Q&A: Is Kant the Greatest Mystic of the Modern Age?
Is Kant the Greatest Mystic of the Modern Age?
Question
A letter to Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham
**Subject: A Fundamental Problem in Kantian Philosophy**
Hello Rabbi,
I am writing to you about a philosophical issue that has troubled me for a long time. In the course of studying Kantian philosophy, I discovered what seems to be a fundamental problem that may somewhat undermine the system, and despite extensive searching in the academic literature I have not found any discussion of it.
The problem touches the heart of Kant’s project. Kant builds his entire philosophy on the assumption that he is dealing with phenomenology—with the study of the way human consciousness perceives reality. He assumes that our consciousness, which is clearly material and human, observes phenomena and shapes them into experience by means of the categories and the pure intuitions. His whole system is based on the distinction between the phenomena we experience and the thing-in-itself, which remains beyond all possible knowledge.
But here the basic problem appears. Kant seemingly cannot know what our consciousness is actually observing. It could be observing material expressions of the divine infinite, or alternatively ordinary material phenomena that have no connection to the divine. Kant himself blocks the possibility of answering this question, since he claims that the thing-in-itself is in principle unknowable and inaccessible to any knowledge.
On the other hand, when one examines the way Kant describes the thing-in-itself, it turns out that he attributes very specific properties to it. The thing-in-itself is so abstract and undefined that it cannot enter the category of phenomenon. Our consciousness cannot grasp it in any way. It has no possible attribute or description. It lies beyond every category and every concept. But this description is precisely the classic philosophical definition of the divine infinite—that which is beyond every description and attribute, that which exceeds every finite definition.
It is important to clarify that I am not speaking here about God in the religious sense of a commanding or personal being, but about the philosophical concept of the infinite—the reality that is beyond every limitation and every description. This is a concept that appears in many philosophers from Plotinus to Spinoza, and it is always characterized by exactly the same properties that Kant attributes to the thing-in-itself. In fact, the more Kant emphasizes the absolute impossibility of knowing the thing-in-itself, the more he strengthens its identification with the philosophical infinite. The absolute transcendence he describes is exactly what defines the divine in philosophy.
If the thing-in-itself is indeed the divine infinite, a far-reaching conclusion follows: all the phenomena our consciousness sees are in fact expressions of the divine infinite. What Kant thinks is “innocent” phenomenology—a neutral description of how we perceive things—actually becomes a description of how the divine infinite is revealed to finite consciousness. This is a deep paradox: Kant wanted to sever phenomenology from ontology, to limit philosophy to the domain of how we know without making claims about what really exists. He even explicitly claimed that he rejects the concept of ontology. But if phenomena are expressions of the infinite, then his whole philosophy becomes an ontological study of the divine—exactly the opposite of what he intended.
The situation becomes even more ironic when one considers the implications. Kant becomes, without intention and without knowing it, the greatest mystic of the modern age. His entire detailed description of how consciousness shapes experience through the categories, how time and space are forms of intuition—all of this becomes an exact description of how the divine infinite is revealed and shaped into a phenomenal world that finite consciousness can grasp.
It should be noted that if this is really so, then the Kantian system also solves in this way some of the most classic philosophical problems. The problem of multiplicity arising from unity, which occupied philosophers from Plotinus to Schelling, receives an elegant solution: multiplicity is created by the forms consciousness imposes on the experience of the infinite unity. The problem of the relation between the finite and the infinite, which troubled Spinoza and others, is also solved: the finite is the way the infinite is revealed through the limitations of human consciousness.
Any attempt to say “I deal only with phenomena” presupposes knowledge of what lies beyond phenomena—precisely the knowledge Kant claims we do not have. The attempt to do “non-ontological” philosophy is revealed as fundamentally inconsistent.
And of course the implications for modern philosophy are immense. If the argument is correct, the secular revolution that followed Kant is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. The Enlightenment thought it was freeing man from “superstitions” and placing human reason at the center, but in fact it described with precision the way human consciousness encounters the divine infinite at every moment of experience. Modern science, which is viewed as a secular project detached from metaphysics, becomes an investigation of the ways in which the infinite is expressed in the lawfulness and order of the phenomenal world.
The extensive search I conducted in the academic literature did not turn up a discussion of this specific problem. I found many critiques of the thing-in-itself, comparisons between Kant and Berkeley, and discussions of the status of transcendental consciousness, but not the simple and fundamental question of what exactly our consciousness is observing and what the significance is of the inability to answer that question.
I would be happy to hear your professional opinion on the argument, on its logical validity, and on whether it would be appropriate to develop it into a comprehensive academic study. Or in other words: where did I go wrong?
Best regards,
Israel
Answer
A few comments on this piece of pilpul.
1. In your remarks you included a collection of statements that are indeed made about it:
On the other hand, when one examines the way Kant describes the thing-in-itself, it turns out that he attributes very specific properties to it. The thing-in-itself is so abstract and undefined that it cannot enter the category of phenomenon. Our consciousness cannot grasp it in any way. It has no possible attribute or description. It lies beyond every category and every concept…
If those are “very specific properties,” I wouldn’t want to be around when you describe genuinely specific properties.
2. It is not true that the inability to say something about the thing-in-itself is some limitation of ours. We have the ability to say everything about it. What we say about it is the phenomena.
3. The same applies to God. One can definitely say things about Him. One can say that He exists, for example (which is a statement about the noumenon). One can describe His attributes (which are part of His phenomena, just like with any other entity).
4. Later in the passage I quoted above you write:
But this description is precisely the classic philosophical definition of the divine infinite—that which is beyond every description and attribute, that which exceeds every finite definition.
According to your line of thinking, the chair-in-itself is God, and so is the dove, the watermelon, the cloud, and so on. It comes out somewhat polytheistic. True, God is something about which you cannot say anything. But when there is something about which you cannot say anything, that does not necessarily mean it is God.
5. A similar critique of Kant was raised by Lev Shestov, and I discussed it in a series of columns (494 and onward) on the matter. His claim was that the distinction between phenomena and noumena is itself part of the phenomena. Or in other words: how can one know at all that there is a noumenon.
Discussion on Answer
Let me add one more word: how does Kant know that the phenomena as our consciousness reveals them are the primary phenomena that come from the thing-in-itself? Maybe they are only the tip of the iceberg. Maybe the chair we are able to grasp in our consciousness is a material chair, but perhaps before it there were already tens of thousands of levels of chairs, one above another, all of them phenomena of that same thing-in-itself. And there is also a strong rational intuition behind this. Why should we say that the thing-in-itself—which in his view is not defined even by the category of the spiritual—would have as its direct expression the most defined, coarse, and limited thing imaginable?
B. 🙂 As is well known, on the internet it’s hard to know what was written ironically.
C. My claim is that there is no problem at all in knowing properties of the thing-in-itself. Neither the depth of the concept, nor the weakness of the knower, nor anything of the sort. Those properties are the phenomena. I referred you to my columns where I explain this.
What divinity means is the one who created the world and gave the Torah. He is indeed also hard to grasp, etc. But not everything that is hard or impossible to grasp is divinity. I already explained this.
D. That’s Chinese to me.
E. Very simple. He sees that there is a chair and assumes that at its basis there is a chair-in-itself. What does that have to do with divinity?
V. I answered that in the second part of C above.
I’m looking for a dictionary to understand what you want. Kant only said that there is a chair here. You ask how he knows that this chair is not a reflection of something else? Maybe it really is. Kant didn’t deal with that.
Israel, it seems to me that you made an interesting and brilliant identification here; I don’t understand why Rabbi Michi dismissed you the way he did. Israel’s claim, as I understand it, is that in Kant there is a move that runs—at least—along the border of theology. If we take the concept of “the thing as it is in itself” not as a single concrete object that has a concrete appearance, but as a general definition of what stands at the basis of all phenomena (and that is no less close to the truth), then we come very close to the definition of divinity in many thinkers: the fundamental force, inaccessible to reason or the senses, that stands at the basis of phenomena. The parallel is very יפה מאוד. And if I may, I think the reason this similarity escaped notice is that Kant’s move proceeds in the opposite direction: he began from the characteristics of human reason, from its built-in subjectivity, and from there moved toward “the thing as it is in itself.”
A. Michael, thank you for the explanation. That is what I meant, and I wasn’t answered.
B. There really is room to discuss the Rabbi’s definition too, that divinity is the one who created the world and gave the Torah.
So what does Spinoza call divinity? I am speaking about Spinoza’s God.
C. And more generally, as a result of this description, does the description of the thing-in-itself, of every thing, even of the particular chair, not follow necessarily? For if it is so undefined that it has no image or attribute at all, and is not even within the category of the spiritual, then such simplicity is divine simplicity.
A. Thank you very much for the quick reply.
B. The words “very specific properties” were written ironically, of course.
C. The point at issue is that if you do not know what the thing-in-itself is, and this lack of knowledge does not stem from the weakness of the knower but from the depth of the concept—that is, that in reality it could never be grasped because it is above the category of phenomenon altogether, meaning above every category whatsoever—is that not what “divinity” means in the language of philosophy?
D. As for the chair, it is not God, but an expression of the power of divinity in the world of material phenomena. That chair as phenomenon could appear in millions of other variations of phenomena in any world whatsoever.
E. And all this comes from the basic question: if Kant describes the thing-in-itself in this way—a non-description, of course—how does he know to say that he is dealing with the phenomenology of reality and not the phenomenology of divinity, which is really a branch of ontology? And simply put, this is not even a matter of “maybe,” because his description of the thing-in-itself really parallels what philosophy tends to call divine.
V. So if we sharpen the question, it would be formulated like this, and on this I would ask if you could answer: in what way is the thing-in-itself, which is not defined by any definition whatsoever, different from the philosophical concept of divinity? And if it is parallel to it, why should we not say that all of life consists of material phenomena in which divinity is expressed?