Forster Michael N. - Kant and Skepticism

KANT AND SKEPTICISM

PRINCETON MONOGRAPHS
IN PHILOSOPHY

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Fixing Frege by J OHN P. B URGESS

Kant and Skepticism by M ICHAEL N. F ORSTER

Michael N. Forster

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Forster, Michael N.
Kant and skepticism / Michael N. Forster.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-691-12987-7 (hardcover: alk. paper)
1. Kant, Immanuel, 17241804. 2. Skepticism. I. Title.
B2799.S5467 2008
149.7309dc22 2007020800

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Janson Text

Printed on acid-free paper.

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1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

For Noha

WITH MUCH LOVE

C HAPTER O NE
Varieties of Skepticism

C HAPTER T WO
Veil of Perception Skepticism

C HAPTER T HREE
Skepticism and Metaphysics (a Puzzle)

C HAPTER F OUR
Kants Pyrrhonian Crisis

C HAPTER F IVE
Humean Skepticism

C HAPTER S IX
Kants Reformed Metaphysics

C HAPTER S EVEN
Defenses against Humean Skepticism

C HAPTER E IGHT
Defenses against Pyrrhonian Skepticism

C HAPTER N INE
Some Relatively Easy Problems

C HAPTER T EN
A Metaphysics of Morals?

C HAPTER E LEVEN
Failures of Self-Reflection

C HAPTER T WELVE
The Pyrrhonists Revenge

T HIS ESSAY concerns Kant and skepticism. It is a sort of companion piece to earlier work of mine on Hegel and skepticism: Hegel and Skepticism (1989) and Hegels Idea of a Phenomenology of Spirit (1998), . In many ways the two projects ascribe very different positions to Kant and Hegel. However, they do identify one large and important piece of common ground which the two philosophers share: a profound preoccupation with Pyrrhonian skepticism. The identification of this form of skepticism as a central concern for Hegel was probably the most striking feature of the earlier project. Likewise, the identification of it as a central concern for Kantand as the source of a full-blooded crise pyrrhonienne which Kant underwent in Dreams of a Spirit Seer, Illustrated by Dreams of Metaphysics (1766)will probably be found the most striking feature of the present essay. My purpose in this essay is to consider Kants position on its own terms, rather than to compare it with Hegels. However, the final chapter does stage a confrontation of sorts between their positions.

Versions of this essay have been in existence for about twenty years now, and I have incurred many debts of gratitude in the course of its development. I would especially like to thank the following people, who went to the trouble of providing detailed, probing written comments which helped me to improve the material significantly: Michael Inwood, Batrice Longuenesse, and Allen Wood. I would also like to thank the following people for contributing to its development in various ways: Fred Beiser, Eckhart Frster, Michael Frede, Gottfried Gabriel, Don Garrett, Steven Stich, and the late Manley Thompson. In addition, I would like to thank audiences at the following institutions who listened and responded to parts of it given as public presentations: the University of Chicago, Princeton University, the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, and New York University. I would also like to thank the many generations of students at the University of Chicago who have listened and responded to versions of it presented as lectures over the years. I would like to thank Ian Malcolm and his colleagues at the Princeton University Press for their excellent work and friendliness. Last but not least, I would like to thank my parents Michael and Kathleen, my wife Noha, and my daughter Alya for their unfailing love, support, and patience.

Kants works are cited in this essay in the following conventional ways: in the case of the Critique of Pure Reason, by means of the standard system of A and B numbers for the first and second editions respectively (e.g., A90 / B123); in the case of other texts, normally by means of the volume and page number of the standard German edition of Kants works published by the Knigliche Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, generally known as the Akademieausgabe and hence referred to here as AA (e.g., AA 4:247), or when a text is frequently cited, after a first citation, simply by means of the page number of the relevant volume of that edition. Thanks largely to the excellent new Cambridge Edition of Kants works edited by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood, these forms of reference should allow readers working with English translations to locate passages easily, while also permitting readers working with German texts to do so. Translations are either my own or borrowed from standard English editions of Kants works, sometimes with modifications (mainly editions by Norman Kemp Smith and Lewis White Beck).

KANT AND SKEPTICISM

I N THE FIRST part of this essay I shall give a general exposition of the role of skepticism in Kants critical philosophy. In the second part, I shall offer a critical assessment of the Kantian position that emerges.

The critical philosophy, as first set forth by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason of 1781/7 (henceforth: the Critique), grew from and addresses a very complex set of philosophical concerns. But among these, two which stand out as especially central are a concern to address skepticism and a concern to develop a reformed metaphysics.

That much is widely recognized. However, it is a fundamental thesis of the present essay that these two projects belong tightly together, namely in the following sense: The types of skepticism which really originated and motivate the critical philosophy are types of skepticism that mainly threaten metaphysics;

To amplify a little on the first of those points: Treatments of Kant have commonly been plagued, it seems to me, by two closely connected weaknessesa failure to distinguish with sufficient care between different types of skepticism, and a (largely consequent) failure to discern the different roles that different types of skepticism played in connection with the origination and motivation of the critical philosophy. For the purposes of interpreting Kant, it is especially important to distinguish between the following three sorts of skepticism: First, there is