Did Heidegger Read Kant's Transcendental Dialectic?

In the midst of an admirably even-handed consideration of the early Heidegger's auseindersetzung with Kant, David Carr makes a fleeting observation about how the intensive probing of that hermeneutic confrontation also  happens to be exclusive of an extensive reading ---even, in fact, exclusive of the entire extent of the first Kritik upon which it is focused:

One thing that strikes readers of Heidegger on Kant in these writings is that his analysis is very detailed and close to the text, but it is focused entirely on the first Critique and indeed goes no farther than the first third of that work. He has almost nothing to say about the “transcendental dialectic”and its critique of traditional metaphysics, in which the first Critique culminates, much less about Kant’s moral philosophy, for which the first Critique is preparing the way.

Carr doesn't stop with this somewhat blunted criticism, however. In what is an appraisal in all other ways self-restrained, Carr permits himself the following anomalously pointed remark: "...I have to wonder, in all seriousness, if Heidegger ever got as far as the paralogisms in his reading of the first Critique." The implication of Carr's speculation is clear: even in terms of its sources, Heidegger's reading of Kant is a narrow, lopsided one.
  In the present post, I want to take the opportunity to briefly suggest one reason why this is so --- why, that is, it is far from a matter of accident that Heidegger devotes himself exclusively to the Transcendental Aesthetic and Analytic in the majority of his Kant interpretations. As an aside I would allow the remark that Heidegger did not read other parts of Kant's corpus to pass as a piece of rhetorical hyperbole, were it not for the fact that even hyperbole does not allow itself to contradict historical fact (there is no need to waste breathe justifying Heidegger here on this point, he marshals so much evidence in the copious cross references he makes to the entirety of Kant's corpus ---nevermind the Dialectic). It might have been a nice addition to his Kant interpretation if Heidegger had produced, say, a phenomenological, or later, a seynsgeschichtliche interpretation of the Dialectic, one that is not altogether inconceivable in what its outline would have looked like, but Heidegger did not do so for, I would argue, a rather simple structural reason. One need only consider the architectonic of Kant's first Kritik to supply himself with the readily available answer.
   While the arrangement of the Kritik's Doctrine of Elements  can be regarded, as the Prolegomena in fact does regard it, as an arrangement of increasingly comprehensive pure foundations for the sciences of mathematics, physics, metaphysics respectively treated under the Aesthetic, Analytic, and Dialectic, nevertheless the work's arrangement can also be regarded from another vantage point. If in the former regard it is the Dialectic that treats of the possibility of metaphysics as an actual science, then in the latter regard it is the Transcendental Logic as a whole that furnishes the reader with the principles for a science of metaphysics as Kant alone wishes to establish it. This double vantage point is inherent to the work itself and may be explained by the fact that the pure physiological principles of the Analytic are at the same time metaphysical, since for Kant they ground any possible gegenstandsbeziehung.   In the order of presentation, then, the Analytic is designed to take over exactly that place reserved by Scholastic thought for metaphysica generalis, while the Dialectic is to occupy the place of metaphysica specialis. That this is so according to the rule of the work is made all the more obvious by the fact that the Dialectic's threefold division of paralogisms, antinomies, and Transcendental Ideals mirrors precisely the threefold division of metaphysica specialis into the specific domains of soul, world, and God. And it is precisely in this superficial observation of the works arrangement that we have a strong indication of the reason for Heidegger's focus. Months before Heidegger gives his phenomenological interpretations of the first Kritik, Heidegger is introducing to his students, in the Grundprobleme lectures of 1927, the problem of ontological difference, and he is doing so precisely through a destruktive meditation on Kant's categories of modality as they circumscribe the bounds of real predication. Although Heidegger had previously penetrated the Transcendental Analytic before the Phenomenological Interpretations in his 1925 Logik lectures, there it was self-evident why his examination had to limit itself in range and scope. By contrast the Phenomenological Interpretations, like the controversial Kantbuch that followed it, stood in need of some justification, and the Grundprobleme proffer that in linking the interpretation of Kant with the elaboration of the ontological difference.
     This link is of direct importance to the issue of Heidegger's attachment to the Analytic because it is as a consequence of the ontological difference that Heidegger will sever the possibility of doing anything like a metaphysica specialis from ontology properly understood. A properly ontological science will begin, as all metaphysica generalis attempt to do, with the question of Being as such. But, as the Grundprobleme make clear in their introduction, the method by which such a beginning is to be made consists in enacting a phenomenological reduction ---one which is vastly different from the move Husserlian phenomenology acknowledges by that name. In fact, precisely what was allegedly bracketed in Husserl's reduction is what is shifted toward in Heidegger's, namely Being as an antecedent given (seinsverstaendnis) which precedes and enables ontic datum:

We call this basic component of phenomenological method - the leading back or reduction of investigative vision from a naively apprehended being to Being phenomenological reduction. We are thus adopting a central term of Husserl's phenomenology in its literal wording though not in its substantive intent. For Husserl the phenomenological reduction, which he worked out for the first time expressly in the Ideas Toward a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy (1913), is the method of leading phenomenological vision from the natural attitude of the human being whose life is involved in the world of things and persons back to the transcendental life of consciousness and its noetic-noematic experiences, in which objects are constituted as correlates of consciousness. For us phenomenological reduction means leading phenomenological vision back from the apprehension of a being, whatever may be the character of that apprehension, to the understanding of the Being of this being (projecting upon the way it is unconcealed).   

Heidegger's self-comparison with his mentor here is particularly instructive in the task of clarifying Heidegger's reading of Kant's Kritik; the explanation (and/or justification) of object-constitution in light of transcendental consciousness has its roots in Kant's Analytic as it is usually interpreted. If an interpretation of the Kritik is to be a phenomenological  interpretation, then it will presumably have to enact the step required to initiate any phenomenological research, namely, Heidegger's onto-phenomenological reduction. But that reduction, which serves to properly raise questions traditionally belonging to metaphysica generalis, precludes the establishment of metaphysica specialis, since, insofar as it investigates three specific (domains of) objects, the latter would be a reversal of the reduction, moving from Being to beings --a move that can only be permitted if the ontological difference remains misunderstood as a difference. Heidegger's reduction is accordingly a recapitulation of the ontological difference contra to  yet presupposed by the difference between genus and species, and therefore also problematic for the difference between metaphysica generalis and metaphysica specialis. To be more precise, the reduction shows, through the view that it enacts, a difference already present in the domain of metaphysica generalis, prior to its own demarcation from metaphysica specialis. This ontological difference, as the phenomenon which makes possible any science capable of investigating positive data, renders the three specific objects of metaphysics, namely soul, world, and God, as subject to this further unaddressed ontological difference. Soul, world and God have always been interpreted according to an already established metaphysica generalis in order to be secured as objects of investigation --and even when that security is problematized, it is done so only by what is accomplished beforehand by metaphysica generalis ---just as Kant's Analytic supplies the ground for his paralogisms, antinomies, and Ideals. In short, general metaphysics must settle itself and stabilize its fundamental principles before specific metaphysics can commence.  But if one is to, as Heidegger's phenomenological reduction would have it, demonstrate a difference problematizing the ability of metaphysica generalis to come to rest and thereby lay the foundations of metaphysica specialis, then he will also have to read the Analytic in such a way that makes it incapable of dispatching with further consideration of its subject matter in order to then transition to the Dialectic.  The phenomenologically reduced Analytic will be the
beginning of an inexhaustible perplexity.

The Logic of Catastrophe: A Study in Arachnology, Part I

          Kant… This catastrophic spider…

        - Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist (hat-tip Edward Feser)

In a discussion spawned by the last post's attempt to defend Heidegger against a common historicistic misreading, I was given occasion to sketch a rough, formal definition of that logical specimen which may serve, within certain limits, as a criterion according to which the difference between historicism and Heidegger's seynsgeschichte may be judged irreducible. The Liar's Paradox, as the specimen is sometimes called, was there specified as follows: 

The "Liar's Paradox" names any proposition the form of which contradicts that same proposition's content due to the manner in which the latter referentially contains the former." The Liar's Paradox as I have just formulated it can assume either a universal or a particular form, in keeping with the twofold possibility of the form of all predication (or if you prefer, propositional formation).
An example of its universal form would be: "All propositions are false". An example of its particular form would be "This proposition is false."".

The Liar's Paradox has a history whose origins may be traced at least as far back as the ancient Greek Cretan Epimenides, whose famous warning that "All Cretan's are liars" raised suspicion in regard not only to its credibility but, remarkably, also to its incredibility. But for the purposes of the present post, it is not its alleged ancient Greek origin but its alleged exemplification in modern transcendental idealism that is in need of some consideration: the author of Just Thomism has recently drawn attention to the way in which the "basic thesis" of Kant's first Kritik offers us a shining example of just such a logical fallacy:

The basic thesis of the Critique is that the mind cannot move beyond the bounds of possible experience. But the more often he argues and repeats the point, the more ironic it becomes, for sooner or later it becomes clear that Kant is giving page after page of non-empirical arguments to show that only empirical arguments are possible. To use Kant’s own language in his preface, when does he ever put the nature of the mind on the witness stand and force it to only answer the questions that he is putting to it? 

Is Kant, logically speaking, a bold-faced Liar? The question, however seemingly simplistic, is obviously an important one: perjury is perhaps least acceptable before the tribunal of Rational criticism. And while the objection is not an uncommon  one among intelligent readers of Kant, it is all the more pressing since Kant himself does not leave the peculiar character of his "thesis" unaddressed: 

That the understanding, therefore, cannot make of its a priori principles, or even of its conceptions, other than an empirical use, is a proposition which leads to the most important results. A transcendental use is made of a conception in a fundamental proposition or principle, when it is applied to things in general and in themselves, an empirical use, when it is applied merely to appearances , that is, to objects of a possible experience. (KrV A 239, B 298) 

If we are to examine Kant's words in the light of the aforementioned objection, then the first order of business is to ensure that no equivocation is afoot --or, in other words, that the terms to which the objection has been raised can be translated without significant remainder into those of the Kritik's actual proposition. Thinking along these lines we may be inclined to take observation of a state of affairs at once superficial and significant: the word Kant employs above which has been rendered as "understanding" is verstand. An immediate difference in terminology becomes apparent with the force of something obvious: Kant's work is not entitled "Kritik der Reinen Verstand", but "Kritik der Reinen Vernunft". It would be hard to overstate the importance of differentiating between the two faculties and of never losing sight of their difference, not only in the first Kritik, nor only in the entire critical project of Kant, but in German Idealism as a whole --even when, as in Hegel, the goal is to arrive at the Identity within this difference.

But for our present purposes, such a superficial  observation, while necessary, is insufficient. For what is at stake in the task at hand is not only that the powers of the mind cannot be reduced to verstand, but that the nature of verstand, when positively expounded and clearly specified, be unconfused with the source of Kant's proposition regarding the limitations of the employment of that same verstand. What does Kant mean by speaking of the "use of the understanding", in either its transcendental or its empirical variety? What is the nature of such "use" or "application"?  In his most general accounts, Kant speaks of verstand as "a spontaneity of knowledge" in distinction from the receptivity of sensibility (KrV A 126). At such a level of description we might very well be inclined to think of the understanding as identifiable with "mind" or with "the mental faculty" broadly conceived. But Kant also supplies his reader with far more specific accounts of the understanding: Kant's revolutionary claim is that it is possible "to reduce all acts of the understanding to judgements" and thus to regard the understanding specifically as "faculty of judgments" (KrV A 68, B 93). The precise sense then, of "the use of the understanding" here in question regards those functions whose combinatory power enables the setzen, the positing, that occurs in and is proper to all scientific, that is, synthetic judgment. Analytic judgments such as those that are to be found in logic, may well constitute a propaedeutic to science, but they can never constitute a body of scientific knowledge proper; they are not to be regarded as a use or application of the understanding, either in its transcendental or empirical variety. The use of the understanding, then, precisely in so far as it is so regarded, results in the acquisition of objective knowledge, i.e. not simply tautologous, but ampliative knowledge, which extends the wealth of what is already known,  and whose systematic possession constitutes, for Kant, the aims of all science. The use of the understanding is most properly referred to the acquisition of scientific knowledge, and that scientific knowledge, because it  must be ampliative (and therefore objective), must depend upon the possibility of categorial judgement, i.e. the capacity to say something about something. 

But it is here that the question is only begged all the more: when we revisit Kant's quotation above, isn’t Kant therein saying something ("cannot make any use other than empirical") about something ("the understanding" as it relates to its "a priori principles" and "conceptions")? But if we bear firmly in mind the specific meaning of the understanding that Kant has clarified, then an answer becomes detectable.  For what is meant by "saying something about something", i.e. by categorial judgment, is that act by which one can establish relations with an object --and not just any manner of relations, but precisely those in terms of which the object itself can be known and knowledge can thereby be amplified.  In other words the combination achieved in such judgment must be achieved in just such a way that that combination be justified and necessitated by nothing but the object itself; the grounds of our judgment must be looked for nowhere else than in the object itself. Only thus is knowledge truly objective. I can, on the other hand, say something about an object without my statement being objective knowledge (but only an opining about perception), as in Kant's famous example: "the rock in the sun over there is warm". This judgment does indeed refer to an object as to its matter. But --and this is the crucial point --it does not find the ground of its combination therein. Rather we should say in such a case that this combination is only to be found in the representing subject, in which the representations of  "rock" and "warmth" have happened to coincide. Such a judgement is a judgement of perception.  But if a judgment is to produce objective knowledge, if it is to truly say something about something, if it is to be a categorial judgment, then it must be a judgement of experience, the sole possibility of which depends upon the application of the categories and not upon subjective coincidence. Thus, when I say: "the sun causes the rock over there to increase in temperature", I am now relying on much more than a coincidence of representations to intend the object of my judgement; I am relying not on the mere subjective simultaneity revealed within time as inner intuition but upon the objective succession of time as universal intuition, i.e. as the element in which alone the matter of my representations (and not my representations qua form) can be given. Such a distinction is the fundamental basis of the second of Kant's Analogies of Experience, and, more generally of all dynamical determinations, and it must therefore be regarded as elementary to the entire argument, the "basic thesis", of the Kritik itself. 

To recapitulate: the use of the understanding, when specified as judgment, can be roughly spoken of as the act whereby one predicates or "says something about something", but such saying is itself a πολλαχῶς λεγόμενον. When we sort out the equivocation at play here, we discover that the primary sense of such "saying something about something" is the judgement qua judgment of experience, whose combination is objective, and not the judgment of perception whose combination is subjective. The case of Kant's proposition regarding the use of the understanding that we are discussing above can be classified in neither of the two ways just mentioned; the necessity of its connexion depends neither upon the use of the a priori principles of the understanding, nor upon the coincidence of representation, which is why the statement is properly logical in the transcendental sense; its matter, while belonging to a determinate domain (unlike General Logic, which bears no reference to material content whatsoever), is itself yet formal and only that. It is for this reason that Kant begins his second book of the Transcendental Analytic, namely, The Analytic of Principles, by noting the following regarding the material content of all knowledge proper to Transcendental Logic: 

As Transcendental Logic is limited to a certain determinate content, namely to the content of those modes of knowledge which are pure and a priori, it cannot follow general logic in its division...Understanding and judgment find, therefore, in transcendental logic their canon of objectively valid and correct employment.  (KrV A 131, B 170)  

Kant's point here bears repeating: a canon of the objective and correct employment of the understanding, and not that objective knowledge gained by such employment, is to provide the proper subject matter of the transcendental logic. For the Liar's Paradox to be operative in Kant's transcendento-logical statement that "the understanding, therefore, cannot make of its a priori principles, or even of its conceptions other than an empirical use", that statement must be a product of the use of the a priori principles or conceptions of the understanding, i.e. it must be establishing a categorial saying something about something. But this is not what it is doing, since categorial application, because it by definition is grounded in the object itself, always depends on the givenness of time in terms of which the appearance of that object is informed. If all objects of knowledge are in the first place given in and under the conditions of intuition as Kant has transcendentally exposited them, and if one accepts that the very application of the categories depends on those conditions and owes all of its (formal) meaning to them,  then his thesis regarding the empirical limits of the use of the understanding is logically unassailable. But however his exposition and analysis of the conditions of knowing be understood, it cannot be understood as vulnerable to the Liar's Paradox.

What Has Already Been Lost In Space? (Part 1)

Commenting on our last consideration of the problem of the definition of space (after taking the time to apply some warranted scrutiny), Amos of KTL found that same consideration to be missing something essential: the proper requisites of the very definition itself seem to have been lost on that previous consideration:

How is the coinciding permeation of space by time a definition, rather than a fact about space? Could not one ask, if space were its own being permeated by time as something other, what would it be prior to this permeation such that it could be permeated?

It is only from within the confines of the problematic of space as it was first introduced (over at A City in Speech) that a proper response can now be ventured to these important observations offered by Amos, if only because one must never fail to exercise a certain respect for the place where he already is, and this a fortiori in the case of a consideration of the a priori nature of space. What we have tried to show in our previous consideration was that the subterranean understanding which governed the initial introduction of this problematic is one that can and must be brought to light and drawn out in meticulous fashion along lines that are unmistakably Kantian. If we keep this hermeneutic situation firmly in view, then a certain light falls upon the otherwise tangled thicket of possible responses to Amos' question regarding the temporal permeation of space.

What does it mean to think space as a pure form of finite intuition? More specifically, when we ask the question "What is space?", how is our search for this 'what' impacted by the peculiarity that space is not intuited like something spatial, but is rather intuited a priori along with and in advance of anything (in space)? The question of what something is either has an object or it does not. If it does, then this is a possible object of experience about which an empirical question may be raised; if it does not, then this is a condition for the possibility of such experience about which a transcendental question may be raised. In the case of the former, namely, the empirical question, what is aimed at is constituted at the most fundamental level by two elements: 1.) the receptivity of intuition and 2.) the spontaneity of the understanding; any possible object of experience, any "what" about which we make inquiry, depends upon 'what' is intuited (the sense manifold) and 'what' is understood (i.e. the categorical organization of the sense manifold). Kant sometimes calls this dual dependency which combines intuition and understanding the "unity of representation". Strictly speaking, only if space, considered in exclusion from anything else, required the unity of representation could it possibly be an object of experience to which an empirical question may be plied. Only if this is the case can we extend our knowledge about space and discover, as Amos would have it, "a fact about space". And, indeed, Kant does more than concede that such discoveries are, in point of fact, possible; his entire first Kritik relies upon and, in another way, founds such discoveries. They are none other than what Kant calls formal intuitions, and in the case of space, they are to be found in that familiar body of apodictic knowledge known as geometry. But a formal intuition of space can in no wise be confused with the form of intuition of space:

Space, represented as object (as we are required to do in geometry), contains more than the mere form of intuition; it also contains combination of the manifold, given according to the form of sensibility, in an intuitive representation, so that the form of intuition gives only the manifold, the formal intuition gives unity of representation.(CPR B161)

Space, insofar as it is formally intuited, is given as a unity of representation in reference to which facts can be established. Thus we may ask and give definitive answer to the question "what is a line?" But the question "what is space?" asks for what any such formal intuition, in its unity of representation, depends upon, namely the transcendental form of intuition of space. To this latter transcendental question and its answer the synthetic a priori judgment capable of establishing facts about space is necessarily indebted. Therefore the question "what is space?" can neither offer a definition produced by the understanding nor ipso facto can it look for that unity given in and by the "unity of representation". The definition of space as a pure intuition must be given in its unity by pure intuition. The oneness or unity of pure space can only be discovered only when its borders or confines are seen, and yet because this unity is not the unity of representation, these borders cannot be de-fined by the understanding, but rather must be intuited. It is as if we must in some way see rather than apprehend the definition of space. But how is such seeing to take place if what is to be seen is neither something we can experience nor even conceivable? It must take place by way of an intuition that is non-empirical, i.e. pure. And for this reason we cannot expect it to be positively demonstrated (and therefore understood in its necessity); it must instead be given, i.e. intuited.

Now, if there were nothing to be purely intuited other than space, then the form of the intuition of space would have to be able to give itself, in its unity, and therefore constitute itself as self-defining. But because something else is given as a form in pure intuition, namely time, this is not necessary. The question remains: is it possible? The only answer to this question must be found by way of recourse to pure intuition. Kant himself indicates the answer by the following observation:

Whatever the origin of our representations,...whether they arise a priori, or being appearances [i.e. possible objects of experience] have an empirical origin, they must all, as modifications of the mind, belong to inner sense. All our knowledge [i.e. any intuition, concept, or unity of representation] is thus finally subject to time, the formal condition of inner sense. In it they must all be ordered, connected and brought into relation.(CPR, A 98)

Kant's observation can be supplied with the testimony of a quick reference to our awareness of anything in space: this awareness itself is not spatial, it is not something that we might bump into like a tree in the forest. It is not defined by space. On the other hand, what about space? If it can be said to be anything, and it is already lost to any attempt to conceive of it, than it must be received as an intuition, i.e. as a form given in the intuition of a sense manifold. But, as Kant just observed, not just the understanding, but intuition too, and any sort of representation, takes place in time. So much is this the case that when Amos proposes the possibility of the alternative, namely,"Could not one ask, if space were its own being permeated by time as something other, what would it be prior to this permeation such that it could be permeated?" he has already presupposed time insofar as he speaks of "space prior to this permeation" ---in other words, the priority is nothing if it is not a temporal one.

When this problematic of the temporal definition of space as Kant has framed it is reflected upon, a paradoxical formulation which it seems we must be content with asserts itself regarding the definition of space: the essence of space is, in the immediate pure intuition of space, lost in that intuition. Space, because it is definable by the pure intuition of time and this alone, must first be lost, since the essence of space is not only, according to the order of intuition, found later, but above all because it is found precisely as what is found later. The de-finition of space is found as what has been lost in space. And it is in this sense that I would like, at least initially, to read the last and most astute comment Amos has left in connection with our recent post on Ereignis:

Also, is space as it transpires in the shifting encounter an example of what "always comes too late?"

Lost in Space

If borders or limits are required for definition, and if space by definition cannot be anything spatial --and must therefore by definition be refused any limit or border --then we seem prima facie to confront in the problem of space an irresolvable ἀπορία. The apparent force of this problematic has once again asserted itself in a debate that has since fallen into ellipsis over at A City in Speech:

We will close at the present by highlighting that space constantly retreats to the background whenever it is involved in a question. Turn your mind now to the concept of space, and try to fix your thoughts upon it. What comes into your mind? If there are any images of objects within space itself, clear them at once, since space itself cannot be that which it contains. Clear away all materiality from the conception, and fix your gaze upon space itself. Stripped of matter, what remains? What is space?

Thus does the problematic initially impinge itself upon our initial effort to in any way clarify it. But what initially, that is immediately, seems to of itself deny any resolution, often needs only enough pause to embark on a second reflection, i.e., it needs only the mediation of time; although space will refuse all shape and form, it nevertheless must permit of definition insofar as there properly belongs to it the possibility of being encountered as formless. After all, it must be admitted that space is not in the first place experienced as indefinable. The question is therefore begged:

What condition is necessary to make such an encounter of space, namely, as indefinable, possible?

The answer can be brought into relief negatively: there must be something non-spatial about our very encounter of space, something which allows us to see it at first only as a backdrop that is always already there in our encounter of any object of experience, only to allow us to see it later on as an indefinable fore-ground that vexes our attempts to think it. And indeed, in the course of this shift, space itself does not change, yet our encounter with it changes emphatically. The implication being brought into relief has now become obvious:what is capable of constituting the condition for the possibility of any such shifting encounter of space is not space itself but something outside of space itself, something which, being other than space, could not simply reside alongside of space (in just another space, as it were), but would have, at the same time as it remained outside of and beyond space, to permeate it through and through. Of course, in keeping with this a priori permeation, the positive identity of this non-spatial condition has, even in this our present musing upon the definition of space, necessarily already been mentioned. Space is not only bordered by what already permeates it; it is defined by this very coinciding permeation: space is defined by being defined already, i.e. it is defined by time.

Such an answer is in many ways a stock response. It is clearly drawn along Kantian lines, and is --like many things Kantian --easily incorporated into the System of Hegel. As Kant would have it, the pure inner intuition of time is not simply some complement to the pure outer intuition of space: time is not only inner intuition but also universal intuition. What is spatial is already temporal. What is important to see is that this universal status does not erase or correct time's designation as internal. Rather, time is universal intuition in a manner that outer intuition cannot be, and it must therefore be other than what is outer; it must be internal. Time must be internal intuition at the same time as it is universal intuition, and this alone vouchsafes its universal status. But what time is this, which would allow the intuition of time to be necessarily differentiated into what is internal and what is universal, while at and as the same time, insisting upon the necessity of their identity?