Notes on <Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason> - The Problem of Metaphysics
In the sphere of metaphysics we vacillate between dogmatism, skepticism and indifference, metaphysics “has hitherto been a merely random groping”. Against this background, Kant makes his famous announcement of a Copernican revolution in philosophy: “Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects”, but since this assumption has conspicuously failed to yield any metaphysical knowledge, we “must therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks of metaphysics, if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge.”
Historical background: the Enlightenment and its problems
In the world view of scholasticism, knowledge of God and knowledge of nature had complemented one another. At the time of Enlightenment, the question presented itself as to how knowledge of nature, and knowledge of God, were to be co-ordinated. The favored Enlightenment solution was natural theology, which exalted the order of nature, in place of revelation, as proof of God’s existence, making reason the foundation of religion, since it is reason that cognizes order in nature, however it effectively disposed of biblical authority. The possibility of conflict between science and religion - with morality hanging in the balance - obtruded increasingly. Metaphysics, as guardian of reason and human knowledge as a whole, found itself with divided loyalties.
Natural science and metaphysics, both of which could claim to be rational descriptions of reality, should contradict one another, amounted to sheer paradox, and meant that the autonomous exercise of reason in scientific research posed a threat to rational religion.
The most powerful onslaught on the dogmas of the age was Hume’s skeptical empiricism. On Hume’s account, our beliefs about the external world have no foundation in reason and repose entirely on “habit” or “custom”, the operation of associative and other mechanical propensities of the mind.
Rousseau associated human nature, moral consciousness and religious faith, not with man’s independent power of reason, but with feeling, sentiment intérieur and denied the priority of reason. The net result of Rousseau’s philosophy was to create a doubt: had the activities of reason - including perhaps the metaphysics of philosophers - played a part in corrupting and immiserating humanity, and warping its moral understanding of the world?
The anti-intellectualism of the Counter-Enlightenment is also reflected in religion. Pietism, an evangelical Lutheran movement that had originated in Germany towards the end of the seventeenth century as a reaction against Protestant dogmatism. Once established, Pietism tended to fossilize and became dogmatic in turn, but in its inception it was a religion of the inner spirit rather than outward forms, which set store by personal experience of conversion, cultivation of an inward devotional life and the manifestation of a morally good will in charitable works. Pietism lay ready with a solution: the independence of religion from reason.
These growing and seemingly irresolvable tensions within the Enlightenment pervaded the intellectual world inhabited by Kant. Kant’s achievement was to create a philosophy of the Enlightenment in its maturity that took account of the difficulties confronting it, and brought it to a culmination.
Is metaphysics possible? (The Preface)
The conflict of Newtonian science with Leibnizian metaphysics, of rationalist dogmatism with skeptical empiricism, of the scientific world-view with morality and religion caused the Enlightenment to falter and gave direction to Kant’s pre-Critical endeavors, are instances of metaphysics in conflict with itself. This leads to skeptical or indifference towards metaphysical questions.
It’s easy to rule out indifference since metaphysics exists, as Kant puts it, “if not as science, yet still as natural disposition”. What makes skepticism about metaphysics unsustainable is that metaphysics cannot be repudiated in isolation from cognition in general. Metaphysical enquiry employs the same cognitive power as is employed in commonsense and scientific judgements about the world of experience.
So Kant formulated the task of CPR as “Is metaphysics as a science possible”. What has to be decided is a question of legitimacy rather than of fact, since it cannot be answered empirically, and since the question concerns the possibility of metaphysics, its answer cannot itself consist in a metaphysical claim or stand upon any metaphysical presuppositions. To do this is to make cognition itself an object of philosophical enquiry.
“Critique” means a critical enquiry, “Pure” means not containing anything derived from experience, “Reason” refers to conceptual elements in cognition which we bring to experience and which are not derived from it. A critique of pure reason is a critical enquiry into our capacity to know anything by employing our reason in isolation, without conjoining reason with sense experience. The verdict will be that reason is competent to know things lying within the bounds of experience, but not to know anything lying outside them. Reason is legitimate when applied to the materials provided by experience; it comes into conflict with itself and becomes illegitimate at the point where it parts company from experience. By means of its self-examination, reason is simultaneously released from its contradictions and protected in its empirical employment.