reedwinegar.files.wordpress.com€¦ · Web viewI use the phrase ‘theoretical philosophy’ as a contrast to Kant’s moral philosophy and theory of reflecting judgment. I take

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Kant on Intuitive Understanding and Things in Themselves

Reed WinegarFordham University

[email protected]

[The published version of this paper is available at the European Journal of Philosophy DOI: 10.1111/ejop.12320]

1. Introduction

Kant famously claims that humans lack theoretical cognition of things in

themselves.1 But Kant never claims that cognition of things in themselves is impossible.

Instead, Kant claims that an intuitive understanding – such as God would possess – could

cognize things in themselves.2 The claim that an intuitive understanding would cognize

things in themselves has prompted many interpreters of Kant’s theoretical philosophy to

propose that the way things are in in themselves corresponds to how an intuitive

understanding would cognize things.3 For instance, Karl Ameriks writes:

At the core of this theory is the notion that there can be a quasi-divine

perspective on all things (which has no forms of sensibility and so no

species limitations like ours), and that the nature of things in themselves

just is what would be perceived from such a perspective. (Ameriks 2000:

266)

If true, this common proposal would significantly influence our understanding of Kant’s

concept of a thing in itself. Specifically, Kant’s claims that an intuitive understanding

would not employ the categories, would not recognize the distinction between possibility

and actuality, and would not recognize a distinction between mechanism and teleology

would need to inform interpretations of Kant’s thing in itself.

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In this paper, I will examine the common proposal that the way things are in

themselves corresponds to how an intuitive understanding would cognize things.

Normally, commentators endorse this common proposal in the context of Kant’s

theoretical philosophy. However, I will argue that in relation to Kant’s theoretical

philosophy the common proposal is false.4 More specifically, Kant’s theoretical

philosophy is committed to the claim that any things cognized by an intuitive

understanding would be things in themselves, but it does not assert the common

proposal’s further claim that the way all things are in themselves corresponds to how an

intuitive understanding would cognize things. Rather, Kant’s theoretical philosophy

asserts only that the way things are in themselves might or might not correspond to how

an intuitive understanding would cognize things.5 Because things in themselves might not

be the way that an intuitive understanding would cognize things, interpretations of Kant’s

theoretical philosophy should not immediately couple Kant’s concept of a thing in itself

with the perspective of an intuitive understanding.

However, theoretical philosophy does not exhaust Kant’s position. Rather, Kant

maintains that both morality and reflecting judgment can provide grounds for regarding

the world as the product of a divine mind. And for reasons explained below this might

seem to entail that we should regard things in themselves as corresponding to the way

that this intuitive understanding would cognize things.6 For the sake of discussion, I will

grant Kant’s view that moral philosophy and reflecting judgment justify regarding a

divine mind as the ground of nature, and I will argue for two claims. First, despite what

Kant himself might have thought, the moral argument still fails to show that we should

regard all things in themselves as corresponding to the way that an intuitive

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understanding would cognize things. Second, Kant’s theory of the reflecting power of

judgment does support the view that (from the perspective of reflecting judgment)

humans should regard things in themselves as corresponding to an intuitive

understanding’s cognition. Thus, although the common proposal is false for Kant’s

theoretical philosophy and not adequately supported by Kant’s moral philosophy, a

version of it holds in relation to the reflecting power of judgment. Therefore, any

interpretation of Kant’s transcendental idealism must attend to the differences between

Kant’s theoretical philosophy, moral philosophy, and theory of reflecting judgment in

assessing the relationship between intuitive understanding and things in themselves.

2. Kant’s concept of intuitive understanding

Allow me to begin by explaining Kant’s concept of intuitive understanding.

According to Kant, human understanding is discursive – that is, a faculty of concepts:

‘the specific nature of our understanding consists in thinking everything discursively, i.e.,

through concepts …’ (Pro, 4: 333). However, human cognition requires both concepts

and intuitions. And because the human being’s discursive understanding is merely a

faculty of general concepts, the human mind must rely on a separate faculty of sensibility

to provide it with singular intuitions.7

Kant contrasts the human being’s discursive understanding with the concept of an

intuitive understanding. Although Kant denies that we can know whether an intuitive

understanding exists, he maintains that we can still entertain the concept of such an

understanding. Kant’s most famous explanation of the concept of an intuitive

understanding is found in §§76-77 of the 3rd Critique.8 I will first explain this concept of

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intuitive understanding and then turn to several other notions of intuitive understanding

that Kant mentions. In §77 Kant writes:

But since intuition also belongs to cognition, and a faculty of a complete

spontaneity of intuition would be a cognitive faculty distinct and

completely independent from sensibility, and thus an understanding in the

most general sense of the term, one can thus also conceive of an intuitive

understanding (negatively, namely merely as not discursive), which does

not go from the universal to the particular and thus to the individual

(through concepts) … (KU, 5: 406)

Here Kant names two essential features of an intuitive understanding. First, an intuitive

understanding employs intuitions, rather than general concepts. This feature is necessary

to qualify as an intuitive understanding, rather than as a discursive understanding. Unlike

a discursive understanding’s general concepts, an intuitive understanding’s intuitions do

not omit any specific features of individuals. Instead, an intuitive understanding

represents a whole as such – that is, represents a whole that includes all of the specific

features of individuals:

Now, however, we can also conceive of an understanding which, since it

is not discursive like ours but is intuitive, goes from the synthetically

universal (of the intuition of a whole as such) to the particular, i.e., from

the whole to the parts … (KU, 5: 407)

Second, an intuitive understanding is spontaneous. This feature is necessary to qualify as

an intuitive understanding. Readers are typically familiar with the 1st Critique’s

characterizations of understanding as a faculty of thinking, a faculty for judgment, and as

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a faculty of concepts or rules.9 But these refer specifically to discursive understanding

and do not constitute Kant’s generic definition of understanding. According to Kant’s

generic definition, an understanding is a cognitive ‘faculty of spontaneity’ (Log 9: 36).10

In the 3rd Critique, Kant notes that an intuitive understanding would meet this generic

definition, claiming that an intuitive understanding as ‘a faculty of a complete

spontaneity of intuition’ would be an understanding ‘in the most general sense of the

term’ (KU, 5: 406; italics altered). Thus, for Kant, there are two types of understanding

that both meet the generic definition of understanding as a spontaneous faculty of

cognition – namely, discursive understanding and intuitive understanding.11

Kant contrasts spontaneity with receptivity. For Kant, sensibility is a receptive

faculty. Thus, in order to be completely spontaneous, an intuitive understanding must, as

Kant says, be ‘completely independent from sensibility’ (KU, 5: 406).12 Therefore, no

part of an intuitive understanding’s representation is derived from sensibility. But if a

representation is not sensible, then it must be intellectual. Consequently, an intuitive

understanding’s intuitions must be entirely intellectual, rather than sensible. Therefore, an

intuitive understanding is a cognitive faculty that possesses intellectual intuitions.13

The claim that an intuitive understanding’s intuitions are intellectual raises a

question about how its intuitions can have a cognitive relation to objects. In his famous

1772 letter to Herz, Kant claims that there are two ways that a representation can have a

cognitive relation to an object.14 First, the object can be the ground of the representation.

In this case, the object elicits the representation by sensibly affecting the mind. Second,

the representation can be the ground of the object. In this case, the mind is the creator of

the object. Because an intuitive understanding is completely independent from sensibility,

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it must be the creator of its objects in order to have a cognitive relation to them.15 This is

an important point, given that several recent commentators have denied that the 3rd

Critique’s concept of an intuitive understanding is, or at least is required to be, that of a

divine creator.16 According to these commentators, Kant’s concept of an intuitive

understanding is primarily the concept of an understanding that cognizes a whole as such,

and there is no necessary connection between cognizing a whole and being a divine

creator. However, such interpretations contradict Kant’s classification of the mind that

cognizes a whole as such as an understanding. As explained above, an intuitive

understanding must be completely spontaneous to qualify as a species of understanding.

And in order to be completely spontaneous, an intuitive understanding must, as I also

explained above, be the creator of its objects. Indeed, Kant makes this very point in the

3rd Critique, when he refers to the intuitive understanding under discussion as an

‘intuitive (archetypical) [intuitiven (urbildlichen)]’ understanding and as an ‘intellectus

archetypus’ (KU, 5: 407f.). For Kant, the concept of an archetypical understanding is

specifically that of an understanding whose intuitions are the grounds of its objects. For

example, in the aforementioned letter to Herz, Kant refers to the concept of an ‘intellectus

archetypus (an intellect whose intuition is itself the ground of things)’ (Br, 10: 130). And

in Reflexion 6041 from 1783-84, Kant writes regarding God’s understanding, ‘His

cognitions are intuitions, not concepts, but not sensible intuitions, but rather ideas, which

do not presuppose the things, but rather make them possible. intellectus archetypus’ (Refl

6041, 18: 431).17 By claiming in these passages that an intellectus archetypus is the

ground of things and makes them possible, Kant indicates that an intellectus archetypus is

the creator of its objects. Thus, in both the letter to Herz and in Reflexion 6041, Kant

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identifies the concept of an intellectus archetypus with the creator of things. Therefore,

the 3rd Critique’s identification of an intuitive understanding with an intellectus

archetypus entails that the 3rd Critique’s intuitive understanding is that of a divine

creator.18

Up to this point, I have explained the 3rd Critique’s concept of intuitive

understanding. There are, however, three other concepts of intuitive understanding to

which Kant’s writings might seem to refer. But, as I will now argue, the only concepts of

intuitive understanding that Kant countenances retain the 3rd Critique’s emphasis on

divine creation. First, as I have argued above, the 3rd Critique refers to a non-conceptual

intuitive understanding. But one might think that Kant refers elsewhere to a conceptual

species of intuitive understanding. For example, in the pre-Critical Inaugural

Dissertation, Kant maintains that the human intellect’s pure concepts provide cognition

of things in themselves. This seems to suggest that, according to the Inaugural

Dissertation, things in themselves are given to the human intellect through pure concepts

alone. Thus, the Inaugural Dissertation’s claim that the human intellect’s pure concepts

provide cognition of things in themselves might seem to entail that the human intellect’s

pure concepts provide humans with an intellectual intuition of things in themselves. Of

course, Kant’s Critical philosophy rejects the Inaugural Dissertation’s claim that the

human intellect’s pure concepts provide cognition of things in themselves. Nevertheless,

one might think that Kant regards an intellect whose pure concepts provide cognition of

things in themselves to be a kind of intuitive understanding.

However, this interpretation is mistaken. Even in the Inaugural Dissertation, Kant

explicitly denies that human beings have intellectual intuitions. He writes:

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There is (for man) no intuition of what belongs to the understanding …

and thinking is only possible for us by means of universal concepts in the

abstract, not by means of a singular concept in the concrete … (MSI, 2:

396; emphasis in original)

Thus, Kant denies that the kind of understanding attributed to human beings in the

Inaugural Dissertation should be described as an intuitive understanding, for this

understanding does not possess singular representations and thus does not possess

intuitions. Consequently, it is unlikely that Kant has in mind the Inaugural Dissertation’s

concept of human understanding when he claims in later writings that an intuitive

understanding would cognize things in themselves.

Second, Kant sometimes refers to the view that human beings might participate in

God’s own mind and, thus, share in God’s own intuitive understanding. Kant associates

this view with figures like Plato, Malebranche, and Maimon.19 Following a popular

tradition, Kant interprets Plato to suggest that in a prior life the soul participated in the

divine Idea’s in God’s mind and, thus, glimpsed the intellectual grounds of created

things. Similarly, according to Malebranche’s doctrine of vision in God, the human

being’s Idea of extension is literally identical to the idea of extension in God’s mind, and

the idea of extension in God’s mind is the intellectual archetype of the material extension

that God creates. By sharing in God’s idea of extension, the human mind cognizes the

intellectual ground of material things. Finally, Maimon maintains that human

understanding is a limited part of a divine understanding. Thus, the human mind shares

God’s intellectual intuitions but, due to its limited nature, presents these intuitions to

itself in an obscure and confused and, thus, sensible manner.20 According to these three

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theories, humans have an intuitive understanding because they participate in God’s own

intuitive understanding.

Kant is not sympathetic to these theories of human cognition. However, in the

Nachlaß, Kant occasionally entertains the possibility that, after death, people might

somehow (perhaps miraculously) be able to participate in God’s own intuitive

understanding.21 Thus, when Kant claims that an intuitive understanding would cognize

things in themselves, he might have views like Plato’s, Malebranche’s, or even Maimon’s

in mind. For our purposes, the main point to emphasize is that the suggestion that human

beings might participate in God’s own intuitive understanding still retains an essential

link between intuitive understanding and divine creation. For, in this scenario, the human

mind would have an intuitive understanding only by participating in the understanding of

a divine creator whose intuitions would themselves be the intellectual grounds of objects.

Third, Kant sometimes ascribes to Leibniz the view that humans possess intuitive

understanding. For example, in Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, Kant

writes:

For he [i.e., Leibniz], adhering to the Platonic school, assumed innate, but

pure intellectual intuitions called ideas, which are encountered in the

human mind, though now only obscurely; and to whose analysis and

illumination by means of attention alone we owe the cognition of objects,

as they are in themselves (Anth 7: 141n)

Here Kant takes Leibniz’s theory of innate ideas to modify the Platonic suggestion that

humans directly participate in the divine mind by suggesting that God has created the

human being with innate intellectual intuitions that correspond to his own intellectual

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intuitions. In the case of the human, these intuitions are (according to Leibniz) confused

and obscure and, thus, present themselves to the human being as sensible. Yet, at least in

principle, they could be rendered clear and distinct and thus (given Leibniz’s own

conception of understanding) could be rendered intellectual. Therefore, one might regard

these innate ideas as intellectual intuitions that, in the human case, have become obscure

and confused.22 Although Kant levels various objections against Leibniz’s theory of

human cognition, the important point for our purposes is that Leibniz must explain how

these innate intuitions correspond to objects. I take Kant’s view to be that Leibniz, whom

Kant describes as a member of the Platonic tradition, must answer this question by

claiming that these innate intuitions correspond to objects because they are based on

God’s own intuitions, which are in turn the grounds of objects. Therefore, for Kant, any

account of intuitive understanding’s cognition of things retains an essential link to a

divine creator’s intuitive understanding that is itself the ground of things. Thus, I will

speak in the following sections in terms of a divine creator’s intuitive understanding.

3. Theoretical philosophy

Throughout the Critical period, Kant claims that an intuitive understanding would

cognize things in themselves. Many commentators take this to entail that the way things

are in themselves corresponds to how an intuitive understanding would cognize things.

However, we need to distinguish between two claims: (1) that things cognized by an

intuitive understanding would be thing in themselves and (2) the common proposal that

all things in themselves correspond to how an intuitive understanding would cognize

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things. These two claims are not equivalent. In contrast to other commentators, I will

argue that Kant’s theoretical philosophy is committed to (1) but not to (2).

To begin, there is clear evidence that any things cognized by an intuitive

understanding would be thing in themselves. For instance, in Kant’s Lectures on the

Philosophical Doctrine of Religion, we read, ‘God cognizes all things as they are in

themselves immediately and a priori through an intuition of the understanding; for he is

the being of all beings and every possibility has its ground in him’ (V-Th/Pölitz, 28:

1052; emphasis in original). In other words, because an intuitive understanding would be

the creator of things, things would be grounded on its representations. Consequently, the

things that it created would have to conform to its representations. For this reason, an

intuitive understanding would represent the things it creates as they, in fact, are. Thus, the

things cognized by an intuitive understanding would be things in themselves. Moreover,

although Kant claims that we cannot know whether an intuitive understanding exists, he

also maintains in respect to theoretical philosophy that, for all we know, an intuitive

understanding might exist. If an intuitive understanding exists, it is the creator of things

and, consequently, cognizes these things in themselves. Thus, for all we know, there

might be things in themselves that are the way that an intuitive understanding would

cognize things.

But what about the common proposal’s claim that the way things are in

themselves corresponds to how an intuitive understanding would cognize things? As I

will argue, Kant’s theoretical philosophy is not committed to this claim. I will first

discuss the textual evidence and, then, will consider more systematic reasons. In general,

commentators who endorse the common proposal point to the 1st Critique’s chapter ‘On

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the Ground of the Distinction of all Objects in general into phenomena and noumena’ as

textual evidence.23 I grant that there are passages in this chapter where Kant indicates that

an intuitive understanding would cognize things in themselves. But, once again, the claim

that an intuitive understanding would cognize things in themselves might just amount to

the claim (which I accept) that any things cognized by an intuitive understanding would

be things in themselves. Thus, such passages leave open the question whether every thing

in itself corresponds to how an intuitive understanding would cognize things. There are,

so far as I can see, two main passages in the chapter on phenomena and noumena that

might appear to present evidence for the common proposal’s claim that all things in

themselves correspond to how an intuitive understanding would cognize things.24 We

should note in advance that these two passages come from the notoriously confused A

edition of the 1st Critique’s chapter on phenomena and noumena, and Kant excised them

in the B edition. Thus, even if they did support the common proposal, they still would not

necessarily express Kant’s settled view. But, as I will now show, neither passage actually

supports the common proposal anyways.

The first passage states:

But in order for a noumenon to signify a true object, to be distinguished

from all phenomena, it is not enough that I liberate my thoughts from all

conditions of sensible intuition, but I must in addition have ground to

assume another kind of intuition than this sensible one, under which such

an object could be given; for otherwise, my thought is empty, even though

free of contradiction. (A252)

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According to this passage, we must assume that an intuitive understanding must be able

to cognize a noumenon in order for the concept of a noumenon ‘to signify a true object’

(A252). If one identifies the concept of a noumenon here with the concept of a thing in

itself, then this passage might seem to suggest that the concept of a thing in itself requires

us to assume that any thing in itself could be cognized by an intuitive understanding. And

if an intuitive understanding can cognize a thing in itself, then that thing in itself must

correspond to the way that an intuitive understanding would cognize things. However,

this interpretation relies on the questionable assumption that the term ‘noumenon’ in this

passage is equivalent to ‘thing in itself’. This assumption need not hold. The term

‘noumenon’ in the passage seems to refer to what Kant describes in the B edition as a

‘noumenon in a positive sense’ (B307). The concept of a noumenon in a positive sense is

the concept of an object cognized by an intuitive understanding. But this concept is not

necessarily identical to the concept of a thing in itself. For instance, in ‘The Antinomy of

Pure Reason’ Kant identifies ‘things in themselves [Sachen an sich selbst]’ simply as

‘things subsisting in themselves [an sich subsistierende Dinge]’ (A491/B519).25

Obviously, the concept of an object cognized by an intuitive understanding is not

synonymous with the concept of a thing subsisting in itself. Nor does the cited passage

from the chapter on phenomena and noumena provide any reason to think that these two

concepts are extensionally equivalent. Instead, Kant’s claim in the passage from the

chapter on phenomena and noumena can be taken to make the basic point that one would

need to assume an intuitive understanding’s cognitive access to an object in order for the

concept of a noumenon in the positive sense – i.e,, the concept of an object cognized by

an intuitive understanding – to signify a true object. Conceding that basic point does not

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immediately require one to concede that every thing in itself is such a noumenon.26

Therefore, the passage under discussion does not commit Kant to the claim that every

thing in itself is the way that an intuitive understanding would cognize things.

The second passage reads:

For if the senses merely present something to us as it appears, then this

something must also be in itself a thing, and an object of a non-sensible

intuition, i.e., of the understanding, i.e., a cognition must be possible in

which no sensibility is encountered, and which alone has absolutely

objective reality, through which, namely, objects are represented to us as

they are, in contrast to the empirical use of our understanding, in which

things are only cognized as they appear. (A249)

Here Kant might seem to claim that the concept of an appearance entails the concept of a

thing in itself that could, at least in principle, be cognized by an intuitive understanding.

But this text does not actually support the common proposal. Rather, the passage belongs

to a paragraph where Kant is explicitly describing how readers might incorrectly ‘have

thought that the concept of appearances, limited by the Transcendental Aesthetic, already

yields itself the objective reality of noumena …’ (A249). In the paragraph, Kant is noting

the possibility that readers might mistakenly take the Transcendental Aesthetic’s

distinction between appearances and things in themselves to entail that we can have

substantive knowledge of things in themselves through the understanding alone.

Therefore, Kant immediately follows the passage in question by writing:

Thus there would be, in addition to the empirical use of the categories

(which is limited to sensible conditions) a pure and yet objectively valid

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one, and we could not assert, what we have previously maintained, that

our pure cognitions of the understanding are in general nothing more than

principles of the exposition of appearances … (A250)

Thus, the passage in question belongs to Kant’s description of a potential but fallacious

line of reasoning, and Kant does not endorse the passage’s line of thought.27 This

suggestion is further supported by the passage’s philosophical problems. In particular, the

passage makes the claim that in order to represent a distinction between how things

appear to us and how they are in themselves we have to claim that an intuitive

understanding could cognize things as they are in themselves. But the passage does not

present an extended argument for this claim, and contrary to the passage’s suggestion all

that one would need to represent a distinction between how things appear to us and how

things are in themselves would be the suggestion that our minds distort or filter features

of an object in our representation of it. This philosophical problem with the passage’s line

of thought lends further credence to my claim that Kant is merely describing a fallacious

line of potential thought, rather than explaining his own position.

Thus, Kant does not explicitly claim that the way things are in themselves

corresponds to how an intuitive understanding would cognize things. In fact, other texts

providence evidence for the countervailing claim that things in themselves might not be

how an intuitive understanding would cognize things. In the 3rd Critique, Kant argues at

length that an intuitive understanding would recognize no distinction between mechanism

and teleology. If the way things are in themselves is how an intuitive understanding

would cognize things, then Kant should readily concede that there is no distinction

between mechanism and teleology for things in themselves. But Kant does not draw this

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conclusion. Instead, Kant says only that ‘at least the possibility that both [i.e., mechanism

and teleology] may be objectively unifiable in one principle (since they concern

appearances that presuppose a superensible ground) is secured’ (KU, 5: 413). Terms like

‘possibility [Möglichkeit]’ and ‘may [möchten]’ do not indicate that things in themselves

definitely lack a distinction between mechanism and teleology. Instead, these terms leave

room for a chance that things in themselves might not be the way that an intuitive

understanding would cognize them.

Of course, one still might argue that Kant’s theoretical philosophy is committed to

the common proposal for systematic, rather than merely textual, reasons. However, as I

will now argue, systematic reasons favor my interpretation over the common proposal.

The main systematic argument advanced by commentators in favor of the common

proposal is that the perspective of an intuitive understanding is the perspective of a mind

that is free from all human limitations and, thus, would be able to cognize things as they

are in themselves. As Ameriks writes in a previously quoted passage, ‘there can be a

quasi-divine perspective on all things (which has no forms of sensibility and so no

species limitations like ours)…’ (Ameriks 2000: 266). Recently, Markus Kohl has

developed this basic suggestion in further detail, and I will take Kohl’s discussion as

paradigmatic for this general approach. Kohl reasons as follows. Kant’s Idea of God is

the Idea of an unlimited being. However, sensibility is a limitation. Thus, God’s

cognition cannot be sensible. Instead, God’s cognition must be intellectual. Because

God’s cognition would be intellectual, God would not cognize sensible appearances.

Thus, God must cognize things in themselves. Indeed, given that God’s understanding is

unlimited, God would cognize all of the intelligible properties of all things in themselves.

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As Kohl summarizes the point, ‘how an intuitive intellect would represent things is the

decisive measure for what things are in themselves …’ (Kohl 2015: 91). Of course, Kohl

recognizes Kant’s claims that we cannot know whether God does or does not exist. But

Kohl argues that the logically possible Idea of God’s cognition will function as a decisive

measure for how things are in themselves, even if God does not exist or might not even

be really possible.28 Kohl makes this argument by employing an analogy between God’s

understanding and a piece of potentially impossible machinery. He writes:

Suppose a scientist believes: (I) Visible objects are constituted by certain

fundamental particles. (II) Due to the limits of our sense organs, we cannot

know what these particles are like. (III) We have an abstract idea of the

technical machinery (sensors etc.) that would be required for complete

cognition of these particles. (IV) For all we know, the production of that

machinery might be impossible. Here the scientists can legitimately (albeit

not very informatively) say that how we would sense the objects with the

help of the requisite, potentially impossible machinery is the decisive

measure for what the particles are like. (Kohl 2015: 94)

Kohl’s suggestion is that our concept of God’s cognition is akin to the scientist’s concept

of the potentially impossible machine. Just as the fundamental particles must be the way

that this machine would represent them to be, even if the machine does not actually exist,

things in themselves must be the way that God’s intuitive understanding would cognize

them to be, even if God’s intuitive understanding does not exist.

However, the line of thought behind such defenses of the common proposal is

fallacious. In particular, such arguments do not sufficiently attend to the role that divine

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creation plays in Kant’s account of intuitive understanding. As we saw above, Kant

claims that an intuitive understanding would cognize things in themselves only because it

would be the creator of things. More specifically, Kant’s claim that an intuitive

understanding would cognize things in themselves is based on Kant’s claim that things

must conform to an intuitive understanding’s representations because those

representations are the grounds of the things. But if an intuitive understanding does not

exist, then it would not be the case that an intuitive understanding’s representations

would be the grounds of things. Accordingly, there would no longer be any reason why

any things in themselves that exist would have to agree with the representations that an

intuitive understanding would have. Indeed, if an intuitive understanding does not exist,

then things in themselves will have some other ground (or perhaps no ground at all) and

consequently might correspond to this other ground. Therefore, if there were things in

themselves that were not created by an intuitive understanding, then those things in

themselves would not need to be the way that any things in themselves grounded on an

intuitive understanding’s intellectual intuitions would be. Indeed, if things in themselves

are grounded on something other than an intuitive understanding’s representations, then

they might have properties that no thing in itself grounded on an intuitive understanding

could possess. Consequently, if an intuitive understanding does not exist, there is no

longer any reason to claim that any things in themselves that do exist and that were not

created by an intuitive understanding must be the way that things cognized by an intuitive

understanding would be. For this reason, Kohl’s example of a potentially impossible

machine is not analogous to an intuitive understanding. In Kohl’s example, the fact that

the features of the fundamental particles correspond to the way that the machine would

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describe them does not depend on the claim that the machine creates those features. Thus,

in Kohl’s example, whether the machine exists is irrelevant. But in the case of intuitive

understanding, the fact that things correspond to an intuitive understanding’s

representations does depend on the fact that an intuitive understanding creates them.

Consequently, the two cases are not analogous.

As I have argued, Kant’s view of the relationship between intuitive understanding

and creation entails that there might be things in themselves that do not correspond to the

way that an intuitive understanding would cognize things. There are, however, two ways

that one might try to reply to my argument. First, one could propose (contrary to the

views of commentators like Ameriks and Kohl) that if an intuitive understanding does not

exist, then things in themselves do not exist either. Second, one could propose that my

argument illicitly presupposes a metaphysical interpretation of things in themselves.

Allow me to address these two potential replies in turn.

To start, we have seen that the position endorsed by commentators like Ameriks

and Kohl suffers because it fails to adequately consider the case where things in

themselves exist even though an intuitive understanding is not their creator. One could try

to avoid this particular problem by proposing that if an intuitive understanding does not

exist, then things in themselves do not exist either.29 For example, Merold Westphal has

argued that the concept of a thing in itself is the concept of an object cognized by a divine

intuitive understanding and claims that if no such understanding exists, then no things in

themselves exist either.30 This interpretation entails that every thing in itself would be the

way that God’s intuitive understanding cognizes it to be. For if God exists as the creator

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of things, then things in themselves will correspond to God’s cognition. But if God does

not exist, then (according to this interpretation) no things in themselves will exist either.

There are, however, four major problems with such an interpretation. First, it is

not clear why Kant would commit himself to this position. In fact, the defenders of such

an interpretation normally base it simply on textual evidence – the same textual evidence

from the 1st Critique’s chapter on phenomena and noumena that I already dismissed

above.31 Second, given that Kant explicitly claims that we cannot know whether God

exists, it follows (according to the position under consideration) that we also do not know

whether thing in themselves exist. Thus, we might expect that Kant, who repeatedly

emphasizes that we cannot know whether God exists, would in the very same passages

just as explicitly emphasize that we cannot know whether things in themselves exist.

However, Kant does not do this. Third, if Kant were committed to the claim that the

existence of things in themselves depends on God’s existence, then we might think that

Kant would follow up his moral argument for belief in the existence of God by nothing

that the argument also licenses the belief that things in themselves exist. Yet, Kant does

not do this either. Fourth and finally, Kant does not typically mention God when

introducing the concept of things in themselves. For example, in the B Preface, Kant

famously writes:

even if we cannot cognize these same objects as things in themselves, we

must at least be able to think them as things in themselves. For otherwise

there would follow the absurd proposition that there is an appearance

without anything that appears. (Bxxvi)

21

Here Kant maintains simply that the concept of an appearance leads to the concept of a

thing in itself, but he does not refer in any to God or an intuitive understanding.

However, as noted above, other people might reply to my overall argument by

pressing a different objection – namely, that my argument presupposes a metaphysical

interpretation of the thing in itself. More specifically, one might argue that the concept of

a thing in itself should be interpreted as a particular way of conceiving things, such that

one conceives of a thing in itself by considering it in abstraction from the conditions of

finite human cognition and, thus, from the perspective of an infinite intuitive

understanding. This suggestion is prominent in Henry Allison’s methodological

interpretation of transcendental idealism, which refers to the standpoint where one

abstracts from the human being’s epistemic conditions as a God’s-eye point of view and

equates this standpoint with that of a divine intuitive understanding.32 On this

interpretation, any talk of a thing in itself differing from how an intuitive understanding

would cognize things would be nonsense.

The debate between metaphysical and methodological interpretations of

transcendental idealism is, of course, extensive, and I will not enter into it here. However,

this potential reply to my overall argument is problematic on its own terms in such a way

that it cannot successfully defend the common proposal. It aims to accommodate Kant’s

claim that an intuitive understanding would cognize things in themselves by suggesting

that to consider an object in abstraction from the conditions of human cognition is

equivalent to conceiving of it from the standpoint of a divine intuitive understanding. But

what does it mean to abstract from the conditions of human cognition? Here one could

either (1) abstract merely from the forms of sensibility or (2) abstract both from the forms

22

of sensibility and from the categories.33 We have seen that Kant’s intuitive understanding

would be both non-conceptual and non-sensible. Thus, to claim that the concept of a

thing in itself is the concept of a thing considered from the standpoint of an intuitive

understanding, one must maintain that the concept of a thing in itself is the concept of a

thing considered in abstraction both from the categories and from the forms of sensible

intuition. Yet, Kant’s own discussions of things in themselves do not normally abstract

away from the categories. To take just one well-known example, in the 3rd antinomy,

Kant claims that transcendental realists have confused appearances for things in

themselves. But the transcendental realists that Kant has in mind here employ the

category of causation. And Kant’s own resolution of the antinomy continues to consider

the human being as a thing in itself in terms of the unschematized category of causation.

Of course, methodological interpretations can accommodate this last point by

suggesting that Kant employs two different concepts of a thing in itself – namely, (1) the

concept of a thing conceived from the standpoint of a non-conceptual intuitive

understanding (i.e., in abstraction from both the forms of sensible intuition and the

categories) and (2) the concept of a thing conceived from the standpoint of a pure,

discursive understanding (i.e., merely in abstraction from the forms of intuition). But,

remember, the main question that we are considering here regards the common

proposal’s claim that things in themselves are the way that an intuitive understanding

would cognize them to be. And this accommodation undermines the common proposal’s

claim. For to conceive of a thing from the standpoint of a pure, discursive understanding

is not equivalent to conceiving of a thing from the standpoint of an intuitive

understanding. Yet, the accommodation recognizes that to consider a thing either from

23

the standpoint of a pure, discursive cognition or from the standpoint of an intuitive

understanding suffices for conceiving of a thing as a thing in itself. Thus, it entails that a

thing in itself either might or might not be the way that an intuitive understanding would

cognize things.

4. Moral philosophy and reflecting judgment

Up to this point, I have argued that textual and systematic reasons support my

claim that, for Kant’s theoretical philosophy, the way things are in themselves might or

might not correspond to how an intuitive understanding would cognize things. Yet Kant

is not interested only in theoretical philosophy. Rather, Kant also maintains that moral

philosophy and reflecting judgment can provide grounds for making claims about things

in themselves. Indeed, Kant claims that morality provides rational grounds for belief in

the existence of a supersensible God. And Kant also claims that the reflecting power of

judgment’s demand for a system of particular laws of nature entails that we should regard

nature as if it were grounded on a supersensible divine mind. Thus, it is important to

consider whether Kant’s views regarding moral philosophy and reflecting judgment

might justify the claim that the way things are in themselves corresponds to how an

intuitive understanding would cognize things.34 I will consider the case of moral

philosophy first and then turn to reflecting judgment.

To begin, Kant claims that morality provides rational justification for belief in the

existence of God. More specifically, Kant maintains that practical reason demands the

highest good, which consists of both virtue and happiness in proportion to virtue.35 This

demand for the highest good justifies the belief that God exists and has created nature in

24

such a way that people will eventually receive the happiness that their virtue merits in a

future life. Kant’s claim that we should believe that God is the creator of things seems to

entail that we should believe that these things in themselves are the way that God’s

intuitive understanding cognizes them. After all, since God is their creator, they will

conform to God’s representations.36

However, this argument is too quick. In order for the argument to work, Kant

would need to justify not merely the claim that a divine being exists but also the further

claims that this divine being is the creator of all things in themselves and that this divine

being intellectually intuits all things in themselves. There are good reasons to think that

Kant himself would have taken the moral argument to justify these further claims. For

instance, in the 1st Critique, Kant criticizes traditional physico-theological arguments for

failing to prove the existence of a Supreme Being. More specifically, even if physico-

theological arguments could successfully infer from the existence of natural order to the

existence of a divine mind, they could not successfully prove that this divine mind would

have to be omnipotent, omniscient, etc., rather than merely very powerful, very

knowledgeable, etc. Kant maintains, however, that his moral argument will succeed

where the physico-theological argument fails.37 Thus, Kant seems to maintain that the

moral argument justifies belief in a Supreme Being. And if God is a Supreme Being, then

God will indeed be the creator of all things and his understanding will be an unlimited

intuitive understanding, rather than a limited discursive understanding.

Yet, even if one accepts Kant’s claim that morality entails belief in a divine mind,

his moral argument faces two problems in regards to our topic.38 First, as I have

emphasized, Kant’s theory of intuitive understanding requires that an intuitive

25

understanding be the creator of its objects. However, despite what Kant himself might

have thought, the moral argument fails to prove that God must be the creator of all things,

even if we grant that it proves that God has to exist in order to guarantee the right

proportion between virtue and happiness. According to Kant’s moral argument, a divine

being must create nature so that nature realizes the highest good. But it is not obvious

why such a divine being would have to be the creator of all things.39 Consider, for

example, the concept of a demiurge that does not create matter but merely organizes it.

Kant is aware of the distinction between a divine organizer and a divine creator. He refers

to it as a distinction between an ‘architect of the world [Weltbaumeister]’ and a ‘creator

of the world [Weltschöpfer]’ (A627/B655). Yet, Kant’s moral argument seems to justify,

at best, belief in a divine architect. For the claim that a divine being must direct nature

towards the highest good requires merely that this divine being be able to organize nature

towards the production of the highest good. It is not obvious why this divine being would

have to be a creator, rather than merely an organizer, to play this role. Consequently, the

moral argument does not justify belief in God as a creator of all things in themselves. But

(as I argued earlier) if things in themselves are not created by an intuitive understanding,

then there is no reason to assume that they must be the way that an intuitive

understanding would cognize things.

Second, Kant’s moral argument fails to prove that this divine being must be able

to intellectually intuit all things. According to Kant, the moral argument justifies the

ascription of an intuitive understanding to the divine being. Specifically, the divine being

needs to cognize people’s moral dispositions in order to be able to proportion happiness

to virtue. But a person’s moral disposition is supersensible. Thus, to cognize a person’s

26

moral disposition, the divine being must possess an intuitive understanding. For instance,

in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Kant writes that the human’s

supersensible moral disposition is ‘judged by a knower of the heart in his pure intellectual

intuition …’ (RGV, 6: 67).40 Thus, Kant’s moral argument does seem to require that God

possess an intuitive understanding. However, this argument does not entail that God must

be able to intellectually intuit all things in themselves. Instead, the argument claims only

that God needs to have an intellectual intuition of agents’ moral dispositions, and there is

no reason to assume that all things in themselves, including those that correspond to

rocks and trees, are moral agents. Perhaps God needs to have an intellectual intuition of

moral agents but so far as the highest good is concerned could have a merely sensible

intuition of other things. Thus, Kant’s moral argument fails to show that the divine being

must be able to intellectually intuit all things. For these reasons, Kant’s moral argument

fails to demonstrate that human beings should regard all things in themselves as

corresponding to how an intuitive understanding would cognize things.

Let us turn finally to the reflecting power of judgment. As I will argue, Kant’s

theory of reflecting judgment avoids the problems that beset the moral case above and,

thus, supports the claim that we should (from the perspective of the reflecting power of

judgment) regard all things in themselves as being the way that an intuitive understanding

cognizes things. As noted previously, Kant claims that the reflecting power of judgment’s

demand for a system of particular laws should prompt us to regard nature as if it were the

product of a divine mind. Initially, one might think that the same objection from above

regarding the distinction between a creator and a designer could be made here as well.

Specifically, one might argue that a mere designer would suffice to guarantee nature’s

27

systematic order. There is, however, a key difference between this case and the moral

argument – namely, Kant claims that particular laws must be necessary in order to

qualify as laws. For example, Kant claims that the reflecting power of judgment demands

that nature contain particular laws ‘which, as empirical, may seem to be contingent in

accordance with the insight of our understanding, but which, if they are to be called laws

(as is also required by the concept of a nature) must be regarded as necessary on a

principle of the unity of the manifold, even if that principle is unknown to us’ (KU, 5:

180; italics added). According to Kant, we need to regard the particular laws of nature as

grounded on an intuitive understanding, rather than on a mere designer, in order to

represent the particular laws of nature as necessary and, thus, as laws.41 Kant makes this

point in §77’s discussion of intuitive understanding:

we must at the same time conceive of another understanding, in relation to

which, and indeed prior to any end attributed to it, we can represent that

agreement of natural laws with our power of judgment, which for our

understanding is conceivable only through ends as the means of

connection, as necessary. (KU, 5: 407)

Kant’s suggestion is as follows. The concept of an intelligent designer would imply that

the ‘laws’ of nature were contingent. An intelligent designer would arrange pre-existent

things into a systematic order. But if the intelligent designer did not arrange things in this

way, then things would not have a systematic order. Thus, the order imposed by an

intelligent designer would be contingent. If an intelligent designer were the ground of the

particular laws of nature, then the particular laws of nature would be contingent, rather

than necessary. But the particular laws of nature must be necessary in order to qualify as

28

laws. Thus, the particular laws of nature cannot be grounded on an intelligent designer. In

contrast to an intelligent designer, an intuitive understanding would not organize pre-

existent things. Instead, a divine intuitive understanding would be the creator of things.

Moreover, because an intuitive understanding represents a whole as such, all of the parts

of an intuitive understanding’s creation would exist only through the reality of the whole.

In §77, Kant famously takes this point to entail that, for an intuitive understanding, the

arrangement of the parts would not be contingent.42 Kant writes, ‘Now, however, we can

also conceive of an understanding … in whose representation of the whole, there is no

contingency in the combination of the parts …’ (KU, 5: 407). Because we human beings

represent something as necessary if it is not contingent, we should represent the laws of

nature as necessary by representing nature’s systematic order as grounded on an intuitive

understanding for which those laws are not contingent.43 Moreover, because the reflecting

power of judgment requires that we represent all of nature as a system of particular laws,

it requires that we represent all (rather than merely some) things as grounded on an

intuitive understanding. Therefore, in contrast to the moral case discussed above, Kant’s

theory of reflecting judgment requires that we represent all things as grounded on an

intuitive understanding. And since all of the objects cognized by an intuitive

understanding will be things in themselves, we should regard all things in themselves as

being the way that this intuitive understanding cognizes them. Consequently, from the

perspective of the reflecting power of judgment, we should regard all things in

themselves as corresponding to the way that an intuitive understanding cognizes things.

Thus, if one accepts the basic tenets of Kant’s theory of reflecting judgment, then this

29

theory avoids the specific problems that beset the moral case and supports a version of

the common proposal from the perspective of the reflecting power of judgment.

5. Conclusion

In this paper, I have argued that Kant’s theoretical philosophy does not endorse

the claim that things in themselves are the way that an intuitive understanding would

cognize things. Rather, Kant’s theoretical philosophy maintains that things in themselves

might or might not be the way that an intuitive understanding would cognize things.

Additionally, I have considered Kant’s views regarding moral philosophy and reflecting

judgment. Here, I have argued that Kant’s moral argument for belief in the existence of

God fails to justify the claim that we should regard all things in themselves as being the

way that an intuitive understanding would cognize things. However, I have also argued

that Kant’s view regarding the reflecting power of judgment provide Kant with better

grounds for regarding all things in themselves as grounded on an intuitive understanding

and, thus, as corresponding to an intuitive understanding’s cognition. Therefore,

interpretations of transcendental idealism should not straightforwardly equate Kant’s

general conception of things in themselves with things as an intuitive understanding

would cognize them but, instead, should attend to the differences between Kant’s

theoretical philosophy, moral philosophy, and theory of reflecting judgment in assessing

the relationship between intuitive understanding and things in themselves.44

References

30

Works cited by abbreviation

I cite Kant’s works according to Kant (1900ff.) with the exception of the Critique of Pure

Reason, for which I employ the standard A/B pagination. Where possible, I use the

translations from Kant (1992ff.).

A/B = Critique of Pure Reason, where A refers to the 1781 edition and B to the 1787

edition

Anth = Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View

Br = Correspondence

KpV = Critique of Practical Reason

KU = Critique of the Power of Judgment

Log = Jäsche Logic

MSI = Inaugural Dissertation

Pro = Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics

ÜE = On a Discovery

Refl = Notes and Fragments

RGV = Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason

V-Th/Baumbach = Danziger Rationaltheologie

V-Th/Pölitz = Lectures on the Philosophical Doctrine of Religion

Other works

Allais, L. (2015). Manifest Reality: Kant’s Idealism and his Realism. Oxford, UK:

Oxford University Press.

31

—. (2016). Kant’s Tightrope: Responses to Grüne, Kreines, and Walker. European

Journal of Philosophy, 24(1), 275-283.

Allison, H. E. (2004). Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense,

revised and enlarged edition. New Haven, USA: Yale University Press.

Ameriks, K. (2000). Kant’s Theory of Mind, new edition. Oxford, UK: Oxford University

Press.

Förster, E. (2011). Die 25 Jahre der Philosophie. Frankfurt a.M., Germany: Vittorio

Klostermann.

Gram, M. (1981). Intellectual Intuition: The Continuity Thesis. Journal of the History of

Ideas 42(2), 287-304.

Haag, J. (2013). Grenzbegriffe und die Antinomie der teleologischen Urteilskraft. In J.

Haag & M. Wild (Eds.), Übergänge – diskursiv oder intuitiv? Essays zu Eckart Försters

Die 25 Jahre der Philosophie (pp. 141-172) Frankfurt a.M., Germany: Vittorio

Klostermann.

Hanna, R. (2006). Kant, Science, and Human Nature. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.

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Kant, I. (1900ff.). Gesammelte Schriften, edited by the Preussische Akademie der

Wissenschaften, Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, and Akademie der

Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. Berlin, Germany: de Gruyter.

—. (1992ff.). The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, edited by Paul

Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Klingner, S. (2015). Kant und der Monotheismus der Vernunftreligion. Archiv für

Geschichte der Philosophie 97(4), 458-480.

—. (2016). Kants Begriff einer intellektuellen Anschauung und die rationalistische

Rechtfertigung philosophischen Wissens. Kant-Studien 107(4), 617-650.

Kohl, M. (2015). Kant on the Inapplicability of the Categories to Things in Themselves.

British Journal for the History of Philosophy 23(1), 90-114.

Leech, J. (2014). Making modal Distinctions: Kant on the Possible, the Actual, and the

Intuitive Understanding. Kantian Review 19(3), 339-365.

McLaughlin, P. (1990). Kant’s Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation:

Antinomy and Teleology. Lampeter, UK: Edwin Mellen Press.

—. (2014). Mechanical Explanation in the ‘Critique of the Teleological Power of

Judgment’. In E. Watkins and I. Goy (Eds.), Kant’s Theory of Biology (pp. 149-166).

Berlin, Germany: de Gruyter.

33

Michalson, G. E. (1999). Kant and the Problem of God. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

Robinson, H. (1994). Two Perspectives on Kant’s Appearances and Things-in-

Themselves. Journal of the History of Philosophy 32(3), 411-441.

Stang, N. F. (2016). Kant’s Modal Metaphysics. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Tuschling, B.. (1991). The System of Transcendental Idealism: Questions Raised and

Left Open in the Kritik der Urteilskraft. Southern Journal of Philosophy, Supplement 30,

109-127.

Van Cleve, J. (1999). Problems from Kant. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Walker, R. (2010). Kant on the Number of Worlds. British Journal for the History of

Philosophy 18(5), 821-843.

—. (2016). Comments on Lucy Allais, Manifest Reality: Kant’s Idealism and his

Realism. European Journal of Philosophy 24(1), 267-274.

Westphal, M. (1968). In Defense of the Thing in Itself. Kant-Studien 59(1), 118-141.

Winegar, R. (2015). Kant’s criticisms of Hume’s Dialogues concerning Natural Religion.

British Journal for the History of Philosophy 23(5), 888-910.

34

(2017). Kant on God’s Intuitive Understanding: Interpreting §76’s modal claims. Kantian

Review 22(2), 305-329.

––. (forthcoming). God’s Mind in the 3rd Critique. In V. Waibel & M. Ruffing (Eds.),

Natur und Freiheit. Akten des XII. Kant-Kongresses. Berlin, Germany: de Gruyter.

1 E.g., (Bxxvi). There is debate over what Kant’s term ‘cognition [Erkenntnis]’ means and, in

particular, how ‘cognition’ relates to ‘knowledge [Wissen]’; see Allais (2015: 13). However, I do

not believe that these debates bear on the substance of the issues below, and I will leave them to the

side.

2 E.g., (B72f.), (A249), (A252), (B308), (A256/B312), (Br, 10: 130f.), (KU, 5: 409), (RGV 6: 67),

and (V-Th/Pölitz, 28: 1052). Sometimes Kant refers to intellectual intuition [intellektuelle

Anschauung] and sometimes to intuitive understanding [intuitiver Verstand, anschauender

Verstand]. Some recent commentators – e.g., Förster (2011: 160), Haag (2013), Klingner (2016),

and McLaughlin (1990: 171; 2014) – attempt to distinguish these two notions. But like Leech

(2014) and Stang (2016: 300f.), I argue below that these two notions are necessarily related.

3 Versions of this common proposal are endorsed by both metaphysical and deflationary interpreters

of the thing in itself; e.g., see Allais (2016: 276), Allison (2004), Ameriks (2000: 266), Hanna

(2006: 194f.), Kohl (2015), Robinson (1994), Stang (2016: Ch. 10), Walker (2016: 270-3), and

Westphal (1968).

4 I use the phrase ‘theoretical philosophy’ as a contrast to Kant’s moral philosophy and theory of

reflecting judgment. I take the 3rd Critique’s theory of reflecting judgment to represent Kant’s

mature Critical position regarding systematicity. Thus, for the purposes of this paper, I do not

include the 1st Critique’s discussion of the regulative Idea of God’s understanding in the Appendix

to the Transcendental Dialectic under the heading of Kant’s theoretical philosophy.

5 Walker gestures in a similar direction when he briefly claims that Kant should have considered the

possibility that things in themselves might not be ‘graspable by any mind at all, even in principle’

(Walker 2016: 273).

6 In the moral case, Kant maintains that we should believe (glauben) that God exists. In the case of

reflecting judgment, Kant does not use a technical term like ‘belief’ but claims that reflecting

judgment prompts us to view nature as if it is grounded on a divine mind. I use the general term

‘regard’ to cover both cases. Kohl (2015), who endorses the common proposal in relation to Kant’s

theoretical philosophy, notes in passing that Kant’s moral philosophy and views regarding

systematicity might provide alternative grounds for the common proposal, but he does not examine

this suggestion in detail. For further endorsements of the view that Kant’s moral philosophy

supports the claim that things in themselves correspond to the way that an intuitive understanding

would cognize things; see Stang (2016: Ch. 10), Walker (2010: 829), and Westphal (1968).

7 (A19/B33)

8 I also discuss §76’s conception of intuitive understanding in Winegar (2017 and forthcoming).

9 (A51/B75) and (A69/B94)

10 Kohl (2015) and Leech (2014) also note this point.

11 For these reasons, I disagree with Walker’s claim that Kant lacks support for the ‘legitimacy of

applying the term “intellectual”, or “rational”, to this sort of intuition’ (Walker 2016: 272).

12 Cf. (V-Th/Baumbach, 28: 1267)

13 Cf. Leech (2014) and Stang (2016: 300f.)

14 (Br, 10: 130f.)

15 Cf. (Refl 6048, 18: 433); see Allison (2004: 13f.), Leech (2014), and Westphal (1968) for the

suggestion that an intuitive understanding needs to be the creator of its objects.

16 E.g., Förster (2011: 160), Gram (1981), Haag (2013), Klingner (2016), and McLaughlin (1990:

171; 2014)

17 Cf. (Refl 4124, 17: 426) [1769-75? 1764-68?]

18 In Winegar (2017), I examine in more detail the relationship between God’s intuitive

understanding and possibility, including the relationship between God’s intuitive understanding and

God’s will in creation.

19 E.g., (Br, 10: 131) and (Refl 4275, 17: 492) [1770-1]. Walker (2016: 272) notes that Plato

endorses a type of intellectual intuition of the Good, but Walker does not refer to the Platonic

tradition’s views regarding the Platonic Ideas’ role in creation. Walker does not mention Kant’s

references to Malebranche and Maimon. Instead, Walker refers to Descartes’ notion of clear and

distinct ideas (Walker 2016: 272). But Kant never refers to Descartes’ own theory of clear and

distinct ideas in terms of intuitive understanding.

20 Kant identifies Maimon’s position as a type of Spinozism, given its claim that the human mind is

identical to the divine mind. However, Kant does not directly discuss the Ethics’ own conception of

intuitive knowledge (scientia intuitiva). Thus, I will leave Spinoza himself to the side.

21 (Refl 6048, 18: 433) [1783-84] and (V-Th/Pölitz, 28: 1052)

22 Kant suggests the same point regarding Eberhard’s defense of Leibniz (ÜE, 8: 219).

23 For example, Hanna (2006: 195) refers to the entirety of B305-8, Robinson (1994: 431n) refers to

the entirety of B306-9, and Westphal (1968) refers to (A249) and (A252).

24 Westphal (1968) cites these two passages.

25 Van Cleve (1999: 134) endorses this concept of a thing in itself and notes that it is not

synonymous with the concept of a noumenon in the positive sense.

26 To deny that things in themselves should be identified with noumena in the positive sense does

not exclude the interpretation that things in themselves should still be identified with things

considered independently of the human being’s forms of sensibility – that is, as noumena in the

negative sense.

27 Indeed, I take Kant to be summarizing and criticizing his own earlier position from the Inaugural

Dissertation.

28 Kant emphasizes that the concept of an intuitive understanding is merely problematic; e.g.

(A256/B311f.)

29 Hanna (2006), Robinson (1994), and Westphal (1968) endorse versions of this view.

30 Westphal (1968: 127)

31 Cf. notes 23 and 24

32 Allison (2004: xvif., 17, 28f., 33f., 37, 59, 395)

33 The third option where on abstracts from the categories but not from the forms of sensibility does

not seem relevant here.

34 See note 6.

35 E.g., (KpV, 5: 110)

36 See note 6 for a list of commentators who endorse versions of this argument.

37 (A627f./B656f.)

38 Klingner (2015) and Michalson (1999) argue that Kant’s moral argument does not successfully

ascribe all of the attributes of a Supreme Being to God, but they do not relate this point to intuitive

understanding and things in themselves as I do here.

39 Cf. Klingner (2015)

40 Given the relationship between intuitive understanding and creation, one might worry that God

must be the creator of people’s moral dispositions in order to know them, which would raise

questions with respect to Kant’s views regarding human agency and moral responsibility. Whether

Kant can reconcile this tension is too large a question to pursue here; see Stang (2016: Ch. 10) for

discussion.

41 Cf. Tuschling (1991). I argue elsewhere that, on Kant’s view, human beings should analogically

represent this intuitive understanding in terms of a purposive, intelligent designer but that this

analogical representation does not undermine its status as an intuitive understanding; see Winegar

(forthcoming). See Winegar (2015) for further discussion of Kant’s theory of divine analogy.

42 I discuss this further in Winegar (2017).

43 Whether an intuitive understanding would itself represent nature in terms of modal categories like

‘necessity’ is a further question. For different approaches to this question, see Stang (2016, Ch. 10)

and Winegar (2017).

44 [acknowledgments removed]