Mark Glouberman

Unhappy with a recent submission of mine, a referee for a journal specialising in the history of philosophy wagged a finger at what he or she called my ‘hermeneutical principles’. Though I am no stranger to the collegial woodshed, my initial reaction was nonetheless one of surprise. For had I then been asked about interpretive methodology I would have scoffed. The construer’s best course, I would have said, is to nose about the texts until some rough shape begins to emerge from the murk, and to inch forward in an effort to block in details, frequently doubling back for more nosing about. Isn’t this —fill, back, adjust, refill, back again, re-adjust—a counsel of anti-method?

Did Descartes make a revolutionary contribution to philosophy? Given the widespread application to him of the title ‘father of modem philosophy,’ the standard affirmative proves surprisingly difficult to justify. ln this paper I locate Descartes’s epoch-making philosophical shift. Descartes contributed a very strong idea of realism, an idea modelled in his cogito-argument. To grasp the contribution aright, it is however necessary to de-emphasise what is usually identified as his key contribution---an epistemological one. AIso, the theoretical connection between Descartes’s core philosophical activity and the scientific revolution of his time has to be appreciated. ln the course of the discussion I explain, in a more philosophical vein, how the influence of Kant clouds the abiIity of post-Kantians to see what Descartes did. A route to an understanding of Descartes’s realism is an inconsistency in Kant’s modal views. The antirealism of Kant’s view---his transcendental idealism---yields up some of its mystery once the dialectical interplay with Cartesian realism is elicited.

Throughout the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant locates his position relative to those of his predecessors and near contemporaries. Save for Spinoza, all the ‘greats’ of the early modern canon put in appearances. But while Kant’s idiom is respectful—Hume is referred to as ‘celebrated’ ; Berkeley is characterised as ‘good’ ; both Locke and Leibniz are called ‘illustrious’ —this ‘language of good will’ recalls Mark Antony’s ‘honourable man’. In fact, the debt Kant acknowledges to the prior toilers is largely negative: the earlier thinkers adhere to views whose correction or rejection enabled Kant to win through to the truth.

The Bible ridicules idolaters for bowing down to sticks and stones. Since idolaters worship what the sticks and stones stand for, not the sticks and stones themselves, isn’t the biblical position confused? At the basis of the Bible’s consistent refusal to observe the preceding distinction are found the conceptual underpinnings of its critique of idolatry. Men and women alone among creatures are inspired with God’s breath. Men and women alone among creatures, that is, are like God. They alone among creatures are persons. Since mere pieces of nature cannot understand prayers, entreaties, etc., and hence cannot respond in the personal way, idolatrous practices are incoherent. But while it is true that (sub-person) elements of nature cannot enter into inter-personal relations, idolatry has a sequel: the scientific interrogation of nature, an interrogation which has been magnificently effective in eliciting responses. Elijah’s dramatic confrontation with the Baalites is a stylized version of the clash between the biblical view of men and women as in an irreducible respect non-natural, and the naturalizing scientific view. On the Carmel, the prophets of the Baal are soundly defeated. Must those who inherit from them lose too? That is a live question. Read closely, the story of Elijah implies that those behind the Bible would defend the view of human distinctiveness against the renascent idolatry.

The first "Critique", Kant states inaugurates a perfectly new science'. But this transcendental philosophy', for dealing in possibilities, not actualities, does not qualify as philosophy in the traditional sense. What Kant dubs transcendental idealism' "is" however an (ontological) doctrine about things. Kant's doctrinal stand is thus inconsistent with his description of transcendental enquiry. Since transcendental idealism gets its meaning from the contrast with Cartesian realism, it follows that Kant must implicitly be granting that in some measure at least the earlier metaphysicians did what they said they were doing. Indeed, Kant must be relying on some part of what they did. It follows that if there is a "via media" between traditional Cartesian metaphysics and Hume's backgammon, Kant does not locate it

The recent scholarly promotion of Pierre Gassendi to a key position in the formative modern period raises doubts about the portrayal of Descartes as “the father” of the post-Scholastic philosophical conceptualization. I defend the Cartesio-centric account against Thomas M. Lennon’s elliptical alternative. The defense necessitates a reassessment of the root nature of Descartes’s contribution—specifically of the interplay between philosophy and science, the latter being the crucial extraphilosophical component of the new practico-cognitive ensemble. This raises questions about the “philosophically” of Descartes’s activity, and with that questions about the quality of modernity. By way of explaining Gassendis nonoriginative position, his attitude toward the post-Scholastic Humanist thought that Descartes simply repudiated is examined.

In Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry, Bernard Williams supplies an interpretation of Descartes's Meditations in which the meditator's clean sweep of initial beliefs is justified by a stance that abrogates all practical pressures: the stance of pure enquiry. Otherwise, Williams explains, it would not be reasonable to set many of the initial beliefs aside. Nowhere, however, does Descartes assert that his approach is in this sense ?pure?. It would of course be preferable if the meditator's rejection of all the initial beliefs did not require an abrogation of the conditions that govern everyday belief-formation and assessment. I supply a reading that accomplishes this. The key to this reading is recognition that Descartes is a thinker of his time, a time when the pre-modern worldview was being systematically rejected. I show, in this regard, that when Descartes characterizes a belief as ?uncertain?, this has the implication that the belief is false. And, certainly, the rational policy, without need for any special stance, is to reject falsehoods

SummaryLeft wing interpreters of Kant's transcendental idealism argue that the doctrine must be excised in order to disclose the viable philosophical content of the first Critique. For right wing interpreters, this leaves a Hamlet without the prince. I chart and defend a middle path. Transcendental idealism, while essential to Kant's position, renders that position philosophically indefensible. Constant misinterpretation of the doctrine results from a failure to appreciate the inter‐theoretic relations between Kant's conceptualisation of sense‐involving experience and the output of ‘Cartesian theory of error'

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:32. HUME ON MODES As thorough a critic as Norman Kemp Smith states in his investigation of the Treatise that "Hume's treatment of... the complex ideas of modes... need not detain us." Whatever is interesting in this brief treatment, Smith suggests, rests on remarkable features of Humean doctrine, elsewhere expounded at length. This is true, I would agree, as a descriptive comment to the following degree. The category of modes is officially regarded by Hume as highly marginal, even dispensible. But it is not in fact the case that, intrasystematically, the work of modes can be duplicated in non-modal materials. In this discussion I will show that Hume mistakes the case, and attempts to diagnose the error's deep sources. To the naked eye, the mistake seems perhaps small and reparable. Placed under the microscope, we find an important philosophical conception is at stake. Our raw material comprises the explanations of modality provided by Locke and Hume. Modes, according to Locke, are complex ideas which, however compounded, contain not in them the supposition of subsisting by themselves, but are considered as dependences on, or affections of, substances; such are the ideas signified by the words, triangle, grati2 tude, murder, etc. (2.12.4). Hume's account is similar in appearance. The idea... of a mode... is nothing but a collection of simple ideas.... The simple ideas of which modes are formed, either represent qualities, which are not united by contiguity and causation, but are dispers ' d in different subjects ; or if 33. they be all united together, the uniting principle is not regarded as the foundation of the complex idea. The idea of a dance is an instance of the first kind of modes; that of beauty of the second (I. I. VI). The appearance of harmony is capped by the uniformity in examples: Locke also mentions 'beauty' (2.12.5) as a modal term, and between his 'murder' and Hume's 'dance' there is nothing to choose. One small difference remains. The idea of dependence, prominent in Locke's sketch, is absent from the Treatise passage quoted. This disparity is eliminated by the following remark, temporarily withheld above: the difference betwixt [substances and modes] consists in this, that the particular qualities, which form a substance, are commonly referr'd to an unknown something, in which they are supposed to inhere (I. I. VI). Superficially then, both Locke and Hume might be thought to subscribe to the following theses. The designata of modal terms, but not of substantial terms, lack independence (I will call this 'the Modal Dependence Thesis' or 'MDT'). Modal terms designate complex ideas in the same way as do those substantial terms which designate complex ideas (this will be referred to as 'the Modal Complexity Thesis' or 1MCT'). But while Locke supports MDT, Hume rejects it, and whereas Hume advocates MCT, Locke — when pressed — will be found to disagree with it. Let us start with MDT. To establish that the category of modes is regarded, intrasystematically, as superfluous by Hume is to confirm the disagreement here between the two theorists. Hume categorically dismisses what Locke describes by the phrase 'a something I know not what' as contributing 34. to any particular idea of a substance. Accordingly, the designata of modal as well as substantial terms resolve identically under analysis, i.e. into combinations of simple ideas. Hume mentions a differentiating factor: the principle of union of simple ideas in the case of a substance scores higher in naturalness than in the case of a mode. The components of a substantial idea are "closely and inseparably connected by the relations of contiguity and causation" (I. I. VI), which are 'natural'. But Hume's own examples expose this as an ineffective device of differentiation, one to which Hume himself attaches little importance. Where is the unnaturalness in the case of the (modal) designata of 'beauty' and 'dance'? How — more pointedly — is the complexity involved in the (substantial) designata of 'dog' and 'table' more natural? Any difference here is one that Hume does well to play down and neutralise of all but sentimental significance. In adducing the idea of naturalness to explain the difference felt by the common...

In what respect, if any, is Kant a distinctively “critical” thinker? How does Kant’s “transcendentalism” differentiate his practice in metaphysics from that of the philosophers of the Cartesian tradition? How much does the success of Kant’s enterprise depend on the viability of the idea of the synthetic a priori? The issues that these questions raise came to a head for Kant in the attack on his novelty by the Leibnizean Johann August Eberhard, an attack to which Kant responded at length in the sarcastically titled On a discovery according to which any new critique of pure reason has been made superfluous by an earlier one. Unfortunately, Kant’s apology is quite inconclusive. In this discussion, in an effort to shed some light on the murk, I supply text-sensitive analyses of the various key notions. It emerges that while, as Eberhard complained, the “critical” turn is not at all a methodological novelty, Kant’s procedure does mark a departure from traditional metaphysics, though not one that he himself describes at all clearly. Kant’s “transcendentalism” ultimately constitutes an open-ended and ever-widening interrogation of logical possibility; hence an interrogation that, contrary to what Kant himself claims, can never furnish what legitimately counts as “proof.”