Things in Themselves: The Historical Lessons

Things in Themselves: The Historical Lessons MOLTKE S. GRAM 1. KANT'S THEORYOFTHINGS1NTHEMSELVEShas been unfortunate in most of its critics. They do not state the theory properly because they assimilate it to something it is not. They then succeed in refuting one or another theory which Kant does not hold but which misleadingly goes under the name of the theory he does hold. All of these efforts have succeeded only in obscuring what I shall identify as the genuine issue facing Kant's theory of things in themselves. For none of them, other hermeneutical mishaps apart, has recognized a crucial ambiguity in Kant's use of the notion of transcendental ideality. 2. Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi begins the philosophical disaffection with things in themselves by giving it a slogan; "Without that presupposition [I] could not enter that system... and could not remain there with that presupposition. ''~ He reasons this way. Objects make impressions (Eindriicke) on our sensory apparatus. What makes these impressions Kant calls the transcendental object. 2But this object is not itself an impression and therefore can "never be an object of experience; but appearance and that this or that affection of sensibility is in me constitutes no relation of these representations to an object."3 Jacobi concludes that "where this cause might be and what kind of relationship it might have on the effect remain concealed in the deepest darkness. "4 3. Jacobi's polemic can be cast in this argument form: 1. Objects (Gegenstiinde) make impressions (Eindriicke) on our sensory receptors. [Assumption] 2. Objects stand in causal relations to those receptors. [Assumption] 3. The causal object cannot be an impression. [From steps 1and 2 by the lemma that the immediate content of every sensory awareness is the causal result of an object, making it impossible for anything to be both an object and an impression simultaneously] 4. Therefore, that any impression is present to my consciousness does not imply that This paper owes much to the critical attention given to an earher draft by Lewis White Beck, Manley Thompson, and Wilham Werkmeister. Werke,ed. F. Roth, 6 vols (Leipzig: Gerhard Fleischer, 1815), vol 2, "Uber den transzendentalen Ideahsmus ," p. 304. 2 Ibid., pp. 302ff. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid., p. 305; cf. p. 307: "Kurz unsere ganze Erkenntms enthalt mchts, ptatlerdmgs mchts, was lrgend eme wahrhaft objektive Bedeutung hatte.'" [4071 408 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY . the impression stands in any relation to an object. [From 3 with the lemma that whatever cannot stand in any relation to consciousness cannot be an object] Therefore, there are no things in themselves. [From step 4 with the lemma that what cannot stand in some relation to consciousness cannot exist] The argument is a failure. The notion of a thing in itself cannot be discredited by saying, as Jacobi does, that it stands in a causal relation to our sensory receptors. Nor can it be discredited by saying, as Jacobi also does, that we lack an impression of a thing in itself. 3.1. Jacobi's argument feeds on two confusions about the distinction between a thing in itself and an appearance. It is one thing to say, as Jacobi does, that a thing in itself causes the impressions we have. It is, however, quite another to claim that objects outside us cause whatever impressions we have. The presiding assumption of the confusion is that whatever is a thing outside us is a thing in itself. A sensation can be caused by something outside us which itself is a phenomenal object. 3.2. The second confusion is that what causes an impression cannot itself be an impression . Here the argument slides from one to another deceptively similar proposition which makes step 3 in the argument fatally ambiguous. We can say that an object cannot be an impression when it causes an impression. But this is compatible with saying that an object cannot be an impression on any perceptual occasion. And this leaves open an alternative which discredits step 3 and undermines Jacobi's attempt to show the indemonstrability of the existence of things in themselves: An object which causes us to have certain impressions on one perceptual occasion can itself be an impression on...