The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century
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33.2 LATE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES
33.2.1 Kant: Trancendental Dialectic
Kant’s ‘transcendental dialectic’, understood as an outline of a ‘logic of illusion’, is the second main part of the ‘transcendental logic’ in his Critique of Pure Reason (1781/7). As is well known, reason is for Kant the ability to ask for final and comprehensive grounds, that is, to find the ‘unconditioned’ (Unbedingte) of each ‘conditioned’ (Bedingte), and thereby to bring the individual objective cognitions of the understanding to their highest, systematic unity.17 In the ‘transcendental dialectic’ Kant now shows that the attempts of pure reason not only to think a world beyond appearances (the meta-physical) but also to recognize it,18 must inevitably fail. That which traditional metaphysics essentially sought, namely knowledge of the transcendent, that is, that which grounds and yet exceeds experience, loses its philosophical foundation once the necessity of recognizing this transcendent is seen.19 But metaphysics and its questions are not thereby simply wrong or to be abandoned, since they are grounded for Kant in a legitimate interest of reason. No objective but only a subjective necessity provides the basis for knowledge’s progress from the conditioned (understanding) to the unconditional (reason): as ‘regulative principles’ the ‘ideas’ of reason are heuristic concepts, which though they do not deliver the nature of objects in themselves nevertheless provide the subjective rules for connecting objects of experience in knowledge. As such they represent and condition the systematic interest of reason, by enabling the ‘unity’ of empirical knowledge as well as unity’s greatest possible ‘plurality’. A ‘hypothetical’ use of ideas, aware of their limits and possibilities, permits the formation of an essentially stable and coherent individual knowledge, through which this individual knowledge gains meaning and shape in the first place: that is, reason’s ideas are not only logical, but also transcendental principles of cognition. By bringing the cognitive concepts of understanding (first-order concepts) into relation to themselves and to each other according to the second-order concepts of ‘homogeneity’, ‘specification’, and ‘continuity’, the latter guarantee—as schematism already guaranteed with regard to the understanding—the function as well as the validity of cognition in general without being cognitions themselves. Where ideas are applied like concepts of understanding, that is, as means of cognition, to an unconditional object (God, immortality, etc.) the endeavour must necessarily fail. For Kant knowledge is strictly limited to the realm of the empirical (‘concepts without intuitions are empty’20); reason can think the unconditional, but not recognize it. Already in the ‘Preface’, Kant makes it clear that beyond all possible experience, no objects can be recognized, for there reason gets caught up in irresolvable contradictions. In mistaking thinking and knowledge, reason thus gets involved in transcendental illusion: of necessity it becomes entangled in false conclusions or fallacies (Paralogisms of Pure Reason), in contradictions (Antinomy of Pure Reason), and in logically nonsensical proofs (Ideal of Pure Reason). Kant now sees in dialectic a procedure whereby reason can expose the paralogisms, antinomies, and absurdities in which reason becomes involved when confusing cognition and thinking. However, while the transcendental illusion of reason can be seen through, it cannot be abolished (just like an optical illusion and in opposition to a logical fallacy, it remains even when recognized). The general and unrestricted use of cognition purely out of thinking generates illusions of reason which appear as dialectical contradictions of the ideas of reason. The philosopher cannot make the illusion disappear because the need for the unconditional is a necessary interest of reason, it provides an important function of unification that is needed for human knowledge to work properly. Dialectic is thus the critique of reason’s hyperphysical use, that is, a criticism of the derivation and constitution of knowledge purely from the conceptual conditions of thinking concerning unconditional objects, which are treated like objects of objective knowledge instead of as regulative principles. Herein Kant’s dialectic differs quite clearly from Plato, whose dialectic is the method of indicating the necessary transcendence of cognition in the dialectical sublation.
Without going into detailed discussion of every single antinomy in Kant’s Critique and their immeasurable effect upon the history of modern philosophy,21 it can be said that their main significance lies in the undecidability of the question of which term of the contradictory (dialectical) relation is wrong in an epistemological sense (an exception is the third antinomy with its distribution of the antitheses between two different ‘realms’ of actuality). This is because there can be no cognition of an antinomy’s objects; antinomy merely provides a basic rule about which fundamental perspective on nature can be investigated in detail. In the dialectical discussion of the proofs of God, and finally in the ‘ideal’ of pure reason, Kant makes quite clear by analogy that the basic mistake in each case is to deal with the last and most comprehensive unity of being in God as if it were a certain, limited object of cognition, and not a final regulative ideal of the subjective unity of all knowledge.
In the final chapter of the transcendental dialectic (‘Appendix’: A 642–704/ B 670–732) Kant indeed gives a positive view of pure reason’s function.22 He recognizes that a reason which leads only to mistakes would be a senseless assumption. Reason’s transcendental ideas are natural and therefore justified for human beings, but they still carry the necessary illusion of being elements of cognition. Kant thus concludes in the first part of the ‘Appendix’ (‘On the regulative use of the ideas of pure reason’, A 642–68/ B 670–96) that it is not the ideas which are wrong, but their use: if ideas are taken for concepts of real objects, the dialectical illusion comes into being.23 Ideas become dialectical concepts (i.e. illusory) by constitutive use, that is, where they are used as concepts of objects. Instead, they may only be used regulatively, that is, ideas are rules for the combination of concepts with meta-concepts, which set the frame of scientific thinking.
Accordingly, I assert: the transcendental ideas are never of constitutive use, so that the concepts of certain objects would thereby be given, and in case one so understands them, they are merely sophistical (dialectical) concepts. On the contrary, however, they have an excellent and indispensably necessary regulative use, namely that of directing the understanding to a certain goal.24
This shows that dialectic in Kant does not only carry the negative connotations of an art of illusion (the confusion of first-order concepts with second-order concepts) but is also positively defined as a theory of the idea’s final unification of all individual cognitions. In the second part of the ‘Appendix’ (‘On the final aim of the natural dialectic of human reason’, A 669–704/B 697–732) Kant thus points out that dialectic does not come immediately from the ideas of pure reason: ‘The ideas of pure reason can never be dialectical in themselves; rather it is merely their misuse which brings it about that a deceptive illusion arises out of them’.25
In summary, it can be stated that Kant’s dialectic neither deals with truth (as do Plato’s and Hegel’s), nor with probability (as does Aristotle’s). For Kant dialectic is a logic of illusion for the purpose of clarifying thinking’s fundamental self-deceptions, its natural confusion or identification of different intelligible operations (recognizing and thinking). This logic of illusion is not directed at logical illusion: ‘logical illusion’ means a deception in thinking which can be completely solved by the correction of thinking, that is, where illusion stops being an illusion if one recognizes and corrects it. However, the ‘transcendental illusion’ in dialectic refers to deceptions which are inherent in human thinking and which do not disappear or lose their effect when recognized as such. It belongs to the ‘tragedy’ of the Kantian concept of reason that reason, according to its nature, gets entangled in necessary illusion and cannot wholly escape it, even if it becomes aware of it. Dialectic in Kant is therefore the indication of something which should not, but unfortunately does, appear—ineluctably so—as transcendental il
lusion. Kant’s dialectic, according to its own concept as transcendental dialectic, is thus defined primarily in relation not to the principle of contradiction, but to the principle of illusion or deception. Contradiction is merely one manifestation of this illusion, namely in the antinomy of cosmology. The illusion of dialectic only appears where ideas (concepts of reason) are used as categories (concepts of mind), hence where they adopt the constitutive character of statements of knowledge about reality, which should refer to objects but which in truth have a merely hypothetical and regulative function as norms of the subjective connection of individual cognitions.
33.2.2 Fichte: Antithetic-Synthetic Dialectic
Fichte’s dialectic is probably one of the most difficult concepts in classical German philosophy, in part because he himself never directly uses the notion ‘dialectic’ to describe his methodical procedure or the forms of contradiction which he thematizes. Thus different types of dialectic have been ascribed to Fichte within the secondary literature: some commentators speak of Fichte’s I-dialectic (Ich-Dialektik) to highlight the fact that the dialectical operation is grounded in the I’s original activities (in contrast to Hegel’s universal dialectic [Universaldialektik] of the ‘absolute Spirit’); some speak of an arbitrary overview-dialectic (arbiträre Überblicksdialektik) where attention is focussed on the static system in which all dialectical moments operate simultaneously (in contrast to Hegel’s process dialectic [Prozessdialektik]); or of an analytical dialectic (analytische Dialektik), because it does not aim at a speculative synthetic unity (in contrast to Hegel’s speculative dialectic [spekulative Dialektik]); or of a contrast dialectic (Gegensatzdialektik), because it is concerned with an external analytic-synthetic procedure (in contrast to Hegel’s concept of a dialectic of internal contradictions [Widerspruchsdialektik]). Regarding the late Fichte (of the 1804 version of his Science of Knowledge), research also speaks of a contradiction dialectic. By this is meant a dialectic which leaves contradiction unresolved, and which therefore differs not only from the positive dialectic of the early Fichte (Foundation of 1794/5), but also from the Hegelian dialectic which sublates contradictions positively.26 In addition, the concepts of a limitative dialectic (limitative Dialektik) and practical-logical dialectic (praxologische Dialektik) have been put forward to describe Fichte’s dialectical thinking. Whereas the limitative dialectic refers solely to the unification of opposites by divisibility (Teilbarkeit) in the Foundation’s basic synthesis (‘A in part = non A, and vice versa’27) and therefore proceeds only limitatively, the praxological dialectic assumes a logical structure in the field of practical philosophy, that is, is a transcendental-logical dialectic in Fichte’s theories of law, politics, and ethics.28
Research has also tried to show that historically Fichte’s dialectic is the link between old (Ancient/Middle Ages) and modern dialectic (Hegel). On the one hand, a new, modern kind of dialectic begins with Fichte; on the other, his dialectic is also considered a precursor to the much more influential Hegelian dialectic.29 However, the question arises as to whether there is indeed a general structure inherent in all pre-modern and modern types of dialectic. In what follows I focus on the basic type of dialectic from the early Fichte of the Jena Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre (1794/5), which was the only version of the Science of Knowledge publically available to Fichte’s contemporaries. The following aspects are thereby essential: the ‘I-dialectic’ as the argumentative space of dialectical relations in general; the ‘limitative dialectic’; and the ‘contrast dialectic’ in the context of the three foundational principles (Grundsätze) via an external, antithetical-synthetical procedure.
Famously, the Foundations expounds three foundational principles which describe Fichte’s antithetical-synthetic concept of dialectic and which form the starting point for the development of the whole Foundations. Fichte concerns himself with the ‘highest unity’30 of the absolute I, a unity which aims at negating the opposition of I and not-I that arises in the second principle by means of dialectical operations (position, negation, opposition, contradiction, resolution of contradiction through the I’s divisibility). In so doing he relocates all these operations in the original action of the I, the basic and dominant operation (hence ‘I-dialectic’). Fichte applies formal logic’s axioms to the I’s original activities (or to transcendental self-consciousness) by justifying the principle of identity (A = A), the principle of contradiction (A ≠ non A), and the principle of the excluded middle—which in Fichte is reformulated as the principle of sufficient reason (A in part = non A, and vice versa)—in the I’s actions of (self-)positing, opposing, and composing.
First Principle: Fichte’s aim is to seek out the absolutely unconditioned principle of all human knowledge, which can be neither determined as such nor proved. The first, absolute unconditional principle ‘should express that Act (Tathandlung) which…lies at the basis of all consciousness and alone makes it possible’.31 This first unconditional principle of the Science of Knowledge is: ‘I am I’. The unconditional certainty that ‘I am’ (as the thetic moment of unity) cannot be denied and is always certain to everyone who is thinking at all and thereby using the ‘I’ as organ of thinking. In what does this certainty consist, however? In so far as the I judges the principle (A = A), the principle must be posited by the I. Because this principle is unconditional within the I, that is, without further grounds and limitations, it must be given by the I itself. Hence it is recognized as absolutely valid that in the I there is an absolute self-identity (A = A), and the validity of the principle derives solely from being recognized (posited) by the I and without limitation or conditions. For the I, ‘being’ is a ‘positing’ (Setzen): where I is, it posits itself, that is, its being consists in acting and consequently giving itself objectivity.32
Second Principle: Fichte knows very well that self-positing (Selbstsetzung) alone is not enough to enable empirical consciousness. Every consciousness, because it is determined, consists not only of identity and reality, but also of difference and negation. Therefore, to explain consciousness, another action of the I is needed, formulated in a second principle which is immediately certain: A ≠ non A. This second principle is only formally unconditional, since the form of opposition is not included in the form of positing of the first principle. The content of the opposition of the Not-I, however, depends on the self-positingfrom the first principle and is, hence, conditioned by it, since in the last instance A can be opposed to something only if this A is posited. To make opposition possible at all, the positing of an A must take place within the same consciousness in which its opposite is posited. The I thereby posits its own opposite. And since this opposite has, up to now, only the determination of being the negation of the I, Fichte calls it the ‘Not-I’. If one abstracts from the determinate content (I and Not-I) of the second principle and considers only the form of being opposed (Gesetztsein), one obtains a basic principle of classical logic: the law of non-contradiction or the ‘principle of opposition’,33 as Fichte calls it. However, if one also abstracts from the action of opposition, one gains the category of negation, which follows from the original act of opposing. ‘Reality’ and ‘negation’ form the categorial context of determination in general: givenness, which preserves itself in opposition. The dialectical form of an antithetical relation of the first two principles thus becomes visible.
Third Principle: the question how I and Not-I may be thought together without simply dissolving each other becomes the task of the third principle and leads Fichte to the principle of ground (‘A in part = non A, and vice versa’34); because ground is the thing that holds several things together in one. Thus, the action of limitation (A in part = non A) now emerges besides the already developed actions of positing and opposition. Its product is the ‘boundary’ which makes possible the opposition of I and Not-I within the identity of consciousness without the sublation of the opposing terms. I and Not-I need to mutually limit themselves in order not to dissolve each other completely, tha
t is, they sublate themselves but only in part. The limitation is a restriction without negation of reality, a negation without full sublation. In the concept of limitation we find divisibility as a capacity for quantity (Teilbarkeit als Quantitätsfähigkeit) in general, because the limited is only partly negated in the limiting. Thus the third principle arises: I and Not-I oppose one another as divisible by one another, or the Not-I will be opposed as divisible by the I and vice versa (‘In the self I oppose a divisible not-self to the divisible self’35). I and Not-I are therefore not posited within the absolute I, but the I in which they are posited is a divisible substance.36 Through this division (Teilung) or limitation (Einschränkung), the limitative dialectic arises: it mediates the opposition of I and Not-I by dividing the whole space of the I as a divisible substance, so that thesis and antithesis independently occupy a part within it. Hence the ‘category of determination (bounding, or as Kant calls it, limitation)’37 expresses a limitation as the positing of quantity in general.
With this structure of the first three fundamental principles, the dialectical framework is complete: the fundamental dialectical structure is given extensively in its antithetical-synthetic basic form by the actions of positing (Setzung), opposition (Entgegensetzung), and limitation or division (Teilbarsetzung). The basic pattern remains: the sublation of the contradiction of thesis and antithesis as partial, external opposites to each other occurs through integration in a synthesis, which operates on the same principle of divisibility, so that a validity is partly assigned to both principles. All following derivations are further intensively differentiated against the background of this dialectical basic structure as method in the theoretical and practical part of the Foundations which is based on this fundamental synthesis. The antithetical-synthetic procedure carries out the self-differentiation of the system, and represents the contradictory ‘motor’ by which dialectic receives its dynamism. Whereas the antithetical procedure goes on to see the opposite in the same (two identical things are distinguished in at least one feature) on account of a ‘ground of distinction’ (Unterscheidungsgrund), the synthetic procedure tries to find the same in the opposite (two opposite things are equal in at least one feature) on account of a ‘ground of conjunction’ (Beziehungsgrund).38