of Being and Time.
See also Heidegger (1997: 109, 119, 170–1) who takes up this problem in that reason is grounded in transcendental imagination which is grounded in temporality and which stretches us out towards beings which we have not created (i.e., through intuition).
Heidegger’s French is left untranslated in Capuzzi’s English translation.
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I would like to offer thanks to the anonymous reviewer as well as those who gave feedback on an earlier version of this paper which was presented at a conference of the Society for Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture (EPTC).
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Hensby, E. Kant and Heidegger: The Place of Truth and the Shrinking Back of the Noumena. Philosophia 49, 1507–1524 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-020-00319-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-020-00319-x