Necessity and Possibility: The Logical Strategy of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

6. The Modesty of the Critical Philosophy

188 Chapter Six The Modesty of the Critical Philosophy e It is not uncommon in introductory philosophy courses to receive a picture of Kant that paints him as a paradigmatic old-fashioned, detached Prussian scholar, whose walks were so predictable that the residents of Königsberg could set their clocks by them, and whose life passed as the most regular of regular verbs. Such an image is reinforced by the overwhelming attention to what might be called the “positive” dimension of Kant’s philosophy, for example, the Transcendental Analytic . There we find obscure arguments couched in arcane, inscrutable terminology, as well as intricate, elaborate proofs of synthetic a priori concepts and principles. All this makes it easy to neglect the perspective from which Kant viewed things—“Our age is, in especial degree, the age of criticism, and to criticism everything must submit” (Axi n.)1—and to forget the once-famous epithet Mendelssohn applied to Kant: der alles zermalmende, “the destroyer of all.” By adhering to this traditional picture, it is also easy to overlook 1. Kant gives some of the historical background to this claim in the Jäsche Logik (Ak. IX, 27ff.); some of its political implications are developed in the essay “What Is Modesty of the Critical Philosophy   189 Kant’s own view of the Critique of Pure Reason. To conclude this study, I want to look briefly at some of the things Kant himself says about the purposes of the Critique. As we saw earlier, the “positive” dimension is presented in the Transcendental Aesthetic and Transcendental Analytic ; the remainder of the Doctrine of Elements, where Kant presents argument after argument against philosophical positions staked out by both rationalists and empiricists, is negative. This critical strategy reaches its zenith in the Antinomies, where Kant employs a skeptical method to show that in some cases, both rationalists and empiricists are making claims that are demonstrably false; in other cases, by failing to make crucial critical distinctions, they fail to recognize that presumably opposed claims are both demonstrably true. Furthermore, a great deal of the Doctrine of Method is critical as well, constantly reminding the reader of the necessity to discipline the employment of pure reason. In sum, the structure of the Critique reflects its title as a critique of pure reason, a feature often neglected by the overwhelming emphasis on the Transcendental Analytic—specifically the Transcendental Deduction—found in the literature. Indeed, this emphasis may be a result of just how successful the arguments of the Transcendental Dialectic are regarded. But this should not obscure the fact that the main thrust of the Critique is negative. And this is precisely what Kant says: “On a cursory overview of the present work it may seem that its usefulness is merely negative, teaching us that we must never venture with speculative reason beyond the limits of experience. Such in fact is its primary [erster] use” (Bxxiv; Kant’s emphasis). Elsewhere, Kant tells us that the critical investigation of pure reason “should be called a critique, not a doctrine, of pure reason. Its utility, in speculation, ought properly to be only negative, not to amplify, but only to purify our reason, and to keep it free from Enlightenment?” Ak. VIII, 35–42, esp. 40. It is worth comparing Foucault’s remark in his essay of the same name: “I have been seeking to stress that the thread that may connect us with the Enlightenment is not faithfulness to doctrinal elements, but rather the permanent reactivation of an attitude—that is, of a philosophical ethos that could be described as a permanent critique of our historical era.” “What Is Enlightenment?” 42. As I have tried to argue, that attitude ultimately cannot be inculcated without adopting some aspect of these “doctrinal elements,” as characterized in terms of Kant’s transcendental strategy establishing conditions that hold a priori. 190   Modesty of the Critical Philosophy errors—which is already to gain a great deal” (A11=B25).2 Much later, Kant returns to make the same point: “[W]here the limits of our possible cognition are very narrow, where the temptation to judge is great, where the illusion that confronts us is very deceptive and the harm that results from the error is very serious, there the negative in instruction , which serves solely to guard us from errors, has even more importance than many a piece of positive information by which our cognition is...