Abstract
In this chapter, Dennis Schulting is interested in how, following Hegel’s critique of Kant, recent Hegelians have read Kant’s claims in the Transcendental Deduction (TD) in particular. Hegelians such as Robert Pippin think that in TD Kant effectively compromises or wavers on the strict separability of concepts and intuitions that he stipulates at A51–2/B75–6. For if the argument of TD, in particular in its B-version, is that the categories are not only the necessary conditions under which I think objects, by virtue of applying concepts, but also the necessary conditions under which anything is first given in sensibility, the fixed separation between concepts and intuitions seems incompatible with the very aim and conclusion of TD. Schulting examines these charges by looking more closely at Pippin’s reading of the B-Deduction. Pippin believes the orthodox Kant cannot be retained, if we want to extract something of philosophical value from TD. He defends a Kantian conceptualism shorn of the remaining nonconceptualist tendencies, which are in his view antithetical to the spirit of Kant’s Critical revolution. Schulitng argues, by contrast, that we must retain the orthodox Kant, including its nonconceptualist tendencies, in order not to succumb to an intemperate conceptualism.
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Notes
- 1.
This is not the same as saying that no nonconceptual content could be brought under concepts.
- 2.
In a planned work on Hegel’s Science of Logic, I expand on the positive story of Kant’s influence on Hegel. A more detailed interpretation of the early Hegel’s critique of Kant in Faith and Knowledge, in particular, is given in Schulting (2017), Chap. 8.
- 3.
- 4.
I am not sure if such tendentious, ahistorical validations are a good start in helping us understand Kant’s position, as it runs the risk of begging his question or at least missing (some of) its essential elements. Philosophical evaluation is dependent on faithful interpretative work. In reality, however, Pippin’s reading is much more heedful of strictly interpretative issues than his statement suggests.
- 5.
See Schulting (2017), Chaps. 3–4.
- 6.
Cf. A19/B33. As Kant says here, the relation that an intuition has to the object is an immediate one, consistent with the definition of an intuition as designating immediacy. But this relation (Beziehung) is only “secured” as a relation proper, a determined relation, by the functions of the understanding.
- 7.
I agree with Pippin here, insofar as nonconceptualists tend to see, wrongly, intuition as functioning wholly separately from a priori concepts in securing reference to particulars. The relation that intuitions have to objects, as Kant indeed suggests they do (A19/B33), is an immediate one, where the relata, object and intuition, are entirely undifferentiated; this relation is only first determined as a relation in the strict sense (the way that Kant uses the term Beziehung at B137, as a “determinate relation”), namely, a relation between two differentiable items, a subject of intuition and the object of intuition, by the determining act of the understanding.
- 8.
Cf. Pippin (1989:85). Hegel in fact accuses Kant himself of subverting his own idea of a productive imagination as an original a priori synthesis by regarding it in the end as just an act of the understanding, which Hegel regards as a derivative, a posteriori, act in comparison to the imagination (for details, see Schulting 2017, Chap. 8). This putatively shows that Kant sees the relation between concept and intuition purely as a “mechanical relation of a unity of self-consciousness which stands in antithesis to the empirical manifold, either determining it or reflecting on it” (GuW, 4:343; emphasis added), thus seeing the relation not as genuinely a priori and as an organic unity holding opposites together (cf. WL, 12:22–3).
- 9.
Sedgwick (2012) likewise argues that Hegel takes Kant to task for the fixation of the separability of form and content, which in Hegel’s view is unsustainable, if one is to take seriously the Kantian invention of a truly original-synthetic unity of form and content, spontaneity of the understanding and receptivity of sensibility. I briefly discuss the unresolved contradictions in Sedgwick’s Hegelian reading of Kant in Schulting (2016).
- 10.
Pippin differentiates distinguishability (or “notional separability”; 2015b:67) from separability (see Pippin 2005; also 2013:162): formally, concept and intuition are of course “distinguishable”, but in actual fact, in experience, they are never separable. Or so Pippin argues. It is important to note, in light of criticism by some nonconceptualists (Allais 2009), that by inseparability Pippin (and also McDowell 1996:9, et passim) does not mean that intuition does not have a distinctive and distinct role to play in cognition, but rather that the distinctive role it plays is inseparable from the role concepts play; they play their roles together.
- 11.
This is in direct contrast to how Gareth Evans pictures the relation between sense content and conceptualisation (see Evans 1982:227).
- 12.
Pippin says that Hegel’s critique is concerned with the “strictness” of the distinction (2005:30n.19), not with the distinction per se.
- 13.
What Fichte says is actually more radical than this. In his Versuch zu einer neuen Darstellung zur Wissenschaftslehre from 1797/98, Fichte has explicit recourse to Kant in support of refuting the at the time widely held belief that his Wissenschaftslehre is not authentically Kantian, and offers his own interpretation of Kantian themes, which are relevant to the present topic. With reference to B136, where Kant says that “all the manifold of intuition stand under conditions of the original synthetic unity of apperception”, Fichte writes the following: “That something intuited is thought is only possible under the condition that the possibility of the original unity of apperception can exist thereby, and, I infer further—since according to Kant the intuition is also only possible by being thought and understood, while according to him intuition without concept is blind, that is, is nothing at all—therefore the intuition itself stands under the conditions of the possibility of thinking, not only thought in an immediate fashion, but by virtue of the latter also the intuiting conditioned by it, hence all consciousness, stands under the conditions of the original unity of apperception” (W, I,4:227–8; trans. mine, my underlining). For a critical assessment of the Fichtean legacy of reading Kant’s principle of apperception, see Ameriks (2000), esp. Chap. 5.
- 14.
I discuss Sedgwick’s own, more recent, take on these issues concerning the relation between Kant and Hegel in my review of her book (Sedgwick 2012) in Schulting (2016).
- 15.
I agree with Pippin’s radically literal interpretation here, where most Kantians attempt to explain away any constitutive talk here. Kant’s account in TD is not about a “subjective unavoidability” but constitutes a “strong objectivity claim”. That is, “Kant will try to establish such objectivity by insisting that the categories constitute what any possible relation to an object could be, and so what any object in possible relation to us could be” (2005:32). This indeed goes beyond, as Pippin says (2005:32), the claim that for objects to be knowable to us, they must conform to our forms of knowledge. See my own account, also in relation to Pippin, in Schulting (2017), Chaps. 3–4.
- 16.
I expand on the details of Hegel’s reading in Schulting (2017), Chap. 8.
- 17.
And this is in fact what Fichte believes. See the quotation from the 1797 Wissenschaftslehre in note 13.
- 18.
Cf. Schulting (2015b:570).
- 19.
I agree with Pippin that reference to animal “experience” is not going to help here. In Pippin (2013), he explicates what he sees as a fundamental difference between the way human beings and animals perceive. See e.g. Pippin’s interesting reference to his non-apperceiving dog Molly in Pippin (2013:101–2). Cf. McDowell (1996:64, 182–3).
- 20.
Notice that I am of course not here charging Pippin with conflating the existence of a particular intuition X with the condition of X being conceptualised. Indeed, Pippin argues that “X cannot be representationally significant except as Y’ed” does not imply “There are no X’s; there is only Y’ing” (2005:27n.8). This points to his insistence that inseparability does not mean indistinguishability, to avoid any neo-Leibnizian style reductive conceptualism. That intuitions must be conceptualised in order for knowledge to arise does of course not mean that intuitions are just confused concepts, that intuitions and concepts cannot really be distinguished. But by employing the terminology “representationally significant”, Pippin fudges the difference between representing by means of an intuition, as one species of representation, and representing by means of a concept, as another species of representation (cf. the Stufenleiter at A320/B376–7), whilst thus suggesting that any representing entails conceptualisation. A lot hinges on what “representationally significant” is supposed to convey. If it means that a brute, say, cannot have a representation, in any significant sense (to him, even if in a very limited way), of an object that is a house without employing the concept “house”—an object which anyone familiar with houses would normally recognise as “a dwelling established for men” (Log, 9:33)—then the requirement that “X cannot be representationally significant except as Y’ed” seems too strong, where by Y we understand “conceptualised”. For clearly Kant suggests (in the passage at issue in the Jäsche Logic) that there are two real possibilities: either one represents the house by way of intuition only (bloße Anschauung), as the brute does, or one represents the house by way of both intuition and concept (Anschauung und Begriff zugleich) (Log, 9:33). The brute’s seeing (intuiting) the house without knowing that he sees a house because he is not acquainted with the concept “house” is not “representationally” insignificant in the sense that he does not represent at all—in fact, Kant calls the brute’s seeing a form of cognition (Erkenntniß). His seeing the house by means of intuition alone would only not be “representationally” significant in the sense of seeing the house by way of both intuition and concept inseparably (zugleich), namely, “determinately”. The distinction between these two ways of being “representationally significant” is fudged by the Hegelian. Of course, Pippin could rejoin that the example of the brute does not at all provide a convincing ground for denying the inseparability thesis, for the brute could very well be incapable of assigning the right property or empirical concept (“house”) to what he intuits, while nonetheless the view can be endorsed that the brute’s intuitional representations must at any rate be taken to instantiate pure concepts, the categories, in order even to be able to intuit the object that he sees. This would then still suggest that intuition and pure concepts (which is what Kant effectively means at A51–2/B75–6, not empirical concepts) are inseparable, and that thus anything that is “representationally significant” presupposes conceptualisation in the specific Kantian sense of being subsumed under the categories. But I think that the Jäsche example at any rate shows that a kind of representation (intuiting) is possible that does not require an occurrent conceptualisation (in the sense of applying empirical concepts).
- 21.
See also Pippin (1989:31): “We are here shifting from an account of thought’s relation to the pure manifold of intuition to thought’s ‘self-determination’. …This does not at all eliminate the role of the given in knowledge, but it will radically relativize to ‘thought’ the ways in which the given can be taken to be given” (emphasis added).
- 22.
Fichte, it should be noted, quite explicitly conflates epistemological and existential conditions. For Fichte—in his interpretation of Kant—receptivity or sensibility is something we ascribe to ourselves purely through thought: “‘The capacity to acquire representations by the way in which we are affected by objects’*—what is it? Since we only think the affection, we undoubtedly only think the common [Gemeinsame] of it; it is a mere thought. When one posits an object while thinking it has affected one, one thinks of oneself as being affected in this particular case; and when one thinks that this happens with all objects of one’s perception, one thinks of oneself as being capable of being affected in general [affizierbar überhaupt], or in other words: through this thinking [ durch dieses dein Denken ], one ascribes receptivity or sensibility to oneself. Thus the object as given is merely thought. … Naturally, all our knowledge starts with an affection; but not through an object” (W, I,4:241; trans. mine and my underlining; *Fichte paraphrases A19/B33).
- 23.
And of course one should note the following “its unity” in the subordinate clause of that sentence (B145).
- 24.
Of course, Hegelians want to stress that Hegel does not, like the rationalists, want to reduce perceptions to confused ideas or concepts (Pippin 1993:291), and also that we are dependent on a content we do not make—because we are discursive thinkers, rather than noetic or intuitive intellects (cf. Pippin 1993:292; Sedgwick 2012). Pippin says: “Hegel clearly has no interest in returning to some neo-Leibnizian position as a result of his dissatisfaction with Kant’s concept–intuition distinction in the Deduction” (1993:295).
- 25.
- 26.
See note 8 above. For more details, see Schulting (2017), Chap. 8.
- 27.
See also Sedgwick’s (1993:279–80) critique of Pippin on this point.
- 28.
In the Stufenleiter (A320/B376–7), Kant appears to define “perception” as either a sensation (the modification of a subject’s inner state) or a cognition, which can in its turn be either an intuition or a concept. This seems to indicate that by “perception” any representation in sensibility, subjective or objective, can be meant (see also A115; A120; B207; A192–3/B237–8; B275). Perception as such is not experience, since experience is “perception according to rules” (Refl, 2740, 16:494; trans. mine), or “cognition through connected perceptions” (B161; emphasis added; cf. Prol, 4:298 [§19], 305; FM, 20:276). Experience is contrasted with “mere perception—whose validity is merely subjective” (Prol, 4:304).
- 29.
Briefly, in our nonconceptualist reading of the unity of space in Onof and Schulting (2015), we argue for a distinction between, on the one hand, the sui generis unity of space, which we call the unicity of space, and is as such independent of the unity of apperception (categorial unity) and thus independent of the synthesis of the imagination, and, on the other hand, the unity of a determinate space (or determinate spaces), which is due to the unity of apperception, by virtue of the synthesis of the imagination. The sui generis unity of space defines the essential characteristics of space as the form of intuition (singularity, infinity, mereological inversion), which cannot be reduced to conceptual unity by virtue of the unity of apperception (and thus neither to the synthesis of imagination). This, we argue, refutes conceptualist interpretations of the unity of space (such as Pippin’s). Nevertheless, our reading allows for the conceptual grasp of the sui generis unicity of space as a unity for the understanding, and thus accommodates Kant’s claim in the footnote that the understanding determines the spatial manifold “inwardly” by means of the synthesis of the imagination. See also Tolley, Chap. 11, and Land, Chap. 7, in this volume for a nonconceptualist and a conceptualist reading, respectively, of the unity of space.
- 30.
It is also unclear how Pippin can acknowledge that “orientation in space is in some sense pre-conceptual” (1993:291). How is this possible if he denies that there are pure intuitions? For pre-conceptual orientation in space requires a pre-conceptual form of such orientation, which is the pure form of intuition, space. But if Kant’s distinction between form of intuition and formal intuition is blurred, as Hegel and Pippin argue, then it seems hard to visualise a pre-conceptual form for spatial orientation, given that, on the Hegelian reading, its unitary form is provided by the understanding via the synthesis of imagination.
- 31.
I employ Longuenesse’s (1998a:243) phrasing here (cf. B152).
- 32.
This not only affects Pippin’s reading. Ever since Dieter Henrich’s (1969) proposal of a two-step proof structure for the B-Deduction, also many Kantians believe that the “second step” is meant to prove that any sense content is subject to the categories. For a different reading, see Schulting (2017), Chap. 7.
- 33.
- 34.
See again note 22.
- 35.
See the essays on the McDowell–Dreyfus debate in Schear (2013), and Pippin’s own essay in that volume (Pippin 2013). See also Onof, Chap. 9, in this volume.
- 36.
See note 20.
- 37.
I would like to thank Christian Onof for his useful comments on an earlier draft, as always. I also thank Kees Jan Brons, Robert Hanna, Dietmar Heidemann and Marcel Quarfood for their helpful remarks.
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Schulting, D. (2016). On an Older Dispute: Hegel, Pippin and the Separability of Concept and Intuition in Kant. In: Schulting, D. (eds) Kantian Nonconceptualism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53517-7_10
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