The Rudolf Steiner Archive

2. Kant's Basic Epistemological Question

[ 1 ] Kant is usually considered to be the founder of epistemology in the modem sense of the word. Against this assessment one could quite rightly raise the objection that the history of philosophy before Kant shows numerous investigations which after all must be regarded as more than the mere germ of such a science. Volkelt, for example, in his fundamental work on epistemology, notes that the critical treatment of this science has already begun with Locke. But even with earlier philosophers, already in Greek philosophy, in fact, one finds discussions that commonly take place in epistemology today (J. Volkelt, Experience and Thinking. Critical Foundations of Epistemology). But all the pertinent questions have been churned up in all their depth by Kant; and in connection with him, numerous thinkers have elaborated them in so many ways that, either with Kant himself or with his epigones, one finds again the earlier attempts at solutions. If it is a question, therefore, of studying purely the content and not the history of epistemology, one will hardly miss a single important phenomenon if one merely takes into account the time since s*Kant appearance with his critique of pure reason. What was accomplished earlier in this field repeats itself in this epoch.

[ 2 ] Kant's basic epistemological question is: How are synthetical judgments possible a priori? ^{1Urteil “judgment” means here the bringing together of two concepts. In his Science of Knowing (page 55) Rudolf Steiner gives the following as an example of a “Judgment”: ...inner freedom is the self-determination of a being from out of itself... —Translator.} Let us look at this question to see how free it is of presuppositions! Kant raises this question because he is of the opinion that we can attain an unconditionally certain knowledge only if we are in a position to prove the validity of a priori synthetical judgments. He says: “Included in the solving of the above task is the possibility of using pure reason in founding and conducting all the sciences that contain a theoretical a priori knowledge of objects” (Critique of Pure Reason, p. 61ff.) and “whether metaphysics will stand or fall, and therefore the very existence of metaphysics, depends entirely upon the solving of this task.” (Prolegomena, § 5)

[ 3 ] Now is this question, in the way that Kant poses it, free of presuppositions? By no means, for it makes the possibility of an unconditionally certain system of knowledge dependent upon the fact that the system be built up only out of synthetical judgments and out of judgments achieved independently of all experience.^{2Erfahrung: virtually synonymous for Kant with “sense perception,” in contrast to what reason gives us “a priori.” —Translator.} Kant calls those judgments “synthetical” in which the concept contained in the predicate adds to the concept contained in the subject something lying entirely outside the subject, “even though it may stand in some connection with the subject” (Critique of Pure Reason, p. 53f.); whereas, in “analytical” judgments the predicate only expresses something already present (in a hidden way) within the subject. It cannot be the place here to go into Johannes Rehmke's (The World as Perception and Concept, p. 161ff.) incisive objections to this classification of judgments. For our present purpose it is enough to see that we can gain true knowledge only through those judgments which add to a concept a second one whose content, at least for us, was not yet present in the first concept. If we want, along with Kant, to call this class of judgments “synthetical," we can still agree that knowledge in the form of judgments can be achieved only if the connection of the predicate to the subject is a synthetical one of this sort. It is a different matter, however, with the second part of the question which demands that these judgments be acquired a priori, i.e., independently of all experience. It is in fact altogether possible (by this we mean, of course, only that it is possible to conceive) that such judgments do not exist at all. Where epistemology begins, the question must remain entirely open as to whether we can arrive at judgments in a different way than through experience or only through experience. In fact, to an unprejudiced consideration, it seems impossible from the very beginning that judgments could be independent of experience. For, no matter what might become the object of our knowing, it must, after all, at some time enter our immediate and individual awareness, which means that it must become our experience. We even acquire mathematical judgments in no other way than by experiencing them in certain individual cases. Even if, like Otto Liebmann, for example, (Contribution to the Analysis of Reality, Thoughts and Facts) one believes mathematical judgments to be founded in the particular organization of our consciousness, the matter presents itself no differently. One might very well say then that one or another principle is necessarily valid, for, if its truth were annulled, then consciousness would be annulled along with it: but we can still acquire the content of the principle as knowledge only if it becomes experience for us at some stage in exactly the same way as an occurrence in outer nature. No matter whether or not the content of such a principle contains elements that guarantee its absolute validity, or whether other reasons establish its validity: I cannot come into possession of it in any other way than through its approaching me at some stage as experience. That is one reservation about Kant's question.

[ 4 ] The second reservation consists in the fact that one absolutely cannot assert at the beginning of epistemological investigations that no unconditionally valid knowledge can stem from experience. It is definitely quite conceivable that experience itself could exhibit a characteristic that would guarantee the certainty of the insights gained through experience.

[ 5 ] Two presuppositions, therefore, are contained in the way the Kantian question is stated: firstly, that we must have a way besides experience of attaining knowledge, and secondly, that all knowing from experience can have only a conditional validity. That these two propositions need examination, that they could be open to doubt, does not enter Kant's consciousness at all. He simply takes them up as preconceptions from dogmatic philosophy and makes them the basis of his critical investigations. Dogmatic philosophy assumes them to be valid and simply uses them to arrive at a knowledge corresponding to them; Kant assumes them to be valid and asks himself only: Under what conditions can they be valid? But what if they are not valid at all? Then the edifice of Kant's theory has no foundation.

[ 6 ] Everything that Kant presents in the five paragraphs that preceded the formulating of his basic question is an attempt to show that mathematical judgments are synthetical.^{3An attempt, furthermore, which, if not totally refuted by Robert Zimmermann's objections (On Kant Is Mathematical Preconception and its Consequences) is nevertheless seriously brought into question by them.} But precisely the two presuppositions we have indicated remain there as scientific preconceptions. In the second introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason it is stated: “Experience teaches us indeed that something is fashioned in such and such a way, but not that it could not be different” and: “Experience never gives to its judgments true or strict, but only presumed and comparative, universality (by induction).” In Paragraph I of the Prolegomena we find: “First of all, as far as the sources of a metaphysical knowledge are concerned, it is already inherent in their concept that they cannot be empirical. Their principles (to which belong not merely their basic axioms, but also their basic concepts) must therefore never be derived from experience, for this knowledge is not supposed to be physical, but rather metaphysical, i.e., lying beyond experience.” And finally, Kant says in the Critique of Pure Reason (p. 58): “First and foremost it must be noted that actual mathematical axioms are always judgments a priori and not empirical ones, because they bring with themselves necessity such as cannot be derived from experience. But if someone does not want to concede this, fine, then I will limit my proposition to pure mathematics, whose concept already implies that this science does not contain empirical but only pure knowledge a priori.” We can open the Critique of Pure Reason wherever we want, and will still find that all the investigations in it are conducted under presupposition of these dogmatic propositions. Cohen (Kant's Theory of Experience, p. 90ff.) and Stadler (Basic Principles of Pure Epistemology in the Kantian Philosophy, p. 76f.) attempt to show that Kant did establish the a priori nature of mathematical and pure scientific axioms. But everything attempted in the Critique can be summed up as follows: Because mathematics and pure science are a priori sciences, the form of all experience must therefore be determined within the subject. Thus, finally, it is only the material of sensations that is given empirically. This material is built up into a system of experience by forms lying within the soul (Gemüt). Only as ordering principles for the material of sensations do the formal truths of a priori theories have any meaning and significance; they make experience possible, but do not reach beyond it. These formal truths, however, are the synthetical judgments a priori that, as the determining factors of all possible experience, must therefore reach as far as this experience itself. Thus the Critique of Pure Reason does not at all prove the a priority of mathematics and pure science, but rather determines only the region where they are in effect under the presupposition that their truths be acquired independently of experience. In fact, Kant bothers so little about any proof for this a priority that he simply excludes that part of mathematics (see p. 7, above) for which, even in his view, this a priority could perhaps be doubted, and limits himself only to that from which he believes himself able to deduce this a priority in a merely conceptual way. Even Johannes Volkelt finds that Kant starts “from the express presupposition that there actually is a universal and necessary knowledge.” He says about this further: “This presupposition, which Kant never expressly subjected to examination, stands in such conflict with the character of critical epistemology that one must seriously raise the question as to whether the Critique of Pure Reason can be considered a critical epistemology.” Volkelt finds, to be sure, that one can answer “yes” to this question, for good reasons, but “still the critical stance of the Kantian epistemology is deeply shaken by this dogmatic presupposition.” (Experience and Thinking, p. 21) But enough: even Volkelt finds that the Critique of Pure Reason is not an epistemology free of presuppositions.

[ 7 ] The views of O. Liebmann, Hölder, Windelband, Ueberweg, and Ed. v. Hartmann ^{4Liebmann, Analysis, p. 211ff.; Holder, Epistemology, p. 14ff.; Windelband, Phases, p. 239; Ueberweg, System of Logic, p. 380f.; Hartmann, Critical Foundations, p. 142-172, and Kuno Fischer, History of Modern Philosophy, vol. 5, p. 60. Volkelt is mistaken about Kuno Fischer when he says (Kant's Epistemology, p. 198f., note.) that it is “not clear from K. Fischer's presentation whether, in his view, Kant presupposes only the psychological reality of universal and necessary judgments or at the same time their objective validity and correctness.” For, at the place referred to, Fischer says that the main difficulty with the Critique of Pure Reason is to be sought in the fact that its “foundations rest upon certain presuppositions, which one has to have dealt with in order for what follows to be valid.” For Fischer also these presuppositions consist in this: “first the fact of knowledge” is asserted and then through analysis the ability for knowledge is found “by which that fact itself is explained.”} are also basically in accord with ours about the fact that Kant places the a priori validity of pure mathematics and physics as presupposition at the forefront of his argument.

[ 8 ] The propositions that we really have knowledge which is independent of all experience and that knowledge from experience only affords insights of comparative universality could become valid only as corollaries of other judgments. Investigations into the nature of experience and into the nature of our knowledge would absolutely have to precede such assertions. Investigation into experience could lead to the first proposition; investigation into knowledge to the second.

[ 9 ] Now one could still reply to the objections we have made to the critique of reason in the following way. One could say that every epistemology, after all, must first bring the reader to where he can find a starting point free of presuppositions. For, what we possess as knowledge at any given moment in our life is far removed from this starting point, and we must first of all be led back to it again artificially. And, in fact, it is necessary for every epistemologist to arrive at a purely didactic understanding about the starting point of his science. But this understanding must limit itself in any case to showing to what extent the said starting point of knowledge really is so; it would have to proceed in purely self-evident analytical propositions and not, as Kant did, make any assertions with real content that affect the content of the subsequent arguments. It is also incumbent upon the epistemologist to show that the starting point he takes really is free of presuppositions. All this, however, has nothing to do with the nature of this starting point itself, but stands entirely outside it and expresses nothing about it. At the beginning of mathematical instruction I must also make an effort to convince my pupil of the axiomatic nature of certain truths. But no one would maintain that the content of the axioms themselves is made dependent upon these preliminary considerations.^{5In Chapter IV, The Starting Points of Epistemology, we show the extent to which we proceed with our own epistemological considerations in exactly the same way.} In exactly the same way the epistemologist would have to show in his introductory remarks how one can come to a starting point free of presuppositions; the actual content of this starting point, however, must be independent of these considerations. But in any case, a person is far from any such introduction to epistemology if, like Kant, he makes assertions of a quite definite dogmatic nature right from the very beginning.