Elise Frketich

In the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic, Kant introduces several ideas of reason, e.g. those of pure air, pure water, and pure earth. I call these the “particular chemical ideas” in contrast to the three general transcendental ideas, namely, ‘God’, ‘world’, and ‘soul’. Among the few Kant scholars who study them, one predominant view is that we can discover instances of them, e.g., under laboratory conditions. This view denies that particular chemical ideas contain a unity that is permanently beyond the bounds of possible experience, which Kant introduces as a feature of ideas in general. According to this view, particular chemical ideas figure in scientific hypotheses that can be proved. When these hypotheses are proved, the ideas that figure in them are instantiated. By contrast, I argue that the particular chemical ideas do not figure in scientific hypotheses that can be proved. Instead, they are generated by what Kant calls the “hypothetical use of reason”, which is for him not how we produce provable hypotheses, but rather how we do metaphysics. The resulting particular chemical ideas, I argue, are best understood as denoting natural kinds—universals that are permanently beyond the bounds of possible experience.

This paper discusses what I call “biological individuation” in the works of Kant and Hegel. Biological individuation is what makes one organism numerically distinct from another. Following a common distinction in metaphysics today, I separate this discussion into what I call “epistemic” and “metaphysical biological individuation”. The former is how we distinguish one organism from another, and the latter is how one organism distinguishes itself from another. Metaphysicians today convincingly hold that epistemic individuation presupposes metaphysical individuation. I apply this to the case at hand. It is impossible for us to distinguish one organism from another if this organism has not already distinguished itself from another. However, this poses a problem for a standard reading of Kant’s regulative ideas: it does not allow us to provide a Kantian account of metaphysical biological individuation. This paper offers an alternative, Hegel-inspired reading of the same, one that solves this problem.

In this paper, I take up a topic central to Reinhold’s system of rational realism, namely, truth. I show that Reinhold introduces a new concept of truth into the philosophical dialogue, one that cannot yet be found in Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism, but one that we see appear again, albeit in modified form, in Hegel’s mature philosophical system. To do so, I argue that Schelling’s theory of truth is best understood as one according to which we say that propositions are true. By contrast, I contend that Reinhold’s and Hegel’s theories are best understood as ones according to which we say that things are true.

Kant describes intellectual intuition as a kind of non-sensible intuition that creates its objects and provides knowledge of them as noumena. Although he precludes intellectual intuition from the human mind, Reinhold attributes it to the human mind. Pioneering research has already shown that Reinhold deviates from Kant in this way to explain the possibility of a priori self-cognition. It has also already shown that Fichte follows Reinhold by deviating from Kant in the same way. Yet, other aspects of Reinhold’s doctrine of intellectual intuition remain largely overlooked. Among the few Reinhold scholars who study it, the extant view is that intellectual intuition does not yield cognition of an absolute knower, and that only Fichte makes this assertion. However, this view ignores Reinhold’s claim that I must attribute all my representations to an absolute knower to explain the unity of experience. In this paper, I argue that we must take this claim seriously, and I show that, for Reinhold, my cognition of myself as an absolute knower in intellectual intuition enables me to attribute all my representations to myself as such a knower, and he does so prior to Fichte.

In Aenesidemus, G.E. Schulze adopts the skeptical voice of Aenesidemus and engages in critical dialogue with Hermias, a Kantian, in the hopes of laying bare what he views as the fundamental issues of K.L. Reinhold’s version of critical philosophy. While some attacks reveal a deep misunderstanding of Reinhold’s Elementarphilosophie on Schulze’s part, others hit their mark. In the Aenesidemus Review (1794), J.G. Fichte at times agrees with criticisms raised by Aenesidemus and at times defends Reinhold against them. On Fichte’s view, Schulze succeeds in proving that the first principle of Reinhold’s Elementarphilosophie, the principle of consciousness (Satz des Bewußtseins), is neither self-evident nor self-determining. Therefore, it cannot be the first principle of philosophy. However, Schulze fails to dissuade Fichte from viewing Reinhold’s principle of consciousness as the pithiest expression of human consciousness of the time. For these reasons, Fichte holds that Reinhold’s principle of consciousness must be deduced from an even higher principle. The goal of this paper is to assess whether Fichte puts forth his own candidate for the first principle of philosophy in his Aenesidemus Review.

Wolff advocates the mathematical method, which consists in chains of syllogisms that proceed from axioms and definitions to theorems, for achieving scientific certainty in branches of philosophy like ontology and physics. By contrast, in ‘The Discipline of Pure Reason in its Dogmatic Use’ Kant significantly limits the efficacy of this method in philosophy. In this paper I investigate an under-examined result of the Discipline: Kant’s claim that his system of philosophy does not contain “dogmata”. By identifying “dogmata” in Wolff’s system of physics, I argue that, for Kant, they are propositions that uncritically deploy ideas of reason. I conclude that the Discipline extends criticisms raised in the Transcendental Dialectic to any erroneous use of the mathematical method in philosophy.