Kant’s Second Critique and the Problem of Transcendental Arguments

172 Pages·1978·14.2 MB·English

by  Robert J. Benton (auth.)

KANT'S SECOND CRITIQUE
AND THE PROBLEM OF
TRANSCENDENTAL ARGUMENTS
ROBERT J. BENTON
MARTINUS NIJHOFF / THE HAGUE 11977
ISBN-I3: 978-90-247-2055-2 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-9700-4
DOl: 10.1007/978-94-009-9700-4
© 1977 by Martinus NijhoJ!, The Hague, Netherlands
Softcover reprint o/the hardcover 1st edition 1977
All rights reserved, including the right to trans/ate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form
KANT'S SECOND CRITIQUE
AND THE PROBLEM OF TRANSCENDENTAL ARGUMENTS
CONTENTS
THE PROBLEM OF TRANSCENDENTAL ARGUMENTS AND
THE SECOND CRITIQUE AS TEST CASE 1
1. Jntroduction 3
2. A Working Model for Transcendental Arguments 7
3. Criteria of a Successful Account of the Argument-
Structure of the Analytic of the Second Critique 20
THE ARGUMENT OF THE ANALYTIC 27
4. Preliminary Outline of the Argument of the Analytic
as a Whole 29
5. The Argument of Chapter 1 36
The ErkHirung and its Remark 38
Sections 2-4 42
Sections 5-7 49
Section 8 53
The Deduction 55
6. The Argument of Chapter 2 68
Step 1: The Moral Good Must Be the Supreme Good 70
Step 2: The Moral Good Can Be the Supreme Good 76
7. The Argument of Chapter 3 87
The Division of the Chapter 90
The Moral Feeling 91
The Moral Interest 97
CONCLUSIONS 103
8. Conclusions and Discussion 105
The Second Critique 105
Transcendental Arguments 108
APPENDIXES 113
Appendix A: Beck's Account of the Argument 115
Appendix B: Silber's Account of the Argument 134
Appendix C: The Fact of Pure Practical Reason 145
Appendix D: Maxims and Laws 151
NOTES 165
BIBLIOGRAPHY 169
PART!
THE PROBLEM OF TRANSCENDENTAL
ARGUMENTS AND THE SECOND CRITIQUE
AS TEST CASE
PREFACE
This work is in no way intended as a commentary on the second Cri
tique, or even on the Analytic of that book. Instead I have limited myself
to the attempt to extract the essential structure of the argument of the
Analytic and to exhibit it as an instance of a transcendental argument
(namely, one establishing the conditions of the possibility of a practical
cognitive viewpoint). This limitation of scope has caused me, in some
cases, to ignore or treat briefly concrete questions of Kant's practical
philosophy that deserve much closer consideration; and in other cases it
has led me to relegate questions that could not be treated briefly to
appendixes ,in order not to distract from the development of the argu
ment. As a result, it is the argument-structure itself that receives pri
mary attention, and I think some justification should be offered for this
concentration on what may seem to be a purely formal concern.
One of the most common weaknesses of interpretations of Kant's works
is a failure to distinguish the level of generality at which Kant's argument
is being developed. This failure is particularly fatal in dealing with the
Critiques, since in interpreting them it is important to keep clearly in
mind that it is not this or that cognition that is at stake, but the possibility
of (a certain kind of) knowledge as such. Thus, in interpretations of the
second Critique, the transcendental aim of the argument is frequently lost
sight of and a more limited ("metaphysical'') aim is put in its place for
example. justification of the moral law). This confiation of questions that
arise on different levels of generality is doubly detrimental. On the one
hand, as I try to show in this work, it can lead to failure to understand
those aspects of the arguments that are truly transcendental (for example,
in the case of the second Critique, the establishing of a practical cognitive
viewpoint distinct from the theoretical viewpoint). And, on the other hand,
it can contribute to a narrowing of perspective in dealing with a field of
cognition once it has been transcendentally established. The latter can be
seen in the common tendency to treat Kant's practical philosophy as though
ii PREFACE
it were solely a moral philosophy. which in turn can lead one to ignore
or misunderstand Kant's numerous writings on political theory. My own
opinion is that the second Critique is concerned with establishing a
cognitive framework within which moral, legal, and political thinking are
all made possible. Thus my limitation of the scope of the present investi
gation is not intended as a restriction on the area of legitimate concerns
in practical philosophy. but rather as a way of focusing attentIon on the
prior question of how and in what way practical cognition is possible.
Only after clarity has been attained on that question are we in a position
to raise questions concerning the more concrete concerns of Kant's moral
or political philosophy.
In quoting passages from the second Critique I have generally made use
of Louis White Beck's translation (copyright © 1956 The Liberal Arts
Press, reprinted by permission of the Bobbs-Merrill Company. Inc.) ;
but I have made minor changes in the translations throughout, always in
the interest of greater literalness. In cases where the changes are major
I have noted them, but in other cases I have made them silently.
For citing references I have adopted the following method: I cite the
author's last name. the year of publication of the article or book (in the
case of books it is the year of publicatIon of the edition that I used). and
the page number (all three items separated by commas). Complete refer
ences are given in the Bibliography. In cases where I make use of only
one work by a given author I sometimes omit the year of publication in
citations, since the year is useful only in distinguishing two works by the
same author. In case an author has two works with the same year of pub
lication, I distinguish them by appending an a, b, etc. to the year.
For references to Kant's works I follow a different scheme: All refer
ences to the second Critique are by Academy-edition page number only
(so that when a number appears in parentheses with no other identification
it refers to the second Critique). Other works by Kant are cited by the
PREFACE iii
following list of abbreviations:
Ethics-Lectures on Ethics
GMM-Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals
KrV-Critique of Pure Reason
KU-Critique of Judgment
MM-MetaPhysic of Morals
Religion-Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone
Page number references are to the Academy-edition pagination in all
cases where those numbers appear in the English texts. In the case of
references to the KU I have cited section number rather than page num
ber since there are several commonly available English editions, none
of whlch, I thlnk, have Academy page numbers. In the case of the KrV
page numbers, A- and B-edition references are given, rather than
Academy-edition numbers, and they are given in the form A111/B222.
In all other cases the page numbers are those of the English edition
listed in the Bibliography.
Quotations from.. the Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman
Kemp Smith, copyright © 1929 by Macmillan and Company, Ltd., are
reprinted by permission of St. Martin's Press and Macmillan Co •• Ltd.
QuotatIons from the Doctrine of Virtue of the Metaphysic 0/ Morals,
translated by Mary Gregor. and from the Groundwork 0/ the Metaphysic
of Morals, transl!'_ted by H. J. Paton, are reprinted by permission of
Harper and Row Publishers. Inc. Quotations from Beck's Commentary
on Ktznt's Critique of PY'actical Reason. copyright © 1960 by the Univer
sity of Chicago, are reprinted by permission of the University of
Chicago Press. Quotations from the Critique 0/ Judgment, translated
by James Creed Meredith, are reprinted by permission of Oxford
University Press.
This work was originally presented as a dissertation submitted to the
Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science of the New School for
Social Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree
of Doctor of Philosophy. The first four chapters of the work first ap
peared, in substantially the same form, in the Graduate Faculty
iv PREFACE
Philosophy Journal, Vol. 6, No. 1 Winter 1977.
I would like to express my gratitude to Kenley R. Dove for his con
sistently fruitful criticism and advice; to J. N. Mohanty for invaluable
help and encouragement; to Hans Jonas for his critical and helpful
suggestions; and to John Wetlaufer for innumerable discussions. during
the course of which many of the ideas in this work were first brought to
clarity. I would also like to thank Larry Redman for his tireless and
repeated typings of the manuscript.
Robert J. Benton
New YlYYk, New YlYYk
July 1977
1. INTRODUCTION
Transcendental arguments have been the subject of much discussion in
the recent literature. The debate has been of the most radical sort, in
cluding strong arguments against the very possibility of transcendental
arguments (e. g., K'6rner, 1967).1 Others have argued in favor of the
possibility of transcendental arguments (e. g., Schaper, 1972). But out
of all of this there has arisen no consensus about what a transcendental
argument is and what its aims are. Moreover, there has been a remark
able lack (especially in the English-language literature) of attempts to
establish with any precision or in any detail exactly how a transcendental
argument works-what it presupposes and how it must be structured.
This lack of consensus on what a transcendental argument is and the near
total absence of attempts to specify the structure of such arguments are
all the more unfortunate since they would seem to be prerequisites for
deciding (or even fruitfully raising) the question of the possibility or im
possibility of such arguments.
These difficulties are, I think, tied up with the fact that (again., in the
English-language literature) the model for a transcendental argument has
implicitly or expliCitly been taken as being the deduction in Kant's
Critique of Pure Reason. 2 That is, most discussions of transcendental
arguments (or attempts to construct such arguments) have taken that deduc
tion as their standard of what such an argument must be. The difficulties
arise from two interrelated problems that are inherent in this approach:
The first is that there is no more agreement about the aims and struc
ture of the deduction in the first Critique than there is about transcen
dental arguments in general. And the second is that, even in cases
where there is some agreement about essential features of the deduction,
there is a general lack of clarity about what features of the deduction are
attributable to the form of argument as such and what features are at
tributable to the content and its particular requirements.