Kant Trouble by Morgan Diane

Author:Morgan, Diane [Diane Morgan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781134671120
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

The discussion of the Anthropology above has already shown that any formula such as ‘imagination combined with consciousness’ presupposes an impossible distinction. By Kant’s own admission, we cannot be sure whether we are deliberately using imagination or whether it is deviously playing with us (Kant 1977b:476; 1974:51). However, here he is not suggesting that this fundamental power, undivided and radical, actually exists—it is ‘purely hypothetical’ (Kant 1983a:B677)—but that the search for such a convergence, both in the human mind and in nature, is necessary; for without it we would have no reason, no use of understanding and no possibility of empirical truth (ibid.: B679). Different substances (gases, liquids), different minerals, plants and animals, different species, faculties of the mind, must all be interrelated to some extent (but to what extent?). If each entity was living its own monadic life in its own separate world, unaffected by its environment, unperturbed by neighbouring life forms, we would have no cognitive point of entry into their existence at all. In order for our scientific enquiry to have a sense of direction and to come up with coherent answers to questions, we must at least assume that natural phenomena mean something, that they have a raison d’être or purpose. Otherwise, it is difficult to imagine how reflections on natural phenomena could ever cohere to form a systematic study of life forms instead of remaining at the unconvincing level of fluke observations of random happenings. The enquiring mind needs to be able to read adaptive necessity into the world to some extent so as to see ‘into the reasons why and the end for which they are provided with such and such parts’ (Kant 1990a:§66; 1988a:25).28 In the same vein, this necessary assumption of unity excludes any idea of the excessive proliferation of principles in nature. To relate back to our previous discussion of sexual difference: the fact that there is difference and not auto-reproduction—the principle of parsimony (Ersparung)—has to be the economic law of reason and nature (Kant 1983a: B678). If the source of life itself is in excess of a unitary, single element that could serve as a unifying origin, then this must be an economical excess.

However, if elsewhere reason’s folly is to transgress the bounds of all possible experience, soaring to impossible supersensible heights misled by its ‘drive to extension’ (ibid.),29 Kant draws our attention here to another danger. This is the drive that pushes the reduction of substances too far, to a state of unjustifiable parsimony. It is now that we come across the example of the irresponsible ‘Scheidekünstler’ mentioned above in relation to ‘Verwandtschaften’ and imagination:

Already a great advance was made when chemists succeeded in reducing all salts to two main genera, acids and alkalies; and they endeavour to show that even this difference is merely a variety, or diverse manifestation, of one and the same fundamental material. Chemists have sought, step by step, to reduce the different kinds of earths (the material of stones and even of metals) to three, and at last to two; but, not content with this…

(ibid.

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