On Hegel’s Critique of Kant’s Subjectivism in the Transcendental Deduction

Gaps, Chasms and Things in Themselves: A Reply to My Critics

“…But Brook broaches here what might strike one as a central problem for Kant: how can we take empirical intuitions to provide the real possibility that cannot be ‘conjured out of’ concepts (cf. Schulting 2017a: 362) if even spatial and temporal structure is ‘actively’ contributed by the mind and not already in some way in the manifold, and indeed if the intensive magnitude of an intuition, which corresponds to matter, is first determined by the mind?…”

“…Precisely because matter (and not just form) is part of possible experience, we are able to a priori determine matter as that which fills space, in virtue of the categories of quality (cf. Schulting 2017a: 335, n. 28). I do not underestimate the complexity of Kant’s views on matter – not least of the question of what metaphysically grounds it – which he continued to reflect on right until the end of his career (cf.…”

“…My thesis of Kant’s radical subjectivism implies that the subjective conditions of thought are not only necessary but also formally sufficient conditions of the objects of thought (see e.g. Schulting 2017a: 22). Basically, I take Kant to argue in the Deduction that there is no gap between the transcendental unity of apperception which governs self-consciousness and the transcendental conditions for the objects of thought.…”

“…If one wants to call this irreducible principle of apperceiving, judging or understanding absolute spontaneity, I am fine with that as such, since the principle is absolute in the sense of it being irreducible to ‘an external source’ and because there is no other principle governing my ϕ-ing (qua ϕ-ing). However, I prefer not to call it ‘absolute’ inasmuch as Kant reserves absolute spontaneity for the idea of transcendental freedom, whereas the spontaneity of the understanding, as Kant himself says, ‘cannot produce from its activity … other concepts than those which serve merely to bring sensible representations under rules ’ ( Groundwork , 4: 452) (see the discussion at Schulting 2017a: 128ff.). Of course, the non-absolute spontaneity at issue here is not a Sellarsian relative spontaneity that is merely a posteriori responsive to causal impingements but it is one that is ‘concurrent’ with sensibility, as I put it, so relative to the necessary sensible input that it unifies.…”

Minding the Gap: Subjectivism and the Deduction

“…Chapter 4 of Dennis Schulting’s interesting and stimulating book Kant’s Radical Subjectivism (Schulting 2017) takes as its target those Anglophone commentators who take there to be a gap in Kant’s transcendental deduction of the categories. As Schulting puts it,The Gap is construed in terms of the difference between arguing that we must apply categories in order to be able to think of, experience, or perceive objects and arguing that the categories must so apply, or in other words, that the categories are exemplified by the objects that we think of, experience, or perceive.…”