subjective idealism essay

1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology

Philosophy, One Thousand Words at a Time

Idealism Pt. 1: Berkeley’s Subjective Idealism

Author: Addison Ellis Category: Historical Philosophy , Metaphysics , Epistemology Word Count: 1000

Editor’s Note: This essay is the first of two essays in a series authored by Addison on the topic of philosophical idealism. Part 2 on Kant’s Transcendental Idealism can be read here .

We often take it for granted that we have some knowledge about the way reality is. For instance, it seems clear to me that I know there is a computer screen directly in front of my face, and I believe it is clearly true that I know how to get to the refrigerator from where I currently sit. But what is the nature of the computer screen and the refrigerator? Common sense tells us that they are bundles of physical stuff and that our minds have become adapted, perhaps through a process like evolution, to knowing about and acting with respect to them.

Idealism, on the contrary, is the view that what reality is like depends upon the way the mind works. There are many distinct versions of idealism in the history of philosophy, and we will consider three of the most important versions over three distinct installments: Berkeley’s subjective idealism, Kant’s transcendental idealism, and Hegel’s absolute idealism. This, then, will be part one of a three-part installment on idealism, and we will start with George Berkeley’s subjective idealism.

1. Two Arguments for Berkeley’s Subjective Idealism

George Berkeley, an 18 th -Century Irish philosopher, held that esse est percipi , or “to be is to be perceived.” When I perceive a black dog, according to many philosophers in the early modern period, I am in possession of a representational state – that is, my mind is affected by a physical thing, the dog, which in turn causes my mind to generate a mental representation of the dog. What I perceive, then, is really only a representation, from which I infer the existence of the thing represented. This is called indirect realism.

Berkeley challenged this traditional picture in the following way. 1 First, when we take a representation to accurately represent an object in the world, we do so on the assumption that the representation resembles the object in some way. But, Berkeley argues, we are in no position to say that our ideas resemble anything other than other ideas. According to Berkeley, we cannot compare ideas with material objects since to have knowledge of a material object would require that we know it via some idea. Thus, all we ever encounter are ideas themselves, and never anything material.

If Berkeley is right, then we never have knowledge of anything material whatsoever; we only ever know our own ideas. This is part of a larger attack in which Berkeley argues that we are not entitled to believe that matter exists, in which case the only things that do exist include minds, ideas, and God. Berkeley is putting forth a view that is sometimes called subjective idealism : subjective, because he claims that the only things that can be said to exist are ideas when they are perceived. Thus, my black dog exists only when I am currently in possession of the idea of my black dog. If I leave my dog behind when I walk to the store, she no longer exists, and so her existence is purely dependent upon a subject’s perception of her.

In addition to the resemblance argument above, and to strengthen his attack on realism and materialism, Berkeley also argues that matter is impossible.

The basic idea goes like this: Matter is defined as physical stuff which can exist independently of our minds. We ordinarily take matter to be the stuff that makes up reality, and this stuff is supposed to go on existing whether we are perceiving it or not. That is, we think of matter as stuff that can exist unconceived. But we can never conceive of matter except through some idea. If so, then we cannot conceive of matter as something unconceived. In fact, it would be absurd to say so, since necessarily in conceiving of matter, we are conceiving of an idea , and surely we cannot conceive of an idea that is unconceived. If all of this is true, then, Berkeley argues, matter as it is defined is impossible . 2 If matter is impossible, then no material objects exist, and it is only possible for minds, ideas, and God to exist.

2. Problems with Subjective Idealism

If Berkeley is right, and things exist only insofar as they are ideas being perceived by a mind, then there were never physical objects like mountains and animals before minds capable of knowledge (i.e., minds like ours) came into existence. Since things, for Berkeley, exist only insofar as they are being perceived (esse est percipi), and since no minds were perceiving anything millions of years ago, then nothing would have existed millions of years ago, if Berkeley is right. This is an unsettling thought, since it directly conflicts with both common sense and our best scientific worldview.

However, Berkeley may be able to avoid such a problem by suggesting that our ideas continue to exist in the mind of God even when we cease to possess them ourselves. When we have ideas, especially perceptual ones, they seem to be passive with respect to our minds. That is, in perception we seem to have little choice in what ideas we encounter. Because ideas are passive, they do not cause themselves. Additionally, since ideas are always possessed by a mind, and since our minds do not seem to simply produce their own ideas (since we passively receive them), they must be given to us from another mind. For this reason, Berkeley believes (i) that God exists, and (ii) that our ideas have their origin in the mind of God. If this is true, then arguably my dog does not simply pop out of existence when I cease to perceive her, since all our ideas are ultimately held in the mind of God. 3

3. Conclusions

We should take away three important points from this essay. First, idealism is the view that the way reality is depends upon the way the mind is. Second, one version of idealism, Berkeleyan subjective idealism, holds that all there is are ideas, the minds that possess those ideas, and God. 4 Third and finally, while Berkeley’s view is not without its problems, his arguments are compelling and worth taking very seriously.

1  Berkeley rejects both indirect and direct realism, to be more precise. In traditional philosophical parlance, it is common to define realism as the view that there exists a mind-independent reality. If this is what realism means, then no idealist is a realist. Curiously, as we will see with Kant’s transcendental idealism, a distinction can be made between what Kant calls transcendental realism and empirical realism. Kant believes that he can be an empirical realist and a transcendental idealist .

2  See Dialogue Two in the  Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous.

3  This is by no means the end of the discussion. As we will see in the next installment, Kant has more objections to Berkeley’s subjective idealism.

4  God is a kind of spirit or mind, but one that is infinite rather than finite like us.

Berkeley, George.  Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous . Indianapolis: Hackett 1979.

Downing, Lisa. “George Berkeley.”  Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Stanford University, 10 Sept. 2004. Web. 07 July 2014. <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/>.

Related Essays

The Mind-Body Problem: What Are Minds? by Jacob Berger

About the Author

Addison Ellis is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at The American University in Cairo. His interests include Kant and Post-Kantian European Philosophy, with special attention to the topics of self-consciousness, ontology, and cognitive capacities and attitudes. philpeople.org/profiles/addison-ellis

Follow 1000-Word Philosophy on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to receive email notifications of new essays at 1000WordPhilosophy.com

Share this:, 4 thoughts on “ idealism pt. 1: berkeley’s subjective idealism ”.

• Pingback: Epistemology, or Theory of Knowledge – 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology
• Pingback: The Philosophy of George Berkeley: The Best Introductory Resources - The Daily Idea
• Pingback: Idealism Pt. 2: Kant’s Transcendental Idealism | 1000-Word Philosophy

Comments are closed.

Philosophy Break Your home for learning about philosophy

Introductory philosophy courses distilling the subject's greatest wisdom.

Reading Lists

Curated reading lists on philosophy's best and most important works.

Latest Breaks

Bite-size philosophy articles designed to stimulate your brain.

George Berkeley’s Subjective Idealism: The World Is In Our Minds

According to George Berkeley’s subjective idealism, everything in the universe is either a mind or an idea in the mind, and matter cannot possibly exist.

10 -MIN BREAK  

Y ou’re reading these words on the screen of a particular device. You might be holding the device in your hand, or it might be resting on your lap, a desk, or some other convenient surface. Regardless of the exact model and set up of your device, there’s one thing that’s so obvious about it that it hardly needs to be stated: your device exists independently of you, as a lump of matter out there in the world.

…or does it? 18th-century Irish philosopher George Berkeley would argue that, in fact, the device you perceive exists only as an idea in your mind.

This might seem absurd, but the funny thing about Berkeley’s view is how, when you inspect it further, it can be difficult to really identify why it’s absurd.

George Berkeley, existing as an idea in your mind.

Think about it. Your device has a certain color, size, and shape, which you perceive with your eyes. Close your eyes, and the device disappears.

No bother, you might think: you can still touch the device to know it’s there. Well, take away your sense of touch, and you’ll no longer feel the device’s presence.

Perhaps you can hear occasional notification bleeps. Take away your hearing, and those bleeps go too.

You might get desperate and try to smell or even taste the device, but if we remove those sensory capabilities, then even those emergency routes prove inadequate in providing a basis for the device’s existence.

The device you know and love has been reduced to a colorless, soundless, odorless, tasteless nothingness: there's no sign of the independent lump of matter that common sense initially presumed to exist. It turns out all we ever had access to were our own sensory perceptions, located in our mind. Take those away, and what’s left of the device’s existence?

The question we're really asking: remove conscious minds — remove our sensory perceptions — and what remains of the universe?

Esse est percipi: to be is to be perceived

R eflections like those above led Berkeley to famously declare esse est percipi : to be is to be perceived. This slogan refers to the idea that it is being perceived that gives things existence, and encapsulates Berkeley’s view that minds and their ideas are thus the only things that exist, a view known as subjective idealism . As he clarifies in his brilliant 1710 work, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge :

There was an odor, that is, it was smelled; there was a sound, that is, it was heard; a color or figure, and it was perceived by sight or touch. This is all that I can understand by these and the like expressions. For as to what is said of the absolute existence of unthinking things without any relation to their being perceived, that seems perfectly unintelligible. Their esse is percipi , nor is it possible they should have any existence, out of the minds of thinking things which perceive them.

You might think: well, take away my sensory perceptions, and of course I won’t be able to detect the existence of anything. This tells us nothing about the status of the world or the objects contained within it, for even if I am no longer able to perceive my device, that doesn’t mean my device has stopped existing. Someone else could perceive it if they were in its presence.

Well, Berkeley would agree. To be is to be perceived. So, if someone else was in the presence of your device, the device would then exist in the mind of that person. But take away the mind of that person, and again — what remains? As Berkeley states:

It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst people that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects, have an existence natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding… for what are the forementioned objects but things we perceive by sense? And what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? And is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these or any combination of them should exist unperceived?

The world we tend to think of as existing independently of us, Berkeley points out, is a world of sensory perceptions: a world of colors, smells, textures, tastes, and sounds. Ice cream on a summer’s day. A fire crackling during the night. A rainstorm soaking you to the bone. These sensory experiences may be real and vivid — but they remain sensory experiences, dependent on our sensory apparatus, existent only in the minds of those experiencing them. Where is the mind-independent stuff?

From the Buddha to Nietzsche: join 11,500+ subscribers enjoying my free Sunday Breakdown

In one concise email each Sunday, I break down a famous idea from philosophy. You get the distillation straight to your inbox.

💭 One short philosophical email each Sunday. Unsubscribe any time.

We might object by appealing to the fact that it’s perfectly possible to imagine a scene existing — say, a mountain forest, or a faraway planet — without a conscious mind there to experience it. But, of course, in doing the imagining, we would then be the conscious mind experiencing it. As Berkeley comments:

When we do our utmost to conceive the existence of external bodies, we are all the while only contemplating our own ideas. But the mind, taking no notice of itself, is deluded to think it can and does conceive bodies existing unthought of or without the mind; though at the same time they are apprehended by, or exist in, itself.

It is impossible to imagine any object existing independently from a mind, Berkeley argues, because in the act of imagining it, we use our own minds. Be it a tree, river, or a subatomic particle: they are all ideas dependent on our minds.

But isn’t Berkeley just talking about our perceptions of the world, not the world itself?

P erhaps we might think Berkeley’s argument rests on a conflation between our perceptions of the world, and the world itself. And once we clear away that conflation, all of the strange unintuitive confusion arising from Berkeley’s points will go with it.

We might grant Berkeley that, if we were to suddenly be deprived of our senses, the world of our experience would vanish. But that doesn’t mean the world itself would stop existing. There would still be underlying ‘stuff’ that endures — i.e. there would still be matter, the stuff that causes our experiences in the first place — even without anyone there to perceive it.

So, our perceptions of the world might be mind-dependent, mental; but that doesn’t mean the world itself is mind-dependent.

But this view — reminiscent of that put forward by the great empiricist John Locke — is mistaken, Berkeley thinks.

Try to imagine a world without your mind, he implores. What would such a world be like? Are we even able to conceptualize it?

Remove your conscious self and your sensory capabilities from this picture. What remains?

As we saw with your device at the beginning of this article, once we strip objects of our sensory perceptions, we are left with a colorless, soundless, odorless, tasteless nothingness.

So, without our minds, what exactly endures? Are materialists like Locke simply insisting that, as well as our rich sensory perceptions, there also exists this colorless, soundless, odorless, tasteless stuff that we aren’t even able to conceptualize? But what grounds are there for claiming this? What does matter, this inaccessible non-mental alien substance, really add here?

Besides, even if we did grant materialists their precious matter, Berkeley continues, they have absolutely no idea how it could possibly cause conscious, mental experiences within us. As matter is necessarily colorless, soundless, odorless, and tasteless, how could such a non-mental nothingness possibly cause or give rise to colors, sounds, odors, or tastes within our minds — when it itself possesses none of these things? Berkeley writes:

By their own confession, [materialists] are never the nearer knowing how our ideas are produced, since they own themselves unable to comprehend in what manner body can act upon spirit, or how it is possible it should imprint any idea in the mind.

As philosophers of consciousness continue to argue about today , we have no real idea how non-mental ‘stuff’ can possibly give rise to mental ‘stuff’. How can colorless, tasteless blocks of matter that apparently exist independently of our minds, cause vivid sensations of redness or the taste of watermelon within our minds?

Far simpler, Berkeley thinks, to just say our sensations are the only things that exist here. Why posit a non-mental substance like matter standing behind them? Matter adds unnecessary complexity into our picture of the universe for it introduces a needless substance dualism. As Berkeley summarizes:

The production of ideas or sensations in our minds can be no reason why we should suppose [the existence of] matter or corporeal substances, since that is acknowledged to remain equally inexplicable, with or without this supposition. If therefore it were possible for bodies to exist without the mind, to hold they do so must needs be a very precarious opinion; since it is to suppose, without any reason at all, that God has created innumerable beings that are entirely useless, and serve… no manner of purpose…

In describing our experiences of the world, we never truly encounter or directly access ‘matter’. We only ever access our perceptions. Our perceptions can be nothing ‘like’ matter, for matter (if it exists) is necessarily colorless, soundless, odorless, and tasteless. Positing matter’s existence thus tells us nothing about why we have the experiences that we do. So matter, Berkeley concludes, is ultimately empty — and we have nothing to gain from thinking this non-mental substance exists independently from our minds.

So where do our experiences come from, if not physical objects?

I t might be thought that there’s a hole in Berkeley’s argument. Even if we concede that everything we experience is, by definition, in our own minds, and that everything in our minds is, again by definition, ‘mental’, that doesn’t explain where all this experience comes from . Is Berkeley arguing our minds spontaneously create everything we experience? But what about shared experiences?

Say you’re eating a meal with some friends. Presumably everyone sees the same or at least a similar set up, and shares similar experiences eating the food, and so on. Is Berkeley saying everyone’s mind is uniquely generating their own experience? That seems absurd, and a much simpler explanation would be that there is an independently existing table (made of matter) that everyone is independently experiencing with their own sensory apparatus.

In one concise email each Sunday, I break down a famous idea from philosophy. You get the distillation straight to your inbox:

Berkeley agrees that there is an independently existing table, but disagrees that its existence depends on some alien non-mental substance like matter. Non-mental things, Berkeley reminds us, do not have the power to cause ideas in us: only other ideas can do that. So, the source of all ideas — including the source of your shared experience of the table — must be another mind…

In fact, not only must the source of our experiences be another mind, Berkeley continues, it must be a mind superior to human minds, for...

the ideas of sense are more strong, lively, and distinct than those of the imagination; they have likewise a steadiness, order, and coherence, and are not excited at random, as those which are the effects of human wills often are, but in a regular train or series — the admirable connection whereof sufficiently testifies the wisdom and benevolence of its Author.

Here the brilliant audacity of Berkeley’s argument is truly revealed: the objects of experience exist independently from us not as lumps of matter, Berkeley argues, but as ideas in the mind of God:

...all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind; that their being is to be perceived or known; that consequently so long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some Eternal Spirit.

With a bold, beautiful appeal to simplicity, Berkeley thus denies matter and claims everything is ‘spirit’: everything in existence is either a mind or an idea in the mind, and the reason the world appears consistently and independently from our minds is because it exists in the divine mind of God.

Where does Berkeley’s view of the universe leave us?

O ur kneejerk reaction to Berkeley’s audacious conception of the universe might be: but what about science? Doesn’t today’s scientific picture of the world show that we live in a shared world of matter, and that Berkeley’s philosophy is surely outdated nonsense?

Well, Berkeley would argue his picture is very much consistent with science. The Laws of Nature, revealed by scientific inquiry, indicate the order and structure of God’s mind. Subatomic particles are fundamental building blocks not of matter , but of God’s ideas and our own perceptions. Furthermore, one of 20th-century philosopher of science Karl Popper’s best-known papers is called A Note on Berkeley as Precursor of Mach and Einstein , and in it he shows how significant features of Berkeley’s philosophy are consistent with, and even implied by, modern physics.

However, though Berkeley is still widely read today, it must be admitted that his positive philosophy is not widely followed.

In his 1912 book The Problems of Philosophy , Bertrand Russell strongly critiques Berkeley’s view, claiming that Berkeley’s philosophy hinges on a conflation between what we mean by objects being ‘in’ the mind and ‘before’ the mind. Despite his belief that Berkeley’s philosophy is fallacious, Russell acknowledges its significance, writing:

Berkeley retains the merit of having shown that the existence of matter is capable of being denied without absurdity, and that if there are any things that exist independently of us they cannot be the immediate objects of our sensations.

Indeed, even if we don’t agree with Berkeley’s ultimate conclusions, anyone forming a conception of the world must take seriously his denial of matter, and recognize that the world of our sensory experience cannot possibly be ‘like’ the world as it exists without our minds, for the latter would necessarily be a world without color, sound, taste, or touch.

The objects of our sensory perception — your device, say — cannot possibly ‘resemble’ or ‘represent’ objects by themselves. Without a conscious mind there to perceive it, your device is something very different (an insight harnessed by Kant with his transcendental idealism ). Berkeley thought it was so different, so alien and contradictory and empty, that there was no point entertaining its existence at all: its only ‘real’ existence is as an idea in your mind...

So, though we might balk at Berkeley’s positive picture, that does not reduce the power of his arguments against commonsensical conceptions of matter. He makes us question, what does ‘physical’ actually mean? What is matter? What is the boundary between perceiver and perceived? Is the world around us ‘real’? What is the universe like without conscious minds there to perceive it? And ultimately — what are the limits of human knowledge?

If you're interested in exploring these questions further, our introductory philosophy course, Life's Big Questions , discusses philosophy's best answers to the question of whether the world of our sensory experience aligns to ‘reality’, outlining René Descartes , John Locke , George Berkeley, David Hume, Immanuel Kant and many other great thinkers. Interested in learning more? Explore the full course now!

Life’s Big Questions: Your Concise Guide to Philosophy’s Most Important Wisdom

From why anything exists to how we should live, unlock philosophy’s best answers to life’s big questions.

★★★★★ (50+ reviews for our courses)

Get one mind-opening philosophical idea distilled to your inbox every Sunday (free):

About the author.

Jack Maden Founder Philosophy Break

Having received great value from studying philosophy for 15+ years (picking up a master’s degree along the way), I founded Philosophy Break in 2018 as an online social enterprise dedicated to making the subject’s wisdom accessible to all. Learn more about me and the project here.

If you enjoy learning about humanity’s greatest thinkers, you might like my free Sunday email. I break down one mind-opening idea from philosophy, and invite you to share your view.

Subscribe for free here , and join 11,500+ philosophers enjoying a nugget of profundity each week (free forever, no spam, unsubscribe any time).

Get one mind-opening philosophical idea distilled to your inbox every Sunday (free)

From the Buddha to Nietzsche: join 11,500+ subscribers enjoying a nugget of profundity from the great philosophers every Sunday:

★★★★★ (50+ reviews for Philosophy Break). Unsubscribe any time.

Take Another Break

Each break takes only a few minutes to read, and is crafted to expand your mind and spark your philosophical curiosity.

Nietzsche On Why Suffering is Necessary for Greatness

3 -MIN BREAK

How to Live a Fulfilling Life, According to Philosophy Break Subscribers

15 -MIN BREAK

Enrich Your Personal Philosophy with these 6 Major Philosophies for Life

17 -MIN BREAK

Heidegger On Being Authentic in an Inauthentic World

4 -MIN BREAK

View All Breaks

PHILOSOPHY 101

• What is Philosophy?
• Why is Philosophy Important?
• Philosophy’s Best Books
• About Philosophy Break
• Support the Project
• Instagram   /   Threads   /   Facebook
• TikTok   /   Twitter

Philosophy Break is an online social enterprise dedicated to making the wisdom of philosophy instantly accessible (and useful!) for people striving to live happy, meaningful, and fulfilling lives. Learn more about us here . To offset a fraction of what it costs to maintain Philosophy Break, we participate in the Amazon Associates Program. This means if you purchase something on Amazon from a link on here, we may earn a small percentage of the sale, at no extra cost to you. This helps support Philosophy Break, and is very much appreciated.

Access our generic Amazon Affiliate link here

Privacy Policy | Cookie Policy

© Philosophy Break Ltd, 2024

• Search Menu
• Browse content in Arts and Humanities
• Browse content in Archaeology
• Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology
• Archaeological Methodology and Techniques
• Archaeology by Region
• Archaeology of Religion
• Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
• Biblical Archaeology
• Contemporary and Public Archaeology
• Environmental Archaeology
• Historical Archaeology
• History and Theory of Archaeology
• Industrial Archaeology
• Landscape Archaeology
• Mortuary Archaeology
• Prehistoric Archaeology
• Underwater Archaeology
• Urban Archaeology
• Zooarchaeology
• Browse content in Architecture
• Architectural Structure and Design
• History of Architecture
• Residential and Domestic Buildings
• Theory of Architecture
• Browse content in Art
• Art Subjects and Themes
• History of Art
• Industrial and Commercial Art
• Theory of Art
• Biographical Studies
• Byzantine Studies
• Browse content in Classical Studies
• Classical Literature
• Classical Reception
• Classical History
• Classical Philosophy
• Classical Mythology
• Classical Art and Architecture
• Classical Oratory and Rhetoric
• Greek and Roman Archaeology
• Greek and Roman Epigraphy
• Greek and Roman Law
• Greek and Roman Papyrology
• Late Antiquity
• Religion in the Ancient World
• Digital Humanities
• Browse content in History
• Colonialism and Imperialism
• Diplomatic History
• Environmental History
• Genealogy, Heraldry, Names, and Honours
• Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
• Historical Geography
• History by Period
• History of Agriculture
• History of Education
• History of Emotions
• History of Gender and Sexuality
• Industrial History
• Intellectual History
• International History
• Labour History
• Legal and Constitutional History
• Local and Family History
• Maritime History
• Military History
• National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
• Oral History
• Political History
• Public History
• Regional and National History
• Revolutions and Rebellions
• Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
• Social and Cultural History
• Theory, Methods, and Historiography
• Urban History
• World History
• Browse content in Language Teaching and Learning
• Language Learning (Specific Skills)
• Language Teaching Theory and Methods
• Browse content in Linguistics
• Applied Linguistics
• Cognitive Linguistics
• Computational Linguistics
• Forensic Linguistics
• Grammar, Syntax and Morphology
• Historical and Diachronic Linguistics
• History of English
• Language Variation
• Language Families
• Language Acquisition
• Language Evolution
• Language Reference
• Lexicography
• Linguistic Theories
• Linguistic Typology
• Linguistic Anthropology
• Phonetics and Phonology
• Psycholinguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Translation and Interpretation
• Writing Systems
• Browse content in Literature
• Bibliography
• Children's Literature Studies
• Literary Studies (Modernism)
• Literary Studies (Asian)
• Literary Studies (European)
• Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
• Literary Studies (Romanticism)
• Literary Studies (American)
• Literary Studies - World
• Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
• Literary Studies (19th Century)
• Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
• Literary Studies (African American Literature)
• Literary Studies (British and Irish)
• Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
• Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
• Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
• Literary Studies (Graphic Novels)
• Literary Studies (History of the Book)
• Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
• Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
• Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
• Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
• Literary Studies (Science Fiction)
• Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
• Literary Studies (War Literature)
• Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
• Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
• Mythology and Folklore
• Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
• Browse content in Media Studies
• Browse content in Music
• Applied Music
• Dance and Music
• Ethics in Music
• Ethnomusicology
• Gender and Sexuality in Music
• Medicine and Music
• Music Cultures
• Music and Culture
• Music and Religion
• Music and Media
• Music Education and Pedagogy
• Music Theory and Analysis
• Musical Scores, Lyrics, and Libretti
• Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
• Musicology and Music History
• Performance Practice and Studies
• Race and Ethnicity in Music
• Sound Studies
• Browse content in Performing Arts
• Browse content in Philosophy
• Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
• Epistemology
• Feminist Philosophy
• History of Western Philosophy
• Metaphysics
• Moral Philosophy
• Non-Western Philosophy
• Philosophy of Action
• Philosophy of Law
• Philosophy of Religion
• Philosophy of Science
• Philosophy of Language
• Philosophy of Mind
• Philosophy of Perception
• Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic
• Practical Ethics
• Social and Political Philosophy
• Browse content in Religion
• Biblical Studies
• Christianity
• East Asian Religions
• History of Religion
• Judaism and Jewish Studies
• Qumran Studies
• Religion and Education
• Religion and Health
• Religion and Politics
• Religion and Science
• Religion and Law
• Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
• Religious Studies
• Browse content in Society and Culture
• Cookery, Food, and Drink
• Cultural Studies
• Customs and Traditions
• Ethical Issues and Debates
• Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
• Lifestyle, Home, and Garden
• Natural world, Country Life, and Pets
• Popular Beliefs and Controversial Knowledge
• Sports and Outdoor Recreation
• Technology and Society
• Travel and Holiday
• Visual Culture
• Browse content in Law
• Arbitration
• Browse content in Company and Commercial Law
• Commercial Law
• Company Law
• Browse content in Comparative Law
• Systems of Law
• Competition Law
• Browse content in Constitutional and Administrative Law
• Government Powers
• Judicial Review
• Local Government Law
• Military and Defence Law
• Parliamentary and Legislative Practice
• Construction Law
• Contract Law
• Browse content in Criminal Law
• Criminal Procedure
• Criminal Evidence Law
• Sentencing and Punishment
• Employment and Labour Law
• Environment and Energy Law
• Browse content in Financial Law
• Banking Law
• Insolvency Law
• History of Law
• Human Rights and Immigration
• Intellectual Property Law
• Browse content in International Law
• Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
• Public International Law
• IT and Communications Law
• Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
• Law and Society
• Law and Politics
• Browse content in Legal System and Practice
• Courts and Procedure
• Legal Skills and Practice
• Primary Sources of Law
• Regulation of Legal Profession
• Medical and Healthcare Law
• Browse content in Policing
• Criminal Investigation and Detection
• Police and Security Services
• Police Procedure and Law
• Police Regional Planning
• Browse content in Property Law
• Personal Property Law
• Study and Revision
• Terrorism and National Security Law
• Browse content in Trusts Law
• Wills and Probate or Succession
• Browse content in Medicine and Health
• Browse content in Allied Health Professions
• Arts Therapies
• Clinical Science
• Dietetics and Nutrition
• Occupational Therapy
• Operating Department Practice
• Physiotherapy
• Radiography
• Speech and Language Therapy
• Browse content in Anaesthetics
• General Anaesthesia
• Neuroanaesthesia
• Browse content in Clinical Medicine
• Acute Medicine
• Cardiovascular Medicine
• Clinical Genetics
• Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
• Dermatology
• Endocrinology and Diabetes
• Gastroenterology
• Genito-urinary Medicine
• Geriatric Medicine
• Infectious Diseases
• Medical Oncology
• Medical Toxicology
• Pain Medicine
• Palliative Medicine
• Rehabilitation Medicine
• Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonology
• Rheumatology
• Sleep Medicine
• Sports and Exercise Medicine
• Clinical Neuroscience
• Community Medical Services
• Critical Care
• Emergency Medicine
• Forensic Medicine
• Haematology
• History of Medicine
• Medical Ethics
• Browse content in Medical Dentistry
• Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
• Paediatric Dentistry
• Restorative Dentistry and Orthodontics
• Surgical Dentistry
• Browse content in Medical Skills
• Clinical Skills
• Communication Skills
• Nursing Skills
• Surgical Skills
• Medical Statistics and Methodology
• Browse content in Neurology
• Clinical Neurophysiology
• Neuropathology
• Nursing Studies
• Browse content in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
• Gynaecology
• Occupational Medicine
• Ophthalmology
• Otolaryngology (ENT)
• Browse content in Paediatrics
• Neonatology
• Browse content in Pathology
• Chemical Pathology
• Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics
• Histopathology
• Medical Microbiology and Virology
• Patient Education and Information
• Browse content in Pharmacology
• Psychopharmacology
• Browse content in Popular Health
• Caring for Others
• Complementary and Alternative Medicine
• Self-help and Personal Development
• Browse content in Preclinical Medicine
• Cell Biology
• Molecular Biology and Genetics
• Reproduction, Growth and Development
• Primary Care
• Professional Development in Medicine
• Browse content in Psychiatry
• Addiction Medicine
• Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Forensic Psychiatry
• Learning Disabilities
• Old Age Psychiatry
• Psychotherapy
• Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
• Epidemiology
• Public Health
• Browse content in Radiology
• Clinical Radiology
• Interventional Radiology
• Nuclear Medicine
• Radiation Oncology
• Reproductive Medicine
• Browse content in Surgery
• Cardiothoracic Surgery
• Gastro-intestinal and Colorectal Surgery
• General Surgery
• Neurosurgery
• Paediatric Surgery
• Peri-operative Care
• Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
• Surgical Oncology
• Transplant Surgery
• Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
• Vascular Surgery
• Browse content in Science and Mathematics
• Browse content in Biological Sciences
• Aquatic Biology
• Biochemistry
• Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
• Developmental Biology
• Ecology and Conservation
• Evolutionary Biology
• Genetics and Genomics
• Microbiology
• Molecular and Cell Biology
• Natural History
• Plant Sciences and Forestry
• Research Methods in Life Sciences
• Structural Biology
• Systems Biology
• Zoology and Animal Sciences
• Browse content in Chemistry
• Analytical Chemistry
• Computational Chemistry
• Crystallography
• Environmental Chemistry
• Industrial Chemistry
• Inorganic Chemistry
• Materials Chemistry
• Medicinal Chemistry
• Mineralogy and Gems
• Organic Chemistry
• Physical Chemistry
• Polymer Chemistry
• Study and Communication Skills in Chemistry
• Theoretical Chemistry
• Browse content in Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Architecture and Logic Design
• Game Studies
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Mathematical Theory of Computation
• Programming Languages
• Software Engineering
• Systems Analysis and Design
• Virtual Reality
• Browse content in Computing
• Business Applications
• Computer Games
• Computer Security
• Computer Networking and Communications
• Digital Lifestyle
• Graphical and Digital Media Applications
• Operating Systems
• Browse content in Earth Sciences and Geography
• Atmospheric Sciences
• Environmental Geography
• Geology and the Lithosphere
• Maps and Map-making
• Meteorology and Climatology
• Oceanography and Hydrology
• Palaeontology
• Physical Geography and Topography
• Regional Geography
• Soil Science
• Urban Geography
• Browse content in Engineering and Technology
• Agriculture and Farming
• Biological Engineering
• Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Building
• Electronics and Communications Engineering
• Energy Technology
• Engineering (General)
• Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology
• History of Engineering and Technology
• Mechanical Engineering and Materials
• Technology of Industrial Chemistry
• Transport Technology and Trades
• Browse content in Environmental Science
• Applied Ecology (Environmental Science)
• Conservation of the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Environmental Sustainability
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Environmental Science)
• Management of Land and Natural Resources (Environmental Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environmental Science)
• Nuclear Issues (Environmental Science)
• Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Environmental Science)
• History of Science and Technology
• Browse content in Materials Science
• Ceramics and Glasses
• Composite Materials
• Metals, Alloying, and Corrosion
• Nanotechnology
• Browse content in Mathematics
• Applied Mathematics
• Biomathematics and Statistics
• History of Mathematics
• Mathematical Education
• Mathematical Finance
• Mathematical Analysis
• Numerical and Computational Mathematics
• Probability and Statistics
• Pure Mathematics
• Browse content in Neuroscience
• Cognition and Behavioural Neuroscience
• Development of the Nervous System
• Disorders of the Nervous System
• History of Neuroscience
• Invertebrate Neurobiology
• Molecular and Cellular Systems
• Neuroendocrinology and Autonomic Nervous System
• Neuroscientific Techniques
• Sensory and Motor Systems
• Browse content in Physics
• Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
• Biological and Medical Physics
• Classical Mechanics
• Computational Physics
• Condensed Matter Physics
• Electromagnetism, Optics, and Acoustics
• History of Physics
• Mathematical and Statistical Physics
• Measurement Science
• Nuclear Physics
• Particles and Fields
• Plasma Physics
• Quantum Physics
• Relativity and Gravitation
• Semiconductor and Mesoscopic Physics
• Browse content in Psychology
• Affective Sciences
• Clinical Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Criminal and Forensic Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Evolutionary Psychology
• Health Psychology
• History and Systems in Psychology
• Music Psychology
• Neuropsychology
• Organizational Psychology
• Psychological Assessment and Testing
• Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction
• Psychology Professional Development and Training
• Research Methods in Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Browse content in Social Sciences
• Browse content in Anthropology
• Anthropology of Religion
• Human Evolution
• Medical Anthropology
• Physical Anthropology
• Regional Anthropology
• Social and Cultural Anthropology
• Theory and Practice of Anthropology
• Browse content in Business and Management
• Business History
• Business Strategy
• Business Ethics
• Business and Government
• Business and Technology
• Business and the Environment
• Comparative Management
• Corporate Governance
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Entrepreneurship
• Health Management
• Human Resource Management
• Industrial and Employment Relations
• Industry Studies
• Information and Communication Technologies
• International Business
• Knowledge Management
• Management and Management Techniques
• Operations Management
• Organizational Theory and Behaviour
• Pensions and Pension Management
• Public and Nonprofit Management
• Strategic Management
• Supply Chain Management
• Browse content in Criminology and Criminal Justice
• Criminal Justice
• Criminology
• Forms of Crime
• International and Comparative Criminology
• Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
• Development Studies
• Browse content in Economics
• Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Resource Economics
• Asian Economics
• Behavioural Finance
• Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics
• Econometrics and Mathematical Economics
• Economic Methodology
• Economic Systems
• Economic History
• Economic Development and Growth
• Financial Markets
• Financial Institutions and Services
• General Economics and Teaching
• Health, Education, and Welfare
• History of Economic Thought
• International Economics
• Labour and Demographic Economics
• Law and Economics
• Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
• Microeconomics
• Public Economics
• Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
• Welfare Economics
• Browse content in Education
• Adult Education and Continuous Learning
• Care and Counselling of Students
• Early Childhood and Elementary Education
• Educational Equipment and Technology
• Educational Strategies and Policy
• Higher and Further Education
• Organization and Management of Education
• Philosophy and Theory of Education
• Schools Studies
• Secondary Education
• Teaching of a Specific Subject
• Teaching of Specific Groups and Special Educational Needs
• Teaching Skills and Techniques
• Browse content in Environment
• Applied Ecology (Social Science)
• Climate Change
• Conservation of the Environment (Social Science)
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Social Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environment)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science)
• Browse content in Human Geography
• Cultural Geography
• Economic Geography
• Political Geography
• Browse content in Interdisciplinary Studies
• Communication Studies
• Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences
• Browse content in Politics
• African Politics
• Asian Politics
• Chinese Politics
• Comparative Politics
• Conflict Politics
• Elections and Electoral Studies
• Environmental Politics
• European Union
• Foreign Policy
• Gender and Politics
• Human Rights and Politics
• Indian Politics
• International Relations
• International Organization (Politics)
• International Political Economy
• Irish Politics
• Latin American Politics
• Middle Eastern Politics
• Political Theory
• Political Methodology
• Political Communication
• Political Philosophy
• Political Sociology
• Political Behaviour
• Political Economy
• Political Institutions
• Politics and Law
• Public Administration
• Public Policy
• Quantitative Political Methodology
• Regional Political Studies
• Russian Politics
• Security Studies
• State and Local Government
• UK Politics
• US Politics
• Browse content in Regional and Area Studies
• African Studies
• Asian Studies
• East Asian Studies
• Japanese Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Middle Eastern Studies
• Native American Studies
• Scottish Studies
• Browse content in Research and Information
• Research Methods
• Browse content in Social Work
• Addictions and Substance Misuse
• Adoption and Fostering
• Care of the Elderly
• Child and Adolescent Social Work
• Couple and Family Social Work
• Developmental and Physical Disabilities Social Work
• Direct Practice and Clinical Social Work
• Emergency Services
• Human Behaviour and the Social Environment
• International and Global Issues in Social Work
• Mental and Behavioural Health
• Social Justice and Human Rights
• Social Policy and Advocacy
• Social Work and Crime and Justice
• Social Work Macro Practice
• Social Work Practice Settings
• Social Work Research and Evidence-based Practice
• Welfare and Benefit Systems
• Browse content in Sociology
• Childhood Studies
• Community Development
• Comparative and Historical Sociology
• Economic Sociology
• Gender and Sexuality
• Gerontology and Ageing
• Health, Illness, and Medicine
• Marriage and the Family
• Migration Studies
• Occupations, Professions, and Work
• Organizations
• Population and Demography
• Race and Ethnicity
• Social Theory
• Social Movements and Social Change
• Social Research and Statistics
• Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
• Sociology of Religion
• Sociology of Education
• Sport and Leisure
• Urban and Rural Studies
• Browse content in Warfare and Defence
• Defence Strategy, Planning, and Research
• Land Forces and Warfare
• Military Administration
• Military Life and Institutions
• Naval Forces and Warfare
• Other Warfare and Defence Issues
• Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
• Weapons and Equipment

• < Previous
• Next chapter >

Introduction

Author Webpage

• Published: June 2011
• Cite Icon Cite
• Permissions Icon Permissions

The introduction explains the overall plan of the book: Berkeley will be seen as a reactive philosopher who advanced novel arguments against the Cartesian-Lockean mainstream views, notably the shared belief in the existence of matter, and who put forward an alternative, idealist metaphysics according to which only minds and ideas exist and physical things are nothing but collections of ideas. Part I expounds key elements of the views Berkeley opposes and analyzes difficulties for those views that Berkeley thought would disappear in his system. Part II and Part III reconstruct and evaluate his direct and indirect arguments for idealism, respectively; Part IV expounds his positive metaphysics, including his views of mind, God, objects, causality, human agency, and laws of nature, and explores the issues that these views raise, including causation in perception, the status of unperceived objects, and intersubjectivity.

Signed in as

Institutional accounts.

• GoogleCrawler [DO NOT DELETE]
• Google Scholar Indexing

Personal account

• Sign in with email/username & password
• Get email alerts
• Save searches
• Purchase content
• Activate your purchase/trial code

Institutional access

• Sign in with a library card Sign in with username/password Recommend to your librarian
• Institutional account management
• Get help with access

Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:

IP based access

Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.

Sign in through your institution

Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institution’s website and Oxford Academic.

• Click Sign in through your institution.
• Select your institution from the list provided, which will take you to your institution's website to sign in.
• When on the institution site, please use the credentials provided by your institution. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.
• Following successful sign in, you will be returned to Oxford Academic.

If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institution’s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.

Sign in with a library card

Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.

Society Members

Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:

Sign in through society site

Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see ‘Sign in through society site’ in the sign in pane within a journal:

• Click Sign in through society site.
• When on the society site, please use the credentials provided by that society. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.

If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.

Sign in using a personal account

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.

A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.

Viewing your signed in accounts

Click the account icon in the top right to:

• View your signed in personal account and access account management features.
• View the institutional accounts that are providing access.

Signed in but can't access content

Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.

For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.

Our books are available by subscription or purchase to libraries and institutions.

• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Rights and permissions
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Friedrich wilhelm joseph von schelling (1775—1854).

The real importance of Schelling’s later works lies in the exposure of the dominant systemic metaphysics of the Subject to its limit rather than in its confirmation. In this way, the later works of Schelling demand from the students and philosophers of German Idealism a re-assessment of the notion of German Idealism itself. In that sense, the importance and influence of Schelling’s philosophy has remained “untimely.” In the wake of Hegelian rational philosophy that was the official philosophy of that time, Schelling’s later works was not influential and fell onto deaf ears. Only in the twentieth century when the question of the legitimacy of the philosophical project of modernity had come to be the concern for philosophers and thinkers, did Schelling’s radical opening of philosophy to “post-metaphysical” thinking receive renewed attention.

This is because it is perceived that the task of philosophical thinking is no longer the foundational act of the systematic metaphysics of the Subject. In the wake of “end of philosophy,” the philosophical task is understood to be the inauguration of new thinking beyond metaphysics. In this context, Schelling has again come into prominence as someone who in the heyday of German Idealism has opened up the possibility of a philosophical thinking beyond the closure of the metaphysics of the Subject. The importance of Schelling for such post-metaphysical thinking is rightly emphasized by Martin Heidegger in his lecture on Schelling of 1936. In this manner Heidegger prepares the possibility of understanding Schelling’s works in an entirely different manner. Heidegger’s reading of Schelling in turn has immensely influenced the Post-Heideggerian French philosophical turn to the question of “the exit from metaphysics”. But this Post-Structuralist and deconstructive reading of Schelling is not the only reception of Schelling. Philosophers like Jürgen Habermas, whose doctorate work was on Schelling, would like to insist on the continuation of the philosophical project of modernity, and yet attempt to view reason beyond the instrumental functionality of reason at the service of domination and coercion. Schelling is seen from this perspective as a “post-metaphysical” thinker who has widened the concept of reason beyond its self-grounding projection. During the last half of the last century, Schelling’s works have tremendously influenced the post-Subject oriented philosophical discourses. During recent times, Schelling scholarship has remarkably increased both in the Anglo-American context and the Continental philosophical context.

Table of Contents

• Naturphilosophie and Transcendental Philosophy
• Identity Philosophy
• The Middle period
• Positive Philosophy
• Primary Sources
• Secondary Sources

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling was born on 27 January, 1775 in Leonberg, Germany. His father was Joseph Friedrich Schelling and mother was Gottliebin Maria Cless. In 1785 Schelling attended the Latin School in Nürtingen. A precocious child, his teachers soon found nothing more to teach him. In 1790, Schelling joined the Tübingenstift, a Protestant Seminary, in Tübingen where he befriended Hölderlin who was later to become a great German poet, and Hegel who was to become a great philosopher. In 1794 Schelling published Über die Möglichkeit einer Form der Philosophie Überhaupt , in the same year of the publication of Fichte’s  Wissenshaftlehre. Fichte’s Wissenshaftlehre, along with Kant’s Critique of Judgment that was published four years before (1790), proved to be of decisive importance for Schelling’s early philosophical career. In 1798 at the age of just 23, Schelling was called to a professorship at the University of Jena where he came in contact with German Romantic poets and philosophers like the Schlegel brothers and Novalis. He also met August Wilhelm Schlegel’s wife Caroline Schlegel and there begun one of the most fascinating and scandalous romantic stories of that time, leading to Caroline’s divorce and her marriage to Schelling in 1803. In 1803 he left Jena for Würzburg where he was called to a professorship. In the Autumn of 1805 Würzburg fell to Austria. The following year Schelling left for Munich where he was to stay till 1841 apart from a break between 1820-1827 when he lived in Erlangen. In 1809 Schelling published his great treatise on human freedom, Philosophical Inquiries Concerning the Nature of Human Freedom . A few months later Caroline died.. Schelling was devastated. In 1812 Schelling married Pauline who was to remain his life long companion. In 1831 Hegel died. In 1840 Schelling was called upon to the now vacant chair in Berlin to replace Hegel where he sought to elaborate his Positivphilosophie which was attended by the likes of Søren Kierkegaard, Alexander Humboldt, Bakunin and Engels. In 1854 on 20 August Schelling died at the age of 79 in Bad Ragaz, Switzerland.

2. Philosophy

Encounter with the works of Schelling often baffles the scholars and historians of philosophy. Schelling’s works seem to exhibit the lack of consistent development or systematic completion which most of his contemporaries possess. As a result scholars and historians of philosophy complain of the absence of a “single” Schelling. Recent scholarship, however, while accepting the often disruptive and discontinuous movement with which Schelling’s thinking moves that defies and un-works the completion of a single definite philosophical system, finds issues that are singular to Schelling’s continuous attention and unceasing concern. Thus the absence of a systematic completion is what has become the source of fascination for recent Schelling scholarship. Schelling appears to be the mark that delineates the limit of the systematic task of philosophy, “the end of philosophy and the task of thinking” as Heidegger says. Prominent Schelling scholars like Manfred Frank and Andrew Bowie (1993) have, however, pointed out that Schelling had never abandoned the idea of ‘system’, although the idea of ‘system’ was no longer grounded on a restricted, narcissistic concept of reason as totalizing and self-grounding but as opening to that which cannot be thought in the concept.

For the sake of convenience we can roughly divide the philosophical career of Schelling into four stages:

a. Naturphilosophie and Transcendental Philosophy

b. Identity philosophy

c. The Middle period: Freedom essay and The Ages of the World

d. Positive Philosophy ( Philosophy of Mythology and Philosophy of Revelation )

The significance of Schelling’s early philosophical works lies in its radically new understanding of nature that departs significantly from the then dominant philosophical and scientific understanding of nature. Perhaps the best the way to approach the Schelling of Naturphilosophie is to see him, on the one hand, in relation to the dominant mechanistic determination of nature at that time, that of the Newtonian mathematical determination of nature according to which nature follows certain determinable physical laws of motion and rest, and that can be grasped in the objective cognition that has universal and non-relative validity and on the other hand, as a development of post-Kantian philosophy that led to a radical revision of Kant himself. Schelling’s philosophy of nature thus arose out of the demand to respond to the mechanistic determination of nature that was dominant at that time on the one hand, and to respond to the problems that arose in Kant’s division of the phenomenal realm of nature and noumenal realm of freedom. This demanded a dynamic philosophical account of nature where nature is no longer seen as a totality of objects that are a mere inert, opaque mass, but nature that is subjected to universal laws of causality. Such a dynamic philosophy of nature must be able to resolve the abyss that is opened up in the wake of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. It is the abyss between the deterministic, causal, conditioned realm of understanding on the one hand, and the unconditioned realm of ethical self-determination on the other hand, between theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy. The task that the Post-Kantian philosophy has given to itself is to bridge this gap between the conceptual, constitutive realm of nature which can be grasped by causal laws that has universal validity, and the ethical spontaneity of the practical reason where the ethical subject is beyond the conditioned realm of determination and is thus a free Subject of self-determination. This Subject is the Subject of freedom that cannot be grounded in the constitutive principles of understanding but in the regulative Ideas of reason. J. G Fichte sought to unify the theoretical reason (that is “understanding”) and the practical reason by  grounding them both in the dynamic activity of the self-consciousness that posits itself as pure, unconditioned act of self-positing ‘I’. The task of accounting for the process of emergence of the world of nature, which is thus a dynamic process, is addressed by Fichte thus: nature is an essential self-limitation of the ‘I’. The unconditioned, infinite self-positing ‘I’, in order to know itself as itself, divides itself into the finite ‘I’ and its counter-movement “Not-I”. In this manner, Fichte claimed to have resolved the problem that appeared to him and to the post-Kantian philosophers as that which is left unresolved by Kant himself. This is the question of how to account for the mysterious X, “the thing-in-itself” which, according to Kant, can never be grounded in the constitutive principle of understanding. As the condition of possibility of knowledge, “the thing-in-itself” can never be known. It is irreducible to the concepts of understanding. Fichte in his Science of Knowledge accounts for the genesis of this “thing-in-itself” in the pure self-positing act of the ‘I’. Since the ‘I’ cannot be an object of outer sense like any other objects of cognition ( Kant prohibits this), ‘I’ can only emerge in a pure, primordial act of inner-self. This self-emerging ‘I’ cannot therefore be an object of conceptual cognition, of an empirical intuition. It can only be grasped in the inner sense in ‘intellectual intuition’ which is none but ‘the fact of self-consciousness.’ According to Fichte, ‘the thing-in-itself’ is this self-emerging self-consciousness which is a ‘fact’ unlike any other ‘fact’. It is a fact that only ‘intellectual intuition’ grasps in the act of pure self-intuition. This is because only a being capable of intuiting itself as simultaneously representing and represented can account for the unity of representation and object. For such a being, that is ‘I’, there is no other predicate than itself. It is its own object. This object for it appears as nature which is the self-limitation of the self-positing Subject. Fichte’s idealism later came to be known as Subjective Idealism.

Schelling’s early works flourished under the influence of Fichte’s thinking. In 1797 Schelling published an essay called Treatise Explicatory of the Idealism in the “Science of Knowledge” in Philosophisches Journal edited by Immanuel Niethammer. This essay is crucial document for understanding the transition from Kantian critical philosophy to German Idealism. While attempting to elucidate what Kant would have intended if Kant’s philosophy is to prove internally cohesive, Schelling moves to the task of unifying theoretical and practical philosophy in a single principle in such a manner that he actually moves beyond both Kantian and Fichtean philosophy. What allows this unification of theoretical and practical philosophy is the Spirit’s infinite striving to represent the universe. The Spirit is not a static entity given, something mysterious X, but infinite becoming and infinite productivity. It is in this ceaseless production lies the organic nature of human Spirit that is moved by its immanent laws and that has its purposive-ness within itself. Schelling here introduces the notion of organism which unites in its immanence its goal and purpose, its form and matter, concept and intuition. As such each organism is a system which is “an arabesque delineation of the soul” or “eternal archetype” that finds expression in every plant. As immanent unity of form and matter that orients itself towards absolute purposive-ness through successive stages, this organism is not thus mere static, lifeless entity but is said to exhibit life. The Idealist notion of the system here takes this unified world of organism as model. Intuition is the unity of form and matter, representation and object which is distinguishable only in the concept that freely repeats the originary unity. With the help of the schematic power of the imagination, concept here produces the individual object of cognition. The succession of representation occurs alternately in a circle. To move beyond this circle of theoretical knowledge, this circle where the object always returns, it is necessary to introduce an act of free self-determination which cannot be further determined. This act is the absolute act of free will which is primordial and infinite. It is with this act the theoretical and practical philosophy is united.

In the same year Schelling published his   Naturphilosophie that further elaborates the concept of organism through analysis of natural phenomena with the help of scientific studies of the day . This work responds to the dual tasks mentioned above. On the one hand it must give an account of a dynamic process of the emergence of nature as against the mechanistic, deterministic understanding of nature; and on the other hand, to resolve the problem left by Kant, that of bridging the realm of theoretical and practical philosophy by developing a dynamic philosophy of nature that takes into account Fichtean dialectical philosophy of consciousness. Like the Treatise of the same year, this new philosophy of nature is not grounded in the self-positing, unconditioned self-consciousness but by positing a “non-objective”, unconditioned in nature itself which Schelling calls “productivity”. It is this productivity that emerges through the logic of polar oppositions between subject and object that is shown to lead to a higher subject-object synthesis. For Schelling such a dialectical logic is deducted as a movement of potencies. The first potency is the movement of infinite to the finite. The second potency makes the reverse movement, while the third potency alone, which is higher than the other two, unities preceding potencies. In this manner Schelling explains magnetism as the first potency, electricity as the second and chemistry as the third potency that dialectically sublates the other two. Schelling’s philosophy of nature that attempts to develop the dynamic process of Idealism from the objective side can be seen as a parallel development to the Subjective Idealism that is elaborated by Fichte.

In the Treatise Explicatory of the Idealism in the “Science of Knowledge” of 1797 Schelling hints at the idea of “the history of self-consciousness”. The Spirit through its originary activity presents the infinite in the finite, a movement whose goal is self-consciousness that marks the unification of theoretical and practical philosophy, nature and history. Schelling perfects this model in his System of Transcendenatl Idealism .   Schelling’s publication of The System of Transcendental Idealism in 1800 brought immediate fame to the young 25 year old philosopher. Schelling here draws from Fichte’s great insight that self-consciousness is not a mere “given entity”. It is not an unknown and inaccessible X,  a mysterious transcendental “in-itself” as the formal ground of cognition, but a coming into presence of itself, a pure self-positing emergence through the dialectical process of self-positing and self-limitation. In that way a “history of self-consciousness” can be deduced from one principle that explains the coming into being of the theoretical cognition that at its limit passes into the practical realm of freedom, that is, the objective world of history . This is the task of Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism of 1800. Thus the axiomatic sense of Fichtean I=I is transformed into the dynamic deduction of the self-consciousness by one principle. This is emergence of the Idealist notion of System whose possibility, according to the Idealists, is already given in Kantian Critical philosophy; a possibility is denied by Kant himself.

“The history of self-consciousness” comes into being in three stages or epochs. While the first epoch manifests the coming into being of “productive intuition” from “original sensation” and the second epoch manifests the emergence of “reflection” from “productive intuition”, the third epoch recounts the emergence of “the absolute act of will” from “reflection”. At the end of the third epoch, “the history of self-consciousness” passes into the practical realm where the deduction of the concept of history is shown to be the realm of unity of freedom and necessity. This has led Schelling to ask at the end of System : how the Subject which is now a completed self-consciousness can become conscious of that moment of its origin which is now unconscious for it, a past that appears to have receded into an immemorial origin and is inaccessible? It now appears that the condition of possibility of consciousness as such remains irreducible to consciousness itself. This is the problem that has become decisive, not only for Schelling’s subsequent philosophical career, but for the fate of Idealism as such. It now appears as if our self-consciousness is driven or constituted by an unconscious ground, forever inaccessible to consciousness, which can never be grounded in consciousness itself.

For Schelling this shows the limit of philosophical cognition and at the same time the importance of works of art. By refusing the claim to say or represent the synthesis of unconscious and conscious, the work of art rather shows it. Therefore art can be said to be the “the eternal organ and document of philosophy” whose basic character is an “unconscious infinity” that arises in the work of art’s synthesis of nature and freedom. While the artist initiates a work of art with a manifest, conscious intention, she, in an unconscious and unintentional manner, depicts infinity without representing or saying it. Such an unintentional showing exceeds the representational acts of consciousness. It cannot be reduced to categorical statements. Therefore works of art cannot be understood on the basis of pre-given set of rules. Works of art are not exhausted in the normative or axiomatic definitions as to ‘what constitutes art as such’. What constitutes the ‘essence’ of art lies rather in its excess of showing over the said. In that sense works of art are more analogous with organisms by virtue of its existing as a link between unconsciousness and consciousness. Such a link can only be shown and therefore remains irreducible to the propositional character of judgment. Schelling develops such insights further in his lectures on The Philosophy of Art (1802), two years after The System of Transcendental Idealism . Unlike Hegel’s lectures on Aesthetics where Hegel argues that “the work of art is a thing of the past” in so far as it no longer has an essential relation to the Absolute even though works of art will continue to be produced, and thus pass into the sobriety of philosophy’s Absolute Knowledge, Schelling sees works of art and philosophy as manifesting the differential mode of the Absolute where art retains an essential, singular and irreducible role.

b. Identity Philosophy

In 1795,  Friedrich Hölderlin published an article called On Judgment and Being that has proved to be of decisive importance for the later development of German Idealism. In this small article Hölderlin attempts to think of an Absolute identity, a prior and originary ground of consciousness that cannot be grasped or known within the immanence of self-consciousness. Hölderlin calls this originary identity “being”( Seyn ) which he distinguishes from Judgment ( das Urteil ). Hölderlin here attempts to think of an originary identity that grounds the reflective judgment. According to Hölderlin this reflective judgment which is the unity of a disjunction, separation or difference between the subject and the object, must already presuppose an originary identity before judgment. In so far as judgment presupposes the difference between the subject and the object of consciousness, it must already be grounded in an identity. This identity is being ( Seyn) which, because of its ground character, remains irreducible to the reflective consciousness. In order for judgment to be possible, it must be grounded in a principle that exceeds judgment itself. This originary identity is being which is before or without consciousness.

In his Identity philosophy , Schelling too attempts to move beyond the immanence of self-consciousness and the circle of reflective judgment. With this move, Schelling decisively breaks away from the Fichtean subjective Idealism. The question of ‘I’ is no longer the point of departure, unlike that of Fichte’s absolute ‘I’ that is not an inert substance but arises purely in the act of self-positing. Rather, here it is the question of consciousness as a result of a process which is to be grasped not merely from the side of the Subject of self-consciousness but from the other side as well. This relation between subject and object thus can no longer be grounded within self-consciousness itself but in an absolute indifference that is prior to this distinction and hence, that can only be presupposed but is never accessible to reflective judgment or to the categories of understanding. Unlike that of reflective philosophy, the question is no longer that of making a correspondence between the subject and the object of consciousness. Such a representational philosophy of correspondence is here abandoned. The problem is rather that of explaining the manifestation of a finite world from a ground that is forever excluded from the infinite chain of conditioned, finite, particular entities. In order not to fall into dualism, which Jacobi alludes is the dualism between the unconditioned ground on the one hand and the infinite chain of conditioned, finite entities on the other, Schelling has to explain the manifestation of the finite world out of its unconditioned ground, from an absolute indifference , without falling into the logic of reflective thinking which Hegel later uses to develop in his Phenomenology of Spirit . This is the emergence of the finite world of entities that are connected to each other in an infinite chain of predicates from an originary indifference which is unconditioned. This emergence is not a smooth transition but a qualitative leap, a diversion, a falling away ( Abfall ) from its originary ground. Later in his critique of Hegel, Schelling argues that such a leap cannot be understood on the basis of Hegelian modality of dialectical negativity that arrives at absolute knowledge only on the basis of the self-cancellation of the finite.

Perhaps the most lucid and systematic exposition of Schelling Identity philosophy will be found in his posthumously published lecture called The System of Philosophy in General and of the Philosophy of Nature in Particular (1804) . Schelling gave this lecture during his brief years of stay at Würzburg. Schelling here begins with the proposition which according to him is the first presupposition of all knowledge, that is: “the knower and that which is known are the same”. This proposition immediately puts into question the correspondence theory of truth and knowledge that was dominant at that time. The correspondence theory of knowledge posits two principles – the subject and the object of knowledge – which are then sought to be reconciled in a higher synthetic principle. According to Schelling, once this dualism is posited, the possibility of knowledge itself becomes inexplicable. Therefore Schelling begins with an absolute identity of the known and the knower, an identity that cannot be posited within subjectivity. With this notion of absolute identity beyond subjectivity, Schelling definitely breaks with Fichte’s Subjective Idealism and Kant’s reflective philosophy. Distinguishing his Identitätssystem from both Empiricism and merely subjective Idealism, Schelling here introduces the notion of the Absolute that has proved to be of crucial importance for German Idealism in general. The absolute identity is the unconditional identity of the subject and the object, idea and Being, Ideal and Real both at once, immediately posited and not discreetly. As immediate knowledge of the absolute, this system of identity is distinguished from what Schelling calls “common sense understanding”.

The common sense understanding distinguishes conditional knowledge, which is synthetic, real knowledge from unconditional knowledge, which is analytic and thus is no real knowledge. Here common sense understanding comes to an irresolvable aporia: either I have real, objective knowledge, but then I renounce the unconditional; or, I have the unconditional in which case it is merely subjective and thus is no real knowledge. According to Schelling, this irresolvable aporia is the aporia of Kantian philosophy  which Kantian dogmatism can never resolve. This demands a move beyond Kant’s critical philosophy. This move which inaugurates German Idealism consists of going beyond the mediated knowledge of the Absolute to the immediate knowledge of the Absolute which is an immediate affirmation of this affirmation. As immediate knowledge of the absolute, Reason is Absolute Knowledge. From this idea Hegel’s notion of the Absolute is not far.  Unlike Kant’s regulative idea of Reason, Reason here is the idea of God as an immediate, absolute, unconditional identity. The immediate awareness of the Spirit of its absolute will which can never be further grounded in concept, is what Schelling calls in this essay ‘intellectual intuition’. It is intuition because it is not yet mediated by concept, and it is intellectual because it goes beyond the empirical in that it has as its predicate its self-affirmation. As the unconditional ground of all knowledge, ‘intellectual intuition’ does not belong even to inner sense. Thus what Fichte calls ‘intellectual intuition’ is no longer seen here as belonging to the inner sense but to the unconditional absolute which is beyond the circle of self-consciousness. “The fact of consciousness” is not originary, for there must already be a priori identity before differences come to manifest in consciousness. The essence of Reason can be said to be ‘intellectual intuition’ whose object is exclusively the absolute which is monolithic, one and only substance. By virtue of this affirmation, Reason recognizes “the eternal impossibility of non-being”. Being is not a predicate of God as something lying outside or exterior, but God and being is immediately, unconditionally one without duration. This absolute identity is infinite by virtue of its idea. Therefore God can neither be thought as the end result of the self-negation of difference, nor being involved in a process of emanation. The indivisibility and univocity of God is neither a numerical concept nor a concept of totality as aggregate unity of finite particulars. This is because the indivisibility and univocity of God is the ground for infinite divisibility in form or in accidents. How can the existence of finite, particulars be explained within Identitätssystem ?

In regard to the absolute identity, these finite, particulars are surely non-being, non -ens , non-essentials that can neither subtract nor add anything to the essence of the being who is the absolute substance. The existence of the finite, particulars can only be understood, not as modification of essence, but as modifications in form. They are non-being in respect to the universal which is absolute identity, but considered independently, they are not completely devoid of being. They are in part being and in part non-being. As such they are “real” or “concrete” things, irreducibly finite, particular, multiple, whose ground of existence does not lie within themselves but in that absolute identity of Being and essence. Schelling here deduces the finitude of particulars which ‘common sense understanding’ calls ‘actuality’, not as a process of emanation from the absolute identity, but as negativity that adheres in all finite things. Since these finite things cannot have positivity of being within themselves, they must therefore always relate themselves to other finite things, all sensuous cognition of them can only be non-cognition. Schelling here radically departs from Kant. For Kant all cognition is cognition of the sensible but not of the supersensible. By contrast Schelling argues that all of our sensory knowledge is only a privation of knowledge, or rather, “a negation of knowledge”. Hegel argues in a similar manner in Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) where he shows in a dialectical manner, the vanity of the supposed certitude of sensuous cognition.

One can present the schema of Schelling’s Identitätssystem as follows. God as absolute identity is an essential, qualitative identity. Absolute indifference follows from this essential identity of the absolute. Therefore, absolute indifference is not in-itself essential but a quantitative identity. There is thus a difference between absolute identity and absolute indifference. The opposition between real and ideal, subject and object arises out of this indifference. This is the birth of the finite world. Schelling here introduces the theory of potencies in triplicates that are “the necessary modes of appearances of the real and ideal universes”. While the potencies in triplicates are “the necessary modes of appearances” of the finite universes, they are not applicable to the absolute identity. The absolute identity is thus without potency or devoid of power. The potencies are those modes of appearances that make manifest the non-essential. Therefore they all have equal dignity in relation to the absolute. No potency has priority over the others temporally, for they are not posited successively in a genetic sequence but simultaneously, with equal primordiality. As such, they constitute a circle where all the potencies are posited together but not in an equal manner. Each time the potencies are posited, a particular potency predominates, subjugating the others to their relative non-being. At another time another potency predominates in an alternate manner, always returning to the same and always going away, always being attracted and repulsed, always contracted and expanded in an alternate, circular manner. In this alternating,  rotatory movement of potencies the Real principle comes first as the ground or condition of the Ideal Universe. The Ideal universe then overcomes the Real principle, its conditioning and grounding factor, by relegating it to its relative non-being. Only the higher synthetic principle can unify both the Real and Ideal universes by inhering in both and yet separating each from the other. Schelling presents the theory of potency in the following formula:

—————–

A2 =  (A=B)

A=B  :   The domination of the Real or affirmed. It is A1

A2     :    The domination of the Ideal

A3     :    Indifference between the other two

With the theory of potencies Schelling explains the existence of the finite universes which are originally one. Their existence is neither completely being nor nothing, but a relative being and relative non-being. As relative being and relative non-being, potencies exceed each time from the immanence of self-presence. They never arrive at the absolute equilibrium of forces without ceasing themselves to be potencies. The circle of the potencies never comes to standstill, or that they do not come out of the circle unless a will superior to this circle of the conditioned existence breaks in.

Three years after this lecture, Hegel published his magnum opus Phenomenology of Spirit. In his Phenomenology of Spirit published in 1807, Hegel apparently criticizes Schelling’s notion of the Absolute indifference as “the night where all cows are black”. In a letter to Hegel, Schelling asks Hegel to clarify in the Preface to the Phenomenology whether this criticism is applied to him or to others who misuse Schelling’s ideas. Hegel did not incorporate this clarification in the subsequent edition of Phenomenology that the criticism is applied, not to Schelling, but to others. This led to the break in the friendship between the two philosophers who shared the same room at Tübingenstift. While this friendship was profoundly important and fruitful for both of them, the bitterness proved to be equally decisive for the development of  their singular modes of thinking, one leading to the task of systematic completion of the metaphysics of the Subject, the other leading to the attempt to inaugurate a new thinking beyond such a metaphysics of the Subject.

c. The Middle period

Published in 1809, Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom is perhaps the most important book that Schelling published in his life time. Along with Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit , Fichte’s Science of Knowledge , and Kant’s Critique of Judgment , this essay is one of the greatest philosophical achievements of the late 18 th and 19 th century Germany. Published immediately before the death of Caroline, it evokes “a deep, unappeasable melancholy” that adheres to all finite beings. Here Schelling does not pose the question concerning the essence of human freedom as the dialectical problem between nature and freedom. Freedom does not appear here as the free exercise of the rational Subject’s will to mastery over its sensuous nature, but as the capacity to do evil. The question thus posed is no longer one question amongst others but the metaphysical question concerning the possibility of a system of freedom. On the one hand, freedom appears to be that which cannot be included within a system at all; on the other hand, the demand of Idealism that there must be a system without which nothing is adequately comprehensible is not to be renounced. The essay attempts to reconcile these two incommensurable demands: the demand of the unconditionality of freedom that grounds being and the demand of the grounding act of the system. This attempt at the system of freedom arose in the wake of what came to be known as the “pantheism controversy”.

The pantheism controversy is centred on the supposedly atheistic figure of Spinoza. During the late 18 th century, and early 19 th century, the dominant understanding of Spinoza was that of a pantheist and consequently an atheist. It is understood that within the pantheistic system of Spinoza’s ethics wherein God is immediately identified with the world, there is no place for the affirmation of God as unconditional reality. If the world is only a totality of conditioned, finite beings, then the unconditioned existence of God cannot be understood to be immediately identifiable with the world, and consequently with any dogmatic, rational system.  In the famous pantheism controversy, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi attempted to show that a system of rational knowledge never arrives at the unconditioned since, for such a system, the unconditioned can only arise as a result of a process where the one conditioned leads to other conditioned in an infinite chain of negativity. To be properly concerned with the unconditioned, one must begin with the unconditioned itself  which no rational knowledge ever attains. For Jacobi it is only the leap of faith beyond the system of rational knowledge that enables us to open to the unconditionality of the absolute being. Therefore all system of rational knowledge for Jacobi is nihilism. Jacobi thereby becomes the first to use the word “nihilism” that arose in the context of the pantheism controversy.

Schelling here agrees with Jacobi about the limit of purely rational attainment of the unconditioned. Schelling, however, disagrees with Jacobi’s use of a limited and restricted notion of ‘system’ and ‘freedom’, along with Jacobi’s restricted use of the metaphysical and logical notion of judgment. In the Freedom essay Schelling attempts to re-interpret the logical and metaphysical notion of judgment in such a manner that it opens up to the unconditioned character of freedom without renouncing the demand of a system. Such a system must, on the one hand, be other than a purely formal, lifeless realism of Spinoza; and on the other hand, it must be otherwise than a conventional system of idealism that reduces the dynamic character of freedom and the world into pure rational necessity. Only a dynamic notion of the system that affirms the exuberance of life and the generosity of freedom can truly be system. The formal, rational notion of freedom as the intelligible principle that overcomes sensuous impulses must be opened to the ontological question of the beings in their becoming. The question of judgment is thus no longer merely a formal logical question but the question of the jointure, or bond of beings. This bond or jointure of beings is grounded in freedom which, understood in more originary manner, is not arbitrary free will but that belongs together with highest necessity. This jointure of beings – the infinite, creative being of God and the finite, created being called ‘man’ – must be  essentially a free relation, a relation that is governed by freedom which in the highest sense is also necessity. If man is free in a certain manner, then this manner is also the manner of man’s individuation. This is to say that to the extent that man is individuated by freedom, man’s freedom is distinguishable from the absolute freedom of the infinite, eternal being called God. This peculiar essence of human freedom is the capacity to do evil.

According to Schelling, the human is distinguished from the eternal creative God by the specificity of his freedom which is essentially and inextricably a finite freedom. God is the being whose condition, though never completely immanent, can be actualized in its very existing. On the other hand, the finite being can never actualize itself completely because the ground of its existence remains inappropriable. This is the source of the fundamental melancholy of all finite beings. The distinction between the absolute freedom of the eternal being and the finite freedom of the mortal can be better understood with the help of Schelling’s distinction between the ground of existence and existence itself. This is not a formal distinction between sensuous nature and intelligible will, but a dynamic distinction of freedom. Eternal or finite, each being is a jointure of  the ground of existence and existence itself. In the eternal, creative being, this jointure is indissoluble. In the mortal, however, there can occur dissolution of this jointure. It is the possibility of the dissolution of the principles that explains the finitude of the finite being, and the freedom of this finite being. The human is essentially finite being, and only such a finite being is capable of evil. Therefore evil is neither divine nor beastly but essentially belongs to the human freedom. Evil has this peculiar, specific relation to human finitude. Unlike the beasts in whom the jointure of the principles is governed by necessity, and unlike the divine in whom the jointure of the principles is indissoluble, human freedom partakes of the divine freedom and is yet separated by an abyss. According to Schelling, this abyss is the possibility of dissolution of the principles.

In the dynamic freedom there are two oppositional principles that never reach equilibrium. In the coming to existence of the finite being there adhere these oppositional principles. There is the dark principle which is the principle of ground, and there is the ideal principle of light. The dark principle that operates in the realm of history as the principle of particularity is the principle of evil. Man is the finite being that unites in himself both of these principles in an equal measure. Since the nexus ( band ) of these principles in him is free and not governed by necessity, man is free to bring permutation to this nexus. Therefore what ought to remain as mere condition of existence, as mere principle of particularity, man can seek to elevate to totality or to universal domination. Out of this self-affirmation of the finite being who in this self-affirmation seeks to abnegate its very finitude, there arises evil. Thus while the possibility of evil is given to man in the coming into existence of this being, to actualize this principle of possibility is the work of human freedom. As mere ground, this principle is the very source of creative joy and affirmation of life, but elevating it into the universality or totality results into the most terrible form of evil that seeks to negate any form of its life-affirmative character. Thus the source of life and the origin of evil is grounded in the same principle. This principle is the human freedom whose origin remains unfathomable for man. According to Schelling, this unfathomable, inappropriable, unconditional freedom ought to remain inappropriable and unconditional, for the human creates a conditioned world on the basis of the unconditioned freedom. This conditioned world is history. By beginning this new “covenant”, man partakes the creativity of the divine freedom. This is the source of creative joy for the human, for through this creative act of human, the world of nature is redeemed.  But in his vain arrogance and in his self-affirmation that is pushed to the point of absolutization and totalization, the human seeks to negate the finite character of his freedom and thereby seeks to elevate the principle of particularity to the universal domination. Herein lays the evil when the non-being, which is for that matter is not completely devoid of being, seeks to attain the complete, absolute being. Evil is therefore neither being nor nothing, but non-being’s malicious hunger for being. Therefore power of evil cannot be said to be the power of being. It is rather the power of non-being that seeks to devour itself and is never satisfied at any point, because it never reaches being without a remainder of non-being. More it does not reach being, more self-consuming becomes its lust. According to Schelling such is the character of evil.

In The Ages of the World which was written between 1809-1827 and is  found in various incomplete versions, Schelling develops a narrative method that seeks to recount the stages of the world’s becoming through the agonal movement of conflictual forces. This is the germ of Schelling’s theory of potencies. The world as it exists has its ground in a dark, unfathomable past which no work of human reason can ever elevate into thought. This non-reason is not irrationality that is opposed to reason nor is it the negation of the possibility of reason but the ground of reason. Human reason thus exists only as a “regulated madness”. On account of its immanent force alone the human reason cannot attain the unconditioned which is the realm of absolute freedom. The emergence of the world-order is not seen as an immanent order ruled by the necessary principles of reason but has its source in an absolute, unconditional freedom. This freedom can arrive to the finite, mortal being as a gift. Man can never master this gift, because it opens man to his historicity. The essence of history is freedom. “The ages of the world” thus arises out of the unconditional character of freedom. This principle of freedom manifests itself in the agonal movement of contradictory forces, one repulsive and the other attractive. It is this agonal movement of oppositional forces that makes possible the emergence of “the ages of the world” out of the unconditional. This unconditional is that which cannot be further grounded in thought or in self-consciousness, it is what Schelling in his Freedom essay calls “the indivisible remainder” that constantly solicits from finite human beings ‘awe’ or ‘respect’.

Here as elsewhere Schelling’s thought wrestles with the question of the unconditioned. If there is anything that is singular to Schelling’s whole of philosophy, and that unifies Schelling’s often discontinuous philosophical career, it is this question of the unconditioned. Schelling does not explain the existence of the world with the help of logical categories. For Schelling, a rational system constitutive of logical categories cannot explicate the facticity or actuality of the world. It is the unconditional character of freedom whose ground is groundless ( Abgrund) , this freedom alone opens the world. Therefore there is always something excessive about freedom. In many texts, especially in his 1797 treatise, Schelling evokes a freedom which is not only a promise for the human but also a danger ( Gefahr ). “The ages of the world” is grounded by a condition which is excessive and unthinkable. The human belongs to the “un-pre-thinkable” ( Unvordenkliche ). This is a promise as well as danger. Schelling evokes this excess to explain the possibility of the world and finite existence. This unconditional excess makes the world and being-in-the world as essentially finite and irreducibly mortal. It is this aspect of Schelling’s work that has most profoundly influenced the twentieth century philosophers like Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Heidegger.

d. Positive Philosophy

On 14 November 1831 Hegel died in Berlin. In 1840 Schelling was called to the now vacant chair in Berlin to replace Hegel. The following year Schelling began his lectures on  “positive philosophy” ( Positivphilosophie ) which was attended by Kierkegaard, Bakunin, Humboldt and Engels. These lectures were delivered in three phases:  Grounding of Positive Philosophy that introduces and grounds Positive Philosophy vis-à-vis the history of Negative Philosophy from Descartes onwards, followed by Philosophy of Mythology ( Philosophie der Mythologie ) and Philosophy of Revelation ( Philosophie der Offenbarung) .

Schelling’s grounding of Positive Philosophy begins with the distinction between the “what” of being and “that being”. “What” of being is being as essence and “that” being is the contingent being’s pure actuality of existence. This actuality is not an attribute of being but its  existentiality , the very facticity of its coming into being . From here comes the distinction between a negative philosophy, that is, the rational philosophy that is essentially concerned with the essence of being (its ‘what’ character) and the positive philosophy that is concerned with the pure actuality of the existence of “that” being which comes into its being . Such a being (“that” being) is not a settled entity that is given, but that which comes into being . Schelling calls such a coming into being , existence . Since this coming into being is not a finished entity but yet becoming and always contingent, it cannot be grasped in the concept. Therefore existence and movement cannot be a logical category. There is a concept only if a being already exists, for by definition concept can only grasp the essence of being which in turn is possible if such a being already exists. Understood in this sense, negative philosophy is not concerned with the facticity of something that exists at all. Therefore it is not concerned with the question “why something exists at all?” The negative philosophy is rather concerned with the question: if and if something exists, what is its essence, what is the “being” character of this being irrespective of the problem whether such a being exists as “this” being at all.

For example, when Kant argues against the ontological proof of God, he argues neither for the existence of God nor for its non-existence. He only argues that the concept of God is not extendable to the existence of God because ‘existence’ cannot be predicated. In so far as ‘existence’ cannot be predicated, its actuality or facticity can only be for rational philosophy a presupposition. This presupposition is a point of beginning whose existence can only be deduced only if such an existence is already granted; only if such and such a being has already revealed itself. What then Kant’s philosophy shows, for Schelling, is the limit of negative philosophy, a limit that constitutes the possibility of negative philosophy. Schelling does not contest the possibility of negative philosophy, but precisely demands it however, on the condition that it recognizes this limit that is constitutive of it and does not pretend to be able to constitute itself as absolute system that includes the concept as well as existence of being. What Schelling finds problematic in Hegel is not that there should not be negative philosophy, but of Hegel’s claim to include existence in a system that is logical and purely negative system. For Schelling, Hegel’s extension of his negative notion of system to the Absolute totality without outside is without justification. For Schelling there always remains a remainder of such a system of negativity, which is the positivity of existence. Hegel’s system is founded upon purely negative relation of the finite being in relation to other finite beings where the unconditioned is supposed to be reached as a self-negation of negation. According to this conception, the unconditioned is the end result of a process of the self-cancellation of finite, conditioned entities. As early as 1804 in a lecture in Würzburg on The System of Philosophy in General Schelling contests this idea of the absolute as the end result of a process of the self-negation of finitude. According to Schelling, such a system is based upon a false premise and a presupposition. It presupposes to have reached the unity of being and thought, while it reaches such a unity merely in thought that means, only from negative side. It leaves out the pure actuality of existence whose unconditional character of its being cannot be merely the result of a dialectical process of the self-cancellation of finitude. Unlike Hegel’s claim, a purely negative philosophy cannot be presupposition-less. It presupposes what it cannot incorporate within its systemic edifice. This limitation of negative philosophy demands a positive philosophy that begins with the unconditionality of existence, with a prius whose existence can only be proved posteriori once there is a manifest world. Schelling called  such a positive philosophy, “metaphysical Empiricism”.  Hence the idea of a positive philosophy is where the ground is a presupposition. This presupposition is the unconditional existence of being whose pure actuality no rational knowledge based upon potentiality can ever attain. While the philosophical concept that is essentially concerned with essence can only elaborate the possibility of being, the actuality of being itself is beyond such categorical cognition, for the existence of this being exists as absolute freedom and not as a necessary consequence of a concept.

Here the limit of the Idealist notion of system is reached. Schelling in these lectures shows that the (Hegelian ) notion of the Subject presupposes as its condition that which cannot be further grounded in the Subject itself. One then has to begin from the pure actuality of existence, from a facticity, which is already always before self-consciousness and before thought’s ability to grasp it in the concept. This immemoriality of the origin is the “exuberance of being” that elicits from us awe or respect ( Achtung ), because it exposes us to the Infinite that unconditionally and groundlessly exists. It thereby exposes us to our own finitude and mortality.

3. Influences

How deeply Schelling’s later philosophy has influenced Kierkegaard cannot be shown by quoting Kierkegaard or from Kierkegaard’s self-understanding. This can better be shown by understanding Kierkegaard’s anti-systematic notions of “existence”, “temporality” and “finitude” that he understands to be irreducible to the general order of the system. Like Schelling, Kierkegaard understands the question of existence as the highest question of philosophy. There is in existence something that cannot be grasped in the predicative. Likewise, in the realm of history there is a preponderant mass of contingencies that cannot be completely and exhaustively accounted by the speculative dialectical logic. The Post-Schellingian philosophies that are concerned with this problem have the source of their inspiration in Schelling’s later works. For Schelling neither history nor existence is a homogenous process leading straight, necessarily, to a telos of absolute knowledge by irresistible law which is auto-generative and anonymous. History is rather a field of polemos where agonal forces are at work. Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety begins with a Schellingian note. Kierkegaard here argues, in a manner that recalls Schelling’s critique of Hegel, that the notion of movement does not allow itself to be thought within the immanent speculative logic of Hegel, for the true movement presupposes transcendence which by definition a logical category cannot grasp. The task of Kierkegaard’s philosophy is to open towards an Archimedean point outside totality, or outside the general, normative order of validity. That point cannot be attained within the realm of the ethical, that is, within the homogenous order of universal norms, but in a “quantum leap” of faith. That leap of faith must pass through an existential experience of anxiety ( Angst ) which no phenomenology of spirit can thematize.

This anxiety has family resemblance with Schelling’s notion of anxiety of the mortal who constantly flees from the fire of the centre and takes shelter in the periphery. In Schelling as well as in Kierkegaard, especially in his Fear and Trembling , this anxiety manifests the irreducible finitude of the mortal being who is seized by the gaze of the wholly other, the divine, holding his hand, tearing him out of the totality of finite knowledge. In his Concluding Unscientific Postscript Kierkegaard attempts to open this universal order of the ethical to the notion of subjectivity, the subjectivity of that singular individual for whom transcendence of the wholly other is an existential interest. This existential interest, argues Kierkegaard, cannot be addressed within the immanent order of the system. One of the most prominent tendencies of the post-Schellingian philosophy is this question of existence from the religious point of view. For Schelling himself the question of religion remains irreducible to the rational-logical system of knowledge. The transcendence of the absolute cannot be reduced to a theodicy of history. As early as 1804, Schelling warned in his Philosophy and Religion against the danger of the acts of legitimacy by the earthly power in the name of the embodiment of the divine in the profane body. Religion for Schelling, as for Kierkegaard remains irreducible to the violence of a historical reason that constantly evokes a theological foundation for the justification of its domination. As against this theologico-political foundation, Kierkegaard evokes the whole other God. Thus religion cannot be used as the foundation of the profane in order to legitimize the power of earthly sovereignty, because religion essentially opens us to a non-foundation that eternally delegitimizes any earthly power, like the power of the State. In his 1804 lecture Philosophy and Religion and in his Stuttgart lectures of 1810, Schelling raises this important theologico-political question that has profound significance for our contemporary historical world. The recent upsurge of the question of political theology attempts to go back to Schelling to see how Schelling helps us to think of a critique of historical reason.

Such a question is pursued further by Franz Rosenzweig, a German Jewish philosopher who is contemporary of Martin Heidegger. Rosenzweig’s first scholarly work was his doctoral thesis on Hegel called Hegel and the State . In the wake of his horror of the First World War, Rosenzweig soon abandoned Hegelianism; his The Star of Redemption , which he wrote on post cards to his mother  when he was in the Balkan Front, is an anti-Hegelian work. In this book, that evokes Schelling’s later works as one of the main sources of inspiration, Rosenzweig envisions the messianic notion of history and redemption beyond the closure of a historical-speculative reason. This remarkable book begins with the question of existence which he takes from Schelling’s later works. It is the notion of the individual, finite existence whose fear of death cannot be consoled by the concept of the universal history. This demands opening up the closure of the universal historical reason to the arrival of redemption that is always to come . This eternity which is always to come, that alone can redeem the violence of a historical reason, does not itself belong to the “Philosophy of the All”. Rosenzweig’s critique of “the philosophy of the All” begins with Schellingian critique of Hegel, that existence precedes thought and thus it cannot be enclosed within the All. It is what falls outside totality or system, and in this manner opens the world to the messianic event of pure future. The messianic arrival of eternity does not allow itself to be reduced to the theological foundation of the profane order, like the power of the State. Thus the State is no longer an expression of the Absolute. Like Schelling, Rosenzweig’s later works are deeply suspicious of the theodicy of history that legitimizes the political sovereignty of the State.

The question of existence is important for Martin Heidegger’s early philosophical works. What Heidegger calls in his early works “hermeneutics of facticity” has resonance with Schelling’s notion of actuality of “that”, the pre-predicative, pre-conceptual and pre-categorical disclosure. The existential analytic of Dasein that Heidegger elaborates in his Being and Time and his deconstruction of the metaphysical foundation of logic has inspiration in Schelling’s attempt to open the system of negative philosophy to the more  originary revelation of being. Schelling’s positive philosophy seeks to release philosophy beyond its metaphysical foundation in the logic of the thinkable to a disclosure that can only be shown a posteriori . In this sense Schelling’s metaphysical empiricism is at once an exit from the metaphysics founded upon the notion of the predicative truth. What both Heidegger and Rosenzweig have sought to complete is this exit from metaphysics.  Heidegger’s 1936 lecture on Schelling shows the real importance of Schelling’s thinking for him.

The exit from metaphysics is a fundamental problem even for Marx. Ernst Bloch, whom Jürgen Habermas calls “Schellingian Marxist”, combines a certain version of Marxism and messianism that envisions a utopian fulfilment oriented towards the “not yet”. His The Spirit of Utopia and his later work The Principle of Hope evoke a notion of history that is disruptive, opening to the “not yet”, a fundamental affirmation of future which Schelling always insisted as the very creative, free task of philosophy. While Schelling has attempted to open the radical notion of future in a certain eschatological-theological manner, Bloch’s messianism is essentially an atheistic eschatology.

Schelling’s influence is seen to be growing in our contemporary philosophical world. Thus Jean Louis Chrétien, the French philosopher, has drawn on Schelling from a certain phenomenological perspective. In his Unforgettable and the Unhoped for , Chrétien is concerned with the immemoriality of a promise that arrives from the extremity of time, from an eschatos of future always to come. Chrétien draws here on Schelling’s notion of the eternal past which has not come to pass but that is always a past, an immemorial past that, being the principle of foundation, always opens the world to its futurity. Schelling indeed develops such a notion of an immemorial past in his The Ages of the World . Like Schelling in his various texts, Chrétien too evokes Plato’s notion of Anamnesis as remembrance, not of what has passed, but what has immemorially opened us to truth. What has found us, the excess that opens us to the world, is immemorially lost. For both Schelling and Chrétien, this is not the occasion of despair but the occasion of a creative freedom and the possibility of future.  In recent years the Anglophone philosophical world has been witnessing increased attention to Schelling’s works. This shows the continuing relevance of Schelling in our contemporary historical existence. Schelling’s philosophy has come to be interpreted and understood as a philosophy of affirmation and a philosophy of the exuberance of life as against petrified system of concepts. Jason Wirth’s recent work on Schelling rightly emphasizes the contemporaneity of Schelling for our concerns: our ethical concern with the primacy of Good over truth, the affirmation of life beyond the instrumental use of Reason, the affirmation of the more originary ecstatic temporality, and our deep ecological concerns. The ‘unconscious’ has psychoanalysis speaks of, evokes the notion of ‘unconscious’ in Schelling, the abyss that cannot be further grounded, and hence is unground. In Jacques Lacan’s term, it is the Real that never stops haunting, destabilizing and disturbing the symbolic order of the world. “The indivisible remainder” that Schelling speaks of in his 1809 Freedom essay  is that element of eternal nature as ground that never ceases de-constituting the cultural-historical order of totality. The symbolic order of a restrictive Reason never reaches totality, but always opens to an eternal remnant outside. This question has profound importance of Schelling for our time.

4. References and Further Reading

A. primary sources.

• Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling’s Sämmtliche Werke , ed. K.F.A. Schelling, I Abtheilung Vols. 1-10, II Abtheilung Vols. 1-4, Stuttgart: Cotta, 1856-61.
• Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, Ausgewählte Schriften , 6 Vols., ed. Manfred   Frank, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1985.
• Aus Schellings Leben. In Briefen (three volumes) , Adamant Media Corporations, 2003 .
• The Unconditional in Human Knowledge: Four early essays 1794-6 , trans. F. Marti, Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1980.
• Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature: as Introduction to the Study of this Science , trans. E.E. Harris and P. Heath with an introduction R. Stern, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1797/1988.
• System of Transcendental Idealism, trans. P. Heath with an introduction by M. Vater, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1800/1978.
• Bruno, or On the Natural and the Divine Principle of Things , trans. with an introduction by M. Vater, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1802/1984.
• The Philosophy of Art , Minnesota: Minnesota University Press, 1802-03/1989.
• On University Studies , trans. E.S. Morgan, ed. N. Guterman, Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1803/ 1966.
• Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom , trans. With an introduction by J. Gutmann, Chicago: Open Court, 1809/1936.
• Clara : or On Nature’s Connection to the Spirit World , trans. Fiona Steinkamp, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1811/2002.
• The Ages of the World , trans. Jason M. Wirth, Albany: State University of New York, 1811-15/2000.
• The Ages of the World , trans. F. de W. Bolman, jr., New York: Columbia University Press, 1811-15/1967.
• ‘ The Deities of Samothrace’ , trans. R.F. Brown, Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1815/1977.
• On the History of Modern Philosophy, trans. Andrew. Bowie, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1833-4/1994.
• P hilosophie der Offenbarung . ed. M. Frank, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1841-2/1977.
• Historical-Critical  Introduction  to  the  Philosophy  of Mythology ,    trans. Richey, M., Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2007.
• The Grounding of Positive Philosophy: the Berlin Lectures , trans. Bruce Matthews, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2008.
• Philosophy and Religion , Spring Publications, 2010.
• Idealism and the Endgame of Theory , trans. Thomas Pfau , Albany: State University of New York, 1994.
• Philosophy of German Idealism: Fichte, Jacobi and Schelling , ed. Ernst Behler , Contuum, 1987.

b. Secondary Sources

• Beach, Edward Allen, The Potencies of God(s): Schelling’s Philosophy of Mythology ,         Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994.
• Behun, William A. The Historical Pivot: Philosophy of History in Hegel, Schelling and Hölderlin , Triad Press, 2006
• Beiser, Frederick C., German Idealism: Struggle Against Subjectivism , Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2008.
• Bowie, Andrew, Aesthetics and Subjectivity: from Kant to Nietzsche , Manchester:    Manchester University Press, 1990.
• Bowie, Andrew, S chelling and Modern European Philosophy: An Introduction ,     London: Routledge, 1993
• Brown, Robert F., The Later Philosophy of Schelling: The Influence of Boehme in the Works of 1809-1815 , The Associated University Press, 1977
• Courtine, Jean-Francois , Extase de la raison. Essais sur Schelling , Paris, Galilée, 1990
• Distaso, Leonardo V., The Paradox of Existence : Philosophy and Aesthetics in the Young Schelling, Springer, 2010
• Esposito, Josephe L . , Schelling’s Idealism and Philosophy of Nature, Associated University Press, 1977
• Fackenheim, Emil, The God Within: Kant, Schelling and Historicity , ed . John W. Burbridge, University of Toronto Press, 1996
• Frank, Manfred, Der Unendliche Mangel an Sein , Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1975
• Frank, Manfred, Eine Einführung in Schellings Philosophie , Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1985
• Frank, Manfred, Selbstbewußtsein und Selbsterkenntnis , Stuttgart: Reclam, 1991
• Frank, M. (ed).  with Kurz, G., Materialien zu Schellings philosophischen Anfängen , Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1975
• Freydberg, Bernard, Schelling’s Dialogical Freedom Essay: Provocative Philosophy Then and Now , State University of New York Press, 2009
• Geldhof, J, Revelation, Reason and Reality: Theological Encounters with Jaspers, Schelling and Baader , Peeters, 2007
• Goudeli, Kyriaki, Challenges to German Idealism: Schelling, Fichte and Kant , Palgrave Macmillan, 2003
• Grant, Ian Hamilton, Philosophies of Nature After Schelling, Continuum, 2008
• Hegel, G.W. F., The Difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy , Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977
• Heidegger, Martin, Schellings Abhandlung über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit , Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1971. Schelling’s Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom , trans. Joan Stambaugh, Athens: Ohio University Press, 1985
• Heidegger, Martin, Die Metaphysik des Deutschen Idealismus (Schelling) , Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1991
• Henrich, D. Selbstverhältnisse , Stuttgart: Reclam, 1982
• Horn, Friedemann , Schelling and Swedenborg: Mysticism and German Idealism, trans. George F. Dole , Swedenborg Foundation Publishers, 1997
• Jaspers, Karl, Schelling : Größe und Verhängnis , Munich: Piper, 1955
• Kierkegaard, Søren, The Concept of Irony/Schelling Lecture Notes : Kierkegaard’s Writings Vol 2, Princeton University Press, 1992
• Kosch, Michelle, Freedom and Reason in Kant, Schelling and Kierkegaard, Oxford University Press, 201
• Lauer, Christopher, Suspension of Reason in Hegel and Schelling , Continuum,201
• Limnatis, Nectarios G., German Idealism and the Problem of Knowledge: Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel , Springer, 2010
• Marx, W. , The Philosophy of F.W.J. Schelling: History, System, Freedom , Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984
• Norman, Judith and Alistair Welchman , ed.  New Schelling , Continuum, 2004
• O’Meara, Thomas, Romantic Idealism and Roman Catholicism: Schelling and the Theologians, University of Notre Dame Press, 1982
• Shaw, Davin Jane , Freedom and Nature in Schelling’s Philosophy of Art , Continuum, 2011
• Snow, Dale E., Schelling and the End of Idealism , Albany: SUNY Press, 1996
• Tillich, Paul, Mysticism and Guilt Consciousness in Schelling’s Philosophical Development , Bucknell University Press, 197
• Tilliette, X. , Schelling une philosophi e en devenir , Two Volumes, Paris: Vrin, 1970
• White, A., Absolute Knowledge: Hegel and the Problem of Metaphysics , Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1983a
• White, A., Schelling : Introduction to the System of Freedom , New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983b
• Wirth, Jason, The Conspiracy of Life: Meditations on Schelling and His Times, New York: State University of New York Press, 2003
• Wirth , Jason, (ed.), Schelling Now: Contemporary Readings, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2004
• Zizek, Slavoj , The Indivisible Remainder: An Essay on Schelling and Related Matters , London: Verso, 1996.

Author Information

Saitya Brata Das Email: [email protected] The University of Delhi India

An encyclopedia of philosophy articles written by professional philosophers.

Meaning relativism and subjective idealism

• Published: 05 September 2018
• Volume 197 , pages 4047–4064, ( 2020 )

Cite this article

• Andrea Guardo   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8706-4960 1  

468 Accesses

2 Citations

3 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

The paper discusses an objection, put forward by—among others—John McDowell, to Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s non-factualist and relativist view of semantic discourse. The objection goes roughly as follows: while it is usually possible to be a relativist about a given domain of discourse without being a relativist about anything else, relativism about semantic discourse entails global relativism, which in turn entails subjective idealism, which we can reasonably assume to be false. The paper’s first section sketches Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s ideas about semantic discourse and gives a fully explicit formulation of the objection. The second section describes and briefly discusses the formal apparatus needed to evaluate the objection—which is basically equivalent to John MacFarlane’s recent development of David Kaplan’s classic semantic framework. Finally, the third section explains in detail why the objection fails. I show that even though relativism about semantic discourse does entail a form of global relativism, the relativism in question does not entail anything like Berkeleyan or Fichtean idealism. This particular kind of relativism holds that which character (in Kaplan’s sense) is associated to a given utterance depends on what MacFarlane calls “the context of assessment”.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA) Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Rent this article via DeepDyve

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Realism, inferential semantics, and the truth norm

Relativism, realism, and subjective facts.

Relevance Theory, Semantic Content and Pragmatic Enrichment

Note that, contrary appearances notwithstanding, saying that there are no meaning facts is not necessarily pragmatically self-refuting in Kölbel’s ( 2011 , pp. 12–13) sense. According to Kölbel’s definition, a sentence is necessarily pragmatically self-refuting if and only if one can never use it to make a true assertion; and there are certain non-standard contexts, e.g. when I am talking about another possible world, in which “There are no meaning facts” (and, for that matter, also Kölbel’s example, “I am not saying anything”) can be used to make a true assertion.

I want to stress, however, that I think there is at least one other absolutely legitimate way to deal with Kripkenstein’s thesis, namely substituting (what I believe is) the common-sense, in some sense normative, notion of meaning with a purely descriptive one.

McDowell’s primary target in this passage is the interpretation of Wittgenstein’s remarks put forward in Wright ( 1980 ); however, the way McDowell introduces Kripke’s reading later in the paper suggests that he thinks that the objection applies to Kripkenstein’s case, too. If I read the relevant passage correctly, basically the same objection is raised also in Wright ( 1987 , p. 122). That being said, whether Wright’s objection is really McDowell’s is secondary. In fact, it is secondary also whether Kripkenstein is really one of the targets of McDowell’s objection. What matters is that it is rather natural to think that McDowell’s objection is a problem for Kripkenstein’s position; and, in fact, this is an objection which, while discussing Kripke’s reading, I have heard countless times.

McDowell also argues that a view such as Kripkenstein’s implies that “for the community itself there is no possibility of error”; for my answer to this objection see Guardo ( 2012a , pp. 382–383); for a parallel answer to a parallel objection see MacFarlane ( 2014 , § 2.1.3).

The distinction between facts and states of affairs (according to which a state of affairs is a fact if and only if it holds) is, I think, a useful one. In what follows, however, I will sometimes employ Kripke’s terminology and use “fact” in the more general sense of state of affairs .

See also what Kripke ( 1981 , p. 87) says about necessary and sufficient conditions and straight solutions.

This is not, of course, the sense of “non-factualism” used by some of Kripke’s commentators. For example, Kusch ( 2006 , p. 148), following Boghossian (see, e.g., 1989 , § 16), defines non-factualism by saying that “A non-factualist about a certain class of declarative sentences denies that they are “truth-apt” or “fact-apt”: he denies that for any sentence s of this class we can infer “ s is true” or “It is a fact that s ” from s ”, while in my sense of the word there is no inconsistency in maintaining that a certain class of declarative sentences, though non-factual, still are truth-apt. For a criticism of the idea that Kripkenstein is a non-factualist in the Boghossian-Kusch sense see Soames ( 1998 , §§ 4 and 5).

For a criticism of Kripke’s reading see Putnam ( 1994 , pp. 66–69). Kripke’s Wittgenstein is a deflationist about truth in general; however, it is worth stressing that, just as non-factualism and relativism, deflationism can be a local matter—see, e.g., Kölbel ( 2008 , §§ 1–3). To borrow Azzouni’s ( 2010 , p. 79) turn of phrase: “true” can be argued to be “[…] neutral between ontically relevant and ontically irrelevant usages”—see also Azzouni ( 2007 , pp. 204–205).

[Readers might prefer to come back to this footnote after having read Sect.  2 and the first paragraph of Sect.  3 ] Such a view of meaning ascriptions is neither a form of nonindexical contextualism nor a form of truth-value relativism—in fact, it is none of the six views I describe in Sect.  3 . It resembles nonindexical contextualism and truth-value relativism in that it holds that the circumstances of evaluation relative to which the proposition expressed by a meaning ascription should be assessed for truth or falsity vary with context; however, here the relevant context is neither the context in which the meaning ascription (e.g. “The meaning of Jones’ utterance of “68 + 57 = 125” is M”) was uttered nor that in which it is assessed, but—rather—that in which the utterance the meaning ascription makes reference to (e.g. Jones’ utterance of “68 + 57 = 125”) was produced—the view is therefore akin to Stanley’s ( 2005 ) interest-relative invariantism about knowledge and Street’s ( 2008 ) constructivism about practical reasons. Note, however, that this position entails—not for meaning ascriptions but for language in general—a view which I do describe in Sect.  3 , namely the ambiguity theory.

The question I started with was whether Kripkenstein can be viewed as a relativist—in one of the two senses I described above. Since the notion that Kripkenstein is a relativist was a straightforward consequence of the non-factualist reading, I answered the question by providing evidence in support of that reading. As I see it, the evidence I provided outweighs any evidence for the factualist reading; however—lest some reader be distracted by what, after all, is a side issue—let me remind you of the dialectic. McDowell takes Kripkenstein to be a non-factualist about meaning (in fact, McDowell is the primary target of Wilson’s polemic against the non-factualist interpretation) and his argument presupposes such a reading. My goal is to show that even if we grant McDowell this assumption, his argument does not go through. Therefore, I do not have to prove that the non-factualist reading is correct; all I have to show is that it is a plausible interpretation of Kripke’s remarks—and that, therefore, McDowell’s argument cannot be ignored.

An anonymous reviewer for this journal noted that the factualism I described above (according to which when we assess the proposition Jones means addition by “+” for truth or falsity the only relevant community is Jones’ ) is much more intuitive than the non-factualism of McDowell’s Kripkenstein. This is, I think, correct. Consider, e.g., the word “prima”—which, I am told, means excellent in German and a number of things (e.g. before ), but never excellent , in Italian—and suppose that the proposition we are assessing for truth or falsity is By “prima”, Üter means excellent . Saying that, since Üter is German, this proposition is true is definitely more intuitive (or at least less counterintuitive) than saying that it is true relative to the community of the German speakers and false relative to that of the Italian speakers. So far, so good. What I deny (and, to be fair, I am not sure that the reviewer in question would disagree with me on this) is that this shows that the factualist interpretation of Kripke’s essay is more plausible than the non-factualist one. Granted, Kripke ( 1981 , e.g. pp. 63–65) stresses that Wittgenstein did not regard himself as a skeptic, but he also makes it clear that he does not think that Wittgenstein’s self-assessment should be taken too seriously ( 1981 , esp. pp. 65–66). I therefore doubt that the move from View X is more intuitive than view Y to View X is more likely to be Kripkenstein’s than view Y is a valid one. If anything, the fact that a given view does not constitute too much of a departure from common sense should, I think, make us wary of ascribing it to Kripke’s Wittgenstein.

Note that I am assuming that for every state of affairs there is a corresponding proposition, but not that for every proposition there is a corresponding state of affairs: there are, of course, propositions that are non-factual.

[Readers unfamiliar with the distinction between contexts of use and contexts of assessment might find this footnote more helpful after having read Sect.  2 —and maybe Sect.  3 , too] Strictly speaking, saying that the way a word should be used depends on X is not yet embracing a form of relativism (at least in MacFarlane’s sense of the word), since X might be a feature of the context of use . That being said, there are three reasons to believe that, in this case, X is a feature of the context of assessment . First, this is what is suggested by the word “ratification”. Second, this seems to be the reading most consistent with the general tenor of Wright’s book. Third, as we have seen, McDowell believes both that his argument applies also to Kripkenstein’s case and that Kripkenstein is a non-factualist about meaning, and—as Azzouni and Bueno have shown—non-factualism and relativism usually go hand in hand.

Some might want to argue that the second step of McDowell’s original version of the argument should be identified with my regimentation’s second lemma. That might be. Anyway, nothing of importance hinges on this point.

For a useful complement to MacFarlane’s own defense of his system see Predelli ( 2012 ).

“Logical form” might, of course, be a tad misleading. Another term used in the literature is “clause”—see, e.g., Predelli ( 2005 , pp. 14–17).

I speak of utterances only for the sake of simplicity, since I must confess that I sympathize with the Kaplanian idea that, as far as semantic theorizing is concerned, all talk of utterances should be replaced by talk of, say, logical forms in context—see, e.g., Predelli ( 2005 , chapter 3, §§ 3–4), which develops the strategy suggested by Kaplan ( 1989a , part 2, § 1). Note that even if it entails a switch from (uses of) tokens to types, such a view is not platonistic in nature—for one thing, it is consistent with the metaphysics of words outlined in Kaplan ( 1990 ).

The relevant notion of context is a rather technical one—see, e.g., the remarks on contexts and indexes in Predelli ( 2005 , pp. 17–18). A quite interesting consequence of the adoption of this notion is that the circumstance against which a given logical form in context must be evaluated can be “non-standard”—see, e.g., Predelli ( 2005 , chapter 2, § 5 and chapter 3, § 6).

For an influential argument against the idea that the values of a character are not always truth conditions see Stanley ( 2000 , 2002 ). For a by now classic example of a character and its arguments (allegedly) falling short of determining truth conditions see Travis ( 1997 , §§ 1–3)—in the remainder of the paper Travis draws from his analysis conclusions concerning several issues, e.g. Grice’s (see, e.g., 1989 ) criticism of certain distinctively philosophical uses of “what we would not say”; for a sensible analysis of Travis’ example see Predelli ( 2005 , chapter 4, §§ 1–5), to which I owe my use of the distinction t-distributions-truth conditions. For other Travis-friendly examples see Lewis ( 1979 ).

It should be clear that this sense of “truth conditions” is not Kripke’s. For one, while Kripke’s truth conditions are facts, truth conditions in the sense at issue here are functions. That being said, the two notions are not unrelated. If there are no truth conditions in Kripke’s sense which correspond to a given kind of declarative sentences, then the relevant utterances have no truth conditions in the “functional” sense, and vice versa. By the way, this correspondence shows that just as there are two senses in which the utterances of a declarative sentence can be said not to have “functional” truth conditions in a robust sense (either because their t-distributions are not truth conditions or because which truth conditions they express depends on the context of assessment—see below for the lingo), there are two senses in which one can say that, strictly speaking, there are no Kripkean truth conditions which correspond to a given kind of sentences: either because the facts in question do not exist or because which facts correspond to the sentences in question is a relative matter. As the next section should make clear, I believe that—if Kripkenstein is right—while meaning ascriptions and related constructions lack Kripkean truth conditions also in the first—stronger—sense, all the other kinds of sentences lack Kripkean truth conditions only in the second—weaker—sense.

If you want, you can reserve the word “proposition” for the counterparts of truth conditions and say that t-distributions that are not truth conditions are the theoretical counterparts of propositional radicals—in Bach’s ( 1994 ) sense. The distinction between propositions and propositional radicals is basically Recanati’s ( 2007 , p. 5) distinction between complete and explicit content.

The dependency of the truth value of a proposition(al radical) on a certain parameter is, of course, represented in our system by a dependency of the argument of the corresponding t-distribution on that parameter, and the argument of a t-distribution is a circumstance of evaluation.

And so, on the non-factualist/relativist reading Kripkenstein holds (or at least is committed to) the idea that (1) which character is associated to an utterance depends on the value of the perspective parameter in the context of assessment. But is this not inconsistent with the very notion that Kripkenstein maintains that (2) there is no fact of the matter as to what a given utterance means? Is not saying that an utterance’s character depends on the context of assessment just saying that meaning facts have, as it were, more structure than we thought, rather than flat out denying that they exist? The answer is that no, it is not, since—as I have already stressed in Sect.  2 —there is no “correct” context from which to assess a particular speech act. Saying that an utterance’s character depends on the context of assessment is not saying just that meaning facts have more structure than we thought; it is saying that, where we thought there were facts, there really are only opinions. That being said, a somewhat related objection deserves a more careful answer. The objection is that even though (1) and (2) are in principle consistent, maybe one (or more than one) of the arguments that support (2) can be adapted to refute (1). So far, I have tried to be as non-committal as possible about the details of the notion of a perspective; however, it is impossible to discuss this second objection without making this concept a little bit more precise. Let us therefore identify a perspective with a set of dispositions, which, in this context, strikes me as the most natural way to cash out the notion of a perspective. After all, when I first introduced the notion that Kripkenstein is a (reality) relativist about meaning ascriptions the idea was that the ground for saying that the proposition Jones means addition by “+” is true relative to Smith’s perspective and false relative to Williams’ is that while the answers to particular addition problems Smith is inclined to give agree with Jones’, Williams’ do not. And it is quite natural to take the answers Smith is inclined to give to be those he is disposed to give. This would make Kripkenstein’s view a form of dispositionalism; however, it is worth stressing that the relevant dispositions would be the assessor’s, which would make Kripkenstein’s brand of dispositionalism utterly different not only from classic semantic dispositionalism, but also from views such as McDowell’s—for the role of dispositions in McDowell’s view see McDowell ( 2009 , p. 95); mutatis mutandis , the same holds for McDowell’s remarks concerning the role of the linguistic community, for which see, e.g., McDowell ( 1991 , p. 315). Anyway, if we identify perspectives with sets of dispositions, the objection becomes that maybe one of the arguments that refute less idiosyncratic varieties of semantic dispositionalism can be adapted to refute (1), too. Well, as far as I can see, the main arguments against semantic dispositionalism one finds in the literature are (I) Kripke’s Argument from Finitude and Mistake, (II) what we may call “the Ought Argument” (i.e. Kripke’s Normativity Argument as rendered in, e.g., Glüer and Wikforss 2009 ), (III) what we may call “the Non-Inferential Knowledge Argument” (i.e. Kripke’s Normativity Argument as rendered in, e.g., Zalabardo 1997 ; Guardo 2014 ), and, finally, (IV) the Privileging Problem (for which see, e.g., Bird and Handfield 2008 ; Guardo 2012b , pp. 206–207). Now, my view on the matter is that (I) fails against ideal-condition dispositional analyses (since I no longer accept the argument I gave in Guardo 2012b , § 3), while (II) is at the very least invalid (see Guardo 2012a , pp. 374–375); as for (III), the point of this argument is that if we analyze meaning in terms of dispositions we make a mystery of our non-inferential knowledge of what we mean, and (1) is not an attempt to analyze meaning in terms of dispositions: the idea is, rather, that there is no fact of the matter as to what we mean; finally, the point of (IV) is that there is no principled, non-question-begging reason to identify what I mean by “+” with my disposition to give certain answers in conditions X rather than with my disposition to give certain other answers in conditions Y—and such a problem does not even arise with regard to (1), for according to (1) any set of dispositions (mine or someone else’s) is as good as any other. (Note that while in the case of (I) and (II) my answer is that I am skeptical that these arguments can really refute classic semantic dispositionalism and so I do not see any reason to think that they can refute meaning relativism, in the case of (III) and (IV) my point is just that they cannot be adapted to refute meaning relativism, which is not to say that they do not work against classic semantic dispositionalism—and, in fact, I suspect they both do).

Azzouni, J. (2007). Ontological commitment in the vernacular. Noûs, 41 (2), 204–226.

Article   Google Scholar  

Azzouni, J. (2010). Ontology and the word “Exist”: Uneasy relations. Philosophia Mathematica, 18 (1), 74–101.

Azzouni, J., & Bueno, O. (2008). On what it takes for there to be no fact of the matter. Noûs, 42 (4), 753–769.

Bach, K. (1994). Conversational impliciture. Mind and Language, 9 (2), 124–162.

Bird, A., & Handfield, T. (2008). Dispositions, rules, and finks. Philosophical Studies, 140 (2), 285–298.

Boghossian, P. (1989). The rule-following considerations. Mind, 98 (392), 507–549.

Byrne, A. (1996). On misinterpreting Kripke’s Wittgenstein. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 56 (2), 339–343.

Glüer, K., & Wikforss, Å. (2009). Against content normativity. Mind, 118 (469), 31–70.

Grice, P. (1989). Prolegomena. In Studies in the way of words (pp. 3–21). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Google Scholar  

Guardo, A. (2012a). Kripke’s account of the rule-following considerations. European Journal of Philosophy, 20 (3), 366–388.

Guardo, A. (2012b). Rule-following, ideal conditions and finkish dispositions. Philosophical Studies, 157 (2), 195–209.

Guardo, A. (2014). Semantic dispositionalism and non-inferential knowledge. Philosophia, 42 (3), 749–759.

Guardo, A. (2018). Yet another skeptical solution. Philosophia . https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-018-9954-0 .

Kaplan, D. (1989a). Afterthoughts. In J. Almog, J. Perry, & H. Wettstein (Eds.), Themes from Kaplan (pp. 565–614). New York: Oxford University Press.

Kaplan, D. (1989b). Demonstratives—An essay on the semantics, logic, metaphysics, and epistemology of demonstratives and other indexicals. In J. Almog, J. Perry, & H. Wettstein (Eds.), Themes from Kaplan (pp. 481–563). New York: Oxford University Press.

Kaplan, D. (1990). Words. Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume , 64 (1), 93–119.

Kölbel, M. (2004). Faultless disagreement. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 104 (1), 53–73.

Kölbel, M. (2008). “True” as ambiguous. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 77 (2), 359–384.

Kölbel, M. (2011). Global relativism and self-refutation. In S. Hales (Ed.), A companion to relativism (pp. 11–30). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

Kripke, S. (1981) [1982]. Wittgenstein on rules and private language — an elementary exposition . Oxford: Blackwell.

Kusch, M. (2006). A sceptical guide to meaning and rules—Defending Kripke’s Wittgenstein . Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Lewis, D. (1979). Attitudes de dicto and de se . Philosophical Review, 88 (4), 513–543.

MacFarlane, J. (2014). Assessment sensitivity—Relative truth and its applications . New York: Oxford University Press.

Book   Google Scholar  

McDowell, J. (1984) [1998]. Wittgenstein on following a rule. In Mind, value, and reality (pp. 221–262). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

McDowell, J. (1991) [1998]. Intentionality and interiority in Wittgenstein. In Mind, value, and reality (pp. 297–321). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

McDowell, J. (2009). Are meaning, understanding, etc., definite states? In The engaged intellect — philosophical essays (pp. 79–95). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Predelli, S. (2005). Contexts—Meaning, truth, and the use of language . New York: Oxford University Press.

Predelli, S. (2012). Indexicality, intensionality, and relativist post-semantics. Synthese, 184 (2), 121–136.

Putnam, H. (1994) [1999]. Sense, nonsense, and the senses—an inquiry into the powers of the human mind. In The threefold cord — mind, body, and world (pp. 1–70). New York: Columbia University Press.

Recanati, F. (2007). Perspectival thought—A plea for (moderate) relativism . New York: Oxford University Press.

Soames, S. (1998). Facts, truth conditions, and the skeptical solution to the rule-following paradox. Philosophical Perspectives, 12 (1), 313–348.

Stanley, J. (2000). Context and logical form. Linguistics and Philosophy, 23 (4), 391–434.

Stanley, J. (2002). Making it articulated. Mind and Language, 17 (1–2), 149–168.

Stanley, J. (2005). Knowledge and practical interests . New York: Oxford University Press.

Street, S. (2008). Constructivism about reasons. Oxford Studies in Metaethics, 3 (1), 207–245.

Sweeney, P. (2014). The utility of content-relativism. Dialectica, 68 (4), 563–579.

Travis, C. (1997). Pragmatics. In B. Hale & C. Wright (Eds.), A companion to the philosophy of language (pp. 87–107). Oxford: Blackwell.

Voltolini, A. (2010). Is wittgenstein a contextualist? Essays in Philosophy, 11 (2), 150–167.

Wilson, G. (1998). Semantic realism and Kripke’s Wittgenstein. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 58 (1), 99–122.

Wittgenstein, L. (1953) [1958]. Philosophische Untersuchungen/Philosophical investigations . Oxford: Blackwell.

Wright, C. (1980). Wittgenstein on the foundations of mathematics . Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Wright, C. (1987) [2001]. On making up one’s mind: Wittgenstein on intention. In Rails to infinity — essays on themes from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (pp. 116–142). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Zalabardo, J. (1997). Kripke’s normativity argument. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 27 (4), 467–488.

Download references

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank for their comments on previous versions Alan Sidelle, John Mackay, Paolo Spinicci, Francesco Guala, Marcello D’Agostino, and my audience at the II Filosofi del Linguaggio a Gargnano, as well as three anonymous referees for this journal (one of whom was extraordinarily helpful) and one for another journal.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Philosophy, University of Milan, Via Festa del Perdono 7, 20122, Milan, Italy

Andrea Guardo

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrea Guardo .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Guardo, A. Meaning relativism and subjective idealism. Synthese 197 , 4047–4064 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-01917-9

Download citation

Received : 01 November 2017

Accepted : 17 August 2018

Published : 05 September 2018

Issue Date : September 2020

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-01917-9

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Meaning relativism
• Subjective idealism
• Assessment sensitivity
• Kripkenstein
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

• Table of Contents
• Random Entry
• Chronological
• Editorial Information
• About the SEP
• Editorial Board
• How to Cite the SEP
• Special Characters
• Advanced Tools
• Support the SEP
• PDFs for SEP Friends
• Make a Donation
• SEPIA for Libraries
• Entry Contents

Bibliography

Academic tools.

• Friends PDF Preview
• Author and Citation Info
• Back to Top

Kant’s Transcendental Idealism

In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant argues that space and time are merely formal features of how we perceive objects, not things in themselves that exist independently of us, or properties or relations among them. Objects in space and time are said to be “appearances”, and he argues that we know nothing of substance about the things in themselves of which they are appearances. Kant calls this doctrine (or set of doctrines) “transcendental idealism”, and ever since the publication of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, Kant’s readers have wondered, and debated, what exactly transcendental idealism is, and have developed quite different interpretations. Some, including many of Kant’s contemporaries, interpret transcendental idealism as essentially a form of phenomenalism, similar in some respects to that of Berkeley, while others think that it is not a metaphysical or ontological theory at all. There is probably no major interpretive question in Kant’s philosophy on which there is so little consensus. This entry provides an introduction to the most important Kantian texts, as well as the interpretive and philosophical issues surrounding them.

1.1 Transcendental Realism and Empirical Idealism

1.2 the empirical thing in itself, 2.1 the feder-garve review, 2.2 varieties of phenomenalism, 2.3 kant strikes back, 2.4 changes in the b edition, 3.1 appearances = representations, 3.2 qualified phenomenalism, 3.3 criticisms of phenomenalist readings, 3.4 the problem of things in themselves, 4.1 one object, not two, 4.2 allison’s “epistemic” reading, 4.3. problems with the epistemic reading, 4.4 metaphysical “dual aspect” readings, 4.5 problems for langton’s reading, 5.1 identity between appearances and things in themselves, 5.2 langton and non-identity, 5.3 phenomenalist dual aspect readings, 5.4 assessing the interpretive issues, 6.1 phenomena and noumena, 6.2 the transcendental object = x, 7. conclusion, works of kant, other primary sources, secondary sources, other internet resources, related entries, 1. appearances and things in themselves.

In the first edition (A) of the Critique of Pure Reason , published in 1781, Kant argues for a surprising set of claims about space, time, and objects:

• Space and time are merely the forms of our sensible intuition of objects. They are not beings that exist independently of our intuition (things in themselves), nor are they properties of, nor relations among, such beings. (A26, A33)
• The objects we intuit in space and time are appearances, not objects that exist independently of our intuition (things in themselves). This is also true of the mental states we intuit in introspection; in “inner sense” (introspective awareness of my inner states) I intuit only how I appear to myself, not how I am “in myself”. (A37–8, A42)
• We can only cognize objects that we can, in principle, intuit. Consequently, we can only cognize objects in space and time, appearances. We cannot cognize things in themselves. (A239)
• Nonetheless, we can think about things in themselves using the categories (A254).
• Things in themselves affect us, activating our sensible faculty (A190, A387). [ 1 ]

In the “Fourth Paralogism” Kant defines “transcendental idealism”:

I understand by the transcendental idealism of all appearances [ Erscheinungen ] the doctrine that they are all together to be regarded as mere representations and not as things in themselves [ nicht als Dinge an sich selbst ansehen ], and accordingly that space and time are only sensible forms of our intuition, but not determinations given for themselves or conditions of objects as things in themselves [ als Dinge an sich selbst ]. (A369; the Critique is quoted from the Guyer & Wood translation (1998))

Ever since 1781, the meaning and significance of Kant’s “transcendental idealism” has been a subject of controversy. Kant’s doctrines raise numerous interpretive questions, which cluster around three sets of issues:

Sections 2–6 examine various influential interpretations of transcendental idealism, focusing on their consequences for (a)–(c). Section 7 is devoted more narrowly to the nature of things in themselves, topic (b), and the related Kantian notions: noumena , and the transcendental object. The primary focus will be the Critique of Pure Reason itself; while transcendental idealism, arguably, plays an equally crucial role in the other Critiques , discussing them would take us too far afield into Kant’s ethics, aesthetics, and teleology. [ 2 ] While transcendental idealism is a view both about space and time, and thus of objects of outer sense as well as inner sense (my own mental states), this entry will focus on Kant’s views about space and outer objects. Kant’s transcendental idealist theory of time is too intimately tied up with his theory of the self, and the argument of the transcendental deduction, to discuss here (see Falkenstein 1991; Van Cleve 1999: 52–61; and Dunlop 2009 for more on Kant’s theory of time).

Before discussing the details of different interpretations, though, it will be helpful if readers have an overview of some relevant texts and some sense of their prima facie meaning. The interpretation of these texts offered in this section is provisional; later, we will see powerful reasons to question whether it is correct. Since some scholars claim there is a change in Kant’s doctrine from the A edition of 1781 to the B edition of 1787, we will begin by restricting attention to the A edition. Section 2.4 discusses what relevance the changes made in the B edition have for the interpretation of transcendental idealism. However, following standard scholarly practice, for passages present in both editions, the A page number followed by the B page number is given (e.g., A575/B603). Works other than the Critique are cited by volume in the “Academy” edition of Kant’s work (Ak.), followed by the page number. At the end of this article can be found a guide to all the editions and translations of Kant used in its preparation.

One promising place to begin understanding transcendental idealism is to look at the other philosophical positions from which Kant distinguishes it. In the “Fourth Paralogism”, he distinguishes transcendental idealism from transcendental realism:

To this [transcendental] idealism is opposed transcendental realism, which regards space and time as something given in themselves (independent of our sensibility). The transcendental realist therefore represents outer appearances (if their reality is conceded) as things in themselves [ Dinge an sich selbst ], which would exist independently of us and our sensibility and thus would also be outside us according to pure concepts of the understanding. (A369)

Transcendental realism, according to this passage, is the view that objects in space and time exist independently of our experience of them, while transcendental idealism denies this. This point is reiterated later in the Critique when Kant writes:

We have sufficiently proved in the Transcendental Aesthetic that everything intuited in space or in time, hence all objects of an experience possible for us, are nothing but appearances, i.e., mere representations, which, as they are represented, as extended beings or series of alterations, have outside our thoughts no existence grounded in itself. This doctrine I call transcendental idealism. The realist, in the transcendental signification, makes these modifications of our sensibility into things subsisting in themselves, and hence makes mere representations into things in themselves [ Sachen an sich selbst ]. (A491/B519) [ 3 ]

Appearances exist at least partly in virtue of our experience of them, while the existence of things in themselves is not grounded in our experience at all (cf. A369, A492/B521, A493/B522). Kant calls transcendental realism the “common prejudice” (A740/B768) and describes it as a “common but fallacious presupposition” (A536/B564; cf. Allison 2004: 22). Transcendental realism is the commonsense pre-theoretic view that objects in space and time are “things in themselves”, which Kant, of course, denies.

Kant also distinguishes transcendental idealism from another position he calls “empirical idealism”:

One would also do us an injustice if one tried to ascribe to us that long-decried empirical idealism that, while assuming the proper reality of space, denies the existence of extended beings in it, or at least finds this existence doubtful, and so in this respect admits no satisfactorily provable distinction between dream and truth. As to the appearances of inner sense in time, it finds no difficulty in them as real things, indeed, it even asserts that this inner experience and it alone gives sufficient proof of the real existence of their object (in itself) along with all this time-determination. (A491/B519)

Empirical idealism, as Kant here characterizes it, is the view that all we know immediately (non-inferentially) is the existence of our own minds and our temporally ordered mental states, while we can only infer the existence of objects “outside” us in space. Since the inference from a known effect to an unknown cause is always uncertain, the empirical idealist concludes we cannot know that objects exist outside us in space. Kant typically distinguishes two varieties of empirical idealism: dogmatic idealism, which claims that objects in space do not exist, and problematic idealism, which claims that objects in space may exist, but we cannot know whether they do (see A377). Although he is never mentioned by name in the A Edition, Berkeley seems to be Kant’s paradigm dogmatic idealist, while Descartes is named as the paradigm problematic idealist. [ 4 ]

Transcendental idealism is a form of empirical realism because it entails that we have immediate (non-inferential) and certain knowledge of the existence of objects in space merely through self-consciousness:

[…] external objects (bodies) are merely appearances, hence also nothing other than a species of my representations, whose objects are something only through these representations, but are nothing separated from them. Thus external things exist as well as my self, and indeed both exist on the immediate testimony of my self-consciousness, only with this difference: the representation of my Self, as the thinking subject is related merely to inner sense, but the representations that designate extended beings are also related to outer sense. I am no more necessitated to draw inferences in respect of the reality of external objects than I am in regard to the reality of my inner sense (my thoughts), for in both cases they are nothing but representations, the immediate perception (consciousness) of which is at the same time a sufficient proof of their reality. (A370–1)

Merely through self-conscious introspection I can know that I have representations with certain contents and since appearances are “nothing other than a species of my representations” this constitutes immediate and certain knowledge of the existence of objects in space.

Understanding transcendental idealism requires understanding the precise sense in which things in themselves are, and appearances are not, “external to” or “independent” of the mind and Kant draws a helpful distinction between two senses in which objects can be “outside me”:

But since the expression outside us carries with it an unavoidable ambiguity, since it sometimes signifies something that, as a thing in itself [ Ding an sich selbst ], exists distinct from us and sometimes merely that belongs to outer appearance, then in order to escape uncertainty and use this concept in the latter significance—in which it is taken in the proper psychological question about the reality of our outer intuition—we will distinguish empirically external objects from those that might be called “external” in the transcendental sense, by directly calling them “things that are to be encountered in space”. (A373)

In the transcendental sense, an object is “outside me” when its existence does not depend (even partly) on my representations of it. The empirical sense of “outside me” depends upon the distinction between outer and inner sense. Inner sense is the sensible intuition of my inner states (which are themselves appearances); time is the form of inner sense, meaning that all the states we intuit in inner sense are temporally ordered. Outer sense is the sensible intuition of objects that are not my inner states; space is the form of outer sense. In the empirical sense, “outer” simply refers to objects of outer sense, objects in space. Transcendental idealism is the view that objects in space are “outer” in the empirical sense but not in the transcendental sense. Things in themselves are transcendentally “outer” but appearances are not.

Just as Kant distinguishes a transcendental from an empirical sense of “outer” he also distinguishes a transcendental version of the appearance/thing in itself distinction (the distinction we have been concerned with up to now) from an empirical version of that distinction. The key text here is A45–46/B62–63, which for reasons of brevity will not be quoted in full (cf. the discussion of the rose at A29–30/B45, as well as A257/B313).

In the empirical case, the distinction seems to be between the physical properties of an object and the sensory qualities it presents to differently situated human observers. This requires distinguishing between what is “valid for every human sense in general” and what “pertains to [objects] only contingently because [of] … a particular situation or organization of this or that sense” (A45/B62). The distinction seems to be that some properties of objects are represented in experience just in virtue of the a priori forms of experience, and thus have inter-subjective validity for all cognitive subjects, while some properties depend upon the particular constitution of our sense organs (cf. A226/B273). The “empirical thing in itself” is the empirical object qua bearer of the former set of properties, while the “empirical appearance” is the empirical object qua bearer of all of its properties, including the latter. For instance, the empirical “rainbow in itself” is a collection of water droplets with particular sizes and shapes and spatial relations, while the empirical “rainbow appearance” is the colorful band we see in the sky. [ 5 ]

For our purposes, the importance of this distinction is two-fold. Firstly, the (transcendental) distinction is not the ordinary distinction between how objects appear to us in sense perception and the properties they actually have. Kantian appearances are not the objects of ordinary sense perception, for Kant holds that appearances in themselves (things in themselves, in the empirical sense) lack sensory qualities like color, taste, texture, etc. In scientific research, we may discover how appearances are in themselves (in the empirical sense) but in so doing all we discover is more appearance (in the transcendental sense); scientific investigation into the ultimate constituents or causal determinants of objects only reveals more appearance, not things in themselves. Secondly, there is an appearance/reality distinction at the level of appearances . This provides a further sense in which Kant is an “empirical realist”: appearances in themselves have properties quite different than they seem to have in sense perception.

Kant’s empirical realism—not in his technical sense, but in the broader sense that he accepts an appearance/reality distinction at the level of appearances (see Abela 2002)—is further deepened by his scientific realism: he accepts the existence of unobservable entities posited by our best scientific theories and holds that these entities are appearances (because they are in space). [ 6 ] Earlier, we saw texts whose prima facie meaning is that appearances exist, at least partly, in virtue of the contents of our representations of them. But it is clear that Kant cannot hold that the existence of an object in space is grounded in our direct perception of that object, for that would be incompatible with the existence of unperceived spatial objects.

2. The Feder-Garve Review and Kant’s Replies

The first published review of the Critique of Pure Reason , by Feder and Garve (1782), accuses Kant of holding a basically Berkeleyan phenomenalist conception of objects in space. Feder and Garve were not the only ones to read Kant as a phenomenalist. The phenomenalist reading was so widespread and influential that it became the default interpretation for generations after the publication of the Critique . In fact, many of the key figures in German philosophy in 1781 and after (e.g., Mendelssohn, Eberhard, Hamann, Jacobi, Fichte, Schelling) take the phenomenalist or “subjectivist” reading of Kant for granted and think this is precisely why Kant must be “overcome”. The assumption that Kant is a subjectivist about appearances is a major impetus in the development of German idealism. [ 7 ]

However, the phenomenalist reading of transcendental idealism has been challenged on many fronts, both as an interpretation of Kant and (often on the assumption that it is Kant’s view) on its own philosophical merits. This section explores the origin of the phenomenalist reading in the Feder-Garve review and its basis in the text of the Critique . The next section provides some reasons to think that the phenomenalist reading is more defensible as an interpretation of Kant than is sometimes appreciated. Section 3.4 explores influential objections by Kant’s contemporaries to transcendental idealism, on the assumption that the phenomenalist interpretation of that doctrine is correct, which were later taken up as criticisms of the phenomenalist interpretation itself. Section 4 introduces a theme explored in greater detail in later sections: the development of non-phenomenalist interpretations of Kant’s transcendental idealism.

Although it is uncharitable and, on some points, simply mistaken, the first published review of the Critique , originally written by Christian Garve and then substantially revised, and shortened, by J.G.H. Feder, raised an issue that has been discussed ever since. [ 8 ] The Göttingen, or “Feder-Garve” review, as it is now known, claims that Kantian “transcendental” idealism is just idealism of a familiar Berkeleyan or phenomenalist variety (Sassen 2000: 53).

First of all, it should be noted that the Feder-Garve view, while not exactly an exercise in interpretive charity, is not without a basis in claiming that there is a deep similarity between Berkeley and the Critique (this point is brought out well in Beiser 2002: 49–52). First of all, Kant repeatedly claims that empirical objects are representations. For instance, in the “Transcendental Aesthetic” he writes that “what we call outer objects are nothing other than mere representations of our sensibility” (A30/B45) and in the “Fourth Paralogism” he writes: “external objects (bodies) are merely appearances, hence also nothing other than a species of my representations” (A370; see also A30/B45, A104 and A375n, A490, A498, A563). Since “representation” [ Vorstellung ] is Kant’s term for what Berkeley calls “ideas”, this seems at least perilously close to the Berkeleyan view that bodies are collections of ideas. Secondly, the A Edition is full of passages that can easily suggest a phenomenalist view of objects in space, such as:

Why do we have need of a doctrine of the soul grounded merely on pure rational principles? Without doubt chiefly with the intent of securing our thinking Self from the danger of materialism. But this is achieved by the rational concept of our thinking Self that we have given. For according to it, so little fear remains that if one took matter away then all thinking and even the existence of thinking beings would be abolished, that it rather shows clearly that if I were to take away the thinking subject, the whole corporeal world would have to disappear, as this is nothing but the appearance in the sensibility of our subject and one mode of its representations. (A383; cf. A374n, A490–1/B518–9, A520/B492–A521/B493, A494/B522)

On one plausible reading of these passages, Kant is claiming that all there is for objects in space to exist is for us to have experiences as of objects in space. Consequently, if we did not exist, or did not have such experiences, these objects would not exist. The Feder-Garve interpretation of transcendental idealism is not without some merit. [ 9 ]

Phenomenalism can mean many things, and later we will explore these meanings in detail, but for now it is worth distinguishing at least three different things we might mean by phenomenalism:

“Core physical properties” here means the properties that appearances have “in themselves” according to Kant. These are, roughly, Lockean primary qualities (see Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding , book II, chapter VIII). Feder-Garve accuse Kant of holding (1), which we may call “identity phenomenalism”. But even if he did not hold that extreme view, he might hold one of the weaker views listed here. Claim (2) is a quite strong form of phenomenalism, for it entails that, in some sense, all there is to objects is our representations of them, although they are not literally identical to those representation. We may call this “strong phenomenalism”. The exact meaning of Berkeley’s own views about bodies is unclear, and not the subject of this entry. But it is not implausible to read Berkeley as holding (2). However, claim (3), while very controversial and (arguably) extremely counter-intuitive, is weaker. It allows that there may be more to the existence of objects in space than our representing them, and it allows that there may be aspects or properties of objects that they possess independently of how we represent them. We may call it “qualified phenomenalism”. In discussing the debate about Kant’s alleged phenomenalism, and Kant’s own responses to the Feder-Garve review, it will help to have these distinctions in mind.

Kant’s was apoplectic that Feder and Garve had, apparently, not made any serious attempt to even understand the Critique , or to present its contents accurately to their readers. He penned a response to the review, published as an appendix to the Prolegomena . In the appendix, and in the text of the Prolegomena itself, Kant explains what he sees as clear differences between his own view and Berkeley’s. First, Kant identifies idealism as the doctrine that

all cognition through the senses and experience is nothing but sheer illusion, and there is truth only in the ideas of pure understanding and reason (Ak. 4:374)

and points out that, in this sense, his view is not idealism at all because the Critique consistently maintains that bodies exist in space and that we have immediate (non-inferential) knowledge of them. [ 11 ] Secondly , Kant points out that his idealism is merely formal : he has argued only that the form of objects is due to our minds, not their matter (cf. Kant’s Dec. 4 1792 letter to J.S. Beck (Ak. 11:395)). While the form-matter distinction in Kant’s philosophy is a complex matter in its own right, Kant’s point seems to be that the matter of experience, the sensory content that is perceptually and conceptually structured by space and time, and the categories, respectively, is not generated by the mind itself, but is produced in our minds through affection by mind-independent objects, things in themselves (see, however, section 3.4 for some reasons to be suspicious of the doctrine of “noumenal affection”). As he would write several years later in response to Eberhard, the Critique

posits this ground of the matter of sensory representations not once again in things, as objects of the senses, but in something super-sensible, which grounds the latter, and of which we can have no cognition. ( Discovery , Ak. 8:205)

Thus, Kant can claim that only the form of experience is mind-dependent, not its matter; the matter of experience depends upon a source outside of the mind. [ 12 ]

However, Kant’s attempts to distance himself from Berkeley may not cut as deep as he seems to think. Regarding the first point, Kant’s definition of idealism in the Appendix (quoted above) does not apply to Berkeley. Nor is it clear that his definition in the body of the Prolegomena does either:

the claim that there are none other than thinking beings; the other things that we believe we perceive in intuition are only representations in thinking beings, to which in fact no object existing outside these beings corresponds. (Ak. 4:289)

One of the main points of Berkeley’s philosophical project is to defend the existence of bodies in space, while denying what he takes to be a philosophical misinterpretation of what this existence amounts to: the existence of non-thinking substances. Berkeley does not deny that bodies exist; he claims that bodies cannot exist without minds to perceive them, something that Kant himself also seems to accept (see the texts quoted in the previous section). In fact, Berkeley constantly contends that his theory is the only way to avoid what Kant calls “problematic” idealism: we do not know whether bodies exist ( Treatise on the Principles of Human Knowledge , Part I, § 1, 6, 18, 20, 22–24, 34–38). That Kant would describe Berkeley as an idealist in this sense (what he elsewhere designates a “dogmatic idealist”) raises the suspicion that has misread Berkeley. [ 13 ] Since the misinterpretation of Berkeley as holding that sense perception is illusory and that bodies do not exist was widespread in Germany in the eighteenth-century (again, see Beiser 2002), it is quite possible that Kant shares it. It may be that Kant is more similar to Berkeley than he realizes because he is not familiar with Berkeley’s actual theory.

Nor does another point Kant makes—that Kant’s idealism concerns merely the form and not the matter of experience—constitute a clear difference from Berkeley. Berkeley does not claim that human spirits are the causes of their own ideas; he claims that God acts on human spirits, causing us to perceive an internally and inter-subjectively consistent world of ideas. Since Kant’s official doctrine in the Critique seems to require agnosticism about the ultimate nature of the things in themselves that causally affect us in experience, it is compatible with what he says that the noumenal cause of experience is God himself.

Kant’s argument might be that the matter of experience (its sensory content) depends upon how our sensibility is affected by mind-independent objects, things in themselves, while the form of experience is determined by our minds alone. Consequently, experience itself requires the existence of objects “outside” (in the transcendental sense) the mind. But this would show, at most, that Kant is not a strong phenomenalist. It does not undercut the interpretation of him as a qualified phenomenalist. Nor does it succeed in clearly differentiating him from Berkeley. (See the supplementary article: Kant’s Attempts to Distance Himself from Berkeley .) This, of course, does not settle the issue; it may be that Kantian appearances are quite different than bodies, as Berkeley, or even the qualified phenomenalist, conceive them (for important discussions of transcendental idealism in the Prolegomena see Ak. 4:283–4, 286, 289–294, 314–315, 320).

Kant extensively revised certain sections of the Critique for the second edition (B), published in 1787. It is widely accepted that a main consideration in these revisions was to avoid the misunderstanding of his view that had led to the Feder-Garve review. However, some scholars think that, on this point, there is a difference in doctrine between the A and B editions: made aware of the problematic Berkeleyan consequences of the first edition, Kant endeavored to develop a more realistic view in the B Edition. [ 14 ] Other scholars think the difference is largely a matter of presentation: in the B edition, Kant highlights the more realistic aspects of his view and downplays its phenomenalistic sides, but the view is basically the same (e.g., Allison 2004). The rest of this section considers the main textual changes from 1781 to 1787 and considers what implications they have for the interpretation of Kant’s idealism. Since Kant made no significant changes past the Paralogisms chapter, sections that did not undergo substantial revision will not be cited as evidence; it may be that Kant would have significantly changed those sections if he had gotten there (on the general topic of the changes from the A to the B edition, see Erdmann 1878).

Kant did, however, make one relatively minor alteration in the later sections (in the “Antinomies”, to be specific) that is relevant to our discussion. In the wake of the Feder-Garve review, Kant evidently felt that “transcendental” idealism may have been a poor choice of name. [ 15 ] In the B Edition Kant adds a footnote to his definition of transcendental idealism at A491/519 (quoted earlier) to remark that perhaps he should have called his position “critical idealism”. [ 16 ] The section Kant most heavily revised for the B Edition is the “Transcendental Deduction”, but there is not space here to discuss the complex argument of that section, or the differences between the A “Deduction” and the B “Deduction”.

2.4.1 Objects as representations

As mentioned earlier, one of the main sources, both in the eighteenth century and today, for the phenomenalist reading of Kant is Kant’s tendency to identify empirical objects with representations. But Kant continues to do this in the B Edition, not only in sections that were heavily revised for the B Edition [ 17 ] but even in passages that were added to the B Edition (e.g., B164).

2.4.2 Preface

The B Preface contains several passages, which some scholars take to be inconsistent with the phenomenalist reading. They are discussed below in section 4.1 .

2.4.3 Transcendental Aesthetic

The main addition to the B “Transcendental Aesthetic” is several pages (B66–69) at the end of the section, which includes this discussion, a clear reference to the Feder-Garve review:

If I say: in space and time intuition represents both outer objects as well as the self-intuition of the mind as each affects our senses, i.e., as it appears , that is not to say that these objects would be a mere illusion . […] Thus I do not say that objects merely seem to exist outside me or that my soul only seems to be given if I assert that the quality of space […] lies in my kind of intuition and not in these objects in themselves. It would be my own fault if I made that which I should count as appearance [ Erscheinung ] into mere illusion [ bloßen Schein ]. (B70–1)

This reiterates a theme found in the A edition and in the Prolegomena: transcendental idealism does not entail that objects in space are illusions. Later in the paragraph Kant argues that, if we assume that if space and time must be “infinite substances”, if they exist at all, then we cannot blame Berkeley for concluding that space, time, and bodies are mere illusions; empirical idealism is the right conclusion to draw from transcendental realism, according to Kant. While Kant is correct in representing Berkeley later in this paragraph as reacting against the Newtonian view of space and time as “absolute” entities, he is wrong to characterize Berkeley as concluding that bodies are mere illusions, so Kant’s dissatisfaction with Berkeley’s own view is not evidence that he does not have a some variety of phenomenalist view of objects in space. The B “Transcendental Aesthetic” adds no new evidence against the phenomenalist reading.

2.4.4 Paralogisms

One main source of the phenomenalist reading is the A Edition “Fourth Paralogism”, in which Kant refutes the “Cartesian” view that our inner states are immediately known while the existence of outer objects can only be known mediately by inference from our inner states. The Paralogisms section was entirely re-written in the B Edition, and none of the four B Paralogisms correspond precisely to the fourth A Paralogism. The A Edition “Fourth Paralogoism” is the source of many of the passages quoted above, and, historically, an important source for the phenomenalist interpretation. The fact that it was, effectively, removed in the B Edition has led many scholars to reject the phenomenalist interpretation, at least with respect to the B Edition (with some averring that he changed his mind from the A to the B Edition). [ 18 ] A version of the A Paralogism argument that self-consciousness requires knowledge of objects in space reappears as the “Refutation of Idealism”, added in the B Edition.

2.4.5 Refutation of Idealism

Given its brevity, the “Refutation of Idealism”, added to the “Postulates of empirical thinking in general” in the B Edition, is, line for line, one of the most thoroughly commented upon passages in all of Kant’s writings. [ 19 ] Kant’s argument, very briefly, is that the existence of objects in space outside me (“empirically external” objects) is a condition on the possibility of my being conscious of the determinate temporal relations of my inner states. Consequently, it is impossible to be a self-conscious subject without there existing objects in space outside of me, and in being conscious of the temporal relations of my inner states I am immediately conscious of the existence of these objects. [ 20 ] The problem of “problematic idealism”—how can I infer the existence of objects outside of me on the basis of my immediate knowledge of my inner states?—is based on a false premise.

Nothing about this conclusion, or how Kant argues for it, is prima facie incompatible with a qualified phenomenalist reading of transcendental idealism, or even a strong phenomenalist one. [ 21 ] It may be incompatible with “identity” phenomenalism, since Kant argues that self-consciousness requires the existence of permanent objects in space, yet there is no permanent representation in the mind (B278). If objects just are representations, it follows that none of them are permanent. [ 22 ] At B274 Kant makes it clear that the “idealism” that he intends to refute is idealism as he defined it in the Prolegomena and the “Fourth A Paralogism”: the claim that objects in space do not exist (dogmatic idealism) or at least that we do not know whether they exist (problematic idealism). The sense of idealism that is at issue in the phenomenalist reading—empirical objects exist, and exist in virtue of the contents of experience—is not, apparently, addressed here. On an extreme phenomenalist reading, all there is to the existence of empirical objects in space is our having appropriately unified experiences of them. The phenomenalist can interpret Kant’s argument in the “Refutation” as an argument that consciousness of the temporal relations of my inner states requires that these inner states constitute appropriately unified experiences. Consequently, self-consciousness requires the existence of objects in space (spatially) outside me. [ 23 ] , [ 24 ]

2.4.6 General note to the principles

In the B Edition Kant added a “General Note” to the “Principles of Experience”, which some have read as ruling out the phenomenalist reading, especially the long passage from B291 to 294 (excerpted here):

This entire remark is of great importance, not only in order to confirm our preceding refutation of idealism, but, even more, when we come to talk of self-cognition form mere inner consciousness and the determination of our nature without the assistance of outer empirical intuition, to indicate to us the limits of the possibility of such a cognition. (B293–4)

Once again, this is a case of Kant emphasizing that his view is not idealist in the specific sense of idealism we have seen so far —denying either that objects exist in space or that we can know that they do. His point is that even understanding our most basic a priori concepts, the categories, requires applying them to outer objects in space. The remark about “self-cognition” at the end is a reminder that inner awareness is dependent upon outer experience; it does not address whether empirical objects exist (partly or wholly) in virtue of the contents of experience.

2.4.7 Phenomena and noumena

Kant extensively revised the section entitled “On the grounds of the distinction of all objects into phenomena and noumena” in the B Edition. However, since that section concerns the Kantian notion of “ noumena ”, discussion of it is reserved until §6 , which is devoted to that notion, its relation to the “thing in itself”, and the related notion of the “transcendental object”.

3. Kant as a Phenomenalist

So far, we have seen the prima facie evidence for the phenomenalist interpretation of Kant, made famous by Feder-Garve, and Kant’s own attempts to distance himself from their accusations. However, we also distinguished three different kinds of phenomenalism: identity phenomenalism, strong phenomenalism, and qualified phenomenalism. This section explores the interpretation of Kant as qualified phenomenalist, and explores how a defender of this interpretation might answer some of the standard objections to the phenomenalist reading.

While the identity phenomenalist interpretation has found few defenders among contemporary readers (Guyer 1987: 333–336 is a notable exception; for critical discussion, see Allison 2004: 8–9), it is worth asking why exactly we should reject the prima facie meaning of the numerous passages in which Kant equates appearances with representations.

Perhaps the best reason to reject the identity phenomenalist interpretation is that it is incompatible with many of the very texts that are used to motivate it (there is also the lingering problem of whether it is compatible with the “Refutation of Idealism”; see section 2.4 . and part IV of Guyer 1987). In many of the texts in which Kant identifies appearances with (a species of) representations, he also claims that representations are representations of appearances, i.e., that representations are representations of objects, appearances. For instance,

[…] external objects (bodies) are merely appearances, hence also nothing other than a species of my representations, whose objects are something only through these representations, but are nothing separated from them. (A370–1) everything intuited in space or in time, hence all objects of an experience possible for us, are nothing but appearances, i.e., mere representations, which, as they are represented, as extended beings or series of alterations, have outside our thoughts no existence grounded in itself (A490–1/B518–9; Allison (2004: 36) attempts to explain away the apparently phenomenalist implications of this passage)

In both passages, Kant describes appearances as representations but also as objects of representation. If this is correct, then Kant thinks that the sense in which an appearance is a representation is compatible with it being the object of a representation. For instance, the sense in which this table “is” a representation is compatible with it being the object of my perception of it. Assuming that the representations that empirical objects “are” are not always self-representational (e.g., the table is not identical to a table-ish visual perception that also represents itself), it follows that the objects cannot be identical to our representations of them. For instance, my visual perception of this table cannot be this table, because my visual perception does not (presumably) represent itself. To make the identity phenomenalist view consistent with the very texts that motivate it, we need to “double” our representations: a visual perception of the table and then the representation that the table is. But what could that representation be? It must be present when and only when the table exists (because they are identical), and my perception of the table must be intentionally directed at it . While this is not conclusive, it is evidence that the identity phenomenalist interpretation should be abandoned.

Is there any way to free Kant from the apparent consequences of his tendency to identify appearances with representations of them? One standard strategy is to say that Kant is simply being sloppy: he means that appearances are the objects of our representations, not that they literally are those representations. [ 25 ] However, the passages in question occur throughout the Critique , in both editions, and they remain after Feder-Garve pointed out their apparently phenomenalist implications. On the other hand, their persistence in the B Edition suggests that they do not, and never were intended to, commit Kant to a form of identity phenomenalism. How could Kant claim Feder-Garve had misunderstood him if he had identified appearances with representations? This suggests that another reading is possible, but does not tell us what it is.

One strategy would be to claim that Kant does not mean the “is” of identity, but the “is” of grounding. Sometimes, apparent claims of identity are really claims about grounding relations. For instance, if I say “pain is C-fiber firing” I might mean the type-identity thesis that the state of being in pain is the state of C-fiber firing. But I might also mean that all there is to pain is C-fiber firing, that if one is in pain it is in virtue of C-fiber firing, or that C-fiber firing non-causally grounds the state of being in pain. On this view, in claiming that appearances are representations, Kant is claiming that the contents of representations ground the existence and empirical properties of appearances.

But this is not the plain meaning of the relevant passages. At A371 Kant claims that appearances are a species ( Art ) of representations; while “is” can be interpreted in a number of ways (e.g., the “is” of constitution), it is hard to interpret “ A s are a species of B s” in any other way than: every A is a B , which means every A is identical to a B (namely, itself). While there may be something to the “grounding” interpretation of these passages, there are good reasons to think these texts have not been explained (or explained away).

A third alternative, proposed by Wilfred Sellars, and which may ultimately face the same problem, relies on the Cartesian distinction between the formal and objective reality of representations (in Cartesian terminology, ideas). [ 26 ] The objective reality of an idea is the representational character of the idea, its character as a representation with a certain content. Consequently, we can talk about the object of an idea without assuming that there is an object “external” to the idea; to talk of the “internal” object of the idea is just to talk about that idea’s objective reality. For instance, we can coherently talk about God without presupposing that God exists “outside” our idea of him; this God-talk is to be understood as talk about our idea of God in its objective realty, i.e., to talk about the content of our God-idea. Translating this back into Kant, we might take his claims that appearances are representations as claims to the effect that appearances are representations considered in their objective reality , or, in other words, that talking about appearances, objects of representations, is just talking about representations and their contents.

There are at least two problems with this strategy, however. For one, it is arguably no less a distortion of the plain letter of the text than the other interpretations. If Kant meant that appearances are representations considered with respect to their objective reality why didn’t he simply say that, rather than stating that they are a species of representations? Secondly, it is far from clear that, on Kant’s view, talk about appearances is equivalent to talk about the objective reality of representations. Kant may not be attempting a semantic analysis of appearances in terms of representations. To many readers, it has seemed more plausible to read Kant as claiming that appearances are grounded (non-semantically) in representations and their objective reality (content). So this proposal may collapse into the previous one.

Kant repeatedly claims that our representations alone do not ground the existence of their objects. At A92/B125 he writes that “representation in itself does not produce its objects in so far as existence is concerned” and in a 1792 letter to J.S. Beck he dismissed the Feder-Garve interpretation with one line:

I speak of ideality in respect of the form of representation, while they construe it as ideality in respect of the matter , i.e., ideality of the object and its existence. (Ak. 11:395)

The first passage could be taken to mean that the existence of empirical objects is not wholly grounded in the contents of our experience; something else must be added. The second passage could be taken to mean that Feder and Garve misattributed to him the opposite view: that all there is to the existence of an object in space is our having mental states with a certain content. But all this shows is that strong phenomenalism is not Kant’s view. It leaves open the possibility that he accepts qualified phenomenalism : the existence of objects in space is grounded partially, and their core physical properties are grounded wholly, in the contents of our representations of them.

The first question to be answered is, what, in addition to the contents of our representations, grounds the existence of empirical objects? The natural answer, for the qualified phenomenalist, is that there must be things in themselves that appear as these objects. Kant repeatedly insists that it is a conceptual truth that appearances are appearances of something that is not itself an appearance, a thing in itself (e.g., A251–2, Bxxvi–xxvii, B306, B307, and Ak. 4:314–5). On the qualified phenomenalist reading, this means that the existence of an appearance requires (a) a representation of an object, and (b) a thing in itself that appears as that object. A fully developed qualified phenomenalist reading would require saying precisely what it means for a thing in itself to appear as an empirical object (an object of experience), but for reasons of space only a sketch of an answer can be given here. At the minimum, the qualified phenomenalist should require that the thing in itself causally affect the experiencing subject, and that the sensory content thus produced be involved in the experience of the object. Some scholars have suggested that the properties of appearances are structurally isomorphic to the properties of things in themselves, but that idea will not be further pursued here (e.g., Findlay 1981: 92–93; see also Van Cleve 1999: 155–162).

The qualified phenomenalist also owes us an answer to the question, which are the representations whose content partly grounds the existence of empirical objects and wholly grounds their core physical properties? The natural answer is “experience”, so the qualified phenomenalist owes us an interpretation of what Kant means by “experience”, what its content is, and how it grounds (partly) the existence and (wholly) empirical properties of appearances. [ 27 ] We have already seen that, for familiar reasons, Kant cannot ground the existence of empirical objects in our mere perceptions of them: sometimes we misperceive objects, objects exist while unperceived, and there are objects we cannot ever directly perceive.

There have been few worked-out phenomenalist interpretations of Kant in the secondary literature. An outline of one such reading is presented in what follows in order to present the reader with some more determinate idea of what a qualified phenomenalist reading might look like and why ( section 3.3 ) some of the classic objections to phenomenalist interpretations may be less devastating than they are sometimes presented. But this is not meant to give the impression that this is the only plausible phenomenalist reading of Kant.

The qualified phenomenalist grounds the existence of objects (partly) and their core physical properties (wholly) in the content of experience. But this requires a conception of experience on which it is not identical to any individual subject’s perceptual episodes; otherwise, objects will have contradictory properties if, for instance, I see the tower as round and you see it as square. Kant distinguishes experience from perception in the A “Deduction”, writing:

There is only one experience, in which all perceptions are represented as in thoroughgoing and lawlike connection […] If one speaks of different experiences, they are only so many perceptions insofar as they belong to one and the same universal experience. (A110).

In this sense of experience (“universal experience”) there is only one experience. It may also be that, inter-subjectively, there is only one universal experience as well: my perceptions and your perceptions are only “experiences” to the extent that they cohere with the one universal experience. Kant, in this passage, does not tell us much about what universal experience is, or what its contents are. He does tell us that it is composed from perceptions, that it has an a priori form (space, time, and categories), and that the perceptions that constitute it are in “thoroughgoing and lawlike connection”.

Elsewhere, he sheds further light on the coherence relation that defines universal experience:

In space and time, however, the empirical truth of appearances is satisfactorily secured, and sufficiently distinguished from its kinship with dreams, if both are correctly and thoroughly connected up according to empirical laws in one experience. Accordingly, the objects of experience are never given in themselves, but only in experience, and they do not exist at all outside it. (A493/B521)

Perception P n coheres with perceptions P 1 through P n −1 to the extent that the causal laws observed in P 1 through P n −1 are observed in P n . This gives us reason to exclude hallucinatory perceptions from universal experience: hallucinatory perceptions involve apparent violations of the causal laws that are observed to hold in our “waking” perceptions, so they do not cohere with those other perceptions.

We know a priori something very general about the form of universal experience, of course: it will be spatiotemporal and the principles of experience (applications of the categories) will hold in it. But that does not determine the determinate a posteriori content of universal experience, and the idea of a qualified phenomenalist analysis of empirical objects is to hold that their existence and empirical properties are (partly and wholly, respectively) grounded in that fully determinate a posteriori content. So we might begin with the following analysis:

( Experience ) Universal experience consists in the largest internally coherent subset of perceptions that obeys the principles of experience. A subset of perceptions is internally coherent to the degree to which causal regularities hold among its contents.

On a qualified phenomenalist reading of Kant, this might be taken as the set of representations whose content grounds objects. However, there are at least two problems with this analysis of universal experience:

We need to refine the conception of experience so as to include unperceived objects and exclude secondary qualities. This might push us towards a more “scientistic” conception of universal experience, on which experience is something like the ideal scientific theory of objects in space and time. [ 28 ] The form of that theory is a priori determinable from the forms of experience: it will represent persisting substances in a 3-D Euclidean space obeying universal causal laws and in simultaneous mutual interaction. However, the determinate a posteriori content of that theory will be grounded in the perceptions subjects actually have.

Here is a sketch of a conception of universal experience that the qualified phenomenalist might accept:

( Experience ) Universal experience is the maximally unified and lawful representation of objects in space and time that is compatible with the a priori forms of experience and justified by the totality of subjects’ perceptual states, or the conjunction of such representations if there is no unique such representation. [ 29 ]

To fully develop such a view, a lot more would have to be said about exactly how the content of experience is grounded in, and justified by, the contents of subjects’ perceptual states, but this gloss is enough to give us a sense of what a developed phenomenalist reading of Kant might look like.

Since the Feder-Garve objection to Kant has been around almost as long as the Critique itself, many objections to broadly phenomenalist readings of Kant’s idealism have accumulated. Perhaps the most comprehensive list of such objections is given by Allais (2004). They include:

• “ Kant’s claim that his notion of appearance implies that there is something that appears”. We have already discussed how the qualified phenomenalist can accommodate this point.
• “ Empirically real objects and the space they inhabit are public”. Allais seems to assume that, on a phenomenalist analysis of objects in space, objects are “private”, meaning the objects each subject perceives are constituted by sense data of that subject, which, by definition, cannot be perceived by other subjects. But the qualified phenomenalist conception of universal experience sketched above is explicitly “non-private” in this sense; it is based on the perceptions of all subjects.
• “Kant’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities”. However, the qualified phenomenalist can claim that while our perceptions represent objects as having secondary qualities, the best scientific theory justified by the totality of those perceptions (universal experience) does not represent them as having those properties, because there is a better theory available: objects do not possess such properties but do possess powers to cause us to perceive them as having such properties. There is, in principle, no barrier to a qualified phenomenalist allowing the distinction between primary and secondary qualities.
• “Kant’s realism about the unobservable entities of theoretical science”. Kant is a scientific realist, in that he accepts the existence of unobservable entities posited by our best physical theories (magnetic matter, Newtonian “lamellae”). Allais thinks this is incompatible with a phenomenalist reading, but it is compatible with the conception of universal experience developed in the previous section. If universal experience has the content of the scientific theory best justified by our perceptions, then universal experience can represent unobservable (=unperceivable) objects (cf. Allison (2004: 46)) who also objects that phenomenalism is incompatible with Kant’s empirical realism).
• “Empirically real objects exist through time and unperceived, and are in causal relations”. The fact that empirically real objects exist through time while unperceived might be thought to pose a problem for phenomenalism, although it should be remembered that Berkeley (at least on some readings) is a phenomenalist and yet accepts that objects exist while unperceived (although he denies that they stand in causal relations). So it isn’t clear why Allais think this is incompatible with phenomenalism. And it clearly is compatible with the conception of universal experience developed in the previous section: experience represents objects as existing through time and unperceived, because a theory that represents them as existing only when perceived would be far less unified and lawful.
• “We do not know what ideas are in themselves”. Allais’s idea seems to be that the phenomenalist is committed to grounding empirical objects not in “empirical ideas” (temporally ordered mental states available in conscious introspection) but in “noumenal ideas” (the non-temporal states of the subject in itself). But it is unclear why; the phenomenalist conception of experience developed in the previous section explicitly grounds the a posteriori content of universal experience in “empirical” ideas, the totality of subjects’ perceptions. [ 30 ]

Allais appears to have conflated phenomenalist readings of Kant in general with the “strong” phenomenalism (or even identity phenomenalism) discussed in section 2 , and one, moreover, that identifies experience with mere perception.

No discussion of Kant’s transcendental idealism would be complete without a discussion of F.H. Jacobi’s famous objection to the critique:

without the presupposition of the [thing in itself] I cannot enter the [critical] system, and with that presupposition I cannot remain in it. (Jacobi, Werke , vol. II, p. 304)

Jacobi is referring to a number of quite serious problems for Kant’s transcendental idealist theory. They do not disappear on other interpretations, but they are especially serious for the traditional phenomenalist reading. Unlike the problems we discussed earlier, however, which were specifically problems for the phenomenalist analysis of appearances , these problems, as Jacobi indicates, concern the thing in itself, and the relation between things in themselves and appearances.

3.4.1 The Unknowability of Things in Themselves

Kant is committed to both of the following theses:

( Existence ) There are things in themselves.

( Humility ) We know nothing about things in themselves.

While these are not, strictly speaking, incompatible, they are in tension, for Humility appears to remove any warrant Kant might have for asserting Existence .

But it gets worse for the traditional view. Kant does not merely claim that things in themselves exist , he also asserts that,

( Non-spatiality ) Things in themselves are not in space and time.

( Affection ) Things in themselves causally affect us. [ 31 ]

Many of Kant’s early readers concluded that Kant’s philosophy is inconsistent: he claims that we cannot know the very assertions he makes about things in themselves. Kant’s own theory renders itself unknowable. [ 32 ]

It would be over-hasty to suggest that each of these three problems—how to square Humility, with Non-Spatiality, Affection, and Existence—are on a par. Since Non-spatiality makes only a negative claim, it may be easier to make it consistent with Humility. For instance, at B149 Kant writes:

it is not yet a genuine cognition if I merely indicate what the intuition of the object is not, without being able to say what is then contained in it.

This suggests that, while Kant’s usually unqualified statements of our ignorance of things in themselves (they are “not cognized at all” A30/B45), his considered view might be more qualified: we know nothing of the positive properties of things in themselves. [ 33 ] But Affection looks especially difficult to square with Humility (see Hogan 2009 and Stang 2013).

3.4.2 Things in themselves as causes

The issue of things in themselves affecting us raises another problem for Kant’s theory, for Kant also argues that categories like cause-effect cannot be meaningfully applied to things in themselves. Without an intuition “[the category] has no sense, and is entirely empty of content” (A239/B298). Since things in themselves cannot be intuited, categories (including cause-effect ) have no sense or content when applied to things in themselves. Jacobi and others thought this was yet another inconsistency in Kant’s philosophy: he denies that categories can be applied to things in themselves, but then he applies the category cause-effect to them!

However, one has to be careful in interpreting Kant’s denial of “sense” or “meaning” to categories as applied to things in themselves. It is tempting to read this as meaning that the thought of things in themselves falling under categories is literally nonsense, but there is textual evidence that Kant is making a weaker point: thinking of things in themselves under the categories has no cognitive sense, i.e., in making such judgments we do not cognize anything. For instance,

[…] the categories are not restricted in thinking by the conditions of our sensible intuition, but have an unbounded field, and only the cognition of objects that we think, the determination of the object, requires intuition; in the absence of the latter, the thought of the object can still have its true and useful consequences for the use of reason […] (B166n) [ 34 ]

We can think of any objects whatsoever using the categories. In fact, this is unavoidable; the categories are the most basic concepts of objects in general, so we cannot think about anything whatsoever without using some categories to do so. But in thinking about the things in themselves using categories we do not thereby (a) know that there are things in themselves falling under the categories or (b) even that it is possible for there to be things in themselves falling under the categories. The strongest form of Jacobi’s objection—that Kant’s view entails that the categories cannot be applied, even in thought, to things in themselves—may rest on a misunderstanding (cf. Van Cleve 1999: 137; Adams 1997: 820–1). This still leaves, though, the pressing problem of how, given Kant’s Humility doctrine, he could have any epistemic warrant for making the various substantive claims he does about things in themselves (Existence, Non-spatiality, Affection).

3.4.3 The Problem of Affection

Jacobi raises yet another problem about Kant’s theory of experience. He notes Kant’s definition of sensibility as the capacity “to receive representations through the manner in which we are affected by objects” (A19/B33) and poses a dilemma: are the objects that affect our sensibility appearances or things in themselves? They cannot be things in themselves, Jacobi argues, because that would involve applying the categories to things in themselves. And they cannot be appearances, because appearances exist in virtue of the very experiences they are (allegedly) causing. He concludes that Kant’s system is inconsistent (Jacobi, Werke , vol. II, 291–310; Fichte raises the same objection in the Second Introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre ; cf. Fichte, Werke I, 488).

We have already discussed the argument of the first horn of Jacobi’s dilemma: we can think but not know that things in themselves causally affect us. But what about the second horn? Hans Vaihinger concisely explains Jacobi’s argument:

Or one understands by affecting objects the objects in space; but since these are only appearances according to Kant, and thus our representations, one falls into the contradiction that the same appearances, which we first have on the basis of affection, should be the source of that very affection. (Vaihinger 1881: vol. 2, p. 53)

“First” here does not refer to temporal priority, but to metaphysical priority: if p is true in virtue of q , then q is “prior” to p . Jacobi and Vaihinger assume that appearances exist in virtue of the contents of our experience of them:

( Trans. Idealism ) If x is an appearance, then x exists in virtue of the fact that subjects experience x .

If we are empirically affected, though, it follows that:

( Empirical affection ) For some x , x is one of the causes of subjects’ experience of x .

For instance, this computer is one of the causes of my current experience of it. But these assumptions are inconsistent if we assume the following plausible principle:

( Exclusion ) If x exists in virtue of the fact that p , then x cannot be even a partial cause of the fact that p .

Intuitively, this principle says that no object can be even a partial cause of the very fact in virtue of which it exists; if it were, it would be a partial cause of its own existence. In the context of Kant’s theory of experience, it means that appearances cannot “reach back” and cause the very experiences in virtue of which they exist. From the 1780s until today, many have taken this problem to be fatal to Kant’s theory of experience. [ 35 ]

4. The “Dual Aspect” View

Because the phenomenalist interpretation of transcendental idealism held such sway, not only among Kant’s contemporaries, but for generations of German philosophers as well, these problems for the phenomenalist construal of transcendental idealism were taken to be evidence that Kant’s view itself is inconsistent. [ 36 ] In the twentieth century, the phenomenalist (or “Berkeleyan”) interpretation of transcendental idealism is associated with P.F. Strawson, whose massively influential (1966) argued that, for many of the reasons we have seen, transcendental idealism was a blunder on Kant’s part (Strawson 1966: 16, 38–42, 253–73). However, Strawson claimed, the core arguments of the Critique do not in fact rely on it and can be reconstructed independently of it.

In the 1960s and 1970s a group of scholars, in some cases in direct opposition to Strawson, developed a non-phenomenalist, anti-metaphysical reading of transcendental idealism, the “dual aspect” view. [ 37 ] These scholars took the textbook problems for phenomenalism (especially, the problem of affection) as evidence that this was the wrong interpretation of Kant’s position to begin with. They sought to rescue transcendental idealism from what they took to be the phenomenalist misconstrual, defend its philosophical cogency from its detractors, and show, contra Strawson, that the central arguments of the Critique do rely on transcendental idealism. This was as much a philosophical defense of Kantian transcendental idealism as it was an interpretive-exegetical project.

They developed what has become known as the “dual aspect” view. They argue that many of the classic problems for the phenomenalist reading (e.g., affection) arise because it was mistakenly assumed that appearances and things in themselves are distinct kinds of objects. They argued instead that the appearance/thing in itself distinction is not an ontological distinction between two kinds of objects, but an adverbial distinction between two different perspectives or stances we can take on one and the same set of objects: we can consider them as they appear, or as they are “in themselves”.

In numerous passages, Kant describes the appearance/thing in itself distinction, not as a distinction between two different objects, but as a distinction between two ways of considering one and the same object. For instance,

[…] the same objects can be considered from two different sides, on the one side as objects of the senses and the understanding for experience, and on the other side as objects that are merely thought at most for isolated reason striving beyond the bounds of experience. (Bxviii–Bxix, note) […] the reservation must well be noted that even if we cannot cognize these same objects as things in themselves, we are lat least able to think of them as things in themselves. (Bxxvi) [ 38 ]

The general characteristic of such passages is that they use the same chain of pronouns to refer both to appearances and things in themselves. This strongly suggests that one and the same object can be an appearance and a thing in itself, or, to put it another way, the distinction between appearance and thing in itself is not a distinction between two or more objects, but a distinction between two different aspects of, or ways of considering, one and the same object. One and the same object can be considered as it appears to us in experience, or as it is in itself . Considered in the former way, the object must conform to our a priori intuitional forms, so it is in space and time. Considered in the other way, the object may not be in space and time. Some “dual aspect” readers cite the increased frequency of such passages in the Prolegomena and the B Edition as evidence that Kant, realizing that his distinction between two aspects of objects was being conflated with a distinction between two kinds of objects, sought to remedy this interpretation by emphasizing precisely this point. Prauss (1974) notes that, in most cases, Kant uses the expression “ Dinge [ Sachen , Objecte , Gegenstände ] an sich selbst ” rather than the shorter form “ Dinge an sich ”. He argues that “ an sich selbst ” functions as an adverb to modify an implicit attitude verb like “to consider” [ betrachten ]. He concludes that the dominant use of these expressions is as a short-hand for “things considered as they are in themselves” (Prauss 1974: 14–15).

Different scholars understand this distinction in different ways. The main difference is between epistemological and metaphysical “dual aspect” interpretations (Allison 2004: 52). On the epistemological reading, the distinction between appearances and things in themselves is simply a distinction in the standpoint from which we consider them. We can consider objects as objects of knowledge for discursive spatiotemporal cognizers like us, in which case we are considering objects as appearances . Or we can abstract from our particular cognitive conditions and consider objects merely as objects for a mind in general, in which case we are considering them as things in themselves . It is crucial to the epistemological reading that there is no sense in which the “transcendental” perspective on objects as things in themselves gets at how objects “are in themselves”. The point of Kant’s transcendental idealism, epistemological interpreters stress, is to get away from the incoherent idea of a “view from nowhere” in which we could know objects as they “really are in themselves”. [ 39 ]

By contrast, metaphysical “dual aspect” interpreters take the distinction to carry more metaphysical weight. They interpret the appearance/thing in itself distinction as a metaphysical distinction between two different classes of properties had by objects, for instance, their relational properties and their intrinsic properties. Appearances are objects qua bearers of “empirical properties” (e.g., relational properties) while things in themselves are the very same objects qua bearers of “noumenal” or “non-empirical” properties (e.g., intrinsic properties). The next two sub-sections explore the epistemological interpretation of Henry Allison. The remainder of the sections concerns metaphysical “dual aspect” readings, focusing on the widely discussed interpretation of Langton (1998).

In modern Kant scholarship, the epistemic reading was first put forward by Gerold Prauss, Henry Allison, and Graham Bird. Since Allison’s work was the most influential among English language scholars, and most likely to be known to readers, this discussion will focus on the interpretation of transcendental idealism in Allison (1983) and the revised and enlarged second edition (2004). Allison’s writings contain several distinct (and not obviously equivalent) formulations of transcendental idealism. This section concentrates on reconstructing what is arguably the “core” of Allison’s reading: his interpretation of appearances and things in themselves, and his reconstruction of the argument for the non-spatiality of things in themselves.

The core insight of Kant’s epistemology in general, and his transcendental idealism in particular, according to Allison, is the principle that we possess a discursive intellect. A discursive intellect is one that passively receives representations of particular objects (intuitions) and then spontaneously subsumes those intuited objects under general concepts; consequently, a discursive intellect must possess a sensory faculty (through which it receives sensory data and intuits individual objects) and a conceptual faculty (through which it forms general concepts and applies them to objects) (A50–1/B74–5). By contrast, an intuitive intellect brings into existence its objects merely by representing them, and thus has no need to receive representations of objects from outside. [ 40 ] But that is not all there is to the discursive nature of our intellect, Allison argues. [ 41 ] Kant’s key insight is that our sensible faculty has its own epistemic conditions.

An “epistemic condition” is Allison’s term for a representation we must apply to objects in order to cognize them (Allison 2004: 11, 14). Space and time are epistemic conditions, as are the categories. If E is an epistemic condition then necessarily if we know an object O , in knowing it we represent it using E . [ 42 ] Some of our epistemic conditions follow from the general fact that we are discursive cognizers (the categories) and some follow from the more specific fact that we cognize objects given to us in space and time. Representing objects using the categories is an epistemic condition for any discursive intellect, i.e., for any intellect that must conceptualize objects given passively in sensory intuition. [ 43 ] So space and time are epistemic conditions of spatiotemporal discursive cognition of objects, while the categories are epistemic conditions of discursive cognition of objects in general . Any discursive intellect must conceptualize sensibly intuited objects using the categories, whether or not those objects are intuited in space and time, or some other intuitional forms (Allison 2004: 17).

This grounds a distinction between two ways of considering the objects of our cognition. When we consider objects qua objects of our cognition, we consider them as falling under the relevant epistemic conditions. If E is an epistemic condition of cognition of objects, then objects must fall under E (i.e., be accurately represented by E ); otherwise, in representing them with E , I would not be cognizing objects but misrepresenting them. My representation of objects with E would be an illusion, the very conclusion Kant wants to avoid with respect to space and objects represented in space. This means that if E is an epistemic condition of the specific kind of discursive cognition of objects that we have, then E correctly represents those objects. So, if space and time are the forms of our intuition, it follows that empirical objects qua objects of the kind of discursive intellect we have, are in space and time. But if we do not consider objects qua objects of our specific kind of discursive intellect, but qua objects of discursive intellect in general, we can no longer assume that our specific intuitional epistemic condition applies to them. The more general epistemic conditions of all discursive cognition (in Kant’s view, the categories) still apply to objects under this more abstract perspective, however. So we can say that objects qua appearing (objects of spatiotemporal discursive cognition) are in space, but qua things in themselves (objects of discursive cognition in general) they are not in space. This, in a nutshell, is Allison’s reconstruction of the argument for the non-spatiality of things in themselves. [ 44 ] While it is legitimate to consider objects as things in themselves using the categories, we do not thereby cognize them. This follows trivially from the fact that space and time are epistemic conditions for us: without representing objects in space and time, we can think of objects using the categories, but those thoughts are not cognitions (Allison 2004: 18).

Allison’s interpretation has been challenged on a number of points by other scholars. This section discusses a number of such objections.

4.3.1 The Triviality Objection

Some scholars object that Allison’s reading of the non-spatiality thesis, and the thesis that things in themselves are uncognizable by us, renders it a tautology, a trivial logical consequence of definitions. [ 45 ] We may represent the definition of “thing in itself” talk (on Allison’s interpretation) as follows:

And the non-spatiality thesis as:

But now the reader can see that to derive (C) from (1) we would need a further premise:

But this claim is not a definition, for it is equivalent to the claim that the concept of a discursive cognition is more general than the concept of a spatiotemporal discursive cognition, i.e., that a non-spatial discursive intellect is conceivable. So although the non-spatiality of things in themselves follows almost immediately from very general truths , on Allison’s reconstruction, it is not correct to say that it is a tautology, or that it is true by definition.

Nor is it true that the uncognizability of things in themselves is trivial, on Allison’s reading. For that principle only follows from the claim that there are sensible epistemic conditions, space and time. And that, on Allison’s reconstruction, is the key insight that sets Kant apart from both his rationalist and empiricist predecessors. Thus, while Allison’s interpretation makes the argument for the non-spatiality of things in themselves relatively easy , it does not render the conclusion trivial.

4.3.2 Epistemic conditions entail realism

Robinson (1994) raises a quite general objection to Allison’s notion of an epistemic condition, namely, an object must satisfy (fall under) a representation if that representation is to constitute an epistemic condition for that object (Robinson 1994 is a response, mainly, to Allison 1983 and 1987). So in the claim that “objects qua appearances” or “objects considered with our epistemic conditions” the qualification “ qua appearances” or “considered with our epistemic conditions” is otiose. If space is an epistemic condition of outer objects for us then this entails that objects we cognize are in space simpliciter . The claim that objects are spatial because of or in virtue of space being an epistemic condition for them entails either that these objects exist in virtue of our representations of them (which results in phenomenalism) or it entails that they are spatial in virtue of our representing them but would not be spatial otherwise. In the latter case, we are not cognizing them in representing them as spatial; we are misrepresenting them (Robinson 1994: 420–22).

Allison might reply to this objection by pointing out that it implicitly assumes that the claim empirical objects are in space is coherent independently of specifying a perspective on those objects. In the terminology of Allison (2004) it is committed to “transcendental realism” (see the supplementary entry: Allison on Transcendental Realism and Transcendental Idealism ). If this were Allison’s reply to the objection, then it would show that the coherence of transcendental idealism, on Allison’s reconstruction, rests on the premise that there is no coherent sense to questions about how objects are independent of any perspective on them. This is important, because it is not always clear that Allison’s reconstruction does depend on this premise, and it is not clear where Kant argues for such a conclusion.

4.3.3 Abstraction

One influential objection focuses on the role that “abstracting” from our spatiotemporal intuition plays in Allison’s reconstruction. Van Cleve puts it somewhat facetiously:

How is it possible for the properties of a thing to be vary according to how it is considered? As I sit typing these words, I have shoes on my feet. But consider me apart from my shoes: so considered, am I barefoot? I am inclined to say no; consider me how you will, I am not now barefoot. (Van Cleve 1999: 8) [ 46 ]

To put the point less facetiously: if the object o , considered as an object of spatiotemporal cognition, is spatial, then when we ascend to a more general perspective, in which we consider o as the object of discursive cognition in general, then we should not say that o is non-spatial ; we should merely not judge that it is spatial. To take an example of Guyer’s, when we consider a job applicant we might want to ignore or abstract from their race or sex; in doing so we would not judge that they are race-less or sex-less, but merely refrain from representing them as having a determinate race or sex.

Allison can interpret Kant’s claim that things in themselves are not spatial in either of two ways:

While ordinarily we might take these claims to be equivalent, when talking about “things in themselves” we can distinguish them, because “things in themselves” talk is talk about objects from a certain perspective (i.e., considered as objects of discursive intellect in general). In particular, (1) and (2) are equivalent to:

Allison’s critics assume that he opts for (1) (and its analysis, (1*)) and object, rightly, that this is the wrong conclusion to draw from the fact that discursive cognition is a more general notion than spatiotemporal discursive cognition. (Just as it would be wrong to conclude that the job candidate, considered in abstraction from his sex and race, is sex-less and race-less.) While it is sometimes unclear from Allison’s texts which analysis he opts for, the charitable reading is that he accepts (2*).

If this is correct, Allison’s reasoning can be reconstructed as follows:

But (6) must be distinguished from:

On this reconstruction of Allison, Kant is committed to (6) but not to (7).

We saw earlier that Allison’s critics assume that he must intend (7) rather than (6). They do so because they think that it is clear from the texts that Kant claims (7) and not the weaker (6). But that is not so clear from the texts, for instance:

Space represents no property at all of any things in themselves nor any relation of them each other, i.e., no determination of them that attaches to objects themselves and that would remain even if one were to abstract from all subjective conditions of intuition. (A26/B42)

Prima facie it is compatible with the letter of these texts that Kant is claiming (6) rather than (7). Note that (6) is not the claim that we cannot know, or justifiably assert that things in themselves are spatial. It is the claim that it is false to say that they are spatial .

The stronger objection to Allison’s view, as reconstructed here, is that (6) is too weak to be a plausible reconstruction of Kant’s non-spatiality thesis. Given Allison’s understanding of “thing in itself” talk (premise (3)) all that (6) requires is that there is some conceivable perspective on objects that is more general than the specifically spatiotemporal form of cognition that we have (premise (4)). It does not even require that it is possible that there be discursive intellects with a non-spatiotemporal form of cognition. All it requires is that the concept of discursive cognition as such is more general than the concept of spatiotemporal discursive cognition, which, trivially, it is. (6) is compatible with it being impossible for there to be non-spatiotemporal discursive cognition because all objects are necessarily spatiotemporal and hence can only be cognized spatiotemporally. In other words (6) is compatible with transcendental realism about space and time (as Kant defines that term)!

One potential Allisonian response to this objection would be that it implicitly presupposes that there is a way objects are independently of any perspective on them. In particular, the claim that (6) is compatible with all possible objects being spatial, and thus cannot be a reconstruction of the non-spatiality thesis, begs the question by assuming that that state-of-affairs does not need to relativized to a perspective, e.g., all possible objects as objects for a certain kind of mind are spatial. Thus, the coherence of Allison’s reconstruction again depends upon the claim that there is no “standpoint-independent” perspective on reality.

4.3.4 Things in themselves as more fundamental than appearances

One major textual hurdle for Allison’s “epistemic” reading of transcendental idealism is the various passages in which Kant describes things in themselves as more fundamental, more ontologically basic, than appearances, or describes things in themselves as the grounds of appearances. Allison appears to reverse this relation of dependence because things in themselves (objects from the relatively abstract transcendental perspective) are an abstraction from appearances (objects from the more determinate empirical perspective). Ameriks (1992: 334) raises this objection, and Allison (2004: 45) replies to it. Allison does not offer an alternate reading of the relevant texts, but instead points out that, in the case where the relative fundamentality of the phenomenal and noumenal is most important to Kant, namely the freedom of the will, [ 47 ] Ameriks’ objection assumes, once again, that there is some fact of the matter as to whether we are free or not, and this is to be settled by determining whether we are free at the most fundamental level (the noumenal level, on Ameriks’ reading). Once again, the coherence of Allison’s reading rests on the premise that there is no standpoint-independent perspective on reality (see the supplementary entry: Allison on Transcendental Realism and Transcendental Idealism ).

One prominent strand in recent scholarship on Kant’s transcendental idealism has been the development of quite sophisticated interpretations that try to retain the original insight that the appearance/thing in itself distinction is not a distinction between two different kinds of objects, while abandoning Allison-style “epistemic” readings. These interpretations take the distinction to be a metaphysical one between two different sets of properties had by one and the same set of objects. These metaphysical “dual aspect” interpretations differ in exactly how they understand the distinction between these different sets of properties (see also Allais (2004, 2006, 2007, 2015); Rosefeldt (2007, 2013); McDaniel (ms); and Marshall (2013)).

Perhaps the most influential metaphysical but non-phenomenalist interpretation of Kant’s idealism has been Langton (1998). Langton begins by pointing out that Kant thinks we are genuinely missing out on something in not knowing things in themselves, and this sense of “epistemic loss” is incompatible with Allison’s reading. As we saw in the previous section, “Allisonian humility” is apparently compatible with it being impossible that there are non-spatiotemporal objects and our forms of intuition being the only possible such forms. This loses Kant’s sense that we are genuinely cognitively deprived, that there is something about the world of which we are irremediably ignorant (Allison responds to Langton’s criticism in 2004: 9–11).

Having rejected Allison’s epistemic reading, Langton goes on to discuss a familiar tension between two of the central doctrines of Kant’s transcendental idealism:

( Existence ) Things in themselves exist.

( Humility ) We cannot know anything about things in themselves.

Langton’s solution to this, one of the oldest problems of Kant scholarship, is to interpret things in themselves as substances with intrinsic properties, and talk of “phenomena” as talk of the extrinsic properties of those substances (things in themselves). So in general,

In particular, this allows Langton to interpret ( Existence ) and ( Humility ) as:

( Existence *) Substances with intrinsic properties exist.

( Humility* ) We cannot cognize the intrinsic properties of substances.

The apparent tension between these doctrines has vanished. Langton’s interpretation also allows her to explain why the apparent tension between Humility and

( Non-spatiality ) Things in themselves are not spatial.

is merely apparent because, on her reading (Non-spatiality) is equivalent to:

( Non-spatiality *) Being spatial is not an intrinsic property of substances.

This is compatible with (Humility*) because we can know it merely by knowing that being spatial is an extrinsic property in general (thus is not an intrinsic property had by substances), and to know this we do not need to know anything about the intrinsic properties of substances. Langton thus offers a consistent, elegant interpretation of transcendental idealism that solves several of the oldest and hardest problems in the interpretation of Kant’s philosophy. [ 48 ]

Much of the critical reaction to Langton (1998) has focused on her reconstruction of Kant’s argument for Humility, but that will not be discussed further here; even if Langton is wrong about how Kant proves Humility, she may still be right about what Humility means and thus what the appearance/thing in itself distinction means (e.g., Allais 2006).

4.5.1 Textual evidence

There is substantial textual evidence that Kantian appearances have only extrinsic properties. For instance, this passage from the “Aesthetic”:

everything in our cognition that belongs to intuition (with the exception, therefore, of the feeling of pleasure and displeasure and the will, which are not cognitions at all) contains nothing but mere relations, of places in one intuition (extension), alteration of places (motion), and laws in accordance with which this alteration is determined (moving forces). (B67)

This, and other passages Langton cites, support attributing to Kant these theses:

However, in none of these passages does Kant directly state the stronger claim that:

It is clear that Kant holds (1)–(3) and less clear that he holds (4). The textual case for (4) is weaker, though not absent. It is presented below, in sub-section 4.5.2 .

There is a further textual problem for Langton’s interpretation, though. In at least two passages Kant denies that we can know relations between things in themselves:

Space represents no property at all of any things in themselves nor any relation of them each other […] (A26/B42) […] the things that we intuit are not in themselves what we intuit them to be, nor are their relations so constituted in themselves as they appear to us. (A42/B59)

In these passages Kant claims that space is not a relation among things in themselves, nor are relations among objects “in themselves” as they appear to us. This is hard to square with Langton’s reading. However, in her (2011) Langton responds to these textual objections by suggesting that the relations among things in themselves of which Kant speaks are internal relations, relations that supervene on the intrinsic properties of substances. [ 49 ]

4.5.2 Phenomena substantiata

One source of resistance to Langton’s interpretation is that Kant argues at length in the “First Analogy of Experience” that the category substance can be applied to phenomena:

all appearances contain that which persists (substance) as the object itself, and that which can change as its mere determination, i.e., a way in which the object exists. (A182)

This would appear to contradict Langton’s assertion that things in themselves are substances, while appearances (phenomena) are merely properties of substances.

Langton is well aware that Kant accepts “phenomenal substances” and endeavors to explain this within her picture. In doing so, she compiles a compelling set of textual evidence for her alternative reading of the “First Analogy” and the meaning of substance for phenomena. She begins by pointing to Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten’s notion of a phaenomena substantiata , a “substantiated phenomenon”, by which Baumgarten means a property that we treat as a substance by predicating other properties of it (Baumgarten, Metaphysica §193 (Ak. 18:150); quoted at Langton 1998: 53). She argues convincingly that Kant’s fundamental notion of a substance is of a being with properties but which is not a property of anything else. [ 50 ] Only such beings, of which other things are predicated (inhere in) but which are not predicated of (inhere in) anything else, are truly substances. However, the properties that are predicated of substances can also be spoken of as substances, because they themselves have properties (which might also have properties, and so on). [ 51 ] These are substantiated phenomena.

The question is, are Kantian empirical substances genuine substances or mere substantiated phenomena? Do the objects subsumed under the empirical schema of substance (absolute persistence in time) also fall under the pure category of substance (subjects of inherence which inhere in nothing further)? If not, then they must be predicated of some more fundamental substance, which drives Langton to conclude that appearances (phenomena) are properties of substances (she does point out the hesitant terms in which Kant describes phenomena as substances (1998, 57). Langton assembles an impressive array of evidence that Kant does regard empirical “substances” as phaenomena substantiata (e.g., A265/B321, A277/B333, Refl. 4421, 4422, 5294, Ak. 28:209). However, in context it is not clear whether Kant has the Baumgarten notion in mind, or whether this Latin expression means simply: phenomenal substance. So it is unclear, textually, whether phenomena are predicated of noumena in the Critique . [ 52 ]

In his metaphysics lectures, and other texts, Kant consistently distinguishes the inherence relation (which holds between a property and an entity of which it is predicated) from the relation of ground to consequence :

The world “substance” is clearly ambiguous. One translates it through the notion of self-sufficiency, i.e., the possibility of existing without a ground, but also as the possibility of existing without inhering [in something else]. (Ak. 28:1308; Ak. 8:225n, 28:562, 28:779, 28:638–9, 28:1041, 28:1104f)

Kant, following Baumgarten, criticizes Spinoza’s definition of substance as “what is in itself and conceived through itself” ( Ethics Id3) because it conflates two notions: (i) a being that is not grounded in, or caused by, anything more fundamental, and (ii) a being that does not inhere in anything more fundamental. The second is the correct definition of substance, according to Kant; by conflating these two notions, Spinoza forecloses the following possibility: there are substances distinct from God (they are not modes of God), all of which are grounded in God.

To bring this back to Langton, we need to distinguish two different claims:

Langton attributes (i) to Kant, but her textual case appears to support (ii), at best. [ 53 ] This is significant, because (ii) is far less controversial. For instance, it is in principle acceptable to the qualified phenomenalist, because the extrinsic properties of things in themselves include (presumably) properties like causing us to have such and such experience .

5. One Object or Two?

Since Karl Ameriks’ classic survey of the literature, Ameriks (1982), it has been customary to divide interpretations of transcendental idealism into “two object” readings and “one object” readings. By contrast, this article has been organized around the distinction between phenomenalist readings, and non-phenomenalist dual-aspect readings. This section explores the relation between the “one object”/“two object” distinction and the phenomenalist/non-phenomenalist distinction among different interpretations of Kant’s idealism.

The distinction between “one object” and “two object” readings comes down to the question of whether appearances, in general, are numerically identical to things in themselves: “one object” readers claim they are (Adickes 1924: 20, 27; Allais 2004: 657; Langton 1998: 13; Westphal 1968: 120), and "two object" readers deny this. [ 54 ] Whether all things in themselves are numerically identical to appearances is not at issue, for most one object readers will admit there could be things that never appear to us (cf. B306, where Kant seems to admit as much) (although it might be misleading to call them things “in themselves” since they never appear to us, so we never consider them as they are “in themselves”). The qualification “in general” is necessary because some “two object” readers will admit that some appearances are also things in themselves; e.g., many “two object” readers will admit that, in the case of the self, there is a single object, a thing in itself, that appears to itself as a spatiotemporal object (on this issue, see Adams (1997), Aquila (1979), and Ameriks’ discussion of Aquila in his 1982).

However, the characterization of these views as “one object” and “two object” is unfortunate, because it is not a commitment of “two object” readings that, for each appearance, there is one and only one thing in itself that appears as that object. The “two object” interpreter can hold that each appearance is the appearance of an indefinite plurality of things in themselves. Nor is the other standard moniker, “one world” versus “two world”, helpful, either, for “world” is a technical term in Kant’s metaphysics and has a very specific meaning. [ 55 ] One can coherently hold a “non-identity” interpretation while denying that appearances in space and time constitute a “world” at all. [ 56 ]

This section explores how the identity/non-identity debate relates to the non-phenomenalist/phenomenalist debate. They have often been conflated by equating the “two world” interpretation (non-identity) with the phenomenalist one, and conversely, by equating the “one world” interpretation (identity) with the anti-phenomenalist one. There are grounds to think, however, that these are distinct debates. Section 5.1 examines whether claims about the numerical identity or non-identity of appearances and things in themselves are meaningful at all, and, if they are, what warrant we could have for making them within Kant’s theoretical philosophy. Section 5.2 looks at whether paradigmatically anti-phenomenalist interpretations (e.g., Langton 1998) can be understood as non-identity views. Section 5.3 examines some reasons for thinking that the phenomenalist interpretation is compatible with the “identity” of appearances and things in themselves. Section 5.4 considers the interpretive landscape in light of these results. [ 57 ]

As Henry Allison and others have pointed out, it is not clear that there is any content to the question of whether an appearance is numerically identical to a thing in itself, outside of moral contexts. [ 58 ] It is relatively clear that in the context of his moral philosophy, Kant wants to assert that one and the same object, a rational agent, can be considered as an appearance and as a thing in itself. Considered as an appearance, a rational agent is subject to conditions of experience (space, time, and the categories). Considered as a thing in itself, a rational agent can at least consistently be thought of as free (because independent of the deterministic causal order of space and time), while practical reason gives us warrant for positively asserting that the agent is free. Kant typically expresses this solution to the problem of freedom and determinism in terms of the numerical identity of the appearance of the agent and the agent as thing in itself (e.g., Ak. 5: 105, 114). Practical reason gives both content and warrant to the assertion of numerical identity: content , because the assertion of numerical identity means that one and the same noumenal agent is the cause of and therefore responsible for the actions of an empirical rational agent over time, and warrant , because this assumption of the unity of a noumenal agent over time is a presupposition of our ordinary moral cognition of blame and praise. But neither of these seem to hold in the theoretical use of reason. It is not clear that within the theoretical use of reason we can give any content to the claim of the numerical identity (or distinctness) of appearances and things in themselves, nor any warrant for asserting or denying it. [ 59 ]

In defense of the contentfulness of these identity claims, one might argue that the term “appearance” and “thing in itself” each has an extension, a set of objects, and the question of identity is perfectly well-formed: do these two sets have a non-empty intersection? If so, at least one appearance is identical to a thing in itself. But this argument begs the question by assuming that the question of whether the set of appearances and the set of thing in themselves has an intersection is itself well-formed; whether this is the case is precisely what is at issue.

While many interpreters (notably Adams 1997: 822) think that we can have no warrant for asserting the identity or non-identity of appearances and things in themselves in general, and thus think the identity/non-identity debate (at least in theoretical contexts) concerns something about which Kant must be agnostic, there are those who disagree (Stang 2014; cf. Walker 2010). In texts quoted earlier, Kant claims that appearances would cease to exist if there were not minds to experience them. On the assumption that this is not true of things in themselves, consider the following argument:

This argument purports to show that, since appearances and things in themselves have different modal properties, they must be distinct. Since (P1) and (P2) are claims Kant makes in the context of his theoretical philosophy, this argument provides warrant for denying identity on purely theoretical grounds.

Langton’s view can be interpreted as either an identity reading or a non-identity reading. The difference is somewhat subtle, but it has important consequences. On the identity version of Langton (1998), to talk about things in themselves is to predicate intrinsic properties of substances, while to talk about phenomena is to predicate extrinsic properties of those very substances . On the non-identity version of Langton (1998), phenomena are numerically identical to those extrinsic properties. This would be a non-identity reading because substances are not identical to their properties (either extrinsic or intrinsic). By contrast, on the identity reading, an expression for a phenomenon refers to a substance. The difference between these readings can be illustrated by how they give truth-conditions for the judgment that some phenomenon x has property F :

( Identity ) x has F = F is among the extrinsic properties of x

( Non-Identity ) x has F = x , an extrinsic property of some substance y (≠ x ), has F

While Langton initially explains her view in a way that suggests an identity reading, she in fact opts for a non-identity reading, for good reason. Firstly, on the identity reading Kant would have to identify subjects of predication in empirical judgments with substances. This is problematic because it would bring substances into the world of space and time. For instance, if I can make a judgment about this table, then it would be a judgment about the extrinsic properties of this table, and this table would be a substance with intrinsic properties (although being a table would, presumably, not be one of them). Alternately, if we identify the table as a collection of extrinsic properties of substances, then we can go on to predicate further properties of the table, without having to identify the substance or substances of which the table is ultimately predicated. [ 60 ]

Some scholars have defended what might initially seem like a contradiction in terms: a phenomenalist “one object” (identity) interpretation of appearances and things in themselves. [ 61 ] On such a view, the appearance and the thing in itself are one and the same object, but considered with respect to different properties: the properties we experience the object as having, and the properties it has. On this interpretation, Kant is qualified phenomenalist because he holds that:

( Phenomenalism P ) The core physical properties of objects in space are grounded in the contents of our experience of them.

His attitude to:

( Phenomenalism E ) The existence of objects in space is ground partly or wholly in the contents of our experience of them.

depends upon how we read it, on this interpretation. On the one hand, we can understand it either as the “ de re ” claim

( Phenomenalism E *) ( x )( x is an object in space ⊃ the existence of x is partly or wholly grounded in our experience of x )

in which case Kant would reject it, because each such object in space is also a thing in itself and, as such, does not depend for its existence on our experience of it. On the other hand, we could understand it as the de dicto claim

( Phenomenalism E **) The fact that there are objects in space is partly or wholly grounded in our experience of objects in space.

in which case Kant would accept it, because there being objects in space depends upon our experiencing objects as in space.

This leads to an important exegetical point. One of the main motivations for “non-identity” interpretations are passages in which Kant claims that appearances would not exist if there were not subjects to experience them, e.g., A42/B59. This might be thought to directly entail phenomenalism, for, if appearances would not exist without subjects to experience them, but things in themselves would, then a fortiori appearances and things in themselves are distinct. This line of reasoning can be represented formally as (P1), (P2) and C from section 5.1. But the identity reader can interpret Kant’s claim “if I were to take away the thinking subject, the whole corporeal world would have to disappear” as meaning: without subjects to experience them, appearances would not exist as appearances , i.e., would not appear. In other words, she can reinterpret (P1) as:

But the conjunction of this and (P2) does not entail (C); they are compatible with the identity reading. These passages do not force the non-identity interpretation on us. (For more on phenomenalist identity readings see the supplementary article: Phenomenalist Identity Readings and the Problem of Illusion .)

We have seen some reasons to think that the resolutely anti-phenomenalist reading of Langton (1998) and the phenomenalist reading can be re-interpreted as, respectively, a non-identity reading and an identity reading. One reaction would be to conclude that the interpretive options are simply more complex than is usually appreciated:

But the distinction between the two different versions of Langton, and between the non-identity version of phenomenalism (Aquila 1983; Van Cleve 1999) and the identity version of phenomenalism (Adickes 1924; Westphal 1968) is relatively recondite. It depends on the controversial assumption that assertions of identity between appearances and things in themselves, outside of practical contexts, have a content.

Furthermore, Henry Allison has recently argued that even his view is neutral on the identity/non-identity debate:

although it is sometimes assumed that [the two-aspect reading] commits Kant to a highly implausible one-to-one mapping of the phenomenal and noumenal, I take that to be a red herring. First, it is one thing to distinguish between things (taken collectively) as they are for us in virtue of the sensible conditions of human cognition and as they might be for some putative pure understanding, unburdened by such conditions, and quite another to affirm a one-to-one correspondence or isomorphism between the members of the two domains. (Allison 2004: 459 note 19; cf. Allison 1987: 168)

Allison’s idea is that the distinction between the empirical and the transcendental standpoint is a distinction between how they consider objects as a whole , not how they consider particular objects. The Epistemic reading is not committed to Identity, but neither is it committed to Non-Identity. So an Identity version of the Epistemic reading is possible (according to which we can consider each object individually from either standpoint), as is an Epistemic reading that is neither an Identity nor a Non-Identity reading (on which we remain agnostic as to whether objects considered from one standpoint are numerically identical to objects considered from another). [ 62 ] So we might conclude that our interpretive options are even more numerous than we initially thought:

But notice we now have doubling of interpretations: identity and non-identity versions of Langton (1998), identity and non-identity versions of phenomenalist views, and identity and “neither identity nor non-identity” versions of Allison.

However, if one thinks that claims of identity between appearances and things in themselves are contentless (see section 5.1), at least outside of the context of practical philosophy, then the menu of interpretive options will appear as:

On such a reading, there is no substance, outside of the practical context, to the question of whether an appearance is numerically identical to a thing in itself, so the identity and non-identity versions of, e.g., phenomenalism, are equivalent. [ 63 ] If one holds instead that these identity claims have a content but that we cannot know them on theoretical grounds alone (see section 5.1) then one will likewise see these interpretive options as so constrained, because, although there is a difference in content between, say, the identity and non-identity versions of phenomenalism, Kant must be agnostic as to which is true.

6. Things in themselves, noumena , and the transcendental object

Up to this point, we have focused primarily on the nature of Kantian appearances, and their relation to things in themselves, questions (a) and (c) from section one. However, one of the main questions that must be answered in any interpretation of Kant’s transcendental idealism is, what are things in themselves? Obviously, different interpretations will give very different answers to this question:

Phenomenalist interpretations . Perhaps the best statement of the phenomenalist interpretation of things in themselves is given by Erich Adickes (1924: 14–19): things in themselves are a plurality of mind-independent centers of force. On this view, things in themselves are just what we pre-theoretically took ordinary spatiotemporal objects to be: objects that exist, and possess their core physical properties, wholly independently of our representations of them, and which are (among) the causal inputs to our perceptual faculties (a variant of this thought is expressed by Ameriks 2003: 23–25).

Epistemic interpretations : On the epistemic reading, things in themselves are simply objects considered independently of our distinctively spatiotemporal form of intuition. Thus, they are objects considered as objects of a discursive cognition in general. This very abstract thought is not the basis of any cognition, however; it is merely a reminder that space and time are epistemic conditions, without which we cannot cognize any object.

Metaphysical “dual aspect” interpretations . On this family of interpretations, things in themselves are objects with a given set of properties. Different interpretations give a different answer as to which set of properties constitute things “as they are in themselves”. On Langton’s reading, for instance, things in themselves are substances with intrinsic properties.

In this section we distinguish “things in themselves” from other, closely related Kantian notions: noumena , and the “transcendental object”.

In the section “On the ground of the distinction of all objects into phenomena and noumena ”, which he substantially revised for the B Edition, Kant reiterates his argument that we cannot cognize objects beyond the bounds of possible experience, and introduces a complex distinction between phenomena and noumena.

Fortunately, it is relatively clear what phenomena are: “appearances to the extent that as objects they are thought in accordance with the unity of the categories are called phenomena” (A249). Earlier, in the “Aesthetic”, Kant had defined appearance as: “the undetermined object of an empirical intuition” (A20/B34). All objects of empirical intuition are appearances, but only those that are “thought in accordance with the unity of the categories” are phenomena. For instance, if I have a visual after-image or highly disunified visual hallucination, that perception may not represent its object as standing in cause-effect relations, or being an alteration in an absolutely permanent substance. These would be appearances but not phenomena. The objects of “universal experience”, as defined in section 3, are phenomena because the categories determine the a priori conceptual form; universal experience represents its objects under the unity of the categories.

Kant’s then introduces the concept of noumena:

if, however, I suppose that there be things that are merely objects of the understanding and that, nevertheless, can be given to an intuition, although not to sensible intuition (as coram intuiti intellectuali ), then such things would be called noumena ( intelligibilia ). (A249)

The concept of a noumenon, as defined here, is the concept of an object of cognition for an intellect that is not, like ours, discursive, and thus has a non-sensible form of intuition, which Kant here designates “intellectual intuition”. [ 64 ] A sensible intuition is one that can only intuit objects by being causally affected by them; a non-sensible intuition is one in which the intuition of the object brings the object into existence. Thus, the concept of a noumenon is the concept of an object that would be cognized by an intellect whose intuition brings its very objects into existence. Clearly, we do not cognize any noumena, since to cognize an object for us requires intuition and our intuition is sensible, not intellectual.

Kant then connects the concept of noumena to things in themselves:

it also follows naturally from the concept of an appearance in general that something must correspond to it which is not in itself appearance, for appearance can be nothing for itself and outside of our kind of representation; thus, if there is not to be a constant circle, the word "appearance" must already indicate a relation to something the immediate representation of which is, to be sure, sensible, but which in itself, without this constitution of our sensibility (on which the form of our intuition is grounded), must be something, i.e., an object independent of sensibility. Now from this arises the concept of a noumenon , which, however, is not at all positive and does not signify a determinate cognition of something in general, in which I abstract from all form of sensible intuition. (A251–2)

This passage begins with the familiar point that the very concept of appearance requires that there be something that is not appearance that appears. Usually Kant makes this point using the concept “things in themselves” (e.g., in the Prolegomena (Ak. 4:314–5); cf. Bxxvi–xxvii, B306, and B307). However, here he claims that this idea—that it cannot be “appearances all the way down”—brings with it the idea of noumena. This is puzzling. Why must whatever it is that appear to us as phenomena be conceived of as objects of intellectual intuition?

Kant clarifies precisely this point in the B Edition by distinguishing between a positive and a negative sense of “noumena”:

If by a noumenon we understand a thing insofar as it is not an object of our sensible intuition , because we abstract from the manner of our intuition of then this is a noumenon in the negative sense. But if we understand by that an object of a non-sensible intuition then we assume a special kind of intuition, namely intellectual intuition, which, however, is not our own, and the possibility of which we cannot understand, and this would be the noumenon in a positive sense. (B307)

Noumena in a positive sense are simply noumena as Kant originally defined that notion in the A edition: objects of an intellectual (non-sensible) intuition. The negative concept of noumena, however, is simply the concept of objects that are not spatiotemporal (not objects of our sensible intuition, namely space and time). But then it follows that things in themselves are noumena in the negative sense, retrospectively clarifying the passage from the A edition quoted immediately above, where Kant seems to draw from the “Transcendental Aesthetic” the conclusion that there are noumena: the concept of appearance requires that something appears, and this must be a negative noumena.

Putting these pieces together we can see that “things in themselves” [ Dinge an sich selbst ] and (negative) “noumena” are concepts that belong to two different distinctions: “thing in itself” is one half of the appearance/thing in itself distinction, which Kant originally defined at A491/B519 in terms of their existence: appearances have no existence “grounded in themselves” while things in themselves do. “Noumena” is one half of the distinction phenomena/noumena which Kant characterizes at B307 as the distinction between what can be an object of our sensible spatiotemporal intuition and what cannot be an object of sensible intuition. (Kant here appears to overlook the possibility of objects of sensible but non-spatiotemporal intuition). One is a distinction in what grounds the existence of objects; the other is a distinction in what kinds of intuition can present those objects. However, we can make a connection between them: things in themselves, the objects whose existence is “ground in itself”, and which appear to us in space and time, cannot be objects of any sensible intuition, so they are negative noumena. Whether, additionally, they are also objects of an intuitive intellect, is a separate matter. This is a point about the relations among these concepts; it holds whether or not they are possibly instantiated.

In the “Phenomena and noumena” section, Kant distinguishes the concept of a noumenon from the concept of a “transcendental object” (A250). This is a reference to a notion introduced in the A version of the “Transcendental Deduction”:

The pure concept of the transcendental object (which in all of our cognition is really one and the same = X ) is that which in all of our empirical concepts in general can provide relation to an object, i.e., objective reality. Now this concept cannot contains any determinate intuition at all, and therefore contains nothing but that unity which must be encountered in a manifold of cognition insofar as it stands in relation to an object. (A109; cf. A104)

The “concept of a transcendental object” might be fruitfully thought of as “the transcendental concept of an object”: the concept of “object” that makes experience possible. Our mind’s synthesis of representations into experience of objects is guided and made possible by the idea that there is a way objects are that must be tracked by our representations of them. This wholly abstract concept of “a way things are” is the concept of the transcendental object = X , the indeterminate concept of the “target” of our representational activity. Consequently, the concept of the transcendental object must be distinct from the concept of “things in themselves” or “negative noumena”. The concept of things in themselves is the concept of the (unknowable by us) objects (or aspects of objects) that appear to us the 3D world of space and time. They are the grounds of phenomena, while the transcendental object is the very abstract idea of those objects in space and time as the targets of our cognitive activity.

Another way to appreciate this distinction is to consider the difference in why these notions of object (noumena, transcendental object) are unknowable by us. We cannot cognize things in themselves because cognition requires intuition, and our intuition only ever presents appearances, not things in themselves. We cannot cognize the transcendental object because the transcendental object is a purely schematic, general idea of empirical objectivity. Whenever we cognize a determinate empirical object we are cognitively deploying the transcendental concept of an object in general, but we are not coming to know anything about the object of that concept as such.

This is Kant’s point in “phenomena and noumena” when he writes:

This transcendental object cannot even be separated from the sensible data , for then nothing would remain through which it would be thought. It is therefore no object of cognition in itself, but only the representation of appearances under the concept of an object in general, which is determinable through the manifold of those appearances. (A250–1)

The (negative) concept of a noumenon is the concept of an object that is not an object of our sensible spatiotemporal intuition. But the transcendental object makes no sense in abstraction from intuition, because it is merely the abstract concept that the unity of our intuitions must have in order to constitute experience of an object (cf. Allison’s classic 1968 paper).

This article has traced the meaning of transcendental idealism, sometimes referred to as “critical” or “formal” idealism, through the text of the Critique of Pure Reason and various interpretive controversies. Historically, the main question dividing different interpretations is whether Kant is a phenomenalist about object in space and time and, if so, in what sense. The phenomenalist interpretation of Kant, dominant among Kant’s immediate predecessors and later German idealists, was challenged in twentieth century Anglophone scholarship by, among others, Graham Bird, Gerold Prauss, and Henry Allison. Some later scholars have retained a central idea of these scholars’ reading—that the appearance/thing in itself distinction is a distinction between distinct aspects of objects, not distinct kinds of objects—while jettisoning the purely epistemological interpretation of Kant’s idealism. The meaning and philosophical significance of “transcendental idealism” has been debated by Kant’s readers since 1781, and this debate shows no sign of abating any time soon.

The standard German edition of Kant’s works is:

• [Ak.] Königlichen Preußischen (later Deutschen) Akademie der Wissenschaften (ed.), 1900–, Kants gesammelte Schriften , Berlin: Georg Reimer (later Walter De Gruyter).

The most authoritative English translations of Kant’s works are in:

• Guyer, P. and A. Wood (eds.), 1992–, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Individual volumes used in the preparation of this entry are:

• Allison, H. and P. Heath (eds.), 2002, Theoretical Philosophy after 1781 , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Guyer, P. and A. Wood (eds.), 1998, Critique of Pure Reason , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Zweig, A. (ed.), 1999, Correspondence , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

We refer to certain Kantian works by the following abbreviations:

• [ Prolegomena ] Prolegomena to any future metaphysics . Translation by Gary Hatfield in Theoretical Philosophy after 1781 .
• [ On a discovery ] On a discovery according to which all future critiques of reason have been rendered superfluous by a previous one . Translation by Henry Allison in Theoretical Philosophy after 1781 .
• Fichte, J.G., 1845–1846, Johann Gottlieb Fichtes sämtliche Werke , edited by I. H. Fichte, 8 vols, Berlin: Veit.
• Jacobi, F.H., 1812, Werke , edited by F. Roth and F. Köppen, 6 vols, Leipzig: Fleischer.
• Abela, P., 2002, Kant’s Empirical Realism , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Adams, R., 1997, “Things in Themselves”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 57: 801–825.
• Adickes, E., 1924, Kant und das Ding an Sich , Berlin: Pan Verlag.
• –––, 1929, Kants Lehre von der doppelten Affektion unseres Ichs als Schlüssel zu seiner Erkenntnistheorie , Verlag von J.C.B. Mohr: Tübingen.
• Allais, L., 2003, “Kant’s transcendental idealism and contemporary anti-realism”, International Journal of Philosophical Studies , 11: 369–392.
• –––, 2004, “Kant’s “One World”: Interpreting Transcendental Idealism”, British Journal for the History of Philosophy , 12: 655–684.
• –––, 2006, “Kant on Intrinsic Natures: a Critique of Langton”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 73: 143–169.
• –––, 2007, “Kant’s Idealism and the Secondary Quality Analogy”, Journal of the History of Philosophy , 45: 459–484.
• –––, 2015, Manifest Reality: Kant’s Idealism and his Realism , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Allison, H., 1968, “Kant’s Concept of the Transcendental Object”, Kant-Studien , 59: 165–186.
• –––, 1973, “Kant’s Critique of Berkeley”, Journal of the History of Philosophy , 11: 43–63.
• –––, 1976, “The Non-spatiality of Things in Themselves for Kant”, Journal of the History of Philosophy , 14: 313–321.
• –––, 1983, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism , New Haven: Yale University Press.
• –––, 1987, “Transcendental Idealism: The Two Aspect View”, in Ouden and Moen (eds.), New Essays on Kant , 155–178.
• –––, 2004, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism , New Haven: Yale University Press. Revised and Enlarged Edition.
• Ameriks, K., 1982, “Recent Work on Kant’s Theoretical Philosophy”, The Philosophical Quarterly , 19: 1–24.
• –––, 1992, “Kantian Idealism Today”, History of Philosophy Quarterly , 9: 329–342.
• –––, 2003, Interpreting Kant’s Three Critiques , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Aquila, R., 1979, “Things in Themselves: Intentionality and Reality in Kant”, Archiv Fur Geschichte der Philosophie , 61: 293–307.
• –––, 1983, Representational Mind: A Study of Kant’s Theory of Knowledge , Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• Beck, L.W., 1960, A Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Beiser, F., 1987, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy between Kant and Fichte , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• –––, 2002, German Idealism: The Struggle against Subjectivism, 1781–1801 , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Bennett, J., 1966, Kant’s Analytic , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Bird, G., 1962, Kant’s Theory of Knowledge , London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• –––, 2000, “Review of Kantian Humility ”, The Philosophical Quarterly , 50: 105–108.
• Chignell, A., 2010, “Causal Refutations of Idealism”, The Philosophical Quarterly , 60: 487–507.
• Cohen, H., 1871/1885, Kants Theorie der Erfahrung , Berlin: Dümmler. Third revised edition, 1885. Reprinted in Cohen, Werke , H. Holzhey and H. Weidebach (eds.), Hildesheim: G. Olms.
• –––, 1907, Kommentar zu Immanuel Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft , Leipizig: Meiner.
• Collins, A., 1999, Possible Experience , Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
• Cummins, P., 1968, “Kant on Outer and Inner Intuition”, Noûs , 2: 271–292.
• Dicker, G., 2008, “Kant’s Refutation of Idealism”, Noûs , 42: 80–108.
• –––, 2011, “Kant’s Refutation of Idealism: a Reply to Chignell”, The Philosophical Quarterly , 61: 175–183.
• Dunlop, K., 2009, “The Unity of Time’s Measure: Kant’s Reply to Locke”, Philosophers’ Imprint , 9: 1–31.
• Drexler, H., 1904, Die doppelte Affektion des erkennenden Subjekts , Beuthen o.S.: Th. Kirch.
• Dryer, D.P., 1966, Kant’s Solution for Verification in Metaphysics , London: Allen & Unwin.
• Emundts, D., 2008, “Kant’s Critique of Berkeley’s Concept of Objectivity”, in D. Garber and B. Longuenesse (eds.), Kant and the Early Moderns , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• –––, 2010, “The Refutation of Idealism and the Distinction between Phenomena and Noumena ”, in P. Guyer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Erdmann, B., 1878, Kants Kriticismus in der ersten und in der zweiten Auflage der Kritik der reinen Vernunft , Leipzig: Voss.
• Falkenstein, L., 1991, “Kant, Mendelssohn, Lambert, and the Subjectivity of Time”, Journal of the History of Philosophy , 29: 227–251.
• –––, 2000, “Langton on Things in Themselves”, Kantian Review , 5: 49–64.
• Findlay, J.N., 1981, Kant and the Transcendental Object , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Förster, E., 2012, The Twenty Five Years of Philosophy: A Systematic Reconstruction , trans. B. Bowman, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Gram, M., 1975, “The Myth of Double Affection”, in Werkmeister (ed.), Reflections on Kant’s Philosophy . University of Florida Press: Gainesville.
• –––, 1981, “Intellectual Intuition: The Continuity Thesis”, Journal of the History of Ideas , 42:287–304.
• Grier, M., 2001, Kant’s Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Guyer, P., 1983, “Kant’s Intentions in the Refutation of Idealism”, The Philosophical Review , 92: 329–383.
• –––, 1987, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Heidegger, M. 1929. Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik . Vittorio Klostermann: Frankfurt a/M.
• Hanna, R., 2000, “The Inner and the Outer: Kant’s ‘Refutation’ Reconsidered”, Ratio , 13: 146–174.
• Hogan, D., 2009a, “How to Know Unknowable Things in Themselves ”, Noûs , 43: 49–63.
• –––, 2009b, “Noumenal Affection”, The Philosophical Review , 4: 501–532.
• Kemp Smith, N., 1962, A Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason , New York: Humanities Press.
• Köhnke, K., 1986, Entstehung und Aufstieg des Neukantianismus: die deutsche Universitatsphilosophie zwischen Idealismus und Positivismus , Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
• Langton, R., 1998, Kantian Humility , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2011, “Kant’s Phenomena: Extrinsic or Relational Properties? A Reply to Allais”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 73: 170–185.
• Marshall, C., 2013, “Kant’s Appearances and Things in Themselves as Qua-Objects”, The Philosophical Quarterly , 63: 520–545.
• Matthews, H.E., 1969, “Strawson on Transcendental Idealism”, The Philosophical Review , 19: 204–220.
• McDaniel, K., Ms, “Kantian Ignorance”.
• Paton, H.J., 1936, Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience , 2 vols., London: Allen & Unwin.
• Patton, L., 2005, “The Critical Philosophy Renewed: The Bridge Between Hermann Cohen’s Early Work on Kant and Later Philosophy of Science”, Angelaki , 10: 109–118.
• Prauss, G., 1974, Kant und das Problem der Dinge an Sich , Bonn: Grundman.
• Richardson, A., 2003, “Conceiving, Experiencing, and Conceiving Experience: Neo-Kantianism and the History of the Concept of Experience”, Topoi , 22: 55–67.
• Robinson, H., 1994, “Two Perspectives on Kant’s Appearances and Things-in-Themselves”, Journal of the History of Philosophy , 33: 411–441.
• Rosefeldt, T., 2001, “Review of Kantian Humility ”, Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung , 9 (2001): 236–69.
• –––, 2007, “Dinge an sich und sekundäre Qualitäten”, in J. Stolzenberg (ed.), Kant in der Gegenwart , Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 167–209.
• –––, 2013, “Subject-Dependence and Trendelenburg’s Gap”, in Akten des XI. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses , New York and Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, vol. 2, 755–64.
• Sassen, B., 2000, Kant’s Early Critics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Schopenhauer, A., 1938, Sämtliche Werke , edited by Arthur Hubscher, Leipzig: Brockhaus.
• Sellars, W., 1968, Science and Metaphysics: Variations on Kantian Themes , London: Routledge.
• Stang, N., 2012, “Kant on Complete Determination and Infinite Judgment”, British Journal for the History of Philosophy , 20: 1117–1139.
• –––, 2013, “Freedom, Knowledge and Affection”, Kantian Review , 18(1): 96–106.
• –––, 2014, “The Non-Identity of Appearances and Things in Themselves”, Noûs , 48(1): 106–136.
• –––, 2015, “Who’s Afraid of Double Affection?” Philosophers’ Imprint , 15:1–28.
• Strawson, P.F., 1966, The Bounds of Sense , London: Methuen.
• Turbayne, C., 1955, “Kant’s Refutation of Dogmatic Idealism”, Philosophical Quarterly , 5: 225–244.
• –––, 1969, “Kant’s Relation to Berkeley”, in L.W. Beck (ed.), Kant Studies Today , La Salle, IL: Open Court.
• Vaihinger, H., 1881/1892, Commentar zur Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft , 2 vols., Stuttgart: W. Spemann.
• –––, 1884, “Zu KantsWiderlegung des Idealismus”, Strassberger Abhandlungen zur Philosophie , Freiburg: Mohr.
• Van Cleve, J., 1999, Problems from Kant , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Vogel, J., 1993, “The Problem of Self-Knowledge in Kant’s ‘Refutation of Idealism’”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 53: 875–887.
• Walker, R., 1985, “Idealism: Kant and Berkeley”, in J. Foster and H. Robinson (ed.), Essays on Berkeley , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2010, “Kant on the Number of Worlds”, British Journal for the History of Philosophy , 18: 821–843.
• Weldon, T.D., 1958, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Westphal, M., 1968, “In Defense of the Thing in Itself”, Kant-Studien , 59: 118–141.
• Westphal, K.R., 2000, “Kant, Hegel, and the fate of ‘the’ Intuitive Intellect”, in S. Sedgewick (ed.), The Reception of Kant’s Critical Philosophy , Cambridge University Press.
• Wilson, M., 1971, “Kant and the ‘Dogmatic Idealism of Berkeley”, Journal of the History of Philosophy , 9: 459–475. Reprinted in Wilson (ed.), 1999, Ideas and Mechanism: Essays on Early Modern Philosophy , Princeton: Princeton University Press: 277–293.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Immanuel Kant Corpora (in German)
• Kant Papers.org
• North American Kant Society

Kant, Immanuel | Kant, Immanuel: view of mind and consciousness of self | Kant, Immanuel: views on space and time

Copyright © 2016 by Nicholas F. Stang < nick . stang @ gmail . com >

• Accessibility

Support SEP

Mirror sites.

View this site from another server:

• Info about mirror sites

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is copyright © 2024 by The Metaphysics Research Lab , Department of Philosophy, Stanford University

Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

Social Sciences

© 2024 Inquiries Journal/Student Pulse LLC . All rights reserved. ISSN: 2153-5760.

Disclaimer: content on this website is for informational purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical or other professional advice. Moreover, the views expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of Inquiries Journal or Student Pulse, its owners, staff, contributors, or affiliates.

Home | Current Issue | Blog | Archives | About The Journal | Submissions Terms of Use :: Privacy Policy :: Contact

Need an Account?

Forgot password? Reset your password »

George Berkeley’s Philosophy Essay

Introduction, locke’s criticism, implications to the knowledge of external world, reasons for subjective idealism, works cited.

George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, was a profound philosopher of the early modern period, who criticized Locke’s ideas of perception and nature of substances. He is a follower of the idealist theory claiming that reality exists only in people’s minds by perception. Two of his works, Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (Principles) and Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (Dialogues) are examined in the present paper to describe Berkeley’s philosophy and his arguments against materialism.

Before starting the points on which Berkeley criticized Locke and other materialists, one should refer to Locke’s “copy theory.” According to this theory, knowledge is the perception of connection or repugnancy of humans’ ideas (Ferguson 117). In simpler words, Locke claims that a person cannot percept an object directly; however, he or she refers only to the ideas or the copies of the objects that are created in their minds. The concept presupposes that material matters exist and have primary and secondary qualities. The primary qualities, such as solidity, extension, mobility, and number form a simple idea inside minds, while secondary qualities, such as color, sound, and taste produce sensations. These concepts attracted much criticism from idealists, such as George Berkeley.

Berkeley’s critique of Locke’s theory is explicitly depicted in the Dialogues where Philonous, an idealist, explains his concepts to Hylas with materialistic views. Berkeley insists that sensible qualities must be ideal rather than belonging to a substance, as claimed by Locke. The first argument supporting the statement is that some qualities as heat, for example, are similar to pleasure or pain (Berkeley, Dialogues 4).

The second point mentioned by Philenous is the issue with relativity, as qualities may vary depending on the perceiver (Berkeley, Dialogues 6). For instance, if something is hot and bitter to one person, it may be cold and sweet to another. Furthermore, Berkeley gives an example of microscopes to undermine the “plausible thought that the true visual qualities of objects are revealed by close examination” (“George Berkeley” para. 34). In short, even though there are some flaws in Berkeley’s arguments, he effectively criticizes Locke’s theory on the ground of substance existence.

Even though the arguments presented above may seem appropriate, they can be contested by the idea of primary and secondary qualities. It may be assumed that primary qualities cannot be misperceived, while people can interpret the secondary ones, as in the example with substances tasting different depending on the perceiver. However, Berkeley denies the ability to abstract the primary qualities from the secondary ones, as it is impossible to conceive a material body that is extended but not colored (“George Berkeley”). In brief, Locke’s concept fails to stand against the critique provided by Berkeley in the Dialogues.

Berkeley offers an innovative concept of a human’s ability to know and understand the outside world. Even though Berkeley does not directly deny the existence of objects, he considers the objects to be the collection of ideas (Berkeley, Principles 11). In simple words, an apple is a compilation of its color, taste, and shape and it cannot exist independent of a person conceiving it. This leads to an understanding that one cannot immediately get knowledge about an external object. Instead, a person can perceive ordinary objects only indirectly or mediately, while immediately perceiving only ideas. Therefore, it can be stated that Berkeley denies the existence of a material world, but creates another dualism of a physical world, or the world of ordinary objects, and the mind.

The primary reason for Berkeley not becoming a radical skeptic to materialists is the problem with the inability to wish things into or out of existence. Berkeley answers this question by introducing the greater mind, the mind of God that controls the universe all the ideas. As objects do not depend on people’s wishes, there must be a kind of existence outside of their minds. However, these ideas cannot be without a mind perceiving them; therefore, there must be a greater mind that is independent and greater than ordinary people possess.

Thus, the world of physical objects is the result of God perceiving them. Berkeley was a Bishop of Cloyne and manifested the goal of his Principles as “consideration of God and of our duty” (Berkeley, Principles 55). These factors contributed to him avoiding critical skepticism and leaning to subjective idealism.

Berkeley is one of the most remarkable philosophers, who greatly influenced the evolution of thought of the XVIII century. Even though his readers greeted him with incomprehension, his works are well written and filled with relative arguments that delight contemporary philosophers (“George Berkeley”). While not becoming a radical skeptic, Berkeley began to describe limitations to empiricism by stating that to be is to be perceived. Berkeley found evident flaws in Locke’s “copy theory” and shaped his views into a cohesive philosophy that could hardly be criticized by the thinkers of his time.

Berkeley, George. “The Principles of Human Knowledge.” EarlyModernTexts, 2017. Web.

—. “Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists.” EarlyModernTexts, 2017. Web.

Ferguson, Henry H. “Locke’s Theory of Knowledge.” Australasian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy , vol. 12, no. 2, 1934, pp. 107-118.

“George Berkeley.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . 2011. Web.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2022, May 11). George Berkeley’s Philosophy. https://ivypanda.com/essays/berkeleys-philosophy/

"George Berkeley’s Philosophy." IvyPanda , 11 May 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/berkeleys-philosophy/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'George Berkeley’s Philosophy'. 11 May.

IvyPanda . 2022. "George Berkeley’s Philosophy." May 11, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/berkeleys-philosophy/.

1. IvyPanda . "George Berkeley’s Philosophy." May 11, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/berkeleys-philosophy/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "George Berkeley’s Philosophy." May 11, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/berkeleys-philosophy/.

• Berkeley’s Argument on Materialism Analysis
• Materialism and the Theory of Consciousness
• Third Dialogue between Philonous and Hylas
• Berkeley’s and Locke’s Philosophies Comparison
• Locke’s and Berkeley’s Theories on Knowledge
• Comparison of John Locke’s and George Berkeley’s Epistemologies
• Heat Cannot Exist Unperceived: Berkeley’s Argument
• Internship at Berkeley College
• Perspectives on Free Will: A Comparison of Hobbes and Berkeley
• Berkley's and Hume's Philosophical Theories
• Immanuel Kant's Life and Philosophy
• John Locke and Adam Smith as English Philosophers
• Outlining Aristotle's Ethics and Metaphysics
• Socrates and His Methods
• Immanuel Kant’s Philosophy of Knowledge and Judgement

Subjective idealism

Fichte's Subjective Idealism Essay example

Fichte's Subjective Idealism With a dramatic dialectic style, Fichte expounds his subjective idealism which seriously undermines claims of an external world and which ultimately borders on solipsism. Beginning with the question of Free Will, Fichte concludes that there is none before engaging a mysterious Spirit in a philosophical dialogue over the nature of Fichte's knowledge. In the end, Fichte curses the Spirit for revealing the grim truth: "all reality is transformed into a

Berkeley's Subjective Idealism

different ontologies, for instance some philosophers, such as Locke, believe that objects have primary and secondary qualities and that those objects exist independent of our mind and are composed of a substance that they call “matter”. Berkeley’s “subjective idealist” ontology, which may seem unreasonable to most at first, is strong enough to counter most objections. The main thesis of this essay will be presenting Berkeley’s ontology and what he argues for, explaining his claims and conclusion, followed

Borge's Use of Berkeley's Idealism Essay

• 5 Works Cited

Borge's Use of Berkeley's Idealism Jorge Luis Borges drew upon a number of philosophical and intellectual models in his writing, one of which is George Berkeley’s subjective idealism. In "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," Borges paints a picture of a perfect reality governed by Berkeley’s idea that matter only exists in perception, and in "The Circular Ruins," he presents a man who creates a boy who cannot exist independent of his perception. However, by employing Berkeley’s logic in these stories

Idealism Is Idealist

Idealism is not only for dreamers International Relations 2/10/2016 Submitted to : Miss Gulrukhsar Mujahid Submitted by: Amna Rafiq Nagani 16075   Idealism is not only for dreamers Whenever you think of idealism, Martin Luther King, Jr. or Gandhi would come to your mind who stand as idealists in making the world a better place. We think of Idealism as good in the face of evil, or of ideals bracing us up from the dust of reality, purifying life from its toxins (Macionis, 2012) .As explained

Idealism Vs. Idealism : The Theory That Ideas And Thoughts Make Up The Actual Fundamental Reality Of The

Idealism is the theory that ideas and thoughts make up the actual fundamental reality of the world. In an overview, it is any philosophy that argues that the only things that are knowable lies in consciousness. This also states that we can never truly tell if anything in the outside world really exists. Things that are real are only mental, nothing physical if proven to be real. The stages of Idealism’s development have been in a constant change since the times of Plato up to Berkeley. In Idealism

Descartes : The Four Views Of The Enduring Self

1 b) The four views of the enduring self includes: the body identifies who the person is, the soul defines the person, consciousness or memory defines the person, and the no-self view. The first view is the belief that the person is who they are because of the body they live in. Their body defines them as an enduring self. It describes that although a person goes through physical changes by growth and mental changes by education and possibly health may affect this, that the person is essentially

The Philosophy Of Mind By Paul Churchland

Philosophy of Mind In contemporary philosophy of mind, talk of perception has fallen out of favour. Indeed most writers to deny perception altogether, or claim that they do not matter. Instead they reduce perception to reality, or speak of the “really real.” Perception are said to be “nothing but” particles or waves or structured brain events. “Always already” “Nothing but” matter and motion. One influential philosopher of mind, Paul Churchland in his book The Engine of Reason, The Seat of the Soul

Evaluating Kant 's Intentions For Each Premise

itself reveal whether the persisting object occurred in any particular order. (B275). So, seeing that I can determine the order in time of my own subjective experiences, then there needs an additional capacity other than my own experiences allowing me to do so. Currently, we have rested the first two premises as possible. Accordingly, I will maintain subjective experiences do not expose the determinate time-order alone. This conclusion is not explicitly stated in Dicker’s reconstruction. In the B-version

Theme Of Idealism In Twelfth Night

Idealism is the group of philosophies which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Idealism emphasizes how human ideas especially beliefs and values shape society. Essentially, it is any philosophy which argues that the only thing actually knowable is consciousness, whereas we never can be sure that matter or anything in the outside world really exists. Thus, the only real things are mental entities, not physical

The Epistemology of Hegel's Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit

The Epistemology of Hegel's Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit In his Phenomenology of Spirit, G.W.F. Hegel lays out a process by which one may come to know absolute truth. This process shows a gradual evolution from a state of "natural consciousness" (56) (1) to one of complete self-consciousness - which leads to an understanding of the "nature of absolute knowledge itself" (66). By understanding the relation between consciousness and truth, one may come to know the true nature of

Popular Topics

• Nicotine addiction
• The Man of Law's Tale
• Winter olympics
• Economic problem
• Brief survey
• Cocaine addiction
• Todays world
• Business structures

University of Notre Dame

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

• Home ›
• Reviews ›

Essays on Kant

Henry E. Allison, Essays on Kant , Oxford University Press, 2012, 289pp, $35.00 (pbk.), ISBN 9780199647026.

Reviewed by Nicholas Stang, University of Miami

Few people have had more impact on how Anglo-American philosophers read Kant than Henry Allison. Starting with a series of articles in the 1970s and 80s on transcendental idealism, followed by his massively influential  Kant's Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense  (1983), Allison has revolutionized how many philosophers understand Kant's distinction between appearances and the 'thing in itself.' Since then he has extended this innovative interpretation of Kant's idealism to his practical philosophy and his theory of freedom ( Kant's Theory of Freedom , 1990) and written three major commentaries: on the 'Critique of aesthetic judgment,' the first half of the third critique ( Kant's Theory of Taste , 2001); on Hume's Treatise ( Custom and Reason in Hume: A Kantian Reading of the First Book of Hume's Treatise , 2008); and on the  Groundwork  ( Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals , 2011). In 2004 Allison published a significantly revised second edition of  Kant's Transcendental Idealism , deepening and modifying his original interpretation and replying to his various critics. In addition to the books there has been a steady stream of papers in journals and edited volumes on all aspects of Kant's philosophy; it is difficult to think of a significant issue in Kant's philosophy that Allison has not written about.

The present volume, containing seventeen previously published essays, is divided into four parts. The essays of the first part concerns Allison's interpretation of transcendental idealism, in particular, the innovations in his interpretation that appear in the 2004 edition of  Kant's Transcendental Idealism . The second part contains essays on Kant's moral philosophy: three essays on freedom, and two on questions that arise in particular Kantian works and their consequences for larger interpretative issues (Kant's claim in the  Religion  that we have a propensity to evil, the claim in the  Groundwork  that all of the different formulations of the categorical imperative are equivalent). The essays in the third part cover issues in the third  Critique  not dealt with in  Kant's Theory of Taste : in particular, Kant's argument in the two Introductions to that work for the principle of the 'formal purposiveness' of nature and, more generally, the theory of teleology in the second half of the work, the 'Critique of teleological judgment.' The fourth section contains four essays on Kant's theory of history. The essays in each section are tightly connected: they show Allison circling around a single problem posed by Kant's texts, either philosophical or interpretive and usually both, approaching it from different perspectives. The different parts are also linked: the reflections on Kant's distinction between 'transcendental idealism' and 'transcendental realism' in part one lead naturally to the discussion of Kant's resolution of the compatibility of necessity and freedom in part two; particularly impressive is the way that the essays in part three, on Kant's theory of teleology in the  Critique of Judgment , support and enrich Allison's' reading of Kant's theory of history in part four. Throughout the diversity of this material, Allison sustains his characteristic clarity, seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of Kant's texts, and unified vision of Kant's Critical philosophy. Since I cannot discuss all of these essays or the many issues they raise in a single review, I will instead focus on the essays in the first two parts and the over-arching theme that links them: Allison's interpretation of transcendental idealism.

1. Transcendental Idealism

The first essay, "Commentary on Section Nine of the Antimony of Pure Reason" was originally written for a collaborative commentary on the  Critique of Pure Reason . [1]  The second essay contains a contribution to an 'author-meets-critics' style symposium on Longuenesse (1998) and Allison's response to Béatrice Longuenesse's response to his critique. The two essays I want to focus on here are three and four.

Essay three, "Kant and the Two Dogmas of Rationalism," contains a very concise and helpful discussion of the relation of Kant to the rationalist tradition, in particular, to two rationalist doctrines: that in every true judgment the predicate is 'contained' in the subject, and that the content of sensible representation is reducible to the content of conceptual representation. Readers will quickly note the Leibnizian provenance of these doctrines, and Allison does not always make it as clear as he could that by "dogmas of rationalism" he means dogmas of  Leibniz's  rationalism in particular. Allison also exaggerates the extent of the connection between these Leibnizian 'dogmas,' even going so far as to assert at one point that they mutually entail one another (p. 50). But while they may mutually support one another, the claim of entailment is surely incorrect. One can hold (what Kant would express by saying) that all true judgments are analytic, while nonetheless maintaining that the contents of sense perception are irreducible to conceptual contents. For instance, one can hold a direct realist theory of perception on which its contents are simply the objects themselves. True judgments are made about an object by subsuming it under a concept and then unpacking that concept (so all true judgments are analytic). In the other direction, that the contents of sense perception are conceptual contents does not entail that all judgments are analytic; if it does, someone should alert John McDowell.

For our purposes the most interesting aspect of essay three is the final section in which Allison introduces one of the main themes of essay four: that transcendental realism and transcendental idealism are not specific ontological theses about space, time, and appearances, but very broad methodological or 'meta-philosophical' views about the nature of human cognition and the project of epistemology. Allison's key argument here, as in essay four, "Transcendental Realism, Empirical Realism, and Transcendental Idealism," is that Kant treats transcendental idealism and transcendental realism as mutually exclusive and  exhaustive  philosophical options. Consequently, Allison argues, transcendental realism must be understood, not as some specific ontological thesis about the nature of space, time, or appearances (e.g., that these items exist independently of any finite mind), but as a "kind of meta-philosophical stance from which the problem of human knowledge is considered" (p. 64). By parity of reasoning, transcendental idealism is not a specific ontological thesis (e.g., that space, time, and appearances exist at least partly in virtue of finite cognitive subjects), but as a similarly broad 'meta-philosophical' stance.

A plausible case can be made that Kant uses the terms 'transcendental realism' and 'transcendental idealism' in such a way that they (are intended to) exhaust logical space, but I think Allison is wrong in his characterization of them as 'meta-philosophical' stances, and in his identification of their specific content. Let us start with the point on which he is on the most solid ground: the alleged exhaustiveness of 'transcendental realism' and 'transcendental idealism,' as Kant uses these terms. Perhaps the strongest case for the Exhaustiveness Thesis is Kant's definitions of these terms at A490-1/B518-9, which Allison discusses [2] :

We have sufficiently proved in the Transcendental Aesthetic that everything intuited in space or in time, hence all objects of an experience possible for us, are nothing but appearances, i.e., mere representations, which, as they are represented, as extended beings or series of alterations, have outside our thoughts no existence grounded in itself. This doctrine I call  transcendental idealism . The realist, in the transcendental signification, makes these modifications of our sensibility into things subsisting in themselves, and hence makes  mere  representations  into things in themselves. (A490-1/B518-9 [3] )

Allison writes, "As Kant here describes these two forms of transcendentalism, they appear to encompass the entire philosophical landscape" (p. 63). But that is precisely  not  how things appear in this passage. Transcendental realism asserts, and transcendental idealism denies, that objects in space (henceforth, 'objects') have "outside our thoughts [ Gedanken ] an existence grounded in itself." So one would think that an idealist who denies that objects exist at all would count neither as a transcendental realist nor as a transcendental idealist. The case for Allison's Exhaustiveness Thesis is improved somewhat when we look at the next paragraph:

One would do us an injustice if one tried to ascribe to us that long-decried empirical idealism that, while assuming the proper reality of space, denies the existence of extended beings in it, or at least finds this existence doubtful, and so in this respect admits no satisfactorily provable distinction between dream and truth. (A491/B519)

If the Exhaustiveness Thesis is true, then empirical idealism must be a kind of transcendental realism (since Kant has just told us that it is not a kind of transcendental idealism). Now, while it might initially seem counter-intuitive that "denying or finding doubtful" the existence of objects (empirical idealism) is compatible with claiming that they have an existence "grounded in themselves" (transcendental realism), there is something on which both positions agree: what it would be for objects to exist, whether or not they do exist. The transcendental realist and the empirical idealist, on this reading, agree on what it takes for objects to exist: they must exist 'in themselves' where this means their existence is not grounded in facts about our experience or sensibility. This picture of their relation is suggested by Kant's remarks elsewhere that "it is really this transcendental realist who afterwards plays the empirical idealist" (A369) and "as far as I know all those psychologists who cling to empirical idealism are transcendental realists" (A372). [4]  Henceforth, 'transcendental realism' will refer to the view, shared, with the empirical idealist, about what it would be for objects in space to exist.

The more important question, though, is whether the Exhaustiveness Thesis (that transcendental realism, so understood, and transcendental idealism exhaust logical space) plays any significant role in any Kantian argument, to which I think the answer is 'no.' One of the well-known interpretive puzzles about the Antinomial Conflicts of Pure Reason is that Kant takes them to show that transcendental realism entails both the Thesis and the Antithesis in each Antinomy, which are contraries (they cannot be both true), and that this constitutes an indirect proof of transcendental idealism. This raises two puzzles: (i) why is transcendental realism committed to the Thesis and the Antithesis of each Antinomy?, and (ii) even if this is so, how can Kant conclude that transcendental idealism is true? First, I just want to point out that if 'transcendental realism' means what Allison thinks it does, then (i) is clearly false. A thoroughgoing empirical idealist (who is a transcendental realist, on Allison's understanding) who denies that there is space or time or objects in space (they are all illusions) is committed neither to the Thesis (space and time are bounded) nor the Antithesis (space and time are unbounded) of the first Antinomy. But if this is correct, then 'transcendental realism' in the Antinomies means something more specific than what Allison means by that term, which means that the Exhaustiveness Thesis, as formulated by Allison, does not play a role in Kant's "indirect" proof of transcendental idealism. This removes a key piece of support for Allison's claim that 'transcendental realism' and 'transcendental idealism' are understood so broadly by Kant that they exhaust logical space.

In the remainder of this section I will object to his identification of what these philosophical views in fact are. In essay four, Allison claims that transcendental realism is the thesis that "spatiotemporal predicates are applicable to things in general" (pp. 67-68). This, however, has some problematic consequences. It entail that, for instance, Platonism is not a form of transcendental realism, which, together with Allison's Exclusivity Thesis, would entail that Platonism is a form of transcendental idealism.

In "Transcendental Realism, Empirical Realism, and Transcendental Idealism" Allison begins by characterizing transcendental idealism as the negation of transcendental realism (since he is assuming the Exhaustiveness Thesis), so its content is: spatiotemporal predicates do not apply to all things in general. Allison tries to connect this with more traditional ways of characterizing the transcendental realism/idealism distinction by noting that if spatiotemporal predicates apply to  all things in general  then, assuming that the concept of 'things in themselves' is a concept of things in general, it follows that the transcendental realist holds that things in themselves are spatiotemporal. However, it does not follow that the transcendental idealist  denies  that things in themselves are spatiotemporal. By denying that spatiotemporal predicates apply to all things in general, the transcendental idealist is not committed to denying that they apply to one species of (or way of conceptualizing) things: things in themselves. So Allison's own characterization of transcendental idealism in this essay fails to explain why it entails non-spatiotemporality of things in themselves, despite Kant's characterization of it in precisely those terms at A369.

Allison tries to remedy this gap in his argument by giving an independent argument that things in themselves are not spatiotemporal: "inasmuch as the concept of a thing in itself contains the thought of something as it is in itself, independently of any sensible intuition, it requires  an active factoring out or exclusion  of any contribution of sensibility rather than merely a refusal or failure to factor it in" (p. 74, my emphasis). This interpretation, developed more fully in Allison (2004), repudiates an alternative model that some have attributed to him (e.g., Van Cleve 1998). On the alternative model, talk of things in themselves is merely a way of talking about objects of a discursive intellect in general, whether or not they are given in spatiotemporal intuition:

(i)             Things in themselves are  F   ↔  representing the object of a discursive intellect in general involves representing it as  F .

James Van Cleve and others objected to this model (which they took to be Allison's) that it licenses only the conclusion that it is  not  the case that things in themselves are determinately spatiotemporal,  not  Kant's own conclusions: things in themselves are determinately  not  spatiotemporal. The quoted passage contains Allison's response to this objections; he rejects (i) in favor of:

(ii)           Things in themselves are ~F  ↔  the representation of objects as F is a sensible condition on our cognition (and thus does not apply to the object of a discursive cognition in general). [5]  

This entails that 'things in themselves are not in space and time' is a direct consequence of the definition of 'things in themselves' talk; a foundational claim of Kant's epistemology is rendered analytic. Allison's response is that the substantive synthetic a priori claim is that there are sensible conditions on our cognition, and they are space and time. So while the judgment 'things in themselves are not in space and time' may be a direct consequence of (ii), (ii) would be false unless there were sensible conditions on cognition. We cannot know that things in themselves are non-spatiotemporal without knowing a synthetic a priori judgment (that space and time are sensible conditions on our cognition), so this claim is saved from being analytic.

Finally, Allison offers a third, distinct characterization of transcendental idealism, one that plays an important role in his account of the resolution of the Third Antinomy and is prominently featured in Allison (2004). On this reading, transcendental idealism is the meta-philosophical or meta-cognitive thesis that there is no 'way the world is' independently of a perspective or standpoint on it. Consequently, the theoretical standpoint (in which we represent objects using space and time and categories) and the practical standpoint (in which we represent ourselves as freely acting rational agents) are not 'in competition.' Neither of them correctly describes how things 'really are' because the question of 'how things really are' independent of such a standpoint is precisely the assumption of transcendental realism that Kant wants us to abandon. The problem with this 'internal realist' reading of transcendental idealism [6]  is that it offers no room for one of Kant's most characteristic claims about the relation between the empirical world (the world as revealed from the theoretical standpoint) and the 'intelligible' world (the world as revealed from the practical standpoint): that the intelligible world is the ground of the empirical world. [7]  Allison repeatedly objects to more traditional, metaphysical readings of transcendental idealism by claiming that Kant does not mean to claim that appearances (the denizens of the empirical world) are less 'real' than noumena or things in themselves (the denizens of the intelligible world). But, as metaphysical interpreters of transcendental idealism have long pointed out, there are at least two notions of reality at play here and two ways in which noumena might be said to be more real than phenomena:

(i)             Are appearances/phenomena illusory (unreal)?

(ii)           Are appearances/phenomena less fundamental ontologically than things in themselves/noumena?

From Erich Adickes to Karl Ameriks to Richard Aquila, metaphysical interpreters have pointed out that the answer to the first question is 'no' while the answer to the second question is 'yes.' It is a significant weakness of Allison's reading of transcendental idealism in these essays that he never addresses this distinction, and never tries to accommodate within his interpretation Kant's repeated claims that noumena are the ground of phenomena. [8]  After all, on Allison's view it appears that the opposite is true: if the concept of things in themselves is the concept of things  not  having the spatiotemporal properties they must have if we are to experience them, then it seems that the concept of things in themselves is dependent upon the concept of full-fledged objects of experience and their sensible conditions. Allison owes us an explanation of why, on his reading, appearances are not the grounds of things in themselves.

2. Freedom of the Will

The second group of essays concern Kant's moral philosophy and, with the exception of essays six and eight, specifically, Kant's theory of freedom. Essay six, "On the Very Idea of a Propensity to Evil," treats an especially difficult interpretive puzzle in  Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone : what does Kant mean by attributing to human beings an 'innate propensity to evil' and what grounds does he have for doing so? Essay eight is about Kant's claim in the  Groundwork  that the various formulations of the categorical imperative (e.g., the formula of humanity, the formula of universal law) are "at bottom only so many formulae of the very same law, and any one of them of itself unites the other two in it" (4: 436).

The other essays in this section deal with a connected set of issues in, roughly,  Groundwork   III , the  Critique of Practical Reason , and the resolution of the third Antinomy in the  Critique of Pure Reason . The jumping-off point in several essays is Kant's claim in  Groundwork III  that: "to every rational being having a will we must necessarily lend the idea of freedom also, under which he acts" (4:448). Kant states the point in the third-person, but it is perhaps easiest to appreciate in the first-person case: when I act I presuppose that I am free from determination by my sensible desires, inclinations, etc., that I am free to act on these inclinations or not act on them. If we extend this point to other rational agents we get: the idea of another person as a practically rational agent involves representing her as free from determination by desires, inclinations, previous intentions, etc. We (and she herself!) must represent her as able to act for reasons because she has endorsed those reasons (incorporated them into her maxim), not because they causally determine her to act. One might wonder what exactly 'freedom' means here, and I take it that, on Allison's interpretation, it requires at least: the capacity to (i) act for reasons, (ii) because one has endorsed those reasons (incorporated them into the maxim of one's action), where the activation of this capacity is (iii) contra-causal (one's actions are not causally determined by the past, given the laws of nature). The interpretive difficulty is understanding what part this presupposition of freedom plays in Kant's argument that we in fact possess this kind of freedom. After all, even a hard determinist might admit that practical reasoning constitutively involves the illusion of contra-causal freedom. [9]

This problem becomes especially acute when we recall that Kant has already argued in the Second Analogy of the  Critique of Pure Reason  that every alteration in the empirical world has a sufficient and determining cause. As Allison reads  Groundwork   III , Kant's resolution of this problem consists in distinguishing two 'standpoints' from which we can view our actions: we can view them from the 'theoretical' standpoint as events like any others in the empirical world, or we can view them from the 'practical standpoint' in which we think of them as moves in a 'space of reasons' that are normatively evaluable and therefore (contra-causally) free. [10]  Clearly, how we understand this resolution will depend crucially upon how we understand transcendental idealism and the distinction between the two standpoints.

This transforms the conflict of the presupposition of freedom with the fact of casual determination into a question about the potential conflict between the 'practical standpoint' and the 'theoretical standpoint': which (if either) accurately represents the way things are? Am I in fact free from causal determination when I act? Or are all of my actions in fact part of a deterministic causal nexus, while I am subject to the persistent illusion that I am free? This is where Allison's interpretation of transcendental idealism as a 'meta-philosophical' doctrine becomes relevant (see previous section). While, in the first set of essays, Allison characterized transcendental idealism in several distinct ways, in the context of the freedom-determination problem his main characterization is the 'meta-philosophical' or 'internal realist' one: there is no 'way things are' independent of a standpoint (a structured set of norms for making claims about things), so the question of which standpoint (theoretical or practical) is 'right' is incoherent. The apparent conflict between freedom and determination is revealed to rest on the mistaken assumption that I must be  either  free  or  determined  period , while in fact I can correctly be judged to be free and undetermined from one perspective (the practical) and can correctly be judged to be determined and unfree from another (the theoretical). This, in essence, is Allison's reconstruction of Kant's resolution to the Third Antinomy, discussed in the first essay of the collection, tying together the themes of the first half of the book: transcendental idealism and freedom.

Lest this seem like warmed-over relativism, Allison argues that these standpoints each have a privileged status: one of them is constitutive (for beings with our kinds of intellect) of reasoning about given objects, while the other is constitutive of reasoning about how to act. So the practical standpoint is not some arbitrarily invented way of representing myself, cooked-up solely for the sake of vindicating my freedom. Taking the practical standpoint on oneself is constitutive of being a practically rational agent. Consequently, the presupposition of my freedom is warranted (within the practical standpoint) in virtue of being a central component of my representation of myself as a practically rational agent. Assuming that the practical standpoint is itself internally coherent (in Kantian terms, that practical reason is consistent with itself), the only challenge to claims warranted within the practical standpoint is the putative contradiction between that standpoint and the theoretical standpoint. If Kant can show that this putative conflict is based on a fallacy (that there is no truth independent of standpoints) then he will have gone a long way to showing that freedom and necessity are compatible.

I think this view has a lot going for it. In particular, I find it more plausible than some other contemporary forms of compatibilism. Essay five, "We Can Act Only Under the Idea of Freedom," contains a helpful comparison of Kant's theory of freedom (as interpreted by Allison) to Daniel Dennett's work on free will and more contemporary forms of naturalism.

However, as an interpretation of Kant's theory of free will (and the resolution of the freedom-determinism problem) I think it is seriously lacking. For one, it depends upon the interpretation of transcendental idealism as the thesis that there is no 'way things are' independent of a standpoint, and thus inherits all of the problems of that interpretation (see above). I will outline what I take to be the two most pressing such problems.

First, there is always a worry that a given standpoint might be arbitrary or created ad hoc. I do not think this worry arises for the practical standpoint as Allison characterizes it until we realize that, according to Kant (in  Groundwork  III and elsewhere), the perspective that allows me to represent myself as free is a perspective in which I represent myself as  non -spatiotemporal. Following Allison's interpretation of the non-spatiotemporality of things in themselves (see previous section), this does not mean merely that I abstract away or ignore my spatiotemporal properties, but that I deny that I possess them (at least from this standpoint). Recall how Allison interprets claims about things in themselves:

Things in themselves are ~F  ↔  the representation of objects as F is a sensible condition on our cognition (and thus does not apply to the object of a discursive cognition in general).

Allison owes us an explanation of why representing myself from the practical standpoint involves representing myself as a thing in itself  in this sense . It may involve merely 'abstracting away' from my spatiotemporal predicates (as Van Cleve reads earlier presentations of the view), but Allison rejects that way of understanding talk about things in themselves; why does it involve  negating  them? Perhaps, when I take the practical standpoint on myself I regard my actions as normatively evaluable within a space of reasons, and perhaps the idea of a 'space' of reasons is not the idea of a  spatiotemporal  order (not a 'space' in Kant's sense), so in so representing my actions I am  not  representing them as spatiotemporal; but why does it involve representing them as  non -spatiotemporal?

Furthermore, Allison's interpretation inherits the problem I noted earlier: it is not clear that he can make room for Kant's claim that the practical standpoint is more fundamental than the theoretical standpoint. This is particularly pressing in the case of Kant' theory of free will, for Kant's deduction of the categorical imperative in  Groundwork   III crucially relies on the claim that the intelligible world (the world as revealed in the practical standpoint) is the ground of the sensible world (the world as revealed in the empirical standpoint). [11]  And this is not the only place where Kant's theory of freedom appears to rely essentially on a claim about the ontological dependence of the phenomenal upon the intelligible. In the resolution of the third Antinomy, Kant repeatedly asserts that one's intelligible character is the  cause  of one's empirical character. [12]  Allison's reading of this (essay one, p. 26) is that one has one's empirical character (dispositions to act in certain ways) because of the rational norms one has freely chosen to endorse. But the question then is: from what standpoint is that explanatory claim being made (since there is no truth independent of a standpoint)? Surely not from the theoretical standpoint: the character of acts as being moved in a 'space of reasons' is not available to theoretical reason. So it must be made from the practical standpoint. So Allison must say that, from the practical point of view, I regard my general disposition to act in certain ways (my empirical character) as the result of my own free choice to live by certain rational norms and values. It is hard to know, without hearing more about how my empirical character "results" from my free choices, whether this is compatible with Kant's claim that the latter is the  ground  of the former.

However, these are issues about which Allison has written extensively elsewhere. Allison's interpretations of Kant in these essays are, as always, something about which Kant scholars will have to think, and argue, for years to come.

Allison, H. 2004.  Kant's Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense . Revised Second Edition. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Kant, I. 1998.  Critique of Pure Reason . Trans. and Ed. P. Guyer, A. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Longuenesse, B. 1998.  Kant and the Capacity to Judge . Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Van Cleve, J. 1999.  Problems from Kant . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Willascheck, M and Mohr., G. (Eds).  Immanuel Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft . 1998. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

[1]  Willascheck and Mohr (1998).

[2]  He also discusses A369, but parallel issues arise for that passage.

[3]  The  Critique of Pure Reason  is cited in the usual fashion: the page in the 1781 edition (A), followed by the page in the 1781 edition (B). Other works of Kant are cited by their volume and page number in the Academy edition, published the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. Translations from the  Critique  are taken from the Guyer-Wood translation, Kant (1998).

[4]  But note that even this passage undermines Allison's reading: if  as far as Kant knows  all empirical idealists are transcendental realists, then it is not the case that  by definition empirical idealism is a form of transcendental realism (as Allison thinks it is).

[5]  Cf. Allison's response to Van Cleve in Allison (2004), 42-45.

[6]  Allison notes the similiarity to 1980s Hilary Putnam at p. 68, note 2.

[7]  E.g.,  Groundwork  III "the world of understanding contains the ground of the world of sense" (4:453).

[8]  He addresses a similar objection by Ameriks in Allison (2004), p. 45.

[9]  Allison also addresses one of the oldest chestnuts of Kant scholarship -- whether Kant fundamentally alters his proof of freedom from the  Groundwork  in the second  Critique  -- but his view here is somewhat more traditional (he thinks that Kant does reverse himself) and somewhat orthogonal to what I take to be the main interest of these essays (transcendental idealism as the resolution of the conflict between freedom and necessity), so I will not discuss it further here.

[10]  Cf. 4:452.

[11]  4:453.

[12]  A546/B574, A551/B579, A556/B584, A557/B585.

Naturalism and Subjectivism

Alternative formats available from:.

• Google Play

View Table of Contents

Request Desk or Examination Copy Request a Media Review Copy

• Share this:

Table of contents

I Experience and Basic Fact

A. The Issue of Naturalism vs. Subjectivism

B. The Historical and Social Character of the Analysis of Experience

C. Philosophic "Immediacy" and the Point of Departure for Philosophy

D. The Mind as Contributive and the Error of Irrationalism

E. The "Given" Element in Experience According to Lewis

F. Dewey on Immediate Knowledge and the Nature of the "Given"

G. The Principle of the Cooperation of Methods

II Naturalistic and Pure Reflection

A. On Subjectivism and the Meaning of Reflection

B. The Function and Aims of Reflection

C. Types of Reflection

D. Conditions Bearing on Reflection

E. The Ideal of Certainty

F. The Subjective Procedure of Phenomenology

III Beyond Naturalism

A. Fact and Essence

B. The Question of Naturalistic Misinterpretations

1. The Philosophical Epoché and the Danger of Hostility to Ideas

2. Concerning the Narrowness of the Historical Types of Empiricism

3. Empiricism as Skepticism

4. Obscurity on the Idealistic Side

5. Essence and Concept

6. The Principle of all Principles

7. On Positivism and the Use of Mathematics in Natural Science

8. Sciences with the "Dogmatic" and Sciences with the "Philosophic" Point of View

C. The Thesis of the Natural Point of View and its Suspension

1. The World of the Natural Point of View and the Ideal Worlds About Me

2. The "Radical Alteration" of the Natural Point of View

3. The Phenomenological Epoché

D. Consciousness and Natural Reality

1. Concerning "Pure" or "Transcendental" Consciousness as the Phenomenological Residuum

2. "Objectification" and Transcendence

3. The Immanent Nature of Perception and its Transcendent Object

4. Being as Consciousness and Being as Reality

5. ''Phenomenal" Being of the Transcendent, and "Absolute" Being of the Immanent

6. Indubitability of Immanent Perception, Dubitability of Transcendent Perception

IV Pure Consciousness

A. The Region of Pure Consciousness

1. The Natural World as the Correlate of Consciousness

2. The Logical Possibility and Real Absurdity of a World Outside Our Own

3. Absolute Consciousness as the Residuum after the Nullification of the World

4. The Phenomenological Point of View and Pure Consciousness as the Field of Phenomenology

5. The Significance of the Transcendental Preliminary Reflections

6. The Physical Thing and the "Unknown Cause of Appearances"

7. Animalia and Psychological Consciousness

8. Transcendent Psychological Experience Distinguished from Transcendental Experience

9. All Reality as Existing through "Meaning Bestowal": No "Subjective Idealism"

B. The Phenomenological Reductions

1. The Question Concerning the Extension of the Phenomenological Reduction

2. The Question of the Suspension of the Pure Ego

3. The Transcendence of God Suspended

4. The Suspension of Pure Logic and the Material-Eidetic Disciplines

5. The "Dogmatic" and Phenomenological Points of View

C. Preliminary Considerations of Method

1. The Importance for Phenomenology of Considerations of Method

2. The Self-Suspension of the Phenomenologist

3. Concerning Clearness and Clarification

4. Clearness, Free Phantasy, and Fiction

5. Concerning "Mathematical" Sciences of Essential Being

D. General Structures of Pure Consciousness

1. The Realm of Transcendental Consciousness

2. Reflection upon Experience

3. Phenomenology and the Difficulties of "Self-Observation"

4. The Relation of Experiences to the Pure Ego

5. Phenomenological Time and Time-Consciousness

6. Apprehension of the Unitary Stream of Experience as "Idea"

7. Intentionality as the Main Phenomenological Theme

8. Sensuous Hyle, Intentional Morphe

9. The Functional Problems

E. Noesis and Noema

1. Concerning the Study of Intentional Experience

2. Immanent and Intentional Factors of Experience; the Noema

3. Noematic Statements and Statements Concerning Reality

4. The "Noematic Meaning" and the Distinction between "Immanent" and "Real" Objects

5. "Doxic" (Belief) Modalities as Modifications

6. The Founded Noeses and Their Correlates

F. Reason and Reality

1. Object and Consciousness

2. Phenomenology of Reason

3. Pure Logic and Phenomenology

4. Regional Ontologies and Phenomenological Constitution

5. The Region "Thing" as a Transcendental Clue

6. Constitution in Other Regions

7. The Full Extension of the Transcendental Problem

V Phenomenology and Naturlaistic Philosophy

A. Antinaturalism in the Name of Rigorous Science

1. The Motive of Antinaturalism

2. Circumscribing Naturalistic Philosophy

3. Toward a Phenomenology of Consciousness

4. The Concept of a Phenomenon

B. Pure Psychology and Transcendental Reduction

C. The Idea of an Eidetic Anthropology

VI The Function of a Constitutive Phenomenology

A. The Ontological Priority of the Spiritual World

B. The Relations Between Psychology and Phenomenology

1. The Relationship of Phenomenology to the Sciences

2. The Ontological Foundation of the Empirical Sciences

3. Regional Concepts, Psychology, and Phenomenology

4. Phenomenological Description and the Domain of Experience

5. Ontological Description in Relation to Physics and Psychology

6. Rational Psychology Distinguished from Pure Phenomenology

C. The Relationship of Phenomenology and Ontology

1. The Question of the Inclusion of the Ontologies in Phenomenology

2. The Significance of Ontological Determinations for Phenomenology

3. Noema and Essence

4. Significance of the Ontological Concepts for Psychology

D. The Method of Clarification

1. On the Need for Clarification of the "Dogmatic" Sciences

2. Clarification of the Conceptual Material

3. Explication and Clarification

VII The Limits of Subjectivism

A. The Meaning of "Transcendence"

B. The "Riddle" of Transcendence

C. The Need for Complete Reflection

D. Doubt and Certainty

1. The Cartesian Procedure of Doubt and its Phenomenological Use

2. Husserl on Descartes

E. The Transcendental Dimension and the Treatment of History

F. Misplaced Subjectivism

VIII Max Scheler and the Spiritual Elevation of Man

A. Antinaturalism on all Fronts

B. Against Evolutionism, Humanism, and Human Ethics

IX The New Irrationalism

A. The Influence of Husserl's Subjectivism

B. Heidegger on Truth and Metaphysics

1. The Importance of Nothing

2. On the Essence of Truth

3. Heidegger on Husserl

4. Husserl on Heidegger: Existence and Philosophical Anthropology

C. Becker and Paratranscendence

D. Jaspers and the Evasion of Scientific Philosophy

E. Marcel and Mystery

F. Sartre and the Avoidance of Materialism

A. Subjectivism on the Defensive

B. The Methodological Outcome

Description

This book will assist readers of philosophical literature to understand and to appraise a large section of the controversial philosophical thought of our time. The central theme is the conflict between naturalism and idealism. The idealist philosophy is considered in its historical outcome of subjectivism, as developed in the phenomenological movement. The use of phenomenology is discussed as a general philosophy, as well as with respect to representative philosophies of human existence. The naturalistic view of experience as represented by Dewey is contrasted with the subjectivistic treatment of "pure" experience which is taken to be somehow "prior" to nature.

"Since 1939 when he played the leading role in founding the International Phenomenological Society, Marvin Farber has established his position as the outstanding American expositor, interpreter, and critic of Edmund Husserl's phenomenology. The present volume … is the most recent addition to the author's already impressive list of published studies of phenomenology. In this work he is concerned with the tension between naturalism and idealism in its historical outcome of subjectivism, as developed in the phenomenological movement … Subjectivism he defines as a general philosophical position having as its principle the primacy of the experiencing being—a position exemplified by Husserl's transcendental idealism, the anti-naturalistic philosophy of Max Scheler and the existentialism of Martin Heidegger. But this book is more than an essay in the history of 20th-century German philosophy; it is also a criticism of important aspects of that philosophy. The theme of this criticism is that the subjective feature of phenomenology is neither philosophically defensible nor a necessary consequence of phenomenology as a descriptive and analytic method … Naturalism and Subjectivism, because of its scope and thoroughness, will henceforth be an indispensable part of the critical literature of phenomenology. " — Herman Brautigam in Philosophical Review

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Guest Essay

What Sentencing Could Look Like if Trump Is Found Guilty

By Norman L. Eisen

Mr. Eisen is the author of “Trying Trump: A Guide to His First Election Interference Criminal Trial.”

For all the attention to and debate over the unfolding trial of Donald Trump in Manhattan, there has been surprisingly little of it paid to a key element: its possible outcome and, specifically, the prospect that a former and potentially future president could be sentenced to prison time.

The case — brought by Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, against Mr. Trump — represents the first time in our nation’s history that a former president is a defendant in a criminal trial. As such, it has generated lots of debate about the case’s legal strength and integrity, as well as its potential impact on Mr. Trump’s efforts to win back the White House.

A review of thousands of cases in New York that charged the same felony suggests something striking: If Mr. Trump is found guilty, incarceration is an actual possibility. It’s not certain, of course, but it is plausible.

Jury selection has begun, and it’s not too soon to talk about what the possibility of a sentence, including a prison sentence, would look like for Mr. Trump, for the election and for the country — including what would happen if he is re-elected.

The case focuses on alleged interference in the 2016 election, which consisted of a hush-money payment Michael Cohen, the former president’s fixer at the time, made in 2016 to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump. Mr. Bragg is arguing that the cover-up cheated voters of the chance to fully assess Mr. Trump’s candidacy.

This may be the first criminal trial of a former president in American history, but if convicted, Mr. Trump’s fate is likely to be determined by the same core factors that guide the sentencing of every criminal defendant in New York State Court.

Comparable cases. The first factor is the base line against which judges measure all sentences: how other defendants have been treated for similar offenses. My research encompassed almost 10,000 cases of felony falsifying business records that have been prosecuted across the state of New York since 2015. Over a similar period, the Manhattan D.A. has charged over 400 of these cases . In roughly the first year of Mr. Bragg’s tenure, his team alone filed 166 felony counts for falsifying business records against 34 people or companies.

Contrary to claims that there will be no sentence of incarceration for falsifying business records, when a felony conviction involves serious misconduct, defendants can be sentenced to some prison time. My analysis of the most recent data indicates that approximately one in 10 cases in which the most serious charge at arraignment is falsifying business records in the first degree and in which the court ultimately imposes a sentence, results in a term of imprisonment.

To be clear, these cases generally differ from Mr. Trump’s case in one important respect: They typically involve additional charges besides just falsifying records. That clearly complicates what we might expect if Mr. Trump is convicted.

Nevertheless, there are many previous cases involving falsifying business records along with other charges where the conduct was less serious than is alleged against Mr. Trump and prison time was imposed. For instance, Richard Luthmann was accused of attempting to deceive voters — in his case, impersonating New York political figures on social media in an attempt to influence campaigns. He pleaded guilty to three counts of falsifying business records in the first degree (as well as to other charges). He received a sentence of incarceration on the felony falsification counts (although the sentence was not solely attributable to the plea).

A defendant in another case was accused of stealing in excess of $50,000 from her employer and, like in this case, falsifying one or more invoices as part of the scheme. She was indicted on a single grand larceny charge and ultimately pleaded guilty to one felony count of business record falsification for a false invoice of just under $10,000. She received 364 days in prison.

To be sure, for a typical first-time offender charged only with run-of-the-mill business record falsification, a prison sentence would be unlikely. On the other hand, Mr. Trump is being prosecuted for 34 counts of conduct that might have changed the course of American history.

Seriousness of the crime. Mr. Bragg alleges that Mr. Trump concealed critical information from voters (paying hush money to suppress an extramarital relationship) that could have harmed his campaign, particularly if it came to light after the revelation of another scandal — the “Access Hollywood” tape . If proved, that could be seen not just as unfortunate personal judgment but also, as Justice Juan Merchan has described it, an attempt “to unlawfully influence the 2016 presidential election.”

History and character. To date, Mr. Trump has been unrepentant about the events alleged in this case. There is every reason to believe that will not change even if he is convicted, and lack of remorse is a negative at sentencing. Justice Merchan’s evaluation of Mr. Trump’s history and character may also be informed by the other judgments against him, including Justice Arthur Engoron’s ruling that Mr. Trump engaged in repeated and persistent business fraud, a jury finding that he sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll and a related defamation verdict by a second jury.

Justice Merchan may also weigh the fact that Mr. Trump has been repeatedly held in contempt , warned , fined and gagged by state and federal judges. That includes for statements he made that exposed witnesses, individuals in the judicial system and their families to danger. More recently, Mr. Trump made personal attacks on Justice Merchan’s daughter, resulting in an extension of the gag order in the case. He now stands accused of violating it again by commenting on witnesses.

What this all suggests is that a term of imprisonment for Mr. Trump, while far from certain for a former president, is not off the table. If he receives a sentence of incarceration, perhaps the likeliest term is six months, although he could face up to four years, particularly if Mr. Trump chooses to testify, as he said he intends to do , and the judge believes he lied on the stand . Probation is also available, as are more flexible approaches like a sentence of spending every weekend in jail for a year.

We will probably know what the judge will do within 30 to 60 days of the end of the trial, which could run into mid-June. If there is a conviction, that would mean a late summer or early fall sentencing.

Justice Merchan would have to wrestle in the middle of an election year with the potential impact of sentencing a former president and current candidate.

If Mr. Trump is sentenced to a period of incarceration, the reaction of the American public will probably be as polarized as our divided electorate itself. Yet as some polls suggest — with the caveat that we should always be cautious of polls early in the race posing hypothetical questions — many key swing state voters said they would not vote for a felon.

If Mr. Trump is convicted and then loses the presidential election, he will probably be granted bail, pending an appeal, which will take about a year. That means if any appeals are unsuccessful, he will most likely have to serve any sentence starting sometime next year. He will be sequestered with his Secret Service protection; if it is less than a year, probably in Rikers Island. His protective detail will probably be his main company, since Mr. Trump will surely be isolated from other inmates for his safety.

If Mr. Trump wins the presidential election, he can’t pardon himself because it is a state case. He will be likely to order the Justice Department to challenge his sentence, and department opinions have concluded that a sitting president could not be imprisoned, since that would prevent the president from fulfilling the constitutional duties of the office. The courts have never had to address the question, but they could well agree with the Justice Department.

So if Mr. Trump is convicted and sentenced to a period of incarceration, its ultimate significance is probably this: When the American people go to the polls in November, they will be voting on whether Mr. Trump should be held accountable for his original election interference.

What questions do you have about Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial so far?

Please submit them below. Our trial experts will respond to a selection of readers in a future piece.

Norman L. Eisen investigated the 2016 voter deception allegations as counsel for the first impeachment and trial of Donald Trump and is the author of “Trying Trump: A Guide to His First Election Interference Criminal Trial.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

James Marcus documents a personal relationship with Emerson in ‘Glad to the Brink of Fear’

Finding solace in the works of the transcendentalist leader.

James Marcus had long been fascinated by Ralph Waldo Emerson, but it wasn’t until he found himself at a low point, both professionally and personally, that he began to see the great Transcendentalist as a source of solace. “I’ve since discovered that that’s a time when Emerson seems to speak to a lot of people,” says Marcus. “Even though what he offers is not traditional consolation, [reading his essays] really cheered me up.”

“I started digging into the biographies; I read the letters and the journals, which are by themselves just an amazing literary monument,” Marcus recalls. “But it was more like my weird hobby. I wasn’t preparing to write a book.”

It took a nudge from Marcus’s now-agent for him to embark on the project that became “Glad to the Brink of Fear: A Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson.” Rather than duplicate the “capacious and complete” biographies already published on Emerson, Marcus says he wanted to explore in writing the question “How does a person like me connect with a person like Emerson?” The result is an intimate and often moving book, lively with ideas. “Emerson said every human being should have an original relation to the universe,” Marcus says, “and I wanted to have an original relationship with Emerson.”

The research was daunting, as Marcus wanted to understand Emerson in the context of his intellectual influences, from Unitarianism to German Idealism to abolitionism. He had to leave a lot out. “I could write another entire book out of the stuff I didn’t put into this book!” Marcus says, but adds, “I think I ended up with the book I wanted to write, which you can’t always say.”

Even as he moves on to other projects, Marcus believes Emerson will always be with him. “There is an intimacy that springs up between a biographer and a biographical subject. I came to find Emerson an extremely lovable figure in the course of writing this book.”

Advertisement

James Marcus will speak at 6 p.m. on Thursday, May 2, at the Boston Athenaeum .

Kate Tuttle is a freelance writer and editor.