Kant und das Problem des metaphysischen Idealismus (review)

Journal of the History of Philosophy 37 (1):175-177 (1999)
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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kant und das Problem des metaphysischen Idealismusby Dietmar H. HeidemannKonstantin PollokDietmar H. Heidemann. Kant und das Problem des metaphysischen Idealismus. Kantstudien Ergänzungshefte 131, Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1998. Pp. 268. Cloth, DM 158.00.Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy was controversial from the very beginning. His refutations of idealism played an important part in these debates. Dietmar H. Heidemann’s book on the problem of idealism is an attempt to evaluate Kant’s arguments against metaphysical idealism. Yet Heidemann never takes a position on whether Kant eventually succeeded or failed in refuting idealism. On the one hand, he thinks it is possible “to consider the proof of the existence of the external world as ultimately unsatisfactory” (238). On the other hand he ambiguously talks of Kant’s “solution of the problem of metaphysical idealism, which is, though not satisfactory in all parts, still quite convincing and even plausible” (238). This indecisiveness constitutes a fundamental shortcoming in an otherwise interesting discussion of a central Kantian problem. The book is distinguished by its close reading of the relevant Kantian texts between 1781 and 1800 and its scrupulous rendering of the respective steps of Kant’s argumentation.Heidemann’s well written investigation consists of an introduction, dealing with the pre-Kantian discussion of that problem, followed by three chapters that present Kant’s criticism of “metaphysical idealism” (3). The author lumps together the theories of Descartes’s ‘skeptical’ or ‘problematic’ idealism and Berkeley’s ‘dogmatic’ idealism with this non-Kantian term. The three chapters correspond to different chronological stages in Kant’s attempts at refuting idealism. First, Heidemann analyzes the structure of the Fourth Paralogism of the Critique of Pure Reason, which was directed against Descartes. This argument was intended to prove that our knowledge of the external world is [End Page 175]immediate. Kant appeals to a radical difference between transcendental and empirical idealism on the one hand and transcendental and empirical realism on the other, and he claims that doubts about the external world that are based on discursive argumentscan be dismissed as illegitimate in principle. Heidemann criticizes Kant’s argumentation. In particular, he thinks that the immediacy of our perceptions alone cannot prove the necessity of outer objects, which could instead be imaginations of immediate objects.In the second chapter, which is unquestionably the center of Heidemann’s study, he analyzes the Refutation of Idealismin the second edition of the Critique. Beginning from its external occasion—the ‘Göttingen review’ by Garve, edited by Feder— Heidemann tries to show that Kant’s refutation of idealism is compelling. He sees Kant’s arguments as implicitly or explicitly informed by the postulate of actuality and the consciousness of one’s existence in time. It is this consciousness that makes necessary the presupposition of something permanent in intuition and thus of substance as matter. In supporting Kant’s sometimes elliptical argumentation with other passages from the Critique, Heidemann tries to improve on Kant’s text. Yet, he is doubtful as to whether the argument succeeds. He thinks that the refutation of idealism would remain insufficient, unless the “theory of self-affection ( Selbstaffektion)” (127), added in 1787, is taken into consideration. In other words, the refutation depends on Kant’s revision of the relationship between the inner and the outer sense in the B-Deduction.The third chapter examines Kant’s occupation with the refutation of idealism after 1787. Heidemann finds that Kant continues to be preoccupied with this subject because of Eberhard’s articles in his Philosophisches Magazin, G. E. Schulze’s Aenesidemus, and D. Tiedemann’s Theaetet. Using Kant’s Reflexionsbetween 1788 and 1800, Heidemann argues that Kant’s new approach is characterised mainly by a decreasing importance of the permanent in the determination of time and a new emphasis of the coexistence argument. But this is questionable for Kant relies on the synthetic connection between the categories of coexistence and substance in the Critique. Heidemann pays a great deal of attention to Kant’s Reflexion “On inner sense” because of its explicit consideration of the relationship between the inner and the outer sense. Heidemann views this passage as “Kant’s...

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Konstantin Pollok
University of South Carolina

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