# 25. On Kant's Epistemology

The question repeatedly arises within the intellectual movement that this journal serves: How does theosophy relate to the scientific foundations of the epistemology that currently prevail? In the following, I would like to present some of the ideas of Kant's epistemology, which is probably the starting point for most modern epistemologies. “Back to Kant” has been the motto of our philosophers since the 1960s. Therefore, an epistemological consideration must probably be linked to Kant's thoughts.

The theory of knowledge is supposed to be a scientific investigation of that which all other sciences presuppose without examination: *cognition* itself. This means that it is assigned the character of a philosophical fundamental science from the outset. For only through it can we learn what value and what significance the insights gained by the other sciences have. In this respect, it forms the basis for all scientific endeavor. It is clear, however, that it can only fulfill this task if it itself, as far as the nature of human cognitive faculty allows, is free of presuppositions. This is generally conceded. Nevertheless, a close examination of the better-known epistemological systems reveals that a whole series of presuppositions are made at the very outset of the investigation, which then significantly impair the convincing effect of the further explanations. In particular, it will be noticed that certain hidden assumptions are usually made even when the basic epistemological problems are being formulated. But if the questions posed by a science are wrong, then one must doubt the correctness of the solution from the outset. The history of science teaches us that countless errors, which have plagued entire ages, are solely and exclusively due to the fact that certain problems were posed incorrectly. To give just one example: what modifications did certain questions in physics undergo as a result of the discovery of the mechanical equivalent of heat and the law of the conservation of energy! In short, the success of scientific investigations depends to a large extent on whether one is able to pose the problems correctly. Even though epistemology, as the basis of all other sciences, occupies a very special position, it is nevertheless foreseeable that successful progress in its investigation will only be possible if the fundamental questions are posed in the correct form.

One could rightly object to the view that Kant was the founder of epistemology in the modern sense of the word, that the history of philosophy before Kant shows numerous investigations that can be seen as more than just the seeds of such a science. Volkelt, for example, notes in his fundamental work on epistemology (“Erfahrung und Denken. Kritische Grundlegung der Erkenntnistheorie” by Johannes Volkelt. Hamburg and Leipzig 1886, page 20) that the critical treatment of this science began with Locke. But even in the case of earlier philosophers, even in the philosophy of the Greeks, one finds discussions that are currently being held in epistemology. However, Kant has stirred up all the problems that come into consideration here in their depths, and numerous thinkers have followed up on him and worked through them so thoroughly that one finds the earlier attempts at solutions either in Kant himself or in his epigones. If, then, we are dealing with a purely *factual* and not a *historical* study of epistemology, we can hardly fail to recognize an important phenomenon if we take into account only the period since Kant's appearance with the “Critique of Pure Reason”. What had been achieved in this field before is repeated in this epoch.

Kant's fundamental epistemological question is: *How are synthetic judgments a priori possible?* Let us examine this question in terms of its presuppositions! Kant raises this question because he believes that we can only attain an absolutely certain knowledge if we are able to prove the justification of synthetic judgments a priori. He says: “The solution of the above problem also includes the possibility of the pure use of reason in the foundation and execution of all sciences that contain a theoretical knowledge a priori of objects” (“ *Critique of Pure Reason*”, page 61 ff. according to the edition by *Kirchman* n, to which edition all other page numbers in quotations from the Critique of Pure Reason and the Prolegomena are to be referred), and “The resolution of this task is the be-all and end-all of metaphysics, and thus of its very existence” (Prolegomena$ 5).

Is this question, as Kant puts it, without presuppositions? Not at all, for it makes the possibility of an absolutely certain system of knowledge dependent on the fact that it is built up only from synthetic judgments and from such judgments as are won independently of all experience. Kant calls synthetic judgments those in which the predicate concept adds something to the subject concept that lies completely outside of it, “even though it is linked to it” (“Critique of Pure Reason”, p. 53 f.), whereas in analytical judgments the predicate only states something that (hidden) is already contained in the subject. This is not the place to discuss Johannes Rehmke's astute objections to this classification of judgments (“Die Welt als Wahrnehmung und Begriff”, page 161ff.). For our present purposes, it is sufficient to realize that we can only attain true knowledge through judgments that add a second concept to a first, the content of which was not yet present in the first concept, at least *for us*. If we wish to call this class of judgments *synthetic* judgments, we can still concede that knowledge can only be gained in the form of judgments if the connection between the predicate and the subject is a synthetic one. The matter is different, however, with the second part of the question, which requires that these judgments must be arrived at a priori, that is, independently of all experience. It is quite possible (we mean here, of course, the mere *possibility of thought*) that such judgments do not exist at all. For the beginning of epistemology, it must be considered completely undecided whether we can arrive at judgments other than through experience, or only through it. Indeed, such independence seems impossible from the outset in the face of unbiased reflection. For whatever may become the object of our knowledge, it must first approach us as an immediate, individual experience, that is, it must become an experience. We also gain mathematical judgments in no other way than by *experiencing* them in certain individual cases. Even if, as Otto Liebmann does, for example, in his book “Analysis of Reality: Thoughts and Facts”, one allows the same to be based on a certain organization of our consciousness, the matter does not present itself differently. We can then say that this or that proposition is necessarily valid, for if its truth were annulled, consciousness would be annulled *with* it; but we can only gain the content of consciousness as knowledge if it becomes an experience for us, in exactly the same way as a process in external nature. The content of such a proposition may always contain elements that guarantee its absolute validity, or it may be secured for other reasons: I cannot get hold of it in any other way than when it confronts me as an experience. This is the one.

The second concern is that at the beginning of epistemological investigations, one should not claim that absolutely valid knowledge cannot come from experience. It is certainly quite conceivable that experience itself would have a characteristic that would guarantee the certainty of the insights gained from it.

Thus, Kant's question contains two presuppositions: firstly, that we must have a way of gaining knowledge other than experience, and secondly, that all knowledge gained through experience can only have limited validity. Kant is not at all aware that these statements need to be examined, that they can be doubted. He simply takes them over from dogmatic philosophy as prejudices and uses them as the basis for his critical investigations. Dogmatic philosophy presupposes them as valid and simply applies them in order to arrive at knowledge corresponding to them; Kant presupposes them as valid and only asks himself: under what conditions can they be valid? What if they were not valid at all? Then Kant's edifice of doctrine lacks any foundation.

Everything that Kant presents in the five paragraphs that precede the formulation of his fundamental question is an attempt to prove that mathematical judgments are synthetic. (An attempt that, incidentally, is not completely refuted by Robert Zimmermann's objections – “On Kant's mathematical prejudice and its consequences” – but is very much called into question.) But the two premises we have cited remain as scientific prejudices. In Introduction II of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant writes: “Experience teaches us that something is so or so, but not that it could not be otherwise,” and: “Experience never gives its judgments true or strict generality, but only assumed and comparative generality (through induction). In the “Prolegomena” § I we find: “First, as regards the *sources* of metaphysical knowledge, it is already in their concept that they cannot be empirical. The principles of the same (to which not only their principles, but also their basic concepts belong) must therefore never be derived from experience; for it is not physical, but metaphysical, that is, knowledge beyond experience.” Finally, in the Critique of Pure Reason (page 58), Kant says: “First of all, it must be noted that actual mathematical propositions are always judgments a priori and not empirical, because they involve necessity, which cannot be derived from experience. But if you do not want to concede this, then I limit my proposition to pure mathematics, whose concept already implies that it does not contain empirical, but only pure knowledge a priori.” We may open the Critique of Pure Reason wherever we like, and we will find that all the investigations within it are conducted under the assumption of these dogmatic propositions. Cohen (“Kants Theorie der Erfahrung”, p. 90ff.) and Stadler (“Die Grundsätze der reinen Erkenntnistheorie in der Kantschen Philosophie”, p. 76£.) attempt to prove that Kant demonstrated the a priori nature of mathematical and pure scientific propositions. However, everything that is attempted in the Critique can be summarized as follows: Because mathematics and pure natural science are a priori sciences, the form of all experience must be grounded in the subject. Thus, only the material of sensations, which is given empirically, remains. This is built up into a system of experience by the forms lying in the mind. The formal truths of a priori theories only have meaning and significance as organizing principles for the material of sensations; they make experience possible, but do not extend beyond it. These formal truths are, however, the synthetic judgments a priori, which, as conditions of all possible experience, must therefore extend as far as this experience itself. The Critique of Pure Reason does not, therefore, prove the a priori nature of mathematics and pure natural science, but only determines their area of validity under the *precondition* that their truths are to be obtained independently of experience. In fact, Kant is so reluctant to provide a proof of this a priori nature that he simply excludes that part of mathematics (see above) in which, even in his view, it could be doubted and confines himself to that in which he believes he can deduce it from the mere concept. Johannes Volkelt also finds that “Kant proceeds from the explicit assumption” that “there is in fact a general and necessary knowledge”. He goes on to say: “This assumption, which Kant never explicitly examined, is so contrary to the character of the critical theory of knowledge that one must seriously ask oneself whether the ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ can be considered a critical theory of knowledge.” Volkelt finds that this question can be answered in the affirmative for good reasons, but that “the critical attitude of Kant's epistemology is thoroughly disturbed by that dogmatic presupposition” (“Erfahrung und Denken”, p. 21). Suffice it to say that Volkelt also finds that the “Critique of Pure Reason” is not an epistemology without presuppositions.

The views of Otto Liebmann (“Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit”, p. 211 ff.), Hölder (“Darstellung der Kantischen Erkenntnistheorie”, p. 14f.), Windelband (“Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie”, p. 239, 1877), Überweg (“System der Logik”, 3rd edition , p. 380f.), Eduard von Hartmann's (“Kritische Grundlegung des transcendentalen Realismus”, pp. 142-172) and Kuno Fischer's (“Geschichte der neueren Philosophie” V.Bd., p. 60. Volkelt is mistaken in his reference to Kuno Fischer when he says - “Kants Erkenntnistheorie”, p. 198f. Note - says that it is “not clear from K. Fischer's account whether, in his view, Kant presupposes only the psychological actuality of general and necessary judgments or at the same time the objective validity and legitimacy of the same”. For at the point in question, Fischer says that the main difficulty of the “Critique of Pure Reason” is to be found in the fact that its “foundations are dependent on certain presuppositions” that “one must have conceded in order to accept the following”. For Fischer, these preconditions are the fact that “first the fact of knowledge” is established and then, through analysis, the cognitive faculties are found “from which that fact itself is explained”) in relation to the fact that Kant places the a priori validity of pure mathematics and natural science at the forefront of his discussions as a *precondition*.

That we really have knowledge that is independent of all experience, and that the latter only provides insights of comparative generality, we could only accept as corollaries of other judgments. These assertions would have to be preceded by an investigation into the nature of experience and one into the nature of our knowledge. The first of the above propositions could follow from the former, the second from the latter.

Now, one could still reply to our objections to the criticism of reason as follows. One could say that every epistemology must first lead the reader to the point where the starting point without presuppositions is to be found. For what we possess as knowledge at any point in our lives has moved far from this starting point, and we must first be led back to it artificially. Indeed, such a purely *didactic* understanding of the beginning of his science is a necessity for every epistemologist. But it must in any case be limited to showing in what way the beginning of knowledge in question is really such a beginning; it should proceed in purely self-evident analytical propositions and should not make any real, substantial assertions that influence the content of the following discussions, as is the case with Kant. It is also incumbent upon the epistemologist to show that the beginning he assumes is really without presuppositions. But all this has nothing to do with the nature of this beginning itself, is completely outside of it, and says nothing about it. Even at the beginning of a mathematics lesson, I have to try to convince the student of the axiomatic character of certain truths. But no one will want to claim that the *content* of the axioms is made dependent on these considerations. In exactly the same way, the epistemologist would have to show in his introductory remarks the way in which one can arrive at a beginning without presuppositions; the actual content of this beginning, however, must be independent of these considerations. But anyone who, like Kant, makes assertions of a very definite, dogmatic character at the beginning is far removed from such an introduction to epistemology.