BEISER'S IDEALISM (7): How Kant Made Empirical Realism Stronger

Beiser says the attempt to give empirical reality a stronger sense without falling back into the very realism Kant attacks has created a long and complicated debate. The proposal that affection happens on two levels is intended to preserve the idea that appearances are genuinely given to us while also allowing the thing in itself to play some explanatory role. According to this reading the empirical self receives its objects ready formed and stands to them as something receptive, whereas the transcendental self stands in some kind of deeper relation to the thing in itself which affects it. This is attractive because it seems to give empirical objects a kind of stability and independence that goes beyond their merely formal relation to space. Yet as soon as one presses the details difficulties arise because the idea of a transcendental self being affected by a thing in itself looks very much like the sort of claim Kant says we cannot make. He constantly reminds us that the transcendental standpoint is not one from which we can describe hidden processes but only one from which we can outline the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience. If one begins to speak of two selves or two levels of affection one quickly slides into the kind of metaphysical picture he wanted to avoid.

It is worth staying with this tension for a moment because it shows why the debate about Kant’s supposed subjectivism has lasted so long. If empirical realism means only that appearances conform to a structure supplied by our sensibility and understanding, then many readers conclude that Kant has made the world depend entirely on the mind. If empirical realism is made stronger by appealing to affection from the thing in itself then he seems to smuggle in precisely the kind of dogmatic speculation he argued against. This is the dilemma that confronts almost every interpreter of the first Critique. Some take the first path and accept a more idealist Kant, others take the second and accept a more realist Kant, while others still insist that neither route is correct and that Kant was attempting to articulate a position that cuts across the usual alternatives. The question becomes even more delicate once we recall Kant’s original intention, which was not to replace the world with a system of mental contents but to explain how our limited human faculties can nevertheless grasp a world that is independent of us. If one reads the early chapters of the aesthetic and the analytic with this aim in mind one sees that the distinction between appearance and thing in itself is not meant to shrink the world down to the mind but to protect the mind from the impossible task of knowing what lies beyond its reach. Kant frequently insists that the world of experience is not a veil or a dream but the only field within which knowledge is possible. He does not say that the thing in itself is an illusion, only that it is not something we can know. The point of the distinction is to free empirical knowledge from the burden of having to resemble something beyond all possible experience. Once we set aside the demand that knowledge must mirror the thing in itself we can take experience on its own terms, judge it by its own standards and thus avoid scepticism.

This is why Kant couples transcendental idealism with empirical realism. The claim that appearances are not things in themselves is paired with the insistence that the world of appearances is fully real for us. He says repeatedly that the empirical world is not a fiction but the field in which objects can be encountered, measured, compared and judged. The structure of space and time is not a fantasy because it is the necessary condition under which anything can appear to us at all. From this standpoint the question of whether these structures belong to things in themselves is set aside as an empty problem. The transcendental realist who insists that our perceptions must match a thing in itself creates a problem he cannot solve because he demands a comparison that is impossible. The transcendental idealist removes this burden and secures empirical knowledge precisely by refusing to impose that standard. The material idealist is trapped because he accepts the transcendental realist’s standard and then discovers he cannot meet it. The transcendental idealist tries to show that the standard itself is misguided. If I must stand outside my world of experience in order to verify its truth I can never do so. But if I accept that truth is internal to the structure of experience itself then ordinary judgments regain their force. This is not a retreat into solipsism because experience is not private whim. Its structure is universal and necessary, which is why different observers can agree on what they see, measure and describe. This universality is built into the forms of intuition and the categories of the understanding. Far from cutting us off from the world they make a shared world possible.

It is clear that Kant means to safeguard both sides of the relation between mind and world. He insists that there are objects outside us in space in the empirical sense and that they have definite spatial properties. He also insists that these properties are appearances, not attributes of things in themselves. These claims may seem contradictory only if one assumes that any reality must be a reality independent of all sensibility. Kant instead argues that empirical reality is genuine even though it is relative to the conditions of experience. Something can be real in experience without being real in itself. This is not relativism because the conditions of experience are universal for all human beings. It is only a refusal to extend our claims beyond what can be justified.

What becomes striking once we absorb this basic structure is how carefully Kant attempts to maintain the balance. He wants to avoid the rationalist picture in which everything is governed by pure thought and also the empiricist picture in which experience is a loose collection of impressions. His solution is to treat experience as an organised field whose order is determined by the forms of intuition and the categories. This field is not subjective because its structure does not depend on personal whim. It is not objective in the transcendental realist sense because its structure is not a mirror of things in themselves. It is instead the only domain where knowledge is possible. The empirical realist insists that this domain is not any less real because it is conditioned by the mind. Kant gives many examples to show that the distinction between what is real and what is illusory can be drawn entirely within the field of appearances. When I take a stick half submerged in water to be bent when it is straight, the illusion is explained by the laws of optics, which belong within the empirical order. Reality and appearance are therefore distinguished by the coherence and regularity of the empirical world itself. I do not appeal to hidden things in themselves to correct mistakes. I appeal to further experience and to the lawful structure of appearances. This is the heart of Kant’s reply to scepticism.

Because of this, the view that Kant’s theory traps us within the mind becomes harder to sustain. The world of experience is shared, structured and law governed. My experience is not sealed off from yours because the forms of intuition and the categories are the same for every subject. The transcendental self is universal at this level. It is not a private inner realm but the condition that makes there be a world for us at all. This universality is why we can rely on geometry and natural science. Their principles are not discoveries about things in themselves but expressions of the necessary structure of appearances. Even so, the suspicion of subjectivism persists because the notion of a thing in itself is left empty. Readers often feel that if one cannot say what the thing in itself is then Kant has given up on the external world. Kant’s reply is that the thing in itself is not a piece of hidden metaphysics but a limit concept. It marks the boundary of what can be experienced. It prevents us from mistaking the field of appearances for the whole of reality, yet it also prevents us from projecting our concepts beyond their proper reach. The thing in itself thus plays a negative but essential role. It keeps reason critical. When one follows the thread of Kant’s argument through the aesthetic and into the analytic one sees how the appeal to the thing in itself becomes increasingly abstract. It is not meant to be a separate world. It is simply the thought that what appears could always be otherwise if our sensibility were different. This is why Kant refuses to say that the thing in itself has spatial or temporal properties. Those belong only to appearances. The thing in itself is not an alternative object but a reminder that appearances are relative to human sensibility. This is how Kant defends the reality of empirical objects without claiming a knowledge of the absolute. The world as we know it is not diminished by being a world of appearances. It is the world in which everything we care about happens, the world of science, art, action and moral life. The idea that this world is unreal arises only from confusing empirical reality with transcendental reality. Once we see the difference the threat of scepticism becomes less pressing.

At this point the broader stakes of Kant’s argument become visible. He is not trying to argue that the world is inside the mind but that the mind has a structure that makes a world possible. Before Kant thinkers were caught between two extremes. Either the world imposes itself completely on the mind or the mind creates the world entirely from itself. Kant’s answer is that knowledge is possible only because there is a cooperation between the two. The mind supplies the form and the world supplies the matter. Without form the matter would be unintelligible. Without matter the form would be empty.This partnership is easy to misunderstand because Kant describes the mind’s contribution in such powerful terms. Space and time are not learned from experience but are the conditions for it. The categories are not derived from experience but structure it. Yet this does not mean that the world is a product of thought. It means only that we can know it only under these conditions. Experience is therefore always shaped by the mind but never invented by it. The need for affection from without is central to Kant’s view and it prevents any slide into full idealism.

The careful balance Kant attempts to maintain helps explain why he has often been interpreted in opposite ways. Those who emphasise the mind’s contribution see him as the origin of modern idealism. Those who emphasise the reality of appearances see him as a defender of empirical knowledge against scepticism. The truth contains both strands. He believes that the mind must play a constitutive role but he also believes that this role secures rather than undermines the reality of the empirical world. The influence of the rationalist tradition pushed him toward idealism, and the influence of the empiricist tradition pushed him toward realism. The result is a synthesis which is neither the one nor the other. Once we appreciate this, the apparent contradictions begin to soften. The language of subjectivity and representation is counterbalanced by the insistence on objectivity within the field of appearances. The denial that we know things in themselves is counterbalanced by the affirmation that we know things in space. The thing in itself is denied cognitive content yet retained as a boundary that prevents confusion. The empirical world is shaped by the mind yet also given to it. Kant’s thought unfolds in these tensions because he is trying to do justice to both sides of human knowledge.

As Kant moves through his various arguments the depth of his strategy becomes clear. He is attempting to block scepticism not by answering it on its own terms but by showing that its terms are mistaken. The sceptic asks whether our representations match reality in itself. Kant replies that this question misunderstands what knowledge is. Knowledge is not a comparison between mental copies and external originals but a judgment governed by universal rules. These rules are built into the structure of sensibility and understanding. This is why coherence, intersubjective agreement and conformity to laws become the marks of truth. When these conditions are met the question of resemblance becomes idle. The question that remains is whether Kant succeeds in securing this middle path. Many readers doubt it because the language of representation seems to pull everything back into the mind. Others doubt it because the thing in itself seems too mysterious to play any role. Yet the power of Kant’s approach lies in the fact that he gives up neither the world nor the mind. He gives up only the picture that knowledge must be a mirror. He replaces it with a picture in which knowledge is the achievement of a finite rational being who brings a structure to experience and thereby encounters a world that is stable and shareable. In this light the long debates about subjectivism and objectivism begin to look like misunderstandings of Kant’s ambition. He is not trying to choose between them. He is trying to redefine the field so that the choice no longer arises. The world of experience is not subjective because it is constrained by universal forms. It is not objective in the old sense because it is known only through those forms. It is instead the arena of possible knowledge, bounded by limits but rich in content.

This is why Kant believes that transcendental idealism provides the only adequate answer to the sceptic. It allows us to affirm the reality of the empirical world while also accepting the limits of human knowledge. It refuses the demand for a God’s eye view and insists that our perspective as finite beings is neither a flaw nor an obstacle but the very condition that makes knowledge possible. The sceptic asks for more than this and finds that nothing can satisfy him. Kant asks only for what our faculties can provide and finds that this is enough. If one keeps this in mind the long and detailed analysis of appearances, forms of intuition and categories becomes more than an abstract exercise. It becomes a defence of the very possibility of experience. Kant’s system is demanding because it asks us to give up the old metaphysical comforts and to accept that knowledge is always conditioned. Yet it also offers a new kind of security because it shows that these conditions are not arbitrary but grounded in the nature of human reason. The world we know is not the world in itself but it is the only world that can matter to us and the only one we can inhabit together. If this account seems elaborate it is because Kant is attempting to solve problems that had been pressing on European philosophy for more than a century. The tension between rationalism and empiricism came to a head in the work of thinkers like Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Leibniz. Each had tried to explain how the mind could know the world and each had encountered difficulties that seemed insurmountable. Kant believed that the only way forward was to rethink the relation between mind and world from the ground up. Transcendental idealism is his attempt to do just that. It is not a simple doctrine but a complex framework in which appearance and reality, form and matter, subject and object, reason and sensibility are brought into a new relation. This framework remains influential because it confronts the deepest puzzles about experience. The debate over whether Kant is a subjectivist or an objectivist continues because his position resists simple classification. It resists it because he believed that such classifications rested on mistaken assumptions. His aim was not to choose a side but to explain how knowledge is possible for beings like us. Once this aim becomes clear the apparent contradictions become features of a carefully balanced system, one that tries to honour both our finitude and our capacity for understanding. If we approach Kant in this spirit Beiser says we will begin to see why he insisted so firmly on the empirical reality of space and time and why he repeatedly returned to the notion that appearances are genuine objects of knowledge. We also see why he refused to say more about the thing in itself than that it exists. He wanted to clear a space in which empirical knowledge could stand firm without being pulled into metaphysical speculation. That space is the space of experience itself, structured by our sensibility and understanding, open to investigation, correction and refinement.

This is the world Kant wanted to defend, a world in which science is possible, in which mathematics has application and in which everyday judgments can be trusted. He believed that transcendental idealism, far from undermining this world, gives it its proper foundation. When understood in this way his philosophy appears less as a threat to realism and more as an attempt to preserve its core insight, which is that there is a world independent of our whims and that we can know it, even if only under conditions that belong to our nature.

If the debates remain alive it is because Kant saw that philosophy must begin from our situation as finite knowers. The search for certainty beyond experience leads only to confusion. The refusal of any structure leads only to scepticism. Between these extremes lies the human standpoint, neither omniscient nor lost, capable of knowledge but always within limits. Kant’s account of transcendental idealism is an attempt to make this standpoint clear and to show that it needs no further support.