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Grant, I. (2009) Prospects for a post-Copernican dogmatism: On the

antinomies of transcendental naturalism. Collapse, 5 . pp. 415-451.

We recommend you cite the published version.The publishers URL ishttp://www.urbanomic.com/pub collapse5.php

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Iain Hamilton Grant

Prospects for Post-Copernican

Dogmatism: The Antinomies ofTranscendental Naturalism

For it is not because there is thinking that there is being, butrather because there is being that there is thinking.

Schelling1

[T]he fundamental error of dogmatism [...][is to] search outside

the I in order to discover the ultimate ground of all that is in

and for the I.Fichte2

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Schellings claim above: it is a transcendental argument inthat it stipulates what conditions the possibility of thinkingwithout reducing these conditions to any given or particulardomain of objects. Hence Kants having noted, with regardto Schellings System of Transcendental Idealism, that tran-scendental idealism is realism in an absolute sense (1993,255). In accordance with this absolute realism, Schellingsthesis stems from his ontological naturalism:7being is thenecessary condition of thinking and not vice versa.

The point to note is that neither claim is inherentlyinconsistent, both are transcendental, and accordingly, thattranscendental positions are themselves open to counterpo-sitions. Given this, in what follows, we shall argue that tran-

scendental philosophy is itself a dogmatism8on the basis ofthe applicability of three criteria specified by transcendental

what Kant sought by way of the ether proofs in the Opus postumum, trans. by E.Frster, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 62-99. Transcendentalphilosophy is then defined as the system of ideas, which are problematic (notassertoric) in themselves [] but must nevertheless be thought as possible forcesaffecting the rational subject (ibid., 250), necessitating a dynamica generalis(ibid., 224)to ground boththe system of objects andthe system of ideas.

7. Anything whose conditions simply cannot be given in nature, must be absolutelyimpossible (Schelling, Werke II I, 571). Although it could be argued that the positivephilosophy of the Grounding is incompatible with the negative philosophical thesesof the System of Transcendental Idealism, this would be to disguise the extent to whichSchellings naturalism is precisely the kind of absolute realism with which Kantidentifies transcendental idealism.

8. As indeed Fichte claims in the Review ofAnesidemus: the [Dogmatic] system holdsopen the possibility that we might someday be able to go beyond the boundary ofthe human mind, whereas the Critical system proves that such progress is absolutelyimpossible, and it shows that the thought of a thing possessing existence and specificproperties in itself and apart from any faculty of representation is a piece of whimsy,a pipe dream, a nonthought. And to this extent the Humean system is sceptical andthe Critical system is dogmatic and indeed negatively so (W I, 16; Eng trans. byD. Breazeale in Fichte: Early Philosophical Writings, Ithaca: Cornell University Press,1988, 70-71).

access-positivism does little to define it positively, providingonly a formal regression to inhibit speculative or rationalegress beyond reflection, as the Fichte citation above makessun-clear. Nevertheless, the Fichtean egress-prohibition haslatterly been posited as a positive criterion of philosophi-cally effective transcendental arguments:

The transcendental argument must not invalidly infer objective

and or unrestricted conclusions from purely subjective and/or

merely parochial premises.4

Again, following Fichte, this criterion is expressly designedto counter any claim to a transcendental naturalism, whichcomes close, as Bell claims, to an oxymoron.5 It follows

from the above criterion that the only valid transcenden-tal argument is one that demonstrates and asserts theparochial subjectivism of its premises. What is striking isthat the double assertion of subjectivity and parochialism isasserted against the rest of being or nature. We must ask,however, whether the Bell-Fichte subjective parochialismthesis does in fact exhaustively define transcendentalism,so that to reject the one is to dismiss the viability of theother, and thus to assert that there can be no other basis fortranscendental philosophy. If this is so, transcendentalisms

parochialism is as much the grounds for its rejection as forits putative value. If not, we cannot conclude a transcen-dental naturalism to be oxymoronic.6Consider for example

4. D. Bell, Transcendental Arguments and Non-Naturalistic Anti-Realism, in R.Stern (ed.) Transcendental Arguments. Problems and Prospects(Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1999),189-210, at 192.

5. Ibid., 194.

6. The prospect of a naturalistically grounded transcendental philosophy is precisely

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Since (3) can itself be construed as satisfying (2), it maybe subsumed under it. Our point in its separate statementis threefold. Firstly, to highlight the crucial role played

by things not only in the determination of the natureof dogmatism, as above, but also in the development oftranscendental philosophysontology, for which the conceptthing-in-itself asserts only the most elementary determi-nation of existents; but transcendental philosophy is itselfdogmatic when it concludes that therefore that they exist atall, and that this is how being is, as when, for instance,it asserts that concepts of relation presuppose thingswhich are absolutely [schlechthin] given, and without theseare impossible.12 That is, the condition of possibility of

objects of intuition even of their distinction is simplythings absolutely given. At this point, transcendentalphilosophy, whose supreme concept [] is the divisioninto the possible and the impossible, can avoid dogmaticontological commitment only at the cost of antithesis:

Thus the object of a concept to which no assignable intuition

whatsoever corresponds is = nothing. That is, it is a concept

without an object (ens rationis), like noumena, which cannot bereckoned among the possibilities, although they must not for

that reason be declared to be also impossible.13

The things absolutely given on which the objects ofintuition depend are neither possible nor impossible, and

is thus quite arbitrarily set up as the absolutely highest conception. In the criticalsystem, a thing is what is posited in the self; in the dogmatic, it is that wherein theself is itself posited (Fichte WI, 119-120; SK, 117).

12. CPR: A284/B340.

13. CPR A290/B346-7.

philosophers for the identification of dogmatism. Thesecriteria are:

C.1 Logical: the susceptibility of dogmatic systems tointernally consistent but antinomic counter-systems.9

C.2Metaphysical: the attempt to provide a ground or causeof beings external to the I, or to satisfy the Principle ofSufficient Reason;10and

C.3 Ontological: the thesis that beings are things orobjects.11

9. [Reason, in] its dogmatic employment [...] lands us in dogmatic assertions towhich other assertions, equally specious, can always be opposed (Kant, Critiqueof Pure Reason, trans. N. Kemp Smith, London: Macmillan, 1958, B22-3; hereafterCPR). [I]n the dogmatic procedure of reason [] unavoidable contradictions ofreason with itself have long since undermined the authority of every metaphysicalsystem yet propounded (CPR: A10/B23-4). In the dispute between the idealist andthe dogmatist [] reason gives us no principle of choice [ and n]either of thesetwo systems can directly refute its opposite (Fichte WI, 429-432; trans. by P. Heathand J. Lachs, TheScience of Knowledge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982;hereafter SK, 12-14).

10. While metaphysics, as science [] has to deal [] only with itself and theproblems which arise entirely from within itself, and which are imposed upon it byits own nature, not by the nature of things which are distinct from it (CPR: B23),dogmati[sm] claim[s] acquaintance with the constitution of the object fuller than thatof the counter-assertion (CPR: A388). See also Fichte W IV, 174;System of Ethics, trans.and ed. by Daniel Breazeale and Gnter Zller (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2005),165: [T]he fundamental error of dogmatism [...][is to] search outside

the I in order to discover the ultimate ground of all that is in and for the I. WayneMartin confirms this diagnosis in his Idealism and Objectivity: Understanding Fichtes JenaProject(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 37: dogmatists are not identifiedsimply as those who assert that things-in-themselves exist; rather they are those whoassert that things in themselves constitute the ground of experience.

11. [D]ogmaticenquiry concern[s] things (objects), [whereas] a criticalenquiry concern[s]the limits of my possible knowledge (CPR: A758/B786). Dogmatism thus requiresan insight into the nature of the object such that we can maintain the opposite of whatthe proposition has alleged in regard to this object [...] claiming acquaintance with theconstitution of the object fuller than that of the counter-assertion (CPR A388). Anyphilosophy is [...] dogmatic, when it equates or opposes any thing to the self as such;and this it does in appealing to the supposedly higher concept of a thing (ens), which

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7

words, that the I is a thing.15Such arguments properlyparochial, in Bells sense highlight the implicit assertionthat an argument is transcendental if and only if it avoids

dogmatic assertion and thereforesusceptibility to counter-as-sertion (things-in-themselves do/do not exist). Such tran-scendentalisms therefore tend to propose a metaphysicswithout ontology. The third and final reason for the initialdistinction is therefore to raise the question as to whetherthis is possible. Dogmatisms, by contrast, argue that anyconsistent metaphysics is an ontology, and any consistent ontology isa metaphysics.

Consider a metaphysical problem such as causality.When Kant examines self-organisation in the third Critique,

he makes precisely the claim that its ubiquity in experiencecannot warrant any assertion or denial of its existence innature. Yet this problematic address to natural causalitynevertheless finds that it is necessary for reason to thinkthat matter can receive more and other forms than itcan get through mechanism.16 Rational necessity avoidsontological commitment if and only if it does not entailthat the theses concerning matter and causation so neces-sitated are nottheses concerning matter and causation at all,but only reason; or, in other words, if the thesis, although

rationally necessary, is contradictory. If the rational necessityso identified is not to be contradictory, then they are indis-sociably ontological theses. In other words, a resolutely

15. Martin, Idealism and Objectivity, op. cit., 36-7.

16. I. Kant, Kants gesammelte Schriften (HenceforthAk.), ed. Kniglich PreussischenAkademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: Georg Riemer, later Walter de Gruyter,1900-), vol. V, 411; trans. W.S. Pluhar, Critique of Judgment(Indianapolis: Hackett,1987).

therefore not susceptible of a transcendental investigationthat cannot deny their existence. The very essence of thedialectic, or the unavoidable errors entailed in reasons own

nature, we might say. Yet as Kants naturalistic inquiriescontinue (the analysis of fundamental forces in theMetaphys-ical Foundations, for example; that works assuaging of Kantsdoubts concerning chemistry as a science, and its possibleapplicability to emergent neuroscience; or more explicitly,the ether proofs from the Transition from Metaphysics toPhysics),14this possible-impossible determination that there arethingsbecomes increasingly open to dispute: perhaps thingsare not absolutely given, but forces assume ontological andexplanatory priority over things. At issue here is the suscep-

tibility of parochial (in Bells sense) transcendentalisms tonaturalistically driven ontological change. By criterion (1),then, the revealed contestability of a thing-based ontologydemonstrates the transcendental philosophys propensityfor dogmatism.

The second reason for the initial separation of condition(3) from (2) is to accommodate a recent argument madeby Wayne Martin concerning Fichtes identification ofdogmatists not simply as those who assert that things-in-themselves exist but rather as those who assert that things-

in-themselves constitute the ground of experience or, in other

14. See Kant,Aus Soemmering, ber das Organ der Seele,Ak. XII, 33-7, trans. by AnulfZweig as From SoemmmeringsOn the organ of the soul in Immanuel Kant,Anthropology,History and Education, ed. by Gunter Zller and Robert Louden (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2007), 219-226; and Alexander Ruerger, Brain water,the ether, and the art of constructing systems, Kant-Studien86, 1995: 26-40. TheTransition between Metaphysics and Physicswas the working title by which what becameKants Opus postumumwas contemporarily known (cf. Schelling SWVI, 8).

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problematic metaphysics must either satisfy the principleof sufficient reason, or break the law of non-contradiction.Neither, for the same reason, can ontology be separated

from metaphysics unless the latter does not concern beingat all. If it does not, it can only concern not-being, andis then not metaphysics, but meontology. If it does, thenthe distinction is untenable. Or ontology is not concernedwith being, but with the reason-of-being, its logos. Such anaccount must either again face the problems encounteredby Kants rational necessity, or the reason-of-being mustbecome the sole focus of ontological enquiry. This is whymany of the immediate post-Kantians understood the tran-scendental undertaking as a critique of natural cognition17

or of the natural antithetic;18

that is, an inquiry into thenature of reason itself.

It is precisely this that Schellings thesis about beingdenies. For it asserts not only that being is the necessaryconditionof thinking, but also that being is first necessary inorder that there be thinking; being is the cause and groundof thinking, so that the Sufficient Reason for thinking isindistinguishable from ontology. Schellings is, on thisreading, a transcendental dogmatism, specifying conditionsof possibility by satisfying criteria (1) and (2) above. As to

the non-separable criterion (3), Schelling will indeed deny,following from the force-ontologies developed by earlyexperiments in electromagnetism, that things can providean adequate ontological basis for either the natural sciencesor for speculative naturalism. If this is taken to mean that

17. Schelling, WerkeXI, 526.

18. CPR: A407/B434.

any ontological thesis resting on forces rather than things isfor that reason non-dogmatic, then the difference betweentranscendental and dogmatic naturalisms rests on contingent

differences in the ontologies of the natural sciences.

The dilemma initially facing a transcendental naturalismis accordingly that it must either assert determination bycontingent entities of whatever nature (things, forces) orassert parochialism and deny that even in those of its thesesthat putatively address nature, no such address takes placeinsofar as the nature in question is phenomenal only. Theproblem with this perhaps over-familiar claim, for thoseof us steeped in Kantian lore, is that there is an implicitassertion that nature as it is in itself is separable from nature

kat anthropon, as Kant says nature as it appears for us. Forthis asserts in turn boththat phenomenal nature is not nature,which therefore transcendental philosophy does not and cannotaddress. This is exactly the problem that Kant encounterswhen he attempts the transition, firstly, from the dogmaticnaturalism of his pre-critical works; and secondly, frommetaphysics to physics in his final accounts of transcen-dental philosophy. If the Copernican revolution does notresolve this problem, then the problems Kant encounteredremain ours: How, if at all, is a nondogmatic account of the

relation of reason to nature possible?

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1. EVERYCONSISTENTDOGMATISMISANATURALISM

How then is the Critical system different from what was

previously described as the Humean one? The differenceconsists entirely in this: the Humean system holds open the

possibility that we might someday be able to go beyond the

boundary of the human mind, whereas the Critical system

proves that such progress is absolutely impossible, and it shows

that the thought of a thing possessing existence and specific

propertiesin itselfand apart from any faculty of representationis a piece of whimsy, a pipe dream, a nonthought. And to this

extent the Humean system is sceptical and the Critical system

is dogmatic.19

If thetic be the name for any body of dogmatic doctrines,antithetic may be taken as meaning not dogmatic assertions

of the opposite, but the conflict of the doctines of seemingly

dogmatic knowledge in which no one assertion can establish

superiority over the other.20

It would be a matter of considerable irony that aCopernican revolution in philosophy should have put paidto the project of a Universal Natural History were it true. Itdoes not, however; yet this is precisely what it is considered

to have achieved: with having put an end to worries abouthow to adequate intellect to thing, since things must nowinstead comply with intellect. Yet how is any unthingednaturalism to survive the revolutionary injunction? Aresuch things reduciblythose that are intellect-compliant, or

19. Fichte, WerkeI, 16; Early Philosophical Writings, ed. and tr. Daniel Breazeale (Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1988), 70-71.

20. CPR: A420/B448.

are all things so? Must they be made so? Of necessity or byreconstruction? If the occasion for the revolution is that ithas proven impossible to integrate reason with nature as it

is in itself, what becomes of the problem of the integrationof reason and nature after it?

It is immediately evident that not only does the problemof nature not disappear from the transcendental philosophy,but also that, as the critical project progresses, it resumes thecentral role it enjoyed under Kants precritical or dogmatic-naturalist period. The engagement with chemistry in thefirst Critique, which persisted long afterward;21the problemof the teleological judgment of nature with regard to theactualityof self-organising beings in the third. But nothing

makes this cohabitation of dogmatic naturalism withtranscendental philosophy more immediate than Kantsfinal, unfinished project, known under the title Transitionfrom Metaphysics to Physics,22 with its ether deductions andits attempt to square transcendental deduction withontogenesis.23

21. For a survey of Kants chemism, see M. Lequan, La chemie selon Kant(Paris: PUF,2000). On Kant and the sciences more generally, see M. Friedman, Kant and theExact Sciences(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), E. Watkins (ed.) Kantand the Sciences (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), and M. Friedman and A.Nordmann (eds), The Kantian Legacy in Nineteenth-Century Science (Cambridge: MIT,

2006). For a substantial philosophical account of the persistence of naturalism inthe critical philosophy, see J. Edwards, Substance, Force and the Possibility of Knowledge(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), and for the naturalism in the Opuspostumum, E. Frster, Kants Final Synthesis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,2000). For my own account of the conflict between somatism and field physicsin Kants philosophy of nature, see Philosophies of Nature After Schelling, 2nd edition(London: Continuum, 2008).

22. Schelling, Werke VI, 8: In the year 1801 he [Kant] was still labouring, in thosefew hours in which his power of thinking remained free, on a work: Transition fromMetaphysics to Physicswhich, had age allowed him to complete it, would doubtless havebeen of the greatest interest.

23. What I have in mind here is the Transitions discussions of how matter becomes

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Allowing that the Copernican revolution was expresslyundertaken to eradicate (at least Kants) dogmaticnaturalism; and acknowledging also that the problem Kant

held dogmatism incapable of resolving is the integration ofreason and nature into a single and consistent philosophi-cal system; then the purpose of the critical philosophy is toprepare a Transcendental resolution of reason and nature.The beginnings of this can be seen in the first Critiquesaccount of nature as the dynamical whole of all appearances,as opposed to world, which designates the mathemati-cal sum-total thereof.24Dynamics is invariably the meanswhereby the Transcendental philosophy undertakes toavoid the fate of dogmatic naturalism without eliminating

nature. Force-fields provide, by disputing criterion (3),above, egress from dogmatism without sacrificing nature,while the dynamical categories enable a reconstruction ofreason as itself a dynamical and productive system. In theovert transcendental naturalism of the ether deductions,it will finally integrate freedom with natural causality ina single, necessary and a priori, physical medium, longafter the failure of the third Critiques analogical attempt toachieve the same end. Of the ether, Kant writes that

the question is whether it is to be regarded, not just as a hypo-

thetical material, in order to explain certain appearances, but areal world-material given a prioriby reason and counting asa principle of the possibility of the experience of the system

of moving forces [...] The existence of this material, and the

a physical body (Kant, Ak. XXI, 476-7). I discuss this inPhilosophies of Nature afterSchelling(London: Continuum, 2008): 59-81.

24. CPR:A418-9/B446.

necessity of its a prioripresupposition, I now prove a prioriinthe following manner.25

With this, Kant seems to condemn his physics tothe same fate as his geometry: changes in the sciencesapparently undermine the a priori necessities Kant ascribesto their theses. At the same time, therefore, the transcen-dental project in general is opened to charges of dogmatismon the grounds of susceptibility to antinomic dispute. Yetthe reason why Kant argues for the a priori necessity ofthe ether as world-material is this: that dynamics composesbeing from actions, not things. As Kant writes, the movingforces of matter are what the moving subject itself does to[other] bodies.26The twofold gambit of this claim, as ofany transcendental naturalism, is that the transition fromthings to actions is sufficient both to avoid dogmatic trapsconcerning antithetical ontologies of things-in-themselves(are such disputes only possible between rival claims as tothe nature of things?); and to integrate reason and natureinto a single system susceptible to determination by freeand self-constitutive acts (ontogenesis, categorial synthesis,etc.), now cast as causes. The problem is whether the tran-scendental determination of nature is in fact a determination of natureat all, i.e., a determination at once a prioriand physically

conditioned,27or merely a determination of the nature ofReason. If nature is notso determined, then things are notintellect-compliant, and dogmatisms inconclusiveness or

25. Kant, Ak. XXI, 216; Opus postumum, ed. and tr. Eckhart Frster (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1993), 67.

26. Kant,Ak. XXII, 326; 1993: 110.

27. E. Frster in Kant, Opus postumum, xi, citingAk.XXII, 138-9; Opus postumum: 46.

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revisability becomes the price to pay for the failure of theCopernican experiment. If it is, then the question is either:Whatkind of nature is it that is directly determinable in

accordance, as Kant twice stipulates, with the power ofdesire ascause?;28 or: What is the nature of reason suchthat it can so determine nature?

It is freedom and/or reason, or their necessary combination,as Fichte was first to point out, that denaturalises as aprecondition of nature as an objective of transcendentalphilosophy. Accordingly, transcendental anti-naturalismhas its avatars: Heidegger, for instance, in On the Essence ofGround (1929), comparing the dogmatic with the transcen-dental concept of world in Kants Inaugural Dissertationand

first Critique, respectively, concludes in strict accordance withthe replacement of the dogmatists things with actions, thatworld never is, but worlds.29Thus there are reasons why,Heidegger insists, nature is apparently missing [from thisaccount], not only nature as an object of natural science, butalso nature in an originary sense:30nature is not original,but only appears as a determination of world fora form ofattention paid to it.

While Heideggers remains a Copernican transcenden-talism, Husserls 1934 work Foundational Investigations

of the Phenomenological Origin of the Spatiality of Nature:The Originary Ark, the Earth, Does not Move revertsto a more Cartesian, or Archimedeanstrategy. In a reprise

28. Kant,Ak. V, 9n: Critique of Practical Reason, trans. L.W. Beck (New York: Macmillan,1993) andAk.V 177 n., Critique of Judgment, op. cit., 16.

29. Heidegger, Kants Thesis about Being in M. Heidegger, Pathmarks, ed. W.McNeill (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998), 126.

30. Ibid., 370 n. 59.

of the first of the antinomies of pure reason,31 the essaybegins the search for a a transcendental theory of naturalscientific knowledge32by arguing against the absurdity

indeed, the absurdity of naturalistic accounts of the originsof world, and for a world that is instead constituted byand for experience. Nature and its causes are not things,but elaborated intuitions, and for experience, indeed, as itscondition, the Earth, even as a body, does not move. Theparadox is alarming: what began with the Copernicanrevolution has returned, on transcendental grounds, toPtolemaic geocentrism, to a restitution of a sense of theearth as ground beyond Copernicus, as Merleau-Pontydescribes Husserls undertaking.33

Such transcendentalisms amplify their Kantianinheritance, and in particular the problem of whether a tran-scendental naturalism can supplya naturalism at all. Askedfollowing these latter examples, the answer would clearly bein the negative. For precisely this reason, the post-Kantianfate of the transcendental project reveals something aboutthat project in turn its susceptibility to antinomy:

31. CPR:A426/B454ff.

32. E. Husserl, Foundational Investigations of the Phenomenological Origin ofthe Spatiality of Nature: The Originary Ark, the Earth, Does not Move (1934) inMaurice Merleau-Ponty, Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology, trans. and ed. LeonardLawlor and Bettina Bergo (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2002), 117-131: 117)

33. Ibid., 67.

THESIS

Nature precedes

the thinking it

spawns

ANTITHESIS

Thinking

precedes the

Nature it thinks

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What is important to note is that the antinomy revolvesaround the problem of ontological as opposed to consciouspriority, just as Schellings thesis stipulates. A naturalistic

ontological solution will therefore think this priority interms of physical conditionality, while a transcendentalanti-naturalist solution will, by contrast, think it in terms ofthe co-natality of Ichand nicht-Ich(Fichte), of experience andits ground (Husserl), or of the priority of projection overworld (Heidegger). We will return to its solutions below.

The antinomy or natural antithetic echoes either sideof the transition in Kants own work from dogmatic to tran-scendental naturalism. For example, the Universal NaturalHistory provides reasons for the critical project that arethemselves naturalistic:

If one looks for the cause of impediments, which keep human

nature in such a deep debasement, it will be found in the

crudeness of the matter into which his intellectual [geistige] partis sunk, in the unbending of the fibres and in the sluggishness

and immobility of fluids which should obey its stirrings. The

nerves and fluids of his brain deliver only gross and unclear

concepts [...].34

In this light, Kants post-Copernican attention is

directed not away from nature, but towards the nature ofself-constituting reason,35a natural dialectic. In the above

34. Kant,Ak. I, 356; 1981: 187.

35. Transcendental philosophy is the autonomy of ideas, insofar as they form,independently of everything empirical, an unconditioned whole, and reasonconstitutes itself to the latter as a separate system (Kant,Ak. XXI, 79; Opus postumum,op. cit., 246). This is also clear from CPR, where Kant defines critical philosophy asthat science [which] has to deal [] only with itself and the problems which arise

passage, nature clearly conditions thinking; while in thepost-Copernican period, the causes of such impedimentsare found to aris[e] from the very nature of our reason. 36

Thus we have a first element, corresponding to criterion (1)above, in a definition of the dogmatism it is the Copernicanproject to supplant:

D.1Any philosophy is dogmatic whose theses can be antinomicallydisputed.37

It follows from this that, if transcendental theses aresusceptible to antinomy, their assertion is dogmatic. Sincethey are so susceptible, then it cannot be concluded that theCopernican revolution entails the elimination of dogmatism,

which is why naturalism remains a problem for transcen-dental philosophy.

A second element towards a definition of dogmatismmay also be drawn from Kants neuro-anatomical critiqueof human reason. It is clear from the above passage, aswell as from other works of the 1750s and 60s, that thedogmatism at issue during the critical revolution is indeedany metaphysics that might support a dogmatic naturalism.On one view, the critique of such naturalism attests toKants conversion to the experimental method in the

consideration of nature, leaving all a priori reasoningsregarding nature blinded by their want of experimen-tally derived intuitive content. On another, however, it is

entirely from within itself, and which are imposed upon it by its own nature, not bythe nature of things which are distinct from it (B23).

36. CPR: A669/B697.

37. [The] dogmatic employment [of reason ] lands us in dogmatic assertions towhich other assertions, equally specious, can always be opposed (CPR: B23).

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dogmatism that, though often overlooked, remains a crucialdimension in the struggles of the post-Kantian philosophersagainst the mechanistic materialism then migrating from the

natural sciences into philosophy (hence Fichtes constantcomplaints against Spinoza).

D.2Any philosophy is dogmatic for which (physical) contingenciesdetermine the possibilities of reason

It should be noted that D.2 adds to C.2 and 3, insofar asthe latter stipulate that dogmatism locates the ground ofbeing in things, which D.2 recasts in terms of determina-bility. Thus, rather than rejecting the world of physicallycontingent states of affairs, transcendental naturalism will,

on the above grounds, argue for the primacy of actionsdeterminingby free causes over objects determined inaccordance with necessity.

2. THENECESSARYINDETERMINACYOFBEING

The claim that dogmatism is in fact dogmatic naturalismis supported not only by Kants overt assertion thatdogmatism always entails the assumption of the principle of(efficient) causality in its explanations,41that is, of the things

41. See, for example, Kants attempts to determine the causes involved in a putativealteration of the Earths axial rotation (Ak. I, 183-191) and of The Age of the Earth,physically considered (Ak. I, 193-214). Critically reflecting on this proceedure inthe Antinomy of pure reason, Kant writes: the assertions of the thesis, on the otherhand, presuppose, in addition to the empirical mode of explanation employed withinthe series of appearances, intelligible [intellektuelle] beginnings; and to this extentits maxim is complex. But as its essential and distinguishing characteristic is thepresupposition of intelligible beginnings, I shall entitle it the dogmatism of purereason (CPR A466/B494). Finally, in the Critique of Judgment, Kant notes: Now aswe talk about the syustems that try to explain nature as concerns final causes, wemust note carefully that the dispute among all of them is dogmatic i.e., the disputeis about objective principles concerning the possibility of things, whether throughcauses that act intentially or only those that act unintentionally (Ak. V, 391).

not empty concepts, but the determination of causes thatpresents the problem. The Universal Natural Historyis clearthat the causes of conceptual confusion are the materials

from which the brain is composed.Dogmatism in its pureform is materialism, wrote Hegel.38It is not that this mustnecessarily be wrong, but rather that the determination ofthe specific causes of contingent things is held to determinereason in turn. That is, if a contingent neural architecture(others are conceivable) is responsible for unclear concepts,then reasoning concerning concepts is duly inflected bysuch neurology. This is why the first Critiquestipulates thatwhile the proper means for determining the limits of [all]possible knowledge are a priori, when my ignorance is

contingent [zufllig] it must incite me [] to a dogmaticenquiry concerning things (objects)39 precisely becauseit is the principle of the Copernican revolution that it isnot objects that determine thought, but rather thought thatdetermines objectality. Fichte makes the point explicitly:

It is by theprinciple of causalitythat dogmatism wishes to explainthis nature of intelligence in general, as well as its particular

determinations.40

This is extremely telling: not only does it clarify the reasons

for Kants apparentabandonment of the geological, cosmo-logical and mechanical investigations that preoccupied himduring his precritical period, but specifies a dimension of

38. G.W.F Hegel, The Difference Between Fichtes and Schellings System of Philosophy, ed.and trans. by H.S. Harris and Walter Cerf (New York: SUNY, 1977), 126.

39. CPR: A758/B786.

40. Fichte, Werke I, 436; The Science of Knowledge, ed. and tr. Peter Heath and JohnLachs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 17.

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whatever is, is, and whatever is not, is not.44The principleof identity is synthetic and necessarily true, but not a priori,insofar as the principle maintains the difference between

being true of reason and being true of things.The pertinence of Kants adoption of this Parmenidean

couple45consists in its abandonment of a single first principle,and its replacement with two such principles on the onehand, and their derived synthesisin the Principle of Identity onthe other. This synthetic aspect is further borne out whenwe consider the place of existence [Dasein] and not-being[Nichtsein] in the first Critiques Categories of Modality.46

TABLE OF CATEGORIES

I Of Quantity: Unity Plurality TotalityII Of Quality: Reality Negation Limitation

III Of Relation: Of Inherenceand Subsistence

Of Causality andDependence

Of Community(Reciprocity)

IV Of Modality: Possibility-Impossibility

Existence-Nonexistence

Necessity-Contingency

In the considerations concerning the Table of Categoriesadded in the B edition, Kant asserts that Modality andRelation belong to the dynamical categories, Quality and

44. Kant,Ak. I, 389; Theoretical Philosophy, op. cit., 7.

45. Parmenides DK 28 B2: the only ways of inquiry to be acknowledged are: one,that is, and it is impossible for it not to be [] another, that It isnot, and must needs not be this, I tell you, is a path that is utterly indiscernible,for you could not know that which is not, for that is impossible, nor utter it. Ifollow Cornfords translation and insertion, Plato and Parmenides(London: Routledgeand Kegan Paul, 1939), 30-31. Importantly, Parmenides argumentation proceeds byantitheticals, a procedure that Platos Parmenidesrepeats and of which Kants dialecticis a direct heir.

46. CPR: A80/B106.

(cosa) which ground experience, but also by subsequent anti-dogmatist philosophers, chief amongst whom is Fichte. Yetthe rejection of causal explanations in metaphysics is only

one element of a transcendental naturalism designed toreplace it; an additional, ontologicalpart of this programmederives from Kants critique of the primacy of the law ofnon-contradiction, initially presented in the New Elucidation(1755). Proposition I of that work states that there is nounique, absolutely first, universal principle of all truths.42The ground of this argument stems from the problems intowhich basic ontological propositions fall if the law of non-contradiction is held to fulfil the office of such a principle.Drawing on Parmenidean propositions (what is, is; what is

not, is not), Kant argues that any truly simple propositionmust be either affirmative or negative. If the one, thennot the other, and so neither can be universal, since anaffirmative proposition cannot be the principle of a negativeone, and vice-versa. Even the proposition that might be heldindirectly to prove the above assertion false, namely, thateverything of which the opposite is false, is true,43is itselfan affirmative rather than a negative proposition; just as itsantithesis, that is, everything of which the opposite is true,is false, is a negative one. Since neither can be derived fromits antithesis, neither could have a foundation save in itself,from which it follows that there are two propositions, ratherthan one unique one. Moreover, from the combinationof these two propositions the principle of identity isderived. Kant states this concisely in the following terms:

42. Kant,Ak. I, 388; Theoretical Philosophy 1755-1770, trans. and ed. by David Walfordand Ralf Meerbote (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 6.

43. Ibid.

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Accordingly, whatever is not not, is50 avoids the trap ofasserting the being of what is not, or of asserting the beingof not-being (Parmenides way of opinion).

Ontologically, the important consequence of both thisParmenidean and modal argumentation is that all predicationis of what isand no predication can be of what is not. Being isnot therefore a predicate, as the critical Kant will assert,51but rather that of which all predicates are predicates, thereferent or Bedeutung of all predication, regardless of itsSinn.52In other words, no information is or can be given asto what is: all that is specified concerning being is that it isimpossiblethat it is not. This modal account is an importantfirst element of the ontology transcendental philosophy

presupposes but cannot own without reverting todogmatism. The elucidation of this ontology will therefore

[sive] nothing is true iff you invest the sign of the negative concept with the powerof cancelling [vim tollat] the affirmative concept (Ak. I, 390; 1992: 9). This power ofcancellation, however, is precisely what the principle of contradiction presupposes,but that the principle of identity denies as active between assertions and negations.With no such power, nothing cannot derive from the combination of something withsomething that is not. The power of cancellation operates only between identicals, sothat Kant rephrases the principle of identity thus: whatever is not not, is, where the twonots cancel each other out (Ak. I, 389; 1992: 8). In effect, Kant is arguing that theimpossible is not nothing, but is impossible.

50. Kant,Ak. I, 389; Theoretical Philosophy, op. cit., 8.

51. CPR:A598/B626.

52. This elicits a dimension often overlooked in the Fregean account of the Bedeutungenof propositions. In On Sinnand Bedeutung (1892), Frege writes all true sentenceshave the same Bedeutung (in Beaney, ed., The Frege Reader[Oxford: Blackwell, 2000],159), namely, as the Comments on that essay (1892) make clear, the True. Justas Kant claims all predication is of being, so Frege argues that since all propositionsaim at the True, thought and Being are the same (ibid., 174). Finally, in Thought(1919), Frege generalizes this account to the classical Platonic triumvirate: Just asbeautiful points the way for aesthetics and good for ethics, so do words liketrue for logic (ibid., 325).

Quantity to the mathematical. The distinction is significantsince the latter are concerned with objects of intuition and theformer with their existence. In all cases, Kant notes, the third

category in each class always arises from the combinationof the second category with the first. According to theCategories of Modality, then, necessity is just the existencewhich is given through possibility itself.47This reiterateswhat the New Elucidationhas already affirmed: that existenceis necessary and non-existence impossible.

Descending from the synthetic, while all a priori divisionof concepts must be made by dichotomy,48the dynamicalcategories operate by dichotomous antithesesof concepts. Onthe scale of systems rather than concepts, the principle of

identity explicitly sanctions extra-systemic contradictionsbetween those that are affirmatively and those that arenegatively grounded, setting up the problem the Transcen-dental Dialectic examines between antinomic systems. Tothese formal concerns, the New Elucidations protocritical yetstill dogmatic argumentation adds a material element: inkeeping with its Parmenidean source, Kant draws expresslyontologicalconsequences from the principle of identity. It isnot the identity of any particular content that is establishedby the principle, but rather the primary differentiation of

being from not-being, and therefore the identity of whatis as what is. Both principles are self-identical, insofar astheir contraries facilitate no derivation: being is not,that is, does not yield any derivables, not even nothing.49

47. Ibid., B110-111.

48. Ibid., B110.

49. Kant expressly disputes that the product of a contradiction is nothing: + A A= 0, [or i]n other words, affirming and negating the same thing is impossible or

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are in this or that way that makes the proposition a tran-scendental one, but thepositingof things as this or that modeof existence (agit, facit, operatur, dirigit).56That this is so will

become especially evident not only in the Selbstsetzungslehreand the Ether deductions of the Opus postumum, but also inKants heirs (especially Fichtes) accounts of the constitu-tive or determining role of the actof positing with regard tothe factsso posited. Against these Copernican credentials,the second sub-thesis automatically triggers accusationsof dogmatism, at least insofar as the term applies to allmetaphysics that takes as its object the determination ofthings existing in themselves.

The question then concerns the relation between the

two sub-theses; whether, that is, the first sub-thesiss identi-fication of being with positing is identical with or differentfrom the second sub-thesiss identification of positingand determination. If it is, then being is determinable initself by positing; if not, then the being of the positing isnot equivalent to the determination so posited. Note thatfrom the thesis that being is what all predication is of, itfollows that all predication must be the determination ofbeing. Meanwhile, positing posits determinationsas existingin themselves. It does not, that is, determine anything that

exists in itself, but makesdeterminations exist in themselves.In effect, this is what a second constituent of Kants modalontology stipulates: I have been reproached, Kant writes,

for defining the power of desire as the power of being the cause,

through ones presentations, of the actuality of the objects of

56. Nature causes(agit). Man does(facit). The rational subject acting with consciousnessof purpose operates(operatur). An intelligent cause, not accessible to the senses, directs(dirigit). (Kant,Ak. XXI,18; Opus postumum, 224-5)

demonstrate that transcendentalism offers a new species ofdogmatism in philosophy.

We are not alone in affirming an ontology underlying

the transcendental project. For example, Heidegger notes inhis address to Kants Thesis About Being, that the thesisat issue does not affirm that beings or thingsare, and thusdoes not even inform us as to whether being is comprisedsolely of beings. All Kants thesis tells us is that being isobviously not a real predicate. Heidegger identifies this asthe negative thesis about being.53The positive thesis, bycontrast, characterises being as

the positing of a thing, of certain determinations as existing in

themselves. 54

From this we gain a sense of the dogmatism inherent inontological determination, while at the same time theproperly critical element is foregrounded. In this lateanalysis of Kants ontology,55Heidegger takes the entiretyof the above proposition as constituting the positiveassertion, despite its containing two distinct and perhapsantithetical sub-theses: first, being is identified withpositing; second, positing is identified not only with deter-mination, but with determinations as existing in themselves.That the first sub-thesis fulfils the critical requirements ofthis ontology is evident from thepositing: it is not that things

53. M. Heidegger Kants thesis about being, op. cit.

54. CPR: A598/B626.

55. Heideggers first published examination of Kants ontology is Kant and the Problemof Metaphysics(1929, trans. by R. Taft, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997),an analysis to which he returns in Kants Thesis about Being (1961) and What is aThing?(1962, trans. by W. B. Barton and V. Deutsch, Chicago: Regnery, 1968).

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Firstly, that the categories are to fulfil the identity of subjectand object, that is, satisfy the speculative proposition,may seem like Hegels own imposition. Yet it is Kant who

stipulates that, although the categories in general constituteall original pure concepts of synthesis that the understand-ing contains within itself a priori,59the dynamical categoriesare in addition concerned with existence.60 With whatexistence? Categories or acts of thought that had no sucheffects could satisfy no subject-object or concept-intuitionidentity. In other words, although the categories cannotdetermine a priori the existence and specific differentia ofparticular matters, the categories of modality are nonethelessheld to posit determinations existing in themselves. Yet

we have seen how the transcendental philosophy demon-strates the necessity attaching to existence as the ground forits determination, which extends, in the form of practicalreason, to the determination of actuality (Wirklichkeit) assuch. Why then does Hegel expressly deny this determi-nation, asserting instead that Kants categories of modalitydetermine nothing objectively and that the nonidentity ofsubject and object essentially pertain to it?

The criticism hinges on the claim that the categoriesof modality, qua categories of the understanding, aredetermining only of forms of thought, and thus provide amerely subjective determination of actuality. Hence it canbe denied that anything is thereby determined objectively.Further, this is necessarily the case insofar as these categoriesare premised on the non-identity of subject and object,

59. CPR: A80/B104.

60. Ibid., B110.

these presentations [die Definition des Begehrungsvermgens alsVermgens, durch seine Vorstellungen Ursache von der Wirklichkeit derGegenstnde dieser Vorstellungen zu sein].57

Just as the thesis that all predication is of what iscritically buttresses the New Elucidations modal propositionconcerning being, viz., that it is impossible that it is not, sothe thesis that being is a positing of determinations existingin themselves turns into an account of the determiningcauses of actuality. From this, we derive an initial statementof Kants ontology:

Being is necessarily indeterminate if actuality is determinable.

Or, in practical terms:

The necessity of contingency is necessaryfor the determinability of theactual.

It is precisely at this juncture that a comment Hegel makesin the Difference Between Fichtes and Schellings System ofPhilosophywith regard to Kants table of categories acquiressignificance as regards the investigation of a transcenden-tal dogmatism. The framing of Hegels comment is, in thisregard, especially instructive. In Kants deduction,

The identity of subject and object is limited to twelve acts of

pure thought [reine Denkthtigkeiten] or rather to nine only, formodality really determines nothing objectively; the nonidentity

of subject and object essentially pertains to it.58

57. Kant ,Ak. V, 177 n., citingAk.V, 9 n.

58. Hegel,The Difference Between Fichtes and Schellings System of Philosophy, op. cit., 80.

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categories can therefore be extended to objects as such, butonly to actuality, by positing. If being has no objectiveside, in what then does nature consist? Grasping the impli-

cations, it is Fichte who is Kants true heir, exactly as heclaimed, when, in the Science of Knowledge, he characterisesthe object for the subject as the nicht-Ich, finally subjectivis-ing all nature. Is it true then, as Georges Cuvier asked hiserstwhile professor of comparative anatomy, Carl FriedrichKielmeyer, as the Kantians seem to maintain, that

external nature [...] may be deduced from a priori principles,i.e., those that are present prior to all experience [] in short,

from the nature of our minds[?]63

The problem is excellently posed: if there are principlesprior to all experience, then external nature emerges onlyafter its subjective determination. Thus Hegels interven-tion clarifies the ontology presupposed by transcenden-talism, and articulates its dichotomous structure: naturecannot be objectively but only subjectively determined;therefore objective nature is of necessity objectively inde-terminate in itself. By contrast, Cuviers problem suggeststhat it is only if the deduction of external nature is not thededuction of external nature that a subject-object dichotomyis conceivable. Rather than the subject-object pair, theCuvier question (so like Jacobis challenge to Kant)64

63. C. F. Kielmeyer, Natur und Kraft. Gesammelte Schriften, ed. F.H. Khler (Berlin:Kieper, 1938), 236.

64. The transcendental idealist [] must have the courage to assert the strongestidealism that has ever been taught, and not even to fear the charge of speulativeegoism (F.H. Jacobi, Realism and Idealism, in B.Sassen (ed.), Kants Early Critics:the Empiricist Critique of the Theoretical Philosophy(Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2000), 175.

which the ontology supporting the Copernican revolutionpresupposes: the determination of reason is simply not thedetermination of things. In other words, if it is through

the positing that determinations exist in themselves, thenthese determinations have existence only consequent upontheir positing. Since, at the same time, no determinationscan be made of things-in-themselves, then the categories ofmodality, especially those of existence and non-existence,determine nothing objectively.

While possessing no capacity for objective determi-nation, the categories do nevertheless determine the onlypossible actionsthat speculative reason can perform, regardlessof whether such performances obtainor are actualised. As we have

seen, the transition to actualityis not an element of speculativereason, but a power only practical reason can effect. Toeffect is ultimately to determine actuality in accordancewith freedom as the only unconditioned and necessary cause.61Accordingly, since it is a necessary presupposition of theCopernican revolution that being is determinable but notdetermining, being so determined is actuality: subjectiv-ity remains impotent in being, but powerful in actuality.62The reason for this is the Copernican thesis that objectsare determinable for reason while reason is not determina-ble by objects, which entails that objective determination that is, determination of existents anterior to determina-tion is impossible. Neither existence nor any of the other

61. Ibid., A418-9/B446-7.

62. Kant was never as clear as Fichte about this: if the Science of Knowledge shouldbe asked, how then, indeed, are things-in-themselves constituted, it could offer noother answer save, as we are to make them. [ H]ence we can never speak of theexistence of an object without a subject (Fichte, WerkeI: 286; SK: 252).

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is characterised by its antithesis to freedom. Nature determines

itself must [accordingly] be translated into nature isdeterminedby its essence,formaliter, to determine itself; nature can never

be indeterminate, as a free being can very well be; and materi-alitertoo, nature is determined just in one way and no other;unlike a free being, it does not have the choice between a

certain determination and its opposite.67

Fichte here makes explicit the necessary indeterminacyof being that is merely implicit in Kant, and applies this tothe production of a nature as formal and material being-deter-mined. Accordingly, nature is formal and material determina-bility. The determinable is never possibly not-determined,so that the empirical Ich can never not be determined inturn by determinacies it posits as its own limits. Empiricalor living self-consciousness therefore sets itself as its task anunlimited striving to overcome these limits and increase theindeterminacy of or in being.

Because striving takes time, and because it must beunlimitedif it is a free striving rather than a determined andtherefore merely natural drive, Hegel complains that ratherthan resolving the antithesis of nature and freedom, Fichtereplaces it with an antithesis between a limited present andan infinity extraneous to it.68Replacing an absolute object

with an absolute subject merely produces, notes Hegel, adogmatic idealism;69 antinomising it by way of a livingself-consciousness generates no solution, therefore, to theantithesis of nature and freedom, but transposes the ground

67. Fichte, WerkeIV, 112-3; The System of Ethics, op. cit., 108.

68. Hegel, The Difference Between Fichtes and Schellings System of Philosophy, op. cit., 139.

69. Ibid., 127.

works out the implications of the priority of thinking overbeing asserted by transcendental naturalism. Both sets ofconcerns, however, present an antinomy of transcendental

naturalism: the opposability of transcendental to dogmaticnaturalism, on the one hand, and the priority of thinkingover being, on the other. Since these theses are opposable,transcendental ontology is dogmatic by criterion (1), above.Nevertheless, the core problem of the identity of reason andnature remains open. As for all dogmatisms, therefore, tran-scendentalism is a naturalism concerned not with the deter-mination of mind by nature, but with that of nature by freecauses supported by necessary contingency. We will nowexamine both the Hegelian and the Cuverian Antinomies

of Transcendental Naturalism in turn.

3. THEANTINOMIESOFTRANSCENDENTALNATURALISM

I. THEHEGELIANANTINOMY

Hegel presents an antinomy of transcendental naturalismin TheDifference between Fichtes and Schellings System of Philosophy,through Fichtes transcendental deduction of nature. Thededuction is transcendental insofar as its starting pointis the absolute Ichs oppositing of nature to the empiricalIch, or the self-limitation of free activity.65In other words,the differential between the absolute and the finite Ichs, orthe degree to which the latter approximates the absoluteidentity of the former, provides the necessary conditionsfor thinking nature in accordance with the programme ofthe Science of Knowledge. Hegel66cites Fichte postulating thatnature


66. Ibid., 137-8.

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to overcome dichotomy. Yet Reason by its own nature isdriven to maintain the dichotomy in and as its identity withthe Absolute. The speculative proposition that satisfies

this need always and necessarily asserts identity with theAbsolute (Freges Hegelianism), but never equivalence to it,so that the identity of identity and dichotomy resolves theantinomy of finitude and extrinsic infinity.

Therefore it is a condition of Reasons nature that itis both unconditioned by the dichotomy of freedom andnature, andmaintains it. This is an important solution inthree ways. Firstly, Hegels is a species of naturalised epistemo-genesisin accordance, as both the Greater Logicand the Phe-nomenology show, with living reason. Secondly, it is a largely

forgotten solution to a problem that remains unresolved:namely, the relation of reason to nature, on the one hand,given the nature of reason on the other. Speculativeidealism, in this regard, shares its concerns with philosophi-cal inquiries regarding naturalised epistemology, neurophi-losophy, and dialethism,73amongst others. Thirdly, Hegelsproposals do not resolve but amplify antinomy, making hisa hyperdogmatism that remains undetermined with regardto nature or reason.

73. For naturalised epistemology, see W.V.O. Quine Epistemology naturalized inOntological Relativity and Other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969).For neurophilosophy, see P. M. Churchland, Neurophilosophy (Cambridge: MIT,1986), 482: so it is that the brain investigates the brain, theorizing about what brainsdo when they theorize. Graham Priest, in Beyond the Limits of Thought(Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2002), defines dialethism as a transcendental investigation into thenature of true contradictions.

of this antithesis outside itself, a subjectivity as objectiveand absolute as the object of dogmatic materialisms. Thisis borne out by Fichtes the concept of drive, drawn from

physiological researches into the nature of living beings.Thus, he writes:

The highest exhibition of intelligence outside itself, in nature,

is the drive.70

Positing the drive as the highest exhibitionof intelligence innature rather than, for example, the closest nature gets toexhibiting intelligence therefore clearly exhibits transcen-clearly exhibits transcen-dental dogmatisms maintenance of the dichotomy, whileat the same time demonstrating the site of the struggle over

determinacy versus purpose,between physics and ideality.Fichte reconstructs ethics as the direct conflict of matter andideality, as the infinitely unresolvable struggle of embodieddeterminacy for absolute indetermination, and thus positsNature [as] something essentially determined and lifeless.71Nothing demonstrates more concretely this antinomy oftranscendental naturalism than the shock of the objectiveworld,72or nature determined as absolute object.

Hegels own solution follows from a view of Kantstranscendentalism he shares with Schelling. That is,

when reason takes itself as its own object, transcenden-tal philosophy is the investigation of the nature proper toreason. Accordingly, the Hegelian solution to the antinomyconcerns the latters provocation of the need of philosophy

70. Fichte, WerkeXI, 363.


72. Schelling, WerkeI, 337.

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Considered along these lines, the powers or Vermgenof the first Critique, held responsible as they are for theexistence or actuality of determinations, constitute a step

towards supplanting bodies with forces in fundamentalphysics. This, for example, is how the medical scientistAndreas Rschlaub read Fichte, rendering the lattercapable of a philosophy of medicine,75and how the naturalhistorian Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer reports the substance ofKants Copernican revolution to Cuvier:

This experiment of Kants is astute, and it recommends itself

in that in this way, the necessary, the universal and the certain

in our knowledge remains subjective in our mind, while the

contingent and the particular will be attributed to objective

nature, which is unknown in itself. 76

As for Kant, then, although he allows no naveknowledge of nature in itself, Kielmeyers ontology ismodal, consisting of what necessarily and what contin-gently is. Objective nature is not nature-as-objects but asmatterand, as matter, subject to further determination byforces. Here Kielmeyer joins Hegel in asserting that Kantdoes not go far enough (although for different reasons),for to turn matter, as the Metaphysical Foundations of NaturalScienceattempts to, solely into the product of attractive andrepulsive forces, would have satisfied naturalistic demands

75. Developing the theme of Idealist influences in their contemporaneous sciences,Tsouyopoulos (1978: 90) cites Rschlaubs assessment of transcendental naturalismfrom the lattersMagazine for the Improvement of Medicine vol.8, part 3 (1805): 473: Thephilosophemes of a Kant, a Fichte and a Schelling have given the labours of thephysician and the natural scientist a manifest and proper direction in our own day,just as the philosophemes of Empedocles, Democritus, Heraclitus and Aristotle didearlier.

76. Kielmeyer, Natur und Kraft, op. cit., 243.

II. THECUVERIANANTINOMY

Let us then return to the indeterminacy of being thesiscommon to transcendentalism in general. If what is at stake,

for Fichte, is the relative determinability of the Ichand itsopposited nature; and if, for Hegel, it is the determina-bility of all dichotomy by Reasons nature that matters;transcendental philosophy has, in the positing principleconsidered above, a naturalistic means for accounting fordetermination. We will first investigate this before pursuingthe Cuverian antinomy of transcendental naturalism.

Positing is an act, the actualisation of a power in theworld, subject to resistances and limitations. If nature orbeing is able to impose resistances and limitations upon sub-

jectivity, philosophy returns to pre-Copernican dogmaticnaturalism. Thus the antidogmatic critique of causationconsists in a refutation of its capacity to determine reason.To be so capable, a thing or cause (causa) would have to beascribed powers; without a thing-in-itself as their possessoror vehicle, there remains only a set of powers. If a powersontology is generalised, and if determination is a power ofreason, then reason acts in one and the same world as doothers. As Warnke notes,

Actions are conceived by traditional metaphysics as the

expressions of things. [Transcendentalism] stands this commonview on its head [and] determines things as expressions of actions,objectsas products of relations, beingas a reified, objectified doing,exhausted in its product.74

74. C. Warnke, Schellings Idee und Theorie des Organismus und derParadigmawechsel der Biologie um die Wende zum 19. Jahrhundert inJarhrbuch frGeschichte und Theorie der Biologie5, 1998: 187-234, at 200.

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question raises precisely this prospect, we will restate thesubstance of Schellings account of it:

A transcendental naturalism based on powers may be

held to supplant the problem of logical and real prioritywith that of reciprocity powers are reciprocally, ratherthan mechanically or efficiently determined. Since, however,reciprocity is simply a time-cancelling version of Husserlsco-natality thesis, this strand of transcendental naturalism

is clearly dogmatic, in that it asserts a perfected equilibriumor static eternity of forces against the time-based antithesisof that view, as stated in the above antinomy.

If being is necessarily indeterminate, then this indeter-minacy must precede its determination, since the conversewould entail that being is determinate in advance of itsdetermination, thus defeating the transcendental gambitfrom the outset. From this, it follows that, once KielmeyersKant-derived powers ontology is added to it, not that beingis inert and only acted upon by powers-possessors, since

this would amount to a dogmatic reversion to things inthemselves, but rather therefore that being itself is deter-minability in accordance with powers. It is this, then, thatgives Schelling his conviction concerning the priority ofbeing over thinking, and Cuvier his scepticism concerningthe priority of thinking over nature: Being is thereforepotentiality for determinate being, Seynknnen, rather thanthe object over which transcendental subjects struggle.

on the first Critiquewithout sacrificing transcendentalism.According to Kielmeyer, however,

Kant neither achieved this, and nor, although he ought to,

would he want to; the proof is still wanting that all qualititative

differences in matter are simply and immediately differences in

the quantitative relations between the attractive and repulsive

forces. I would very much like to see this proof undertaken and

the qualities of matter explained from these two forces without

the intervention of a tertium, whether this be God, atoms, orsome third force.77

So Kielmeyer demands that the powers hypothesis becomean objective ontology. What we are left with now, however,

are two accounts of transcendental naturalism: in one,the necessary indeterminacy of being is maintained atthe cost of anything other than the subjective determi-nation of actuality; in the other, forces supply a unifiedand speculative ontogenetic account of the material ofknowledge, or objectivity. However, to complete this asan account of Transcendental Naturalism, an additionalelement must be added to the powers thesis, namely, theontological thesis regarding the necessary indeterminacy and therefore determinability of being. It is with this inmind that we turn finally to the Cuverian Antinomy.

The Cuverian Antinomy is also Schellings, andconcerns priority and posteriority in relations of determi-nation. Where Cuvier asks whether external nature can bededuced according to principles of mind prior to experience,Schelling asserts that being precedes thinking and not theconverse. Since the implicit antinomic contrary in Cuviers

77. Ibid., 245.

THESIS

Nature precedes

the thinking it

spawns

ANTITHESIS

Thinking

precedes the

Nature it thinks

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the topics and interlocutors addressed therein. Accordingly,I will conclude by drawing out some implications of powersontologies.

Firstly, powers necessarily involve modal concepts.Against Hegels denial that the categories of Modalitydetermine anything objective, objectality is nothing otherthan a set of potentials for actualisation, as Plato insisted.Powers make contingency into an ontology, a metaphysicsand a physics.

Secondly, and again emphasising contingency, powersnecessarily involve time determination, not as the tran-scendental form of inner sense, but, as Johann HeinrichLambert noted, as determining change: If changes are real,

then time is real [...]. If time is unreal, then no change can bereal.79Of course, this does not mean that the natureof timeis given in advance as linear, as again physicists remind us.

Thirdly, powers do constitute a dogmatically assertibletranscendental field insofar as they are both necessary todetermination and in and of themselves indeterminate.

Fourthly and finally, the prospects for dogmatism areraised wherever the certainties of transcendental reflectionare revealed not as another species of reason, but rather asdogmatism parochialised:

Being is necessarily indeterminate if actuality is determinable.

Or, in practical terms:

The necessity of contingency is necessaryfor the determinability of theactual.

79. Lambert to Kant, October 13th 1770, in KantAk. X, 107.

The Schelling-Cuvier antinomy thus results, its tran-scendental condition-giving notwithstanding, in a dogmaticnaturalism premised on the multiple determinability of

being. Finally, therefore, transcendental naturalism is eithera dogmatic naturalism of the Cuvier-Schelling-Kielmeyertype, or simply naturalism or it is not a naturalism at all,like those of Fichte, Heidegger and Husserl. Copernican-ism does not eliminate dogmatism, but continues it in newforms a dogmatism of appearance as opposed to that ofessence, as has been recently made crystal clear by BatriceLonguenesse:

It is a fact that we live in a world of things. Still, we must

understand that these things are our fact, our doing not in the

sense that a philosophy of praxis would give to this statement[...] but in the sense of a metaphysical account of the world as

constituted by a process of thinking.78

Just as this dogmatism of appearances resulted from Kantsexperiment in thought, it remains true of transcendentalismnow, and prompts a challenge to those who pursue tran-scendental philosophy to demonstrate that theirs is notsimply a dogmatic anti-naturalism.

In conclusion, the ontology of powers, with its modal

determinations (necessity, contingency, possibility,actuality), can only be regarded as a reducibly metaphysi-cal problem if the physical dimensions of its actuality areignored. Field ontology entered physics and philosophyat the same time, although its philosophical pedigree isperhaps longer, stretching back at least to Platos Sophistand

78. Batrice Longuenesse, Hegels Critique of Metaphysics (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2007), 6.

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