A Commentary to Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason'

by Norman Kemp Smith

That Kant’s criticism of Berkeley should be extremely external is not, therefore, surprising. He is interested in Berkeley’s positive teaching only in so far as it enables him to illustrate the evil tendencies of a mistaken idealism, which starts from a false view of the functions of sensibility and of understanding, and of the nature of space and time. The key to the true idealism lies, he claims, in the Critical problem, how a priori synthetic judgments can be possible. This is the fundamental problem of metaphysics, and until it has been formulated and answered no advance can be made.

“My so-called (Critical) idealism is thus quite peculiar in that it overthrows ordinary idealism, and that through it alone a priori cognition, even that of geometry, attains objective reality, a thing which even the keenest realist could not assert till I had proved the ideality of space and time.”[603]

In order to make Kant’s account of Berkeley’s teaching really comprehensible, we seem compelled to assume that he had never himself actually read any of Berkeley’s own writings. Kant’s acquaintance with the English language was most imperfect, and we have no evidence that he had ever read a single English book.[604] When he quotes Pope and Addison, he does so from German translations.[605] Subsequent to 1781 he could, indeed, have had access to Berkeley’s Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous[606] in a German translation; but in view of the account which he continues to give of Berkeley’s teaching, it does not seem likely[607] that he had availed himself of this opportunity. As to what the indirect sources of Kant’s knowledge of Berkeley may have been, we cannot decide with any certainty, but amongst them must undoubtedly be reckoned Hume’s statements in regard to Berkeley in the Enquiry,[608] and very probably also the references to Berkeley in Beattie’s Nature of Truth.[609] From the former Kant would learn of Berkeley’s empirical view of space and also of the sceptical tendencies of his idealist teaching. From it he might also very naturally infer that Berkeley denies all reality to objects. By Beattie Kant would be confirmed in this latter view, and also in his contention that Berkeley is unable to supply a criterion for distinguishing between reality and dreams. Kant may also have received some impressions regarding Berkeley from Hamann.

To take Kant’s criticisms of Berkeley more in detail. In the first edition of the Critique[610] Kant passes two criticisms, without, however, mentioning Berkeley by name: first, that he overlooks the problem of time, and, like Descartes, ascribes complete reality to the objects of inner sense. This is the cause of a second error, namely, that he views the objects of outer sense as mere illusion (blosser Schein). Proceeding, Kant argues that inner and outer sense are really in the same position. Though they yield only appearances, these appearances are conditioned by things in themselves. Through this relation to things in themselves they are distinguished from all merely subjective images. Berkeley is again referred to in the fourth Paralogism.[611] His idealism is distinguished from that of Descartes. The one is dogmatic; the other is sceptical. The one denies the existence of matter; the other only doubts whether it is possible to prove it. Berkeley claims, indeed, that there are contradictions in the very conception of matter; and Kant remarks that this is an objection which he will have to deal with in the section on the Antinomies. But this promise Kant does not fulfil; and doubtless for the reason that, however unwilling he may be to make the admission, on this point his own teaching, especially in the Dialectic, frequently coincides with that of Berkeley. So little, indeed, is Kant concerned in the first edition to defend his position against the accusation of subjectivism, that in this same section he praises the sceptical idealist as a “benefactor of human reason.”

“He compels us, even in the smallest advances of ordinary experience, to keep on the watch, lest we consider as a well-earned possession what we perhaps obtain only in an illegitimate manner. We are now in a position to appreciate the value of the objections of the idealist. They drive us by main force, unless we mean to contradict ourselves in our commonest assertions, to view all our perceptions, whether we call them inner or outer, as a consciousness only of what is dependent on our sensibility. They also compel us to regard the outer objects of these perceptions not as things in themselves, but only as representations, of which, as of every other representation, we can become immediately conscious, and which are entitled outer because they depend on what we call ‘outer sense’ whose intuition is space. Space itself, however, is nothing but an inner mode of representation in which certain perceptions are connected with one another.”[612]

These criticisms are restated in A 491-2 = B 519-20, with the further addition that in denying the existence of extended beings “the empirical idealist” removes the possibility of distinguishing between reality and dreams. This is a new criticism. Kant is no longer referring to the denial of unknowable things in themselves. He is now maintaining that only the Critical standpoint can supply an immanent criterion whereby real experiences may be distinguished from merely subjective happenings. This point is further insisted upon in the Prolegomena,[613] but is nowhere developed with any direct reference to Berkeley’s own personal teaching. Kant assumes as established that any such criterion must rest upon the a priori; and in this connection Berkeley is conveniently made to figure as a thoroughgoing empiricist.

The Critique, on its publication, was at once attacked, especially in the Garve-Feder review, as presenting an idealism similar to that of Berkeley. As Erdmann has shown, the original plan of the Prolegomena was largely modified in order to afford opportunity for reply to this “unpardonable and almost intentional misconception.”[614] Kant’s references to Berkeley, direct and indirect, now for the first time manifest a polemical tone, exaggerating in every possible way the difference between their points of view. Only the transcendental philosophy can establish the possibility of a priori knowledge, and so it alone can afford a criterion for distinguishing between realities and dreams. It alone will account for the possibility of geometrical science; Berkeley’s idealism would render the claims of that science wholly illusory. The Critical idealism transcends experience only so far as is required to discover the conditions which make empirical cognition possible; Berkeley’s idealism is ‘visionary’ and ‘mystical.’[615] Even sceptical idealism now comes in for severe handling. It may be called “dreaming idealism”; it makes things out of mere representations, and like idealism in its dogmatic form it virtually denies the existence of the only true reality, that of things in themselves. Sceptical idealism misinterprets space by making it empirical, dogmatic idealism by regarding it as an attribute of the real. Both entirely ignore the problem of time. For these reasons they underestimate the powers of sensibility (to which space and time belong as a priori forms), and exaggerate those of pure understanding.

“The position of all genuine idealists from the Eleatics to Berkeley is contained in this formula: ‘All cognition through the senses and experience is nothing but mere illusion, and only in the ideas of pure understanding and Reason is there truth.’ The fundamental principle ruling all my idealism, on the contrary, is this: ‘All cognition of things solely from pure understanding or pure Reason is nothing but mere illusion and only in experience is there truth.’”[616]

This is an extremely inadequate statement of the Critical standpoint, but it excellently illustrates Kant’s perverse interpretation of Berkeley’s teaching.

To these criticisms Kant gives less heated but none the less explicit expression in the second edition of the Critique. He is now much more careful to avoid subjectivist modes of statement. His phenomenalist tendencies are reinforced, and come to clearer expression of all that they involve. The fourth Paralogism with its sympathetic treatment of empirical idealism is omitted, and in addition to the above passage Kant inserts a new section, entitled Refutation of Idealism, in which he states his position in a much more adequate manner.