BEISER'S IDEALISM (8): KANT's Delicate Balancing Act

So Beiser makes it clear that Kant’s shifting treatment of idealism reflects more than simple inconsistency. It arises from the pressure of holding together two aims that are difficult to reconcile. On the one hand he wants to deny that the world of experience has any transcendental status. On the other he wants to assert that the world of experience is the only arena in which knowledge is possible. If one takes the first aim in isolation one ends up describing appearances in a thin formal way. They become nothing more than structured representations. If one takes the second aim in isolation one tends to thicken appearances until they look like independent objects. The movement between these emphases is not a lapse but the natural result of treating experience both as something constituted and as something given. It's a delicate balancing act. 

It is therefore not surprising that Kant’s first attempt to distinguish his view from older forms of idealism placed enormous stress on the formal side. The sceptical idealist must be met on his own ground. Since the sceptic doubts the independent reality of things in space the initial task is to show that the certainty we have of spatial objects is not undermined by their dependence on our faculties. Kant’s earliest formulations thus emphasise that objects in space are simply representations ordered according to universal laws. If that much is granted then Descartes’ question about whether there are substantial bodies outside us loses its force because the very idea of a substance existing beyond the field of representation has been revealed as an empty speculation. This strategy is useful in a polemical context but insufficient in a broader one. The collapse of the formal account into something resembling Berkeley’s immaterialism was an obvious risk. If objects in space are only representations and if those representations belong to inner sense, then the world seems to shrink into a theatre of mental states. Kant knew this and took care, in later writings, to shift the emphasis. He began to speak more robustly of appearances as ways in which things in themselves manifest themselves to us. This does not restore the old metaphysical realism, yet it does prevent the slide into a purely phenomenalist reading. It allows him to say that the existence of appearances depends on sensibility while also saying that their content, the matter that fills the form, is not of our making.

The distinction between form and matter within experience becomes crucial here. The form comes from us. The matter arrives from without. To say that the form is a priori is not to say that the matter is subjective. Kant wants to keep the objectivity of content intact even while denying that we can know the thing in itself. This is why he increasingly speaks of appearances as involving a relation. They are neither private mental entities nor glimpses of noumenal objects. They are the intersection between a sensibility that imposes form and a reality that provides matter. The relational character of appearance becomes the keystone of his doctrine. Once this relational account is in place the ambiguity in the term appearance is no longer a sign of confusion. It becomes the natural expression of the dual standpoint from which Kant views experience. When one considers the conditions of experience, one speaks of appearances as representations structured by the mind. When one considers what is given to those conditions, one speaks of appearances as manifestations of things in themselves. The two uses are different but complementary. They are not meant to be combined on the same level because one belongs to a transcendental analysis, the other to an empirical standpoint. When both are used with care, no contradiction arises.

This is precisely the point Kant insists upon when he shifts from speaking metaphorically to speaking critically. The metaphorical description invites us to imagine appearances as little inner pictures, but the critical description denies this picture. It tells us that the distinction between inner and outer sense is not a distinction between two realms of entities but a distinction between two ways of representing. Outer sense gives us the spatial order. Inner sense gives us our own temporal states. There is no need to suppose that the object of outer sense is a mental entity located somewhere inside us. That picture arises only if one forgets that sensibility is a mode of representing, not a container. Recognising this helps explain why Kant refuses to frame his own doctrine in the simple terms preferred by earlier metaphysics. The old choice between matter and mind encouraged the assumption that everything must fall into one of two categories. Kant instead insists that the categories we impose on reality are valid only within the bounds of experience. The question of what appearances are in themselves has no answer because it mistakenly carries the categories beyond their proper use. One can say that appearances are representations as far as their form is concerned. One can say that they are aspects of things in themselves as far as their matter is concerned. But one cannot fuse these statements into a single ontological picture because the mind is not equipped to know the ontological nature of appearances at all. It knows only the conditions under which they can be objects for us.

This refusal to extend knowledge beyond its bounds is not a retreat from objectivity but its precondition. Without it every attempt to secure empirical reality collapses into speculation about things in themselves. Kant wants to block this collapse. The only way to do so is to maintain a disciplined distinction between how things must be for us to experience them and how they might be independently of experience. The first can be analysed and defended. The second cannot. When one keeps this distinction firmly in mind the apparent contradictions in transcendental idealism vanish. They were not contradictions but confusions about the level of talking. 

With this clarified one can return to the question of idealism in the first edition of the Critique. Kant’s reasoning there now appears in a different light. His attempt to defeat sceptical idealism by equating outer objects with representations is not an attempt to make the world mental. It is an attempt to show that the sceptic has misdescribed the act of perception. The sceptic thinks we must infer the existence of external objects from inner data. Kant denies this. The awareness of spatial order is already an awareness of objects outside us in the empirical sense. Space is not an inner state but the form under which outer objects are given. No inference is needed because outer intuition is immediate. The certainty of outer perception is therefore as great as the certainty of inner perception. This is the heart of Kant’s first edition defence. It is not a proof that there are things in themselves corresponding to our perceptions. It is a proof that objects in space are given directly to us as appearances. This is enough to defeat the sceptic because the sceptic’s argument depends on denying the immediacy of outer intuition. If the sceptic is granted that premise then the argument runs its course. If the premise is denied then the argument collapses. Kant’s strategy is to attack the premise, not to satisfy the sceptic’s demand for a correspondence with things in themselves.

Yet the very force of this strategy leads him into a difficulty. If the object in space is identified strictly with its representation, what becomes of the distinction between illusion and veridical perception. Kant is alive to this problem. In the first edition he already hints at the answer he gives more fully in the second. The distinction is to be drawn by appeal to the lawful connection of perceptions. A perception is illusory when it conflicts with the regular order given by experience as a whole. A perception is veridical when it fits into that order. This is a formal criterion but a powerful one. It allows truth and falsity to be distinguished without the impossible task of comparing perceptions with noumenal objects. Set against the background of Cartesian doubt this is a radical move. The sceptic wants certainty grounded in a relation to something outside consciousness. Kant replies that such certainty is impossible. Instead he offers a conception of certainty grounded in the universal and necessary form of experience. This certainty is not absolute but it is the only kind available to finite creatures. It is also the only kind required for empirical knowledge. Once this is accepted the sceptic’s demand loses its urgency. The mystery deepens when one considers Kant’s silence regarding dogmatic idealism in the first edition. Given his insistence that empirical knowledge is secure one might expect him to criticise directly the claim that the external world does not exist. Instead he seems to focus entirely on the sceptical version of idealism. The reason for this becomes clearer when one considers his audience. The more pressing threat, in his view, came from the Cartesian legacy rather than from the metaphysics of immaterialism. To refute the sceptic would be to defend the world of experience more effectively than any direct polemic against Berkeley could do. The dogmatic idealist is dismissed as using mystical intuitions. The sceptical idealist is taken seriously because he demands reasons. Kant believes his system can satisfy that demand.

The absence of a direct refutation of Berkeley in the first edition thus reflects a strategic decision rather than a logical deficiency. When Kant later confronts Berkeley explicitly it is because his audience has changed. The second edition and the Prolegomena respond to readers who accused him of sliding into immaterialism. To reassure them he adopts a different emphasis. He speaks more strongly of the material given, of things in themselves, and of appearances as manifestations rather than as mere representations. This does not alter the core of his doctrine. It shifts the balance between its formal and material aspects. The original insight remains the same, that space is the form of outer intuition and that outer intuition gives us genuine objects. If one draws these threads together one sees that transcendental idealism is held together by a discipline of thinking, not by a single formula. Kant asks us to hold two ideas at once. Experience is structured by the mind. Experience presents objects that are not of our making. If either idea is forgotten the doctrine collapses. If one forgets the mind’s role one becomes a transcendental realist and falls into scepticism. If one forgets the mind’s limits one becomes a dogmatic idealist and falls into metaphysics. The critical path lies between these dangers. Seen in this way the ambiguity of Kant’s language is deliberate. He must describe appearances in two ways because they stand at the meeting point of two standpoints. From the empirical standpoint they are objects in space. From the transcendental standpoint they are representations conditioned by our sensibility. These are not two different things but two different modes of description. The capacity to move between them without confusion is the mark of critical philosophy.

If this capacity seems demanding it is because Kant believed that philosophy must reflect the complexity of human cognition. Our faculties are not simple. They interact in subtle ways. Sensibility and understanding work together to produce experience. Reason reflects on this experience and seeks unity. When reason forgets its limits it generates illusions. When understanding forgets its dependence on sensibility it misdescribes its own activity. Transcendental idealism is an attempt to keep each faculty within its proper sphere while allowing them to cooperate. The complexity of these relations is why Kant’s system oscillates between formal and material emphases. When one focuses on the necessary conditions of experience one naturally emphasises form. When one focuses on what is given in experience one naturally emphasises matter. Both emphases are legitimate as long as one remembers that they concern different questions. The form concerns what the subject contributes. The matter concerns what the subject receives. They cannot be placed on the same level without confusion. 

With this in hand one can return to the problem that has haunted every interpretation of Kant’s idealism, the problem of spatiality. How can appearances be spatial if they are representations. Kant’s answer is that spatiality belongs to the mode of appearing, not to the representing. It belongs to the relation, not to either term taken alone. A representation is not spatial. A thing in itself is not spatial. The way in which a thing in itself appears to a human subject is spatial. Space is thus neither a property of the mind alone nor of the world alone. It is the form of the relation between them. When this is grasped the dilemma between material objects and mental ideas loses its force.

This relational account also explains why Kant is willing, in later works, to say that appearances can be treated as things in themselves from the empirical standpoint. He does not mean that they have noumenal existence. He means that within the field of experience they behave like independent objects. They have stability, causal powers and spatial relations. These features entitle us to treat them as if they were things in themselves as long as we do not project this empirical as if into the transcendental realm. The as if becomes a methodological principle, not a metaphysical claim.

Such methodological as if claims are widespread in Kant. Reason employs ideas it cannot know to regulate inquiry. The understanding employs categories that unify experience without mirroring noumena. Practical reason employs ideas of freedom and morality that go beyond theoretical knowledge. In each case the fiction is useful and legitimate as long as one remembers its status. Confusion arises only when one forgets the distinction between the empirical use of a concept and its transcendental extension. Kant’s clarity on this point varies with context, which is why the surface of his writing can seem uneven.

Nevertheless according to Beiser the underlying structure remains coherent. Appearances are not ontological entities but epistemic relations. The thing in itself is not a hidden object but a limiting concept. Space and time are not substances but forms. Experience is not a mirror but a synthesis. Knowledge is not correspondence with noumena but lawful order within phenomena. If these principles are kept in view the apparent tensions in Kant’s doctrine become expressions of its richness rather than signs of confusion.