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2 Kant’s Revolution We suppose that our representation of things, as they are given to us, does not conform to these things as they are in themselves, but that these objects, as appearances, conform to our mode of representation. (Kant, C1 Bxx) The order and regularity in the appearances, which we entitle nature, we ourselves introduce. We could never find them in appearances , had not we ourselves, or the nature of our mind, originally set them there. (Kant, C1 A125) When we examine the history of philosophy from the perspective of different issues, various philosophers take on greater or less weight depending on how directly, originally, and influentially they address the specific topic. For our topic of anti-realism, Descartes, for instance, recedes in importance . The basic structure of metaphysical realism prevalent throughout the history of philosophy continues in his thought, now just founded in the certainty of the subject. Subjectivity takes on new significance as the first bastion of knowledge, but it still functions as an inert stepping-stone; first in ordine cognoscendi, it can play no role in ordine essendi. Instead of the father of modern philosophy, it is Kant who forms the great fault line for realism. Although other philosophers had challenged individual tenets of realism, Kant was the first to undermine it radically and offer a coherent, powerful alternative account of reality, subjectivity, and knowledge. I will call this new conception the Kantian Paradigm and discuss it in this chapter . The next three chapters will then show how this framework dominates the continental tradition until Heidegger’s definitive break with it in his later work. Kant is keenly aware of how revolutionary his critical philosophy is. Although both Locke (Locke 1959, 1:9) and Hume both took their task to be the similar-sounding charting of a “mental geography, or delineation of the distinct parts and powers of the mind” (Hume 1975, 13) in order to 33 determine its capabilities and limitations, Kant claims that his thought represents “a perfectly new science, of which no one has ever even thought, the very idea of which was unknown” (Kant, PFM 7/262). He believes that his transcendental or critical idealism is the first philosophy to challenge transcendental realism systematically, an assessment shared by many commentators . Hilary Putnam flatly claims that, “it is impossible to find a philosopher before Kant who was not a metaphysical realist” (Putnam 1981, 57; see also Putnam 1978, 1; Putnam 1990, xix). Robert B. Pippin dramatically states that “the implication of Kant’s argument was a more comprehensive and wide-ranging revolution in conceiving mind-world and subjectsubject relations than ever before effected within the Western tradition” (Pippin 1997, 9). Robert C. Solomon also stresses the contrast between Kant’s transcendental idealism and the vast history of realism: “Kant denied . . . that the world was ‘out there’ and independent of our experience of it. The whole history of metaphysics depends upon the belief in the presence of a reality independent of us” (Solomon 1988, 28; see also H. Allison 1983, 16; Hyppolite 1974, 144). Despite its virtually ubiquitous reign, Kant comes to the conclusion that realism is actually an obscure dogma.1 Once we separate thought and being, there seems to be no rational way to demonstrate their unity (Kant, C1 A369), so the connection simply gets assumed (see, for example, A197/ B242). The unity of thought and being—that is, the claim that what we think correctly corresponds to what is—represents the essential condition for any further thought to have validity, yet rationally establishing it appears impossible, so philosophers just assert it dogmatically. Although there have been various attempts to underwrite it through biology (Aristotle ) or a benevolent God (Augustine, Descartes), Kant considers these merely distractions from the emperor’s nudity, since these proofs themselves require prior assurance of the reliability of our cognitive faculties.2 The inevitable dilemma is either dogmatic realism or skepticism about external reality,3 that great “scandal to philosophy and to human reason in general” (Bxl n.a). All realist philosophies require unjustified assumptions even to get started, a genuinely scandalous situation for the discipline that prides itself on rooting out all assumptions. Philosophy must start over with a new understanding of the relationship between subject and world or thought and being that actually establishes the connection rather than simply assuming it. A revolution is needed. 34 A T H I N G O F T H I S W O...

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