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Kant and the development of the human and cultural sciences

Rudolf A. Makkreel
Department of Philosophy, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA
philrm@emory.edu

In considering what Kant has contributed to our understanding of the sciences, it

is all too common to focus exclusively on his attempts to locate the philosophical

conditions that make the natural sciences possible. This relationship was central for Kant

and he worked it out in great detail. But the very fact that his theoretical philosophy is so

intricately tied to the natural sciences of his time also dates it in certain ways. This need

not be the case when we relate Kant’s philosophy to the problems of the human sciences.

Throughout his academic career, Kant lectured on anthropology, but his views

about what we can know about human beings and human history were never as well-

defined as his views about our knowledge of nature. Nor was there any coherent theory

of the human and historical sciences available for Kant to respond to and refine. Well-

defined theories of the human and historical sciences did not emerge until the nineteenth

century. Since many of these theories were directly inspired by Hegel, Comte and Mill,

not enough has been done to examine Kant as an indirect influence.

In this essay I will consider Kant in relation to several theories about the nature of

historical cognition that became dominant in the early twentieth century and formed a

critically grounded constellation of the human and cultural sciences. This constellation

encompasses the works of Wilhelm Dilthey and the Neo-Kantians. Although Dilthey

was not an orthodox Kantian, he placed his theory of the human sciences within the

framework of a Critique of Historical Reason that invites comparison with his more

orthodox contemporaries. What all these theories have in common is that they attempt to

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find a middle ground between speculative theories of history and sociological positivism.

They are problem-oriented and concerned to define the conditions and limits of historical

knowledge in ways that are still very relevant. It is from this standpoint that I will look

back at Kant and consider where his writings are of special interest. The approach to be

followed here is less about finding full-fledged precedents for later theories of the human

sciences than it is about locating tendencies and reflections that can be seen as

anticipatory sources.

For Dilthey’s theory of the human sciences, what Kant has to say about

psychology and anthropology is especially suggestive. Most Neo-Kantians preferred a

concept of the cultural sciences--Kulturwissenschaften--which excluded psychology.

This was especially true for the Baden or Southwest School Neo-Kantians Wilhelm

Windelband and Heinrich Rickert. For them, the discussions of humanity and culture in

sections 60 and 83 of the Critique of judgment are central.

Some Marburg Neo-Kantians such as Hermann Cohen and Ernst Cassirer were

also willing to use Dilthey’s term for the human sciences--Geisteswissenschaften--but

they were unwilling to acknowledge the continuity between life and spirit generally

associated with the term. Cohen in particular insists that the Geisteswissenschaften must

have an a priori basis in legal and ethical norms. In this respect, many discussions in

Kant’s “Doctrine of Right” will prove to be important. Cassirer is willing to include

Dilthey’s conception of Verstehen in his final theory of the Geistes-und Kultur-

wissenschaften, but he assigns it only a preliminary value that must be confirmed by an

Erklärung. Ultimately, understanding requires an explanative validation according to

Cassirer.

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Paradoxically, Dilthey’s insistence that in the historical world the understanding

of meaning must frame the explanative appeal to determinant conditions comes closer to

Kant’s own position that there are limits to our capacity to arrive at explanations. For

instance, there comes a point in human reflection on religion where our desire for

doctrinal interpretations must give way to less definitive but heartfelt interpretations,

which Kant calls “authentic”.1 Indeed, we will see that Dilthey is sometimes better than

the Neo-Kantians at capturing the spirit of Kant’s thinking about human concerns. These

opening comments are meant to give some indication of the wide range of Kant’s

writings that can be called on to delineate a possible theory of the human and cultural

sciences.

1. Pragmatic anthropology as a human science

The need to supplement the natural sciences with another kind of science can be

related to Kant’s increasing skepticism about the possibility that psychology could ever

become a natural science. Traditionally, psychology had been seen as part of metaphysics

and subject to rational analysis. The task of rational psychology was to illuminate the

nature of the soul as a spiritual substance. Rational analysis had been used to argue for

the simplicity of the soul and therefore its immortality. In his Critique of pure reason

(1781), Kant exposed the transcendental illusions involved in such inferences. Thus the

claim that we can theoretically know ourselves to have an immortal soul must be

transformed into the practical claim that it is rational to believe it.

1
I will not examine Kant’s views on religious interpretation here. I have already discussed them in
Imagination and interpretation in Kant, see chapter 7, Makkreel (1990), pp. 130-153.

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With the traditional rational psychology of the soul disposed of, there remain

questions concerning the status and location of its empirical counterpart. Any

psychological claims about mental processes would have to be restricted to an empirical

psychology. However, empirical psychology appeals to inner experience, which is also

unable to adequately determine the status of the soul and our states of mind. Kant

regards inner experience as far less reliable than outer experience and holds out little

hope that empirical psychology can make good on its cognitive claims. Yet, because the

questions raised by psychology remain important, Kant allows it to retain its place in

metaphysics as a temporary abode until it gradually finds its more permanent dwelling in

what he calls an anthropology.

In the Metaphysical foundations of natural science (1786) Kant began to express

further doubts about psychology’s ability to provide more than a “natural description

(Naturbeschreibung) of the soul” (Kant, 1902-97, 4:471). This is because mathematical

measurement is not readily applicable to the temporal phenomena of the life of the soul.2

These ephemeral phenomena of inner sense need a spatial reference to make them more

determinate. They flow into each other and are hard to keep distinct. Their

indeterminacy is unfortunate, according to Kant, not only because it makes the analysis

of psychic phenomena difficult, but also because it makes their a priori synthesis

impossible. He thinks that any theory about natural phenomena can only be scientific

insofar as it contains an a priori foundation, and that the only a priori cognition we can

have about nature is mathematical (Kant, 1902-97, 4:470).

2
Recent commentators such as Nayak, Sotnak and Sturm have argued that Kant did not rule out a limited
applicability of mathematics to psychological phenomena. See Nayak & Sotnak (1995), pp. 133-151 and
Sturm (2001), pp. 163-184.

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These reasons given by Kant for his claim that psychology cannot be a science

were not convincing to Dilthey, who attempted to establish psychology as a descriptive

human science. The fact that psychic phenomena flow into each other is the reason why

a priori synthetic principles need not be appealed to for understanding their general

coherence and connectedness. A mere description can suffice. But Dilthey could

endorse the following passage from Kant’s First introduction to the critique of judgment,

where we read that “the situation of psychological explanations is quite pitiable compared

to that of physical explanations” (Kant, 2001, p. 38 [20:238]). This is because

psychological explanations are

endlessly hypothetical (hypothetisch) so that given three different explanations a

fourth, equally persuasive one can easily be conceived… To make psychological

observations, as Burke did in his treatise on the beautiful and the sublime, this to

collect material for a future systematic connection of empirical rules without

striving for their comprehension or conceptual understanding (begreifen), is

probably the sole true duty of empirical psychology, which can hardly even aspire

to rank as a philosophical science. (Kant, 1902-97, 20:238)

Kant’s view that psychological hypotheses tend to multiply rather too freely is shared by

Dilthey. They agree that psychology should dispense with hypothetical explanations, not

because they are difficult to propose or because they lack persuasive power, but rather

because there is no way of testing the many alternate persuasive accounts that they

produce. Because of the limited applicability of mathematical measurement to

psychological phenomena, exact causal explanations of them are beyond our reach.

Thomas Sturm points out that nevertheless Kant lists three “laws of association” (Sturm,

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2001, p. 170). But laws of association are merely empirical regularities. They fall short

of being causal laws because they have no a priori synthetic basis. To be sure, the fact

cited by Sturm that Kant speaks of “causes that increase or decrease the intensity of sense

perceptions” (Kant, 1902-97, 7:162) means that causation cannot be excluded from

psychological phenomena, but it does not entail that particular causal laws can be found

to explain them. For an explanation to be valid it must be able to replace the contingency

of association with the necessity of a causal synthesis.

Although both Kant and Dilthey are skeptical about finding causal laws for

psychological phenomena, only Kant uses it as an argument against psychology. He

concludes that because no causal explanations of psychological processes exist, no

psychological understanding of them is possible either. According to Dilthey,

explanation is not the only source of understanding. The empirical observations of

human responses to the beautiful and sublime that Burke collected and described make

possible a reflective understanding of psychic life. Dilthey’s reflective understanding

(verstehen) is less determinant than the comprehension or conceptual understanding

(begreifen) that Kant expects of science. But not all sciences need have the determinacy

and a priori philosophical principles that Kant derives from the faculty of intellectual

understanding (Verstand). As far as Dilthey is concerned, there is no reason to deny a

scientific status to a discipline that is able to attain a systematic connection of empirical

rules. Like his teacher Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, Dilthey adopts the Aristotelian

position that we should only expect as much determinacy from a discipline as its subject-

matter allows. Thus we must distinguish between the aims and methods of the natural

and human sciences.

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So far we have seen that Kant and Dilthey agree that psychology is not a natural

science. It is important to note that on this score Dilthey was closer to Kant than were the

Neo-Kantians, who had enough faith in the potential of psycho-physical experimentation

to once again declare psychology a natural science. Such experimentation assumes that

psychic states can be definitively correlated with bodily states. Dilthey is skeptical about

the extent to which this can be done. On the other hand, he does not exclude the

applicability of hypothetical explanations to psychology altogether. His main concern is

to avoid general hypotheses at the foundational level. Highly speculative explanations in

psychology are unnecessary because the most general structural aspects of psychic life

are already available from within and can be described retrospectively, if not

introspectively.3 To be sure, many details of our own experience may be overlooked or

become lost or uncertain. In those cases, specific hypotheses may be devised to attempt

to explain such details. But such explanations only make sense within the already

generally understandable framework of psychic life made possible by description.

We saw Kant deny that psychological description can produce understanding in

the First introduction to the critique of judgment. But in §78 of the Critique of judgment

itself, Kant explores the ideas of descriptive elucidation (Erörterung) and exposition

(Exposition) in relation to reflective judgment (Kant, 2001, p. 281 [5:412]) to arrive at a

kind of intelligibility, although it falls short of a full explanation. In exploring the

problem of reconciling mechanism and teleology, Kant points out that each provides a

mode of explanation. Although mechanistic explanation can be applied indefinitely--

even to organisms--it will, given the limits of the human understanding (Verstand),

3
Dilthey agrees with Kant that introspection can alter a mental state, but a careful use of retrospection need
not.

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always leave something unaccounted for. We must, therefore, appeal to a principle of

final causality as well. But the overall relation between the principle of mechanical

determinism and the principle of purposive activity cannot be explained, for the two

principles mark out irreconcilable approaches to reality. Since “one kind of explanation

excludes the other” (Kant, 2001, p. 281 [5:412]), their interrelation is only “intelligible

(verständlich)” (Kant, 2001, p. 282 [5:413]) reflectively. The two principles cannot be

fused, but if we apply the principle of purposiveness merely descriptively (Kant, 2001, p.

286 [5:417]), then we can coordinate it with the principle of mechanism. Kant now

seems willing to assign his reflective use of description a systematic intelligibility, if not

a full conceptual comprehensibility.

Kant’s new willingness to link intelligibility with reflective exposition can be

related to a more liberal attitude toward what counts as science. This new attitude

becomes evident in the preface for the Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view,

published in 1798. While admitting that there are many obstacles to anthropology rising

to “the rank of a formal science,” (Kant, 2006, p. 5 [7:121]) Kant maintains that it can be

made systematic enough to count as a mode of world cognition. Anthropology may not

be able to rise to the level of the universally valid (allgemeingültige) sciences, but it can

become a “generally useful (gemeinnützige) science” (Kant, 1902-97, 7:122). The term

gemeinnützig suggests that anthropology cannot ignore Gemeinsinn or common sense. It

is thus not a doctrinal science in the academic sense (Schulbegriff), but one that is

oriented to the world and our participation in it. Anthropology relates to philosophy as a

mode of world-cognition (Weltkenntnis). It brackets the traditional academic question of

psychology whether we possess a soul, and instead studies human beings as they relate to

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the world. Anthropology is “physiological” if it merely observes and explains human

behavior--it then tells us what nature makes of human beings. Anthropology is

pragmatic if such observations are used to investigate what a human being “as a free-

acting being makes of himself, or can and should make of himself” (Kant, 2006, p. 3

[7:119]). To show why anthropology should be pragmatic rather than physiological,

Kant considers the difficulties in explaining human memory. He points out that many

have, like Descartes, speculated that memory is caused by “traces of impressions

remaining in the brain” (Kant, 2006, p. 3 [7:119]). But this is an untested hypothesis. In

the twenty-first century, it is possible to make physiological observations about what

parts of the brain are used when we remember. But we are still not able to adequately

explain why some people have better memories than others. Is memory mainly a matter

of storing and reviving traces, or are there obstructive and repressive forces to contend

with as well?

According to Kant, pragmatic anthropology must avoid such explanative

speculation and focus on what reflective descriptions and assessments of human practices

can teach us about the nature of memory and about ways to improve it. Memory is a

form of reproductive imagination that is volitional, as distinct from phantasy which is

not. Attempts to improve memory pragmatically can be differentiated into three kinds of

memorizing: 1) by mechanical repetition, 2) by ingenious associations, and 3) by the

judicious use of classifications. It is the last method that Kant approves of, and his

elucidation of it discloses what is pragmatic about his anthropology:

Judicious memorizing is nothing other than memorizing, in thought, a table of the

divisions of a system (for example, that of Linnaeus) where, if one should forget

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something, one can find it again through the enumeration of the parts that one has

retained; or else through memorizing the sections of a whole made visible (for

example, the provinces of a country on a map, which lie to the north, to the west,

etc.)…Most of all, the judicious use of topics, that is, a framework for general

concepts, called commonplaces, facilitates remembering through class division…

(Kant, 2006, p. 77 [7:184])

Kant’s reference to a topics of commonplaces (Gemeinplätze) shows again that he is

operating on the level of common sense (Gemeinsinn), not on the level of universal

theory. A pragmatic science serves to orient us in the world by providing a kind of

topological outline of it. The parallel with judicious memorization is that both build on

our general feeling of orientation to the world and articulate it into a more specific

mapping of this world, within which divisions can be made to systematically order

things.

Because judicious memorization orients us to the way things are distributed in the

world, it suggests a kinship with the expository and systematizing functions of reflective

judgment as defined in the Critique of judgment. Whereas judicious memorization is a

function of common sense in the ordinary sense of common understanding, reflective

judgment has its a priori transcendental principle and orients us to an ideal sensus

communis. Reflective judgment is appealed to in Kant’s theory of taste as the capacity to

impute the communicability of a feeling that draws merely on a formal harmony of the

cognitive faculties. Because the reflecting power of judgment makes it possible to

broaden our understanding to make room for the felt perspectives of other members of

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the human community, it can have a “comparative” (See Kant, 2001, p. 15 [20:211]) as

well as descriptive use.

Whereas a determinant judgment subordinates particulars to universals that are

already known, a reflective judgment starts with particulars in search of a possible

universal. The paradigm task of a determinant judgment is to explain the occurrence of

particular events by universal laws. The procedure of the reflecting power of judgment is

to a large extent comparative and coordinative. It considers not only whether the

faculties put into play by aesthetic order are in harmony, but also whether it is possible to

find systematic coherence for experience in general. This contrast between these two

types of judgment makes it possible to argue that determinant judgments tend to be

explanative and that reflective judgments tend to be interpretive.

The parallel distinction in Dilthey between general explanations and reflective

understanding is not all that sharp, either. Thus when Dilthey claims that the natural

sciences are explanative by appealing to causal laws and the human sciences interpretive

by examining how various social and cultural systems interact in historical events, he is

not ruling out the possibility of arriving at explanations in history. He is, however,

limiting their possible scope in a critical manner. Explanations can only be arrived at

within carefully delineated contexts in which the relevant variables are restricted.

Understanding must always frame possible explanations. In that vein, Dilthey’s Critique

of Historical Reason invokes an enlarged conception of human consciousness to find the

reflective conditions of coherence in a mode of reflexive awareness that locates thinking

and willing within the horizon of what is felt (Dilthey, 2002, pp. 139-142, 214-218). The

reflective aims of thinking and willing can only illuminate the historical world if they are

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rooted in the self-referring nature of what is felt reflexively. Dilthey’s reflexive

awareness orients the reflective understanding of history in the way that Kant’s “I think”

organizes the conceptual understanding of nature. We find meaning in history because

we identify with its ends, in contrast to nature, which we can only observe or use as

means. Thus we are able to understand and interpret history because we feel ourselves as

participating in it. The basic structural frameworks that constitute history are conceived

by Dilthey in accordance with the reflective purposiveness that Kant used to make sense

of the way organisms function. Because organisms are part of nature, Kant could only

make regulative claims about their immanent purposiveness. The social and cultural

systems that Dilthey locates in history are of our own making and are thus not merely

regulative. The immanent purposiveness of social and cultural systems can be

understood from within (Dilthey, 2002, pp. 168-170) and is constitutive.

2. The life of culture

One of the main points on which Dilthey differs from the Baden Neo-Kantians is

that he took this immanence of purposiveness to entail a continuity between life and

spirit. If spirit is the principle of mental life as Kant defined it in section 49 of the

Critique of judgment, then there is no need to create a dualism between life and spirit. In

that vein, Dilthey argues that it is unnecessary to claim that the values orienting historical

life must transcend it as Windelband and Rickert insist. For Dilthey, the immanent

purposiveness of the social and cultural systems that we create allow values to be

embodied or intuitively presented (dargestellt).4

4
For a discussion of how this difference between Dilthey and the Baden Neo-Kantians about the status of
values affects the understanding of individuality in the human and cultural sciences, see Makkreel (1975),
pp. 39-44, 218-225.

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To clarify Kant’s own position here we can look at sections 60 and 83 of the

Critique of judgment, where he lays out his views on human culture. In the former he

speaks of cultivating our humanity. To be human means on the one hand to possess a

“universal feeling of participation (teilnehmen)” in a culture and on the other hand to

cultivate the capacity to “communicate (mitteilen) one’s inmost self” (Kant, 2001, p. 229

[5:355]) to others. But to be successful in this it is necessary to be able to coordinate “the

breadth and refinement” of culture with a “natural simplicity” (Kant, 2001, p. 229

[5:356]). Culture should not be defined in opposition to nature--it is precisely a mode of

cultivating human nature. This is confirmed in section 83, where Kant examines what it

means for human beings to be the ultimate end of nature. They can be the ultimate end

(letzter Zweck) of nature only because they alone among living beings have the power to

set final ends (Endzwecke) that transcend nature. The paradox here is that nature

considered teleologically prepares us to become practically self-activating and

independent of nature. What makes us worthy of being the ultimate end of nature is not

some mere natural end such as happiness, but a cultural end.

There are two kinds of culture according to Kant: the culture of skill, which is the

aptitude for the promotion of ends in general, and the culture of discipline, which

liberates “the will from the despotism of desires” (Kant, 2001, p. 299 [5:432]). The

culture of skill cultivates the natural capacities of human beings to find the means to

satisfy their desires. This culture of skill allows natural life to become more organized in

terms of economic and political life. Skills can produce goods that are indispensable to

life as well as luxuries that are dispensable. They lead to social inequalities that need to

be limited. In so far as we are members of the culture of skill we must operate under the

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external constraints of law. As Kant puts it: “the formal conditions under which alone

nature can attain its final aim is that constitution in the relationships of human beings

with one another in which the abuse of reciprocally conflicting freedom is opposed by the

lawful power in a whole, which is called civil society” (Kant, 2001, pp. 299-300 [5:432]).

The culture of skill needs to be regulated from above.

Only the culture of discipline entitles human beings to be the ultimate end of

nature. The culture of discipline is the aptitude to voluntarily curb our natural desires and

be “receptive to higher ends than nature itself can afford” (Kant, 2001, p. 300 [5:433]).

Whereas the culture of skill needs the external limits of the state, the culture of discipline

sets its own bounds from within. An argument could be made that the self-binding higher

ends of the culture of discipline lead to a cosmopolitan society where cooperation

replaces competition. If the rules of civil (bürgerliche) society can be correlated with

Kant’s theory of right, then those of cosmopolitan (weltbürgliche) society may be

correlated with his theory of virtue. Kant at least suggests the latter correlation in the

appendix to “The theory of virtue.” Speaking of the virtues of social intercourse he

writes: “It is a duty to oneself as well as to others not to isolate oneself but to use one’s

moral perfections in social intercourse…While making oneself a fixed center of one’s

principles, one ought to regard this circle around one as also forming a part of an

inclusive circle of those who, in their disposition, are citizens of the world” (Kant, 1996,

p. 218 [6:473]). Virtues of social intercourse such as agreeableness and tolerance are

described in terms that evoke the idea of culture, namely, as the cultivation of a

disposition of reciprocity in human life.

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By downplaying the importance of culture, several recent discussions of Kant’s

pragmatic anthropology have simply equated the pragmatic with the prudential.5 This

may seem justified on the basis of the claim in the Critique of pure reason that “the

practical law from the motive of happiness” is the “pragmatic (rule of prudence)” (Kant,

1997, A806/B834). However, in the later lectures on anthropology he expands his notion

of the pragmatic. He now speaks of the “pragmatic predisposition to become civilized

through culture, particularly through the cultivation of social qualities” (Kant, 2006, p.

228 [7:323]). To the extent that culture includes the development of skills, the pragmatic

still encompasses the prudential interest of the individual “to use other human beings

skillfully for his purposes” (Kant, 2006, p. 226 [7:322]). But to the extent that culture

becomes the culture of discipline, the pragmatic moves beyond the prudential concern for

individual happiness and identifies itself with the good of the human species. Now the

pragmatic cultivates “social relations” and aims at human “concord” (Kant, 2006, p. 228

[7:323]). Although culture is not yet truly moral, it allows for a mutual use of human

beings for their common good.

Terms like “culture” and “life” could be considered as bridge notions for Kant.

They are coordinative ideas that provide a “way of thinking” (Denkungsart) about how

human beings span the realms of nature and spirit. Culture involves the cultivation of

nature to prepare us to be spiritual; life is both moved by nature and moving towards self-

initiating spirit.6 These coordinative ideas are orientational like the reflective concepts of

the Critique of pure reason.7 But whereas reflective concepts such as inner and outer,

matter and form orient us by means of their differentiating function to the point of forcing

5
See Kain (2003), pp. 230-265. Also Jacobs (2003), pp. 105-134.
6
For a fuller discussion of the role of life in Kant’s philosophy see Makkreel (1990), ch. 5.
7
See the Amphiboly of Concepts of Reflection in Kant (1998) A260/B316-A292/B349.

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us to keep the phenomenal and noumenal worlds apart, coordinative ideas like culture

and life help us to bring together the various contexts that are in play in the cosmopolitan

world. Human life and culture can only thrive if they can maintain the equilibrium that is

implicit in Kant’s reflective idea of immanent purposiveness.

Whereas Dilthey’s life-based approach to the human sciences develops the idea of

immanent purposiveness in articulating the cultural systems at work in human history, the

Baden School Neo-Kantians continued to uphold the transcendent values by which

history is to be judged and therefore placed a greater emphasis on the external

purposiveness of history.

3. Human appropriation

Moving now to the Marburg Neo-Kantians we will see that its main exponent,

Hermann Cohen, turns to a very different side of Kant for a theory of the cultural

sciences. Instead of considering Kant’s writing on anthropology within the framework of

the theoretical works--the 1st and 3rd Critiques--he focuses on how Kant’s philosophy of

right fits with the moral standpoint of the 2nd Critique. According to Cohen, a properly

critical approach to the Geisteswissenschaften requires a juridical grounding that will

legitimate them in an a priori fashion.

To see how far Kant himself went in the direction of providing an a priori

normative grounding of social relations, we can look at The metaphysics of morals of

1797. One way in which Kant defines social relations is through how we appropriate

objects. Thus Kant’s philosophy of right works out how we can have a legal or juridical

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relation to the objects that we have already been able to make cognitive and aesthetic

judgments about.

The way Kant legitimates our legal relation to objects through a process of

appropriation can be seen as a further development in coming to know objects. The

theoretical or epistemic judgments of the Critique of pure reason related objects to each

other by means of the legislative rules that are implicit in the categories of the

understanding. The categories provide the critical conditions for causally determining

phenomena in space and time. Although space, time and categorical concepts are rooted

in the cognitive subject, their deduction appeals to this subject in a general transcendental

sense. Only in the reflective judgment of taste does the individual human subject come

into focus. Reflective judgment allows the subject to feel itself as it contemplates the

beauty of an object. The aesthetic judgment that something is beautiful is really a claim

about a harmony of the faculties of the subject as indicative of something that any human

subject should be able to feel as well. Taste is a social sensibility that allows the

individual subject to orient itself toward the human species as a whole. It is the analogue

of the a priori feeling of spatial orientation that locates each subject in relation to the

world as a whole.

Kant’s philosophy of right can be seen as another step in the process of defining

our place in the world, namely, as a legal subject. Determinant “cognitive” judgments

about objects are impersonal, observational and explanative as required by the natural

sciences. Reflective aesthetic judgments can be called “communicative” judgments; they

allow us to become participants in human culture, but they do not yet legitimate us as

communal subjects. It is the “juridical” judgment that makes it possible for us to function

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not just as elements of civil society but as members of a civil community and thereby

acquire the right to have a limited number of objects under our control. Ownership is not

the empirical holding of an object in one’s hands. Rather it is having an intelligible or

noumenal possession of an object even when not in its presence. Ownership is a matter

of having the normative authority to control an object, and that authority must be rooted

in a collective ownership. As Kant writes: “Possession of an external object can

originally be only possession in common” (Kant, 1996, p.47 [6:258]). The juridical right

of distributive possession is originally the right of collective possession. The claim is not

on the object but over against other members of a community that are bound by a civil

constitution and its laws.

Whereas the reflective judgment of taste relates the human subject to the ideal of

a common culture, the juridical judgment relates the legal subject to an already

commonly possessed community. A common culture represents a teleological ideal that

requires historical struggle to be realized. By contrast, a common community is a legal

concept that must be presupposed as already collectively universal. The universality of

culture is yet to be determined, but the universality of the legal community is that of a

constitution that predetermines the laws of the state. Such a constitution establishes what

can rightfully be possessed by individual subjects. What is at stake here is the relation

between empirical and intelligible possession. The former is about that part of the world

I am actually occupying and what objects I am able to hold on to (Inhabung), the latter

about what I am entitled to have (Habens) (Kant, 1902-97, 6:253). To hold an object is

to both cognize it as a phenomenal object and treat it “as a material thing in itself (Sache

an sich selbst)” (Kant, 1996, p. 39 [6:249]). But such holding has no legitimacy. It is an

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act of might that must be transformed into a rightful having. To have an object

legitimately as a “possessio noumenon” (Kant, 1996, p. 39 [6:249]) would be to make it

an intelligible thing in itself (Ding an sich) in accordance with the law of outer freedom.

The transition from the material thing in itself to the intelligible thing in itself

involves a process of acquisition in which a legal subject takes control of something

without depriving others of it. This means that the acquisition must be original in some

sense. Kant writes “nothing external is originally mine, but it can indeed be acquired

originally, that is, without being derived from what is another’s” (Kant, 1996, p. 47

[6:258]). There are three moments of such original acquisition (Erwerbung): (1) simply

apprehending (Apprehension) “an object that belongs to no one” so that it does not

“conflict with another’s freedom,” (2) designating (Bezeichnung) it as mine by an “act of

choice (Willkür) to exclude anyone else from it,” and (3) appropriating (Zueignung) it as

an act of “universal legislative will (Willens)” (Kant, 1996, p. 47 [6:258-59]).

The first acquisitive moment of apprehending an object involves more than

looking at it, but taking hold of it as a phenomenal possession. It is a unilateral act

whereby I acquire something that does not already belong to someone else. The second

moment of designating it as mine establishes what could be called a “communicative

possession.”8 Now I am signaling a potential human challenger not to deprive me of the

material thing in itself that I have made my phenomenal possession. This is a bilateral

act claiming priority, but how do I legitimate this as being lawfully a priori? For that a

third moment of appropriation is posited which invokes the omnilateral authority of the

general will to gain noumenal or legitimate possession. Communicative possession can

8
This is not Kant’s own term, but I use it to indicate that a claim is being communicated to others, not
unlike the aesthetic judgment. In both cases the claim is merely imputational.

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be compared to a reflective laying out (Exposition) of a claim to something, which

noumenal possession must then justify with a “Deduction” (Kant, 1996, p. 42 [6:252]).

This last step of appropriation establishes a synthetic a priori acquisition into which we

nevertheless can have no direct insight. Instead of being intuitively demonstrable like

mathematical cognition, the legal appropriation of property is inferred from a postulate of

practical reason concerning rights. The postulate claims that objects which we “have the

physical power to use” through subjective choice can also “be rightfully mine or yours” if

their possession can “coexist with the freedom of everyone” (Kant, 1996, pp. 40-41

[6:246]). Kant also calls the postulate a “permissive law” (Kant, 1996, p. 41 [6:247]) that

allows what nature makes available for possible use to be distributed and developed for

actual human use in accordance with laws.

This last step is criticized as inadequate by Cohen, but before turning to his

attempt to replace Kant’s theory of legal appropriation with a theory of reciprocal justice,

it is interesting to consider how later historians like Gustav Droysen and Dilthey

temporalize the legal concept of appropriation and thereby make it into a developmental

process whereby what is passively inherited (Ererbung) is made historically

understandable as the acquisitive activity of cultural Erwerbung. According to Dilthey’s

descriptive psychology, each individual draws from his past experience to form an

acquired psychic nexus (erworbener seelischer Zusammenhang) (Dilthey, 2002, pp. 34,

253). This acquired nexus is not just the accumulation of what has been experienced, but

also a selective structuring of it which serves to regulate subsequent experience. It

influences what we look for in what we see, and how we respond to it. The acquired

psychic nexus is a representative collective whole that frames the way we distribute our

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limited energies much as Kant’s collective will frames the distribution of limited

property.

The acquired psychic nexus constitutes the kind of immanently purposive system

that we already derived from Kant. It can regulate the way individuals process new

information and allows their lived experience to reflect more general cultural resources.

The acquired psychic nexus is especially important for Dilthey in understanding the

cultural creativity of artists and poets. It enables the poetic imagination to produce

imagery that is attuned with more global concerns. Literature can expand our

understanding of human life and history by showing how individual situations can at the

same time typify something about human existence in general.

In an experiential context the acquired psychic nexus can have a normative force.

It tends to reinforce those stimuli that are relevant to an individual’s welfare and to filter

out those that are indifferent. More generally, it preserves what comes to be prized as

good in human interchange. However Cohen’s theory of the human sciences is not

comfortable with such a content-directed approach. Instead, he thinks the human

sciences should aim at a formal justification of human practice.

In his work Kants Begründung der Ethik: Nebst ihren Anwendungen auf Recht,

Religion und Geschichte, Cohen claims that Kant’s concept of the distributive use of

natural and human wealth can only show the external limits of ownership, not its inherent

bounds. He aims to provide a reconstruction of Kant’s philosophy of right that will be

more intimately related to a pure ethics. The philosophy of right must provide the same

kind of a priori grounding for the human sciences that mathematics provides for the

natural sciences. Indeed, Kant is criticized for not adequately recognizing this and for not

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demonstrating the pure ethical status of the ideas of justice and right. At its core, legal

theory is conceived by Cohen as pure ethics applied reciprocally so that free wills can act

out of mutual respect. If this can be achieved, the model of lawful behavior can be

preserved for all science: in the natural sciences, we discover what laws of nature are at

work; in the human sciences we establish laws in the normative sense.

Cohen’s philosophy of right is not satisfied with mere external legality.

Legitimacy and justice must be rooted in the same idea of self-legislation that constitutes

the ethical. If we conceive of the ethical as already involving “a community of purposes”

(Cohen, 1910, p. 413), then the reciprocity of justice at the heart of the philosophy of

right will follow logically. Whereas Kant derived the concept of legitimate appropriation

from a communal ownership made possible by the constitution of the state, Cohen

focuses on the intelligible nature of the contract that allows a promise and its acceptance

to coexist simultaneously and unite distinct individuals. Accordingly, Cohen prefers to

delineate history, not as a political project of states--not even as Kant’s cosmopolitan

community of nations, which he thinks is willing to settle for the wellbeing of a majority

of them--but as the social work project of all individuals. By means of the contract which

lies at the heart of the theory of right according to Cohen, it is possible “to justly bind

human workers to the ends of economic and social intercourse” (Cohen, 1910, p. 505).

4. Typification in the human sciences

Cohen wants to preserve the universal scope of law for the human sciences at

least to legitimate them foundationally. Kant’s cosmopolitan framework is also universal

in scope, but in many ways his doctrine of right and his theory of human culture make

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concessions to the factical powers of institutional authority. We also saw that Kant found

it necessary to acknowledge that anthropology can only be a commonly useful science.

The human sciences often have to settle for a reflective commonality rather than a

determinant universality. Not all ethical human behavior can be understood in terms of

strict duties of right. There are many duties of virtue that cannot be universally

determined and defined by contractual relations. Instead, they are subject to the

reflective concerns of an individual’s conscience.9 Cohen, however, wants to remove

conscience from the domains of ethics and justice and deliver it to the sphere of religion

(Cohen, 1910, p. 486). But this leads him to artificially separate the reflective complexity

of human decision-making from the universal demands of ethics and justice.

Whereas the natural sciences are mainly interested in formulating universal laws

to explain the interreactions of natural phenomena, the human sciences deal with

interactive behavior of such complexity that the scope of theoretical uniformities will be

seriously restricted. Because the likelihood of discovering meaningful overarching

historical laws is negligible, we must be content with a kind of reflective understanding

that correlates human events within historically delimited parameters. Unlike poets, who

may invent typical fictional characters to enrich our understanding of life, historians can

focus on real individuals as the typical embodiment of a certain age or movement. Thus

in order to crystallize what differentiates the German Enlightenment from the French

Enlightenment, Dilthey highlights the life and work of Lessing. Dilthey shows us that

unlike Voltaire, who used reason to refute religion, Lessing tried to reconcile reason and

religion by advocating tolerance, as can be seen in his play Nathan the wise. Lessing

wrote on many themes in religion, aesthetics and literary criticism, but not merely from a
9
For a discussion of conscience as a mode of reflective self-assessment, see Makkreel (2002), pp. 216-219.

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theoretical point of view. He was equally concerned with exerting an influence on the

German nation. Just as his Laocoon delineates the respective strengths and limits of the

different arts on the basis of the medium used by each, so Lessing shows the relative

virtues and shortcomings of various religious perspectives vying for attention in the

modern age. A healthy skepticism is used to overcome sectarianism and to point forward

to more universal moral goals. Lessing was typical for Dilthey in that he was an engaged

intellectual able to have a real effect on public opinion.

A more ideal kind of typicality is appealed to by Cohen’s student Cassirer in his

Logic of the cultural sciences. There the historian Jacob Burckhardt is praised for

coordinating a set of characteristics of the ideal Renaissance man. The ideal type “is

characterized by his delight in the senses, …his receptivity to the world of form, his

individualism, his paganism, his amoralism” (Cassirer, 2000, p. 71). Although it is

admitted that no single historical person has been found “who actually unites in himself

all the features” (Cassirer, 2000, p. 71) defined by Burckhardt, Cassirer regards it as an

important culture-concept. The concept provides an ideal conspectus that allows us to

see the direction in which various individuals in the Renaissance were moving. Culture-

concepts are thus said to differ from nature-concepts in aiming at the meaning of some

“particular region” (Cassirer, 2000, p. 71) or period rather than at the universality of laws.

But Cassirer also speaks of “the totality of the forms in which human life takes

place” (Cassirer, 2000, p. 76). It would seem then that ideal types are historical

characterizations ultimately directed at the kind of symbolic forms that Cassirer is well-

known for having analyzed. Each symbolic form, whether it is religious, artistic,

mathematical, scientific or philosophical, represents a systematic way of understanding

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the world. Whereas Kant had established one mathematically-based schematism for

nature, Cassirer allows for the possibility of a pluralistic mode of world-analysis. Just as

Wilhelm von Humboldt had discerned distinctive world-views embedded in different

natural languages, Cassirer opens up the possibility of a variety of universally valid

symbolic forms that the human mind can develop for “each new problem that it

encounters” (Cassirer, 2000, p. 19). Kant regarded linguistic symbolism as a supplement

to his mathematical schematism. The need for it arises only when the reflecting power of

judgment relates the task of understanding the lawfulness of nature to the overall

systematic aims of reason. Cassirer reverses the relationship. He makes sure that the

overall aims of reason are stripped of any transcendence. Reason must seek the

“‘unconditioned’ rather within the systematic totality of conditions themselves” (Cassirer,

2000, p. 19). As a result the schematism of the mathematical sciences is reinterpreted as

one of several symbolically mediated systems, albeit the most universal form.

Cassirer’s theory of symbolic forms allows for different problem-directed

approaches to the world, but it does not generate any clear natural science-cultural

science division. Although his ideal type model is based on Kant’s moral and aesthetic

writings, it seems that this kind of ideal limit approach can be applied just as well to the

analysis of structural and functional relations in the natural sciences.

5. Characterization as a way of interpreting the given

Earlier the question was posed whether Kant’s goal of a cosmopolitan society can

be correlated with an ethics of virtue. This raises a related issue that has been debated

recently, namely, whether any non-a priori human science like anthropology can have

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moral relevance. If the pragmatic anthropology is used as an empirical propaedeutic to

morality, is the autonomy of the free moral agent threatened?10 The worry derives from

the Critique of practical reason, where Kant says that we are only moral when the

determining ground of the will is purely rational and includes no empirical influences

(Kant, 1997, pp. 18-19 [5:20-21]). But how far can the empirical be excluded from

consideration?

Kant’s ultimate test for the rationality of a moral decision is whether a maxim for

action is universalizable. Now any maxim for my consideration is going to be empirical

in content--for instance, should I lie to protect an innocent person from a dangerous

criminal? Only if the maxim can be universalized as a law can I decide to follow it

rationally. The universalizability test transforms a subjective maxim valid for me into an

objective law valid for any rational being. This is a case where empirical information can

be incorporated into a law that is purely rational in form without compromising it.

The question becomes more complicated when we consider the way human

beings are trained to behave well by their parents, teachers and social institutions. If their

actions are in accordance with the moral law merely because certain habits have been

inculcated into them, then they are not yet truly moral. But if at a certain point of their

maturity they recognize the rationality of their maxims they can reflectively endorse

them. Then they move from behaving merely in accordance with the law to acting

morally for the sake of the law. Any empirical maxim can be made moral by rationally

affirming it. Even a maxim aimed at happiness can acquire objective moral validity

according to Kant if I limit it to its “lawful form alone”--then it becomes the “obligation

10
This seems to be the view of Patrick Frierson in Freedom and anthropology in Kant’s moral philosophy.
In this work he allows the techniques of self-improvement found in Kant’s anthropology to “affect only the
appearances of the good will in the world,” Frierson (2003), p. 135.

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to extend the maxim of my self-love to the happiness of others as well” (Kant, 1997, pp.

31-32 [5:35]).

The final complication comes when we realize that reason can determine the will

only in deciding what is the right thing to do. As Kant acknowledges in the Critique of

practical reason, this still leaves it open “whether or not the will is sufficient for the

effect” (Kant, 1997, p. 18 [5:20]). Deciding what to do is a function of practical reason,

but the determination whether the ends adopted by the will can be actualized is a function

of theoretical reason, as he points out later in the same work:

Whether the causality of the will is adequate for the reality of the objects or not is

left to the theoretical principles of reason to estimate, this being an investigation

into the possibility of objects of volition, the intuition of which is accordingly no

component of the practical problem. It is here a question only of the

determination of the will and of the determining ground of its maxims as a free

will, not of its result. (Kant, 1997, p. 40 [5:45])

Once the conditions for determining what makes a decision a morally correct one

have been established by pure philosophy (a metaphysics of morals), then human

sciences such as anthropology become indispensable in guiding us to realize our moral

ends (Kant, 1902-97, 4:412). Anthropology will bring empirical material to the table that

can be theoretically useful for carrying out our practical decisions. Kant’s anthropology

is not just empirical but pragmatic in organizing and reflecting on empirical information

to make it relevant to our ends. What Kant aims for in his anthropology is not an

exhaustive description of human action and interaction, but a “completeness of the

headings under which this or that observed human quality of practical relevance can be

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subsumed” (Kant, 2006, p. 5 [7:121f]). He replaces the idea of complete empirical

description which involves an endless process with the idea of characterization that

projects a whole on the basis of its parts. Thus Kant writes that “the character of a living

being is that which allows its vocation to be cognized in advance” (Kant, 2006, p. 233

[7:329]). Characterization is a reflective process that uses empirical data to assess what

distinctive ends human beings should strive for.

The concluding part of Kant’s anthropology is entitled “Anthropological

characteristic: on the way of cognizing the interior of the human being from the exterior”

(Kant, 2006, p. 183 [7:283]). Since using outer manifestations to cognize something

inner is one of the tasks that is often assigned to hermeneutics, we can say that to

characterize is to assess certain external manifestations by interpreting them as

meaningful signs. Kant himself relates characterization to a natural theory of signs,

which he distinguishes from a civil (bürgerliche) theory of signs (Kant, 2006, p. 185

[7:285]). A civil theory of signs enables specific societies to communicate through

conventional signs that provide common meanings. A natural doctrine of signs applies to

all human beings and allows us to distinguish their typical physical characteristics as well

as to define a universal moral character.

Kant’s theory of characterization makes it possible to elaborate the hermeneutical

import of his theory of human culture. The contrasts that we have drawn between Kant

and Cohen on the role of the philosophy of right can be reformulated to highlight what

differentiates an interpretive approach to the human sciences from a legislative approach.

Whereas Kant starts with the given of what is commonly shared through the constitution

of the state, Cohen posits the contract as the universally self-given essence of justice.

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The former provides the content for reflective interpretation, the latter the regulative form

for determinant legislation. A Kantian theory of the human and cultural sciences must

make room for both approaches.

Conclusion

We have considered various aspects of Kant’s writings that are relevant to the

possibility of developing a critically grounded theory of the human and cultural sciences.

We started with Kant’s attempts to relocate psychology within a pragmatic anthropology.

Then we related the pragmatic aspirations of this descriptive discipline to Kant’s

reflections on culture and purposiveness in the Critique of judgment. This allowed us to

see that the pragmatic is not merely empirical and prudential. The civilizing role of the

pragmatic predisposition has the normative function of bridging the theoretical interests

of prudence and the practical interests of morality. Finally, we used aspects of Kant’s

practical philosophy to adjudicate individual rights and cosmopolitan ideals. In this

context we delineated several modes of human acquisition to distinguish legitimate from

illegitimate ways of distributing and appropriating communal or cultural goods and to

more generally give structure to the idea of historical development. All of these

initiatives by Kant provide resources for a critical theory of the human and cultural

sciences that can establish normative conditions for achieving historical understanding.

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