990118 2219 -Things as they appear and as they are in themselves

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Von: Evan Wm. Cameron <ewc@yorku.ca>
An: Multiple recipients of list <kant-l@bucknell.edu>
Betreff: RE: Things: as they appear and as they are in themselves
Datum: Montag, 18. Januar 1999 22:32

Sidney (Axinn):

I prepared the following before realising that your posting was addressed
to the entire Kant list rather than to me alone. I suppose, therefore (at
the risk of boring others) that I am obliged to reply in kind. In any
case, it was good to hear from you.

Let me answer the two questions you asked, including too much
that you know already but reparsing it as I thought of it off the
top of my head when writing my original note to the list (and as I
think of it recurringly). So, (1) 'Where does Kant mention "the
goodness of God"? and (2) Where does he discuss how God encounters
things AS THEY ARE IN THEMSELVES? Except as a matter that we cannot
know about.

1. (a) Kant was concerned in both editions of the CPR
with separating the concerns of speculative from practical rea-
soning, concentrating exclusively on the former to the extent
that it was possible. Unsurprisingly, or so I recall, he never
says in the CPR that 'God is good'. He implies it unequivocally,
however, and leaves no doubt about the warrant of the implica-
tion:

(1) As he notes recurringly in the CPR, the 'idea' of God
is of a being encompassing all 'perfections, wisdom, etc.'
who is the 'author' (ground, etc.) of all perfection and
wisdom in his creation, including the "principle either of
all natural or of all moral order and perfection" (B660;
Kemp-Smith).

(2) The 'idea' of God is therefore of a being emcompas-
sing all moral as well as natural perfection; and since, as
Kant had already insisted elsewhere by the time of the
2nd edition of the CPR, moral behavior entails acting out
of respect for the moral law, and hence from a 'good will'
(the only thing that we can think to be "good without
limitation" whether"in the world, or indeed even beyond
it" (GMM 4:393; Cambridge edition, p. 49), it follows
that goodness must be attributed to God in his perfection
and wisdom.

(3) Without listing them, Kant even goes so far in the
CPR as to insist that "we may freely, without laying
ourselves open to censure, admit into this idea certain
anthropomorphisms that are helpful to the principle in its
regulative capacity." (B725; Kemp-Smith, or almost).

(4) And lastly, least we have any doubt about the neces-
sary existence of a being corresponding to this 'idea',
given the restricted concerns of the CPR and the conse-
quent incoherence of the SPECULATIVE proofs for it,
Kant leaves a promissory note: "A some future time
[already past by the time of the 2nd edition] we shall
show that the moral laws do not merely presuppose the
existence of a supreme being, but also, as themselves in
a difference connection absolutely necessary, justify us in
postulating it, though, indeed, only from a practical point
of view." Aside, then, from the intrinsic puzzle of how
an 'absolutely necessary existential postulation' could be,
Kant's implication is transparent: there is an incontrovert-
ible proof through moral (but not speculative!) reasoning
that God exists, and that the 'goodness' we attribute to
him, however anthropomorhically and by speculative
standards analogically, is warranted.

(b) Conversely, and unsurprisingly, Kant does say that 'God is good'
in his moral texts(!), nowhere, to my knowledge, more explicitly than
in the footnote to 5:131 of the CPrR (Cambridge edition, p. 245):

"In passing, and to make what is proper to these concepts
distinguishable, I add only this remark. Although one ascribes
to God various attributes the quality of which is found
appropriate to creatures as well except that in him they are
raised to the highest degree, e.g., power, knowledge, presence,
goodness, and so forth, calling them omnipotence, omniscience,
omnipresence, all-goodness, and so forth, there are still three
that are ascribed to God exclusively and yet without the addition
of greatness, and all of them are moral: he is the ONLY HOLY, the
ONLY BLESSED, the ONLY WISE, because these concepts already
imply the absence of limitation. According to the order of these
attributes he is also the HOLY LAWGIVER (and creator), the
BENEFICIENT GOVERNOR (and preserver), and the JUST JUDGE -
three attributes which inlude everything by which God is the
object of religion"; to which Kant then adds significantly,
"and in conformity with which the metaphysical perfections are
added of themselves in reason."

(c) Note: since it would be irrational, says holds,Kant, to deny the
existence of a being corresponding in all its attributes to the 'idea' of
God (the 'proof', though deriving from practical considerations, being
as 'rational' as if given through speculative ones), Kant is here claiming
that we can KNOW a lot about things outside the bounds of sensory
recognition! Although I shall not mention it again, keep it in mind
as you rethink the many claims about God that Kant takes to be true of
this being whose existence can be proven morally (e.g. his unique,
nonsensible mode of encountering things, the unity of his encountering and
understanding them, etc.). Which brings me to the second of your
questions.

2. (a) As Kant emphasised again and again in the Preface to the 2nd
Edition of the CPR, hoping (ineffectually, of course) to counteract the
core misunderstanding of the critical programme to which uncautious
readers were prone, then and now, the programme rested in its entirety
upon the distinction between how things (e.g., chairs, tables, ourselves,
etc.) could be meet with in two AND ONLY TWO ways: the first being how we
must meet with things, encountering and then understanding them AS THEY
APPEAR', in contrast to how they may otherwise be meet with in an
'original', 'creative' and 'intellectual' way, a mode of non-sequential
recognition within which encountering and understanding were undifferentiated.

"That space and time are only forms of sensible encoun-
ter, and so only conditions of the existence of things as
appearances; that, moreover, we have no concepts or
understanding, and consequently no elements for
recognising things, save in so far as encounters can be
given corresponding to these concepts; and that we can
therefore have no recognition of any thing as thing in
itself but only so far as it is an object of a sensible en-
counter, that is, an appearance." (Bxxvi; me after Kemp-
Smith, reparsing for clarity)

"... the distinction that our Critique has shown to be
necessary between things as objects of experience [i.e.,
things as they appear] and those same things as things in
themselves ..." (Bxxvi, etc.)

"... the object is to be taken IN A TWO-FOLD SENSE
[Kant's italics], namely as appearance and as thing in
itself ..." (Bxxvii)

In short, to conclude thereafter, as Kant often will, that a
being could be meeting with things otherwise than AS THEY
APPEAR (i.e., as we must) IS to conclude that it must be meet-
ing with them AS THEY ARE IN THEMSELVES.

(b) Kant's recurring example of a being who, unconstrained like
us to meet things 'as they appear', was God, the 'primordial
being', capable of meeting them in the only alternative way,
namely 'as they are in themselves', for God's encounter with
them was 'original', 'creative' and 'intellectual', GIVING the
things to himself, in our limited way of analogically understand-
ing it, through the very same act of THINKING (or understanding)
them:

"[freedom can be thought without contradiction] ... pro-
vided due account be taken of our critical distinction
between the two modes of presentation, the sensible and
the intellectual ..." (Bxxviii)

"... in thinking an object [God ... interpolation by Kemp-
Smith] whom we not only can never encounter but whom
could never be encountered sensibly by himself, we are
careful to remove the conditions of time and space from
his encounter - for all knowledge for him must be indistin-
guishable from his encounters, and not by way of think-
ing which always involves limitations. But with what
right can we do this ... [for] as conditions of all existence
in general, they must also be conditions of the existence
of God. If we do not thus treat them as objective forms
of all things, the only alternative is to view them as sub-
jective forms of our inner and outer encounters, which
are sensible, for the very reason that there are NOT
ORIGINAL [Kant's italics], that is, are not such as can
give us the existence of anything - a mode of encounter
that, so far as we can judge, can belong only to the pri-
mordial being." (B71,72; after Kemp-Smith, etc.)

"An understanding in which through self-consciousness
all the manifold would EO IPSO be given [i.e., the mani-
fold that we encounter differently] would be itself EN-
COUNTERABLE; our understanding [in contrast] can only
think and for encounters must look to the senses ..."
(B135; after Kemp-Smith; also B153)

"This principle is not, however, to be taken as applying to
every possible understanding, but only to that under-
standing through whose pure apperception in the presen-
tation 'I am' nothing manifold is given. An understanding
which through its self-consciousness could supply to
itself the manifold of encounters [i.e., the manifold that
we encounter differently] - an understanding, that is to
say, though whose presentation the objects of the pres-
entation should at the same time exist - would not require
for the unity of consciousness a special act of synthesis
of the manifold. For the human understanding, however,
that thinks only and does not thereby encounter anything,
that act is necessary." (B138, 139; after Kemp-Smith)

"For were I to think an understanding that by itself
encompasses encounters (as, for example, a divine under-
standing which should not present things to itself, but
through whose presentation the things should themselves
be given or produced), the categories would have no
meaning whatsoever in respect of such a mode of recog-
nition." (B145; my translation after Kemp-Smith).

God's 'original', 'creative' and 'intellectual' encounters with the
things we encounter otherwise is therefore Kant's primary
example within the CPR of how things may be encountered AS
THEY ARE IN THEMSELVES, i.e., by a being unencumbered by
the contraints of space, time and understanding that restrict our
own encounters with them AS THEY APPEAR.

Hang in there, Sidney. Best wishes as always!

Dr. Evan Wm. Cameron Telephone: (416) 736-5149
CFT 216 (Film): York University Fax: (416) 736-5149
4700 Keele Street E-mail: ewc@yorku.ca
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M3J 1P3