Critique of the Kantian philosophy

Schopenhauer appended a criticism to the first volume of his The World as Will and Representation. He wanted to show Kant's errors so that Kant's merits would be appreciated and his achievements furthered.

At the time he wrote his criticism, Schopenhauer was familiar only with the second (1787) edition of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. When he later read the first (1781) edition, he said that many of Kant's contradictions were not evident.

Contents

Kant's merits

According to Schopenhauer's essay, Kant's three main merits are as follows:

  1. The distinction of the phenomenon from the thing-in-itself.
  2. The explanation of how the moral significance of human conduct is different from the laws that are concerned with phenomena.
    • The significance is directly related to the thing-in-itself, the innermost nature of the world.
  3. Religious scholastic philosophy is completely overthrown by the demonstration of the impossibility of proofs for speculative theology and also for rational psychology, or reasoned study of the soul.

Schopenhauer also said that Kant's discussion, on pages A534 to A550, of the contrast between empirical and intelligible characters is one of Kant's most profound ideas. Schopenhauer asserted that it is among the most admirable things ever said by a human.

Kant's logical table of judgments is kept almost unchanged as the real, invariable, primary forms of thinking.

Kant's faults

Fundamental error

Perceptions and Concepts

Kant did not distinguish between the concrete, intuitive, perceptual knowledge of objects and the abstract, discursive, conceptual, knowledge of thoughts.

Secondary errors

Transcendental analytic

Concepts
Idealism
Object–in–itself/Thing–in–itself

According to Schopenhauer, there is a difference between an object-in-itself and a thing-in-itself. There is no object-in-itself. An object is always an object for a subject. An object is really a representation of an object. On the other hand, a thing-in-itself, for Kant, is completely unknown. It cannot be spoken of at all without employing categories (pure concepts of the understanding). A thing-in-itself is that which appears to an observer when the observer experiences a representation .

Schemata
Judgments/Categories

Transcendental dialectic

Reason
Ideas of reason

Ethics

Categorical Imperative

Power of judgment

Aesthetics
Teleology

Reactions to Schopenhauer

Paul Guyer

In The Cambridge Companion to Schopenhauer, Professor Paul Guyer wrote an article titled "Schopenhauer, Kant, and the Methods of Philosophy." In it, he compared the methods of the two philosophers and in so doing, discussed Schopenhauer's Criticism.

In explaining how objects are experienced, Kant used transcendental arguments. He tried to prove and explain the fundamental principles of knowledge. In so doing, he started by indirectly conceptually reflecting on the conditions that exist in the observing subject that make possible verbal judgments about objective experience.

We shall therefore follow up the pure concepts to their first germs and beginnings in the human understanding…

A66

In contrast, Schopenhauer's method was to start by a direct examination of perceived objects in experience, not of abstract concepts.

…the solution of the riddle of the world is possible only through the proper connexion of outer with inner experience…

Appendix p. 428

The fundamental principles of knowledge cannot be transcendentally explained or proved, they can only be immediately, directly known. Such principles are, for example, the permanence of substance, the law of causality, and the mutual interactive relationships between all objects in space. Abstract concepts, for Schopenhauer, are not the starting point of knowledge. They are derived from perceptions, which are the source of all knowledge of the objective world. The world is experienced in two ways: (1.) mental representations that involve space, time, and causality; (2.) our will which is known to control our body.

Professor Guyer stated that Schopenhauer raised important questions regarding the possibility of Kant's transcendental arguments and proofs. However, even though Schopenhauer objected to Kant's method, he accepted many of Kant's conclusions. For example, Kant's description of experience and its relation to space, time, and causality was accepted. Also, the distinction between logical and real relations, as well as the difference between phenomena and things-in-themselves, played an important role in Schopenhauer's philosophy.

In general, the article tries to show how Schopenhauer misunderstood Kant as a result of the disparity between their methods. Where Kant was analyzing the conceptual conditions that resulted in the making of verbal judgments, Schopenhauer was phenomenologically scrutinizing intuitive experience. In one case, though, it is claimed that Schopenhauer raised a very important criticism. That is his objection to Kant's assertion that a particular event can be known as being successive only if its particular cause is known. Otherwise, almost all of Schopenhauer's criticisms are attributed to his opposite way of philosophizing which starts with the examination of perceptions instead of concepts.

Michael Kelly

Dr. Michael Kelly, in the Preface to his 1910 book Kant's Ethics and Schopenhauer's Criticism, stated: "Of Kant it may be said that what is good and true in his philosophy would have been buried with him, were it not for Schopenhauer…."

References

See also