Emerson’s question, “Where do we find ourselves?”, at first presents itself as vastly more confident than Nietzsche’s answering question, “But how do we find ourselves again?”. Where Emerson presupposes that we have managed to find ourselves somewhere or other, the remaining question being only, where that has occurred, Nietzsche asks how such finding is (“again”) possible at all. But, here as always, Emerson is a master of the barely audible ambiguities of English (so different in this respect from German or Greek).[1]And, in fact, although Nietzsche’s question uses finden (“Aber wie finden wir uns selbst wieder?”) Emerson’s had to be translated using begegnen (“Wo begegnen wir uns selbst?”).

Where, in what state, are we when we set ourselves to this finding, which is to say, to the original transcendental act of self-consciousness? Schelling had called this a state of synthesis, that is, of composition, in which the two ingredients are the finite and infinite in us, the limited self and the self that limits it:

The limiting activity [Thätigkeit] does not come to consciousness, does not become object; it is thus the activity of the pure subject. But the ego of self-consciousness is not pure subject, but rather subject and object simultaneously.

The limited activity is only that which becomes object, the merely objective in self-consciousness. But the ego of self-consciousness is neither pure subject nor pure object, but rather both simultaneously.

Thus, neither through the limiting nor through the limited activity for itself does it come to self-consciousness. It is accordingly through a third activity, composed [zusammengesetzte] of both, through which the ego of self-consciousness is generated [entsteht]. . . .

The ego is thus itself a composite activity; self-consciousness itself a synthetic act [Act]. (System des transscendentalen Idealismus, p. 85)

Now, “composition” (compositio = تركيبtarkīb = σύνθεσιςsunthesis), in a narrow sense, means the mere placing together of parts which remain distinct in the composite (so that, for example, the human body is, in this narrow sense, a composite of flesh, bone, blood, etc.), as opposed to true mixture (mixtio or commixtio = خاليطkhālīṭ or اختيلاطikhtīlāṭ = μίξιςmixis) or temperament (temperamentum or complexio = مزاجmizāj = κρᾶσιςkrāsis), in which the ingredients come to make up a uniform whole (as homogeneous parts like blood and bone are supposed to be themselves temperaments of the four humors, or of the four elements). But “composition” can also be used in a broader sense, in which it stands for the genus of which both composition narrowly construed and temperament are species. That Schelling is using the term in this broad sense is evident from his later description of the constituents as mutually penetrating:

In that the opposed activities of self-consciousness interfuse [sich … durchdringen] into a third, something common [ein Gemeinschaftliches] is generated out of both. (p. 100)

Schelling’s sich durchdringen corresponds to Galen’s phrase δι’ ἀλλήλων ἰέναιdi’ allēlōn ienai, by which he explains what characterizes temperament according both to Peripatetics and to Stoics, the only issue between them being:

how the ingredients are entirely tempered [ὅπως δι’ ὅλων κεράννυνται τὰ κεραννύμενα],hopōs di’ holōn kerannuntai ta kerannumena whether by the qualities only going through each other [δι’ ἀλλήλων ἰουσῶν],di’ allēlōn iousōn as Aristotle supposes, or by the corporeal substances [doing so], as well. (De el. 9, K1:489)

What Schelling says does not, perhaps, give enough information to tell whether he favors the Peripatetic or the Stoic theory, but it does show certainly that the type of “composition” he has in mind is temperament.

This, then, is the question as Emerson takes it up, and he begins by agreeing with Schelling that we find ourselves, that is, carry out the act of transcendental self-consciousness, in a state of mixed constitution, that is, in a temperament. But, unlike Schelling, he describes this tempered state as a certain distemper:

the Genius which according to the old belief stands at the door by which we enter, and gives us the lethe to drink, that we may tell no tales, mixed the cup too strongly, and we cannot shake off the lethargy now at noonday. (loc. cit.)

It is that distemper of the brain, namely, that was thought, by “the old physicians,” to be the cause of “lethargy”: “yellow bile predominating in the brain,” as Galen explains,

we are drawn into delirium [παραφροσύνηparaphrosunē = وسواسwaswās = desipientia], through that of the black [bile] into melancholy, but, because of phlegm and cooling causes generally, we are seized by lethargy, due to which [we are seized also by] harms to the memory and the sagacity [σύνεσιςsunesis = عقلʿaql = prudentia]. (K4:776–7) [2]Arabic ed. Biesterfeld, p. 15; Latin, Opera ed. Bonardus (Venice, 1490), 118r (translation attributed to Niccolò Da Reggio). My usual half-assed research has not turned up any evidence that Emerson read Galen extensively: he mentions him only a few times, and in somewhat of a name-dropping manner. The reference to “the old physicians” linked to above (from “Power” in The Conduct of Life) is followed by a quote from someone not very old, and more a physiologist than a physician, namely Swedenborg. So I cannot claim that Emerson is alluding to this passage from Galen, in particular. But the doctrine is Galenic.

Hence Emerson, in accordance with this etiology, goes on to blame this our lethargy on a “frugality in nature, that she was so sparing of her fire and so liberal of her earth” (loc. cit.). In this respect, he is closer to Hume than he is to Schelling: recall that Hume finds himself, at his point of maximum rational self-knowledge, in a state of “melancholy” (Treatise 1.4.7.1).[3]Instead of Emerson’s phlegm (cold–moist), therefore, Hume has black bile (cold–dry), and this would in fact fit better with Emerson’s contrast of earth vs. fire (phlegm being associated rather with water than with earth). However, it is doubtful whether Hume really keeps up a consistent use of the humoral metaphor any more than Emerson does: see e.g. the different use of the earthy vs. fiery contrast at 1.4.7.14. The state of melancholy in 1.4.7.1 is followed by “splenetic humour,” i.e., predominance of yellow bile, at 1.4.7.10, and then, towards the end of 1.4.7.14, by the return of “good humour” — which may or may not be the same as the returning “sanguine hopes and expectations” mentioned in the First Enquiry (1.12). Phlegm is associated with a cautious philosophy (= moderate skepticism?) in the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (2.18).

Still, what Emerson says is not “melancholy,” but “lethargy.” There is some oddness about the term. It means, in its ordinary sense, a kind of profound inertia that saps one’s ability to act, and yet it derives from λήθηlēthē, oblivion: the opposite, not of action, but of memory. Galen himself is already troubled by this anomaly, and responds, somewhat unconvincingly, by adding that lethargy also results in “harms to the memory.” Emerson, on the other hand, simply starts off from the etymological sense. The transcendental act of self-consciousness miscarries, he says, because the lethe we have drunk, being too strong, makes Platonic ἀναμνήσιςanamnēsis impossible. But, in Schelling’s terms, does this mean that we have too much, so to speak, of the finite — the limited ego which becomes object? Or does it not mean, rather, that we have too much of the infinite, limiting ego, which “does not come to consciousness”? There is no straightforward answer to this, I suppose, because our distemper, breaking, as it does, the cycle by which the intellect ought to be able to return to its source, breaks also the connection between the infinite below us (the infinity of prime matter, that must be limited to become object) and its paradigm in the infinite above (the infinity of the one beyond being, that is the source of all limit). Where we find ourselves, then, is, lost between two infinities:

In a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it has none. We wake and find ourselves on a stair; there are stairs below us, which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above us, many a one, which go upward out of sight. (loc. cit.)

Our distemperate state, in other words, itself prevents us from distinguishing its ingredients (limiting and limited ego), such that we cannot say which is the phlegm that has so damaged our memory.

Easier than a direct comparison between Emerson and Schelling, then, is a comparison between Emerson and Coleridge:

Nature is a Line in constant and continuous evolution. Its beginning is lost in the Super-natural: and for our understanding, therefore, it must appear as a continuous line without beginning or end, (Aids to Reflection, note to Comment to Aphorism X on That Which is Indeed Spiritual Religion [ed. Marsh, 1829], p. 327)

From this point of view, it is clear what, according to Emerson, we have too much of, namely what Coleridge, at this stage in his work, calls “understanding.” To explain exactly what this means would take us on a long detour through Schelling’s interpretation of Kant and Coleridge’s interpretation of Schelling, but, roughly speaking: the limitation of Schelling’s limited (objective) ego, which is really a single, simple act of the limiting (subjective) ego, appears to the limited ego itself as a series of alien limitations (i.e., the manifold of sense), against which it must strive ad infinitum, and that indefinite conatus, when separated (abstracted) from the limit, is the understanding.[4]This interpretation, on which understanding is essentially related to sensibility, is not, I think, true to Kant, even though Coleridge attributes to Kant a definition of “understanding” as “the Faculty [of] judging according to Sense.” (Aids, Comment ot Aphorism VIII on That Which is Indeed Spiritual Religion, p. 137). In Kant, Verstand is equivalent to intellectus = عقلʿaql = νοῦςnous, and as such applies equally to our own discursive intellect or to a hypothetical intuitive one. However, in some places Coleridge seems to acknowledge this: see e.g. his translation of το φρόνημα της σαρκόςto phronēma tēs sarkos as “the sensual understanding.” The full verse, Romans 8:6, is τὸ γὰρ φρόνημα τῆς σαρκὸς θάνατος, τὸ δὲ φρόνημα τοῦ πνεύματος ζωὴ καὶ εἰρήνη,to gar phronēma tēs sarkos thanatos, to de phronēma tou pneumatos zōē kai eirēnē suggesting that he would translate τὸ φρόνημα τοῦ πνεύματοςto phronēma tou pneumatos as “the spiritual understanding.” This faculty finds, as Coleridge puts it, no origin in its object, because the origin is “lost in the Super-natural,” i.e., lies in the infinite, limiting ego, which in this respect is the will:

But where there is no discontinuity there can be no origination, and every appearance of origination in Nature is but a shadow of our own casting. It is a reflection from our own Will or Spirit. Herein, indeed, the Will consists. This is the essential character by which will is opposed to Nature, as Spirit, and raised above Nature as self-determining Spirit — this, namely, that it is a power of originating an act or state. (Aids, p. 327)

This, then, is how Emerson connects the ordinary and etymological senses of “lethargy.” There is a kind of forgetfulness, the forgetfulness of origins, which is a sickness of the will — that is, it is a forgetfulness of ends, as well a forgetfulness of origins. What we forget, ultimately, is will itself as end an sich: will as origin of all our origination, as that to which we ought to be able to revert in reflection (in the “reflection,” that is, that Coleridge mentions in the title of his work).

This forgetfulness or obvliousness that makes us lethargic, prevents us from originating action, and hence prevents us from reverting to the true dynamic infinite, differs in this way from the “darkness” that conceals Schelling’s unconscious ego. For the latter is able to act, out of that darkness, within or behind the finite will, enabling to it create, in its finite object, a infinite symbol of the origin:

The work of art reflects for us the identity of the conscious and unconscious activity [Thätigkeit]. But the opposition of these two is an infinite one, and it is annulled [aufgehoben] without any cooperation [Zuthun] of freedom. The fundamental character of the work of art is thus an unconscious infinity. The artist seems to have exhibited [dargestellt], as it were instinctively, in his work, besides that which he has placed [gelegt] therein with manifest intent, an infinity which no finite understanding is capable of entirely unfolding [entwickeln]. (System, p. 463)

Schelling’s name for this “dark force [Gewalt],” “the inconceivable, which without the cooperation of freedom, and to a certain extent against freedom … brings the objective to consciousness,” is “genius” (pp. 457–8). But Emerson says: “Ah that our Genius were a little more of a genius!” (“Experience,” p. 50).

In Coleridge’s system, the dark force analogous to Schelling’s genius is grace — the action of the divine will within a finite will — and the perfection in doing or making (ποίησιςpoiēsis) that the finite will then produces, as outward symbol, is moral perfection. This is what allows Coleridge, interpreting James 1:25, to contend that faith is higher than morality, but not other than it: he who “looks down into the perfect law of freedom” is “not a forgetful hearer” of the word, “but a doer of the work”; “this man shall be blessed in his deed.”[5]῾Ο δὲ παρακύψας εἰς νόμον τέλειον τὸν τῆς ἐλευθερίας καὶ παραμείνας, οὐκ ἀκροατὴς [λόγου] ἐπιλησμνονῆς γενόμενος ἀλλὰ ποιητὴς ἔργου, οὗτος μακάριος ἐν τῇ ποιήσει αὐτοῦ ἔσται.ho de parakupsas eis nomon teleion ton tēs eleutherias kai parameinas, ouk akroatēs [logou] epilēsmonēs genomenos alla poiētēs ergou, houtos makarios en tēI poiēsei autou estai See Coleridge, Aids, Introductory Aphorism XXIII, p. 16. This is to be compared with Fuller’s discussion of Matthew 5:48 (ἔσεσθε οὖν ὑμεῖς τέλεοι ὡς ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν ὁ οὐράνιος τέλειός ἐστιν):esesthe oun humeis teleoi hōs ho patēr humōn ho ouranios teleios estin see “The Great Lawsuit,” The Dial 4:4–5. Fuller goes in quite a different direction from Emerson’s, as I hope to explain in a later post. Or, as Coleridge puts it in his own words:

The outward service (ΘρησκείαThrēskeia) of ancient religion, the rites, ceremonies and ceremonial vestments of the old law, had morality for their substance. They were the letter, of which morality was the spirit; the enigma, of which morality was the meaning. But morality itself is the service and ceremonial (cultus exterior, θρησκείαthrēskeia) of the Christian religion. (Aids, Introductory Aphorism XXIII, pp. 15–16)

The lethargy that overcomes us on our entrance to this world, that is both a kind of inertia, a mere hearing that does not proceed to doing, and a kind of forgetfulness and defect in (transcendental) reflection,[6]See the preceding two verses in James: ὅτι εἴ τις ἀκροατὴς λόγου ἐστὶν καὶ οὐ ποιητὴς, οὕτος ἔοικεν ἀνδρὶ κατανοοῦντι τὸ πρόσωπον τῆς γενέσεως αὐτοῦ ἐν ἐσπόπτρῳ. καταενόησεν γὰρ ἑαυτὸν καὶ ἀπελήλυθεν καὶ εὐθέως ἐπελάθετο ὁποῖος ἦν.hoti ei tis akroatēs logou estin kai ou poiētēs, houtos eoiken andri katanoounti to prosōpon tēs geneseōs aoutou en espoptrō. kataenoēsen gar heauton kai apelēluthen kai eutheōs epelatheto hopoios ēn is, in other words, original sin: the forgetfulness of our infinite origin by virtue of which we are heteronomous, i.e. by virtue of which the law of morality appears to us, in effect, as sensation, as passion — as experience, one might say — that is, as a limit imposed on us from without:

That the Law is a Law for you; that it acts on the Will not in it; that it exercises an agency from without, by fear and coercion; proves the corruption of your Will, and presupposes it. Sin in this sense came by the Law: for it has its essence, as Sin, in that counterposition of the Holy Principle to the Will, which occasions this Principle to be a Law. Exactly (as in all other points) consonant with the Pauline doctrine is the assertion of John, when speaking of the re-adoption of the redeemed to be Sons of God, and the consequent resumption (I had almost said, re-absorption) of the Law into the Will (νομον τελειον τον της ελευθεριας,nomon teleion ton tēs eleutherias James i. 25. See page 14,) he says — For the law was given by Moses; but Grace and Truth came by Jesus Christ. P.S. That by the Law St. Paul meant only the ceremonial Law is a notion, that could originate only in utter inattention to the whole strain and gist of the Apostles’ Argument. (Comment to Aphorism XV on That Which is Indeed Spiritual Religion, p. 183–4)

The defect in our temperament is that we are reprobate, damned, and when Emerson adds later: “Temperament is the iron wire on which the beads are strung” (p. 54), he is asserting the doctrine of predestination. “Experience,” in opening with a view of the law as experience, thus opens with the sin of despair (or “desperation”): a sin against the Holy Ghost, which will never be forgiven.

Now, “Experience” does not necessarily close the way it opens. The moral subject admits of being treated with desperation, but it cannot, perhaps, so be disposed of. However that may be: from this point of view, “Schopenhauer as Educator” begins actually on a more hopeful note:

A certain traveler, who had seen many lands and peoples and various parts of the earth, and was asked what property of human beings he had always found everywhere, said: they have a tendency to laziness. To some it will seem that he might more correctly and more validly have said: they are all fearful. They hide themselves under customs and opinions. Fundamentally [im Grunde], every human being knows quite well that they are only in the world once, as an unicum …: they know this, but hide it like a bad conscience — why? Out of fear of one’s neighbor, who demands conventionality [Convention] and [also] hides himself with it. But what is it that coerces an individual to fear their neighbor …? … For the great majority it is comfort, inertia, in short that tendency to laziness of which the traveler spoke. He was right: human beings are even lazier than they are fearful, and they fear most of all the pains with which an unconditional honestly and nakedness would encumber them. (“Schopenhauer als Erzieher,” Werke (1899), 1:387)

This “laziness” (Faulheit), which manifests itself as fear, is, like the “lethargy” of “Experience,” a kind of inertia that keeps us back from acting because it prevents us from retrieving our origin. Nietzsche’s use of the concept here, however, brings him closer rather to the Emerson of “Self-Reliance.” Finding ourselves, so to speak, in the midst of a pleasant dream, seemingly clothed in a gown and comfortably seated by the fireplace, we fear awakening naked and destitute, our old houses and old opinions having been torn down,[7]Nietzsche: “Ich gehe durch die neuen Strassen unserer Städte und denke, wie von allen diesen greulichen Häusern, welche das Geschlecht der öffentlich Meinenden sich erbaut hat, in einem Jahrhundert nichts mehr steht, und wie dann auch wohl die Meinungen dieser Häuserbauer umgefallen sein werden” (p. 389). to hard labor in the dark. This inertia and fearfulness are evidently the same, then, as those in virtue of which we dare not say “I think, I am.” To say, “your true essence does not lie deeply hidden in you, but rather immeasurably high above you, or at least, over that which you customarily take as your ego” (p. 391), and to call that infinitely high (or “eminent”), unconscious self our “genius”[8]Nietzsche: “Es giebt kein öderes und widrigeres Ge schöpf in der Natur als den Menschen, welcher seinem Genius ausgewichen ist” (p. 388). — all of this is found in “Self-Reliance,” and indeed even in Schelling.[9]Nietzsche had read, at the opening of the Foreword to the his translation of Emerson’s Essays (Versuche, tr. G. Fabricius [Hannover: Carl Meyer, 1858]): “Emerson only brings back to us the blossoms whose seeds he gathered in through his study of the German people and their cultural [geistigen] products. But it happens with certain types of flowers, that they develop to redoubled beauty in a foreign healthy soil and new climatic relations” (p. iii). The translator was an (otherwise unknown?) young woman (I suppose that “G. Fabricius” is a pseudonym), and the Foreword is by the writer Gisela von Arnim, daughter of Bettina von Arnim and first cousin of Franz Brentano. See Julius Simon, Ralph Waldo Emerson in Deutschland (1851–1932 (Giessen: Junker und Dunhaupt, 1937) (a PhD dissertation completed under the Americanist Walther Fischer and the prominent Nazi neo-Hegelian Hermann Glockner), p. 113. Unfortunately I have not been able to consult the source Simon cites in turn: Luba Dramaliewa, Gisela von Arnim: Leben, Persönlichkeit und Schaffen, PhD dissertation, Leipzig, 1925, p. 74. But absent here is the thought that our distemper is due to the defect of our genius itself, which turns out, after all, not be so much of a genius. Or perhaps, turns out to be a malignant genius. Who are the “Lords of Life”?

I have long been puzzled, as I believe have many of Kant’s readers, as to why the B Deduction has two parts.

One thing seemed clear to me, although this already is controversial, namely that the two parts differ in level of abstraction. The difference is described in §21 (titled “Remark”), which marks the transition from the first part to the second:

In the above proposition, therefore, a beginning is made of a deduction of the pure intellectual concepts [Verstandesbegriffe], in which, since the categories arise merely in the intellect [Verstand], independent of sensibility, I must still abstract from the special [way] [Art] in which what is manifold in an empirical intuition is given, in order to look only upon the unity which advenes to the intuition through the intellect by means of the category. In the sequel (§26) it will be shown, from the special [way] [Art] in which an empirical intuition is given in sensibility, that its [i.e., the empirical intuition’s] unity is none other than that which, according to the previous §20, the category prescribes to a given intuition in general [überhaupt], and so, in that its [i.e., the category’s] a priori validity with respect to all objects of our senses is explained, the aim of the deduction will only then be fully achieved. (B144–5)

The initial sections abstract from the species [Art] of our faculty of sensible intuition, and discuss the categories as unificatory only in relation to the synthesis of what is manifold in a sensible intuition überhaupt, whereas the final sections show that the synthetic unity of our sensible intuition[1]This synthetic unity is to be distinguished from the immediate unity of time and space, insofar as each is the identical formal reality of every inner or outer sensible intuition, respectively. Longuenesse, out of confusion about this point, is led to suppose that the B Deduction “rewrites” the Transcendental Aesthetic. is that very unity supplied by the categories.

If this is correct, then the B Deduction, so to speak, begins before the beginning of the A Deduction. For the A Deduction proper begins precisely with a statement about our form of intuition:

Our representations may arise whence they will … they nevertheless all belong, as modifications of the mind, to inner sense, and as such all our cognitions are ultimately subject to the formal condition of the inner sense, namely to time, as that in which they must, collectively, be ordered, connected, and brought into relations. (A98–9)

This is directly contrary to Longuenesse’s view, that “Kant takes up the B Deduction where the A Deduction leaves off.”[2]Kant and the Capacity to Judge (Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 58. According to her, then, the two Deductions are “complimentary,” as “the B Deduction takes the initial steps of the demonstration in A for granted” (p. 59). But this ill matches Kant’s own description of the relationship between the A and B editions (cited by Longuenesse herself on p. 34): “that a variety [of things] which, although they do not belong essentially to the completeness of the whole, some readers would nevertheless be reluctant to do without, insofar as they could be otherwise useful in some other respect, had to be omitted or treated in an abridged way” (Bxlii). It is not certain, I should add, that this remark concerns the B Deduction at all, and not rather the B Paralogisms, which have clearly been abridged in just the way described. I am thus left open, however, to Longuenesse’s obvious objection:

It might seem, then, that the new contribution of the second part of the Deduction is the consideration now given, not to a sensible intuition in general, but to our sensible intuition. But why should this be necessary? If our intuition provides merely a particular case for a rule that has been proved universally (all sensible intuition is subordinate to the categories), it would seem superfluous to provide a specific proof for this case, and so to a mistake to regard such a proof as that by which the purpose of the deduction should be “fully realized.” (Kant and the Capacity to Judge, p. 213)

This indeed is exactly what I have always found so puzzling.

And yet, Longuenesse’s phrasing is suggestive. Our form of intuition is indeed a special case, an Art, of sensible intuition in general. But this is no ordinary special case. How it is extraordinary, I have often expressed (though not in print) by calling it degenerate.

The term “degenerate” is not, in this context, Kant’s.[3]It seems that Kant’s usual equivalent to Latin degenerare, in the few places he requires one, is ausarten, although he also uses entarten and degenerieren. None of these terms occur in the First Critique. Current German for “degenerate case” is Entartungsfall. The use of Art (instead of Gattung) for genus in these calques strikes me as imprecise, but the story is probably more complicated than I know. I am familiar with the term from mathematics, although even there I’m afraid I know little about its history. Still, the word itself says the right thing: a degenerate case (as opposed to a generic case) is a special case in which the characteristic marks of the genus are not present. A line, for example, can be regarded as a conic section (the section of a cone by one of its tangent planes), but, considered in itself, it has no determinate center. Given a whole family of conics, you easily specify the line as one of its members, but, given just a line, it is entirely unclear how to generalize it into a family of conics. And that, according to Kant, is our situation with respect to our form of sensible intuition: we know that it is only a special case of sensible intuition, in that it includes conditions not derivable from the concept of a sensible intuition — which is to say, not derivable from the concept of a discursive intellect. But we do not, and cannot ever, know of any other possible case. The human intellect

cannot even form for itself the least concept of another possible intellect, either of such a one as would itself intuit or of one which possessed, as its ground, although a sensible intuition, nevertheless one of another species [Art] than that in space and time. (B139)

The mere process of abstraction cannot, obviously, yield a contradiction, and so we can, without formal problem, think a more general concept by abstracting from the concept of an object for us — abstracting, that is, from the schematized category of modality. But this more general concept cannot be more generally schematized, i.e. cannot be constructed with any more general case: the transcendental schemata, in realizing the categories, i.e. lending them objective reality, also restrict them (A147/B187).

If, per absurdum according to Kant, our species of intuition were a generic case of the genus sensible intuition, then Longuenesse’s objection would be insuperable. The possibility of our form of sensible intuition would then have to be derivable from the possibility of sensible intuition in general, by adding to the genus some compossible specific differentia. Hence the category of modality would have to be objectively valid in a use general to all objects of sensible intuition überhaupt, and the First Postulate would have to read:

What accords with the formal conditions of sensible intuition and discursive intellection is possible.

The first part of the Deduction having shown, however, that whatever is manifold in the sensible intuition of a discursive intellect must meet the conditions of discursive intellection (since otherwise it could not count as manifoldly given to one intellect), the first condition in this postulate (“of sensible intuition”) would be redundant, and we could say instead:

What accords with the formal conditions of discursive intellection is possible.

But the formal conditions of discursive intellection are simply the categories, so the aim of the Deduction (to show that the categories are objectively valid) would have to have been, somehow, achieved without reference to the specific differentia of our form of sense.

I hope needless to say, this is all very different from what the Analytic of Principles actually shows. The First Postulate actually reads:

What accords [or rather, “convenes”: übereinkommt] with the formal conditions of experience (according to intuition and concepts), is possible. (A218/B265)

Where “the formal conditions of experience,” according to intuitions, are space and time. We have no concept of possibility which can refer (in a theoretical use[4]The practical is what “possible through freedom” (A805/B828): in practical intellection, in other words, the conditions of the will take the place of the conditions of intuition. See also Bxxvi n.) to any object not in space and time. This limitation derives ultimately from a similar limitation upon the supreme principle of all synthetic judgments:

Every object stands under the necessary conditions of the synthetic unity of what is manifold in intuition in a possible experience. (A158/B197; my emphasis)

But if we ask, in turn, where the supreme principle gets this limitation, we will be led back to the second part of the Deduction, which begins with §22, titled: “A category has no other use for cognition of things than its application to objects of experience” (B146). All this because our species of sensible intuition, according to Kant, is a degenerate case of its genus. Is and must be: it is analytic that the formal conditions of a (species of) sensible intuition are not derivable from the formal conditions of discursive intellection. An intellect which could derive the possible order of what is manifold in its object from a principle of its own, would be intuitive.

And this is why the Deduction must have two parts. The first part establishes the analytic proposition that an object manifoldly given, to a discursive (thinking) intellect, in a sensible intuition, must be somehow capable of synthesis in accordance with a rule of synthetic unity (a concept).

This last proposition is, as I have said, itself analytic, notwithstanding it makes synthetical unity the condition of all thought; for it says nothing more than that all my representations in any given intuition whatever must stand under the condition under which alone I can credit them, as my representations, to the identical self, and thus can comprehend them, as conjoined in one apperception, through the universal expression I think. (B138)

This is indeed the key step in the Deduction, insofar as it shows that an unsynthesizably manifold content of sensible intuition, which in itself is something perfectly conceivable, is not conceivable as given to a discursive intellect. But sensible intuition, as treated at this step, is an ens rationis. I cannot coherently deny that I think (because denial that … is an act of discursive intellection), and it follows from that that I cannot coherently deny that an object is given to me in sensible intuition. But this is not sufficient basis to assert that an object is so given to me: not because some step is missing from the proof, but because I cannot assert anything about sensible intuition unless sensible intuition is possible, and it is only of our sensible intuition that we can know that. So there must be something else, beyond I think, that I cannot coherently deny. What that other thing is may be gathered from the immediate conclusions of the cogito argument, as it occurs in the Second Meditation: Imo certo ego eram, si quid mihi persuasi; fallat quantum potest, nunquam tamen efficiet, ut nihil sim quamdiu me aliquid esse cogitabo (AT 7:25). If I have thought, then I certainly was; and: if I am made to think, in the future, then I certainly will be. A res dubitans is more than just a thinking thing. The reasons to doubt are in the past, and their consequence — the doubt itself — is in the future (prudentiæ est nunquam illis plane confidere qui nos vel semel deceperunt [Med. 1, AT 7:18]). Our intellect knows itself, then, not by means of, and therefore not as subject of, intellection alone, but also by an additional faculty (a faculty which, as Descartes says, “insofar as it differs from the power [vis] of intelligizing, is not required for me myself, that is, for the essence of my mind” [Med. 6, AT 7:73]). This additional faculty is “the faculty of representing an object even without its being, at present [auch ohen dessen Gegenwart[5]I translate this somewhat oddly in order to emphasize that Gegenwart, like English “present” (and unlike, say, Anwesenheit), may be opposed to “past” and “future.” I agree with Heidegger in emphasizing this, although I think my interpretation otherwise quite different from his.], in intuition” (B151) — that is, the imagination. That kind of synthesis, the synthesis of the successive, is the only kind we know to be possible, and we know it is possible because, if we try to deny it, we find that we have now tried to deny it, or because to try and deny we must hope to deny it later.

The second part of the B Deduction, then (a part not missing in the A Deduction, but just imperfectly separated out), is not only the part that actually demonstrates the objective validity of the categories; it is also the point at which, if you follow the argument, your intellect cognizes itself. In doing that, it knows itself only through, and therefore only as conjoined with, this other faculty, imagination, which is not of its own essence:

The ego cogito [Das, Ich denke] expresses the act [Actus], of determining my existence. The existence is thus already given thereby, but the special [way] [Art] in which I should determine it … is not thereby given. To that belongs self-intuition, which has, lying as its ground, an a priori given form, i.e. time. (B157 n.)

This self-cognition is the act of transcendental reflection: the act in which the intellect, reflecting on the sources of its own cognition, itself determines the limits of its own use (A238/B297; cf. A260/B316).[6]In the Amphiboly, Kant (following Baumgarten, Metaphysica §626) gives Überlegung as the equivalent of reflexio, but in Phenomena and Noumena he apparently uses nachsinnen in the same sense. In doing so, it establishes a transcendental topic, that is, a doctrine of the place of objects (objects of intellection) as such, by drawing a limit between the object of experience, on the one hand, and an entirely empty place, on the other (A259–60/B315). The degeneracy of the case of experience (the case of imagination as the faculty of synthesis) is what makes such an empty space representable: an empirical topic could never succeed in representing all experience as surrounded by an empty place, because of the ideality of space (A427–9/B455–7; see also B147), and formal-logical dichotomy of course always presupposes the formal reality of the divided concept, hence of both concepts resulting from the division.

Note that transcendental reflection so understood does not involve any faculty other than discursive intellection and our species of sensible intuition. There is no intellectual intuition, no transcendental psychology, no Wesensschau, no ontological Vorbegriff of being as temporal. There is only the mismatch, already noticed by Descartes, between the way I think myself and the way an object is thereby determined.

This is a response to an article by Agnes Callard, to which Eric Schliesser called my attention (via Facebook). The article has also been published in print along with various responses, which I have not seen. So it may be that sentiments like my own have already been expressed there.

Callard describes a recent debate, of which I am vaguely aware, between two parties. The first party argues that anger, understood as righteous indignation, is “an essential and valuable part of one’s moral repertoire” (this being, I would add, something like an economic proof that the housing market will never crash: a drapery of argument over one of the most pervasive and dangerous trends in our culture). The second party claims, on the perhaps needlessly exotic authority of Stoicism and Buddhism, that “we would have a morally better world if we could eradicate anger entirely.” Callard attacks what she says is a common assumption of both sides: namely, that anger is irrational when it proceeds to the point of unrelenting grudge-bearing and vengefulness. Against this, she offers an “Argument for Grudges” and an “Argument for Revenge.”

If, as I have been assured, this article is to be considered as a work of public philosophy, then the first and perhaps sufficient objection to it is Hume’s:

[T]ho’ the philosophical Truth of any Proposition by no Means depends on its Tendency to promote the Interest of Society; yet a Man has but a bad Grace, who delivers a Theory, however true, which, he must confess, leads to a Practice, dangerous and pernicious. Why rake into those Corners of Nature, which spread a Nuisance all around? Why dig up the Pestilence from the Pit, in which it is bury’d? The Ingenuity of your Researches may be admir’d; but your Systems will be detested: And Mankind will agree, if they can not refute them, to sink them, at least, in eternal Silence and Oblivion: Truths, which are pernicious to Society, if any such there be, will yield to Errors, which are salutary and advantageous. (Second Enquiry, §9, part II)

Whoever discovers a new rationalization for vengeance and grudge-bearing had best keep it to themselves.

Let us, however, look into Callard’s arguments. The core of the argument for grudges is as follows. Suppose I stole something from you, have since apologized, made restitution, and promised never to do so again.

Apologies, restitution, and all the rest do nothing to cancel or alter the fact that I stole, nor the fact that I ought not to have stolen. Those facts were your reasons to be angry. Since they are not changed by my forms of redress — apology, compensation, what have you — then you still have, after the deployment of these amends, the very same reasons to be angry.

And this is the argument for endless revenge:

My theft indicates that I see the world in value-terms opposed to yours. Your “bad” is my “good.” If you are to hold me accountable for this, instead of letting me off the hook, you will make this (accidental, adventitious) opposition a principle and rule for our interactions.

From these two arguments together she derives the paradoxical conclusion that “the morally correct way to respond to immorality is to do things — cling to anger, exact vengeance — that are in some way immoral.” She points to anticipations of this conclusion by Nietzsche, who says that “our present approach to morality” is based on “ressentiment — a form of anger — felt by those previously oppressed and enslaved,” and by Girard, who points to institutions of human and animal sacrifice as evidence that “violence and the opposition to violence are one.” (She also discusses Foucault, about whom I have at present nothing to say.)

Now, it should not be surprising that contradictions result if you (1) try to conceive feeling a passion sub specie aeternitatis and (2) think the supreme principle of the will as conforming itself, like an empirical concept, to an adventitious rule, and hence as existing in time. You might as well argue that, if I have ever seen a certain tree, then, since nothing that happens subsequently can cancel or alter the “reasons,” so to speak, that I had for seeing it, I should always see it, and then further add that from then on I must make it a principle of my will to get that tree to perceive me, and in fact to perceive me as a tree.

By saying this I don’t exactly mean to dismiss these arguments. There is something to be said for thinking through the paradoxes engendered by (1), and then Nietzsche is indeed a good place to look. But this might require some actual interpretation of Nietzsche. To begin with, one might ask about the relationship between the wrath of Achilles, the ressentiment of the slave, and the unzeitgemässe anger of Schopenhauer, which Nietzsche, albeit at an earlier period, once proposed as an alternative to Cartesian doubt: “Thus, to speak unconcealedly: it is necessary that we for once become really angry, so that things might become better [dass wir einmal recht böse werden, damit es besser wird]” (“Schopenhauer as Educator”). It might, likewise, be worth thinking through the paradoxes engendered by (2), and then atonement is certainly the concept we would require. But here again there is no surprise: we have heard before that Stoicism differs from Christianity — and, one might add, from Judaism — in lacking a doctrine of atonement! (What Buddhism may say about this, I do not know.) Here the first question to be addressed would be why Christianity makes atonement (accomplished, once for all, in a single act of infinite violence) into a ground of forgiveness, whereas Judaism makes forgiveness into a condition of atonement.

This is a response to a post by Maxime Rovere, to which Martin Lenz called my attention (via Facebook).

The plot of Rovere’s post[1]The post is a summary of a talk he gave to open the Collegium Spinozanum III. The talk is available here, but I have not watched it. So, as usual, I am ill-informed. concerns a series of games that can be played with Spinoza’s text. The series starts with a “plain game,” which he calls “reading the Ethics.” The further members of the series are presented as powers of this plain game (reading the Ethics², reading the Ethics³, etc.), suggesting that they involve repeated applications of the same method to itself, or perhaps to its own result. It is not so clear, from the descriptions of the individual games, that the series actually is generated in that way. For example: the second game is described as “playing with the rules,” meaning: with the rules of the first game, whereas the third game is “playing with the players,” meaning again, apparently: with players of the first game (so that it is not obvious how the third game involves the second at all). But I can’t see that anything depends on this.

I have something fairly critical to say about this structure (I’m sure this will come as no surprise to those who know me). But I should therefore begin by saying that I sympathize with what I take to be the motivations behind it, and sense that Rovere and I might agree about many things. In describing his fifth level game, he calls for reflection on “how and why we practice philosophy, refer to authors, respect certain protocols of exchange and certain norms of writing and on why we should certainly invent and experiment new ones, if we are to survive in an over professionalized and specialized philosophical world.” This call I wholeheartedly endorse.

Nevertheless. The first thing to say is that, although philosophy is a subject which admits of being played,[2]Played as a game, I mean, although something similar might be said about the idea of playing it as theater (an issue sometimes raised by Cavell and everywhere raised by Plato, maybe also by Shakespeare), or playing it in the sense in which Thoreau says that, for better or worse, children and poor students “play life.” it cannot so be disposed of. And this is because, to use terminology lately introduced by Thi Nguyen: wisdom, the end of philosophy, is never disposable.

For the same reason, moreover, it must be impossible to sort our relation to Spinoza, as Rovere proposes, into separate levels (or, as Nguyen might say: to sort our total agency qua readers into separate, sealed-off “layers of agency”). To explain, let me venture to say that this purported series of levels is the same, mutatis mutandis, as the series of scientific methodologies proposed by Lakatos: the scientific method (picked out by a criterion of demarcation), the metamethod (picked out by a metacriterion), and so forth. I say, too, that it is the same as the series that would begin if someone wanted to explain my consciousness — explain, let’s say, why I know some objects and not others — by the existence in me of a certain inventory of special entities, sometimes called “ideas” (and sometimes called Erlebnisse). A new inventory of ideas-of-ideas will apparently be needed to explain why just these ideas and not others are “in me,” i.e., belong to my consciousness (for surely: even if these ideas are spatiotemporally located, their location — say, inside my brain — will not be sufficient to account for this). And so on. This latter series should be familiar to any reader of Spinoza, since it is the series that Spinoza tries to render harmless at E2p21 (albeit the aim is achieved only via the Scholium to the previous proposition, which in turn refers us back to the very difficult Scholium to 2p7). And I even say: it is the same as the series Philo tries to saddle Cleanthes with:

If it requires a cause in both, what do we gain by your system, in tracing the universe of objects into a similar universe of ideas? The first step which we make leads us on for ever. It were, therefore, wise in us to limit all our inquiries to the present world, without looking further. (Dialogues Part IV)

According to Philo, in other words, Cleanthes’ anthropomorphism must involve him in an infinite Gnosticism: the agency of the creator God (the demiurge) will be only the last in an infinite series of gameified agencies, in which the true, absolute agency of the Heavenly Sophia is infinitely far submerged. And then how could the call of the Paraclete — the call of Angst, or, as Nguyen says, of “anxious double consciousness” — ever reach us over such an expanse of schlechte Unendlichkeit?

But I need not insist even on the first of the above identifications; regard them as mere analogies, if you like. The important thing is to understand Popper’s response:

Professor Lakatos’s own attempts to solve the question of the criticizability of a methodology I will not discuss in detail. For I do not think that his “quasi-empirical approach” has any advantages; indeed, it involves solving difficult (and perhaps insoluble) problems such as “Who are the scientific elite?”. Professor Lakatos himself does not accept his own original suggestion (see the text between his nn. 33 and 34); and in the end, after many pages of discussion, he himself admits, of his improved criterion (see the text to his n. 63): “I … can easily answer the question when I would give up my criterion of demarcation: when another one is proposed which is better on my metacriterion. (I have not yet answered the question under what circumstances I shall give up my metacriterion; but one must always stop somewhere.)” My own criterion of demarcation, however, is not threatened by an infinite regress. (The Philosophy of Karl Popper, ed. Schilpp, n. 81, p. 1187–88)

For Popper, the difference between science (what he calls the “game” of science) and methodology (Logik der Forschung) is the difference between theory and practice (so Popper’s game of science is not a game in Nguyen’s sense, or at least not an example of “Suitsian play”: it does not have its own ends; the ends all belong to methodology). To be faced with a practical question is to be morally responsible. I may not pass off this responsibility down the hall to the department of “metapractice.” The problem situation, therefore, is always the same, always on the same level: how shall we proceed when, lost as we are in the forest of this world, certainty is impossible? And Popper’s answer is therefore always the same (the same as Descartes’s answer, and in fact — if we remember the role of rational faith — the same as Kant’s): we must guess.[3]See e.g., elsewhere in Popper’s replies to his critics: “As always, science is conjecture. You have to conjecture when to stop defending a favourite theory, and when to try a new one” (p. 984); “If we do make auxiliary assumptions, then of course we cannot be certain whether one of them, rather than the theory under test, is responsible for any refutation. So we have to guess” (p. 998); “Why, it might be asked, does rational criticism make use of the best tested although highly unreliable theories? The answer, however, is exactly the same as before. Deciding to criticize a practical proposal from the standpoint of modern medicine (rather than, say, in phrenological terms) is itself a kind of ‘practical’ decision (anyway it may have practical consequences). Thus the rational decision is always: adopt critical methods that have themselves withstood severe criticism” (p. 1026).

Without saying whether I agree with Popper’s Methodenlehre in every detail,[4]I do not. I can say that I do agree with him about the “metamethod”: I agree, that is, that there is and can be no such thing, not in science nor, a fortiori, in philosophy. Philosophy cannot be so disposed of. The anxious double consciousness cannot be sealed out. If we attempt to sort our reading of Spinoza into an infinite hierarchy of levels, we will fail.

Nor are examples of the failure difficult to find. Apparently Rovere’s audience came close to pointing one out: among those who commented after the talk, he says, “some have recognized the influence of certain authors (Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, Foucault) in the way the reading games were articulated.” But to that list of influences we must add Spinoza. This should be obvious enough, if only from the fact that none of the three thinkers mentioned (least of all Wittgenstein!) can be properly understood without inquiring into Spinoza’s influence on them. As we try to play the plain game of reading Spinoza (at least, if we do not forget that this means reading, not only the Ethics, but also the Tractatus theologico-politicus), then the text we are trying to understand is the very text in which our practice of reading is, in many respects, first laid out. As Rovere describes his fourth level game, it “involves looking back at one’s prejudices to understand how our own conceptions transform the text and torment it (as we perfectly may be doing) in order to answer our own questions, and then look at what effect in return our playing actually has on us.” But when we embark on this fourth level of play, we find, so to speak, that Spinoza is one of the players. Hence the plain game, which we thought we were now considering only at several removes, needs at this very moment to be played most directly and most in earnest. We cannot play our fourth level game correctly without knowing what moves he, Spinoza, has already made.

And more than that. If the fifth level game is to “consider the academic rules involved in the previous level, as they imply not only the speaker, but the non-speaking players (the so called audience …),” then, since we are Spinoza’s audience, we must consider the possibility that our relation to him is not at all what we thought. Is “reading Spinoza” really a game that we play, using his texts as the board and pieces? Is it not rather: a game Spinoza plays using us? When that question has arisen for us, then we have reached a new level in our reading of Spinoza. For there are (finitely many) levels to the reading Spinoza, certainly. But that sorting into levels is governed, not by our ends, but by his.

Volume II of Stewart’s Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, published 22 years after Volume I, finds him in a more aggressive mood than when he left off. This appears especially in his extended defense of nominalism, or rather in his extended and sometimes nasty attack on anyone (including his teacher, Reid) who doesn’t accept nominalism. I hope to address that in a future post. Here I begin, instead, with an offhand criticism he aims at Kant.

In context, Stewart is discussing the topic (recently raised by Martin Lenz) of philosophical clarity, or, as he puts it, perspicuity:

I have certainly endeavoured, to the utmost of my abilities, to render every sentence which I have written, not only intelligible but perspicuous; and, where I have failed in the attempt, the obscurity will, I hope, be imputed, not to an affectation of mystery, but to some error of judgment. I can, without much vanity, say, that, with less expence of thought, I could have rivalled the obscurity of Kant; and that the invention of a new technical language, such as that which he has introduced, would have been an easier task, than the communication of clear and precise notions (if I have been so fortunate as to succeed in this communication), without departing from the established modes of expression.

To the following observations of D’Alembert (with some trifling verbal exceptions) I give my most cordial assent; and, mortifying as they may appear to the pretensions of bolder theorists, I should be happy to see them generally recognized as canons of philosophical criticism: “Truth in metaphysics resembles truth in matters of taste. In both cases, the seeds of it exist in every mind; though few think of attending to this latent treasure, till it be pointed out to them by more curious inquirers. It should seem that everything we learn from a good metaphysical book is only a sort of reminiscence of what the mind previously knew. The obscurity, of which we are apt to complain in this science, may be always justly ascribed to the author; because the information which he professes to communicate requires no technical language appropriated to itself. Accordingly, we may apply to good metaphysical authors what has been said of those who excel in the art of writing, that, in reading them, everybody is apt to imagine that he himself could have written in the same manner.

“But, in this sort of speculation, if all are qualified to understand, all are not fitted to teach. The merit of accommodating easily to the apprehension of others, notions which are at once simple and just, appears, from its extreme rarity, to be much greater than is commonly imagined. Sound metaphysical principles are truths which every one is ready to seize, but which few men have the talent of unfolding; so difficult is it in this, as well as in other instances, to appropriate to one’s self what seems to be the common inheritance of the human race.” (Elements, vol. 2, pp. 23–4; the long quote from D’Alembert is from his Élémens de philosophie, here.)

So the charge against Kant is, first of all, that he is an obscure, and therefore a bad, metaphysician — where, for Stewart, “metaphysics” is another word for what he usually calls “philosophy of the human mind” (roughly speaking: the subject Cousin and James and Brentano will call “psychology”).[1]D’Alembert also means roughly this, at least insofar as “metaphysics” is the name of a real science. Just before the passage Stewart quotes (again, here), he says: “The generation of our ideas belongs to metaphysics; it is one of its principal objects, and perhaps it should be limited to it; almost all the other questions it proposes are insoluble or frivolous; they are the food of rash minds [esprits] or false minds; and we must not be surprised if so many subtle questions, always agitated and never resolved, have made that empty and contentious science commonly called metaphysics despised by good minds.” Kant is bad, it is charged, in the only way a “metaphysician” (in that sense) can be bad, namely, not in failing to know sound metaphysical principles (since we all already know them, thus need only be reminded of them), but in failing to unfold them so as to make them perspicuous, whether to others, or, presumably, even to himself. And then, second of all, it is charged that this badness is a result of laziness: it is easy to express sound metaphysical principles obscurely, but far more difficult to express them clearly. And then, thirdly, it is charged that Kant’s (supposedly) profuse introduction of new technical terminology is both a cause of his obscurity and a sign of his laziness.

This criticism of Kant is probably not based on any firsthand acquaintance with his works. Stewart is evidently very comfortable in French, Latin, and Greek, and he cites widely from all kinds of literature (not only philosophy) in all of those languages, but never, that I can recall, cites anything written in German, nor indeed any German author, in any language, after Leibniz. This passage, moreover, is the only mention of Kant in the first two volume of the Elements.[2]If Google is to be trusted, there is exactly one further mention in volume III. In fact, Stewart probably has his knowledge of Kant at third hand, via his student, Thomas Brown, who in turn has his information from Charles de Villers. In any case, Brown makes the same point about Kant’s new terminology and the “perplexity” that results:

In this short view of the principles of Transcendentalism, we have endeavoured, as much as possible, to avoid the perplexity of new terms. Of these its author has been profusely liberal; and to them he is probably indebted for a large share of that favour which his system has received. In minuteness of nomenclature, there is an appearance of nice distinction, which prepossesses us with respect for the acuteness of the inventor’s powers. (“Villers, Philosophie de Kant,” Edinburgh Review 1 (1802–3):253–280, p. 263)

So can the charge simply be dismissed, as based on insufficient evidence?

Kant, admittedly, does think that philosophy often requires the introduction of special terminology, since

with all the wealth of our languages, the thinker [der denkende Kopf ] nevertheless often finds himself at a loss for an expression that is exactly apt to his concept, and in the absence of which he is able to make himself rightly understood neither to others nor even to himself. (A312/B368)

But, as is well known, Kant advises against wholesale neologism (“coining new words”) in such situations, calling it a “desperate measure,” and “a pretension to legislation in language that rarely succeeds” (KrV A312/B368–9). Rather, he suggests, our only recourse in such a situation is to look around in “a dead and learned language” to see “whether this concept, along with its commensurate expression, is not to be found there” (A312/B369). In fact, Kant considers the other strategy so unlikely to succeed that he expects, in case we let the Latin or Greek term in question become vague through indiscriminate use, that the concept to which it is apt may be permanently lost:

Because of this, if for a certain concept only one single word is to be found which, in an already established significance, is exactly apt to this concept, whose distinction from other related concepts is of great importance, then it is advisable not to deal profligately with it, or use it synonymously instead of others merely for variety, but rather carefully to preserve for it its proper significance; for it otherwise easily happens that, when the expression no longer particularly occupies our attention, but is lost under a heap of others of very divergent significance, the thought also goes lost, which it alone could have preserved. (A312–13/B369)

So note that each side accuses the other of abandoning the “established modes of expression,” and predicts that the result will be unclarity in communication and in thought.

But wait — if a neologism is so unlikely to succeed, how, then, did these words ever come to exist in any language? To make any sense of this, we need to remember that Kant has only recently made a transition from writing in a dead and learned language himself. This passage reflects on the peculiar difficulty of writing philosophy in “our languages.” In such living, non-learned languages, linguistic legislation is unlikely to succeed. Which concepts will find apt expression in such languages is out of our control. Since we can’t or won’t return writing in dead and learned languages ourselves (why, is not explained), we need to be very careful with the heritage of precise terms from our predecessors, who had the benefit of doing so. For Stewart and Brown, who are living centuries after the corresponding transition from Latin to English in Britain, and who, moreover, tend to regard Scholastic texts as a mass of insignificant jargon, the whole situation is probably difficult to imagine. So, while it must be conceded that some of the difficulty in Kant results from this struggle with the unsuitability of German for expressing the concepts of Scholastic Latin (and that his Latin works are, consequently, less difficult than his German ones), neither Stewart nor Brown can well appreciate what is easy for him and what difficult.

However important this difference between German and English may be, however (and I think it is quite important), it cannot be exactly the core of the issue, because some version of it appears, in the next generation, between different schools of Anglophone philosophy — and, in fact, between different schools of Kantian (or post-Kantian) Anglophone philosophy. On the one hand, Coleridge, who did not know French, and in fact was deeply anti-Gallic,[3]In the Biographia Literaria, he approvingly quotes the remark of a Prussian artist he knew: “A Frenchman, Sir! is the only animal in the human shape, that by no possibility can lift itself up to religion or poetry” ([Cambridge: 1920], p. 126). did know German, and became a follower of Kant and, especially, a follower of (and extensive plagiarizer from) Schelling. On the other hand, William Hamilton and his close friend, James Frederick Ferrier, though in some sense the successors of Reid, Stewart, and Brown, both also learned German and were also followers, or at least appreciative readers, both of Kant and of the post-Kantian German Idealists. Nevertheless, the Scottish charge of German incomprehensibility was not lifted. Proposition I of Section I, Epistemology, of Ferrier’s Institutes of Metaphysic, reads as follows:

THE PRIMARY LAW OR CONDITION OF ALL KNOWLEDGE.

Along with whatever any intelligence knows, it must, as the ground or condition of its knowledge, have some cognisance of itself. (p. 79)

Commenting on this, Ferrier first pays Kant the backhanded compliment that, although he had “glimpses of the this truth,” manifested namely in his discussion of the analytic and synthetic unity of consciousness, his treatment is confused to the point where “this is one of the few places in his works from which no meaning can be extracted” (Sect. I, Prop. I, Observations and Explanations no. 19, p. 94). He goes on to say that “Fichte got hold of [this truth], and lost it — got hold of, and lost it again, through a series of eight or ten different publications”; that Schelling, in his youth, promised to build something magnificent on its basis, “but the world has been waiting for the fulfilment of these promises … during a period of more than fifty years”; and that, as for Hegel, “A much less intellectual effort would be required to find out the truth for oneself than to understand his exposition of it.” He then concludes:

Hegel’s faults, however, and those of his predecessors subsequent to Kant, lie, certainly, not in the matter, but only in the manner of their compositions. Admirable in the substance and spirit and direction of their speculations, they are painfully deficient in the accomplishment of intelligible speech, and inhumanly negligent of all the arts by which alone the processes and results of philosophical research can be recommended to the attention of mankind. (Ibid., pp. 95–6)

And he lays a similar charge of German, or worse-than-German, incomprehensibility against Coleridge:

It must be remembered, that we are at present speaking of Coleridge only in reference to his connexion with the transcendental philosophy. He lays a good deal of stress on his possession of “the main and fundamental ideas” of that system. We ourselves, in our day, have had some small dealings with “main and fundamental ideas,” and we know this much about them, that it is very easy for any man, or for every man, to have them. There is no difficulty in that. The difficulty lies in bringing them intelligibly, effectively, and articulately out. . . .  Indeed, it is the ability to do this which constitutes philosophical genius. The mere fact of the ideas being in you is nothing — how are they to be got out of you in the right shape, is the question. It is the delivery and not the conception that is the poser. (“The Plagiarisms of S. T. Coleridge,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 47 (1840):287–99, p. 291)

This echoes (and perhaps even alludes to) the passage from D’Alembert that Stewart quotes against Kant: metaphysics (although the meaning of “metaphysics” is now changing) ought to be easy to understand, because everyone (at least, every “man”) already knows its truths; but the “poser,” the difficult thing — the thing that lazy Coleridge, the plagiarist, has barely attempted — is to express it in this correct, easily understood way.

Here again, though, however, the charge of abuse of language, of unintelligibility, goes in both directions. Among the objects for which Aids to Reflection was written, Coleridge lists first of all:

To direct the Reader’s attention to the value of the Science of Words, their use and abuse, and the incalculable advantages attached, to the habit of using them appropriately, and with a distinct knowledge of their primary, derivative, and metaphorical senses. And in furtherance of this Object I have neglected no occasion of enforcing the maxim, that to expose a sophism and to detect the equivocal or double meaning of a word is, in the great majority of cases, one and the same thing. (Preface, [Burlington: 1829[4]This first American edition, with James Marsh’s “Preliminary Essay,” became the foundation of Vermont Transcendentalism, and greatly impressed the Boston Transcendentalists, as well. Note that (as should be obvious from the date) the text Marsh published was of the original (1825) British edition, not the heavily revised edition of 1831.], p. lviii)

Later on he gives the source of this equivocation, and hence of the consequent sophistry, as “carelessness”:

We should accustom ourselves to think and reason, in precise and steadfast terms; even when custom, or the deficiency, or the corruption of the language will not permit the same strictness in speaking. The mathematician finds this so necessary to the truths which he is seeking, that his science begins with, and is founded on, the definition of his terms. The botanist, the chemist, the anatomist, &c., feel and submit to this necessity at all costs, even at the risk of exposing their several pursuits to the ridicule of the many, by technical terms, hard to be remembered, and alike quarrelsome to the ear and the tongue. In the business of moral and religious reflection, in the acquisition of clear and distinct conceptions of our duties, and of the relations in which we stand to God, our neighbour and ourselves, no such difficulties occur. At the utmost we have only to rescue words, already existing and familiar, from the false or vague meanings imposed on them by carelessness, or by the clipping and debasing misusage of the market. (Prudential Aphorism VI[5]In the 1831 edition, there are only four Prudential Aphorisms. This text was retained, however, as part of a long Comment on Aphorism I., p. 20)

The two sides remain Scottish–French and German, and the mutual terms of criticism (or of abuse) remain the same. On the one hand, Ferrier charges Coleridge with a lazy failure to take on the difficult task of intelligibility (i.e., with the vice now usually called, by philosophers, “self-indulgence”). On the other hand, Coleridge charges his opponents with acquiescence in a careless use of traditional words, one that allows them to drift away from their precise meanings and hence erases the conceptual distinctions needed for clear thought and reasoning on the most important subjects. And this continuity is striking, because the sound of the antagonists on each side, and their way with words, has changed greatly. Hamilton and Ferrier positively bristle with technical terms, many of them neologisms — Ferrier, for example, appears to have more or less invented the term “epistemology.”[6]See Wikipedia and (behind a paywall) the OED. Coleridge, meanwhile, even in his prose works, sounds not very much like Kant or (except when plagiarizing) like Schelling, and, although he doesn’t hesitate to lapse in Latin or Greek at the slightest excuse, still the words that most interest him are not technical terms of Scholasticism, but rather good old English words like “reason,” “spirit,” “happiness,” and “freedom” — words whose precise, uncorrupted use is supposed to be found in older Anglican theologians like Hooker and Leighton.

This pattern becomes even more striking when we turn to the next generation of the conflict, which unfolded in New England. Brown, evidently, was, in that context, the philosopher to beat. Thomas Wentworth Higginson (who happens to be a distant relative[7]To be precise, he and I are first cousins five times removed. My daughter, Elana Laurence Higginson Stone, is named partly in his honor.), describes Brown’s central place in the education of the young Margaret Fuller:

At this time [viz., at the age of fifteen] she lived, as always, a busy life, — rose before five in summer, walked an hour, practiced an hour on the piano, breakfasted at seven, read Sismondi’s “European Literature” in French till eight, then Brown’s “Philosophy”[8]Meaning, presumably, his Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind. till half past nine, then went to school for Greek at twelve, then practiced again till dinner. (Margaret Fuller Ossoli [4th edition, Boston: 1885[9]Part of a series called (you can’t make this stuff up!): “American Men of Letters.”], p. 23)

James Marsh, meanwhile, in his “Preliminary Essay” on Coleridge, appoints Brown spokesman for the entire school dominant school (“Locke and the Scottish metaphysicians”), and, after criticizing their views on both the nature–spirit distinction (namely: that they make no “essential” distinction at all) and on the meaning of “free-will” (namely: that they treat it as a species of necessity), concludes:

I feel authorized to take this statement partly from Brown’s philosophy, because that work has been decidedly approved by our highest theological authorities; and indeed it would not be essentially varied, if expressed in the precise terms used by any of the writers most usually quoted in reference to these subjects. (“Preliminary Essay,” in Aids to Reflection, pp. xxx)

His principal complaint against Brown (and, through Brown, against all those he stands for) is the same old complaint, that, by allowing originally precise terms to drift into vague, diluted meanings, they make it impossible to write, read, or think the important distinctions that are needed for morality and religion:

Let us suppose, for example, that a man has studied and adopted the philosophy of Brown, is it possible for him to interpret the 8th chapter of Romans,[10]Beginning: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” without having his views of its meaning influenced by his philosophy? Would he not unavoidably interpret the language and explain the doctrines, which it contains, differently from one, who should have adopted such views of the human mind, as are taught in this work [i.e., in Aids to Reflection]? (pp. xxi–ii)

Then, on the other hand, he finds it necessary to defend Coleridge against objections to his “peculiarities of language,” using terms very similar to Kant’s:

In the very nature of things it is impossible for a writer to express by a single Word any truth, or to mark any distinction, not recognized in the language of his day, unless he adopts a word entirely new, or gives to one already in use a new and more peculiar sense. Now in communicating truths, which the writer deems of great and fundamental importance, shall he thus appropriate a single word old or new, or trust to the vagueness of perpetual circumlocution? Admitting for example, the existence of the important distinction, for which this writer contends, between the understanding and reason, and that this distinction, when recognized at all, is confounded in the common use of language by employing the words indiscriminately, shall he still use these words indiscriminately, and either invent a new word, or mark the distinction by descriptive circumlocutions, or shall he assign a more distinctive and precise meaning to the words already used? It seems to me obviously more in accordance with the laws and genius of language to take the course, which he has adopted. But in this case and in many others, where his language seems peculiar, it.cannot be denied that the words had already been employed in the same sense, and the same distinctions recognized, by the older and many of the most distinguished writers in the language. (p. xlvii–iii)

Thus are the two sides, Scottish vs. German, transplanted to America.[11]The status of France had meanwhile begun to change, thanks to Hamilton’s friend, Victor Cousin. Here, perhaps, is the original seed of our own distinction between Anglophone and Continental philosophy. It would have seemed bizarre in the early 19th century, when the most important philosophical border ran between Germany and France.

Fuller, though in the Scottish camp at age fifteen, was, by the time we know of her as a thinker and a writer, a Transcendentalist. That is (in case her work in translating Goethe and von Arnim didn’t make this clear): she had gone over to the Germans.[12]The word “transcendentalism,” incidentally — a term that occurs sometimes in Fichte, but not, as far as I know, in Kant or the other German Idealists — was introduced into English in Brown’s review of Villers: even Brown, we see, was not above a neologism now and then. See (still behind that paywall) the OED. As Higginson puts it:

And sharing also the drawbacks, she also shared inevitably the prejudices that her companions inspired. These prejudices might be divided into two general heads; it was thought that they were unintelligible and it was said — if this was not indeed the same allegation — that they were German. It is now difficult to recall the peculiar suspicion that was attached to any one in America, forty years ago, who manifested much interest in German thought. Immanuel Kant is now claimed as a corner-stone of religion by evangelical divines,[13]Quomodo ceciderunt fortes. but he was then thought to be more dangerous than any French novelist. (Margaret Fuller Ossoli, pp. 282–3)

But, of course, Fuller and the other Transcendentalists don’t sound very much at all like Kant, or even Coleridge. Brackett describes very well the difficulty of her style:

Even in the later writings, where it is more easy to catch the thought, the inexhaustible flow of metaphor and illustrations keeps one continually on the alert. In this she reminds one of Shakespeare. The figures and illustrations tumble over each other and trip each other up, while in the unquestioning demand which she makes upon the previous information of her readers she is not unlike Carlyle. (Brackett, “Margaret Fuller Ossoli,” The Radical 9 (1872):354–370, p. 360)

There are two parts to this characterization. The first part, in which Brackett compares her to Shakespeare, could also well be said about Emerson. That Shakespeare is very difficult, when regarded as a philosopher, can easily be verified by reading Cavell’s work about him. But his difficulty, like Emerson’s or Thoreau’s, is not of a kind that prevents us from assigning his works to high school students. It is, therefore, not the kind D’Alembert meant to rule out in metaphysics. Indeed, D’Alembert actually compares good metaphysics to good drama:

One can say in a sense of metaphysics that everyone knows it or no one, or to speak more accurately, that everyone is ignorant of that which not everyone can know. There are works of this kind, such as plays; the impression fails [est manquée] when it is not general. (loc. cit.)

Of philosophy that is difficult in this way, one can hardly say, as Kant says of his critical philosophy, that it “can never become popular, but also has no necessity of being so” (Bxxxiv). As Fuller herself writes about Shakespeare — or at least, she has her recurring character, Aglauron,[14]In another dialogue, she describes Aglauron thus: “Aglauron is a person of far greater depth and force than his friend and cousin [Laurie, the other character], but by no means as agreeable. His mind is ardent and powerful, rather than brilliant and ready, — neither does he with ease adapt himself to the course of another. But, when he is once kindled, the blaze of light casts every object on which it falls into a bold relief, and gives every scene a lustre unknown before. He is not, perhaps, strictly original in his thoughts; but the severe truth of his character, and the searching force of his attention, give the charm of originality to what he says. Accordingly, another cannot, by repetition, do it justice. I have never any doubt when I write down or tell what Laurie says, but Aglauron must write for himself.” There is some complex joke here. “Laurie” sounds like it could be a female name, but the character is male. “Aglauron” sounds like a male name, and the character is supposedly male, but the Greek name ῎Αγλαυρος is actually female. Possibly the meaning is that Aglauron “must write for himself” because “he” is actually Fuller (the American Man of Letters!). say this:

Were I, despite the bright points so numerous in their history and the admonitions of my own conscience, inclined to despise my fellow men, I should have found abundant argument against it during this late study of Hamlet. In the streets, saloons, and lecture rooms, we continually hear comments so stupid, insolent, and shallow on great and beautiful works, that we are tempted to think that there is no Public for anything that is good. . . .  Of Shakspeare, so vaunted a name, little wise or worthy has been written, perhaps nothing so adequate as Coleridge’s comparison of him to the Pine-apple; yet on reading Hamlet, his greatest work, we find there is not a pregnant sentence, scarce a word that men have not appreciated, have not used in myriad ways. Had we never read the play, we should find the whole of it from quotation and illustration familiar to us as air. That exquisite phraseology, so heavy with meaning, wrought out with such admirable minuteness, has become a part of literary diction, the stock of the literary bank; and what set criticism can tell like this fact how great was the work, and that men were worthy it should be addressed to them? (“Dialogue,” Papers on Literature and Art, p.163; this passage is quoted by Higginson, pp. 291–2)

And as for the other part of Brackett’s characterization, concerning the demands Fuller makes on “the previous information of her readers”: this also does not apply to Kant, at least, not in the way Brackett presumably intends it. What Fuller assumes about her audience is not a certain more or less Scholastic education, but rather a broad knowledge of European art and literature, and a familiarity with the lives of famous European personages, from Ireland to Russia. Stewart is actually closer to this than Kant.

So here we have a dispute about something — some issue concerning the nature of philosophical clarity, and the correct use of words in philosophy, a dispute which is perceived by the (mostly English speaking) antagonists as somehow entangled with national differences. The dispute is never explained, and would be hard to explain, in a general way, and yet it visibly persists for generations while the philosophical systems on each side, and even the overall styles of philosophical writing, shift beneath it. All of which should sound familiar.