(9) "'I can't prove it, but I feel that it's true'.--that notion is from Kant."
 
Validating quotation:
"The principle of reason is thus properly only a rule, prescribing a regress in the series of the conditions of given appearances."--Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N. Kemp Smith, A 508/B 536

"I have no knowledge of myself as I am, but merely as I appear to myself."--Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N. Kemp Smith, B 158

Ed, this note is in response to your post #9.

Firstly, let me say that when I composed #6 it was done in the stand-and-deliver mode, without consulting any texts. After addressing the two excerpts from CPR that you had introduced as supporting Rand’s thesis (#9 in your article above), I introduced an additional statement of Kant’s that, on its face, would support Rand’s thesis about Kant’s view. (Yes, I did think it had a better chance of supporting Rand’s contention than the other candidates, which I had rejected.) I misremembered Kant as saying that one result of his CPR enterprise was “to make reason small in order to make room for belief.”

You have correctly quoted the statement as “I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith” (B xxx). That was the Kemp Smith translation. Similarly, Pluhar renders this sentence as “I therefore had to annul knowledge in order to make room for faith.”

I began studying CPR in a graduate seminar on it which I was able to take my senior year of my first degree (1971). We used the Kemp Smith translation. It was my reference for many years, and I was reluctant to turn away from it and take up one or the other of the two new translations that had finally been completed in the 90’s. One is by Paul Guyer. It is in the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. I’m sure it is excellent. The second new translation is by Werner Pluhar. I obtained this one, and it has been my reference the past ten years. It is wonderful, and I urge you to consider buying it for your reference in the years ahead. It translates Kant often more intelligibly than in Kemp Smith, it is full of helpful notes on the translation, and it has a tremendous Index.

To the statement of Kant’s just given, Pluhar adds a note on his translation of Glaube as faith.

Glaube. It is knowledge (Wissen), not cognition (Erkenntnis), that is being “annulled” (aufheben). Strictly speaking, what is annulled is the claim to knowledge; Kant is adding a touch of drama. As for Glaube, the term can mean either faith or belief. As the present context makes clear (cf. A 820–31 = B 848–59 incl. br. n. 113), Kant’s Glaube, in the full sense of the term, is incompatible with knowledge (though not with cognition; cf. above, A vii br. n. 6). As these terms are used in English, faith is usually considered incompatible with knowledge, whereas belief normally is not (but is even included in standard definitions of knowledge). Hence Kant’s Glaube, in the full sense of the term, must be rendered as "faith".

In addition to Kant’s statement at B xxx, and Pluhar’s note, I should display the following excerpt from Kant.

Assent—or the judgment’s subjective validity—in reference to conviction (which holds [subjectively and] at the same time objectively) has the following three levels: opinion, faith, and knowledge. Opinion is an assent that is consciously insufficient both subjectively and objectively. If the assent is sufficient only subjectively and is at the same time regarded as objectively insufficient, then it is called faith. Finally, assent that is sufficient both subjectively and objectively is called knowledge. (A 822 = B 850, W. S. Pluhar, trans.)

In view of Pluhar’s note, I think my idea (in #6) that Kant was trading on an ambiguity to simultaneously satisfy opposing tendencies and parties is incorrect. Everyone understood in single way the notorious statement in B xxx.

I should add, also in response to your remarks in #9, that Kant did not consider the knowledge humans were acquiring of the world by so-called unaided reason, scientific knowledge in particular, to be in need of any information or advice from religion. Science and philosophical inquiries such as that in CPR are competent in their own right and should be respected as separate and free from religious dogmas.

Now, I’m sure that in the pulpit and in the classes at the Lutheran seminaries it is a pretty quick trip from “I therefore had to annul knowledge in order to make room for faith” to “I can’t prove it, but I feel that it’s true [just like the Bible says it is true].” They would be chewing on the very bone that Kant had tossed to keep the hounds at bay, I would say. But the trip from Kant’s statement to the subjectivist pigsties of Stirner and Nietzsche is a trip probably not nearly so quick and plain.

(Edited by Stephen Boydstun on 8/04, 5:50am)

Kant from A to Bxxx

This note will be rather long, but examination this close is required to dispose of its specific issue. This note completes up to 1787 the treatment of one of the Kant issues in #6 and #12. I will use curly braces {. . .} for insertions from me into quoted material. I will use square brackets [. . .] for insertions or footnotes from the translators.

I have arrived at an explanation of why Kant writes in the Preface to the second edition (1787) of CPR “I therefore had to annul knowledge in order to make room for faith” (Bxxx). Unfolding the background of this statement will also elucidate its meaning.

This statement was not in the Preface to the first edition (1781) of CPR. It is, however, perfectly consistent with Kant’s presentation of the critical philosophy in the first edition, where he writes:

“Putting the investigating as well as the examining reason in a state of complete freedom—so that it can attend unhindered to its own interest—is always and without any doubt beneficial. Reason furthers this interest just as much by setting limits to its insights as it does by expanding them; and this interest always suffers when outside hands intervene to lead reason—against its natural course—in accordance with forced aims” (A744 B772).

A wholly rational dispute over, for example, the existence of God, “cultivates reason by making it contemplate its objects from two sides, and the dispute corrects reason’s judgment by limiting it {e.g., by showing reason cannot prove the existence or nonexistence of God} . . . You are still left with sufficient basis to speak the language—justified before the keenest reason—of a firm faith, even though you have had to give up the language of knowledge” (A744–45 B772–73).

Between the first and second editions are three works of Kant that I will notice here. The first is Kant’s 1783 treatise in which he summarizes the critical philosophy. That is Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics that Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science. Kant writes in this work:

“In metaphysics, as a speculative science of pure reason, one can never appeal to ordinary common sense, but one can very well do so if one is forced to abandon metaphysics and to renounce all pure speculative cognition, which must always be knowledge [ein Wissen], hence to renounce metaphysics itself and its teaching (on certain matters), and if a reasonable belief [vernünftiger Glaube] is alone deemed possible for us, as well as sufficient for our needs (perhaps more wholesome indeed than knowledge itself)” (4:371).

“Through critique our judgment is afforded a standard by which knowledge can be distinguished with certainty from pseudo-knowledge; and, as a result of being brought fully into play in metaphysics, critique establishes a mode of thinking that subsequently extends its wholesome influence to every other use of reason, and for the first time excites the true philosophical spirit. Moreover, the service it renders to theology, by making it independent of the judgment of dogmatic speculation and in that way securing it against all attacks from such opponents, is certainly not to be underrated” (4:383).

In 1785 in his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant writes:

“The idea of a pure intelligible world as a whole of all intelligences to which we ourselves belong as rational beings (though on the other side we are at the same time members of the world of sense) is always a useful and permissible idea for the purpose of a rational faith. This is so even though all knowledge terminates at its boundary . . .”(462).

Frederick the Great reigned from 1740 to his death in 1786. Under that sovereign, religious freethinking had been allowed and the German Enlightenment (Aufklärung) had flourished. The successor to the throne, Frederick William II, was already well-known to be a religious fanatic prior to getting the reins of full power in 1786. Kant knew what sort of rollback of freethinking and of the Aufklärung would now be attempted by the new administration in Berlin.

F. H. Jacobi was a religious mystic opposed to the Aufklärung. He opposed the authority of reason, supported the authority of inspired faith. When I was a young man, there was a saying: “It’s easy to knock a tall man down.” That was Jacobi’s approach to arguing against the power of reason and philosophy. He would argue that all rationalist Aufklärung philosophies lead inexorably beyond theism, beyond deism, to the pantheism and total necessitarianism one finds in Spinoza (who was widely regarded as really an atheist). The antidote to philosophy, according to Jacobi, is the great leap of faith (salto mortale).

Moses Mendelssohn was a distinguished philosopher who, like Kant, was an Aufklärer. Unlike Kant, Mendelssohn remained in the rationalist, Wolffian school. By 1785 Jacobi and Mendelssohn were sparring in open, published exchanges. This was the famous Pantheism Controversy. It was a fight to the death between what Mendelssohn called "the flag of reason” (Aufklärung) and "the party of faith” (Sturm und Drang).

“Both sides to the dispute saw Kant as their ally, and both did their best to cajole him into fighting for their cause. Hamman and Jacobi were especially eager to gain Kant for their ‘party of faith’” (Beiser 1987, 113–14). They were disappointed. Kant came down, as always, for the Aufklärung. He argued against the speculative metaphysics maintained by philosophers such as Mendelssohn, but he came out against the irrationalists such as Jacobi and against the repression surely on its way from the new political regime.

This Kant did in his October 1786 essay “What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?” Anticipating Bxxx of the second edition of CPR, Kant writes:

“{Mendelssohn} retains the merit of insisting that the final touchstone of the reliability of judgment is to be sought in reason alone . . . . {Rather than its usual name,} pronouncement of healthy reason,  . . . {it is better} to give this source of judging another name, and none is more suitable than rational belief or {rational} faith. . . . A rational belief or faith is one grounded on no data other than those contained in pure reason. All believing is a holding true which is subjectively sufficient, but consciously regarded as objectively insufficient; thus it is contrasted with knowing” (8:140–41).

“Yet in the controversy between Jacobi and Mendelssohn, everything appears to overturn reason in just this way; I do not know whether it is directed only against rational insight and knowledge (through supposed strength of speculation) or also against rational faith, so as to set up in opposition to it another faith which everyone can make up for himself as he likes. One would almost infer the latter intention when it is proposed that the Spinozist concept of God is the only one in agreement with all the principles of reason . . .” (8:143).

The denial that reason has its own needs in its drive for cognition, “the maxim of reason’s independence of its own need (of doing without rational faith), is unbelief.” This is “an unbelief of reason [Vernunftunglaube], . . . which first takes from moral laws all their force as incentives to the heart, and over time all their authority, and occasions . . . the principle of recognizing no duty at all. At this point, the authorities get mixed up in the game . . .” (8:146).

It is very understandable, then, why Kant should be writing in his Preface for the second edition (1787) of CPR:

“A critique that restricts speculative reason is, to that extent, indeed negative. But because, by doing so, the critique also removes an obstacle that restricts—or even threatens to annihilate—the practical use of reason, its benefit is in fact positive and very important. We see this as soon as we become convinced that there is a use of pure reason which is practical and absolutely necessary (viz., its moral use)” (Bxxv).

“Now let us suppose that morality necessarily presupposes freedom (in the strictest sense) as a property of our will . . . . But then suppose that speculative reason had proved that freedom cannot be thought at all [viz., as ruled out by the necessary mechanism of nature] . . . . {Then} freedom, and with it morality, would have to give way to the mechanism of nature. But in fact the situation is different. All I need for morality is that freedom does not contradict itself and hence can at least be thought; I do not need to have any further insight into it” (Bxxviii–xxix).

“I cannot even assume . . . freedom . . . [as I must] for the sake of the necessary practical use of my reason, if I do not at the same time deprive speculative reason of its pretensions to transcendent insight. . . . I therefore had to annul knowledge in order to make room for faith. And the true source of all lack of faith which conflicts with morality—and is always highly dogmatic—is dogmatism in metaphysics, i.e., the prejudice according to which we can make progress in metaphysics without a [prior] critique of pure reason” (Bxxx).

Fred Seddon’s account of Bxxx in his 2005 essay “Kant on Faith” in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (V7N1) is shown to be incorrect by the present note.

References

Beiser, Frederick 1987. The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte.

Harvard.

Kant, Immanuel 1781, 1787. Critique of Pure Reason. Werner Pluhar, trans. Hackett.

―――. 1783. Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics. Gary Hatfield, trans.

In Theoretical Philosophy after 1781. Cambridge.

―――. 1785. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Lewis White Beck, trans.

Bobbs-Merrill.

―――. 1786. “What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?” Allen Wood, trans.

In Religion and Rational Theology. Cambridge.