Two Perspectives on Kant's Appearances and Things in Themselves

Abstract

Two Perspectives on Kant's Appearancesand Things in Themselves HOKE ROBINSON to Lewis W. Beck, on the occasion of his 8oth birthday "HOWONE INTERPRETSKant's idealism," wrote Henry Allison in a recent article , "is largely a function of how one interprets the transcendental distinction between appearances and things in themselves."' The systematic interdependence of the two issues can clearly be seen in the progression of Kant's thought after 1781. Neither issue was given much individual prominence in the first-edition Critiqueof PureReason;but when the very first review of that work took the Critical philosophy to be a kind of Berkeleyan idealism, one which "transforms the world and ourselves into representations,"' Kant appended disclaimers to the Prolegomena,and highlighted a revised Refutation of Idealism in the second-edition Critique and elsewhere.3 Accompanying *Henry Allison, "Transcendentalism Idealism: The 'Two Aspect' View," in Bernard den Ouden, ed., New EssaysonKant (New York: Peter Lang, x987), 155.Cf. alsohis Kant's Transcendental Idealism [KTI] (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 16: "The transcendentaldistinction between appearances and things in themselves or, more properly, between things as they appear and the same things as they are in themselves, functions as the great divide in the Kantian conception of the history of philosophy." ' Review attributed to Christian Garve and J. G. Feder, G~ttingischeGelehrteAnzeigen,Jan. 19, 1782, pp- 40 ft., reprinted as an appendix in the Karl Vorlfinder edition of the Prolegomena: Immanuel Kant, Prolegomenazu einerjeden kiinfligen Metaphysik(Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1957), at 167-74; all references are to the Meiner edition version. More recently, T. E. Wilkerson has held that "[Kant's] 'formal' idealism is indistinguishablefrom the 'material'idealism of Berkeley " (Kant's CritiqueofPure Reason [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976], 19o). The importance Kantattached to refutingthe charge of idealismcan be seen inthe numberof versions of the Refutation: KdrV, A366-8o; Prol., Ak. IV.288-94, 371-83; KdrV, B~74-79, Bxxxix-xli; Refls. 5653-54 (Ak. XVIII.3o6--13), Refls. 6311-a2 (Ak. XVIII.6oT-13), Refls. 6313--16 (Ak. XVIII.613-~3); cf. Refls. 57o9 (Ak. XVIII.331), 6317 (Ak.XVIII.627), 6319 (Ak. XVIII.633), and 6323 (Ak. XVIII.643). As is customary, references to the CritiqueofPure Reason [411] 41~ JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 32:3 JULY 1994 these changes was an increased concern with the "transcendental distinction," that between appefirances and things in themselves: whereas the A-edition Preface does not explicitly refer to the distinction at all--it puts in an appearance only well into the Transcendental Aesthetic4--the rewritten B-Preface includes a substantial discussion of the issue. Concern with the nature of Kant's idealism was not restricted to the first review, nor did his denials lay this concern to rest. For the German Idealists Kant was not idealistic enough; but most later commentators have considered any idealism a defect, and have tended to be the less sympathetic to the Critical philosophy, the more idealism they found there. On the one side is the view of Strawson and others: Kant /s an idealist, unfortunately, since "the doctrines of transcendental idealism.., and the associated picture of... the mind producing Nature... are undoubtedly the chief obstacles to a sympathetic understanding of the Cridque."s On the other is that of interpreters such as Baum: Kant is not an idealist, fortunately, since otherwise he would be inconsistent with his own views.6 Some more recent commentators have been less intimidated by the idealism charge, among them Prauss, Allison, and Aquila. But as all of these treatments make dear, Kant's idealism (or lack thereof) is so bound up with his distinction between appearances and things in themselves that it is not possible to develop a position on the former without an analysis of the latter. In what follows I want first to look at the idealism question, and suggest how a direct comparison of Kant and Berkeley can yield a structure for contrasting the "two world" and "two aspect" interpretations of the transcendental distinction between appearances and things in themselves. Turning to these views, I try to show that in attempting to solve the problems arising on the two world view, the two aspect view runs afoul of...

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