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Heidegger’s History of Metaphysics, Part Eight:

Kant, Heidegger, & the Critique of
Metaphysics
Posted By Collin Cleary On May 25, 2021 @ 3:30 am In North American New Right |
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6,034 words

Part 1 here [2], Part 2 here [3], Part 3 here [4], Part 4
here [5], Part 5 here [6], Part 6 here [7], Part 7 here [8]

1. Metaphysics, Natural Science, and Nihilism

My last essay [9] ended with the observation that there
are clear points of convergence between Kant’s
thought and Heidegger’s. This is hardly any accident,
of course, since Kant inaugurates the tradition of [1]
“transcendental philosophy” that culminates in the Giacomo Balla, Science Against
phenomenological approach of Husserl and Heidegger. Obscurantism, 1920
I will have something to say in my next essay about
how Heidegger reads Kant in the light of
phenomenology. For now, let us focus on one very obvious similarity between the two
thinkers: both are forceful critics of the Western metaphysical tradition. It seems reasonable
to suppose that Heidegger viewed Kant as a natural ally. Was this the case? How are their
critiques of metaphysics similar, and how are they different? I will explore these questions in
the present essay.

The discussion in the previous installment might have led the reader to believe that Kant’s
objections to metaphysics are entirely based on epistemological considerations. Kant’s
first Critique explores the nature and limits of human reason, and winds up arguing that
metaphysics (at least as hitherto practiced) exceeds the bounds of what we can legitimately
claim to know. However, Kant was also preoccupied with the moral problems posed by
metaphysics. In the preface to the second edition of the first Critique, he attacks the “schools”
and “school philosophy,” by which he means rationalism. He states that it is the duty of the
schools,

by means of a thorough investigation of the rights of speculative reason, once for all to
prevent the scandal which, sooner or later, is sure to break out even among the masses,
as the result of the disputes in which metaphysicians (and, as such, finally also the
clergy) inevitably become involved to the consequent perversion of their teaching.

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Criticism alone [i.e., Kant’s “critical philosophy” alone] can sever the root of
materialism, fatalism, atheism, free-thinking, fanaticism, and superstition, which can be
injurious universally; as well as of idealism and scepticism, which are dangerous chiefly
to the schools, and hardly allow of being handed on to the public. [B xxxiv; italics in
original] [1] [10]

Here, Kant gives us a list of all the things he has set himself against, emphasizing each target
with italics. How does rationalism lead to all of these? In brief, it is by raising men’s hopes,
and then dashing them. Rationalist philosophers like Descartes and Leibniz claim they can
prove the existence of God and of a moral order to the universe. This seems like a boon to
Christians who may harbor fundamental doubts, especially in the face of scientific advance
that seems to leave no room at all for God and the moral order. Unfortunately, the arguments
of the rationalists are highly problematic, and the result is that there is no agreement among
them. Well-meaning individuals seeking to strengthen their faith through the books of these
thinkers are bound to be disappointed — and quite possibly delivered into the arms of
materialism, fatalism, atheism, free-thinking, fanaticism, and superstition. [2] [11]

Since we discussed Berkeley in the last essay (and the strange coincidence of Berkeley’s ideas
and those of Leibniz), it is worth noting that Berkeley held more or less the exact
same concern regarding “school philosophy.” In Three Dialogues Between Hylas and
Philonous (1713), Hylas says to Philonous,

I was considering the odd fate of those men who have in all ages, through an affectation
of being distinguished from the vulgar, or some unaccountable turn of thought,
pretended either to believe nothing at all, or to believe the most extravagant things in
the world. This however might be borne, if their paradoxes and scepticism did not draw
after them some consequences of general disadvantage to mankind. But the mischief
lieth here; that when men of less leisure see them who are supposed to have spent their
whole time in the pursuits of knowledge professing an entire ignorance of all things, or
advancing such notions as are repugnant to plain and commonly received principles,
they will be tempted to entertain suspicions concerning the most important truths, which
they had hitherto held sacred and unquestionable. [3] [12]

Berkeley believes he can safeguard “the most important truths” by eliminating the concept of
matter and arguing that the world just is our ideas. (Readers curious about exactly how this
solution is supposed to work are referred to the Dialogues.) For his part, Kant believed that his
demolition of metaphysics had saved belief in God and the moral order. Famously, Kant said in
the first Critique, “I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make
room for faith” (B xxx; italics in original). However, Kant accomplishes this by simultaneously
delimiting both what can be known by metaphysics and by the natural sciences.

Had Kant simply argued that metaphysics cannot actually make good on its claims concerning
God, morality, or anything else, this would not necessarily have put the brakes on
materialism, determinism, and atheism. In fact, it could have made them much stronger and

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more virulent. What was necessary, in addition, was to show that we still had warrant
for believing in God and morality, even if there were no reasons for believing in them.
Otherwise, one might simply respond to the Kantian critique of metaphysics as follows: “If no
one — neither the clergy nor the philosophers — can give good reasons for believing in these
‘sacred’ truths then I shall reject them. Especially since modern science seems to give positive
reasons for denying not only any kind of immaterial divinity or soul, but also the reality of
human freedom. The universe seems to be thoroughly material, and everything in it appears
to be the result of antecedent causes, including human actions.”

Kant was thoroughly committed to the Enlightenment’s celebration of reason and rejection of
religious dogmatism, so why would he not have embraced such a conclusion? The reason is
that Kant had an equally strong commitment to the inviolability human dignity — and the
basis for human dignity, Kant believed, was the moral consciousness. This means our capacity
to freely choose to act according to moral laws — indeed, to freely “legislate” the moral law for
ourselves. No other animal is aware of the idea of the good, an idea which is counterfactual;
i.e., knowledge of the good tells us not what is, but what ought to be. No other creature (that
we know of) feels itself bound by obligations to such an idea.

The sense in which we are “bound” by the good or the moral is quite different from how we,
and other creatures, are bound physical laws such as the law of gravity. When I fall and hit the
ground, we say that my body “obeyed” the law of gravity, but the truth is that I could not
have disobeyed. I can disobey the moral law, however. I must freely choose to obey moral
injunctions and, furthermore, it is not enough, Kant insists, to merely behave in accord with
morality; my actions must instead flow from a free commitment to moral principle. For
example, I might perform an act of generosity simply because it will curry the favor of others.
If I do, then I am being generous; I am outwardly conforming to a moral rule that enjoins
generosity. However, since my action is performed from ulterior motives and not out of a pure
and simple commitment to the moral principle, my action deserves no moral credit (no praise,
in other words). I acted generously, but for the wrong reasons. My action was not immoral, it
was actually in accord with morality; but it was non-moral, because the accord was merely
outward.

To change the example a bit, suppose that I acted generously because I am in fact
somehow determined to always be generous, and that I have no choice in the matter.
(Suppose I am a genetic freak, “programmed” to always be generous, or suppose I have
received a post-hypnotic suggestion to do so.) Would my generosity be moral, or deserve
moral credit? Kant answers that it would not. If I cannot help being generous, if I have no
choice in the matter, then I no more deserve moral credit for my generosity than I do for my
respiration or the circulation of my blood, which I also have no choice about. It follows from all
the above that freedom, or free will, is a necessary condition of morality. If we are not free to
choose our actions, and to act according to different intentions, then morality is impossible.
This is a problem that Hume had already recognized.

The trouble is that the modern scientific worldview has no place for freedom. It insists that

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everything that happens is governed by the principle of sufficient reason: everything is

determined by causes or reasons. To put it crudely, everything that happens is made to
happen by something else. Science applies to human action the same principle it applies to
the behavior of animals and non-living things: it searches for the causes that compel us to act
in particular ways. Thus, science will typically attempt to explain all of our actions on the basis
of environmental or biological factors (heredity, hormones, etc.). “Freedom,” to the scientist,
seems to be a cause that is itself uncaused; it seems to violate the principle of sufficient
reason. To be consistent, the scientist must reject it as a fantasy. He will insist that though we
might believe that we freely choose to be generous, in fact our actions are determined by
antecedent causes. And even in Kant’s time, scientists were able to present some convincing
explanations for what “causes” us to do this or that.

For Kant, this presented an enormous problem. On the one hand, he could not deny, nor did
he want to deny, the power of science to explain the world around us, and to explain much
about ourselves. Yet science seems to reject freedom, and without freedom there is no
morality. Science thus seems to undermine human dignity, turning us into nothing more than
a pretentious variety of ape that deludes itself into thinking it is free. For Kant, this conclusion
was intolerable — not just because it is offensive, but also because it denies my very real,
vivid, and compelling experience of myself as acting freely according to certain intentions.

2. Man the Unnatural Animal

Kant’s solution to this problem was to delimit the sphere within
which science can make claims. [4] [15] In the previous essay
in this series, I explained Kant’s distinction between
“phenomena” and “things as they are in themselves.”
Phenomena are objects as they appear to us, whereas things in
themselves are those same objects considered insofar as they
do not appear. Right now, I am experiencing the phenomenal
laptop — the laptop as it appears to me. As to the laptop as it is
in itself, as it exists independently of my knowledge, this, by
definition, I can never know. Now, Kant leaves open the
possibility that things in themselves might be quite different
from how they appear to us. [5] [16] And he leaves open the
possibility that there might be all sorts of things that exist [13]

independent of our experience that we are simply not equipped You can buy Collin
to know. Those things also have the status of things in Cleary’sWhat is a Rune? here
themselves, for Kant, since they can never appear, and we may [14]
speak very loosely of their inhabiting the “realm” of things in
themselves. [6] [17]

Now, the relevance of this distinction for the problem of freedom and morality is as follows.
Kant argues that science, since it is based in observation and experiment, is restricted to the
domain of phenomena. In other words, it is empirical: it makes sense out of the world that

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appears to us. This is the case even when it discovers objects that do not appear to the naked
eye. These still “appear” to the scientist in some manner; for example, under a microscope or
as readings on instruments. Further, the scientific approach, for Kant, is simply a conscious,
methodical application of the categories and judgment forms of the understanding which he
argues, in the first Critique, already operate in an unconscious, pre-reflective manner in
structuring empirical knowledge. As to the realm of things as they are in themselves, science
can say absolutely nothing about that.

Kant affirms that though we think of ourselves as free we never actually have a sensory
intuition of “freedom,” and the sciences, again, seem to exclude the possibility. In short, we do
not appear to ourselves to be free; there is no experience of freedom in the phenomenal
realm. [7] [18] But what about in the realm of things as they are in themselves? As I am in
myself, independently of how I appear to myself, to my awareness, might I be free? Kant
thinks that this is a definite possibility, on the principle that objects as they are in themselves
may be quite different from their appearances. However, since we cannot know things in
themselves, we cannot prove that this is the case. This need not disturb us, though, since
Kant affirms that we can and do think ourselves as “noumenally” free. Further, we are
actually compelled to believe this; it is an inescapable feature of our intellectual constitution.
(Yes, ironically, we are compelled to believe that we are free.)

Kant is entirely correct in this latter claim, which can be verified by anyone who simply reflects
on the last time he made a moral choice (any sort of choice would do, but let’s focus on moral
choices). Consider: when you decided you had an obligation to, for example, tell the truth in a
given situation, was it not accompanied by the strong conviction that you were choosing to do
this, and could have chosen otherwise? Our minds are built in such a way to believe this — it
is part of the a priori “programming” we discussed extensively in the last essay. It is
knowledge of ourselves held independently of sense experience, because, as we have seen,
the senses unaided give us no intuition of freedom, nor do the senses when augmented and
operationalized in the service of science.

This means, in short, that Kant has placed human freedom, our very essence and the basis for
what we think of as human dignity, beyond the reach of the empirical sciences. There is
absolutely nothing that could be brought forward by the sciences that could shake our
conviction that we are free. Now, readers may balk at this. Isn’t my belief in human freedom
shaken every time I read a new book on, say, the evidence for genetic determinism? No, it is
not. For as soon as I put the book down and find myself in a situation where I am called upon
to make a moral choice — say, the choice to tell the truth or to be generous — I will once
more be seized by the conviction that my choice is free and could be otherwise. That book will
be completely forgotten.

We may also note that Kant “saves” belief in God and a moral order (i.e., cosmic justice) in a
similar fashion. Kant argues that the human moral consciousness requires the tacit belief in a
kind of “ordering principle” that will eventually bring about justice, even if we do not see
justice done here and now. [8] [19] When you see the unjust going unpunished (or the just

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being punished) you may notice that your thoughts are accompanied by a conviction that
seems to say, if it spoke, “Wait. This will not stand. In the end, these wrongs will be righted.”
This is another a priori conviction that seems universal to human thought (though it expresses
itself differently in different cultural contexts [9] [20]). It is the tacit belief that there is a kind
of cosmic justice at work — and this presupposes some kind of cosmic intelligence that sorts
things out.

Kant is not saying that God and a moral order exist; he is saying that we are so constituted as
to believe that they exist. And if we did not, then we might quickly give up on trying to be
moral, since empirical knowledge teaches us that injustice very frequently goes unpunished.
Why strive to be moral when we continually see the good suffering and the wicked getting off
scot-free? Our tacit conviction that wrongs will or must be put right, though it is not based on
anything empirical, keeps us plugging away, trying to be virtuous and hoping for the best.

These arguments have been the source of great controversy. However, our focus here is on
Kant’s treatment of human freedom, because here we see an interesting coalescence between
Kant and Heidegger. Kant safeguards freedom and human dignity from the threat of scientific
materialism and “fatalism” by quite literally locating these in the mysterious world of things as
they are in themselves. It is important to see that the implication of this is that Kant is in
effect declaring that human nature is not a part of nature at all, and cannot ultimately be
understood in naturalistic terms.

Interestingly, Heidegger is basically in complete agreement with Kant on this score. The
agreement is in terms of the broad outlines of Kant’s position, not in terms of its detail.
Heidegger also rejects the idea that there is any way to understand human nature, Dasein,
naturalistically. But it is not just the human moral consciousness that Heidegger places beyond
the reach of naturalism, but the whole of transcendental subjectivity (which is also a clear
implication of Kant’s position). For Heidegger, meaning only exists for human beings, and
transcendental subjectivity is the source of all meaning.

To put the matter as simply as possible: things only show up as “meaningful” for human
consciousness. Meanings are only “for us.” We deal with things we take to have meanings at
every moment of our lives (I know what each thing in front of me right now is; I know
the meaning it has for me, or for us). But except in cases where we have to consciously
struggle to discover what something is, my experience of the world is one in which things
seem to show up with meanings already “attached.” Or, to put it another way, I am always
seeing things through the meanings they already have for me. I am not consciously aware of
doing any “work” to bring about this experience of a world saturated with meaning. In fact,
this is because the “work” is done by transcendental subjectivity, operating behind the
scenes. [10] [21]

Now, the meanings we encounter in our experience of the world include the sort of meanings
ascribed to objects by the natural sciences. The scientist, too, experiences the world as
saturated with meaning, though some of the ways in which objects show up as meaningful for

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him may be quite beyond the capacity of the laymen. Transcendental subjectivity is a
necessary condition for scientific meaning as well, because, as noted above, it is a necessary
condition for all meaning-giving. All scientific attempts at making things meaningful
presuppose transcendental subjectivity as the horizon within which those things become
meaningful in a scientific manner. Therefore, since meaning in the empirical
sciences presupposes transcendental subjectivity, the sciences cannot account for,
cannot explain transcendental subjectivity. Human nature is, in short, beyond the reach of
naturalism.

There is an important caveat we must add to the above account, however. Although Heidegger
begins from the Kantian-Husserlian understanding of transcendental subjectivity, he later
comes to reject the language of “subjectivity” altogether. (This is a function of his critique of
the representationalist tradition, which leads him to reject the traditional subject-object
dichotomy.) Thus, transcendental subjectivity comes to be recast as “the Clearing” (Lichtung).
I have discussed this concept at length in the first essay that launched this series, “Heidegger
Against the Traditionalists [22].”

In moving beyond the language of subjectivity, Heidegger believes he is being truer to our
experience when we try to give a phenomenological description of how what has been called
“transcendental subjectivity” shows up for us. The “transcendental structures” discussed by
Kant and the tradition he inaugurated do not in fact show up for us as “subjective”; there is
nothing “selflike” or personal about them. [11] [23] Instead, they seem to be an other within
which objects become meaningful and to which we seem to be mysteriously attuned; an other
that is not in any way empirical (i.e., not known to the senses), but also inescapably real,
since all things are knowable or meaningful only within the “light” given by these
transcendental structures. Now, if we identify transcendental subjectivity with human nature,
as I did earlier, then Heidegger’s shift to the language of the Clearing has an important
implication: human nature is revealed not only as nothing natural, it is also, in an important
sense, nothing human. We do not possess the Clearing; in a real sense, it possesses us.
But what we are is defined in relation to it.

3. The Roots of Metaphysics and Science

It is now time to step back and assess where we have arrived in our understanding of the
Kant-Heidegger relationship. To sum up: I began this entire discussion by noting that while
Kant’s criticisms of metaphysics are epistemological in nature, what motivates those criticisms
is his awareness of the moral problems posed by metaphysics. It leads, he thinks, to
skepticism, atheism, materialism, etc. — all of which may be summed together, conveniently,
in one concept: nihilism. However, merely to demonstrate the impossibility of rationalist
metaphysics would not be enough, since this would likely deliver well-meaning people into the
arms of the scientific materialists — and thus, once more, into nihilism. Kant’s answer to this
is to delineate the nature and limits of human knowledge in such a way that metaphysics is
defeated and, simultaneously, the sphere in which science can make its claims is strictly
limited. The result is that Kant makes a space, as it were, in which human nature can exist

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unmolested by empiricism and skepticism — and with it

freedom and moral conviction, which are the source of human
dignity and alone give meaning to life.

Needless to say, Heidegger is also worried about nihilism. With

Kant, he believes that the Western metaphysical tradition
leads to it. And, like Kant, he also sees modern science as an
expression of nihilism, in its attempts not just to manipulate
and control all of nature, but to reduce the human to a natural
object. Further, both philosophers see metaphysics and
modern science as having a common root, though they give
very different accounts of what this is.

For Kant, the common root is the “ideas of reason.” These

have the status of “regulative ideals”: ideals that motivate us [24]

to keep thinking, investigating, and synthesizing our You can buy Collin Cleary’s
knowledge. In his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Summoning the Gods here
Kant lists three such ideals: we seek knowledge of the [25].
“complete subject,” knowledge of the complete “series of
conditions,” and knowledge of the “complete complex of that
which is possible.” Kant refers to these ideals respectively as “psychological,” “cosmological,”
and “theological.” These are part of the a priori constitution of the mind and they serve to
motivate, among other things, the scientific quest. Scientists seek complete knowledge of the
self, of the causal chain that is the universe, and of the ultimate laws and conditions that
determine what may or may not exist in this universe. Science will never actually attain such
complete knowledge, but in striving for this goal science continues to advance.

Now, metaphysics happens, according to Kant, when the ideas of reason get hypostatized;
i.e., when they go from being regulative ideals to being misconstrued as actually existing
“things.” For example, the psychological idea postulates a “complete subject” about which we
strive to attain complete knowledge, but does not assert the actual existence of any such
thing. However, the metaphysician imagines that the complete subject is indeed an actually
existing thing that exists right now, whole and entire, beyond the sensory realm; a
“substance.” He dubs it “the soul.” The cosmological idea is similarly hypostatized as “the
cosmos” considered as a totality existing in its own right. [12] [26] The theological idea,
needless to say, is hypostatized as God.

Thus, for Kant metaphysics has the status of a perversion of reason. It is a kind of sickness
that human beings often fall into, given the tendencies of the human mind. Metaphysics is not
a legitimate endeavor in its own right; it is merely a deluded pretender to the mantel of
science. By contrast, the empirical sciences, motivated by the regulative ideals of reason in
their positive function, produce real knowledge and are benign — so long as they know their
place.

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Heidegger entirely rejects this understanding of metaphysics, and of the relation of

metaphysics to science. To avoid equivocation, we must note first of all that “metaphysics” has
a broader connotation for Heidegger than it does for Kant. Indeed, what he refers to as “the
metaphysical tradition” means more than just the writings of certain philosophers. Heidegger
believes, in fact, that philosophers primarily give voice to the spirit of the times. “Metaphysics”
thus refers to broader cultural trends. Now, arguably Heidegger does see metaphysics as a
perversion — as a falling away from a more authentic relationship to Being, and as
culminating in nihilism. However, he does not make the sort of distinction that Kant does
between metaphysics and science. In fact, it is actually possible to say that for Heidegger
modern science can be located within the “metaphysical tradition.” Just how is this the case?

First, Heidegger famously claims that the metaphysical tradition “forgets Being,” by which he
really means that it forgets the Clearing. Recall that the Clearing (aka transcendental
subjectivity) is the fundamental condition for meaning. It is only within the space opened up
by the Clearing that beings become meaningful for us. (Again, for a fuller discussion of this
point, see my essay “Heidegger Against the Traditionalists.”) The metaphysical tradition
“forgets” the Clearing in which beings are, and discourses entirely about beings, taking them
as ultimate. This claim is original with Heidegger (indeed it is the Heideggerean claim), but it
has an analogue in Kant’s critical philosophy. Kant, remember, rejects the idea that
transcendental subjectivity/human nature can be understood naturalistically, i.e., in terms of
natural objects or forces or conditions (again, because “nature” is only
given within transcendental subjectivity, not the other way around). In Heideggerean
language, this error consists in confusing Being (or the Clearing) with beings, or trying to
understand the ontological (what relates to Being) in terms of the ontic (what relates to
beings).

Furthermore, the metaphysical tradition understands beings in terms of their availability to

human subjects for understanding and manipulation. What counts as a “being” is what is
available to human consciousness. This process begins in Plato, for whom a being is a form
or eidos, which literally means “the look” of something, presented to human awareness. (See
my essay on Platonism [27].) In its modern inflection, metaphysics issues in
“representationalism”: beings are understood as what is “thrown against” a human subject, or
what stands opposed to us, ready to be “represented” within the subject’s interiority, and
ready to be mastered and controlled. How? Through the scientific method, of course.

For Heidegger, it is representationalism, in fact, that constitutes the common root

of both modern metaphysics and modern science. Thus, the most fundamental response to
both consists in a critique of representationalism. We can also make an even stronger claim:
nihilism is made possible by representationalism, since representationalism constitutes the
foundation both of modern metaphysics and of the ambitions of modern science. Thus, a
response to nihilism must include, at the very least, a critique of representationalism. It must
also include, of course, an alternative to representationalism — and we will be exploring
Heidegger’s alternative in future essays.

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Now, it is fascinating to note that good old Berkeley, despite all his faults, saw
representationalism as the villain of modern history as well. Berkeley, as I noted in my last
essay, affirms a version of phenomenalism: he argues that all that exists are ideas in minds.
He rejects representationalism because it holds that ideas are ideas of something; but
Berkeley, again, rejects anything existing outside the mind’s ideas. Further, he believes that
representationalism leads to what we would call nihilism. In his Philosophical Commentaries,
Berkeley states “the supposition that things are distinct from ideas takes away all real truth
and consequently brings in a universal scepticism, since all our knowledge and contemplation
is confined barely to our own ideas.” [13] [28] In other words, our ideas are the only objects of
which we are directly aware. But if we hold to the representationalist model and postulate that
those ideas are somehow “copies” of things existing independently of them, we will forever be
ensnared by scepticism, since there is no knowledge of those independent things, and thus no
way to tell if our ideas faithfully copy them or not.

Berkeley’s solution: reject representationalism and affirm that the ideas we know directly are
the only objects that exist (our ideas do not copy the world, they are the world). The problem
is that Berkeley in effect rejects only half of representationalism: the contention that ideas
correspond to things outside our minds. However, he retains the representationalist claim that
we are directly aware of (internal) ideas. As Kant might have put it, he takes “ideas” as things
in themselves which are immediately, transparently, and thus miraculously given to us. But
this is, in fact, the most problematic aspect of representationalism. To repeat something of an
oversimplification I offered in my last essay: Berkeley eliminates the “out there” of
representationalism while preserving the “in here.”

Given the centrality of representationalism to Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics, we must

inquire about how Kant situates himself with respect to it. The short answer is that he also
sets himself against representationalism. But how successful is his response? Our answer to
this question will really determine how we will have to situate Kant in Heidegger’s account of
the history of ideas: does Kant really succeed in overcoming metaphysics, or does he buy into
some of its root assumptions? And what of Kant’s account of Being? I have thus far said
nothing about this. We will explore these issues in the next installment.

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Notes
[1] [29] I am using Norman Kemp Smith’s translation of The Critique of Pure Reason (New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965). Reference is to the marginal pagination, standard in all
editions of the Critique. “A” refers to the pagination of the first edition (1781), “B” to the
second edition (1787).

[2] [30] Possibly the two less obvious points here concern “fanaticism [Schwärmerei] and
superstition [Aberglauben].” Here Kant refers to a perversion of religious belief — what Hume
called “superstition and enthusiasm.” For example, the adoption of peculiar religious cults,
such as fundamentalism (a belief in the literal truth of the Bible). This can result from an
encounter with rationalism because rationalism tends to breed “misology”: an antipathy to
reason, leading to an attraction to its opposite. By “fatalism” (Fatalismus), Kant means
determinism, which denies human freedom. What of “idealism and scepticism”? Note that Kant
says these are “dangerous chiefly to the schools.” By “idealism” he means the position that
nothing exists save “ideas.” By “scepticism” he means a position like Hume’s, which held that
if something exists beyond our ideas, we cannot know it. These afflictions are a danger to
intellectuals or academics, but it is obvious that there is little danger that they will be adopted
by the public, in the way that materialism or atheism might become widely influential.

[3] [31] George Berkeley, Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, ed. Robert Merrihew
Adams (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1979), 7-8.

[4] [32] To be clear, Kant does not claim to legislate such a limit; he claims to
have discovered it.

[5] [33] Indeed, things in themselves must be quite different from how they appear to us,
since, for one thing, they are not in space and time. For an explanation of this, see my
previous essay on Kant.

[6] [34] Although speaking of a “realm” or “world” of things in themselves is almost

unavoidable, it should not be taken literally. The reason is that it seems to entail the “in
here”/“out there” distinction (the “world” in here, in my mind, and the “world” out there) that

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is at the root of the representationalist paradigm that Kant is, in fact, trying to overcome.
Kant’s relationship to representationalism is problematic, and I will explore it in the next
essay.

[7] [35] At the end of the previous section I noted that we have a vivid and compelling
“experience” of ourselves as free. Yet just now I have claimed that for Kant we do not
“appear” to ourselves as free. Isn’t this a contradiction? No, because “appearance” is always
used in Kantian philosophy to mean sensory appearance. I do experience myself as free, but
not in the sense that I see, hear, touch, taste, or smell freedom. So what sort of “experience”
of freedom is there? This is a question Kant cannot really answer, because he does not have a
developed concept of the sort of experience that we are having when we become aware of
aspects of subjectivity that are not given by the senses. What his philosophy is missing, in
fact, is the idea of phenomenology — a type of second-order “experience” with its own unique,
non-sensory form of awareness and its own unique forms of evidence.

[8] [36] This position has roots in Leibniz’s philosophy, as I argued here [7].

[9] [37] For example, one culture may postulate that the wicked are punished in the afterlife,
while the good go to a place of reward. Another culture may postulate reincarnation, in which
one gets one’s just desserts through being reborn in either a more desirable situation, or a
less desirable one.

[10] [38] For more information, see my essay “Heidegger Against the Traditionalists [22].”

[11] [39] This move on Heidegger’s part is analogous to the response of Schelling and Hegel to
Kantianism, as it was re-invented by J.G. Fichte (to whom I will devote a later essay). Fichte
had recast Kantian transcendental subjectivity (or, in language truer to Kant, “the
transcendental unity of apperception”) as the “Absolute Ego.” But, as Schelling was the first to
ask, why treat this as an “ego” (as an “I”) when there is nothing personal, self-like, or egoic
about it? The result was the shift to the language of “the Absolute,” which transcends the
subject-object distinction entirely. There are very interesting parallels to Heidegger’s thought
in these ideas, and I believe that his indebtedness to the “Absolute Idealists” has not been
sufficiently appreciated. But there are also important differences.

[12] [40] Of the three acts of hypostatization, the cosmological one is the most difficult to
understand. Kant is not saying that the cosmos does not exist, in the sense of saying that
these here things don’t exist. What he means is that “the cosmos” is an idea of the total unity
of these here things. It is an idea of a “one,” and science does indeed operate with the ideal of
working toward knowledge of how all things are part of one unified system. Nevertheless, this
is merely an ideal. If we claim that there is a unified system existing right now, a cosmos,
then we have hypostatized the ideal. This shows up when metaphysicians raise such questions
as “what is the cause of the universe?” This question assumes a cosmos that is “thinglike”; it
assumes that the cosmos is a kind of individual (a one) that something else (another
individual) could “cause.”

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[13] [41] Quoted in Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Vol. V: Hobbes to

Hume (New York: Image Books, 1985), 228.

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[1] Image: https://counter-currents.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05

/ballaobscurantism20.jpg
[2] here: https://counter-currents.com/2020/12/heidegger-metaphysics-plato/
[3] here: https://counter-currents.com/2021/01/heidegger-metaphysics-middle-
ages/
[4] here: https://counter-currents.com/2021/02/heideggers-history-of-
metaphysics-part-three-the-emergence-of-modernity/
[5] here: https://counter-currents.com/2021/02/heideggers-metaphysics-
4-destruction-of-being/
[6] here: https://counter-currents.com/2021/03/heidegger-metaphysics-5/
[7] here: https://counter-currents.com/2021/04/heidegger-metaphysics-6/
[8] here: https://counter-currents.com/2021/05/heideggers-metaphysics-seven/
[9] last essay: https://counter-currents.com/2021/05/heideggers-metaphysics-
seven/?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=9d953617cc4867f0008dce478221382aee37ca0d-
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[10] [1]: #sdfootnote1sym
[11] [2]: #sdfootnote2sym
[12] [3]: #sdfootnote3sym
[13] Image: https://counter-currents.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02
/WhatIsARuneCropMedium2.jpg
[14] here: https://counter-currents.com/what-is-a-rune-other-essays-order/
[15] [4]: #sdfootnote4sym
[16] [5]: #sdfootnote5sym
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[22] Heidegger Against the Traditionalists: https://counter-currents.com/2020/12
/heidegger-against-the-traditionalists-part-one/
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[24] Image: https://counter-currents.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06
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[25] here: https://counter-currents.com/summoning-the-gods-order/

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[27] Platonism: https://counter-currents.com/2020/12/heidegger-metaphysics-
plato/?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=dafa402f223b8451c36d4f895cddd960a53b595c-
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