[I] was then making plans for a work that might perhaps have the title, “The Limits of Sense and Reason.” I planned to have it consist of two parts, a theoretical and a practical. The first part would have two sections, (1) general phenomenology and (2) metaphysics, but this only with regard to its method. (Letter to Marcus Herz, 21 February 1772 [C 10: 129])
Previous Installments:
#1: Introduction to The Limits of Sense and Reason
#3: Aiii/Biii/GW93-97 The Dedication
#4: Avii-ix/GW99 Preface to the First (A) Edition.
#5: Axi note/GW100-101 Preface to the First (A) Edition
#6: Axi note/GW100-101 Preface to the First (A) Edition
#7: Axii-xiv/GW101-102 Preface to the First (A) Edition
Because LSR is an ongoing and indeed infinite task, yearly installments of the book will be published in the online journal Contemporary Studies in Kantian Philosophy (CSKP).
Correspondingly, LSR, Part 1 has been published in CSKP 6 (2021): 11-109, and can be read, downloaded, or shared in .pdf HERE.
Moreover, a bibliography of Kant’s writings listed by English translations of their titles, alongside the abbreviations used for infratextual references in LSR, has been also been published in CSKP 6 (2021): 1-10, and can be read, downloaded, or shared in .pdf HERE.
CPR TEXT Axv-xvi/GW102-103 Preface to the First (A) Edition
Axv Furthermore certainty and clarity, two things that concern the form of the investigation, are to be viewed as essential demands, which may rightly be made on the author who ventures upon so slippery an undertaking.
As far as certainty is concerned, I have myself pronounced the judgment that in this kind of inquiry it is in no way allowed to hold opinions, and that anything that even looks like an hypothesis is a forbidden commodity, which should not be put up for sale even at the lowest price but must be confiscated as soon as it is discovered. For every cognition that is supposed to be certain a priori proclaims that it wants to be held for absolutely necessary, and even more is this true of a determination of all pure cognitions a priori, which is to be the standard and thus even the example of all apodictic (philosophical) certainty. Whether I have performed what I have just pledged in that respect remains wholly to the judgment of the reader, since it is appropriate for an author only to present the grounds, but not to judge about their effect on his judges. But in order that he should not inadvertently be the cause of Avi weakening his own arguments, the author may be permitted to note himself those places that, even though they pertain only to the incidental end of the work, may be the occasion for some mistrust, in order that he may in a timely manner counteract the influence that even the reader’s slightest reservation on this point may have on his judgment over the chief end.
***
COMMENTARY
Kant now turns to some special epistemic features of the critique of pure reason.
This all-too-brief but very important discussion should be taken as a partial preview of the third section of the Canon of Pure Reason, “On Opining, Knowing, and Believing” (CPR A820-831/B848-859).
It should also be particularly noted in this connection, that the all-too-brief discussion here in the A Preface and the longer-but-still-not-long-enough discussion in the Canon, when taken together, are in fact the only direct treatments, in the CPR, of “epistemology,” aka Erkenntnistheorie, in the late 19th century, 20th century, and early 21st century sense of that term, which in turn is a special and narrow sense conferred upon it by the neo-Kantian/neo-Hegelian traditions and the mainstream Analytic tradition that flows from those predecessor traditions.
In this sense, epistemology is the general theory of
(i) justified true belief (aka “the analysis of knowledge”), and
(ii) refutations of Cartesian external world (aka “veil-of-perception”) skepticism or Berkeleyan skeptical subjective idealism.
In other words, the CPR itself is not—I repeat not—a treatise in epistemology in this special and narrow sense, except accidentally and tangentially.
On the contrary, the CPR is essentially a treatise about
(i) the limits, cognitive inauthenticity, and cognitive suicide of classical metaphysics, especially classical Rationalist metaphysics, and
(ii) the nature of human Erkenntnis or “cognition,” mitigated rationalism, and anthropocentric, real metaphysics, that is, transcendental idealism.
Still, even granting that absolutely key point, Kant does have some very interesting things to say about epistemology, i.e., the theory of knowledge in a broad sense.
Nevertheless, it’s crucial to recognize that his conception of epistemology flows essentially from the Aristotelian/Scholastic tradition, via the classical Rationalist (namely, Descartes-Spinoza) and Leibniz-Wolff traditions, and that this conception, in turn, connects with our current philosophical conception of epistemology only in a way that’s refracted through the neo-Kantian, neo-Hegelian, and Analytic traditions.
So, like the bent-stick-in-water illusion, it’s nothing but an anachronistic interpretive illusion to think that Kant is mainly interested in the analysis of knowledge as justified true belief or in refuting Cartesian or Berkeleyan “veil of perception” skepticism.
Then, with all that in mind, then what is Kant saying about knowledge here?
He claims that there are two basic epistemic conditions of adequacy on the critique of pure reason:
(i) certainty (Gewiβheit), and
(ii) clarity (Deutlichkeit).
As he tells us much later in the Canon, certainty is to be directly contrasted with opining (Meinen).
Certainty is a strongly modal positive doxic attitude, whereas opining is a weakly modal positive doxic attitude.
Both certainty and opining can be contrasted, as a pair of positive doxic attitudes, with agnosticism and doubt, which as we have seen already, are negative doxic attitudes.
In any case, a cognition Cthat has certainty is non-hypothetical in the sense that if C is believed at all, then C is necessarily believed.
In short, C is completely convincing, intrinsically compelling, or self-evident.
By contrast, opinings are not certain in this sense: in opining, C can be believed without being necessarily believed, that is, C is held in such a way that it’s inherently open to revisability.
The positive doxic attitude of certainty, it seems, can attach to either empirical (a posteriori) or non-empirical (a priori) cognitions.
Now if a cognition C is “supposed to be” both certain and also a priori, then C is “proclaimed to be” absolutely necessary (schlechthinnotwendig).
So, and taking out the subjunctive qualifiers “supposed to be” and “proclaimed to be”, Kant is explicitly committed to the following left-to-right thesis:
Apriority entails absolute necessity.
Later, in CPR’s Introduction, we will see that Kant also asserts the converse or right-to-left thesis:
Absolute necessity entails apriority.
Combining these into a two-way thesis, and also construing entailment as an absolutely necessary material conditional, then we get what I’ll call The Classical Modal Epistemology Equivalence Thesis:
Absolutely necessarily, a judgment J (or proposition P) is absolutely necessary if and only if J (or P) is a priori.
The left-to-right conjunct of The Classical Modal Epistemology Equivalence Thesis (namely: absolutely necessarily, if a priori, then absolutely necessary) Kant says here, is true to an even greater degree of pure a priori cognitions, which are the paradigms of “all apodictic (philosophical) certainty.”
It’s difficult to know how we should interpret this claim, especially the greater-degree-of-truth part of it.
But one way of reading the whole claim is that Kant is saying that if anything satisfies the left-to-right conjunct of The Classical Modal Epistemology Equivalence Thesis, then pure a priori cognitions do.
Later on, in the Introduction, we’ll see that Kant thinks that at least some cognitions in pure general logic, pure mathematics, pure natural science or physics, and the real metaphysics of transcendental idealism, do indeed meet this paradigmatic classical modal epistemology standard, although no cognitions in classical metaphysics, especially including classical Rationalist metaphysics, except the basic truths of pure general logic, meet it.
Given his earlier seeming philosophical arrogance, now Kant rather modestly leaves it up to his readers to judge whether CPR meets this standard.
But in order to anticipate narrowly-focused criticisms of various proper parts of CPR that do not sufficiently consider the “chief end” of the book, he also reserves to himself the right to note places, in advance, where he’s unsure whether his arguments do indeed individually satisfy the left-to-right conjunct of The Classical Modal Epistemology Equivalence Thesis.
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