Kant 2001 003

Discursivity and Causality:
Maimon’s Challenge to the Second Analogy

by Peter Thielke, Claremont/California
Although disputes still rage about the correct interpretation of the Second Anal-
ogy, most commentators agree that Kant’s argument at least succeeds in establishing
the legitimacy of the general a priori principle that every event has a cause. 1 By
showing that the representation of any event requires the application of the cate-
gory of causality, Kant is taken to have obviated at least the broad, Humean-minded
skepticism about the nature of events in general: while the legitimacy of specific
causal connections might still be cast in doubt, the principle ‘every event-some
cause’ assumes the mantle of certainty. However, Kant’s presumed success in the
Second Analogy comes at a rather high price, for his strategy inadvertently exposes
a fundamental problem concerning the relation between the cognitive faculties of
the understanding and intuition. This, at least, was the contention of Salomon
Maimon, the man whom Kant described as the best of his critics. 2 Maimon, who
1 Immanuel Kant. Critique of Pure Reason, N. Kemp Smith, trans. (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1929). All further references to the Critique will appear in the body of the paper,
with a citation to both the A- and B-Editions.
2 Letter 362 (May 26, 1789), Vol XI of Kant’s gesammelte Schriften (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter
& Co., 1922); translated in Kant’s Philosophical Correspondence, A. Zweig, trans. (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 151. Maimon (1753⫺1800) had a philosophical
career that was undoubtedly the strangest of any of the post-Kantians, if not modern philos-
ophy as a whole. Born in Lithuania to a Jewish family, Maimon was a Talmudic prodigy.
Married at eleven and a father at fourteen, in his early twenties he abandoned his family,
initially going to Königsberg. He spent the next several years of his life wandering in the
Polish and German countryside, sometimes working as a private tutor, although at one
point he was reduced to begging. Having been once turned away from Berlin by the Jewish
elders of that city, Maimon eventually found his way back to Berlin, where he was taken
under the wing of Moses Mendelssohn, who, along with his Enlightenment colleagues,
seemed to view Maimon as a living example of Rousseau’s noble savage⫺crude, uncouth,
often inarticulate, yet undeniably possessed of the highest intelligence. Although he had
previously studied philosophy, Maimon became engrossed with Kant’s first Critique, and he
soon decided to undertake a study of the critical philosophy. It is a testament to Maimon’s
brilliance that by 1789, after looking at a draft of Maimon’s first work, Kant called him
the most insightful of all his critics. Yet while Maimon’s genius is clear, its effects are often
obscured by his impenetrable prose and confusing presentation, facts that beyond anything
else have contributed to his relatively forgotten place in history. In this paper, I will concen-
trate on two of Maimon’s works: Versuch über die Transzendentalphilosophie (1790), and
Versuch einer neuen Logik oder Theorie des Denkens (1794); both are found in Maimon’s
Kant-Studien 92. Jahrg., S. 440⫺463

 Walter de Gruyter 2001
ISSN 0022-8877
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Discursivity and Causality: Maimon’s Challenge to the Second Analogy 441
embraced an odd amalgam of Humean skepticism and Leibnizian rationalism,

claims that Kant’s notion of a constraint on succession, which forms the backbone
of the argument of the Second Analogy, rests upon an unwarranted assumption
about the relation of the understanding to particular intuitions. On this view, it is
precisely Kant’s fundamental commitment to a ‘discursive’ model of cognition that
undermines the argument of the Second Analogy. Unlike standard objections to the
Second Analogy, which for the most part turn on the role played by causal laws,
Maimon’s Challenge addresses the cognitive underpinnings of Kant’s argument.
And, as I hope to show, if this objection is persuasive, Kant’s critical idealism as a
whole ⫺ and not just the account of causality ⫺ is vulnerable to what can be called
‘Maimonian skepticism’: the loose threads found in the Second Analogy threaten
to unravel the fabric of the Critique as a whole.
I. The Humean Red Herring
At least on its surface, Maimon’s criticism of the Second Analogy rests on what
seem to be Humean points. 3 At issue are the conditions under which we are entitled
to make specific causal judgments. In this vein, Maimon takes Kant to claim that
we can immediately distinguish between causal and non-causal successions, and
challenges the legitimacy of this supposed fact. 4 That we make causal judgments,
Maimon notes, is indubitable:
We say, for example, that fire warms the stone, which means not merely the perception of
the succession of two appearances in time, but rather the necessity of this succession. Here,
however, David Hume would answer: it is not true that I perceive a necessary succession;
indeed, in this occasion I make use of such an expression which I apply elsewhere, only I
understand by it not the necessity of this succession, but merely the often-perceived succession
of the warmth of the stone that follows from the presence of fire. 5
Kant, on the other hand, presumably assumes both that we are in possession of a
set of genuinely causal judgments, and that we can immediately recognize causal
connections in the world; this, Maimon claims, is something that Kant takes to be
a fact about our cognitive situation. According to Maimon, however, Kant cannot
Gesammelte Werke (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1970), in volumes II and V, respectively.

Citations of Maimon’s work will be abbreviated GW, followed by the volume and page
number; all quotations from Maimon are my own translations.
3 Maimon’s criticisms of Kant’s account of causality come both from a Humean and a Leibniz-
ian front, and although I will not address in any detail how Maimon juggles these seemingly
contrary commitments, it is important to note that he characterizes his position as being one
of rational dogmatism and empirical skepticism⫺that is, at once Leibnizian and Humean.
4 One of the frustrating features of Maimon’s treatment of Kant is his tendency to conflate
the views of the Critique with those of the Prolegomena⫺here, I think, is a case where the
Prolegomena’s account of judgments of perception and judgments of experience is intro-
duced as an ill-fated argument against the role of causality in the Critique.
5 GW II, 72⫺3.

442 Peter Thielke
help himself to any fact of the matter regarding causal versus non-causal judgments.
Nothing provided by the evidence of the senses tells us which perceptual orderings
are in fact causal and which are not; we cannot perceive the difference between a
merely constant conjunction and a genuinely causal connection. 6 Indeed, Maimon
claims that in order to prove the fact that the category of causality is legitimately
applied to the empirical world, Kant “would have to show that children, when they
first perceive [the succession of fire and warmth] would immediately judge that fire
is the cause of the warmth of the stone ⫺ which, however, would be very difficult
to do.” 7 On this line of objection, Kant does not provide sufficient warrant for his
conclusion that the a priori category of causality in fact applies to particular percep-
tual orders, since nothing about the perceptions themselves exhibits a necessary,
causal connection.
The force of this objection, of course, turns on exactly how one understands
both the structure and aims of Kant’s argument. The correct interpretation of the
Second Analogy is a notoriously contentious issue, one that goes well beyond the
scope of this discussion. For our purposes, however, the distinction between a
‘strong’ and a ‘weak’ version of Kant’s argument will perhaps avoid some of the
dangers of internecine squabbles. Whereas the strong reading views the Second
Analogy as an argument about empirical causal laws, the weak reading takes the
Analogy to be concerned simply with the transcendental conditions that govern our
experience of events. 8 Instead of trying to adjudicate between these two camps, a
different tack may be taken. If Maimon can be shown to cast into doubt even the
weak reading, then it seems that regardless of how one understands the Second
Analogy, Kant’s position would look tenuous.
6 For a more detailed account of this aspect of Maimon’s thought, see Achim Engstler’s Unter-
suchungen zum Idealismus Salomon Maimons (Stuttgart: Fromann-Holzboog, 1990). Ac-
cording to Engstler, Maimon claims that in a temporal series of intuitions, the schematized
categories must somehow be perceivable in the series itself, for only in this fashion can we
be guaranteed that the Kantian account of the relation between categories and intuitions is
justified. Moreover, the Kantian account must simply assume⫺illegitimately, according to
Maimon⫺ that we in fact can perceive a difference between objective and subjective succes-
sions. But, as Engstler correctly notes, this is more a matter of Maimon misconstruing Kant’s
claims than an actual problem for the story of the Critique. To Engstler’s eyes, Maimon
conflates the two separate notions of transcendental and empirical time-determinations: for
all its problems, “it seems clear that for Kant, the schema, as a transcendental determination
of time, cannot be as it were ‘readoffable’ [ablesbar] from empirical objects” (Engstler, 87).
As such, Maimon’s claim that Kant must assume some unwarranted fact about the perceiva-
bility of schemata rings hollow: by insisting that schemata must be both a priori and perceiv-
able, Maimon⫺at least on Engstler’s interpretation⫺flouts the careful distinction Kant
draws between the transcendental role played by schemata and the empirical notion of an
image. While I grant that this element of Maimon’s thought is ineffective against Kant, I will
develop below a another aspect of Maimon’s position that I think does prove compelling.
7 GW II, 73⫺4.
8 Among contemporary commentators, this ‘weak’ line is generally associated with the work
of Lewis White Beck and Henry Allison; the ‘strong’ view is articulated most clearly by
Paul Guyer and Michael Friedman.

But does the weak version of the argument run into trouble in the face of Mai-
mon’s Humean-minded objection? At least as sketched above, what Maimon criti-
cizes does not seem to be Kant’s considered position on causality at all, if the
argument of the Second Analogy is taken in the weaker sense. As L. W. Beck notes,
for example, the Second Analogy is not a regressive argument that begins with the
validity of mathematics and science as a premise. 9 Kant does not argue for his
conclusions about the nature of causality by beginning with an ostensibly factual
claim about particular causal connections; the argument does not presume that we
can perceive causal relations. Moreover, it seems that Kant would agree with Mai-
mon that there can be no inference from the subjective order of sensations to an
objective order of states of the world. Kant’s argument, at least in the crucial third
paragraph of the B-edition Second Analogy, accounts for events in a way that does
not involve an inferential move from subjective to objective orders of perception. 10
Rather, Kant relies heavily on the notion of rule-governedness as a general criterion
or definition of what counts as an event; we do not infer the relation of causality
from, but rather impose or apply it to perceptual orders. Where Maimon then
seems to take Kant to be defending the principle that causal connections must be a
‘perceivable component’ of the order of perceptions, in fact Kant advances the view
that these causal connections are not perceived in, but imposed upon the order of
succession. Given this interpretation of the Second Analogy, Maimon’s objections
attack only a straw-man version of Kant.
In his strictly Humean vein, Maimon then at best seems to misinterpret Kant’s
position; at least the ‘weak’ formulation of Kant’s argument avoids the problem of
‘perceptible causes.’ Fortunately, however, Maimon’s rationalist allegiances allow
him to mount another objection to Kant. 11 This criticism ⫺ which is based upon
the problem of the relation of the faculties ⫺ presents a challenge to the Second
Analogy that is distinct from the dispute between the ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ inter-
pretations. For all their differences, both of these camps are committed to the idea
9 L. W. Beck. “Once More unto the Breach: Kant’s Answer to Hume, Again” in Essays on
Kant and Hume (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1978). 130⫺5.
10 The inability to make an inference from subjective to objective orders in fact marks one
of the failures of transcendental realism, according to Kant: “If appearances were things
in themselves…we could never determine from the succession of the representations how
their manifold may be connected in the object” (A191/B235).
11 Maimon’s own positive position, in a nutshell, turns on the claim that real knowledge
requires a determinable relation between the subject and predicate of a judgment⫺the
predicate, that is, must be a real, and not merely possible, determination of the subject.
This determinable relation can be shown to obtain between an intuition and a concept
only when the intuition is constructed according to the ‘rules’ provided by the concept: the
paradigm here is mathematics. On the other hand, this relation can never be established
in the empirical realm, since intuitions are not constructed but given to the subject. As
such, we can never have real empirical knowledge. We can conceive of the possibility of
constructing empirical intuitions according to concepts (as presumably an infinite mind
would do), but our own finitude precludes this from ever being carried out.

444 Peter Thielke
that for Kant, cognition involves the separate faculties of intuition and understand-
ing. Yet it is just this model of cognition, Maimon argues, that undermines the
argument of the Second Analogy, no matter how it is construed.
II. The Problem with Irreversibility
The first step in formulating the objection requires a very brief discussion of
what the Analogies of Experience aim to accomplish, as well as Kant’s claims in
the Second Analogy to have shown that events in general require the category of
causality. In the Analogies, Kant presents the criteria that govern experience; the
principle of the Analogies is that “Experience is possible only through the represen-
tation of a necessary connection of perceptions” (B 218). 12 Unlike the Axioms and
Anticipations, which provide the criteria for the constitution of particular appear-
ances (namely, the conditions of extensive and intensive magnitudes), the Analogies
stand as merely regulative principles: they govern the connection of perceptions,
and not the perceptions themselves. 13 This function is necessary for experience,
Kant claims, because “perceptions come together only in an accidental order, so
that no necessity determining their connection is or can be revealed in the percep-
tions themselves” (B 219). Kant’s point here is relatively straightforward: nothing
about the order of perceptions alone can suffice to determine an object of experi-
ence. Perceptions can be given to the subject in any order, and there is no guarantee
that this order ‘determines an object,’ rather than simply being a stream of uncon-
nected images. In order to provide this guarantee of ‘objective determination,’ Kant
claims, the order of perceptions must be subject to a rule. This determination “can
take place only through [the objects’] relation in time in general, and therefore only
through concepts that connect them a priori” (B 219). By virtue of being a priori,
these concepts of time-determination provide the necessary connection of percep-
tions that makes experience possible. 14
In the First Analogy, Kant argues that in all change of appearances, there must
be a permanent substance that serves as the substratum for change. In other words,
all change of appearances must be understood as the alteration of a substance,
12 Throughout this discussion of the Analogies, I have cited only the B-edition principles; for
our purposes, little turns on the different formulations in the A- and B-editions.
13 In Kant’s terms, the mathematical principles deal with the structure of appearances (and
hence are constitutive), whereas the dynamical principles are concerned with the existence
of these appearances. Since, however, existence cannot be constructed, these dynamical
principles must be solely regulative; they concern the connection of perceptions given to
the subject, but do “not tell us how mere perception or empirical intuition in general itself
comes about” (A180/B222).
14 The notion of necessity applies only to the formal connection of perceptions to each other,
and not to the content of the perceptions. Kant, that is, does not claim that particular
perceptions (of a house, for example) are necessary, but only that the experience of empiri-
cal objects requires the formally necessary connections provided by the categories.

which “as the substrate of all change remains ever the same” (B 225). In the Second
Analogy, Kant turns his attention from the substrate of change to an analysis of
the structure of this alteration itself. Here he argues that “All alterations take place
in conformity with the law of the connection of cause and effect” (B 232). The
essential argument of the Second Analogy then runs as follows: the perception of
an event (or alteration of a substance) requires not simply successive representa-
tions, but rather the representation of succession ⫺ that is, the representation of
an event. 15 To consider a succession of perceptions as the representation of an
event, the perceptual order must be regarded as ‘irreversible,’ where the notion of
irreversibility depends upon a necessary, rule-governed order of succession (as op-
posed to the simple order of perceptions). The succession of perceptions must then
be subjected to an a priori rule (since only such a rule can guarantee necessity),
namely the schema of causality. This follows from the definition of an event, since
the relevant order of perceptions of an event must be ‘bound down,’ and not merely
arbitrary. As Kant notes, “the concept which carries with it a necessity of synthetic
unity can only be a pure concept that lies in the understanding, not in perception; and
in this case it is the concept of the relation of cause and effect” (B 234). Against Mai-
mon’s Humean objection, Kant locates the ground of the irreversibility constraint that
governs events not in the habit that arises from constant conjunction, but rather in the
a priori category of cause and effect. The schema of causality then has what Kant calls
‘objective reality’ ⫺ it makes the experience of events possible ⫺ because it serves as
a condition on the representation of succession itself. It is crucial for Kant’s account
that events are not inferred from the subjective order of perceptions. Rather, to per-
ceive an event is to think or to take the order of perceptions as rule-governed. Given
this, even the Humean (who presumably acknowledges the difference between a suc-
cession of representations and the representation of succession) can be forced to admit
that causality serves as a necessary ⫺ and hence a priori ⫺ condition on the experience
of events. Kant’s argumentative strategy then reveals how any appeal to the notion of
an event requires rule-governedness as a definitional criterion. The judgment that an
event occurs constrains the sequence of perceptions as irreversible, and it does so by
employing the schema of causality.
Unlike Maimon’s ill-fated Humean objection ⫺ which focused on the supposed
‘perceivability’ of causal connections ⫺ Maimon’s rationalist criticism of Kant’s
account of causality turns on just the notion of the constraint on judgment which
Kant advances. 16 At issue here is not simply the role played by irreversibility in
15 This reconstruction is drawn from Henry Allison’s discussion in Kant’s Transcendental

Idealism. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983). I take this account as representative
of a general trend in interpreting the Second Analogy, and not as the definitive position.
16 The reasons for calling this objection ‘rationalist’ might not be readily apparent, but I hope
they will become clearer below, when the issue of discursivity becomes central. The basic
point is that Maimon (following the rationalist tradition) claims that causal relations must
at their core be conceptually determined; his own positive view revolves around the deter-
minate conceptual or logical relation that must hold between cause and effect.

446 Peter Thielke
determining a causal judgment, but rather the possibility of irreversibility itself.

That is, Maimon’s challenge concerns not the definition of an event, but rather the
cognitive apparatus to which Kant appeals in his explication of what the experience
of an event involves. In what way, Maimon asks, can we account for the constraint
upon which the irreversibility thesis depends? What exactly is it that constrains us
to consider a succession as irreversible?
In order to pose these questions in more concrete terms, we can turn to Kant’s
famous examples of the ship and house. Both the perception of a house, and of a
ship moving downstream, are ‘successive,’ in the sense that they require a series of
perceptions. But, Kant claims, whereas the order of perceptions of the house is
arbitrary, the order of perceptions of the moving ship is irreversible. In perceiving
the house, it does not matter whether I begin at the roof and proceed to the ground,
or begin at the ground and go up. On the other hand, this is not the case with the
perception of events. In the example of the ship, something constrains me to take
the succession as irreversible, and this is just to say that the schematized category
of causality must play a role in my perception of the event of the moving ship. 17
But how does this constraint operate? Given the available Kantian cognitive ele-
ments, the problem can be posed in the form of a dilemma: either the constraint is
a product of the order of appearances, or it is imposed by the application of the
category of causality. 18 As we have seen, Kant rejects the first option, since he is at
pains to argue that the order of appearances does not wear any causal ordering on
its sleeve: in experience, “perceptions come together only in an accidental ordering,
so that no necessity determining their connection is or can be revealed in the percep-
tions themselves” (B 219). We are then left with the second option, where irrevers-
ibility is imposed by the judgment that employs the category of causality: here “I
render my subjective synthesis of apprehension objective only by reference to a rule
in accordance with which the appearances in their succession, that is, as they hap-
pen, are determined by the preceding state” (A 195/B 240). The order of perceptions
then is taken as irreversible in the very act of making a judgment of causality.
However, if the order is imposed by the category, we must have some principled
way ⫺ beyond mere imposition ⫺ of accounting for the distinction between events
and mere successions of perceptions. The focus here turns from the issue of particu-
17 As Allison puts the matter: “[Kant’s point in the case of the ship] is simply that in contrast
to the perception of the house, where I do not regard my successive perceptions as percep-
tions of a change or succession in the object itself, in the perception of a ship I do regard
my perceptions in just this way. Kant concludes from this that in the latter case I am
constrained to regard the order of my perceptions as determined or irreversible” (KTI, 224,
emphasis added).
18 As Maimon claims, “The question [regarding the status of the category of causality] is
therefore quid juris, i. e., is the objective application of this concept legitimate or not?⫺
and if it is, what type of right is it, under which it belongs: for since it relates to objects
of intuition given a posteriori, then it is certainly illegitimate, in view of the matter of
intuition” (GW II, 51).

lar perceptual orderings to the difference in type between events and non-events.
In effect, Kant must provide an independent criterion for what counts as an event,
in order to ensure that the application of the category of causality is legitimate. But
this, Maimon claims, is precisely what Kant’s account is incapable of doing. Kant
can assert that there is a difference between a succession of representations and a
representation of succession ⫺ he can assume as a fact about experience that there
is a principled way of distinguishing events from mere perceptions. However, Kant
cannot provide an argument for why this is the case, or how such a distinction
can arise. Maimon claims that the mere perception of both house and ship are
successive:
We believe with this [representation of the house] that the object first originates [with the
perception]; on the other hand, with the latter succession [of the boat on the stream], we
presuppose the existence of the object. [But] these two modes of succession considered in
themselves are entirely undifferentiated from each other. 19
Nothing about the nature of the perceptions themselves accounts for the difference
between ship and house, but without such a distinction, to consider one irreversible
and the other not seems arbitrary. The problem then lies in the justification and
force of Kant’s claim that we take or regard a series of representations as a represen-
tation of succession. As Maimon notes in the Foreword to the Logik, “the con-
sciousness of the use [of the category of causality] can provide no proof of its
reality, in that this consciousness can be explained as arising from an illusion of
the imagination.” 20 The mere fact that we take ourselves to be constrained does
not serve to explain why we legitimately are constrained, nor does it guarantee that
the same constraints will persist in the future.
At best, according to this objection, Kant can reach only a hypothetical claim: if
we take x to be an event, then the succession of perceptions of x must be irrevers-
ible. But, Maimon claims, Kant can provide no adequate explanation of why we
take something as an event, aside from simply assuming that we do so. And, given
Kant’s own ‘critical’ commitments, any further explanation of what counts as an
event would look dubious. In essence, Maimon accuses Kant of arguing in a circle:
events are defined in terms of constrained successions, but this constraint is ex-
plained only as what must be assumed as the condition on events.
III. Kantian Rejoinders
The Kantian might here respond that Maimon simply misses the point: the issue
is not how we can separate events from non-events, but rather how events in gene-
ral can be objects of possible experience. As the argument of the Second Analogy
shows, an event is an object of experience only when the ‘subjective synthesis of
19 GW II, 188⫺9 (emphasis added).

20 GW V, xxiv.

448 Peter Thielke
apprehension’ is determined by a rule, namely when it is taken to be irreversible.

So if we are committed to the reality of events, then we must accept the application
of the schema of causality to successions of perceptions as a condition on the possi-
bility of events. We must connect perceptions in a certain way if we are to experi-
ence an objective succession through them.
Matters are further complicated by an ambiguity present in Maimon’s objection.
The claim that the category of causality does not suffice to differentiate among
types of perceptions could mean either that (i) the category does not wholly deter-
mine these perceptions; or (ii) that the category is incapable of determining these
perceptions. Although at different places Maimon advances both of these objec-
tions, only the second, stronger alternative poses any real threat to Kant’s position.
Indeed, Kant could readily grant the first option ⫺ the category of causality is only
a necessary, and not a sufficient condition of perceptual orderings, and hence on
causal judgments. So, for example, in making a causal judgment, I must employ
the category of causality, but this alone does not guarantee that I have made a
correct causal judgment; the category only imposes the requisite form of causality
on a judgment, but does not guarantee the judgment’s truth. For Maimon’s objec-
tion to be convincing, it then must show not only that the category alone cannot
suffice to guarantee real thought, but also that the category of causality is incapable
of determining particular intuitions. And this, the Kantian claims, is what Maimon
fails to do.
Given this ambiguity, the Kantian can accuse Maimon of confusing transcenden-
tal and empirical levels of explanation. According to this view, in the Second Anal-
ogy Kant provides only the transcendental conditions that govern the possibility of
events; the application of the category of causality is a necessary condition on the
possibility of making causal judgments. This does not mean, however, that we may
not be empirically wrong about whether some perceptual order is in fact an event.
The category of causality provides what we can view as the correct form for causal
judgments, but the truth-values of these judgments are a matter of empirical investi-
gation ⫺ mistaken causal judgments do not impugn the notion of causality in gene-
ral. Kant aims to establish only that if something is to count as an event, then it
must be rule-governed; whether a particular sequence is in fact an event is a matter
of empirical concern. Maimon’s objection that the category of causality cannot
distinguish between events and non-events then seems to be an easily accommo-
dated empirical concern.
Furthermore, the Kantian might argue, the irreversibility constraint is not im-
posed upon a sequence of perceptions, but is rather included in the empirical con-
cept of some objects. This response would then cut against Maimon’s claims that
the category of causality is arbitrarily applied to perceptual orderings. The concept
of a ship, for example, might include the notion that its object’s movements are
irreversible ⫺ we know that ships are the types of things that are perceived in
motion. On the other hand, the concept of a house does not (usually, at least)
include this mark of irreversibility. Moreover, we can determine which concepts

include this ‘causal connection’ only through empirical investigation; on this view,
the schema of causality does not immediately govern the order of perceptions, but
rather is something that is built into empirical concepts. Something counts as an
event only when the empirical concepts that pick out the perceived objects include
the irreversibility constraint ⫺ in Kant’s examples, the concept ‘ship’ would possess
it, but ‘house’ would not. 21 The rule that serves as the focus of the Second Analogy
then should be understood not as the bare irreversibility constraint, but rather as
the empirical concept that includes irreversibility; only this empirical concept, it
seems, “distinguishes [the appearance] from every other apprehension and necessi-
tates some one particular mode of connection of the manifold” (A191/B236).
These rejoinders in turn confront Maimon with a dilemma: either the challenge
to the Second Analogy rests only on the possibility of a constraint in general, or it
appeals to the more specific empirical issue of distinguishing causal from non-causal
successions. Neither of these options looks attractive for Maimon, since the first is
a question addressed (and presumably answered) in the Transcendental Deduction 22
and the second appears to confuse empirical and transcendental levels of explana-
tion. If a series of perceptions stands as the representation of an event, then the
series must be irreversible, but ⫺ against Maimon’s objections ⫺ by itself this
makes no claim about which series in fact represent events.
IV. The Difficulty with Discursivity
Although these Kantian replies pose a serious threat to Maimon’s position, I do

not think they completely vitiate it. The crucial point that Maimon raises against
21 Something like this view can be found, I think, in the account of the Second Analogy
offered by Paul Guyer, who, while claiming that the schema of causality is a principle that
governs the “justification, verification, or confirmation of the judgments about empirical
objects that we make on the basis of our representations of them,” (Kant and the Claims
of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) 246) also argues that the
occurrence of an event “can be inferred by adding to the omnipresent succession of mere
representations a rule from which it can be inferred that in the circumstances at hand one
state of affairs could only succeed the other, and therefore also that one representation
could only succeed the other” (KCK, 248). Guyer, however, goes on to argue that this rule
is not the schematized category of causality, but rather an empirical causal law, to which
we must appeal in order to justify our judgments about events (KCK, 258⫺9). While we
must inductively arrive at specific causal laws, we also must still appeal to them as the
rules that bind the order of representations. In my view, however, Guyer’s account does
not sit well with the actual text of the Second Analogy; that the rule of the Second Analogy
is in fact the schematized category⫺and not an empirical causal law⫺will be briefly ad-
dressed below.
22 In §§24⫺26 of the Deduction, Kant shows that any synthesis⫺even of the manifold of
intuition⫺requires the application of the categories, as rules of combination; this in turn
guarantees the legitimacy of the notion of a ‘constraint in general’ which is provided by
the categories.

450 Peter Thielke
Kant centers on the possibility of irreversibility in general, and it is not clear that
the invocation of a transcendental distinction serves to allay the problem Maimon
introduces. In order to establish this, however, we must look at one of Kant’s most
basic assumptions: his claim that cognition is discursive, namely, that it involves
the separate faculties of intuition and understanding. The notion of discursivity, of
course, is extremely broad and complex, but I hope to show that the difficulty with
irreversibility and causality is inextricably linked to the problem Maimon sees in
Kant’s account of the structure of cognition in general.
First, a few words are in order on the topic of discursivity. Kant’s ‘discursivity
thesis’ can be formulated as follows: human cognition involves the two separate
faculties of intuition and the understanding, each of which possesses its own a
priori forms, and each of which also must play an ineliminable role in cognition.
In intuition, the data of sensibility are given to the subject; the understanding then
must ‘take up’ these data in thought in order to have experience. This dualistic
model of cognition is reflected in Kant’s famous phrase that intuitions without
concepts are blind, and concepts without intuitions are empty:
Our nature is so constituted that our intuition can never be other than sensible; that is, it contains
only the mode in which we are affected by objects. The faculty, on the other hand, which enables
us to think the object of sensible intuition is the understanding. To neither of these powers may
a preference be given over the other. Without sensibility no object would be given to us, without
understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions
without concepts are blind…These two powers or capacities cannot exchange their functions.
The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing (A 51/B 75).
In Kant’s terms, the knowledge provided by the understanding “must … be by
means of concepts, and so is not intuitive, but discursive. Whereas all intuitions, as
sensible, rest on affections, concepts rest on functions” (A 68/B 93). Cognition is
then discursive in the sense that it requires the application of concepts to the data
provided by intuition; cognitive experience needs not simply receptivity but the
process or activity of judgment as well. 23 Unlike an intuitive or divine intellect, for
whom all knowledge is immediate, our cognition is discursive in that it requires (i)
data to be given to it, and (ii) that these data can be thought or cognized only
according to the processes of the understanding, namely conceptualization and
judgment.
With this working definition of discursivity in place, we can return to the prob-
lem it creates in the argument of the Second Analogy. The first issue that must be
addressed is the objection that the Second Analogy is concerned not with the appli-
cation of the irreversibility constraint to sequences of perceptions, but rather with
the way in which empirical concepts or empirical causal laws dictate irreversibility.
This, of course, is a topic closely connected to the issue of whether the Second
Analogy ought to be understood as a ‘weak’ or ‘strong’ argument; the objection
23 For Kant, conceptualization and judgment are integrally connected: cognition simply is to
judge using concepts: “the only use which the understanding can make of these concepts
is to judge by means of them” (A68/B93).

that the rule of the analogy is an empirical law is a version of the strong argument.
In large part, answering this objection is a matter of mustering passages in the
Critique, and while a case can be made for the ‘empirical concept’ view, the prepon-
derance of the evidence supports the idea that the ‘rule’ of the Second Analogy is
not an empirical concept or law, but rather the schematized category of causality
alone. The weak version, in other words, is in fact Kant’s considered view.
Several crucial points buttress the weak reading. First, Kant notes that the prin-
ciple of the Analogies of Experience is that experience “is possible only through the
representation of a necessary connection of perceptions” (A 176/B 218). Since in
experience perceptions come only in an “accidental order” (A 177/B 219), this nec-
essary connection is possible only if the perceptions are connected according to an
a priori rule, which in turn is a product, Kant claims, of the necessary unity of
apperception. Moreover, these rules “will be prior to all experience, and indeed
make it possible” (A 177/B 219). At least here, the notion of the necessary rule for
the connection of perceptions does not seem to include an appeal to empirical con-
cepts or laws, but in fact stands at the ground of the possibility of empirical concepts
(since these are taken to be features of experience). This reading is reinforced when we
turn to the Second Analogy proper. “Experience itself,” Kant writes, “in other words,
empirical knowledge of appearances ⫺ is thus possible only in so far as we subject the
succession of appearances, and therefore all alteration, to the law of causality … the
appearances, as objects of experience, are themselves possible only in conformity with
the law” (A189/B234). Here the focus is on appearances, and not empirical concepts
and their objects: only if the order of appearances is subjected to an a priori rule can
we even have recourse to empirical objects and concepts. 24
The question remains, however, whether this rule is only the schematized cate-
gory of causality, or also involves an empirical concept. Kant, for example, speaks
of the object as “that in the appearance which contains the condition of this neces-
sary rule of apprehension,” (A 191/B 236) and it might be tempting to view this
rule as part of the empirical concept of the object. But despite this initial appeal,
such an interpretation threatens to make Kant’s argument far too specific. The
Second Analogy is primarily designed to delimit the conditions that govern the
perception of an event, and it is not clear that possessing a particular empirical
concept is a necessary feature of perceiving changes of state in an object. Rather,
24 It is for this reason, I think, that Guyer’s view seems suspicious: he is forced to maintain
that “there will be no problem about appealing to causal laws to justify claims about the
order of objective and even subjective states, on the one hand, yet appealing to such states
in order to confirm claims to knowledge of causal laws on the other, as long as … one
and the same sequence of representations is not both being derived from a particular causal
law about objects and being employed as evidence for the validity of the causal law” (KCK,
259). But this seems both puzzling on its own terms (for it is dangerously close to being
circular), and also quite at odds with Kant’s claims that the law of causality serves as a
condition on the possibility of empirical objects. The same concerns, I think, also confront
the view that the ‘rule’ of the Second Analogy can be found in empirical concepts.

452 Peter Thielke
empirical concepts can be applied only after the determination of an object by the
schematized categories. If this were not the case ⫺ if the rule of irreversibility were
a component or mark of empirical concepts ⫺ then it would not be clear how we
could ever recognize new events at all, since we could not have an empirical concept
of a sequence of perceptions that we had never seen before. 25 Rather, the rule of
irreversibility must be separable from empirical concepts; moreover, irreversibility
stands as a necessary condition for empirical concepts, for only “in so far as our
representations are necessitated in a certain order as regards their time-relations do
they acquire objective meaning” (A 197/B 243).
Showing that the ‘rule’ of the Second Analogy is just the schematized category
of causality, however, still does not serve as an answer to the Kantian objection
that Maimon’s challenge turns on an empirical, and not a transcendental issue. In
order to see why Maimon’s objections in fact speak to transcendental concerns, we
must return to Kant’s argument in the Second Analogy. In skeletal form, the Kantian
position reduces to the following formulae: (i) A succession of perceptions repre-
sents an event only if the succession is irreversible. (ii) The irreversibility of a suc-
cession is not established by an inference from the succession of representations,
but rather is the product of the application of the category of causality. (iii) Given
that we experience events, the necessary condition of irreversibility must be satis-
fied, so the category of causality in turn has objective reality.
But what are the grounds for the ‘satisfaction-criteria’ of the condition of irre-
versibility? Here, presumably, the Kantian will point to the B-Deduction, particu-
larly § 26, which aims to show that the categories are connected to empirical intu-
itions through the synthesis of apprehension. 26 It is not clear, however, that this
alone establishes the possibility of the irreversibility of intuitions. The question is
not simply whether the categories can apply to intuitions, but also how the cate-
gories can differentiate between intuitions. While the category of causality can de-
termine the relation of cause and effect in general (as a mere form of thought),
there is no argument to establish that the category applies to particular, determinate
intuitions. As Maimon notes,
[We] can know merely the relation of cause and effect, but not, however, the members of
these relations (what is cause and what effect?) as objects of experience. In order to know
something as cause or as effect in an action, one must know the nature of things apart from
this action. 27
25 This is not to suggest that Kant abandons the notion of induction, or argues that we do
not need to arrive inductively at new causal connections and laws. The point is rather that
the possibility of induction itself depends upon the transcendental analysis of events in
general, apart from any concerns about particular causal laws. In other words, the Second
Analogy makes a claim about the conditions for the possibility of causal laws, and not the
causal laws themselves.
26 See especially B161.
27 GW II, 222. One problem that arises here concerns Kant’s focus not on causal relations
between objects, but rather on the successive states of a single object. Maimon seems to
ignore this distinction, but it is not clear that the point hinges on the difference.

The category of causality then provides the mere form of a causal judgment, but
this does not guarantee the possibility of connecting this form to some particular
intuitions. From the principle of causality “it only follows that objects of experience
in general must be thought in a causal connection with each other, but not that it
must be just these objects that stand in this relation.” 28 More importantly for our
purposes, this seems to be a transcendental issue, and not simply an empirical one.
On a transcendental level, the connection between categories and intuitions that is
forged in both § 26 and the Schematism is alone insufficient to ground Kant’s argu-
ment in the Second Analogy, if there is not also a further account of how different
categories can be applied to various intuitions. 29 Such an account, however, is pre-
cisely what Maimon’s objection claims to preclude, since Kant cannot provide non-
circular criteria that are capable of explaining how various intuitions are subsumed
by different categories. 30
Seen in this light, the accusation that Maimon confuses levels of explanation
seems off the mark. Maimon’s rationalist objections do not arise from doubts about
the legitimacy of particular causal judgments, but rather rest upon the issue of the
cognitive conditions that ostensibly ground a rule-governed sequence in general.
Whether we can be mistaken about what counts as an event is tangential to Mai-
mon’s objection; instead, the question is whether Kant’s notion of a rule-governed
sequence of perceptions is even possible, given the critical system’s commitments to
a discursive account of cognition. This is brought out most clearly in a passage in
the Logik where Maimon claims that the Critique “has not provided any criterion
of real thought.” 31 While the Critique posits a manifold given in intuition, it
does not provide any a priori criterion, whereby one could know whether a given manifold
can be thought in a unity of form in general, still less any criterion by which one could know
28 GW V, 489⫺90 [emphasis added].

29 Samuel Atlas makes a similar point in From Critical to Speculative Idealism (The Hague: Mar-
tinus Nijhoff, 1964): “The fact that phenomena occur in time and that time is a priori does
not command necessity for their [the phenomena] being equivalent to the logical relation of
antecedent and consequent. So far the answer to the question quid juris has merely shown
that the succession of phenomena through the medium of time is not of a different order from
the logical a priori form, and they may therefore correspond to one another, but it has not
shown the necessity of this correspondence. The Kantian cannot convince us of this necessity.
He can only refer to the fact of experience; he cannot know the reason for the harmony exist-
ing between the logical form of causality and the succession of phenomena” (69).
30 It must be noted that the introduction of the way that categories differentiate between
intuitions raises many thorny problems centering on the Schematism, which go beyond the
scope of this paper. Also, a further difficulty lies in Maimon’s especially cryptic claims that
since he⫺like Hume⫺doubts the reality of experience (understood in a Kantian sense), he
takes the logical forms of thought as conditions of perception itself. As such, while Kant’s
causal rule⫺if sound⫺would allow for the differentiation of subjective and objective se-
quences, only Maimon’s ‘logical’ rule of determinability allows for the perception even of
a subjective sequence (GW II, 214⫺7). For a brief discussion of both the Schematism and
of determinability, see below.
31 GW V, 475.

454 Peter Thielke
in which unity [this manifold could be thought]. Not every given manifold allows itself to be
thought in some objective unity or other … In the manifold given to thought, then, an a priori
criterion must be found, whereby one can know not only whether this manifold can be
thought in an objective unity in general, but also in which unity it can be thought. 32
Maimon traces this failure to provide a criterion of real thought back to Kant’s
separation of general logic from transcendental logic. By deriving the categories
from the logical forms of thought, Kant understood general logic as “standing on
its own.” 33 Yet this strategy, Maimon claims, bars an answer to the problem of the
discrimination of intuitions by categories. By deriving the categories from logical
forms that are ostensibly independent of conditions on human cognition, Kant is
committed to the view that the categories remain mere forms of thought. Yet as
mere forms, they can make no reference to the content of particular intuitions: in
Maimonian terms, they can serve as conditions of formal thought, but they “do not
exhibit any criterion for real thought.” 34 The problem Maimon identifies in the
Critique then arises from Kant’s commitment both to the derivation of the cate-
gories from the logical forms of thought (which underlies the categories’ merely
formal nature), and to the difference in kind between concepts and intuitions
(which guarantees that the content of intuition is provided independently of categ-
orial determination). The categories provide general rules of cognition, but their
merely formal nature does not allow for an explanation of how they relate to
particular content, since this content is taken to originate independently of the
forms of thought. Kant can assume that this application of categories to intuitions
occurs, but he can provide no explanation of how it occurs.
Such a claim, however, faces the obvious objection that Kant in fact provides
just such an explanation in the Schematism section of the Critique. Indeed, the
Schematism seems devoted to precisely this issue: Kant there attempts to explain
and justify the employment of the pure categories by linking them to transcendental
schemata. As Allison has argued, this argument is best understood by way of anal-
ogy with a traditional syllogistic structure: just as a syllogism reaches a conclusion
by beginning with a major premise that expresses a universal claim, and by applying
to it a minor premise that limits or conditions the major premise, so too does the
application of the categories to intuition proceed through a type of limitation. 35
The categories can then apply to intuitions only through a “mediating representa-
tion,” which “in one respect [must] be intellectual…[and] must in another be sensi-
ble” (A 138/B 177).
Showing that a condition or ‘middle term’ is required for the application of the
categories to intuitions, however, leads directly to the problem of specifying exactly
what this ‘third thing’ is. Without getting into the messy details, the most plausible
candidate seems to be the pure intuition of time ⫺ as Kant notes, a transcendental
32 GW V, 476; emphasis added.
33 GW V, 476.
34 GW V, 476. For a brief discussion of real thought, see Section V below.
35 Allison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, 178.

schema simply is a “transcendental determination of time” (A 139/B 138). 36 Sup-

port for this claim is found when we ask about exactly what transcendental role
schemata must play; here we must remember that schemata link categories to intu-
itions, whose forms are space and time. The argument turns on the peculiar nature
of time, which stands both as a form of intuition, as well as a pure or a priori
feature of cognition (since it is not derived from the nature of objects themselves).
The categories are then limited or conditioned by time; they apply to intuitions
only insofar as they serve as a priori temporal determinations. As merely logical
functions of thought, the categories operate separately from sensible conditions,
but in order to have a real use, they must “contain a priori certain formal conditions
of sensibility, namely, those of inner sense.” Only in such a way can the categories
“be applied to any object” (A 140/B 179). As such, categories do not directly bear
upon the data of sensibility. Rather, their relation is mediated through the determi-
nation of the universal form of these data: the categories apply to objects by serving
as a priori rules for the ways in which time (as the form of intuition) can be
determined.
Matters become more complicated, however, when Kant notes that the schema
“is in itself always a product of imagination” (A140/B179). In order to make sense
of this claim, here we must keep in mind the central role played by the imagination
in the synthesis of apprehension. In § 26 of the B-Deduction, the categories were
shown to be necessary features for the representation of any empirical object pre-
cisely because they also stand as conditions or rules for any synthesis, even of
the ‘imaginative’ variety required for the apprehension of empirical objects. In the
Schematism chapter, Kant adds a twist to the story, by distinguishing between an
image and a schema. Whereas the image is “a product of the empirical faculty of
reproductive imagination,” the schema of sensible concepts “is a product and, as it
were, a monogram, of pure a priori imagination, through which and in accordance
with which, images themselves first become possible” (A 141⫺2/B 181; emphasis
added). Unlike the image of a particular object ⫺ which is limited to a “single
determinate figure” (A 141/B 181) ⫺ the schema of a concept is the procedure “of
the imagination in providing an image for a concept” (A 140/B 180). As such, the
schema can be understood as the means by which images can be connected to
concepts; schemata stand as the procedures that govern the subsumption of intu-
itions under a concept. Since particular images or intuitions are “never congruent
with the concept,” they require a schema or middle term to relate them to concepts
(A 142/B 181).
In the case of the categories, however, the schemata do not relate these pure
concepts to any images at all. Rather, as Kant characterizes it, the schema of a
category is simply the transcendental product of the imagination that governs “the
36 As Allison notes, however, there are at least seven different characterizations of a transcen-
dental schema, although most are compatible with identifying transcendental schemata
with a pure intuition.

456 Peter Thielke
determination of inner sense in general according to conditions of its form (time),

in respect of all representations, so far as these representations are to be connected
a priori in one concept in conformity with the unity of apperception” (A 142/B 181;
emphasis added). Since empirical representations are given in time, the schemata of
the categories are simply the procedures that determine the temporal unity of these
images ⫺ namely, those procedures that allow for unified thoughts, and not simply
a stream of unconnected representations. The schemata then serve as what might
be called ‘translation guides’ for the conversion of the logical forms of thought into
temporal terms: for example, the schema of the category of substance is permanence
in time, while that of cause is succession according to a rule. Only in such a way,
Kant claims, can the categories be shown to possess objective reality. And it is
precisely for these reasons that Kant claims that the Schematism forms the ground
of the principle of synthetic judgments. Since synthetic judgments involve the rela-
tion of an intuition to a concept, transcendental schemata ⫺ which are a priori
determinations of time ⫺ can be understood as the formal conditions that deter-
mine empirical judgments about time. Here, it seems, is just the explanation of the
way in which categories determine intuitions that Maimon claims is lacking in the
Critique.
Two points, however, suggest that the argument of the Schematism in fact fails
to meet Maimon’s challenge. First, Kant introduces the schemata of categories as
formal elements of his system, which, though products of the imagination, never-
theless enjoy a transcendental status. The schemata, that is, do not make any refer-
ence to the content of intuitions, but only to the temporal form that intuitions must
take. The ground of synthetic judgments is then not found in the content these
judgments contain, but rather in the fact that synthetic judgments must bear some
relation to the form of intuition. Yet Maimon’s challenge is directed at the way in
which the categories can discriminate between the contents, and not the forms, of
thought. All empirical intuitions are identical with regard to their form (they are
all informed by space and time), yet the Schematism shows how the categories
apply only to these formal features of intuition. Unfortunately for Kant, this still
does not provide an account of how intuitions can be discriminated by the under-
standing. As such, the argument of the Schematism could be accepted by Maimon
without also forcing him to grant the results of the Second Analogy. The Schema-
tism, in other words, reaches a conclusion about the nature of categories in general,
but it says nothing in response to Maimon’s charge that the application of different
categories to distinct intuitions is arbitrary.
Second, and perhaps more important, in the course of spelling out the nature
and role of transcendental schemata, Kant makes a rather surprising admission.
The “schematism of our understanding,” he writes, “in its application to appear-
ances and their mere form, is an art concealed in the depths of the human soul,
whose real modes of activity nature is hardly likely ever to allow us to discover,
and to have open to our gaze” (A 141/B 180⫺1). Although this comment is made
in passing ⫺ and seems to be directed primarily against the hope that we could

specify rules for the subsumption of images under empirical concepts ⫺ it betrays,
I think, a deeper problem with Kant’s story, one that underscores the point about
the formal nature of schemata. Unlike the Deduction, which professed to provide
only the necessary conditions for the possibility of any synthesis of the manifold of
intuition, the Schematism makes what seems to be factual claim about the actuality
of subsumption under the categories. That is, Kant’s argument ⫺ while maintaining
that the actual ‘art’ of the schematism remains hidden from view ⫺ nevertheless
assumes that this process actually does occur in cognition. From the Deduction’s
claims about the possibility of empirical apprehension, we have in the Schematism
moved to a position that offers the actual cognition of objects as a fact. On the
face of it, this might seem an unobjectionable move ⫺ for it seems clear that we
do subsume intuitions under concepts ⫺ but it is just this assumption that Maimon
challenges. Once again, the answer to Maimon’s challenge purportedly provided by
the Schematism in fact only recapitulates the question at issue.
As we have seen, the tension between the form and content of thought is precisely
what gives rise to the dilemma Maimon identifies in the Second Analogy. The requi-
site relation between the merely formal category of causality and the empirical
content of particular perceptions is something that Kant can assert, but this asser-
tion fails to convince a skeptic of Maimon’s stripe about the force of the putative
judgmental constraint on the order of perceptions. If the constraint is to have any
kind of epistemological bite, the criteria for its application must be more carefully
specified than simply claiming that we consider or regard ourselves as constrained.
But, Maimon claims, Kant’s commitment to the discursivity thesis means that these
criteria are impossible to specify without running afoul of skeptical worries about
causal realism that Kant takes so many steps to avoid.
V. Determinability and Real Thought
Here we might ask about the consequences of Maimon’s objections, and in partic-
ular the brand of skepticism that is taken to follow from the difficulties with discur-
sivity. As Maimon notes in the Logik, his skepticism
is grounded on this dilemma: either the fact itself (that we apply the form of hypothetical
judgment to empirical objects) is false, and the cited examples [of fire and warmth] are based
on an illusion of the imagination, in which, as I have already shown, the categories have no
application; or, it is itself true, and then there is no knowable ground [for the fact], and the
categories must stand, according to their rigorous deduction and schematism, as before, mere
forms of thought which can determine no objects. 37
The issue of determinability is crucial here, for this is what Maimon claims that
Kant’s account cannot explain. Yet, Maimon argues, Kant needs an account of
determinability in order to guarantee the connection between categories and intu-
37 GW V, 250⫺1.

458 Peter Thielke
itions. The reason for this need lies in the nature of synthetic judgments; the notion
of determinability ⫺ at least as Maimon presents it ⫺ is closely linked to the possi-
bility of synthetic judgments. At issue is the principle such judgments must follow.
According to Kant, this principle is found in the merely formal connection of con-
cepts to intuitions; as Kant notes in a letter to Reinhold of 1789, the principle of
synthetic judgments
is unequivocally presented in the whole Critique, from the chapter on the schematism on,
though not in a specific formula. It is this: all synthetic judgments of theoretical cognition are
possible only by the relating of a given concept to an intuition. If the synthetic judgment is
an experiential judgment, the intuition must be empirical; if the judgment is a priori synthetic,
there must be a pure intuition to ground it. 38
For Kant, the principle of synthetic judgments makes no reference to the content of
these judgments, but only to their formal structure, which relates a concept to an
intuition, be it pure or empirical.
For Maimon, on the other hand, a principle of synthetic judgment cannot merely
provide the grounds for the form that such judgments must take; it must also
provide a warrant for the content that is expressed by these judgments. 39 The
relation of the subject and predicate in a synthetic judgment requires not simply a
reference (however mediated) to an intuition; real (as opposed to both formal and
arbitrary) thought demands a judgment in which the subject and predicate stand in
a determinable relation ⫺ the subject must be something that can be determined
by the predicate. 40 In Maimon’s terms, the subject of a judgment that determines
real thought “must be a possible object [Gegenstand] of consciousness, not only as
subject, but also in itself, [while the predicate] must be a possible object of con-
sciousness not in itself, but rather as a predicate (in connection with the subject).” 41
Real thought arises only when the predicate depends upon the subject for its instan-
tiation, for only this determinable relation can guarantee that the manifold which
the judgment unifies “can be thought in an objective unity in general, [and] in
which unity it can be thought.” 42 Without this determinable relation, thought re-
mains merely arbitrary.
38 Letter 359 (May 12, 1789) in Kant’s gesammelte Werke, Vol. XI, translated in Kant’s Philo-
sophical Correspondence, 141.
39 Despite their differences, Maimon agrees with Kant on one crucial point: thought and
cognition are intrinsically judgmental. To think is to judge, or, in other words, to think
using concepts. This point is never at issue in Maimon’s criticisms of Kant; the tension
stems from the different accounts of how judgment is taken to operate.
40 Near the end of the Logik, Maimon writes that the Critique “has differentiated cognition
from mere thought only unilaterally, namely, that mere thought is a mere form, that refers
to an undetermined object in general, without reference to a given content. This is in some
respects correct. However, I find still another mode of mere thought, which is the complete
reverse of the above, namely to think a given content as object through a merely logical
form of cognition (the thought relations required for objective reality)” (GW V, 495).
41 GW V, 78.
42 GW V, 476.

The difference between arbitrary and real thought is central to Maimon’s objec-
tion to Kant, and to the skepticism that emerges from this critique. Arbitrary
thought describes any thought that is merely possible, whereas real thought deter-
mines an object according to the principle of determinability. 43 Although the details
of Maimon’s account of determinability are complex, the general claim is rather
simple: a judgment accords with the principle of determinability so long as the
predicate depends upon the subject for its instantiation. In other words, in a syn-
thetic judgment that expresses a real thought, the content of the judgment must be
capable of actually standing in the relationship presented in the judgment. The
principle of determinability then governs the way in which thoughts are taken to
relate to objects. 44
While a detailed examination of the way in which determinability governs the
relation of thought and objects would go beyond the scope of this discussion, a few
words must be said on this score. The principle of determinability is offered by
Maimon as a means of explaining how thoughts can connect to, or be about, the
world of objects. The problem, Maimon claims, is that thoughts cannot connect to
the world if we begin with a fundamental distinction between the form and matter
of cognition. How, Maimon asks,
is it conceivable that a priori forms should agree with things given a posteriori? … How is
the origin of matter as something merely given, and not thought, conceivable through the
assumption of an intelligence, since they are so heterogeneous? If our understanding could ⫺
from itself, without need for a thing by which something is given to it ⫺ produce objects
according to its own self-prescribed rules or conditions, then this question would not occur.
The difficulty arises, however, precisely because the objects which are subsumed by the rule
or conditions of thought must be given to the subject from a source outside of thought. This
raises the question: How can the understanding, according to its rules, subsume something
(the given object) that is not in its power? According to the Kantian system, where sensibility
and understanding are two entirely different sources of our cognition, the question is unan-
swerable. 45
In order for thoughts to connect with objects, the formal components of thought
⫺ pure concepts ⫺ must stand in a determinable relation with the contents of
thought: in Kantian terms, concepts must be able to subsume the data of intuition.
But Kant fails to realize, Maimon claims, that to take the content or data of thought
to be given to the subject in a manner wholly distinct from the active power of the
understanding eviscerates the justificatory role that such content can play in war-
ranting real thought about a world of objects. In other words, the given is not
43 As Maimon puts the matter, in an arbitrary thought “neither the predicate not its opposite
is dependent upon the subject” (GW V, 82).
44 The principle of determinability as the principle of synthetic judgments is thus contrasted
to the principle of non-contradiction, which governs both synthetic and analytic judgments.
Analytic judgments do not concern the relation between concepts and objects, but only
relate to the connections between concepts; as such, they do not make any claim about the
relation of thought to an object.
45 GW II, 63.

460 Peter Thielke
something that can stand in a determinable relation with the categories of

thought. 46
Maimon’s ‘empirical skepticism’ follows from the lack of fit between pure con-
cepts and a posteriori intuitions. While the principle of determinability can be satis-
fied in the case of mathematics, it remains doubtful whether it is ever fulfilled in
the empirical realm if we begin with a discursive account of cognition. 47 The
reasons for this doubt turn on the notion of construction. In the arena of mathemat-
ics, pure intuitions are constructed according to the rules provided by mathematical
concepts; as such, the predicate of a judgment can be shown to depend upon the
subject precisely because the predicate and subject can be constructed together: for
example, a scalene triangle can be constructed in pure intuition to provide the
object for the judgment ‘The triangle is scalene.’ In Maimon’s terms, construction
guarantees a ‘knowable ground’ for the legitimate application of the concept to an
intuition, and the principle of determinability is fulfilled. On the other hand, if we
follow Kant’s assumption of the discursivity thesis, in the empirical realm intuitions
are not constructed but given to the subject from a source independent of the fa-
culty of thought. Because of this givenness, Maimon claims, the principle of deter-
46 One fruitful way of understanding the principle of determinability is to view it in light of

the contemporary discussion of the ‘Myth of the Given.’ Maimon’s position in many re-
spects anticipates the views advanced by Sellars, Davidson and others that the notion of a
bare given cannot play a justificatory role in the ‘space of reasons’ but can at best serve a
causal function. In a similar fashion, I think, the principle of determinability claims that
an appeal to empirical intuitions (here understood as the given) cannot guarantee that a
judgment expresses a real thought (where a real thought is taken to involve the notion of
justification). The principle of determinability then stands as Maimon’s attempt to avoid
the ‘Myth of the Given.’ This, of course, is only an intriguing suggestion⫺and would
require far more analysis in order to be made compelling⫺but I think it presents a way of
making sense of what might seem to be a rather obscure doctrine. Also, on this score, it
is noteworthy that John McDowell’s attempt in Mind and World (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1994) to reconcile a basic Kantian insight about the structure of experience
with a recognition of the Myth of the Given ends up with an account of cognition that
seems almost Maimonian: in particular, concepts are taken by McDowell to ‘go all the
way down’ to the given matter of cognition, which is strikingly similar to Maimon’s insis-
tence that real thought requires the conceptual determination of intuitive content.
47 Maimon’s attempts to avoid the difficulties with discursivity lead him to conceive of the
given matter of cognition not (like Kant) as stemming from a source separate from the
faculty of the understanding, but rather as arising from the incompleteness of our thought.
The matter of intuition for Maimon simply is that which remains ‘unconceived’ in cogni-
tion; were our faculties complete or infinite, there would be nothing given to us. As such,
Maimon claims both that concepts inform all of our intuitions, and that in the process of
cognition we expose more and more of what we take to be merely given to be
conceptual⫺we asymptotically approach the model of complete cognition, in which the
given is recognized as wholly conceptual. From this, however, also follows Maimon’s em-
pirical skepticism, since we can never be sure that what we take to be true conforms to
this complete cognition. But while Maimon claims that on Kant’s model, the principle of
determinability can never be fulfilled, on Maimon’s account we can get nearer and nearer
to real knowledge.

minability cannot be shown to be satisfied: there is no knowable ground for the

application of categories to intuitions, since these intuitions stem from a source
wholly different from the arena of thought. Maimon does not deny that concepts
can in principle be applied to given intuitions, but he asserts that this can never be
shown to issue in real, and not merely arbitrary, thought. 48 In other words, Kant’s
discursivity thesis cannot be reconciled with the principle of determinability.
But the Critique needs this principle, for without it Kant’s account of the applica-
tion of the category of causality to the order of perceptions is untenable. Kant has
two types of successions that must be differentiated, but Maimon shows that we
do not have any principled way of telling them apart, unless Kant can provide an
explanation of their difference that does not appeal to a presumed fact of the matter
about the application of the irreversibility constraint. And, as Maimon claims to
have established, in order to explain the distinction between the two cases, the
category of causality would have to make reference to the content of the perceptions
⫺ but the merely formal nature of the category effectively prohibits this move.
Only a determinable relation could provide such a reference, since only such a
determinable relation can govern the content of a causal judgment. In order to
remain true to his epistemological commitments, and to provide a plausible account
of causal judgments, Kant would have to appeal to both discursivity and determin-
ability, but Maimon shows that determinability and discursivity exclude each other.
By casting the objection in terms of the relation of the faculties of intuition and the
understanding, Maimon calls into doubt not only the difference between events and
non-events, but also the status of the rule that ostensibly serves to distinguish the
two cases. And, as we shall see, this has important consequences for the project of
the Critique as a whole.
Before proceeding, it is important to stress the ways in which Maimon’s objection
differs from other, more familiar contemporary criticisms of the Second Analogy. 49
Here we may reintroduce the earlier distinction between the strong and weak read-
ings of the Analogy, and ask about the problems that confront each view. For the
strong reading ⫺ in which the ‘rule’ that justifies our causal judgments is an empiri-
cal causal law ⫺ a difficulty arises about the legitimacy of these laws: it seems that
the account of how empirical laws assume their nomological role is viciously circu-
lar. For the weak argument, the problem lies in how to account for causal laws at
all: here the notion of causality becomes so attenuated that it threatens to disappear.
48 What we take to be real determinations of objects in the world when “we … relate an
original perception, as a representation, to something (outside of consciousness) (which it
cannot be denied that we do)… happens through an illusion of the imagination” (GW V,
319).
49 This is not to assert that Maimon’s criticism is unique; many of the idealistic responses to
Kant focus on just the issue of the applicability of the categories to intuitions. It is impor-
tant to recognize, however, that Maimon’s criticisms of Kant come before other, perhaps
more familiar Hegelian criticisms, and indeed, there is good evidence to suggest that Mai-
mon’s influence on Fichte in turn directed the development of Hegel’s own critique of Kant.

462 Peter Thielke
However, despite their differences ⫺ and their attendant problems ⫺ both of these
positions take the nub of the issue of the Second Analogy to be the status of the
rule of causality. Maimon’s objection, on the other hand, does not follow these
familiar lines; instead, the central issue is not the nature of the rule of causality ⫺
that is, whether it is an empirical causal law or a transcendental rule ⫺ but rather
the ‘cognitive machinery’ that must be invoked to explain how the understanding’s
rules can be applied to the data of intuition. For Maimon, both the strong and
weak readings of the Analogy in an important respect miss the point: in their dis-
putes about the nature of the rule of causality, commentators in both camps have
neglected to ask about the possibility of the application of the rule, however it is
understood. The central problem of the Second Analogy, in other words, is not the
status of causal laws, but rather the problematic discursive model of cognition on
which the argument rests.
VI. Conclusions
If Kant cannot provide a satisfactory explanation of how the constraint on per-

ceptions imposed by causal judgments operates ⫺ or, more generally, how a partic-
ular category can apply to certain subsets of a posteriori intuitions ⫺ then the
model of cognition advanced in the Critique becomes suspicious. The issue of the
constraint on causal judgments makes this point nicely. As Maimon notes, the Kan-
tian dualism of sensibility and understanding faces the same problems that beset
Cartesian dualism: the relation between the two faculties is akin to the “explanation
of the community between soul and body.” 50 Like Descartes, Kant can assert that
a certain relation holds between wholly different faculties, but no proof or explana-
tion of this relation can be provided. Yet, as I have tried to show, the constraint on
succession that informs the Second Analogy appeals directly to this inexplicable
relation of sensibility and understanding. Kant is committed to an account of cogni-
tion that contains two wholly distinct elements ⫺ a posteriori intuitions and a
priori concepts ⫺ and the ‘irreversibility constraint’ at the heart of Kant’s treatment
of causality must be taken to bridge the gap between certain types of intuitions and
the category of causality. Yet Kant must also explain how one of two completely
distinct cognitive elements nevertheless imposes constraints on the other; at best,
Kant can assume that intuitions and concepts interact in such a way that the con-
straint has some force. It is this assumption that Maimon calls into question. Even
on a charitable reading of Kant’s cognitive story, Maimon claims, we still must
posit ⫺ rather than explain ⫺ the interaction between intuitions and categories. In
the case of causality, Maimon then denies the ‘factuality’ of the notion of the con-
straint that girds Kant’s account; more generally, his denial of the ‘fact of experi-
ence’ stands as a rejection of Kant’s discursive account of cognition. And at the
50 GW II, 62.

very least, Maimon’s challenge poses a problem for those who see in the Second
Analogy a definitive answer to skeptical worries about events in general.
Maimon’s criticisms of the Second Analogy, moreover, leave us in a position to
provide a ‘canonical’ formulation of Maimon’s Challenge to Kant. To recap the
path of the argument: Kant’s assumption of discursivity, as we have seen, forces
him to explain how the two separate faculties of intuition and understanding can
interact in order to produce experience. For Kant, this question is ostensibly an-
swered in § 26 of the B-Deduction, which shows that even the synthesis of appre-
hension of the manifold of intuition must accord with the pure concepts of the
understanding. In his explanation of how this process occurs, however, Kant must
appeal to the transcendental imagination, and its product, the transcendental sche-
matism. This step is supposed to guarantee that synthetic judgments are ‘princi-
pled,’ insofar as they relate concepts ⫺ albeit mediately ⫺ to intuitions.
For Maimon, however, the appeal to the transcendental schematism as the link be-
tween categories and particular intuitions remains unsatisfactory, for it does not ad-
dress the determinable relation between a priori concepts and a posteriori intuitions.
Maimon argues that Kant has failed to establish that this relation in fact holds. This
failure can be directly traced to Kant’s assumption of discursivity: by assuming that
the data of intuitions are given to the subject independently of the functions of the
understanding, the bridge between the two faculties can never be secured. Intuitions
can be shown to stand in a determinable relation with concepts, Maimon claims, only
by being constructed according to the rules specified by these concepts ⫺ but this ‘con-
structive condition’ is ruled out of court by Kant’s insistence on discursivity.
The reasons why this poses a problem are, as I have argued, made manifest in Mai-
mon’s challenge to the Second Analogy. Without being able to appeal to a determin-
able relation between categories and intuitions, Kant can provide no criteria to ex-
plain how the category of causality can discriminate between particular perceptions;
since intuitions and concepts arise from entirely separate faculties, there is no way to
specify criteria for the differentiation of given intuitions. It must be emphasized that
this is a transcendental issue: Maimon challenges the possibility of applying categories
to particular instances, rather than the empirical fact of whether the causal judgments
we make are borne out by experience. Without a determinable relation between cate-
gories and intuitions, no headway can be made in explaining the application of vari-
ous categories to different intuitive contents. In sum, then, Maimon’s challenge boils
down to the claim that Kant can assume the discursivity thesis, but he also needs some
account of determinability in order to avoid the ‘discrimination problem’; as Maimon
shows, however, discursivity excludes the requisite notion of determinability, for dis-
cursivity does not allow for the ‘constructive’ element determinability demands. And,
I want to suggest, in the face of this dilemma, the edifice of Kant’s critical idealism
seems in danger of collapsing. 51
51 I am grateful to Henry Allison, Ian Eagleson, Nick Jolley, Wayne Martin, and an anony-
mous referee for very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.


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Discursivity and Causality:

Maimon’s Challenge to the Second Analogy

Kant-Studien 92. Jahrg., S. 440⫺463

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embraced an odd amalgam of Humean skepticism and Leibnizian rationalism,

I. The Humean Red Herring

Gesammelte Werke (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1970), in volumes II and V, respectively.

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II. The Problem with Irreversibility

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15 This reconstruction is drawn from Henry Allison’s discussion in Kant’s Transcendental

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determining a causal judgment, but rather the possibility of irreversibility itself.

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III. Kantian Rejoinders

19 GW II, 188⫺9 (emphasis added).

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apprehension’ is determined by a rule, namely when it is taken to be irreversible.

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IV. The Difficulty with Discursivity

Although these Kantian replies pose a serious threat to Maimon’s position, I do

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28 GW V, 489⫺90 [emphasis added].

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schema simply is a “transcendental determination of time” (A 139/B 138). 36 Sup-

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determination of inner sense in general according to conditions of its form (time),

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V. Determinability and Real Thought

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something that can stand in a determinable relation with the categories of

46 One fruitful way of understanding the principle of determinability is to view it in light of

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minability cannot be shown to be satisfied: there is no knowable ground for the

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If Kant cannot provide a satisfactory explanation of how the constraint on per-

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