Jacobi's Criticism of Kant

 Jacobi famously said about the Critique of Pure Reason that without the presupposition of the thing-in-itself you cannot enter the system while with it you cannot stay within the system. In his essay ‘David Hume on faith’ he brings forcefully the charge that transcendental philosophy cuts us off from reality:

 

“It is plainly impossible to stay within the system with that presupposition, since the presupposition is based on the conviction of the objective validity of our perception of objects outside us as things in themselves, not merely subjective appearances; and it rests equally on the conviction of the objective validity of our representations of the necessary connections of these objects to one another and of their essential relations as objectively real determinations. But these are assertions which cannot in any way be reconciled with Kantian philosophy, since the whole intention of the latter is to prove that the objects (as well as their relations) are merely subjective beings, mere determinations of our own self, with absolutely no existence outside us. For even if it can be conceded, under Kant's view, that a transcendental somewhat might correspond to these merely subjective beings, which are only determinations of our own being, as their cause, where this cause is, and what kind of connection it has with its effect, remains hidden in the deepest obscurity. We have already seen, moreover, that we cannot attain to any experience of this transcendental something, or become in the least aware of it, either from near or from far, but that all the objects of our experience are mere appearances, the matter and real content of which is nothing but our own sensation through and through. With respect to the particular determinations of this sensation, (its source I mean) or, to speak the language of Kantian philosophy, the manner in which we are affected by objects, we are in the most complete ignorance. And as for the inner elaboration or digestion of this matter through which it receives its form, so that the sensations in us become objects for us—this rests on a spontaneity of our being, the principle of which is once more totally unknown, and all that we know about it is that its primitive manifestation is that of a blind faculty which combines forwards and backwards and which we call imagination. But since the concepts that originate in this way, together with the judgments and propositions that grow out of them, have no validity except with reference to our sensations, our whole cognition is nothing but the consciousness of the combinations of determinations of our own self. And from these we cannot pass by inference to anything else at all. Our universal representations, concepts and principles express only the essential form to which every particular representation and every particular judgment must conform because of the constitution of our nature, in order to be capable of being assumed and joined together into one universal or transcendental consciousness, and in this way obtain a relative truth or a relative objective validity. But if we abstract from the human form, these laws of our intuition and thought are without any meaning or validity, and do not yield the slightest information about the laws of nature in itself. Neither the principle of sufficient reason, nor even the proposition that nothing can come from nothing, apply to things in themselves. In brief, our entire cognition contains nothing, nothing whatsoever that could have any truly objective meaning at all.” (Jacobi: 336-337)

 

It is impossible to stay within the system by presupposing the thing-in-itself because the object of the Critique is to prove the objective validity of our concepts and perception but this validity is restricted to appearances which are the determinations of the self while validity should have been proved in reference to the things-in-themselves or to what is real. The conclusion of the Critique then seems to be that we can know no more than our appearances and never the reality itself. Kant on the one side retains the dualism between sensible and intelligible and in relation to the latter finds the former to be an appearance and not the reality but on the other hand as we saw in the passage from the Prolegomena he also wants to emphasize an idealism that explains that only within experience can be find the truth and falsehood and this is because experience involves an a-priori element since its genesis depends on forms of understanding. These two lines of thought conflict with one another but while Kant seems to feel the pinch he still is unable to resolve the issue. Why cannot Kant simply get rid of things-in-themselves? He cannot because this would be tantamount to getting rid of reality altogether. Kant retains the empiricist view that all knowledge of reality comes to us a-posteriori through our senses. The things-in-themselves somehow affect us and this affection points to a reality beyond ourselves and also assists us in limiting our concepts and intuitions to our experience i.e. to what finite beings like ourselves can experience. We would not be finite beings if we were not limited to a world outside us. This also implies that objective validity belongs to the world of experience that is indexed to us and is not valid for all finite beings – beings that may have intuitions or concepts different from us. So we see that Kant despite criticism retained a robust notion of things-in-themselves because otherwise we would be cut off from all reality and philosophy will be reduced to formal logic. This is the charge that Kant brings against Fichte:

“The mere self-consciousness, or, to be more correct, the mere form of thought without matter - consequently without the reflection having anything before it to which it could be applied makes a queer impression upon the reader. When you think you are going to lay hold on an object, you lay hold on yourself instead; in fact the groping hand grasps only itself."

However we should not belittle Fichte’s problems. As Jacobi points out and as Maimon also would eventually point towards - the assumption of things-in-themselves is inconsistent with the basic principles of transcendental philosophy. Kant like Descartes and Locke before him seems to believe that there is a rational connection between sensation and things-in-themselves that allows us to infer the existence of the former on the basis of the latter. While matter of cognition depends on external reality, the form is within us and so the inference depends on the principle of causality which is a rule of understanding found a-priori within us. By definition things-in-themselves do not conform to forms of understanding yet for the inference to go through they will have to conceived as the cause of our sensations and hence as nevertheless conforming to the forms of understanding. Could we salvage the situation by assuming a distinction between thinking and cognizing? Maybe Kant meant that things-in-themselves cannot be objects of cognition but can nevertheless be thought. There is textual basis for this interpretation and Kant seems to agree that it is possible to think about entities outside us even though without the addition of intuition we cannot know their existence from thought alone. That answers our question, the inference would be only formally valid but not materially valid and would yield no knowledge of existence because it can never be an object of cognition. The laws of understanding are subjective conditions which together with intuition are supposed to explain objective knowledge. Objective knowledge however has to be knowledge of the object itself or what is real but this comes to conflict with the aim of the Critique to limit knowledge to appearances. Kant cannot deprive us of reality yet he cannot afford us reality itself. Jacobi points out this problem when he says that when we use the word ‘object’ we mean an object in the ‘transcendental’ sense as something actually existing outside us. Can we know anything about an object in the transcendental sense?

 

Jacobi argues that from within the vantage point of transcendental philosophy there is no rational connection between our concepts and the thing-in-itself. If the transcendental philosopher accepts that there is a rational connection between the two then he forfeits his claim of finding the limit of knowledge and if he accepts that things-in-themselves have no connection whatsoever with our concepts then he accepts that we have no knowledge of actual existence or of reality itself. It is at this point that Jacobi brings the charge that the model of rationality presupposed by the Enlightenment is flawed. To show what is wrong with this model of rationality Jacobi distinguishes between principle of generation and principle of composition:

 

“Imagine a circle, and then raise your representation to a clear concept. If the concept is determined exactly, and does not contain anything non-essential, the whole which is being represented will then have an ideal unity, and, since the parts are combined together with necessity, they will derive from it. But now, if we are speaking of the necessary combination of a succession, and believe that we are thus representing what does the combining itself in time, we never truly have anything in thought except just the kind of relationship that obtains in the circle. And within this relationship all the parts are in effect already united into a whole, and they are present at once. We omit the succession, the objective becoming—as if it were self-explanatory how it occurs visibly before our eyes. But in fact, it is precisely this, namely the medium of the occurrence, the ground of the event, the interior element of time, in brief, the principium GENERATIONS, that should really have been explained.” (Jacobi: 288)

 

Enlightenment Model of Rationality according to Jacobi is based on the principle of sufficient reason which assumes that the nature of reality and the concept are in tandem so that by making our concepts more clear and distinct we can understand or explain reality as it is. Since PSR says that everything that is must have a reason it is committed to the perspective that every sensible reality is intelligible and it would not exist if it were not intelligible. To have a reason to exist is to be intelligible or explainable and since explanation is always based on concepts we also assume that our concepts and reality are appropriately connected. Now Jacobi argues that on this model of rationality the whole is prior to the parts, cause and effect are simultaneous because they are based on the principle of understanding – ground and consequence. A cause cannot exist without the effect and the effect has no existence without the cause. Their existence mutually imply each other. But in actual existence things are different. The existence of the whole arises through the parts. The existence of the cause is prior to the existence of the effect. Things do not exist simultaneously but successively within time. However our concepts are a-temporal and do not take into consideration the mode of generation of actual things within time. Yet since things exist within time our concepts must explain existence as arising within a temporal framework or drop the pretension of providing an explanation. The actual existence or reality itself must be taken to be falling outside the network of our concepts that when applied to reality give us a distorted picture or a flawed ontology however appropriate they may be for scientific purposes. We saw that this is a position taken by empiricists like Berkeley and Hume. The sensible do not obey any laws of understanding and Berkeley argues at length that mathematics no matter how useful does not have ontological validity. Geometry may for instance commit us to infinite divisibility of matter by its a-priori logic but there is no contradiction in affirming that there is a minimum sensibilia. Again in the case of causality laws of understanding dictate that there is a contradiction in denying the existence of the cause while affirming the existence of the effect. Hume does not want to say that something can begin to exist without a cause but he nevertheless does not find a contradiction in affirming an effect and denying a cause. What he has challenged is the assumption that there is a-priori connection between concepts and existence and that existence can only be known through an immediate feeling while for Berkeley it was the actual presence of an object to consciousness. Jacobi finds himself in agreement with empiricists on this matter and emphasizes that philosophy as a science is based on PSR that gives us a distorted picture of reality:

 

“What cannot be conceived, therefore, is succession itself; far from explaining it to us, the principle of sufficient reason could tempt us to deny the reality of all succession. For if nothing else is obtained with the principium GENERATIONS than with the principium COMPOSITIONS, then every effect must be thought of as being objectively simultaneous with its cause. And if the effect is a cause in its turn, then its immediate consequence must again be simultaneous with it, and so on ad infinitum. So we simply cannot attain to a concept that would explain the appearance of sequence, of time, or of flux on these lines. For to want to shove in some hybrid of being and nothing between cause A and effect B would be tantamount (in my view) to making the absurd into the vehicle of the understanding.” (Jacobi: 290)

 

Spinoza’s philosophy is the paradigm of consistent application of PSR that is committed to denying God, Soul and Immortality because it is committed to a determinism incompatible with freedom. Like Kant freedom was an important issue for Jacobi and both philosophers develop a system to justify the existence of freedom. But by condemning enlightenment rationality Jacobi in effect was showing that all efforts to provide a rational explanation of the world and of the human institutions are doomed to failure and even Leibniz’s philosophy eventually collapses in Spinoza’s philosophy. In Spinoza’s philosophy the whole is at once present and the sole reality while the parts – time itself are ens imaginarium. At first sight Kant’s project is in tandem with Jacobi’s. In a sense he distinguishes between the principle of generation and principle of composition. In his Transcendental Aesthetic he proves that space and time are not conceptually structured and this is his point of emphasis against rationalism. He also accepts the empiricist’s criteria of reality as accessible through our senses and our concepts of understanding are purely formal lacking any existential commitment till they are conjoined with a material element – sensible intuition. Yet Jacobi believes that Kant’s ambivalent position regarding things-in-themselves is inconsistent with the logic of transcendental philosophy which is committed to denying them and accepting the position that all that we can know are the determinations of the self or appearances. Maimon’s position then Jacobi would say is a consistent transcendental idealism – the sum total of appearances is the only reality and there is no reality outside appearances. The reason Maimon can hold onto such a view is because the sum total of appearances or anything that exists is defined in relation to an infinite understanding outside which nothing can exist. Human understanding by implication is a fiction – a confused form of understanding and we can elevate our understanding by bringing it closer to the ideal of universal validity found in fact only in infinite reason. Human understanding however can also be understood as a psychological prejudice subject to doubt which can be alleviated only partially through induction or bringing subjective validity ever closer to objective validity in terms of probability. Jacobi’s problem with this school of thought would not be much different from Husserl’s later on who believed that science has somehow compromised the integrity of the life-world. Our ideas of truth and falsehood are dependent on experience which has been pronounced to be a product of psychological deception. This meaningful life world is accessible to us through our immediate conviction but it is not accessible to science. Here Jacobi has made a reversal of Hume’s position. The latter made existence dependent on natural belief or immediate feeling. Jacobi does the same but this natural belief is for him not a-contextual but something to be found within the life-world itself. It is accessible to everyone but because of the pronouncements of science against it we have lost this inner conviction and Jacobi believes his philosophy is therapeutic because it teaches us to trust this inner conviction again. The first step towards it is to realize that we have no rational or conceptual justification for belief in the external world or the actual existence of anything. But our inward conviction informs us validly and truthfully of the existence of an actual reality. While Jacobi’s philosophy is condemned as a plea for irrationality, he saw himself as salvaging the claims of reason if properly understood. What he was rejecting was the enlightenment’s model of rationality and not rationality itself. In order to understand his alternative conception of rationality, his reasons for believing in the objective validity of the concepts of God, soul and immortality and his position vis-à-vis Kant we need to turn to his 1815 preface to his essay ‘David Hume on faith’ where the clearest exposition of these matters is given.

 

The most important point here is to understand the distinction between Reason and understanding. The biggest fault that Jacobi finds in his 1815 preface to his 1787 essay ‘David Hume on faith’ is that in the latter he does not distinguish between reason and understanding leaving ambiguous the word ‘reason’. What he meant by the word ‘faith’ is what he intends now to call reason as distinguished from understanding:

 

“Like all other contemporary philosophers, he called something that is not reason by the name of "reason"—i.e. the mere faculty of concepts, judgments, and inferences that hovers above the senses but is unable to reveal anything at all by itself. But what reason truly is in actuality, i.e. the faculty of presupposing the true, the good, and the beautiful in itself, with full assurance of the objective validity of the presupposition—this the author expounded under the tide "power of faith," as a faculty that is above reason. This was bound to give occasion to serious misunderstandings, and involved the author himself generally in unsurmountable difficulties in expressing and presenting his true meaning.” (Jacobi: 541)

 

So what according to Jacobi is Reason and how should it be distinguished from understanding?

 

“Ever since Aristotle the growing tendency among the schools has always been to subordinate immediate knowledge to mediated cognition. The faculty of perception that originally grounds everything has been subordinated to the faculty of reflection, which is conditioned by abstraction—in other words, the prototype has been subordinated to the ectype; or the essence to the word, and reason to understanding. Indeed, reason has been allowed to sink into understanding entirely, and to disappear in it. From now on nothing was to count as true that was not demonstrable, i.e. amenable to a double proof by turns: in intuition and in the concept, in the fact and in its image or word. And it was only in the latter, in the word, that the fact truly lay and could actually be known. Now, because of the pre-eminence of the second over the first, this showing and re-showing proved to be appropriate to the understanding, but not to reason. Hence reason was declared incompetent to wield the sceptre in the kingdom of true science. So even though, remarkably enough, reason was still accorded the royal title and the ornament of the crown, the sceptre was delivered to the understanding.” (Jacobi: 541)

 

Reason for Jacobi is a kind of immediate knowledge that allows us to grasp the actual existence of the world. Before coming to Jacobi’s conception of Reason we need to see what Reason is not yet confused to be and how and why should we distinguish Reason from understanding the failure to do which can lead to serious philosophical misunderstandings. To return to this passage, Jacobi avers that since Aristotle immediate knowledge has been subordinated to mediate cognition i.e. the demand of knowledge has been to conceptualize and systematize what has been grasped within intuition. Unfortunately there is a loss in this process, the object of intuition reveals more than what human language can conceptualize. Hence he says the ectype or essence has been subordinated to the word and this is what leads Reason to degrade into understanding – the former being intuitive while the latter is discursive. This tendency to discursivity spreads itself further by making discourse the benchmark of rationality, so what cannot be proved, demonstrated or conceptualized becomes irrational and thereby the claims of Reason themselves become irrational. This is a serious loss because it is Reason that makes us different from animals because it brings us in touch with the supersensible:

 

“If what we call reason were merely the product of a faculty of reflection resting on sense experience alone, then all the talk of supersensible things would be only prattle. Reason would have, as such, no foundation; it would be a poetic fancy. If it is truly revelatory however, then there comes to be a human understanding through it which is exalted above the animal one—an understanding, that knows about God, about freedom and virtue, the true, the beautiful and the good.” (Jacobi: 540)

 

Without the values of truth, freedom, beauty there would be no human understanding which aims at the truth, no ethics which depends on human accountability and his freedom to act contrary to dictates of nature and no aesthetics which believes that it finds something truly worth beholding within nature. So reason is not the faculty of concepts, judgements and inferences because these depend on an intimation of truth or on a higher faculty because the knowledge of the goal is prior to the choice of the method to achieve it. Human understanding is mechanical and rule-based but Reason is not. No computer can understand that Goldbach’s conjecture is true because it would seek to prove it which would take an infinity. Human understanding is based on concepts but this faculty itself depends on a higher faculty which brings it in touch with the truth but which itself cannot be defined in terms of concepts. In order to conceptualize well enough we already need an intuition – a rational intuition that allows us to discriminate our discursive activity and to keep tabs when we are performing our tasks correctly or incorrectly. Human rationality consists of the ability to hold ourselves responsible to certain standards and it also consists of the ability to assess these standards. Human rationality is self-reflexive, it is able both to set standards for itself and in turn to make normative assessments about these standards. There cannot be a method (rule or procedure) to select a method because this process would go on ad infinitum. To find axioms based on their self-evidence is enough for ensuring their truth but our problem is that we try to conceptualize this inner intimation of truth exhibiting self-evidence and this drive to conceptualize never stops and it renders naught the entire foundation of science. Human understanding realizes that its conceptual edifice rests on certain foundation and then it turns back to find those foundations but in the process it uses the same tools that it uses in its external drive to reduce sensible evidence to discourse. In trying to reflect on the evidence of the senses to find the concept of the concept it tries to conceptualize these foundations resting in God like Descartes tried to do. So on the one hand we cannot reject the self-reflexivity of Reason otherwise we end up with a mechanical human understanding on the basis of which we cannot distinguish animal rationality from human rationality while on the other hand we cannot find the concept of the concept and faculty of reflection is doomed. The only way out of this quandary is to accept that we have a rational intuition which brings us in touch with actual reality with immediate evidence but which is in itself incomprehensible or incapable of being conceptualized. Hence a metaphysics that seeks to build a science of the supersensible or the science of the foundations of human knowledge and existence or the Concept of the concept cannot succeed because a faculty of reflection based on sense-experience lacks the immediate evidence of a higher faculty that is perceptive but not sensible yet entirely rational. Further Jacobi believes that it was Kant’s immortal contribution to show once and for all that a faculty of reflection based on sense-experience trying to build a metaphysics or a science of the supersensible is doomed to failure:

 

“Kant appeared on the scene, examined this edifice of Babel, and demonstrated incontrovertibly that it is in no way possible to come with it to a pinnacle that penetrates the clouds of the senses, touching the beyond of appearances. Or to speak without metaphors: He showed that what are paraded as cognitions of the supersensible are ideas generated only through negations; their validity must forever remain unprovable.” (Jacobi: 543)

 

Kant showed that human understanding is purely formal and cognition depends on the combination of form with matter. By showing the dependence of understanding on sensibility Kant also proved that in trying to escape the boundaries of the senses into the supersensible understanding leads to dialectical illusions because without sensibility on which understanding is dependent for its content, it is a form which cannot provide knowledge of existence at all. In order to provide us with a cognition of the supersensible understanding would need a rational or intellectual intuition but human understanding is purely discursive and hence it is devoid of the knowledge of the supersensible. It is here that Jacobi finds a problem with Kant who has at this point failed to carry further his discovery by formulating the distinction between Reason and understanding, has instead collapsed the former to the latter. Here Jacobi returns to his criticism of things-in-themselves but with the addition of placing it in context of his discussion of the difference between reason and understanding:

 

“What divides me from the Kantian doctrine is only what divides it from itself too, and makes it incoherent, namely that, as we have shown earlier, it both presupposes and denies the existence of two specifically distinct sources of cognition in man's mind. It presupposes them implicitly and unbeknownst to itself. But it denies them explicitly, openly, and radically. The Kantian doctrine begins with the claim that apart from sense intuition (empirical and pure) there is no other source of cognition from which the understanding could draw concepts that are objectively valid and would truly enlarge its knowledge. It proceeds from this claim explicitly and openly, abiding by it to the end, and substantiating it all the way. Although it is called a second source of cognition, the understanding itself is not truly that, since objects cannot be given through it but can only be thought. To think means to judge. Judgment, however, presupposes the antecedent concept, and the concept presupposes intuition. One cannot think without knowing that there is something outside of thought to which it must conform—which it must verify. If there are a priori intuitions that condition actual experience itself, then there can also be a priori concepts and judgments that are independent of it, i.e. that are formed prior to experience. But according to Kant, unless something is given, either in pure or in empirical intuition, the understanding that arises from the basic faculty of the mind, the imagination, cannot develop to the point of attaining an actual existence. Consequently, understanding is conditioned by the senses, to which it always refers in its thinking as just a means. The understanding, however, as from concepts it begets concepts of concepts, and thus makes its way gradually up to ideas, can easily give the impression that, in virtue of these merely logical phantoms arising for it above the intuitions of the senses, it has truly taken flight above the world of the senses and above itself, and that this flight gives to it, not just the faculty, but the most decisive criterion, for a higher science independent of intuition, i.e. a science of the supersensible.” (Jacobi: 550-551)

 

Kant in Jacobi’s view conclusively proved that understanding cannot provide the knowledge of actual existence of anything without the addition of intuition whether sensible or pure and hence in itself understanding is purely formal. Thinking is nothing but judging and so far as judgements depend on concepts they also depend on something external to which they try to conform to in order to be assessable for truth or falsity. Kant’s Copernican Revolution showed that the concepts need not depend on objects but the object depends on the concept. Yet Kant also retained a commitment to things-in-themselves that do not conform to concepts and yet whose existence has to be accepted otherwise there is no actual existence and the critical system would be purely formal like the rationalism of Wolff, Baumgarten et al which it is criticizing. There are two different ways we can admit the existence or atleast the possibility of existence of things-in-itself. First we can infer their existence based on the principle of causality from the fact of sensation but as we saw this compromises the integrity of the system because we cannot infer the existence of something that by definition does not conform to our concepts. The second possibility arises due to Ideas which have a content that cannot be satisfied within experience and so make us aware of the limitation of the limits of our experience. The problem with this option is as Norman Kemp Smith notes in his commentary on the Critique - there is an ambiguity in Kant’s conception of Ideas which can be given two kind of interpretations, one which Smith calls sceptical and the second idealist. The sceptical reading says:

 

“The so-called Ideas are based upon experience and are derived from it. The understanding removes the limitations to which its pure concepts are subject in sense-experience, and proceeds to use them in their widest possible application, i.e. to things in general. As thus employed, they are without real significance, and are indeed self-contradictory…..To form the Idea of the unconditioned, we have to omit all those conditions through which alone anything can be apprehended, even as possible. We body forth to ourselves, in more or less metaphorical terms, the concept of a maximum. They are imaginary extensions, in Ideal form, of the unity and system which understanding has discovered in actual experience, and which, under the inspiration of such Ideals, it seeks to realise in ever-increasing degree. If the understanding, as thus insisting upon Ideal satisfaction, be entitled Reason, the Ideas must be taken as expressing a subjective interest, and as exhausting their legitimate employment in the regulation of the understanding……As the sole legitimate function of the Ideas is that of inspiring the understanding in its empirical employment, they must never be interpreted as having metaphysical significance. As the Ideas exist solely for the sake of experience, it is they that must be condemned, if the two really diverge. We do not say "that a man is too long for his coat, but that the coat is too short for the man." It is experience, not Ideas, which forms the criterion alike of truth and of reality.” (Kemp Smith 1923: 429-430)

 

And the second idealist reading says:

 

“Kant's teaching, when on Idealist lines, is of a very different character. Reason is distinct from understanding, and yet is no less indispensably involved in the conditioning of experience. All consciousness is consciousness of a whole which precedes and conditions its parts. Such consciousness cannot be accounted for by assuming that we are first conscious of the conditioned, and then proceed through omission of its limitations to form to ourselves, by means of the more positive factors involved in this antecedent consciousness, an Idea of an unconditioned whole. The Idea of the unconditioned is distinct in nature from all other concepts, and cannot be derived from them. It must be a pure a priori product of what may be named the faculty of Reason…..As it is involved in all consciousness, it conditions all other concepts; and cannot, therefore, be defined in terms of them. Its significance must not be looked for save in that Ideal, to which no experience, and no concept other than itself, can ever be adequate……Consciousness of limitation presupposes a consciousness of what is beyond the limit; consciousness of the unconditioned is prior to, and renders possible, our consciousness of the contingently given. The Idea of the unconditioned must therefore be counted as being, like the categories, though in a somewhat different manner, a condition of the possibility of experience. With it our standards both of truth and of reality are inextricably bound up……According to the sceptical view, Reason is concerned only with itself and its own subjective demands; on the Idealist view, it is a metaphysical faculty, and outlines possibilities that may perhaps be established by practical Reason. (Kemp Smith 1923: 430-431)

 

The second reading informs a view held by Descartes that the infinite cannot be known by negating the finite but the finite presupposes the infinite. There can be no doubt that Kant did not want to abolish the intelligible world consisting of God, Soul and Immortality. He wanted to limit knowledge to make room for faith. To make the consciousness of the finite depend on the infinite is a way to limit knowledge from outside – an indication that outside our sources of finite cognition there is a possible existence to which our consciousness as finite being points to but which is unknowable. This view is similar to the view held by Jacobi except he sees Kant not consistently adhering to it:

 

“In actual fact, then, the Kantian philosophy does rest on such a higher faculty. And it does not rest on it only at the end, as it might seem, in order to add to itself by violence an indispensable "keystone of the edifice of philosophy, without which the latter would collapse upon itself and plunge into an abyss of scepticism that the master-builder himself has opened up." It rests on it, rather, from the very beginning, at the place where that higher faculty, through the absolute presupposition of a thing in itself, actually lays the foundation and cornerstone of the edifice. For this thing-in-itself is revealed to the faculty of cognition neither in the appearances nor through them—though only with them, in an utterly positive or mystical fashion, incomprehensible both to the senses and to the understanding.” (Jacobi: 546)

 

We know that there is a thing-in-itself outside the existence of the finite being because we have a higher faculty of Reason distinct from understanding. It is not sensation but rational intuition that informs our belief in the actual existence of a realm outside our finite existence and which limits the pretensions of our knowledge. So it is only on the basis of Reason that Kant can hold onto the possibility of the existence of things-in-themselves. Unfortunately there is another tendency in Kant that seeks to assimilate the dictates of Reason to understanding. If this sceptical reading is adopted then Kant’s is a radical finitism. Jacobi believes that transcendental philosophy forces us to adopt this view – we can know nothing outside the determinations of the self and the ideals of pure reason do not point to the existence of an infinite unconditioned reality but to a subjective urge to completeness and transcendence of limitations. Kant it seems does not want to hold such a view yet it seems that from within his philosophy such a view is inescapable. Here we see how the issues of thing-in-itself and Reason and Understanding come together and on this rests the basis of the interpretation of Kant as grounding metaphysics as a subjective urge consistently with a radical finitism or a Platonist who believes that there is an intelligible world outside the finite existence which is limited to appearance not reality. Jacobi’s charge against Kant then rests on this – if Reason is not seen as a higher faculty distinct from understanding it cannot provide us with any knowledge of existence and if it is seen as a concept of a concept or a mediated cognition grounded in a subjective urge to infinity then transcendental philosophy traps us in a solipsism from which there is no escape. The only alternative is Jacobi’s – Reason as distinct from understanding is a form of immediate knowledge of the supersensible whose content is not amenable to conceptual reduction. This logic it seems was decisive for Schelling and Hegel and led to a reinterpretation of the problem of the synthetic a-priori as pertaining to the relation of the infinite and the finite since the infinite is the source of both intelligibility and sensibility – essence and existence. What however is seldom recognized within contemporary scholarship is this question cannot be raised until and unless one abandons the possibility of a transcendental philosophy which is in fact what both Schelling and Hegel did.

 

Finally how should we see Jacobi’s claim to objective validity of the categories of Reason. He believes that all he needs to prove in this regard is that since the objective validity of understanding depends on its material element – sensible intuition, in the case of Reason it depends on a rational intuition. There is however one problem that Jacobi does not address. He does not make clear the relation between Reason and understanding and yet he finds it absolutely necessary that the former must depend on the latter. Let us compare these two passages:

 

“What is being claimed here is not that nothing permanent can be cognized in the mutable, but only that we must already have cognized something permanent in order to re-cognize it in the mutable. If the mutable contained nothing of the permanent, it could not exist at all even as changeable; it couldn't even simply appearing any way at all. For this reason the understanding turned towards the world of the senses alone, pressing ahead on the strength of its thought alone, ends up by transforming this world necessarily into the One and All of nothingness.” (Jacobi: 568)

 

And:

 

“In my opinion, the question whether man is distinguished from animal according to kind and not only according to degree, i.e. through less or more of the same powers, is therefore one and the same as the question, "Is human reason an understanding only hovering above the intuitions of the senses and in reality only referring back to these, or is it a higher faculty that gives man a positive revelation of the true, the good, and the beautiful in itself, and does not just lead him to believe empty images (ideas) devoid of objective reference?" (Jacobi: 548)

 

If we compare these passages we find that (i) there is a difference of kind between Reason and understanding, (ii) understanding moving in the world of senses without the aid of Reason necessarily leads to nihilism and reduces the multiple reality to a One like Spinoza’s Absolute or ends in solipsism like Transcendental philosophy. Hence contrary to what Kant says in the Prolegomena truth cannot be found within experience alone, (iii) in order to cognize the permanent (values like truth, beauty, freedom) within the mutable world we must have known the permanent beforehand and the permanent must be something that can be found within the mutable, (iv) hence reason without understanding would not be helpful at all because in order to recognize the permanent within the mutable one also needs a grasp of the mutable. So just as cognition is based on both senses and understanding, Reason too depends on the inputs of senses and understanding to perform its function in order to recognize the immutable within the mutable. The problem is how we should conceive the relation between Reason and understanding. According to Jacobi understanding and the senses in themselves are devoid of objectivity. It is only through Reason that we have objective knowledge or knowledge of reality as it is. Even though Reason intimates the presence of certain knowledge within us, the presence of this knowledge cannot be explained because it arises in a mysterious fashion within us and hence its presence is incomprehensible to understanding. We can be confident that the Reason presents us with objectively valid knowledge because its content is unlike the content of understanding and not subject to confirmation by the senses. The content of knowledge that Reason provides us is not even remotely similar to the content of the senses and hence understanding can never arrive at this knowledge by abstracting and reflecting over the input of the senses. So we see that the relation between Reason and understanding is a negative one – the content of the former is transcendental and has no similarity to the content of thought and the senses. This implies that no positive content can be ascribed to the content of Reason otherwise it would be thinkable because the purely intelligible content is indistinguishable from nothing. To understand this problem better we should compare it with an analogous problem that Descartes faced. In the first proof of the existence of God, Descartes’s inference rests on the content of the idea of infinite perfection which could not have been caused by a finite thinking being. Descartes’s aim is to show that the positive content of the idea of infinity is incomprehensible and hence points to the existence of an actual God who is infinite. Yet he also has to prove that the source of this Idea is God himself in order to ground the objectivity of science. On the one hand the inference rests on proving that God is not bounded by the subjective necessity of thought which proves that there is something that necessarily exists outside me and on the other hand the existence of God from his Idea can only go through if the object conforms to the content thought in the Idea. In other words to use Gueroult’s phrase the problem is to choose between a living God and a rational God. How does Descartes manage to balance these opposite demands? The Idea of infinity has a positive content which is incomprehensible to the thinking subject. The subject can think of infinity through negating the finite but this manner of thinking does not belong to the content of the idea but rather falls within the subjective end of the ledger. The Idea of perfection connects thought to the existence of God because God is infinitely perfect and so conforms to the Idea but simultaneously in virtue of this confirming it is also independent of the limits of thought. The idea at once brings us in touch with the actual and free existence of God and limits the possibility of finite thought. The content of the idea is incomprehensible in the sense that no adequate conception can be formed of infinity but its content is nevertheless conceivable which assures us that there is a living and free God corresponding to our Idea of God and who puts Ideas within us that are objectively valid. To relate this to Jacobi’s case we only have via negative route to the infinite but no positive thinkable content can be ascribed to it and so it cannot be seen as the ground of objective knowledge. There can be no objectively valid knowledge if no positive content by can be ascribed to the Idea of God, Soul and Immortality. The ‘permanent’ cannot be seen within the ‘mutable’ if there is no resonance between the two. To bring up some of Maimon’s sceptical objections again, the mutable consists of no sign that it embodies the permanent. Also since it is incomprehensible how the objective knowledge of God etc. arises within us it can also be regarded as originating due to understanding without our knowing it. Consequently we see that Jacobi has not successfully distinguished Reason from understanding and no objectively valid knowledge can be ascribed to content of pure reason.