The use of Kant in Jung's early psychological works.

Link/Page Citation
I need only remark that it is by no means unusual, upon comparing the thoughts
which an author has expressed in regard to his subject, whether in ordinary
conversation or in writing, to find that we understand him better than he has
understood himself. As he has not sufficiently determined his concept, he has
sometimes spoken, or even thought, in opposition to his own intention.

(Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 314)

Introduction

Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) made repeated and explicit reference to Immanuel Kant
throughout his extensive writings.(1) According to his autobiography, he started
reading Kant in the context of his study of Schopenhauer,(2) and in a letter to the
professor of psychology Joseph Rychlak of 27 April 1959, he listed Kant amongst his
major philosophical influences, adding: 'In the intellectual world in which I grew
up, Hegelian thought played no role at all; on the contrary, it was Kant and his
epistemology on the one hand, and on the other straight materialism.'(3) A member
of one of Jung's seminars recalls him as saying that the 'real basis' of his
'philosophical education' was Kant.(4)

Moreover, Jung referred to Kant nearly twenty times - more than to any other
philosopher - in his correspondence (or at least in that which has been published),
repeatedly trying to assimilate the fundamental notions of analytical psychology to
the key concepts of the critical philosophy of Kant. For example, he wrote in a
letter of 8 April 1932 to the aesthetician and philosopher August Vetter: 'In einem
gewissen Sinne konnte ich vom kollektiven Unbewussten genau das gleiche sagen, was
Kant vom Ding an sich sagte, namlich dass es lediglich ein negativer Grenzbegriff
sei' ['In a certain sense I could say of the Collective Unconscious exactly what
Kant said of the Ding an sich - that it is merely a negative borderline concept']
(B1 p.124/L1: p.91); and on 13 October 1941, he told the professor of botany at
Basle, Gustav Senn: 'Der Kantsche kategorische Imperativ ist naturlich eine
philosophische Uberarbeitung einer seelischen Tatsache, welche [...] eine
unzweifelhafte Manifestation der Anima ist' ['Kant's categorical imperative is of
course a philosophical reworking of a psychic fact which ... is unquestionably a
manifestation of the Anima'] (B1: p.380/L1: p.305).

In his correspondence, Jung frequently aligned himself with Kant to defend the
epistemological stance of analytical psychology: in a letter dated 8 February 1941
to the Catholic theologian Josef Goldbrunner, Jung declared himself to be,
epistemologically speaking, a Kantian: 'ich [stehe] erkenntnistheoretisch auf
Kantscher Grundlage [...], was besagen will, dass eine Aussage ihren Gegenstand
nicht setzt' ['epistemologically I take my stand on Kant, which means that an
assertion doesn't posit its object'] (B1: p.368/L1: p.294); and he repeated this
claim two years later in a letter written on 4 February 1943 to the political
philosopher Arnold Kunzli: 'Philosophisch bin ich altmodischerweise nicht uber Kant
hinaus-gekommen, kann also mit keinen romantischen Hypostasen dienen und bin
infolgedessen fur philosophische Befunde ganz und gar nicht zu Hause'
['Philosophically I am old-fashioned enough not to have got beyond Kant, so I have
no use for romantic hypostases and am strictly "not at home" for philosophical
opinions'] (B: p.407/L1: p.329). As in his letter to Walter Robert Corti of 2 May
1955, Jung acknowledged that the boundaries of Kantian philosophy were frequently
transgressed - but only by others: 'Der himmelsturmende Anspruch des romantischen
Intellektes ist mir leider ganz und gar verflogen [...] Es scheint mir, dass
transzendente Urteile des Intellektes uberhaupt unmoglich und darum gegenstandslos
sind. Sie kommen aber, trotz Kant und Erkenntnistheorie, immer wieder vor und
konnen offenbar nicht unterdruckt werden' ['The heaven-storming pretensions of the
romantic intellect, sad to relate, have flown from me utterly ... It seems to me
that transcendent judgements of the intellect are absolutely impossible and
therefore vacuous. But in spite of Kant and epistemology they crop up again and
again and can evidently not be suppressed'] (B2: p.486/L2 p.249). And the most
important statements about Kant in his published works are to be found when Jung
tries to place the development of analytical psychology within an historico-
intellectual context. To give just one example, in 'Die psychologischen Aspekte des
Mutterarchetypus' ['Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype'] (1938/1954),
Jung went so far as to suggest that the critical philosophy of Kant had prepared
the way for his own analytical psychology which now, so he implied, had superseded
the first Critique (GW9(i) [section]150).

Both the nature and the extent of Jung's claims to be a Kantian are, even from the
above statements, less than obvious. Yet despite the apparently immense, even
foundational significance which he credited to Kant and the critical philosophy,
Jung's use of Kant has rarely been investigated, either by philosophers or by those
who profess to belong to the school of Jungian psychology. To the best of my
knowledge, only eight articles have been written which address this topic, of which
only three could be called substantial or detailed, and just five books include any
detailed discussion of Kant's possible influence on Jung in the context of the
wider scientific, philosophical and theological issues at stake in his psychology.
(5) And as far as I know, only one diploma thesis on this topic has been submitted
to a Jungian Training Centre,(6) and just one doctoral thesis has undertaken an
analysis of the transcendental method and its relation to analytical psychology.(7)

Nor is there any clear agreement amongst these philosophical or psychological

critics on the exact nature or extent of Kant's influence, if any, on Jung. On the
one hand, some commentators seem as happy as Jung himself to equate analytical
psychology and the critical philosophy. For instance, David Pugmire has simply
asserted: 'Jung's appeals to Kant centre on the idea that what we take to be
universal and necessary features of reality actually reflect pervasive features of
the human mind, which leaves reality in itself radically inscrutable and in some
ways unimportant to us' (1981, pp.93-94). Before him, Eugen Bar had claimed that
'Jung's archetypes are logically isomorphic with Kant's concepts of reason or
ideas' (1976, p.114-23). In simply aligning terms rather than analysing concepts,
such formulations are typical of the lack of rigour with which the possible
affinities between the critical philosophy and analytical psychology have been
tackled.

On the other hand, at least some have adopted a more sceptical attitude towards
Jung's alleged Kantianism. In particular, Stephanie de Voogd has pointed out that
although 'Jung thought himself a Kantian [...] he was in fact a most un-Kantian
Kantian' (1977, p.176), and more recently she has accused Jung's Kantianism of
being 'both self-contradictory and self-defeating' (1984, p.204). And at the end of
her analysis of what she calls his 'epistemological discussions', Marilyn Nagy has
concluded that Jung ultimately had less in common with Kant than with Schopenhauer
and, more generally, with 'nineteenth-century religious idealism which insisted
that we know only what is within' (1981, p.79). However, none of these commentators
enables us to understand which aspects of Analytical Psychology are part of Kant's
legacy to Jung and which are not, mainly because their preoccupation is with the
validity of Jung's arguments rather than with their filiation.

In this article, therefore, I want to examine the issues raised but deliberately
not addressed by the psychotherapist Barbara Eckman in a footnote in her article on
Jung's relationship to Hegel:

Jung claims that his archetypes correspond to Kant's a priori forms and categories,
in that they are present in the human mind prior to the individual's experience,
and make apprehension of experience possible. Whether Jung used Kant in a way Kant
himself would approve is beyond the scope of this discussion. I suspect that Jung
understood neither the motivation and purpose of Kant's system nor the precise
meaning and function of the Kantian terms noumenon and phenomenon in their relation
to knowledge and faith.(8)

To clarify the issues at stake, I shall concentrate on Jung's use of Kant across a
range of his early psychological works,(9) from a co-authored article on word
association from the psychoanalytic period, via what is widely regarded as the
founding text of analytical psychology, to the most sophisticated of his early
works, Psychologische Typen [Psychological Types] (1921). This in turn will give me
the opportunity to examine in detail the following four areas. First, the
distinction between analytic and synthetic judgements (as found in Kant) and
between analytic and synthetic associations (Jung); second, the reaction and the
response of both Kant and Jung to the crisis of religion; third, Jung's discussion
of Kant's treatment of the ontological proof of God in the first Critique; and
finally, Jung's attempt to define the archetype in terms of Kant's transcendental
system.

Analysis and synthesis

Jung first became known through his pioneering experiments on word-association. One
of his papers, entitled 'Experimentelle Untersuchungen uber Assoziationen Gesunder'
['The Associations of Normal Subjects'], was co-written with his fellow Zurich
psychologist Franz Riklin (1878-1938). It was first published in the Journal fur
Psychologie und Neurologie, iii (Leipzig, 1904) and iv (1905), and subsequently
republished in Diagnostische Assoziationstudien: Beitrage zur experimentellen
Psychopathologie, I (Leipzig, 1906), which Jung himself edited. In this early
psychoanalytic paper on word-association, Jung made use of Kant's distinction
between analytic and synthetic judgements as set out in Kant's Kritik der reinen
Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason] (B 10-20) (see below) to differentiate two kinds
of associative performance. Jung argued that the association between the words
Vater ('father') and Sorge ('worry') - a so-called 'synthetic association' - is
psychologically much more significant than the association between the words
Bleistift ('pencil') and Lange ('length'), a so-called 'analytic association'. He
wrote: 'Bezuglich assoziativer Leistung steht also cum grano salis das synthetische
Urteil uber dem analytischen' ['As regards associative performance the synthetic
judgement is in a way superior to the analytic'] (GW [section]2 46). However, Jung
saw that there were theoretical problems with this distinction: 'Wir wissen namlich
nicht im einzelnen Fall die Frage zu entscheiden, ob das analytische Pradikat ein
notwendig Mitgedachtes sei oder nicht' ['we have no way of knowing in the
individual case whether the analytic predicate is an essential part of the concept
or not']. And even if this problem could be solved - 'Die Entscheidung dieser Frage
kann nur versucht werden, wenn wir im einzelnen Falle zwischen konkreter und
allgemeiner Vorstellung zu unterscheiden vermogen' ['One can only attempt to decide
this question if one can differentiate in individual cases between a concrete and a
general representation'] - he foresaw further, practical, difficulties in using it
meaningfully.(10)

Jung returned to this psychological version of the distinction between synthetic

and analytic in his major work of 1911/12 which marked his offical break with
Freud, Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido ['Transformations and Symbols of Libido',
translated as Psychology of the Unconscious].(11) In an important footnote in this
work, where he defended himself against the charge of Mystizismus, Jung took up
some of the implications of the earlier distinction between 'analytic' and
'synthetic' associations. Here he proposed that therapy should not just aim at
psychological 'analysis' but instead should seek to realize what he called
psychological 'synthesis':

So wenig aber die Geschichtswissenschaft sich um die Zukunfts-kombinationen

bekummert, welche vielmehr das Objekt der Politik sind, so wenig sind auch die
psychologischen Zukunfts-kombinationen Gegenstand der Analyse, sondern waren
vielmehr Objekt einer unendlich verfeinerten psychologischen Synthetik, welche den
naturlichen Stromungswegen der Libido zu folgen verstunde. (WSL: p.66, note 20)(12)

[But just so little as History concerns itself with the combinations for the
future, which is the function of Politics, so little, also, are the psychological
combinations for the future the object of analysis; they would be much more the
object of an infinitely refined psychological synthesis, which attempts to follow
the natural current of the libido. (PU: p.493, n.17)]

As early as 1909, whilst starting work on Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, Jung
had speculated in a letter to Freud of 2-12 March 1909 about the existence of
'irgendein ganz besonderer Komplex [...], der allgemein ist und mit prospektiven
Tendenzen des Menschen zu tun hat' ['some quite special complex ... a universal one
having to do with the prospective tendencies in Man'] (B1: p.28/L1: p.10). From
this speculation, Jung developed the notion of a psychology which did not just look
back to the past but also looked forward to the future: 'Wenn es eine Psychanalyse
gibt, so muss es auch eine >>Psychosynthese<< geben, die nach gleichen Gesetzen
Zukunftiges schafft' ['If there is a "psych-analysis" there must also be a
"psychosynthesis" which creates future events according to the same laws'].(13)

In the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Kant had adopted the established position (found
in Leibniz and others) that, whereas analytic judgements provide us with no new
information (because the idea of the predicate is already contained in the
subject), by contrast, synthetic judgments (where the idea of the predicate is not
contained in the subject) do (see A 10, a passage marked by Jung in the margin of
his copy of the first Critique).(14) Likewise, it appears that Jung wanted a
'synthetic' psychology which would provide the analyst or the patient or both with
additional information about the future psychological development of that patient,
instead of an 'analytic' psychology which could only reveal what had already
happened to that patient in the past and subsequently been repressed. This
difference in emphasis represents the substance of Jung's early critique of Freud.
The same argument as found in Jung's letter to Freud is restated, in terms of an
almost 'messianic' schema, in Jung's footnote in Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido:

Insofern im Heute schon das Morgen enthalten ist und alle Faden des Zukunftigen
schon gelegt sind, konnte also eine vertiefte Erkenntnis der Gegenwart eine mehr
oder minder weitreichende und sichere Prognose des Zukunftigen ermoglichen.
Ubertragen wir dieses Raisonnement, wie das schon Kant getan hat, auf das
Psychologische, so muss sich notwendig dasselbe ergeben: So wie namlich dem
Unbewussten nachweisbar langst unterschwellig gewordene Erinnerungsspuren noch
zuganglich sind, so auch gewisse sehr feine subliminale Kombinationen nach
vorwarts, welche fur das zukunftige Geschehen, insofern solches durch unsere
Psychologie bedingt ist, von allergrosster Bedeutung sind. (WSL: p.66, note 20)

[In so far as tomorrow is already contained in today, and all the threads of the
future are in place, so a more profound knowledge of the past might render possible
a more or less far-reaching and certain knowledge of the future. Let us transfer
this reasoning, as Kant has done, to psychology. Then necessarily we must come to
the same result. Just as traces of memory long since fallen below the threshold of
consciousness are accessible to the Unconscious, so too there are certain very fine
subliminal combinations for the future, which are of the greatest significance for
future happenings in so far as the future is conditioned by our own psychology.
(PU: p.493, n.17)]

Thus the logical distinction between analytic and synthetic judgements as set out
by Kant in the first Critique became, for Jung, the conceptual basis of the
distinction between what he saw as two entirely different psychologies, one of
which - Freud's - deals with the source of the neurosis (and hence, so Jung
thought, says nothing new), and another - Jung's own - which would deal with the
trajectory of the neurosis and its implications for the future development of the
patient (and hence, so Jung thought, would show what it meant). Yet it remains
unclear why retrospective enquiry should be any less 'synthetic' than prospective
enquiry. Jung presents the analogy between analytic/synthetic psychology and a
concern with the past and with the future, but does not argue for it.

Nevertheless, in Jung's later works this distinction broadened out into a

methodological dichotomy in the interpretation of dreams and became the basis of
analytical psychology's claim to be superior to Freudian analysis. For in the paper
'Die transzendente Funktion' ['The Transcendent Function'] (which Jung wrote in
1916 but which was not actually published until 1957), and in his much-revised book
Uber die Psychologie des Unbewussten [On the Psychology of the Unconscious]
(1917/1926/1943), Jung came to distinguish between Freud's 'analytic' (causal-
reductive) interpretation of dreams and his own 'synthetic' interpretation (GW7
[section]121-40). And thirty years on, in Die Psychologie der Ubertragung [The
Psychology of the Transference] (1946), to cite but one text, Jung, referring to
the terminology of the ancient alchemists, would actually talk of the entire
therapeutic process of analytical psychology in these terms of 'analysis' and
'synthesis' (GW16 [section]353-538).(15)

So the choice of the phrase 'analytical psychology' as a label for the therapeutic
approach and the set of ideas proposed by Jung misleadingly obscures his insistence
on the superiority of his own 'synthetic' psychology as opposed to the merely
'analytic' psychoanalysis of Freud. Jung first used the term 'analytical
psychology' in 'On the Doctrine of the Complexes', a paper delivered to the Ninth
Australasian Medical Congress (1911) (GW2 1355) and again in 'General Aspects of
Psychoanalysis', a lecture given to the London-based Psycho-Medical Society in 1913
(GW4 523). But on both occasions the expression was used synonymously with depth
psychology or 'Tiefenpsychologie', and early followers of Jung often preferred the
term 'Komplexe Psychologie'.(16)

Faith, religion and morality

In Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, Jung mentioned Kant in another footnote, this
time as part of a discussion of the relation between myth and religion. Jung's
argument here clearly defines the contours of his post-Kantian, rather than
Kantian, position.

According to Jung, human progress is linked to the transformative capacity of the

libido, which makes possible the attainment of higher cultural goals by means of
the formation of symbols (WSL: pp.31, 225/PU pp. 20, 254). The 'truth' of the
symbol is, so Jung argues, a pre-eminently psychological one:

Der religiose Mythus tritt uns aber hier als eine der grossten und bedeutsamsten
menschlichen Institutionen entgegen [...] Das Symbol, vom Standpunkt des real
Wahren aus betrachtet, ist zwar tauschend, aber es ist psychologisch wahr, denn es
war und ist die Brucke zu allen grossten Errungenschaften der Menschheit. (WSL:
pp.230-1)

[The religious myth meets us here as one of the greatest and most significant human
institutions ... The symbol, considered from the standpoint of actual truth, is
misleading, indeed, but it is psychologically true, because it was and is the
bridge to all the greatest achievements of humanity. (PU: p.262)]

The phrase 'psychologisch wahr' had already been used earlier in the book (WSL:
p.21/PU: p.9), but in his footnote, Jung added the caveat that, when using this
phrase, he was still only talking about psychology, thus denying that he was making
any claims about the transcendent:

Wir bewegen uns hier, was nicht zu vergessen ist, ganz im Gebiete der Psychologie,
der bekanntlich keinerlei transzendente Bedeutung weder in positiver noch in
negativer Beziehung zukommt. Es handelt sich hier um ein schonungsloses Wahrmachen
des durch Kant fixierten erkenntnistheoretischen Standpunktes nicht bloss fur die
Theorie, sondern, was wichtiger ist, auch fur die Praxis. (WSL: p.230, note 58)

[Here, it is not to be forgotten, we are moving entirely in the territory of

psychology, which in no way is allied to transcendentalism, either in a positive or
a negative way. It is a question here of a relentless fulfilment of the
epistemological standpoint established by Kant, not merely in terms of theory but,
more importantly, in practice. (PU: p.529, n.42)]

But is Jung's disclaimer justified? One has only to look just a little more closely
for it to become clear that in fact Jung had no wish to abolish the notion of the
transcendent - 'Das religiose Symbol ist [...] als Postulat oder als transzendente
Theorie und auch als Lehrgegenstand wohl beizubehalten' ['The religious symbol
should be retained ... as postulate or as transcendent theory, and also as an
object of learning'] - even if he adds that '[es ist] in dem Masse mit neuem
Inhalte zu erfullen, wie es der derzeitige Stand des Kulturstrebens erfordert' ['it
is to be filled with new meaning according to the demand of the culture of the
present day']. After all, Jung could have drawn, but he did not, on Kant's argument
in the first Critique that, whilst we can have no transcendent knowledge (i.e.
knowledge beyond the limits of our experience), it is possible, indeed necessary,
to retain a transcendent element in the form of the 'transzendentale Ideen'
['transcendental Ideas']. These Ideas Kant described variously as 'Begriffe der
reinen Vernunft' ['concepts of pure reason'] (B 384) and 'transzendente
Naturbegriffe' ['transcendent concepts of nature'] (B 448, cf. B 594). For Kant,
the consequence of this position was to regard Man as the inhabitant of two
different realms, the phenomenal and the noumenal. Similarly, where Jung also
regarded Man as 'ein zwiefaches Wesen' ['a dual being'] he replaced Kant's
metaphysical dichotomy with his own psychological equivalent:

Wie der Mensch ein zwiefaches Wesen ist, namlich ein Kultur- und ein Tierwesen, so
scheint er auch zweierlei Wahrheit zu bedurfen, der Kulturwahrheit, das heisst der
symbolistischen, transzendenten Theorie, und der Naturwahrheit, welche unserem
Begriffe des >real Wahren< entspricht. (WSL, p.231, note 58)(17)

[Just as Man is a dual being, having a cultural and an animal nature, so does he
appear to need two kinds of truth, that is, the symbolic, transcendent theory, and
the truth of nature, which corresponds to our concept of the 'real truth'. (PU:
p.529, n.42)]

It is at this point that Jung's divergence from Kant becomes apparent, at the same
time as the implications of his statement that religious symbols must be retained
and filled with new content become clear. Writing for an age where faith in the
efficacy of Christian myth and symbols was in rapid decline, Jung had earlier in
his work defined the dilemma facing religion in the following programmatic terms:
'Die Klippe ist die ungluckselige Verquickung von Religion und Moral. Das ist zu
uberwinden' ['The stumbling block is the unhappy combination of religion and
morality. That must be overcome'] (WSL: p.84/PU: p.85). Jung saw this programme in
terms of the abolition of belief and its replacement with knowledge. In other
words, Jung wanted to replace religious faith, in a state of decay but still
mediated by myths and symbols, with a psychological understanding of these same
myths and symbols. On Jung's account, this would constitute in psychological terms
the redemption of both belief and non-belief:

Ich denke, der Glaube sollte durch das Verstehen ersetzt werden, so behalten wir
die Schonheit des Symbols und sind doch frei von den niederdruckenden Folgen der
Unterwerfung im Glauben. Dieses ware wohl die psychoanalytische Heilung des
Glaubens und des Unglaubens. (WSL: p.232)

[I think belief should be replaced by understanding; then we would keep the beauty
of the symbol, but still remain free from the depressing results of submission to
belief. This would be the psychoanalytic cure for belief and disbelief. (PU:
p.263)]

Jung's solution to the problem of the relation between religion and morality harks
back to Kant's solution to a similar problem of almost a century before, which Jung
in effect inverted. For in his introduction to the Second Edition of Kritik der
reinen Vernunft (1787), Kant had claimed that he had found it necessary to annul
knowledge in order to make room for belief: 'Ich musste also das Wissen aufheben,
um zum Glauben Platz zu bekommen' (B xxx). In Kantian terms, this means that the
limitation of reason imposed in that work is followed by the declaration of the
categorical imperative in the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft [Critique of
Practical Reason], which replaces both the dictates of theology and the dogmatism
of metaphysics as the source of morality. Thus in Kant's system, we can conceive
God only as an idea, or regulative principle. But Jung's reversal of Kant's formula
proposed instead to abolish (religious) belief and replace it with knowledge of the
(psychological) symbol. Furthermore, armed with such knowledge, Jung believed, Man
could attain moral autonomy and perfect freedom, liberated from the infantilizing
effect of religion and at the same time protected against the devastating
consequences of unbelief:(18)

Das ware der Weg der sittlichen Autonomie, der vollkommenen Freiheit, wenn der
Mensch ohne Zwang das wollen konnte, was er doch tun muss, und das aus Einsicht,
ohne Tauschung durch den Glauben an die religiosen Symbole. (WSL: p.231)

[This would be the course of moral autonomy, of perfect freedom, when Man could
without compulsion wish that which he must do, and this from knowledge, without
delusion through belief in the religious symbols. (PU: p.262)]

Jung's formulation in this passage sounds highly Schillerian, recalling the concept
of the beautiful soul or 'schone Seele', in which both duty and inclination
coincide.(19) Perhaps sensing his proximity to Schiller, Jung devoted an entire
chapter to Schiller ('Uber Schillers Ideen zum Typenproblem') in Psychologische
Typen (1921), his next major work to contain substantial references to Kant.

Ontology and psyche

Jung's use of Kant in Psychologische Typen is much more complex and correspondingly
problematic, than in any other work, and it can be understood as three-fold. First,
he referred to Kant during his discussion of 'Das Typenproblem in der antiken und
mittelalterlichen Geistesgeschichte', which included a lengthy excursus on Anselm's
ontological proof of God. Second, he found in the biography of Kant an example of a
psychological attitude consistent with the typology he was elaborating. Third, he
made explicit connections between his own psychology and the philosophy of Kant,
comparing on the one hand the Kantian concepts of the primordial Image and the
Idea,(20) the 'Urbild' and the 'Idee', with his own psychological concept of the
archetype on the other.

Psychologische Typen opens with an extract from Zur Religion und Philosophie in
Deutschland (1835) where Heine, possibly following Goethe's Zur Farbenlehre,(21)
contrasts Plato with Aristotle: 'Plato und Aristoteles! Das sind nicht bloss die
zwei Systeme, sondern auch die Typen zweier verschiedener Menschennaturen, die sich
seit undenklicher Zeit, unter allen Kostumen, mehr oder minder feindselig
entgegenstehen' ['Plato and Aristotle! These are not merely two systems, they are
also types of two distinct human natures, which from time immemorial, under every
sort of disguise, stand more or less inimically opposed'] (GW6: p.1/CW6: p.2). Jung
took over Goethe and Heine's opposition of Plato and Aristotle and turned it into a
distinction between the introverted and extraverted personality. In so doing, he
not only made a distinction between two types but also rendered this polarity
internal to the personality (GW6 [section]1-4).

In the final section of the Transcendental Doctrine of Method, called The History
of Pure Reason - in a passage which itself may equally well have been a source for
Heine - Kant made a similar set of distinctions between Epicurus and Plato, and
then again between Aristotle and Plato:

In Ansehung des Gegenstandes aller unserer Vernunfterkenntnisse, waren einige bloss

Sensual-, andere bloss Intellektualphilosophen. Epikur kann der vornehmste
Philosoph der Sinnlichkeit, Plato des Intellektuellen genannt werden [...] In
Ansehnung des Ursprungs reiner Vernunfterkenntnisse, ob sie aus der Erfahrung
abgeleitet, oder unabhangig von ihr, in der Vernunft ihre Quelle haben. Aristoteles
kann als das Haupt der Empiristen, Plato aber der Noologisten angesehen werden. (A
854/B 882)

[In respect of the object of all our knowledge through reason, some have been more
sensualists, others mere intellectualists. Epicurus may be regarded as the
outstanding philosopher among the former, and Plato among the latter ... In respect
of the origin of the modes of knowledge through pure reason, the question is as to
whether in independence of experience they have their origin in reason. Aristotle
may be regarded as the chief of the empiricists, and Plato as the chief of the
noologists. (A 854/B 882)]

Jung's distinction between extraversion and introversion conflates Kant's

dichotomies, since his psychological categories refer not only to the relationship
between the individual and the object without but also to the relationship between
the individual and his or her subjectivity within.(22) Within this scheme, Kant was
judged to be an introverted type (GW6 [section]592) or, more precisely, an
introverted thinking type (GW6 [section]704).(23) Jung - perhaps unsurprisingly -
was able to find examples of such introverted-extraverted pairs throughout
intellectual history, pointing for example to Tertullian and Origen, the
controversy over the doctrines of homoousia and homoiousia (the complete identity
as opposed to the merely essential similarity of Christ with God) in the early
Church, and the medieval dispute between the Nominalists and the Realists. It is at
this point in his historical survey that Jung restaged the argument surrounding the
ontological proof of God, as formulated by St. Anselm (1033-1109).(24)

According to Jung, Kant's argument against the ontological argument is 'endgultig'

(GW6 [section]57/CW6 [section]63), and he quoted the relevant sections from the
Transcendental Dialectic of the first Critique (GW6 [section]57-62; see Kritik der
reinen Vernunft, A 592/B 620, A 594/B 622, A 597/B 625, A 599/B 627 and A 601/B
629). As Jung was to point out much later in his letter of 7 December 1954 to
Bernhard Martin, Kant's basic point is that being is not a real predicate, but
simply the copula of a judgement (B2: p.427) (cf. A 599/B 627). But in
Psychologische Typen, Jung put an additional, psychological gloss on Kant's
argument in A 594/B 622, claiming that: 'Die Macht der Illusion, auf die Kant hier
anspielt, ist nichts anderes als die primitive, magische Macht des Wortes, die auch
dem Begriffe heimlicherweise innewohnt' ['The "power of illusion" referred to here
is nothing else than the primitive, magical power of the word, which likewise
mysteriously inhabits the concept'] (GW6 [section]59/CW6 [section]65).

In this same context, Jung also alluded to Hegel's attack on Kant's argument,
namely that whilst a hundred real dollars do not contain a cent more than a hundred
possible dollars, there are a hundred dollars more in his purse if he actually owns
them rather than if he merely has the concept of them (A 599/B 627).(25) Although
Jung summarized correctly part of what Hegel said - 'Hegel warf Kant vor, dass man
den Begriff Gott nicht mit hundert Talern in der Phantasie vergleichen konne'
['Hegel cast the reproach at Kant that one could not compare the concept of God
with an imaginary hundred thalers'] (GW6 [section]63/GW6 [section]66) - this is in
fact only half of Hegel's argument. According to Hegel, Being and the concept are,
by definition, at variance in finite objects, whereas Being and the concept are, by
definition, identical only in God: consequently, Kant had committed a basic
category error. But because of his fundamental ontological vision of finite being
as 'the necessary and yet inadequate and hence vanishing vehicle of infinite
being',(26) Hegel was anyway less explicitly concerned with what is called God than
with what he chose to call Geist.

But closer examination of Jung's argument again reveals problems, for he was, in
fact, operating with two very different versions of the ontological proof. One
version is indeed Anselm's, but the other is his own psychological version. It is
this second, 'Jungian' version which enabled him to resolve the contradiction, as
he saw it, between possible existence ('esse in intellectu') and actual existence
('esse in re')(27) which is at stake in Anselm's argument. For Jung also
interpreted the ontological argument, as he implicitly did again in his letter of 2
May 1955 to Walter Robert Corti, in terms of the claim that the universal belief in
God (or the 'consensus gentium')(28) is in itself, as a 'psychologische Tatsache',
proof of the existence of the divinity (GW6 [section]56/GW6 [section]62):(29)

Darin aber eben zeigt sich die unerschutterliche Gultigkeit des [ontologischen]
Argumentes, dass es existiert, und dass der consensus gentium es als eine allgemein
vorhandene Tatsache beweist [...] der Fehler des ontologischen Argumentes besteht
einzig und allein darin, dass es logisch argumentieren will, wo es doch viel mehr
ist als bloss ein logischer Beweis; es handelt sich namlich um eine psychologische
Tatsache, deren Vorkommen und Wirksamkeit so uberwaltigend klar ist, das sie gar
keiner Argumentation bedarf. Der consensus gentium beweist, dass Anselm mit der
Konstatierung, dass Gott ist, weil er gedacht wird, recht hat. (GW6 [section]56)

[But it is just here that the unassailable validity of the ontological argument
shows itself - in the fact that it exists, and that the consensus gentium proves
itself to be a fact of universal occurrence ... The mistake of the ontological
argument consists simply and solely in its trying to argue logically, when in
reality it is very much more than a merely logical proof. The real point is that it
is a psychological fact whose existence and efficacy are so overwhelmingly clear
that no sort of argumentation is needed to prove it. The consensus gentium proves
that, in the statement 'God is, because he is thought', Anselm was right. (CW6
[section]62)]

Clearly, this is a very different version of the ontological argument from the one
which Kant was keen to refute, for rather than arguing from the logical idea of God
to his existence, it argues from the universality of the psychological idea of God.
Nevertheless, it became the basis of many of Jung's later pronouncements on the
relation between psychology and theology (see Psychologie und Religion, GW11).

Let us consider the psychologized, 'Jungian' version of the argument on its own
terms. At first glance, Jung is making the same move as he attributes to the
Scholastic tradition: placing thought and being on the same ontological level.(30)
But Jung's purpose was to supersede the dichotomy between actual existence and
possible existence by introducing the notion of fantasy:(31)
Wie immer gibt es zwischen dem logischen Entweder-Oder kein Drittes - namlich vom
Standpunkt der Logik gesehen. Aber zwischen >intellectus und res< gibt es noch
>anima<, und dieses >esse in anima< macht die ganze ontologische Argumentation
uberflussig. (GW6 [section]63)

[From the standpoint of logic, there is, as always, no tertium between the logical
either-or. But between intellectus and res there is still anima, and this esse in
anima makes the whole ontological argument superfluous. (CW6 [section]66)]

As Stephanie de Voogd has astutely observed, Jung's conclusion about the

superfluity of the ontological argument can be interpreted in two different ways
(1984, p.223). First, it can be understood as a shift from a question of pure
reason to a question of pure practical reason. Jung gestures towards this when he
alludes to Kant's second Critique(32) and quotes from it a passage (which he also
marked with a marginal line in his own copy):

Kant selber hat in der Kritik der praktischen Vernunft einen grosszugigen Versuch
gemacht, das >esse in anima< philosophisch zu wurdigen. Er fuhrt dort Gott ein als
Postulat der praktischen Vernunft, das sich aus der durch die a priori erkannte
>Achtung furs moralische Gesetz notwendige[n] Absicht aufs hochste Gut und [der]
daraus fliessenden Voraussetzung der objektiven Realitat desselben< ergibt. (GW6
[section]63).

[Kant himself, in his Critique of Practical Reason, made an attempt on a grand

scale to evaluate the esse in anima in philosophical terms. There he introduces God
as a postulate of practical reason resulting from the priori recognition of
'respect for the moral law necessarily directed towards the highest good, and the
consequent supposition of its objective reality'. (CW6 [section]66)]

But second, de Voogd argues, Jung's abandonment of the ontological argument can
also be understood as a shift away from reason, proof and postulate to a realm of
fantasy and an appeal to psychological functions - and it is in this sense that
Jung sustained his discussion of the existence of God:

Das >esse in anima< nun ist ein psychologischer Tatbestand, von dem einzig nur
auszumachen ist, ob er einmalig, vielmalig oder universell in der menschlichen
Psychologie vorkommt [...] In der Sprache der analytischen Psychologie fallt der
Gottesbegriff zusammen mit demjenigen Vorstellungskomplex, welcher entsprechend der
vorigen Definition die hochste Summe von Libido (psychische[r] Energie) auf sich
vereinigt [...] Die lebendige Wirklichkeit ist weder durch das tatsachliche,
objektive Verhalten der Dinge noch durch die ideelle Formel ausschliessich gegeben,
sondern nur durch die Zusammenfassung beider im lebendigen psychologischen Prozess,
durch das >esse in anima< (GW6 [section]64, [section]73).

[The esse in anima, then, is a psychological fact, and the only thing that needs
ascertaining is whether it occurs but once, often, or universally in human
psychology ... In the language of analytical psychology, the God-concept coincides
with the particular representational complex which, in accordance with the
foregoing definition, concentrates in itself the maximum amount of libido, or
psychic energy ... Living reality is the product neither of the actual, objective
behaviour of things nor of the formulated ideas exclusively, but rather of the
combination of both in the living psychological process, through esse in anima.
(CW6 [section]67, [section]77)]

As de Voogd rightly remarks: 'if esse in anima is what Jung says it is in [Jungian]
psychology, then it cannot be what Jung says it is in (Kantian) philosophy' (1984,
p.223).
Over and above what de Voogd says, there are further comparisons and contrasts to
be noted at this point. Just as Jung presented the 'esse in anima' as mediating
between 'intellectus' and 'res', so Kant argued for 'ein Drittes [...] was
einerseits mit der Kategorie, andererseits mit der Erscheinung in Gleichartigkeit
stehen muss, und die Anwendung der ersteren auf die letzte moglich macht' ['some
third thing, which is homogenous on the one hand with the category, and on the
other hand with appearance, and which thus makes the application of the former to
the latter possible'] (A 138/B 177). The psychological process binding objects and
concepts which Jung calls 'esse in anima' resembles Kant's transcendental
schematism, which combines the universality of a concept with the particularity of
the content of that concept, mediates categories and sensory intuition and enables
the mind to bring the individual case under a general rule. According to Kant, the
ability to subsume the particular under the universal is the faculty of judgement
(Urteilskraft),(33) but the crucial role of the schematism relies on the activity
of the imagination.(34) Kant described the schematism, in terms which doubtless
would have appealed to Jung, as 'eine verborgene Kunst in den Tiefen der
menschlichen Seele, deren wahre Handgriffe wir der Natur schwerlich jemals abraten,
und sie unverdeckt vor Augen legen werden' ['an art concealed in the depths of the
human soul, whose real modes of activity nature is hardly likely ever to allow us
to discover, and to have open to our gaze'] (A 141/B 181).(35)

Yet there is perhaps another Kantian link of which Jung himself was apparently
unaware. For his account of the activity of fantasy, inasmuch as it is said to
mediate both conceptualization ('in intellectu') and sensory input ('in re'), is
remarkably akin to Kant's conception of aesthetic judgement in the Kritik der
Urteilskraft [Critique of Judgement]. In the introduction to this work, Kant
discerns two kinds of judgement: reflective and determinate. Whereas judgement in
general is the faculty of thinking the particular as contained in the universal,
determinate judgement subsumes the particular under the universal, whereas
reflective judgement finds the universal for the particular.(36) The principles of
'bestimmende Urteilskraft' ['determinate judgement'] are the principles of the
Transcendental Analytic, the application of which is provided by the transcendental
schematism. For Kant, an example of 'reflektierende Urteilskraft' ['reflective
judgement'] is aesthetic judgement, and one of the things it judges is beauty. Yet
beauty, and particularly free beauty ('pulchritudi vaga'), pleases without
reference to concepts: 'Schon ist das, was ohne Begriff allgemein gefallt' ['The
beautiful is that which pleases universally without a concept'] (KU [section]9);
and 'freie Schonheit [...] setzt keinen Begriff von dem voraus, was der Gegenstand
sein soll' ['free beauty presupposes no concept of what the object ought to be']
(KU [section]16). Beauty is related to conceptuality only inasmuch as we appreciate
its 'Zweckmassigkeit ohne Zweck' ['purposiveness without purpose'] (KU
[section]10). Instead, free beauty is generated by two things. First, there is the
free play of the imagination:

In der Beurteilung einer freien Schonheit (der blossen Form nach) ist das
Geschmacksurteil rein. Es ist kein Begriff von irgend einem Zwecke [...]
vorausgesetzt; wodurch die Freiheit der Einbildungskraft, die in Beobachtung der
Gestalt gleichsam spielt, nur eingeschrankt werden wurde. (KU [section]16)

[In the judging of a free beauty (according to the mere form), the judgement of
taste is pure. There is presupposed no concept of any purpose...by which the
freedom of the imagination which disports itself in the contemplation of the figure
would only be limited. (KU [section]16)]

And second, there is the harmonious interplay of the imagination with the
understanding:

Dieser Zustand eines freien Spiels der Erkenntnisvermogen [...] [d.h.]

Einbildungskraft fur die Zusammensetzung des Mannigfaltigen der Anschauung, und
Verstand fur die Einheit des Begriffs [...] muss sich allgemein mitteilen lassen.
(KU [section]9).

[This state of free play of the cognitive faculties...i.e. imagination for the
combination of the manifold of intuition and the understanding for the unity of the
concept uniting the representations...must be universally communicable. (KU
[section]9)]

Thus for Kant, in the case of 'freie Schonheit' ['free beauty'], an aesthetic
judgement could be said to be productive or 'schopferisch'. For it has produced -
without reference to concepts, categories or causes, but out of the free play of
the faculties - that very beauty which it judges.

In terms of Jungian psychology, this freedom and productivity of the aesthetic

judgement is simply extended to all forms of psychic activity. In Psychologische
Typen, Jung laid great emphasis on precisely the creativity of the psyche:(37)

Diese Eigentatigkeit der Psyche, die sich weder als reflektorische Reaktion auf den
Sinnesreiz, noch als Exekutivorgan ewiger Ideen erklaren lasst, ist, wie jeder
Lebensprozess, ein bestandiger Schopferakt. Die Psyche erschafft taglich die
Wirklichkeit. Ich kann diese Tatigkeit mit keinem andern Ausdruck als mit Phantasie
bezeichnen. (GW6 [section]73)

[This autonomous activity of the psyche, which can be explained neither as a reflex
action to sensory stimuli nor as the executive organ of eternal ideas, is, like
every vital process, a continually creative act. The psyche creates reality every
day. The only expression I can use for this activity is fantasy. (CW6 [section]78)]

Given this affinity, it is both ironic and unfortunate that the one Critique which
Jung apparently never read was the third! For, if he had read the Kritik der
Urteilskraft, Jung might well have found it more secure to ground his psychology in
a variant of Kantian aesthetics rather than in the epistemology of the first
Critique.(38)

Idea and archetype

Finally, Kant is invoked in Psychologische Typen to provide intellectual support

for the Jungian notion of the archetype - i.e. that concept which is said
ultimately to distinguish analytical psychology from Freudian psychoanalysis.(39)

In Psychologische Typen, Jung assimilated what he called 'der Archetypus' to a term

used by Jacob Burckhardt, the 'urtumliches Bild' or the 'Urbild' ['primordial
image'] (GW6 [section]696/CW6 [section]624; cf. GW6 [section]764/CW6 [section]747).
(40) Jung appended to Psychologische Typen a list of definitions of key terms in
his psychology. Here, he provided entries for the two terms Bild ('Image') and Idee
('Idea'), both of which are discussed in relation to the term 'archetype', to which
Jung, curiously, never assigned an entry of its own. Although Jung attempted to
draw a clear distinction between 'Bild' and 'Idee', he himself confused the matter
by admitting that 'die Doppelnatur der Idee [...] bringt es mit sich, dass der
Ausdruck gelegentlich promiscue mit >>urtumlichem Bild<< gebraucht wird' ['the dual
nature of the Idea...is responsible for the fact that the expression is
occasionally promiscuously used with "primordial image"'] (GW6 [section]818/CW6
[section]737). But there was arguably no-one more promiscuous, cavalier even, with
his terminology than Jung.(41) So what did he say about the relationship between
'Bild' and 'Idee'?

If we read Jung's definition of 'Bild' carefully, there appear to be two major

differences between Images and Ideas - in terms of their priority and affective
component respectively. First, according to Jung, the Image is the matrix of the
Idea: 'Das urtumliche Bild ist Vorstufe der Idee, es ist ihr Mutterboden' ['The
primordial image is the precursor of the Idea and its matrix'] (GW6
[section]767/CW6 [section]750). The Image is thus prior to the Idea, which in turn
can be defined as the intellectual formulation of the Image, 'das zur gedanklichen
Formulierung gelangte urtumliche Bild' ['the primordial image intellectually
formulated'] (GW6 [section]768/CW6 [section]751). Second, Jung attributes to the
Image a vitality and spontaneity superior to those of the Idea: 'Das urtumliche
Bild hat vor der Klarheit der Idee die Lebendigkeit voraus' ['The primordial image
has the advantage over the Idea of vitality'l (GW6 [section]773/CW6 [section]754).
The Image is thus more affective than the Idea.

However, if we then turn to the definition of 'Idee' and read it carefully, the
distinction which Jung has set up starts to erode. Jung emphasizes the secondary
nature of the Idea as compared with the Image: 'Ich gebrauche demnach Idee als
einen Ausdruck fur den Sinn eines urtiimlichen Bildes, welcher von dem Konkretismus
des Bildes abgezogen, abstrahiert wurde' ['Accordingly I use the term Idea to
express the meaning of a primordial image, which has been abstracted from the
concretism of the Image'] (GW6 [section]811/CW6 [section]732).(42) Since the Idea
is an abstraction, Jung grants it a secondary status in accordance, so he says,
with the philosopher and psychologist Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920).(43) However, there
is a curious twist in the logic of Jung's argument at this point. For he continued,
in a passage harking back to the idea of futural synthesis which he had floated in
Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido:

Insofern aber die Idee nichts anderes ist als der formulierte Sinn eines
urtumlichen Bildes, in welchem er schon symbolisch dargestellt war, ist das Wesen
der Idee nichts Abgeleitetes oder Hervorgebrachtes, sondern, psychologisch
betrachtet, a priori vorhanden, als eine gegebene Moglichkeit von
Gedankenverbindungen uberhaupt. (GW6 [section]812)

[Insofar, however, as the Idea is nothing other than the formulated meaning of a
primordial image, in which it was represented symbolically, the essence of the Idea
is not just something derived or developed, but, psychologically speaking, exists a
priori, as a given possibility for thought-combinations in general. (CW6
[section]733)]

And from this, Jung concluded that the Idea was an a priori psychological
determinant: 'Daher ist die Idee dem Wesen (nicht der Formulierung) nach eine a
priori existierende und bedingende psychologische Grosse' ['Hence, in accordance
with its essence (not with its formulation), the Idea is a psychological
determinant having an a priori existence']. Thus the priority - whether temporal or
logical remains unclear - of the Image, which he established in the glossary
definition, is contradicted.

Later on in his definition of the Idea, Jung practically conceded his muddle,
admitting that the Idea has a dual nature or 'Doppelnatur', being both 'etwas
Primares und zugleich Sekundares' ['something primary and derived'] (GW6
[section]818/CW6 [section]737):

Indem das urtumliche Bild eine stets und uberall autochthon wiedererstehende
psychologische Grosse ist, kann in einem gewissen Sinne dasselbe auch von der Idee
gesagt werden, jedoch unterliegt sie, ihrer rationalen Natur wegen, weir mehr der
Veranderung durch die durch Zeit und Umstande stark beeinflusste rationale
Bearbeitung, die ihr Formulierungen gibt, welche dem jeweiligen Zeitgeist
entsprechen. (GW6 [section]817)

[Inasmuch as the primordial image is a constant autochthonic psychological factor

repeating itself in all times and places, we might also, in a certain sense, say
the same of the Idea, although this is, on account of its rational nature, much
more subject to modification by rational elaboration (in turn strongly influenced
by time and circumstance), which gives it formulations corresponding with the
spirit of the time. (CW6 [section]736)]

Thus Jung's distinction between the Idea and the Image collapses, and his appeals
to Kant explain why this had to happen.

In his definition of Image, Jung parenthetically referred to Kant's definition of

'Idee' from the first Critique: '>>Idee<< im Sinne Kants aufgefasst als ein
>>Begriff aus Notionen<<' ["'Idea" understood in Kant's sense of a "concept derived
from notions"'] (GW6 [section]772/CW6 [section]754) (cf. 'ein Begriff aus Notionen,
der die Moglichkeit der Erfahrung ubersteigt, ist die Idee, oder der
Vernunftbegriff' ['a concept formed from notions and transcending the possibility
of experience is an idea or concept of reason'] (B 377)). And yet in his definition
of 'Idee', Jung referred to the Idea both in the Platonic and in the Kantian sense,
ignoring the important differences between them.(44) His simple equation of two
entirely different uses of the term 'Idea' is followed by three further references
to Kant (GW6 [section]812/CW6 [section]733) which do much to reveal the possible
source of his confusion.

The first quotation - defining the Idea as 'das >>Urbild des Gebrauchs des
Verstandes<<' ['the "primordial image" of the use of the understanding"'] - is
bogus, probably the result of a misreading of passages where Kant speaks of Ideas
as concepts which regulate the use of reason. For example, in B 385, Kant says the
Idea is 'die unentbehrliche Bedingung jedes praktischen Gebrauchs der Vernunft'
['the indispensable condition of all practical use of reason'].(45) The second
quotation - defining the Idea as 'ein Vernunftbegriff, >>dessen Gegenstand gar
nicht in der Erfahrung kann angetroffen werden<<' ['a concept of reason "whose
object can never be found in experience"'] - is correctly attributed to Kant's
Logik.(46) And the third quotation is a longer extract from Section 2 of Book 1 of
the Transcendental Dialectic, called 'Von den transzendentalen Ideen' ['Of
Transcendental Ideas'] (A 329). Jung marked this passage in the margin of his copy
and, like him, I shall reproduce this passage in full:

Ob wir nun gleich von den transzendentalen Vernunftbegriffen sagen mussen: sie sind
nur Ideen, so werden wir sie doch keineswegs fur uberflussig und nichtig anzusehen
haben. Denn, wenn schon dadurch kein Objekt bestimmt werden kann, so konnen sie
doch im Grunde und unbemerkt dem Verstande zum Kanon seines ausgebreiteten und
einhelligen Gebrauchs dienen, dadurch er zwar keinen Gegenstand mehr erkennt, als
er nach seinen Begriffen erkennen wuirde, aber doch in dieser Erkenntnis besser und
weiter geleitet wird. Zu geschweigen, dass sie vielleicht von den Naturbegriffen zu
den praktischen einen Ubergang moglich machen, und den moralischen Ideen selbst auf
solche Art Haltung und Zusammenhang mit den spekulativen Erkenntnissen der Vernunft
verschaffen konnen. (A 329)

[Although we must say of the transcendental concepts of reason that they are only
Ideas, this is not by any means to be taken as signifying that they are superfluous
and void. For even if they cannot determine any object, they may yet, in a
fundamental and unobserved fashion, be of service to the understanding as a canon
for its extended and consistent employment. The understanding does not thereby
obtain more knowledge of any object than it would have by means of its own
concepts, but for the acquiring of such knowledge it receives better and more
extensive guidance. Further - what we need here no more than mention - concepts of
reason may perhaps make possible a transition from the concepts of nature to the
practical concepts, and in that way may give support to the moral ideas themselves,
bringing them into connection with the speculative knowledge of reason. (A 329)]

It is clear from this passage that Kant's Ideas operate in the critical philosophy
in a manner clearly distinct from from the way in which Jungian Ideas function in
analytical psychology. For Jung, the Idea is 'eine psychologische Grosse, die nicht
nur das Denken, sondern auch (als praktische Idee) das Fuhlen bestimmt' ['a
psychological factor that not only determines thinking but also (as a practical
Idea) feeling'] (GW6 [section]818/CW6 [section]737). Furthermore, inasmuch as the
Idea is in some unspecified way congruent with the Image, which is also defined by
Jung as 'das notwendige Gegenstuck zum Instinkt' ['the necessary counterpart to
instinct'] (GW6 [section]773/GW6 [section]754), it could be said that the affective
and instinctual components of the Idea are, for Jung, amongst its most important
characteristics. This compound of intellectual and practical functioning is left
unexplicated. By contrast, Kantian Ideas have, in addition to the practical
function of linking theoretical and practical reason, an epistemological function
which is an essential and clearly explicated part of their role in the critical
philosophy. And although Jung thought it appropriate to quote A 329, he was wrong
to appeal to the Kantian Idea in support of his psychological concept of the Idea
on at least two counts.

First, although Kant's Ideas are related to an transcendent object, they are not
directly related to objective experience (cf. A 567/B 595). For Kant, the Ideas are
not constitutive, but regulative (A 509/B 537; A 569/B 597). According to Kant, the
understanding applies itself to experience and organizes the data of
'Sinnlichkeit', i.e. 'Anschauungen' or intuitions, by means of concepts and
combines them to produce judgements ('Urteile').(47) In its turn, reason seeks a
yet higher unity by synthesizing judgements into conclusions ('Schlusse'), and is
guided in so doing by the regulative principles of the unity of the subject, i.e.
the soul (the psychological Idea), the unity of the world (the cosmological Idea)
and the unity of the highest being, i.e. God (the theological Idea). And Kant
argues, in the Paralogisms, the Antinomy and the Ideal of Pure Reason, that to
consider the Ideas as objects leads to contradiction and Schwarmerei.

Second, as such parts of the first Critique as A 329 suggest and as the Kritik der
praktischen Vernunft argues at length, the theological Idea, the cosmological Idea
and the psychological Idea have practical, that is to say moral, implications in
the form of their corresponding postulates of God, freedom and immortality. Thus,
the Ideas of the first Critique are, in the second Critique, expounded as
postulates of pure, practical reason. And as Kant argued both in the Kritik der
reinen Vernunft and the Kritik der Urteilskraft, we can only consider the Ideas as
postulates, not as objects.

For Jung, by contrast, the Ideas - or Images - are indeed constitutive, in the
sense that they are the product of the activity of fantasy: '[Das Bild] ist aber
kein Konglomerat, sondern ein in sich einheitliches Produkt, das seinen eigenen,
selbststandigen Sinn hat' ['The Image is no conglomerate, however, but an integral
product in itself, which has its own independent meaning'] (GW6 [section]761/CW6
[section]745). Jung's argument is clearly not a transcendental argument, but a
transcendent one. That is to say, it is not an argument about the conditions for
experience, but an argument about what is, even if only partially, beyond
experience: '[Das Bild] ist zwar ein Ausdruck unbewusster Inhalte, aber nicht aller
Inhalte uberhaupt, sondern bloss der momentan konstellierten' ['The Image is an
expression of unconscious contents, but not of all of them, only those momentarily
constellated'] (GW6 [section]761/CW6 [section]745). Because of its self-
sufficiency, the Jungian Idea - or Image - requires, apparently, no regulation. And
inasmuch as, for Jung, the psyche is a self-regulating system, it is regulated only
by the automatic constellation in the Unconscious of Ideas or Images which are
opposite to those prevailing in the conscious mind (GW6 [section]6/CW6 [section]6;
and see GW7 [section]92).

Furthermore, Jung's conceptions of Ideas or Images have no moral implications.

Indeed, Jung's definition of morality involves the abandonment of the individual to
autonomous psychic forces.(48) The potentially devastating moral deficit at the
centre of analytical psychology can thus be seen as, at least in part, deriving
from one of the consequences of Jung's failure to understand Kant.(49)

Why did Jung think he was a Kantian?

I should like to conclude more speculatively by asking why Jung came to believe
that Kant was on his side, with the aim of explaining the reasons for his confused
use of Kant in Psychologische Typen and elsewhere.

In the sections of the Transcendental Dialectic in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft
entitled 'Von dem Ideal uberhaupt' ['Of the Ideal in general'] and 'Von dem
transzendentalen Ideal' ['Of the Transcendental Ideal'] (parenthetically subtitled
'Prototypon transzendentale'), Kant introduced the notion of the Ideal of pure
reason. Here he recapitulated his argument that whilst the 'reine
Verstandesbegriffe' ['pure concepts of understanding'] - the categories - can be
represented concretely when applied to objects, the pure concepts of reason - the
Ideas - cannot be so represented and thus are yet further removed from objective
reality. Yet still further removed from objective reality, according to Kant, is
the Ideal, 'worunter ich die Idee, nicht bloss in concreto, sondern in individuo,
d.i. als ein einzelnes, durch die Idee allein bestimmbares, oder gar bestimmtes
Ding, verstehe' ['by which I understand the Idea, not merely in concreto, but in
individuo, that is, as an individual thing, determinable or even determined by the
Idea alone'] (A 568/B 596).(50)

Kant himself then compared his conception of the Ideal with the Platonic Idea: 'Was
uns ein Ideal ist, war dem Plato eine Idee des gottlichen Verstandes' ['What to us
is an ideal was in Plato's view an idea of the divine understanding'] (A 568/B
596). Perhaps this is why Jung, missing the distinction between Idea and Ideal,
mentions the Platonic Idea in the same breath as the Kantian Idea (see above, GW6
[section]812/CW6 [section]733). Kant also wrote that the concept of the Ideal was a
transcendent one:

Die Absicht der Vernunft mir ihrem Ideale ist [...] die durchgangige Bestimmung
nach Regeln a priori; daher sie sich einen Gegenstand denkt, der nach Prinzipien
durchgangig bestimmbar sein soll, obgleich dazu die hinreichenden Bedingungen in
der Erfahrung mangeln und der Begriff selbst also transzendent ist. (A 571/B 599)

[Reason, in its Ideal...aims at complete determination in accordance with a priori

rules. Accordingly it thinks for itself an object which it regards as being
completely determinable in accordance with principles. The conditions that are
required for such determination are not, however, to be found in experience, and
the concept itself is therefore transcendent. (A 571/B 599)]

Without wishing in any way to claim that Jung's conclusions from this passage are
justifiable, it seems plausible to suggest that Jung took this statement as a
licence for such claims about a transcendent realm as implied by his own
speculations about the archetypes and the Collective Unconscious.

Furthermore, the vocabulary in these sections would have been particularly

suggestive for Jung. The example of an Ideal given by Kant is the Stoic Ideal,
which Kant described in terms of the 'Urbild', the primordial image or archetype,
of the wise man within. As well as illustrating the Kantian distinction between the
Idea and the Ideal, the following passage contains a distinctly 'proto-Jungian'
vocabulary:

Tugend, und, mit ihr, menschliche Weisheit in ihrer ganzen Reinigkeit, sind Ideen.
Aber der Weise (des Stoikers) ist ein Ideal, d.i. ein Mensch, der bloss in Gedanken
existiert, der aber mit der Idee der Weisheit vollig kongruiert. So wie die Idee
die Regel gibt, so dient das Ideal in solchem Falle zum Urbilde der durchgangigen
Bestimmung des Nachbildes, und wir haben kein anderes Richtmass unserer Handlungen,
als das Verhalten des gottlichen Menschen in uns [...]. (A 569/B 597)

[Virtue, and therewith human wisdom in its complete purity, are Ideas. The wise man
(of the Stoics) is, however, an Ideal, that is, a man existing in thought only, but
in complete conformity with the Idea of wisdom. As the Idea gives the rule, so the
Ideal in such a case serves as the archetype [primordial image] for the complete
determination of the copy; and we have no other standard for our actions than the
conduct of this divine man within us... (A 569/B 597)]

One of the most important Jungian archetypes is, in fact, the Wise Old Man, the
supreme example of which for Jung was Nietzsche's Zarathustra (GW9(i) [section]77-
79).

Furthermore, in Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunfi [Religion
within the Limits of Reason Alone], another work by Kant of which Jung owned a
copy, the Ideal of moral perfection is equated with the 'Urbild' of the pure
ethical attitude.(51) And in the same work, Kant cited Christ as an example of a
man well-pleasing to God ('das Beispiel eines Gott wohlgefalligen Menschen'), the
'Urbild' of which could only be found within reason.(52) But Kant made a point of
distinguishing belief in 'das Urbild der Gott wohlgefalligen Menschheit' from that
in the empirical, historical appearance of Christ.(53) Similarly, in Jungian
terminology, Christ is a pre-eminent symbol of the archtype of the Seif (GW9(ii)
[section]68-126) and Jung's analysis likewise is in no way related to the
historical veracity or otherwise of the statements about Christ in the Bible.

Returning to the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, we find that Kant distinguished
further between two different kinds of Ideal: Ideals of reason, based on
determinate concepts and providing a rule and what he called an 'archetype', and
Ideals of sensuousness (a term about which Kant cavilled) or creations of the
imagination ('Geschopfe der Einbildungskraft'). The latter are described by Kant,
albeit with much equivocation, as monograms ('Monogrammen') of which no
intelligible conception can be formed and which are more of a blurred sketch than a
crisp, determinate image ('welche mehr eine im Mittel verschiedener Erfahrungen
gleichsam schwebende Zeichnung, als ein bestimmtes Bild ausmachen') (A 570/ B 598).
(54) One has only to compare this definition of what might be termed an 'Ideal of
the imagination' with Jung's definition of the 'Urbild' to hear a clear echo of
Kant's language:

Von einem naturwissenschaftlich-kausalen Gesichtspunkt aus kann man das urtumliche

Bild als einem mnemischen Niederschlag, ein Engramm (Semon) auffassen, das durch
Verdichtung unzahliger, einander ahnlicher Vorgange entstanden ist. In dieser Sicht
ist es ein Niederschlag und damit eine typische Grundform eines gewissen, immer
wiederkehrenden seelischen Eriebens. (GW6 [section]765)

[From the scientific, causal standpoint the primordial image can be conceived as a
mnemic deposit, an engram (Semon), which has arisen through a condensation of
innumerable processes of a similar kind. In this respect it is a precipitate and
therefore a typical basic form of a certain ever-recurring psychic experience. (CW6
[section]748)]

Although much of Jung's terminology in this historico-genetic account of the

archetypes is borrowed from organic biology(55) rather than the critical
philosophy, it is clear from the above passage that Jung's definition of the
primordial image is similar, both conceptually and linguistically, to much of
Kant's vocabulary in the discussion of the Ideal in the Transcendental Dialectic.

Even more striking is the similarity between the structure of Jungian terminology
and Kant's differentation, in 'Von dem transzendentalen Ideal', of 'das Urbild' or
'prototypon' from the 'Kopie' or 'ectypon':(56)

Es versteht sich von selbst, dass die Vernunft zu dieser ihrer Absicht, namlich
sich lediglich die notwendige durchgangige Bestimmung der Dinge vorzustellen, nicht
die Existenz eines solchen Wesens, das dem Ideale gemass ist, sondern nur die Idee
desselben voraussetzte, um von einer unbedingten Totalitat der durchgangigen
Bestimmung die bedingte, d.i. die des Eingeschrankten abzuleiten. Das Ideal ist ihr
also das Urbild (Prototypon) aller Dinge, welche insgesamt, als mangelhafte Kopien
(ectypa), den Stoff zu ihrer Moglichkeit daher nehmen, und indem sie demselben mehr
oder weniger nahekommen, dennoch jederzeit unendlich weit daran fehlen, es zu
erreichen. (A 578/B 606)

[It is obvious that reason, in achieving its purpose, that, namely, of representing
the necessary complete determination of things, does not presuppose the existence
of a being that corresponds to this Ideal, but only the Idea of such a being, and
this only for the purpose of deriving from an unconditioned totality of complete
determination the conditioned totality, that is, the totality of the limited. The
Ideal is, therefore, the archetype [primordial image] (prototypon) of all things,
which one and all, as imperfect copies (ectypa), derive from it the material of
their possibility, and while approximating to it in varying degrees, yet always
fall very far short of actually attaining it. (A 578/ B 606)]

Again, this distinction is taken up and clarified in the Kritik der Urteilskraft
where it is presented as the distinction between the 'Archetypon' or 'Urbild' and
the 'Ektypon' or 'Nachbild' in Kant's discussion of painting and sculpture in
[section]51 of the Deduction of Pure Aesthetic Judgements in that work.(57) But
again we must remember that - crucially - Jung apparently never read the third
Critique.

Yet this did not stop Jung from taking up the distinction between prototypon and
ectypon and conflating it with the distinction between the phenomenon and the
noumenon as the basis for even more precarious appeals to Kant in his later
psychological writings. These later examples of Jung's dubious use of Kant, beyond
the scope of this article, are adumbrated by Jung's definition, elsewhere in
Psychologische Typen, of the archetype as 'das Noumenon des Bildes, welches die
Intuition wahrnimmt und im Wahrnehmen erzeugt' ['the noumenon of the Image which
intuition perceives and, in perceiving, creates'] (GW6 [section]729). Such
definitions took Jung, despite his disclaimers, not only back to pre-Kantian
thought but also beyond the critical philosophy into the post-Kantian realms of
late German Idealism and Romantic philosophy.

So whilst Kant was indeed an important influence on Analytical Psychology, that

influence was a more complex and less direct one than Jung would have us believe.
And ultimately, Jung's philosophical imprecision in his reading of the critical
philosophy also explains, at least in part, why a self-styled empiricist kept on
entangling himself in precisely those transcendent notions of mysticism which Kant
himself unequivocally condemned as Schwarmerei.

NOTES

1. C. G. Jung, Gesammelte Werke, ed. Lilly Jung-Merker, Elisabeth Ruf and Leonie
Zander, 20 vols (Olten und Freiburg im Breisgau, 1960-1983); and C. G. Jung,
Collected Works, ed. Sir Herbert Read et al, trans. R. E C. Hull, 20 vols (London,
1953-1980). Henceforth referred to as GW and CW respectively followed by a volume
number and a paragraph reference. In the case of GW6 and CW6, where the
paragraphing is not identical, both paragraph numbers are given (and I have also
consulted the translation Psychological Types by H. G. Baynes (London, 1946)).
Jung's published correspondence is quoted from C. G. Jung, Briefe, ed. Aniela Jaffe
and Gerhard Adler, 3 vols (Olten und Freiburg im Breisgau, 1972-1973) and Letters,
ed. Jaffe and Adler, trans. R. F. C. Hull, 2 vols (Princeton, NJ, 1973 - 1975),
both referred to respectively as B and L followed by volume number and page number.
Kant's works are cited from the Prussian Academy Edition and referred to according
to section or paragraph numbers. For translations I have used Critique of Pure
Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London, 1929); Critique of Practical Reason,
trans. Lewis White Beck (New York, 1956); Critique of Judgement, trans. J. H.
Bernard (New York, 1951); and Religion Within the Boundary of Pure Reason, trans.
J. W. Semple (Edinburgh, 1838). All translations have been amended throughout where
necessary.

2. C. G. Jung, Erinnerungen, Traume, Gedanken (Olten und Freiburg im Breisgau,

1961), 75.

3. For further discussion of Jung and Hegel, see Friedrich Seifert, Seele und
Bewusstsein: Betrachtungen zum Problem der psychischen Realitat (Munich/Basle,
1962); Barbara Eckman, 'Jung, Hegel, and the Subjective Universe', Spring, 1986,
88-99; Wolfgang Giegerich, 'The Rescue of the World: Jung, Hegel, and the
Subjective Universe', Spring, 1987, 107-14; Hester Solomon, 'The Transcendent
Function and Hegel's Dialectical Vision', Journal of Analytical Psychology, xxxix
(1994), 77-100; and Sean M. Kelly, Individuation and the Absolute: Hegel, Jung and
the Path Toward Wholeness (New York/Mahwah, NJ, 1993).

4. Mary Bancroft, Autobiography of a Spy (New York, 1983), 253. See also Jung's
statements to Ximena de Angulo in 1952, Stephen Black in 1955, the Psychologische
Gesellschaft, Basle, in 1958 and John Freeman in 1959 in C. G. Jung Speaking:
Interviews and Enquiries, ed. William McGuire and R. F. C. Hull (Princeton, 1977),
207, 259, 388, 431.

5. The articles are: Marian L. Pauson, 'C. G. Jung and the A Priori', Tulane
Studies in Philosophy, xviii (1969), 93-103; Anneliese A. Pontius, 'Philosophischer
Uberblick uber die Entwicklung von Jungs Begriff des objektiv Psychischen',
Zeitschrift fur analytische Psychologie, ii (1971), 69-78; A. A. Pontius, 'Die
Subjekt-Objekt-Beziehung in Begriffen von Kant und Jung', Kant-Studien, lxii
(1971), 121-5; Eugen Bar, 'Archetypes and Ideas: Jung and Kant', Philosophy Today,
xx (1976), 114-23; Charles E. Scott, 'Archetypes and Consciousness', Idealistic
Studies, vol. vii, no. 1 (January, 1977), 28-49; Stephanie de Voogd, 'C. G. Jung:
Psychologist of the Future, "Philosopher" of the Past', Spring, 1977, 175-82; David
Pugmire, 'Understanding the Psyche: Some Philosophical Roots and Affinities of
Analytical Psychology', Harvest, xxvii (1981), 90-102; Stephanie de Voogd, 'Fantasy
versus Fiction: Jung's Kantianism Appraised', in: Jung in Modern Perspective,
edited by Renos K. Papadopoulos and Graham S. Saayman (Hounslow, 1984), 204-28. The
books are: J. Harley Chapman, Jung's Three Theories of Religious Experience
(Lewiston and Queenston, 1988); Walter A. Shelburne, Mythos and Logos in the
Thought of Carl Jung: the Theory of the Collective Unconscious in Scientific
Perspective (Albany, NY, 1988); Marilyn Nagy, Philosophical Issues in the
Psychology of C. G. Jung (New York, 1991); John J. Clarke, In Search of Jung:
Historical and Philosophical Enquiries (London and New York, 1992); and F. X.
Charet, Spirualism and the Foundations of C. G. Jung's Psychology (Albany, NY,
1993).

6. Kenneth E. DuPuy, The Nature of the Metaphysical in Kant and Jung: The
Contribution of Philosophy to Analytical Psychology, diploma thesis unpub., C.G.
Jung Training Center, New York, 1983. This thesis has been only partially
published, and is then only available for consultation in Jung Institutes. I am
grateful to the library staff of the C.G. Jung Institute, Kusnacht-Zurich, for
permission to use the Institute's library to consult this document, as well as for
their assistance with my research.

7. T. David Brent, Jung's Debt to Kant: The Transcendental Method and the Structure
of Jung's Psychology, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1977.

8. Eckman, 96.

9. For a discussion of Jung's use of Kant after 1921, see my forthcoming article
entitled 'Jung, Kant, Swedenborg: Epistemology, Psychology and Synchronicity'.

10. 'Fur die Beantwortung der Frage, ob analytisch oder synthetisch, sollten wir
aber genau daruber unterrichtet sein, ob konkret oder allgemein gedacht wurde. Zum
Beispiel Schlange-grun ist objektiv durchaus synthetisch; denn >>grun<< ist bei
Schlange nicht notwendig mitzudenken, bloss im Falle der Vorstellung einer
bestimmten Schlange muss grun implizite schon vorhanden sein, wo es dann ein
analytisches Urteil ware. Abgesehen von diesen Bedenken sind es noch weitere,
namentlich praktische Schwierigkeiten, die diesen Einteilungsmodus verbieten' ['For
the answer to the question whether we are faced with an analytic or synthetic
judgement we should have to know exactly whether the thought was concrete or
abstract: e.g. snake/green is objectively entirely synthetic. It is not necessary
to think of green together with snake; only in the case of the image of a definite
snake must green already be implicit, in which case it would be an analytic
judgement. Apart from these reservations, there are other, mainly practical,
difficulties which interdict this mode of classification'] (GW2 [section]47).

11. Quoted from C. G. Jung, Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (Munich, 1991).
Henceforth referred to as WSL followed by a page reference. The English translation
is misleadingly entitled Psychology of the Unconscious, trans. Beatrice M. Hinkle
(London, 1915). Henceforth referred to as PU followed by a page reference.

12. There may also be a Goethean influence here; see the essay 'Analyse und
Synthese' in his Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften: 'Vor allem also sollte der
Analytiker untersuchen oder vielmehr sein Augenmerk dahin richten, ob er denn
wirklich mit einer geheimnisvollen Synthese zu tun habe' ['Above all, the analyst
should examine or rather direct his attention to whether he is really dealing with
mysterious synthesis'] (Goethe, Werke (Hamburger Ausgabe), 14 vols (Munich, 1981),
XIII, 49-52 (p.52)).

13. Later, the notion of psychosynthesis was taken up by the psychologist Hans Trub
(1889-1949). The Italian psychologist Roberto Assagioli (1888-1974) founded his own
school of therapy on a similar use of the term 'psychosynthesis'. See my
forthcoming article 'Jung, Trub und die Psychosynthese' in Analytische Psychologie.

14. For further details of Jung's annotations of his edition of Kant's Werke, see
my forthcoming article 'Jung, Kant, Swedenborg'.

15. Cf. 'Bewusstsein respektive Erkenntnis entsteht durch Unterscheidung, das

heisst durch eine Analyse (Auflosung) und eine darauffolgende Synthese, worauf sich
symbolischerweise die alchemistische Sentenz >>Solve et coagula<< bezieht'
['Consciousness or knowledge arises from discrimination, that is, through analysis
(dissolution) followed by synthesis, as stated in symbolic terms by the alchemical
dictum: "Solve et coagula" (dissolve and coagulate)'] (GW9(ii) [section]410).

16. For example, even the C. J. Jung Institute in Zurich, which was founded on 24
April 1948 and officially opened on 11 October 1948, called itself 'eine
Ausbildungs- und Forschungsstatte fur Komplexe Psychologie' (see C. G. Jung-
lnstitut Zurich: Ziele und Tatigkeit (Zurich, 1948). Cf. the following remark by
Arie Sborowitz: 'Die analytischen Schulen [...] suchten, auf verschiedenen Wegen,
von den seelischen Komplexen her das Seelenleben zu erfassen. Insofern verdienen im
Grunde alle analytischen Schulen, nicht nur diejenige Jungs, den Namen "komplexe
Psychologie"' ['The analytic schools...tried in different ways to grasp the life of
the soul as far as the spiritual complexes go. To this extent all the analytic
schools, not only that of Jung, deserve the name "complex psychology"'] (Beziehung
und Bestimmung: Die Lehren von Martin Buber und C. G. Jung in ihrem Verhaltnis
zueinander (Darmstadt, 1955), 87).

17. Cf. Lacan's distinction between the imaginary and the symbolic realms (see
Jacqueline Rose's 'Introduction', in Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the
ecole freudienne (New York and London, 1985), 31). For a comparison of Jung and
Lacan, see Steven M. Joseph, 'Fetish, Sign, and Symbol through the Looking-Glass: A
Jungian Critique of Jacques Lacan's Ecrits', The San Francisco Institute Library
Journal, vol. vii, no.2 (1987), 1-16.

18. See Jung's description of the consequences of abandoning religion, which he saw
exemplified in Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900): 'Jeder, der die Grundhaltung des
Christentums ernsthaft kritisiert, entledigt sich auch des Schutzes, den ihm dieses
gewaahrt. Er liefert sich unweigerlich der Tierseele aus. Das ist der Augenblick
des dionysischen Rausches, die uberwaltigende Offenbarung der >>blonden Bestie<<,
die mit ungekannten Schauern den Ahnungslosen ergreift' ['He who seriously
criticizes the basic attitudes of Christianity also forfeits the protection which
these bestow upon him. He delivers himself up unresistingly to the animal psyche.
That is the moment of Dionysian frenzy, the overwhelming manifestation of the
"blond beast", which seizes the unsuspecting soul with nameless shudderings'] (GW7
[section]40).

19. See Schiller's Uber Anmut und Wurde, written in 1793 and published in the
periodical Die neue Thalia in 1793. See also Karin Barnaby, 'A Poet's Intuition:
Schiller's Anticipation of C. G. Jung's Psychology in "Uber naive und
sentimentalische Dichtung"', in Friedrich Schiller and the Drama of Human
Existence, ed. Alexj Ugrinsky (New York and London, 1988), 119-28.

20. I use capital letters for the philosophical concepts 'Idea' and 'Image' to
distinguish them from their non-technical sense.

21. See Goethe's discussion of Plato and Aristotle as 'getrennte Reprasentanten

herrlicher, nicht leicht zu vereinender Eigenschaften' ['separate representatives
of marvellous, not easily united characteristics'] (Materialien zur Geschichte der
Farbenlehre (1805-1810) (Goethe, Werke, XLV, 54). The contrast between Plato and
Aristotle is an ancient one.

22. Extraversion is an attitude-type characterized by concentration of interest on

the external object (cf. GW6 [section]627-90/CW6 [section]562-619). Introversion is
an attitude-type characterized by orientation in life through subjective psychic
contents (GW6 [section]691-740/CW6 [section]620-71). See also Anthony Storr, Jung:
Selected Writings (London: Fontana, 1983), 417 and 419.

23. Jung also distinguishes between four psychic 'functions', described as

thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition (GW6 [section]807/CW6 [section]731).

24. The ontological 'proof' of the existence of God argues that the existence of
the idea of God necessarily involves His objective existence. For further
discussion of the ontological proof, and of Kant's objection to it, see: Dieter
Henrich, Der ontologische Gottesbeweis: Sein Problem und seine Geschichte
(Tubingen, 1960); Alvin Platinga, 'Kant's Objection to the Ontological Argument',
Journal of Philosophy, lxiii (1966), 537-46; and S. Morris Engel, 'Kant's
"Refutation" of the Ontological Argument', Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research, xxiv (1963/64), 20-35.

25. Jung does not give the source of Hegel's famous argument, which is from the
first volume of his Wissenschaft der Logik: 'Wenn es nun allerdings seine
Richtigkeit hat, dass Begriff vom Sein verschieden ist, so ist noch mehr Gott
verschieden von den hundert Talern und den andern endlichen Dingen. Es ist die
Definition der endlichen Dinge, dass in ihnen Begriff und Sein verschieden, Begriff
und Realitat, Seele und Leib, trennbar, sie damit verganglich und sterblich sind;
die abstrakte Definition Gottes ist dagegen eben dies, dass sein Begriff und sein
Sein ungetrennt und untrennbar sind' ['But if it is correct that concept is not the
same as being, it is truer still that God is not the same as one hundred thalers or
other finite things. It is the definition of finite things that in them concept and
being, concept and reality, soul and body are different and separable, and that
therefore they are perishable and mortal: the abstract definition of God is just
the opposite, in that in him concept and being are unseparated and inseparable.']
(G.W.F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, ed. Georg Lasson, 2 vols (Hamburg: Felix
Meiner, 1975), I, Book 1, Part 1 ('Bestimmtheit (Qualitat)', Chapter 1, 71-5
(p.75); Science of Logic, trans. W. H. Johnston and L. G. Struthers, 2 vols
(London, 1929), I, 102.

26. Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge, 1975), 232.

27. Cf. 'Existet ergo procul dubio aliquid, quo majus cogitari non volet, et in
intellectu et in re' (beyond all doubt there exists something than which nothing
greater can be thought, and moreover it exists as much in the intellect as in the
thing) (St. Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion seu Aloquium de Dei Existentia, in:
Sancti Anselmi Cantuariensis Monologium et proslogion nec non liber pro insipiente
cum libro apologetico (Tubingen, 1858), 109) (cf. Jung, GW6 [section]56/CW6
[section]62).

28. The consensus gentium (or consensus omnium) was used by Aristotle (Nicomachean
Ethics) and later by the Stoics as the highest criterion of truth. It was later
used by the Church, in the form of the so-called Vincentian Canon of oecumenicity,
antiquity and consent, laid down by St. Vincent of Lerins, to establish orthodoxy.

29. Compare with Descartes's idea of 'la notion de l'infini en moi' in the third
Meditation. Decartes's argument there is a variant of the ontological proof, as is
his claim in his letter to Clerselier of 23 April 1649: 'l'idee de l'infini,
comprenant tout l'etre, comprend tout ce qu'il y a de vrai dans les choses'
(Descartes, Oeuvres philosophiques, ed. Ferdinand Alquie, 3 vols (Paris, 1963-
1973), II, 445-6, 923).

30. 'Der Begriff >>res<< war aber der Scholastik etwas, das mit dem Gedanken auf
gleicher Hohe stand' ['For the Scholastics, the concept res was something that
existed on the same level as thought'] (GW6 [section]56/CW6 [section]62). Jung
overlooks the distinction in Scholasticism between formal and objective reality
(which recurs in Descartes's version of the ontological proof and in his Objections
and Replies).

31. In Lacanian terms, what Jung calls fantasy is the realm of the Imaginary.

32. Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Part I, Book 2, Section 6 ('Uber die Postulate
der reinen praktischen Vernunft uberhaupt' ['On the Postulates of Pure Practical
Reason in general']).

33. See Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 'Von dem Schematismus der reinen
Verstandesbegriffe' ['Of the Schematism of the Pure Concepts of Understanding'] (A
137-147/B 176-187).

34. 'Das Schema ist an sich selbst jederzeit nur ein Produkt der Einbildungskraft'
['The schema is in itself always a product of imagination'] (A 140/B 179). Kant
defines 'Einbildungskraft' ['imagination'] as 'das Vermogen, einen Gegenstand auch
ohne dessen Gegenwart in der Anschauung vorzustellen' ['the faculty of representing
in intuition an object that is not itself present'] (B 151).
35. Compare with Hume, who described 'fancy' as 'a kind of magical faculty in the
soul [...] inexplicable by the utmost efforts of human understanding' in A Treatise
of Human Nature, Book I, Part 1, Section 7 ((Fontana/Collins, 1962), 68).

36. Kritik der Urteilskraft, 'Einleitung in die Kritik der Urteilskraft',

[section]IV.

37. Confusingly, Jungian psychology elides the concepts of 'psyche', 'soul' (Seele)
and 'anima'. In his early work, including Psychologische Typen, 'Seele' is
equivalent to the 'anima'. Later on, the term 'Psyche' is used instead of 'soul',
and 'Seele' is identified with the archetype of the Anima (a discrete psychic
category amongst many others, such as the Mother, the Wise Old Man, the Trickster,
etc.).

38. Goethe's knowledge of the third Critique enabled him to develop the notion of
the faculty of so-called apperceptive judgement ('anschauende Urteilskraft') - a
mode of perception which could operate with abstractions, yet remain grounded in
sensory experience (cf. his quotation of KU [section]77 in his essay of 1820,
'Anschauende Urteilskraft' ['Apperceptive Judgement'] [Werke, XIII, 30-1]). And in
his Farbenlehre, Goethe succeeded in combining the discourses of science and
aesthetics, a union of apparent opposites which, arguably, analytical psychology
sought also to achieve. However, Jung's neglect of aesthetics forces his regression
from Kant (as it did, albeit for different reasons, in the case of Hegel). For
further discussion, see R. H. Stephenson, Goethe's Conception of Knowledge and
Science (Edinburgh, 1995).

39. However, the difference between Freud and Jung on the question of archetypes
and the inheritance of archaic material is arguably quite small (see the appendix
to the notes). For further information on the development of Jung's concept of the
archetype, see: Anthony Stevens, Archetype: A Natural History of the Self (London:
Routledge, 1982), esp. 39-47; Andrew Samuels, Jung and the Post-Jungians (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), 24-5; and Roger Brooke, Jung and Phenomenology
(London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 136-7.

40. See Werner Kaegi, Jacob Burkhardt: Eine Biographie, 7 vols (Basle and
Stuttgart, 1947-1982), IV, 464, note 121).

41. The translators of Jung's Collected Works give his game away when they actually
render this passage as 'the dual nature of the Idea...is responsible for the fact
that I sometimes use it promiscuously with primordial Image'!

42. With characteristic lack of precision, Jung says: 'Insofern die Idee eine
Abstraktion ist, erscheint sie als etwas aus Elementarerem Abgeleitetes oder
Entwickeltes, als ein Produkt des Denkens' ['Insofar as the Idea is an abstraction,
it has the appearance of something derived, or developed, from elementary factors,
a product of thought'] (GW6 [section]811/CW6 [section]732). For professed
definitions of the Jungian terms 'Abstraktion' and 'Konkretismus', see GW6
[section]745-49/CW6 [section]676-80 and [section]84245/[section]696-99.

43. Jung refers to p.13 of 'Was soll uns Kant nicht sein?', in: Philosophische
Studien, ed. Wilhelm Wundt, 20 vols (Leipzig, 1881-1903), 1-49, where he must be
thinking of the following passage: 'Sehe ich doch, dass die aussere Anlehnung an
Kant in der Unterscheidung der drei Stufen der Wahrnehmungs-, Verstandes- und
Vernunfterkenntniss oder die analoge aussere Unterscheidung der transcendenten
Ideen auf die Beurtheilung des Inhaltes der betreffenden Kapitel gelegentlich
herubergewirkt und mir merkwurdiger Weise gerade da, wo ich es am wenigsten bin,
beinahe den Ruhm eines Kantianers eingetragen hat' ['But nevertheless I see that
the outward reliance on Kant when distinguishing between the three stages of
knowledge from perception, the understanding and reason, or the analogous outward
distinction of the transcendent Ideas, has occasionally affected judgement of the
content of the relevant chapters; and, strangely enough, has given me the
reputation for being a Kantian precisely where I am least so']. But Wundt's article
is less a detailed discussion of Ideas in Kant's epistemology than a defence of
his, Wundt's, interpretation of that epistemology against such critics as Eduard
von Hartmann and Theobald Ziegler (see pp.47-9).

44. For Plato, Ideas (in Greek [Greek Text Omitted] or [Greek Text Omitted] =
image) are universal forms, the only true metaphysical reality, of which individual
objects are particular representations (see The Republic, 514a-517b). Ideas in the
Kantian sense are discussed later on in this article.

45. In the Collected Works, this is misleadingly translated as 'the archetype

[Urbild] of all practical employment of reason' (my emphasis).

46. Immanuel Kants Logik: Ein Handbuch zu Vorlesungen (1800), edited by Gottlob
Benjamin Jasche (1762-1842), Part I, ('Allgemeine Elementarlehre'), Section 1 ('Von
den Begriffen'), Chapter 3 ('Empirischer und reiner Begriff'). Jung also refers to
the Jasche Logic in 'On Psychological Understanding' (1914) (GW3 [section]393) and
in 'The Psychology of Dreams' (1916) (revised finally as 'Allgemeine Gesichtspunkte
zur Psychologie des Traumes' ['General Aspects of Dream Psychology']) (GW8
[section]454).

47. As Kant's famous double maxim puts it: 'Gedanken ohne Inhalt sind leer,
Anschauungen ohne Begriffe sind blind' ['Thoughts without content are empty,
intuitions without concepts are blind'] (B 76/A 52).

48. 'Die naturliche Stromung der Libido, eben dieser mittlere Pfad, bedeutet einen
volligen Gehorsam gegen die Grundgesetze menschlicher Natur, und es lasst sich
schlechterdings kein hoheres Moralprinzip aufstellen als jene Ubereinstimmung auf
den naturlichen Gesetzen, deren Einklang der Libido die Richtung gibt, in der das
Lebensoptimum liegt' ['The natural flow of libido, this same middle path, means
complete obedience to the fundamental laws of human nature, and there can
positively be no higher moral principle than harmony with natural laws that guide
the libido in the direction of life's optimum'] (GW6 [section]399/CW6
[section]356).

49. Analytical psychology in general has been conspicuous for its failure to
develop any ethical standpoint, particularly in the political sphere. Jung's own
misreading is shown by his subsumption of the the Idea back into the 'Urbild' but,
more generally, it also reflects the use of Kant by the Romantic tradition of
German Idealism within which, despite his disclaimers, he works. By contrast
Goethe, who in his poem 'Vermachtnis' ['Legacy'] (1829) apparently adopts a proto-
Jungian formulation of the self, also insists in the final lines of the third
stanza on the moral component of personality:

Sofort nun wende dich nach innen, Das Zentrum findest du da drinnen, Woran kein
Edler zweifeln mag. Wirst keine Regel da vermissen: Denn das selbstandige Gewissen
Ist Sonne deinem Sittentag.

['And then at once turn your gaze inward: You will find the centre there within,
And this no noble mind can doubt. There you will feel no lack of governance, For
conscience, relying upon itself, Is the sun of your moral day'.]

(my emphases) (Goethe, Werke, 1, 370; translation from David Luke, Goethe: Selected
Verse (Harmondsworth, 1964), 276).

50. Kant takes up and clarifies this distinction in the Kritik der Urteilskraft:
'Idee bedeutet eigentlich einen Vernunftbegriff, und Ideal die Vorstellung eines
einzelnen als einer Idee adaquaten Wesens' ['Idea properly means a rational
concept, and Ideal the representation of an individual being, regarded as adequate
to an Idea'] ([section]17, 'Vom Ideale der Schonheit' ['On the Ideal of Beauty']).
In that same section of the third Critique, Kant uses the expressions '[das] Urbild
des Geschmacks' 'and '[das] Urbild der Schonheit'.

51. 'Zu diesem Ideal der moralischen Vollkommenheit, d.i. dem Urbilde der
sittlichen Gesinnung in ihrer ganzen Lauterkeit uns zu erheben, ist nun allgemeine
Menschenpflicht, wozu uns auch diese Idee selbst, welche von der Vernunft uns zur
Nachstrebung vorgelegt wird, Kraft geben kann' ['To elevate ourselves to this Ideal
of moral perfection, i.e. to the archetype [primordial image] of moral sentiments
in their entire purity, is a general human duty, to which end the Idea itself,
presented to us by reason for our imitation, can give us power'] (Kant, Die
Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, Part II, Section 1, [section]a
('Personifizierte Idee des guten Prinzips' ['Personified Idea of the Good
Principle']).

52. Ibid; [section]b ('Objektive Realitat dieser Idee' ['Objective Reality of this
Idea']).

53. Religion, Part III, Section 1, Chapter VII ('Der allmahliche Ubergang des
Kirchenglaubens zur Alleinherrschaft des reinen Religionsglaubens ist die
Annaherung des Reichs Gottes' ['The Gradual Transition of Eccclesiatical Belief to
the Sovereign Rule of the Pure Religious Belief is the Approach of the Kingdom of
God']: 'Der lebendige Glaube an das Urbild der Gott wohlgefalligen Menschheit, (den
Sohn Gottes), an sich selbst ist auf eine moralische Vernunftidee bezogen [...]
Dagegen ist der Glaube an desselbe Urbild in der Erscheinung (an den Gottmenschen),
als empirischer, (historischer) Glaube, nicht einerlei mit dem Prinzip des guten
Lebenswandels, (welches ganz rational sein muss)' ['The living belief in the
primordial image of humanity pleasing to God (the Son of God) in itself is related
to a moral Idea of reason . . . By contrast, the belief in the same primordial
image in its appearance (in the God-Man) as an empirical (historic) belief is not
identical with the principle of the good way of life (which must be completely
rational)'].

54. Kant also uses the conception of a 'Monogramm' in the Transcendental Analytic
during his discussion of the schematism (A 142/B 181).

55. Particularly from Richard Semon (1859-1918), Die Mneme als erhaltendes Prinzip
im Wechsel des organischen Geschehens (Leipzig, 1904); translated by L. Semon as
The Mneme (London, 1921).

56. In this passage, Kant carefully avoided making any ontological assertions about
the Ideal. Although, in his 'Einleitung in die religionspsychologische Problematik
der Alchemie' ['Introduction to the Religious and Psychological Problems'] Jung
argued from the existence of archetypes to a creator of archetypes - 'Schon das
Wort Archetypus [...] was bekanntlich von [Greek Text Omitted] = Schlag, Einpragung
herkommt [...] setzt ein Pragendes voraus', ['The word "archetype" is, as we know,
derived from [Greek Text Omitted], "blow" or "imprint"; thus it presupposes an
imprinter'] - he tried to draw back, like Kant, from any ontological assertions:
'Uber eine mogliche Existenz Gottes ist damit weder positiv noch negativ etwas
ausgesagt, sowenig als der Archetypus des "Helden" das Vorhandensein eines solchen
setzt' ['Nothing positive or negative has thereby been asserted about the possible
existence of God, any more than the archetype of the "hero" posits the actual
existence of a hero'] (GW12 [section]15).

57. 'Die asthetische Idee (Archetypon, Urbild) liegt zu beiden in der

Einbildungskraft zum Grunde; die Gestalt aber, welche den Ausdruck derselben
ausmacht (Ektypon, Nachbild), wird entweder in ihrer korperlichen Ausdehnung (wie
der Gegenstand selbst existiert) oder nach der Art, wie diese sich im Auge malt
(nach ihrer Apparenz in einer Flache), gegeben' ['The aesthetic Idea (the archetype
or original image) underlies both of these arts in the imagination, but the figure
which constitutes its expression (the ectype or copy) is given either in its bodily
extension (as the object itself exists) or as it paints itself on the eye
(according to its appearance when projected on a flat surface)'] (KU [section]51).

Appendix

Freud and Jung on archetypes

A number of passages from Freud sound very Jungian. For example, in 'Eine
Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci' ['Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his
Childhood'] (1910), which Jung acclaimed in his letter to Freud of 17 June 1910 as
'wunderbar', Freud brings in numerous literary and mythological references to
explain Leonardo's childhood fantasy of the vulture (Sigmund Freud/C.G. Jung,
Briefwechsel (Frankfurt am Main, 1974), p.364; Freud, Gesammelte Werke, 18 vols
(Frankfurt am Main, 1968-1978), VIII, 127-211). In his 'Nachtrag' ['Postscript']
(1912) to Psychoanalytische Bemerkungen uber einen autobiographisch beschriebenen
Fall von Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides) [Psychoanalytic Notes on an
Autobiographical Account of Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides)] (1911) (i.e. the
Schreber case), Freud explicitly agreed with Jung's ideas, noting 'wie wohl
begrundet die Behauptung Jungs ist, dass die mythenbildenden Krafte der Menschheit
nicht erloschen sind, sondern heute noch in den Neurosen dieselben psychischen
Produkte erzeugen wie in den altesten Zeiten' ['Jung had excellent grounds for his
assertion that the mythopoeic forces of Mankind are not extinct, but that to this
very day they give rise in the neuroses to the same psychical products as in the
remotest past ages']. Freud concluded: 'Wir haben gesagt: Im Traume und in der
Neurose finden wir das Kind wieder mit den Eigentuimlichkeiten seiner Denkweisen
und seines Affektlebens. Wir werden erganzen: auch den wilden, den primitiven
Menschen, wie er sich uns im Lichte der Altertumswissenschaft und der
Volkerforschung zeigt' ["'In dreams and neuroses", so our thesis has run, "we come
once more upon the child and the peculiarities which characterize his modes of
thought and his emotional life". "And we come upon the savage too", we may now add,
"upon primitive Man, as he stands revealed to us in the light of the researches of
archaeology and of ethnology"'] (VIII, 319-20). And in 'Zeitgemasses uber Krieg und
Tod' ['Thoughts for the Times on War and Death'] (1915), Freud used the notion that
characteristics of the primitive mind could still manifest themselves (regression)
to help explain the First World War (x, 324-55 (p.337). Furthermore, in a passage
added to Die Traumdeutung [The Interpretation of Dreams] in 1919, Freud
acknowledged that dream analysis could provide knowledge of '[die] archaische
Erbschaft des Menschen' ['the archaic inheritance of Mankind'], and in support of
this idea he quoted exactly the same passage from Nietzsche which Jung had in
Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido: 'Im Traum ubt sich dieses uralte Stuck
Menschentum in uns fort' ['In the dream this piece of primeval humanity continues
to exercise itself'] (Freud, II/III, 554; cf. WSL, p.38/PU: p.28; cf. Nietzsche,
Menschliches, Allzumenschliches [Human, All Too Human], Book I, [section]13 (Werke
in drei Banden, edited by Karl Schlechta (Munich: Hanser, 1966), I, 454-5). Again,
in 'Das Ich und das Es' ['The Ego and the Id'] (1923), Freud spoke of 'd[ie]
archaische[ ] Erbschaft' ['archaic inheritance]' (XIII, 237-89 (p.265)), and in
Abriss der Psychoanalyse [An Outline of Psychoanalysis] (1930), he wrote that some
dreams had to be seen as 'Teil der archaischen Erbschaft' ['part of the archaic
inheritance']: 'Die Gegenstucke zu diesem phylogenetischen Material finden wir dann
in den altesten Sagen der Menschheit und in ihren uberlebenden Gebrauchen. Der
Traum wird so eine nicht zu verachtende Quelle der menschlichen Vorgeschichte' ['We
can then find the counterparts of this phylogenetic material in the oldest legends
of Mankind and in customs which have survived. Thus the dream becomes a source,
which must not be neglected, of human prehistory'] (XVII, 63-138 (p.89)).
COPYRIGHT 1996 Sage Publications, Inc.
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission
from the copyright holder.
Copyright 1996 Gale, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.

Please bookmark with social media, your votes are noticed and appreciated: