The Problem of Idealism in Kant’s Pre-critical Period 283

The Problem of Idealism in Kant’s Pre-critical Period

by Luigi Caranti, Rom

In virtually all pre-critical works, Kant shows an interest in the problem of ideal-
ism, i.e. the problem of finding a satisfactory reply to Cartesian skepticism about the
existence of the external world. At first glance, however, the confrontation with this
problem seems to be characterized by sheer inconsistency. Moments of confidence
as to the possibility of countering the skeptical doubt are followed by moments of
despair and vice versa. Kant’s anti-skeptical arguments seem to be first proposed,
then withdrawn, then restored and again abandoned. If these profound changes are
seenb in the context of the development of Kant’s philosophy, they become less mys-
terious. Rather, they appear as natural consequences of the different philosophical
positions that Kant embraces over time. The first task of this paper is thus to show
how the various arguments that Kant devotes to the problem of idealism fit in the
broader context of his overall intellectual development. Once this general context
is provided, Kant’s pre-critical positions will no longer appear as a puzzling succes-
sion of conflicting arguments, but, hopefully, as an intelligible, coherent, although
non-linear, development.1
Such a reconstruction, however, is not our sole goal. It is not even the most im-
portant. Indeed, the problem of idealism is not just a specific problem with little or
no bearing on the development of the central tenets of Kant’s mature philosophy.
Quite to the contrary, I will suggest that, after the introduction of the phenomena/
noumena distinction in the Dissertatio, the skeptical challenge constitutes the main
force that leads Kant to reshape the foundation of his philosophy through a new,
truly critical, notion of phenomenon and thus to transcendental idealism. Realizing
the failure of refuting the skeptic through the identification of phenomena with

1 Although some commentators have analyzed Kant’s pre-critical stance toward idealism,
their accounts are deficient in two main respects: to begin with, no one has considered all
the relevant material that one can obtain from close scrutiny of Kant’s unpublished materi-
als (lectures and Reflexionen), which are of crucial importance for the intelligibility of the
whole development; moreover, scant or no attention is paid to the question of how the treat-
ment of idealism reflects Kant’s general philosophical commitments. In other words, no
systematic account of this aspect of Kant’s pre-critical thought has ever been attempted. The
most comprehensive treatment of this topic in the literature is by Hoyos Jaramillo (Matthias
Kettner, ed. Kant und die Idealismusfrage, Philosophie in Gardez, 1995, 94–110). Hoyos
Jaramillo, however, considers only marginally the Lectures on Metaphysics and ignores the
Reflexionen 5396–5400 that, as I will show, constitute a crucial part of this reconstruction.
See also Norman Kemp Smith: A Commentary to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. New
York: Humanities Press 1962, 298–300.

Kant-Studien 94. Jahrg., S. 283–303

© Walter de Gruyter 2003
ISSN 0022-8877
284 Luigi Caranti

mental entities, and the affirmation of things in themselves as the mind-independent

objects that caused them – the strategy of the Dissertatio –, Kant was forced to mod-
ify radically his notion of phenomenon in such a way to make a new anti-skeptical
argument possible. This new notion is nothing but the idea that the immediate
objects of our external experience (outer phenomena) are not mental entities, but
genuine, mind independent objects. This idea is progressively introduced in the
silent decade and constitutes the first step of the anti-skeptical argument of the
Fourth Paralogism.2 At the same time, however, it is nothing less than the basis on
which Kant’s critical philosophy rests. Not accidentally, the Fourth Paralogism con-
tains both Kant’s new refutation of the skeptic and the definition of his philosophy
as a form of empirical realism. Our task is thus to show Kant’s pre-critical progres-
sion from the interpretation of phenomena of the 1770 Dissertatio toward this criti-
cal form of realism in connection with the problem of skepticism.
If this reinterpretation of the notion of phenomenon throughout the silent decade
is not ignored, common and still widespread misunderstandings of the Critique can
be avoided.3 First and foremost, the attribution to the critical Kant of some version
of phenomenalism conflicts with the direction of the evolution of his thought. Our
historical analysis will show that in the silent decade Kant progressively, although
not without stepbacks, moves away from any form of phenomenalism. This invites
us to see the Critique, even in its first edition, as the culmination of an anti-phenom-
enalistic evolution, rather than the manifest of Kant’s commitment to this doctrine.
Moreover, many problematic parts of the Critique that are usually taken as clear
evidence of Kant’s commitment to phenomenalism, especially the Fourth Paralog-
ism, appear in a completely different light if viewed against the background of this
evolution. Far from being a ridiculous attempt to refute Cartesian skepticism by af-
firming some versions of Berkeley’s esse est percipi,4 they can be viewed as Kant’s
method of expressing the empirical form of realism that characterizes the final stage
of his development.
The reconstruction of Kant’s pre-critical confrontation with skepticism can shed
light also on other crucial interpretative issues. One of these is the relation between
inner sense and outer sense. It is extremely interesting to see how, as long as Kant
holds that inner sense is the only sense that enjoys an immediate relation to its ob-
ject, he is unable to find an anti-skeptical argument. This explains why the first edi-
tion refutation of idealism – the Fourth Paralogism – places such great emphasis
on the notion of the immediacy of outer perception. Combined with the notion of

2 This presupposes that one rejects the standard phenomenalistic reading of the Fourth Para-
logism. For a convincing case against such a reading see Graham Bird: Kant’s Theory of
Knowledge. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1962, 36–51.
3 See for example Paul Guyer: Kant and the Claims of Knowledge. Cambridge University
Press 1987, 335 and Hoke Robinson: Two perspectives on Kant’s appearances and things in
themselves. In: Journal of the History of Philosophy, 411– 441.
4 This is the position of Norman Kemp Smith (see A Commentary to Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure
Reason’. New York: Humanities Press 1962, 301–307).
 The Problem of Idealism in Kant’s Pre-critical Period 285

external phenomenon as a genuine mind-independent object, this idea of the im-

mediacy of outer perception opens the path to the correct understanding of the re-
lation that the Critique establishes between the mind and external objects. There is
no exaggeration in saying that, if Kant’s pre-critical treatment of the problem of
idealism is ignored, crucial tenets of the Critique are likely to be misunderstood.
Kant’s pre-critical confrontation with the problem of idealism can be recon-
structed by analyzing passages that spread over a thirty year time span, from 1755 to
the mid-1770s. They are contained in the following texts: Nova Dilucidatio (1755),
Metaphysics Herder (1762– 4), Dreams of a Spirit-seer (1766), Dissertatio (1770),
Letter to Herz (1772), Metaphysics L1 and Reflexionen 5396–5400 (mid 1770s).
The subdivisions of this paper deal with each of these texts. Although I will pay par-
ticular attention to the texts from the Dissertatio on, in which the skeptical chal-
lenge becomes particularly important for the definition of Kant’s critical philos-
ophy, the full understanding of them also presupposes a fairly detailed analysis of
the anti-skeptical arguments that date before 1770.

1. The causal argument of the Nova Dilucidatio

The anti-skeptical argument of the Nova Dilucidatio is an “application” of one of

the metaphysical principles that Kant discusses in this early work. This is the “prin-
ciple of succession” that reads: “No change can occur to substances, unless they are in
connection with others: it is precisely this reciprocal dependence that determines a re-
ciprocal change in their state.”5 Kant believes that, given his principle, “for the first
time” the existence of external things is proven with a degree of certainty that escaped
other “more healthy” philosophies that attempted the same refutation.6 As he puts it:
I discover that for the first time the real existence of bodies, which a philosophy a little more
healthy [sanior] did not manage to defend against the idealists if not via probability, follows
from our principles in the most transparent way. The mind, namely, is subject through means of
internal sense to internal changes; since these changes cannot […] arise from its own nature
considered in isolation and apart from connection with other things, those other things must be
present outside the mind, and the mind must be connected with them in a mutual relation.7

In other words, the internal changes in the mind could not arise unless some
external object caused them. Since the skeptic is committed to the claim that our

5 Ak. 1, 410.
6 It is difficult to understand precisely which “healthier philosophy” Kant has in mind. It
might be a generic reference to philosophers, such as Locke, who maintain the existence of
things corresponding to the “ideas”, despite our knowledge being limited to the latter.
7 Ak. 1, 411. The first sentence is translated by me. For the second I follow Guyer’s trans-
lation (Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, 11–12). Given this passage, it is difficult to
understand what De Vleeschauwer means when he claims that “There is no question here
[in the Nova Delucidatio] – and it is worth insisting on this point – of any problem of real-
ism; Kant never gives it a thought.” See De Vleeschauwer: The Development of Kantian
Thought. New York: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd 1962, 23 [my emphasis].
286 Luigi Caranti

knowledge of these inner states is certain, he cannot deny the existence of the causes
of such states. It follows that the existence of external objects is proved.
Notice that this line of thought, which I will hereafter call the “causal argument”,
constitutes a substantial departure from the Leibnizian-Wolffian school to which,
by and large, Kant belongs in the 1750s. Indeed, famously, for Leibniz monads do
not interact with each other. Not surprisingly, Kant thinks that his principle of suc-
cession, establishing a real influence among substances, removes the need of the
Leibnizian pre-established harmony. A mutual physical influence among substances
is also one of the central tenets of the Monadologia Physica, as the very title sug-
gests, that appears only one year later than the Nova Dilucidatio. This refutation of
idealism has thus the interesting characteristic of containing in a nutshell the central
tenets of Kant’s overall philosophy of this period. In 1755 Kant is still operating
within the framework of Leibnizian-Wolffian rationalism. At the same time, how-
ever, he is trying to amend some of its main tenets. On the one hand, the very prob-
lem of the refutation is expressed in terms of a relation between two substances/
monads, something that clearly echoes the Leibnizian framework within which
Kant operates; on the other hand, it also rests on the idea of a physical influence
among monads, which constitutes the main thrust of Kant’s critique of that philo-
sophical framework.
The “causal argument” seems to run through the whole pre-critical period up to
the Dissertatio and is clearly abandoned only in the first edition of the Critique with
the familiar consideration that any inference from the effect to the cause is invalid.8
However, we should resist the impression that the young Kant is relying on an in-
ference from effect to cause without any awareness of the risks involved in this pro-
cedure. If we look at the details of the proof of the principle of succession, it be-
comes clear that Kant was far from being oblivious of this problem. The proof is a
reductio ad absurdum. It turns on the idea that, given the internal determinations of
a substance and the set R of their “reasons”, here understood in the sense of causes

8 In the Fourth Paralogism Kant says: “the inference from a given effect to a determinate
cause is always uncertain, since the effect may be due to more than one cause” (A 368). Fur-
thermore, we notice that the idea of proving the existence of a cause starting with the effect
that this alleged cause produces seems to be a common way of arguing for the young Kant.
A similar logical path can be noted in Universal Natural History and Theory of Heavens,
also published in 1755. In this work Kant, here following faithfully Leibniz, argues that the
universality and inviolability of the rules of nature is the best proof of the existence of the
divinity. Not miracles, then, but the strict mechanical laws of nature constitute sufficient
evidence for the existence of a wise Creator (see Ak. 1, 228). From the natural order and its
fixed rules (the effect) we infer the existence of God (as the cause of such an order) in the
same way in which from the inner changes of our mind, we infer the existence of the (exter-
nal) causes of such changes. In both cases, the inference is from the effect to the cause. And
in both cases, we have the same attempt to rule out the possibility of other causes producing
the effect from which the inference started. We have already seen how this works in the
causal argument against idealism. In the present proof, it is implicitly, but clearly, assumed
that only God can be responsible for the lawfulness of nature. Only His infinite wisdom is a
cause adequate to such an effect.
 The Problem of Idealism in Kant’s Pre-critical Period 287

of such determinations, if we abstract from all external influence, we are forced to

postulate the presence in the substance of other reasons, opposed to R, to explain
the occurrence of a change in the internal state of the substance. In other words, we
are forced to postulate the coexistence in the substance of reason R and of reason
not R, which is absurd, because the presence of not R would counterbalance R, thus
making impossible for the mind to be in the original state determined by R. It fol-
lows that inner changes in a substance cannot be self-caused and must arise from the
external influence of another substance. Quite independent of the cogency of this
proof, it is clear that Kant was well aware of the necessity to rule out the possibility
of a cause for the inner changes that was different than the external object. He
thought to have shown that such a possibility involves an absurdity and precisely
for this reason the causal argument can get off the grounds.
But, then, what is the flaw of this argument, if there is one, and why did Kant, as
we shall see, abandon it? If we consider the change that Kant’s overall philosophy
underwent from 1755 to the early 1760s, we will be able to answer these questions.
Let us recall that in the early 1760s, the question posed by the Academy of Berlin
concerning the amenability of the metaphysical sciences to the same degree of dis-
tinctness (Deutlichkeit) as that of mathematical led Kant to rethink the metaphys-
ical method that he had uncritically received from the Wolffian tradition. Kant came
to realize that metaphysics, including the kind of metaphysics he had been doing in
the Nova Dilucidatio, was not on firm ground. No progress in this discipline could
occur without a profound change in its method. The main thrust of the methodo-
logical reform that Kant proposed to the philosophical world through the Prize
Essay was that metaphysics needs to be extremely cautious in its inferences. One
must not start from arbitrary definitions, says Kant, and then infer conclusions that
are plausible only for the features that were arbitrarily introduced in the definitions.
We must rather insert in a concept only the features that experience has taught
us belong to that concept (e.g. we insert ‘solubility in aqua regia’ in the concept of
gold, because we have experienced that gold has this property). And we must draw
inferences from these features only. In this way, there is a hope that metaphysics can
reach a degree of certainty comparable to that of the mathematical sciences.9
This idea of avoiding unwarranted inferences that hold only because we have ar-
bitrarily inserted in the concept certain features is the key to understanding the flaw
in the Nova Dilucidatio argument. This is precisely the mistake that the 1755 causal
argument can be charged with. Kant could rule out causes of our inner determi-
nations other than external ones (such as the imagination) only because he started
with an arbitrary definition of the mind. As we saw Kant had just stipulated that a

9 Kant contrasts the mathematical method that starts from “explanation” – in the sense of
definition – of an object, for example a triangle, with the metaphysical, that should never
starts from definitions, because unlike mathematics, metaphysics does not “construct” its
object. He says: “In metaphysics I can never begin with the explanation; rather the defini-
tion is so far from being the first thing I know of an object, that it is almost always the last”
(Ak. 2, 283). See also Ak. 2, 285f.
288 Luigi Caranti

mind cannot produce out of itself a “reason” not R that, at the moment of its
coming to be, would remove the preexisting “reason” R. By the new standards, his
dogmatic method had led him to overlook or deny a very simple empirical fact: that
the mind sometimes does produce its internal changes, as it happens in familiar
cases of imagining. It follows that Kant in 1755 was guilty of the very methodologi-
cal mistake that he would stigmatize in the 1764 prize essay. He started with an a
priori definition of the substance “mind”, without considerations of the features
that experience teaches us about it, such as capacity of self-affection, and he was
thus led to wrong inferences. It is precisely by changing his style of thinking and be-
coming suspicious of the possibility of solving old metaphysical problems by using
an uncritical method that Kant will abandon the causal argument against idealism.
This explains why in the Metaphysics Herder of the early 1760s the problem of
idealism receives a completely different treatment.10

2. The Metaphysics Herder: the impossibility of refuting idealism “logically”

In the section of the Metaphysics Herder devoted to cosmology, and in particular

to the parts of the universe, Kant inserts the following crucial passage. Given its im-
portance, let me quote it in full:
An egoist thinks that I, who am thinking here, am the only simple being, without connection
<nexu > with others. [An] idealist, that there is merely a spiritual world. Origin of idealism, the
truth that the body without thoughts constitutes no world. So Bishop Berkeley, in the treatise
On the Use of Tarwater for Our Body, doubted whether there are any bodies at all. He alleges
that all bodies are mere appearances of bodies in our soul. And that with much plausibility.
1. for all sensation of bodies outside us is merely in us, e.g., beauty, ugliness, merely in our
sensation, therefore the various judgments [on] color, not in the body, but rather merely in the
refractions of the light rays, as the prism teaches. – It is foolish to recommend to him the proof
of a beating, because he would also hold it to be lively appearances in him. The proof from ex-
periences is ineffective, because he also holds them merely to be lively representations.
2. As in dreams, since one imagines things which nevertheless are not, far more lively than
[when one is] awake: since an affection concerning absurdities is greater. And were dreams ac-
tually in mutual agreement, who would not hold them for occurring things? But could God not
have arranged it so that our life is in mutual dream, and that our death would be only an
awakening? In Locke’s day an honest, learned man who had never lied passed himself off with
all certainty as Socrates, who can refute this? – The weapons of truth, wisdom, goodness of
God, are too dull against idealism, and even serve it. For would it not be a shorter way of wis-
dom, all the same, to effect by representations than by bodies?

10 While Kant’s specific criticism of the metaphysical method centered on the necessity to avoid
a priori definitions, his general criticism centered on the groundless confidence of each meta-
physician to be able to solve old and perennial problems. If we keep in mind the confidence of
the 1755 argument, also this criticism can be seen as an a posteriori self-criticism. A passage
in Der einzige mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseins Gottes (1763)
sounds much like an autobiographical notice: “There is a time, in which in a science such as
metaphysics one has confidence to explain and prove everything; there is another time in
which one embarks in such enterprises only with fear and diffidence.” (See Ak. 2, 66).
 The Problem of Idealism in Kant’s Pre-critical Period 289

Thus logically he cannot be refuted, but rather by the assent of other human beings and one’s
own conviction.11

The first thing to notice in this passage is the confession of impotence in giving a
logical anti-skeptical proof. Such a confession may sound surprising if one thinks
that it comes from the same thinker who only a few years earlier was convinced that
he found a “most transparent” way to ground the existence of the external world.
But if one keeps in mind the profound transformations that Kant’s thought had
undergone, one can expect that Kant was no longer satisfied with his earlier argu-
ment. The idea that the “proof of the beating” is impotent against idealism and the
reference to the dream argument are obvious objections to the 1755 causal argu-
ment from the new methodological standpoint. If we start with what experience
teaches us, we realize that cases of self-affection of the mind are undeniable facts.
Thus, we realize that the skeptical doubt will not be countered by any argument that
starts with a representation in us (such as the vivid pain arising from a beating) and
points to the apparent cause of it. As the dream argument shows, we would have the
same “lively appearances” also in the case in which our world were nothing but
“dreams … in mutual agreement”.
We have already seen that in the 1764 Prize Essay, Kant recommends to philos-
ophers a sort of empirical method: never infer from pre-given definitions, but only
from features of an object ascertained through experience.12 We need to insist on
this empirical orientation of Kant’s methodology to make sense of one last crucial

11 Ak. 28,42 f. As it is well known, Kant’s lectures are modeled on Baumgarten’s Metaphysica
(1739). Sometimes Kant merely repeats a definition that Baumgarten gives in his work. It
follows that we must be very careful to avoid attributing to Kant opinions that he might
simply repeat from Baumgarten without embracing them. If we compare the part in the
Metaphysica corresponding to the passage that interests us, however, we find that Kant
takes from Baumgarten only the definition of “egoista” (see Metaphysica, § 392). But the
rest is Kant’s addition. We never find in the Metaphysica an appreciation of Berkeley. Also in
another passage Kant seems to grant to idealism a theoretical strength that we do not find in
Baumgarten. After having repeated Baumgarten’s definitions of “mundus egoisticus” and
“mundus idealisticus”, Kant notices that the imperfection (by which Kant means lack of
reality) of the idealistic world is more difficult to prove. Indeed, we would have to prove
that our world, composed of spirits and bodies, is more perfect than the idealistic world be-
cause “spirits without bodies could not have the same series of thoughts.” Kant, however,
does not seem to subscribe to this claim. Indeed, he thinks that a world in which our
thoughts are obtained without the contributions of bodies would be better because “the
same ends are obtained by a shorter way.” This is another appreciation of the idealist posi-
tion that Kant adds. Therefore, one can hardly doubt that the concessions that he grants to
idealism in the text reflect his considered judgment.
12 Cassirer (76) has noticed that this empirical orientation conflicts with the highly metaphys-
ical Beweisgrund: “It is especially discordant for Kant on the one hand to consign reason in
its determination of actuality completely to the data of experience, and on the other to en-
trust to it the power of bringing us to unconditional certainty regarding an infinite being
lying beyond all possibility of experience”. One should remember though, that even in the
Beweisgrund Kant warns us that metaphysics is a “groundless abyss” and that the belief in
the existence of God would be on shaky bases if it had to rest on a metaphysical proof.
290 Luigi Caranti

aspect of our passage in the Herder Metaphysics. Kant does not say that, since ideal-
ism cannot be refuted logically, it cannot be refuted at all. Quite to the contrary, in
the last sentence of the quoted passage he suggests, albeit very briefly, that there are
alternative ways to refute it. These are “the assent of other human beings and one’s
own conviction”. This phrase is rather vague, but what Kant seems to have in mind
is something like the immediate, unproblematic conviction about the existence of
objects around us. This conviction, not triggered by philosophical sophistry, can be
strengthened by “the assent of other human beings.” In this way Kant’s methodo-
logical orientation toward empiricism is applied to the problem of idealism. The
solution lies in relying on the conviction that the senses give us, even if we are aware
that this conviction cannot be logically grounded. If we cannot refute idealism logi-
cally, Kant seems to think, we can still refute it empirically.
Unfortunately, it is easy to see that Kant’s present position is highly paradoxical.
The appeal to commonsensical conviction is contradicted by Kant’s own consider-
ations on the impossibility of refuting the skeptic through the appeal to “lively ap-
pearances.” This sort of self-contradiction is interestingly not accidental. Being
based ultimately on sense data, Kant’s argument is exposed to the traditional para-
doxes that any empiricist attempt to ground realism suffers. One could say that the
whole development of classical empiricism, from Locke’s realism to Hume’s skep-
ticism, is summed up in our passage. Empiricism starts by considering “ideas” or
mental representations as the immediate object of our knowledge. In its early stage,
with Locke, it confidently takes the sense data as a secure way to ascertain the exist-
ence of external objects that correspond to them. Locke takes for granted that
external objects exist so that they can “convey into the mind several perceptions of
things, according to those various ways wherein those objects do affect them.” Ex-
ternal objects, along the internal operations of our minds, are what “supplies our
understandings with all the materials of thinking.”13 In its ultimate stage with
Hume, however, classical empiricism ends up in skepticism precisely because of its
focusing on subjective sense data. How can we be authorized to go beyond these
“ideas” in our mind? In the Treatise, Hume points out that “properly speaking, ’tis
not our body we perceive, when we regard our limbs and members, but certain im-
pressions, which enter by the senses.”14 Therefore, the senses “give us no notion of
continu’d existence, because they cannot operate beyond the extent, in which they
really operate.”15 The senses do not inform us in the least about the existence of an
independent object. Locke’s very idea of a source of the materials that occupy our
mind amounts to an illegitimate trespassing beyond the sphere of impressions.
Analogously, Kant’s proof suggests that we can rely on our (and others’) empiri-
cally grounded conviction, even though in the preceding passage he was warned

13 John Locke: Essay concerning Human Understanding. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.
1970, 122 f.
14 David Hume: A Treatise of Human Nature. L. A. Selby-Bigge, M.A. Ed. Oxford at the Cla-
rendon Press 1896, 191.
15 Hume, 191.
 The Problem of Idealism in Kant’s Pre-critical Period 291

that no empirical evidence can be used to challenge Berkeley’s argument. Kant was
perhaps still too enthusiastic about his new empirically oriented philosophical
method to realize fully its limits. The progressive awareness of the paradox of
refuting idealism “empirically” left Kant with a sole option: namely, to dismiss the
whole problem, to stop taking it seriously, and to start ridiculing those who end up
in their speculation doubting or, even worse, denying the existence of external ob-
jects. This is indeed what Kant does against the “idealist” Swedenborg.

3. The Dreams of a Spirit-Seer:

Idealism is as ridiculous as Swedenborg’s visions

In 1766, Kant had occasion to quarrel with a very peculiar “idealist”, namely,
with the “visionary” Swedenborg. Certainly, the Dreams of a Spirit-Seer is more
concerned with removing spiritual substances from the sensible world – the spirits
that Swedenborg claims to see – than with grounding the existence of sensible sub-
stances. Indeed, this polemical essay does not contain a detailed discussion of ideal-
ism. Kant, however, does notice that one of the main consequences of Swedenborg’s
theory is that material things exist only as epiphenomena or signs of the “real”
world constituted by spiritual beings and their relations. In other words, the ma-
terial world, for Swedenborg, is just the way in which spirits present to each other:
“all spirits present themselves to each other under the appearance of figures pos-
sessing extent.”16 This means, continues Kant, that Swedenborg is an “idealist, be-
cause he denies to this world its independent subsistence, and therefore held it to be
only a systematic appearance, arising form the constitution of the spirit world.”17
The interesting feature of Kant’s critique of Swedenborg is that he does not dem-
onstrate the existence of bodily beings in order to prove the falsity of Swedenborg’s
theory. Rather, Kant seems to take their existence as an indubitable datum and is
content to show that Swedenborg is committed to the embarrassing denial of such
existence. My suggestion is that this is extremely indicative of Kant’s attitude to-
ward idealism at this stage in his development. Let me recall that the Dreams of a
Spirit-Seer constitutes the final stage of that process of profound rethinking of the
method and of the possibility of metaphysics that started in the early 1760s. In
1766, Kant has completely changed his mind about the possibility and even the goal
of metaphysics. This science must be now the “science of the boundaries of human
reason,”18 as the critical Kant famously will also conceive of it. If in the 1764 Prize
Essay Kant still thought that metaphysics, properly reformed, could contribute to
the advancement of knowledge, there is now no substantial issue that Kant seems to

16 I. Kant: Dreams of a Spirit-Seer. Trans. E. F. Goerwitz, Ed. F. Sewall. Bristol: Thoemmes

Press 1992, 108.
17 Ibid., 108.
18 Ibid., 113.
292 Luigi Caranti

leave to metaphysics. Using a familiar language, we could say that metaphysics is

now seen as a critical discipline, but not as a doctrine. All the traditional questions
that Kant thought metaphysics could answer are now treated with a dismissive at-
titude. In this context, it comes as no surprise that we find no true argument against
idealism, but only the caricature of Swedenborg for his denial of a mind indepen-
dent existence of bodily beings. Consistent with his disillusionment with all tradi-
tional metaphysical questions, Kant’s reaction to the skeptical challenge is very
commonsensical: the idea of doubting or denying the existence of the external
world simply does not need to be taken seriously.
Echoing the position of the Metaphysics Herder, Kant relies on our immediate
commonsensical “conviction” to silence the skeptic and thus ridicule Swedenborg.
But we must notice that such an attitude is here brought to the extreme. Whereas
the Metaphysics Herder at least took the skeptical challenge seriously, now the
whole problem of idealism is no longer considered worthy of serious reflection.
Kant has removed the very need to take seriously this doubt: idealism is as absurd as
Swedenborg’s visions. Both must be ridiculed rather than seriously criticized. It is
suggestive to think that this dismissive attitude toward idealism was forced on Kant
by his commitment to a broadly construed empiricistic framework. Kant’s insist-
ence in 1764–66 on the importance of grounding philosophy on empirical data
committed him to the usual aporia of all empiricistic philosophy: if our knowledge
is reduced to sense data and inferences from them, then the problem to move
beyond these subjective sense data will always arise. In the Metaphysics Herder,
Kant thought that he was able to solve it with the reference to “the assent of other
human beings and one’s own conviction”. But we have seen that an inner contra-
diction threatened that solution. It was perhaps the progressive awareness of that
contradiction that led Kant to the only option left. Since neither a “logical” (à la
Nova Dilucidatio), nor an “empirical” (à la Metaphysics Herder) solution of the
problem is possible, the best attitude is simply to dismiss it.
That this is Kant’s attitude is also confirmed by his remarks in the third chapter of
the essay. After having attempted in the first chapter a serious metaphysical refu-
tation of Swedenborg, Kant now criticizes his own refutation. He sees it as guilty of
the same abstraction against which it was directed. Those who claim to see spirits as
well as those who dare to deny the existence of the external world must not be dig-
nified with a serious reply “for it creates at once grave suspicion for one to attempt
seriously to expound the fancies of a visionary, and the kind of philosophy which is
found in such bad company is open to question.”19 Not only is it impossible to re-
fute logically metaphysical fantasies such as spirit seeing or idealism, it is also a sign
of intellectual corruption even to take them seriously. Spirit-seeing or idealism, we
might conclude, are such hyperbolic and implausible possibilities that they, although
can be consistently held, are not worthy of attention. The cost of meeting the chal-
lenge posed by them is to sink into equally abstract and confused speculations.

19 Ibid., 83.
 The Problem of Idealism in Kant’s Pre-critical Period 293

Ironically, the more we emphasize Kant’s dismissive attitude toward metaphysics

and its various problems (among which is idealism), the harder it becomes for us to
explain why only a few years later in the 1770 Dissertatio Kant returned in grand
style to metaphysics and, in particular, to a metaphysical argument against idealism.
To this historical mystery we must now turn.

4. The Dissertatio: a restoration of the causal argument?

We already saw that in the Metaphysics Herder Kant abandoned the hope to re-
fute skepticism through a metaphysical, or even merely rational argument, such as
the causal argument of the Nova Dilucidatio. Since 1762 Kant shows a clear aware-
ness of the impossibility of refuting skepticism by pointing to the cause of our im-
pressions. No matter how lively these impressions are, no matter how puzzling the
alterations in our mind are, if we do not assume that external objects determine
them, the dream argument clearly shows that we could easily have fleeting impres-
sions in our mind in complete absence of external factors. In 1770, however, Kant
presents an argument that seems to be completely forgetful of such awareness. He
writes:
Now although phenomena are properly species of things and are not ideas, nor do they express
the internal and absolute quality of objects, none the less cognition of them is most veridical.
For first of all, in as much as they are sensual concepts or apprehensions, they are witnesses, as
being things caused, to the presence of an object, and this is opposed to idealism.20

Phenomena are thus “witnesses” of the existence of an object that caused

them and this is opposed to idealism. The causal argument of the Nova Dilucidatio
seems to be rehabilitated with no attention paid to the weaknesses that had already
led Kant to abandon it. It is tempting to assume that Kant’s general return to meta-
physics in the Dissertatio led him to the same dogmatic confidence in an argument
that, as we saw, owned all its plausibility to an arbitrary definition of the mind as
incapable of self-affection. In his newly restored metaphysical mood, Kant seems
to be ready to ignore the negative results that he had achieved in his skeptical
period.
Despite its attractiveness, this reconstruction would be at best superficial. In
order to see why, we need first to understand what Kant is saying in the passage
above, which is much less clear than it appears at first glance. In particular, we need
to understand precisely what “bears witness” to the presence of an object, what this
object is, and what kind of relation occurs between the two. On this question, in-
terpreters are not unanimous. Some think that Kant here takes phenomena to be
genuine, mind-independent objects. Others reject this reading as committing Kant

20 See, Kant’s Inaugural Dissertatio of 1770. Trans. by W. J. E. Eckoff. New York: Columbia
College 1894, 56. (Ak. 2, 397).
294 Luigi Caranti

to patent non-sense.21 It is crucial that we decide between these two alternatives, be-
cause the interpretation of Kant’s treatment of idealism in the Dissertatio largely
depends on how we read this passage. Moreover, once we are clear about what Kant
is saying, we will also see more clearly whether or not Kant is mysteriously rehabili-
tating the argument of the Nova Dilucidatio.
Guyer champions the non-phenomenalistic reading. He thinks that Kant is saying
that the ideality of space and time does not entail that the things in space and time
are dependent on the subject, that is, that they are mental entities.22 He thus seems
to take phenomena in this passage as “objects of experience”, genuine objects exist-
ing outside of the mind. Whereas I will show that “phenomena” or “appearances”
must be so understood in the first Critique (incidentally, something that Guyer
denies, reducing “appearances” in the Critique to some sort of mental entities23), it
is highly dubious that Kant in this passage is already taking phenomena in this
sense. Quite to the contrary, on Guyer’s reading this passage becomes meaningless.
In fact, Kant is saying that idealism is undermined because a phenomenon bears wit-
ness to the presence or existence of another object. Now, if phenomenon is under-
stood in the way suggested by Guyer, i.e. as a mind-independent object, this other
object would be completely superfluous, because the cognition of the first object
would be sufficient to refute idealism. In order to avoid this absurdity, we are con-
strained to adopt the following reading: “phenomena” in our passage are mental
entities, modifications of our mind of which we are conscious because they are the
objects of our experience. Moreover, in being caused (causata) they bear witness to
the presence of their cause, that is, of a mind-independent object. Given the exhaus-
tive nature of the phenomena-noumena distinction, and given the identification of
phenomena with mental states, this object can only be a noumenon.
This suggests, pace Guyer, that in 1770 Kant was still far from the form of realism
(and correlatively of idealism) that he would hold in the Critique. The analysis of
our passage indicates that Kant was tempted, at least when faced with the idealist
challenge, to interpret phenomena as mental entities and ascribe real, mind independ-
ent existence only to noumena, in turn interpreted as causes of these mental entities.
Thus in his confrontation with idealism, Kant gravitated to a form of metaphysical
realism (that he would later call transcendental realism). This does not mean that
Kant was accepting with full consciousness a two-sets-of-objects interpretation of
the phenomena/noumena distinction. It seems rather that he himself was still un-
clear about the precise way in which that distinction was to be interpreted. When
faced with the skeptical challenge, however, Kant seems to find the dogmatic inter-
pretation very appealing, thinking, mistakenly, that this helps the cause of realism.
Certainly, he is still very far from the clear intuition of the Fourth Paralogism that

21 The former group is championed by Guyer (see, Guyer: Kant and the Claims of Knowledge,
21 f.), the latter by Hoyos Jaramillo (see Kant und die Idealismusfrage, 105 f.).
22 See Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, 21 f.
23 See ibid., 335.
 The Problem of Idealism in Kant’s Pre-critical Period 295

the objects whose existence must be proven against idealism are not the alleged
supersensible causes of phenomena, but the phenomena themselves, understood as
genuine empirical objects.
If we accept this reading of Kant’s realism in 1770, then the alleged restoration
of the causal argument after the powerful objections of the Metaphysics Herder be-
comes less mysterious. We saw that the crucial problem with that argument was
that it rested on an a priori definition of the mind. Only by ruling out (with a ques-
tionable line of abstract reasoning) the possibility of the mind’s self-affection could
Kant conclude that some external cause was needed to explain the inner changes
of the mind. That line of reasoning was easily rebutted by the skeptic in two steps:
1) experience teaches us that the mind is capable of self-affection (e.g. dreams and
products of the imagination); 2) regardless of whether we experience a genuine
object or “see” a mere product of the imagination, we are always entertaining a rep-
resentation (or idea in the Cartesian-Lockean sense). In other words, the immediate
objects of our experience are representations. Therefore, we are never in the posi-
tion to know whether there is something beyond these representations. Let us now
recall that in 1770, Kant operates with the sensibility/understanding distinction that
he did not possess before. Moreover, we have seen that he has now a tendency to re-
duce phenomena to mental entities. By doing so, he incorporates the skeptical as-
sumption that our knowledge is limited to “apprehensions”, so that no empirical
proof can really succeed against idealism. This was the lesson that Kant had already
learnt in the Metaphysics Herder. Idealism is right in claiming that our (sensible)
knowledge is limited to “representations”. Idealism, however, overlooks that some-
thing unknown underlies our apprehensions and that, to a certain extent, we have
access to it through the understanding. In other words, Kant certainly restores in the
Dissertatio a certain kind of causal argument, but one very different from that of
the Nova Dilucidatio. That argument did not even consider the problem of going
beyond the inner modifications of our mind, assuming as impossible that they could
be self-produced. The new argument does not rest on this assumption. It even con-
cedes to the skeptic that there is no way to experience the object whose existence
we want to prove. Nonetheless, it insists that there is something that underlies our
representations that we do not experience, but cognize through pure intellectual
means. Kant thus felt that he had found at the same time a way to incorporate the
skeptical position and surpass it. The Dissertatio, at least as far as the argument
against idealism is concerned, does not constitute an unexplainable return to a posi-
tion that Kant had abandoned in his skeptical period. It is rather a second attempt
that starts from very different premises.
This reconstruction, obviously, does not want to suggest that the new causal ar-
gument, in virtue of the differences with the early one, constitutes a satisfactory
refutation of the skeptic. It is quite clear that the force of this argument is bound
both to a dogmatic interpretation of the phenomena/noumena distinction and to an
equally dogmatic assumption about the knowability of the intellectual world. When
Kant reconsidered the possibility of pure intellectual cognition, he was also forced
296 Luigi Caranti

to abandon his new causal argument and rethink the whole problem of idealism
from the beginning. More importantly, it is precisely when Kant saw that no causal
argument whatsoever can succeed against idealism, that he was forced to rethink
the sense of the appearances/things in themselves distinction. As we can see if we
turn to the texts on idealism from the silent decade, Kant realizes that no appeal to a
supersensible cause can silence the skeptic. However, he still does not grasp that the
only way out is to reject consciously and systematically the identification of phe-
nomena with mental entities. It is only when Kant achieves this crucial insight, to-
ward the end of the silent decade, that at once he solves the idealism problem and
reshapes the appearances/things in themselves distinction, namely, the foundation
of his philosophy. It is no accident that the 1781 Fourth Paralogism contains both
the critical solution to the problem of idealism and one of the few official definitions
of transcendental idealism.24 The refutation of the skeptic and the clear definition of
the kind of empirical realism that Kant will eventually hold in the Critique are in-
separable intellectual achievements. As the texts from the silent decade, to which we
now turn, clearly indicate, the skeptical challenge becomes for Kant perhaps the
leading force of his overall philosophical development.

5. The letter to Herz: the definitive abandonment of the causal argument

In the letter to Herz of July 21, 1772, Kant inserts few remarks relevant to
the problem of idealism in the context of his attempt to reply to a criticism raised
by Lambert. Lambert thought that the ideality of time that Kant defended in the
Dissertatio put at risk the reality of change. Indeed, change presupposes time, but if
time is ideal, then change will be also.25 Kant’s rephrasing of Lambert’s criticism is
the following:
Changes are something real (according to the testimony of inner sense). Now, they are possible
only on the assumption of time; therefore time is something real that is involved in the deter-
mination of the things in themselves.

Kant points out that a parallel argument is not used for the reality of spatial ob-
jects. The argument would be:
Bodies are real (according to the testimony of outer sense). Now, bodies are possible only under
the condition of space; therefore space is something objective and real that inheres in the things
themselves.

Kant wants to emphasize the contrast between the two premises: “Changes are
something real (according to the testimony of inner sense)” and “Bodies are real
(according to the testimony of outer sense)”. Since the reality of bodies is not guar-

24 The other two are in the A 27-B 43/A 28-B 44 and A 490-B 518/A 493-B 522.
25 See Lambert’s letter of October 13, 1770. I. Kant: Philosophical Correspondence, 1759–99.
Ed. Arnulf Zweig. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1970, 61.
 The Problem of Idealism in Kant’s Pre-critical Period 297

anteed by the testimony of outer sense, whereas the reality of changes is guaranteed
by the testimony of inner sense, we tend to accept the first argument and consider
the second as at best dubious. As Kant puts it, the fundamental reason why we ac-
cept only the first argument is this:
[I]t is obvious, in regard to outer things, that one cannot infer the reality of the object from the
reality of the representation, though in the case of inner sense the thinking or the existence of
thought and the existence of my own self are one and the same.26

Given these premises, Kant’s answer to Lambert goes as follows. I experience the
changes in my inner state through time, the form of my inner sensibility. This, however,
does not make them unreal. Quite to the contrary, they are certain, because my inner
sense is infallible. But the reason for the infallibility of inner sense is not that inner
sense is not subject to a form, whereas outer sense is. The reason is simply that “in
inner sense the thinking or the existence of thought and the existence of my own self
are one and the same.”27 In other words, inner sense is more reliable not because it is
not subject to a form, but because the representation and the thing represented are the
same. It follows that one can affirm both that inner sense is subject to a form (namely,
that time is transcendentally ideal) and that changes are empirically real. Analogously,
the reason why we do not infer the reality of the spatial thing from the reality of its rep-
resentation has nothing to do with the fact that outer sense is subject to a form. The
reason is rather that, unlike inner sense, spatial objects are not the same as their rep-
resentations. The fact that changes and spatial objects are experienced through forms
of sensibility does not take away anything of their reality. Kant thus concludes: “I do
not deny that changes are real any more than I deny that bodies are real, even though
by real I only mean that something real corresponds to the appearance.”28
There are at least three aspects in Kant’s reply that are relevant for our purposes.
To begin with, although Kant does not put the point in causal terms, it is clear that
he is denying the validity of inferences from the reality of the effect (the represen-
tation) to the reality of the cause (the alleged object). The reason for this denial
seems to be the familiar consideration that no spatial object might correspond to the
representation, as in the case of hallucinations or dreams. We have seen that Kant
has always been aware of this problem, even in the Nova Dilucidatio. The novelty
here is that he sees that the problem is not solved even if we distinguish between
phenomena and noumena, namely, that the crucial distinction of the Dissertatio
does not remove the difficulties of this invalid inference.
Secondly, the text shows that in 1772 Kant still thinks that inner sense and outer
sense enjoy a completely different degree of certainty.29 And although Kant claims
that he believes in the reality of change as much as he believes in the existence of ex-
ternal objects (“I do not deny that changes are real any more than I deny that bodies

26 I. Kant: Philosophical Correspondence, 75.

27 Ibid.
28 Ibid.
29 Notice the difference with A 38/B 55 and A 370f.
298 Luigi Caranti

are real”), he also insists that inner sense and outer sense do not have equal epis-
temic status. Kant holds that both change and external objects are “real”, but his
own argument presupposes that the existence of external objects, unlike that of
change, cannot be established with certainty.30
Finally and most importantly, Kant has begun to see that external objects are al-
ways “real” in an empirical sense and never in the sense in which a thing in itself is
real. Part of his reply to Lambert turns on the idea that change and external objects
can be ascertained as real precisely because they are subject to a form of sensibility.
Indeed, the question of whether change is real in itself (“objectively or in itself”) is
dismissed by Kant as a sort of category mistake: it presupposes that things in them-
selves are in time. Things in themselves are neither changeable nor unchangeable in
the sense in which the things we experience are. Indeed, even to say that things in
themselves are unchangeable because they are not in time would still presuppose
time as background against which we could experience this lack of change.31 It is a
mistake to try to look to things in themselves to ground the reality of time and
change. Analogously, we can infer from Kant’s remarks that he would also hold that
it is a mistake to look to things in themselves to ground the reality of space and spa-
tial things. This is the crucial insight of the letter to Herz. Kant begins to see that the
reality of anything in space and time does not need to rest on something that goes
beyond the limits of our sensible experience. And this constitutes at the same time
the rejection of the causal argument and the first introduction of the idea that (ex-
ternal) phenomena are the objects whose existence must be proven against the skep-
tic. This in turn presupposes that (external) phenomena are no longer taken as men-
tal entities, but as genuine objects existing outside the mind. Thus, the Dissertatio
reduction of phenomena to mental states is likewise denied.
If Kant begins to see that all doubts about the reality of what we experience (be
that change or external objects) cannot be answered by an appeal to the supersen-
sible, the formula through which he expresses this new, crucial insight, is still hope-
lessly vague and risks encouraging precisely the mistake that he has warned us
against. Indeed, Kant’s definition of what is real is: “by real I only mean that some-
thing real corresponds to the appearance”.32 Clearly, the very idea that what is real
“corresponds” to the appearance can be taken again in the sense that what is real is

30 Notice that it is very unlikely that Kant is merely introducing a hypothetical counter-argument
to Lambert without embracing it, because his language suggests that Kant takes as a plain
truth that everybody (including himself) sees that outer sense, unlike inner sense, suffers a
deficiency of epistemic reliability (“it is obvious, in regard to the reality of outer things, that
one cannot infer the reality of the object from the reality of the representation”, my emphasis).
31 Kant does not say that this is the reason why the question of whether things in themselves
change rests on a sort of category mistake. I therefore offer this explanation just as hypoth-
esis of what Kant might have in mind.
32 The same unfortunate formula is to be found in Metaphysics Mrongovius (1782–3). See
Ak. 29, 928 f.: “But there is also a critical or transcendental idealism, when one assumes that
appearances are indeed nothing in themselves, but that actually something unknown still
underlies them. That is correct.”
 The Problem of Idealism in Kant’s Pre-critical Period 299

what goes beyond the appearances, that is beyond the sensible world, which is
exactly what Kant wanted to avoid.33 Moreover, the decisive improvement in the
anti-skeptical strategy – constituted by the identification of phenomena as the ob-
jects to be proven against the skeptic – does not seem to bring with itself a solution
to the problem of skepticism. Kant seems to lack a convincing argument that could
replace the causal argument that he has just rejected, and we are left with the af-
firmation of the epistemic superiority of inner sense over outer sense. The situation
does not appear to have changed if we move to the mid-1770s. If anything, in these
lectures Kant even seems to lose sight of the crucial insight of the letter, because the
identification of phenomena with mental entities reappears.

6. Metaphysics L1: “idealism remains as problematic in philosophy”

While the dating of Metaphysics Herder is uncontroversial because we know the

year in which Herder matriculated at the university of Könisberg (1762) and the
year in which he left (1764), the dating of Metaphysics L1 is far more difficult be-
cause we lack a comparably decisive indication. Actually, this dating has been the
object of a great dispute among Kant scholars since the end of last century. For our
purpose, however, it is sufficient to note that there is a general agreement that these
notes must not be dated earlier than 1775–6 and that they precede the first edition
of the Critique. Only Arnold proposes an ante quem date later than 1781. But this
suggestion is highly suspicious for many reasons already pointed out by others as
well as the fact, surprisingly overlooked in the debate, that Metaphysics L1 presents
a striking agreement with rational psychology. This fact can hardly be consistent
with the hypothesis that Kant gave these lectures after having written the Paralog-
ism chapter of the first critique.34 It follows that we can place these notes in the sec-
ond half of the 1770s. Together with some Reflexionen35, they are the only indi-
cation of Kant’s treatment of the problem of idealism in the time span that goes
from the letter to Herz to the first critique.
As previously noted, it seems that in the second half of the 1770s Kant has not yet
found a convincing reply to the skeptical challenge. To begin with, Kant reiterates
the absolute superiority of inner sense over outer sense:

33 This analysis of this text is indebted to Rousset (see La doctrine kantienne de l’objectivité.
Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin 1967, 140 f.). Rousset, however, believes that the Fourth
Paralogism will remove the idea of a radical asymmetry between inner and outer sense, but
with it also the distinction between representation and object. The reason is that for Rousset
the Fourth Paralogism is heavily committed to phenomenalism. Moreover, Rousset believes
that Kant’s realism must ultimately be grounded in the thing in itself. My interpretation will
challenge these two last claims.
34 For further details on the dispute see Ameriks’ introduction to Lectures on Metaphysics.
Cambridge: CUP 1997, xiii–xliv. For the dating of Metaphysics L1 see xxx-xxxiii.
35 R. 5396–5400.
300 Luigi Caranti

The first thing that is entirely certain is this: that I am; I feel myself, I know for certain that
I am; but with just such certainty I do not know that other beings are outside me. I do see ap-
pearances (phenomena); but I am not certain that the same thing underlies these appearances;
for in dreams I also have representations and appearances, and were the dreams only orderly,
so that one would always begin to dream where one has left off, then one could always main-
tain that one was in the other world. (28:206).36
The passage strongly suggests that phenomena or appearances, terms that are here
used interchangeably, are identified with mental entities. Moreover, the vague for-
mula that we have seen in the letter is echoed in the way in which Kant formulates
the uncertainly that our outer knowledge suffers: “I am not certain that the same
thing underlies these appearances”. Kant seems to fall back on the idea that the
question of realism is to be solved by an appeal to what goes beyond appearances/
phenomena. Given this, it comes as no surprise that Kant was still unable to find an
answer to idealism. He himself seems to admit as much in the rest of the passage.
First, Kant introduces the distinction, which he will later use in the Critique, be-
tween the problematic and the dogmatic version of the doctrine. Both egoism – the
position that I am the only one who exists – and idealism – the position that only
thinking beings like me exist – can be taken either problematically or dogmatically.
They are taken problematically if it is doubted that there are other beings (in the case
of egoism) or that there are material beings (in the case of idealism.) They are taken
dogmatically if both positions are not doubted, but denied apodictically. Again,
prefiguring the Critique, Kant acknowledges a positive value only to the problem-
atic version, considered as a skeptical test for the reliability of the senses. He argues:
The reliability of inner sense is certain. I am, I feel that and I intuit myself immediately. This
proposition thus has a reliability of experience. But that something is outside me, of that the
senses can provide no reliability; for the appearances can indeed be a play of my power of im-
agination. – Further the senses also cannot provide any reliability against idealism. (28:205–6)
As it often happens in the Lectures, it is immediately clear whether Kant is here
expressing his opinion or whether he is just presenting someone else’s. Certainly, as
in the case of Metaphysics Herder, this exposition of problematic idealism and ego-
ism is not a mere repetition of Baumgarten, because the corresponding sections in
the Metaphysica contain only a definition of the egoist.37 This, however, is not suf-

36 For a similar statement about the absolute certainty of inner sense se also Ak. 28, 224. One
should notice, however, that it is less clear here that Kant is not merely presenting Descartes’
position.
37 Quite to the contrary, it seems that Kant introduces the skeptical challenge of problematic
idealism to criticize Leibniz and thus indirectly also Baumgarten, who follows Leibniz in
considering the world as an aggregate of monads, that is, spiritual entities (Metaphysica,
§ 394 f.). Kant criticizes this theory by showing that it is a form of dogmatic idealism. Indeed,
it asserts that only spiritual substances exist, presupposing a sort of intellectual intuition
that would reveal that the bodies that we experience are actually entities with representative
power (vis representativa), namely, monads. But since we do not have this intellectual intu-
ition, it follows that, unlike problematic idealism, Leibniz’s and Baumgarten’s dogmatic
idealism is of no use and has to be “banned from philosophy.” (Ak. 28, 207) Consequently,
there is no doubt that Kant here is not merely repeating Baumgarten.
 The Problem of Idealism in Kant’s Pre-critical Period 301

ficient to conclude that Kant embraces the skeptical claims that he makes. Indeed, it
is still possible that he is merely presenting the skeptical challenge, without embrac-
ing the considerations on which it rests. There are, however, two reasons to believe
that he does subscribe to some of the tenets of problematic idealism. To begin with,
he clearly agrees with the idea that the senses cannot give any proof, as he comments
in passing that “this [idea] is very good in philosophy”. Secondly, he ends the ex-
position of problematic egoism and idealism with a comment that seems to reflect
his final assessment of the whole issue: since the senses cannot give any proof, “ego-
ism and idealism remain as problematic in philosophy.”38 This means that, unlike
dogmatic idealism that “is of no use”, problematic idealism cannot be simply dis-
missed as such. It remains in philosophy as a meaningful problem. Moreover, we
have just seen that the senses are impotent against idealism. Therefore, it seems that
we still lack an argument to refute it.
To be sure, Kant points out that the understanding “can indeed add something to
the reliability of the senses, for if things are altered, then there must be a ground of
the alteration.” This passage is quite obscure as it stands. If by the things that are al-
tered one understands our mental states, then this remark echoes the causal argu-
ment that we have seen in the Dissertatio and that we thought Kant had completely
and definitively abandoned. There is, however, no indication that the alterations
that Kant is talking about are mental ones. It seems rather that Kant has in mind the
following: we observe that (all) things are altered. Since we take these alterations
(e.g. ice melting) as in general independent of our will, we can hardly explain why
they occur unless we postulate a factor beyond our causal power, that is, something
outside us. Since it is the understanding that introduces causality as a “rule of syn-
thesis” among phenomena, it is the understanding that “can […] add something to
the reliability of the senses”. This reading is confirmed by Kant’s emphasis, lost
in Ameriks’ translation, that the “ground of the alteration” is “in the things” (in
ihnen). It would hardly makes sense to say that the ground of the alteration of
things is “in them”, if we take the things that are altered as inner modifications. The
whole point of the causal argument is, indeed, that the ground of the inner modifi-
cations is not “in them”.
Kant himself does not seem to consider his argument as a straightforward refu-
tation of the skeptic. The very cautious language that he uses suggests as much: the
understanding adds “something” to the reliability of the senses, which suggests that
their inability to produce a proof is not completely rescued by the understanding.

38 See, Ak. 28, 207. There are two versions of this sentence: (1) “bleibt der Egoismus und Idea-
lismus in der Philosophie problematisch” according to Lehman’s reading and (2) “bleibt
Egoismus und Idealismus als problematisch in Philosophie” according to Pölitz’s reading,
which is followed by Ameriks. The former suggests that idealism remains as a problem in
philosophy whereas the latter suggests that problematic (as opposed to dogmatic) idealism
remains in philosophy. We will follow the latter that coheres better with the beginning of the
next paragraph. Notice, however, that the discarded reading suggests even more strongly
that Kant considers idealism as a problem still to be solved.
302 Luigi Caranti

More importantly, even if Kant took his argument as conclusive, it is quite clear that
it is not. The fact that we take the alterations around us as independent of our will
does not rule out the possibility that the causal powers that we observe are just part
of a systematic illusion. That Kant himself was not very happy with his argument
in the Lectures is confirmed by a Reflexion, which, if Adickes’ dating is correct, is
roughly contemporary to these notes. There Kant adopts a completely new argu-
ment. He claims:
We are certainly not aware that [phenomena] are external, namely that they are not mere prod-
ucts of the imagination and dreams, but we do know that they are the original of all possible
products of the imagination and thus that they are not products of the imagination.39

Thus, phenomena must be real because they are what provides to the imagination
the material (“the original”) that it needs to operate on. This is the first appearance
of an argument that Kant will use also in the critical period, both in the Fourth Para-
logism and in the Refutation of Idealism, but that interpreters almost unanimously
consider unsatisfactory.40 Indeed, Descartes himself meets this objection quite con-
vincingly in the First Meditation. His famous metaphor of painting expresses pre-
cisely the objection that Kant is raising, and Descartes silences it with the hypothesis
that God has brought about a condition wherein no material things exist even
though they appear to me to exist.41
Instead of spelling out all defects of this strategy, it is far more important to notice
how in this attempt to answer the skeptic, Kant is once again forced to redefine the
notion of phenomenon. Right before the quoted passage, Kant points out that when
we ask whether something exists outside us, this question is legitimate only if we do
not ask for something that exists in itself. The legitimate question is therefore
“whether there be external phenomena.” The question of skepticism can neither be
posed nor answered with reference to something that has an “absolute existence”,
that is, with reference to things in themselves. The objects that we must prove
against the skeptic are phenomena. And these objects are taken by Kant as genuine
objects, not as mental entities, as is evident from their characterization as the source
of the material of the imagination in the passage quoted above. If phenomena were
mental entities, obviously they could not serve as the external source of the material
on which the imagination operates. In this crucial Reflexion, that can be rightly
considered the bridge to the critical period, Kant is securing the progress that he had
already made in the Letter to Herz and that he seemed to have lost in Metaphysics
L1. Although the formula that Kant uses for defining phenomena (as that to which
“objects correspond”) is still open to misunderstanding and echoes the equally mis-

39 R. 5400; my translation.
40 See, for example, Henry Allison: Kant’s Transcendental Idealism. New Haven and London:
Yale University Press 1983, 301f. and Karl Ameriks: Kant’s Theory of the Mind. Clarendon
Press 1982, 123.
41 See The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Trans. by J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, D. Mur-
doch. Vol. 2. Cambridge University Press 1968, 14.
 The Problem of Idealism in Kant’s Pre-critical Period 303

leading expression of the Letter to Herz, it is undeniable that Kant finally sees with
full clarity that no reference to things in themselves is needed (nor is legitimate) to
answer the skeptic and that all our efforts must focus on grounding the existence of
phenomena, which can no longer be understood as mental entities, precisely for the
anti-skeptical function that is attributed to them. The fact that the proof that Kant
offers is still unsatisfactory does not undermine in the least the enormous value of
this transformation of the notion of phenomena.
In Metaphysics L1 Kant still tended to identify phenomena/appearances with
mental entities and this was the greatest obstacle he had put on the way of a refu-
tation of the skeptic. But precisely that failure was pointing him in the new direction
that he had sketched in the Letter to Herz. If skepticism is to be refuted, then the ob-
jects whose existence is to be shown can no longer be what remains “behind” phe-
nomena. Rather, they have to be exactly these phenomena, no longer understood as
mental entities, but as genuine, mind independent objects. It is with this notion of
phenomenon that Kant turns to his critical period. The dialectical role of the skep-
tical challenge had made possible the definition of a form of empirical realism pro-
foundly different from the metaphysical and dogmatic version of the Dissertatio.
Kant had thus finally defined his transcendental idealism.