Kant and the Empiricists: Understanding Understanding (review)

Hume Studies Volume 33, Number 1, April 2007, pp. 186-189 Wayne Waxman. Kant and the Empiricists: Understanding Understanding. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. xvi + 627. ISBN 0-19-517739-8, Cloth, $65.00 /£35.99. Kant regards the reconciliation of rationalism with empiricism as a central objective of his philosophy. However, there is no consensus yet as to how exactly he accomplishes this task, to what extent it depends on rationalist or empiricist resources, or whether it is a reconciliation at all. Wayne Waxman's book Kant and the Empiricists: Understanding Understandingtakes a definite stance in this debate. According to Waxman, Kant's transcendental philosophy is a continuation of British empiricist sensibilism by non-empirical means, and even more, the culmination of this program. So he locates Kant's main resources clearly on the empiricist side, more specifically, in the philosophy of David Hume. At the same time, Waxman suggests a solution to one of the most debated problems with Hume's Treatise: whether the principle that there are no real connections can be rendered consistent with the bundle theory of mind, according to which our notion of a person is based on connections between perceptions, which therefore have to be real. Regarding the overall structure of the book, it is important that it is intended as the first volume of two, the second one not yet available. The main arguments concerning the relationship of Kant and Hume are presented in the "General Introduction" to both volumes which covers nearly twenty percent of the first volume (1-116). However, these arguments do not figure into the rest of the first volume and will be discussed at length only in the second one, along with most of the secondary literature which is covered rather selectively here. The remainder of the first volume is composed of three parts on Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, which deal at length with a variety of problems relatively independent of the main line of argument; with the exception of part 3, chapter 15 where Waxman briefly discusses innate ideas. This particular structure, with the second volume both unavailable and more important with regard to the main line of argument, renders a review based on only the first volume provisional. In parts 1-3, Waxman discusses a large number of passages and issues in all three empiricists with great scrutiny. Part 1 is devoted to Locke and deals with the three powers of perception Locke attributed to the understanding: the perception of ideas in our minds, the perception of the signification of signs, and the perception of the relations between ideas. Part 2 focuses on Berkeley's critique of Lockean abstract ideas and its consequences for Berkeley's theory of the understanding, as well as his account of the mind and his theory of spatial representation. In part 3, Waxman gives a brief discussion of rationalist accounts of the origin of Hume Studies Book Reviews 187 metaphysical concepts and Locke's and Berkeley's criticisms thereof. He then addresses Hume's contribution to this debate with his principles of the association of ideas, as well as Hume's conception of empirical reason, the distinction between reasonable and unreasonable belief, and Hume's skepticism. What Waxman calls Hume's "quandary, " that is, the problems he had with his own theory of personal identity—the main sub j ect of the work concerning Hume, according to the General Introduction—is hardly mentioned in this part. Waxman entitles the program common to both Kant and Hume "psychologism ." One major aim of his book is to argue that the philosophies of Hume and Kant are both systematically psychologistic, and in such similar ways that they in fact share the same philosophical program (11). The only major difference in their approaches, according to Waxman, lies in the fact that Kant introduces a kind of representation alien to Hume, that is, pure sensible intuition. However, Kant would fully endorse Humean psychologism (22), andalso, Hume's psychologism would at least have the potential to diverge from his empiricism which keeps him from considering a priori notions. What does psychologism mean here? According to Waxman, both Kant and Hume seek to offer psychological...