German Idealism (1) introduction to kant

The Philosophy of German Idealism - Kant and Hegel Introduction (1) Kant WIZIQ, Monday January 18th 2010, 7 PM GMT I have to begin somewhere so I thought I would begin with something that can at least be interpreted as the actual beginning. There is no doubt historically that what we call "German Idealism", basically the philosophy of Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, is the crowning achievement of what we call the Enlightenment. Kant himself may be labeled as being both the end product of the Enlightenment and the beginning of German Idealism. So today I will make a few remarks about the nature of the Enlightenment project as present in Kantianism. My aim is to present a couple of issues that will guide us through the upcoming lectures when we study the various aspects of the philosophy of Kant and Hegel. Most important however is the summary of Kantianism that I will give here. Now the word Enlightenment has received a whole lot of definitions that we won't be troubled by in this course. The most general statement we can make about it, I suppose, is, that Enlightenment designates a period in history in which the Western world of science, technology and rational politics came to existence. We are dealing with the rise of some kind of rational thought, a new way of discovering truth and a transformation of the societies in the western world around ideas of liberty, rational knowledge and human autonomy. Part of the common consensus is the idea that we have an early period in the Enlightenment, in which we find a new mood of rational discourse as in the Essays by Montaigne and the works of French philosophers like Voltaire and Diderot. And then there is the general acceptance of a second and decisive period in the Enlightenment, in which the philosophy of Descartes and Spinoza, Locke and Hume was published. In the session on Friday we will be discussing texts in more detail. Before we dive into a text by Immanuel Kant that seems to be the first attempt at defining the idea of Enlightenment, I am going to present to you another text from an earlier period in western philosophy that encapsulates the mood or spirit of the era in a concise way and presents us precisely with the dilemma's and questions that we will encounter in Kant and Hegel later on. So on Friday we will be talking about the "Dialog about Freedom" by Voltaire and "What is Enlightenment" by Immanuel Kant. That's for Friday. Today I wanted to just sketch out some of the issues that we will be dealing with later on. This week I will be talking about Kant and next week I will discuss Hegel. So, what can we say about German Idealism by way of a general introduction? First of all, it is a somewhat established idea that German Idealism developed between 1781 when Kant published the first of his three Critiques (The Critique of Pure Reason) and 1821 when Hegel published his Lectures on the Philosophy of Right. We are talking about a period of just forty years which makes it one of the shortest periods in the history of Philosophy that has a coherent character if not a common idea or goal. Just the pace of the work that has been produced in this period is breathtaking. German philosopher Richard Kroner in his "From Kant to Hegel", published in 1921 - a full century after the end of German Idealism - speaks about the "eschatological mood" of the period, a sense of a truth coming into existence, transforming the world. In a sense it is the intellectual counterpart of the mood in which the French Revolution took place and in many ways it is that historical event that triggered it. Both Kant and Hegel speak directly about the "great event" in history that is taking place in their life time. Kant wrote that humanity was now in the process of answering the questions that had occupied it for centuries. "There is only the critical path…human reason will come to full satisfaction (it. mine) in all matters that its desire for knowledge has occupied with in vain over the centuries." (KdrV, B 884) In his "What is Enlightenment?" (WiE; 1784) Kant defines the Enlightenment as a new attitude or mood of thought, that is in direct opposition to what had gone before. The definition he gives is decidedly negative, deriving its contents primarily from what it is opposing. "Enlightenment", Kant writes, "is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity (or nonage as some have it, or tutelage)." We have here, a negative definition. So it's an "emergence" from something, a move beyond a dominant system of thought and a movement out of a social order, that is now seen as completely obsolete and detrimental. What is this immaturity then? He goes on: "Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another." "Guidance" from another can have of course various forms. It refers here to the dictates of religious authority for example, or the identification of truth with the Biblical text, or to any kind of political or social force that imposes a worldview or prescribes what can be thought and said. Opposed to all of that, Kant stresses that in this new period, there is a new motto, defining a new attitude: "Have courage to use your own understanding!" First of all you must notice the double strategy as it were. On the one hand the Enlightenment phraseology is meant to be descriptive. We are living in an age of reason, and Frederick the Great has done so much already etc. On the other hand the language is prescriptive: we need to adopt another attitude, we need to have the courage to start moving away from our immaturity etc. So which is it? Is it happening? Or are we under obligation to make it happen? Hegel of course would argue that philosophy cannot be about moral imperatives like that, because they are abstract and detached from reality. The normative should be found in the real. Kant is not doing that according to Hegel, in fact he is setting up a norm as separate from reality. It also seems to imply secondly that reason is exercised by individuals, that have a single point of view from which to understand the world as a whole. That is not without problems. It seems to imply at first sight a complete relativism, because it is not at all clear that individuals would - by using their own reason - would come to any common truth. Universality is however restored when it can be established that reason is a universal and universalizing faculty in all of mankind. Individuals using their faculty of reason exercise a faculty that is shared among humans. (Actually one might say: a particular usage of reason is defining what humanity is, but let's not be too skeptical at the start.) All humans? All of mankind? But does Kant really mean that this Enlightenment is there for all peoples? Is the Enlightenment a process without specific historic conditions or context, so to say and are people in Australia challenged by it at the same time and in the same manner as the Europeans of his day? We may see here the birth of what almost two centuries later was called Europacentrism, the identification of universal human reason with the particular shape it received in Western European history. And third, it says that "courage" is needed. There is a sense in which the new humanity of the Enlightenment has to give up its comforting traditions and prejudices in which it can live with a sense of security and belonging. It has to use reason against the ol order of things. At the same time, it should leave that old order intact in so far as social order and political hegemony is concerned. Isn't there a real tension or even contradiction? I think it comes close to what we find in another defining moment in philosophical history, when we hear Socrates argue that the life of reflection, of questions and arguments about the good and the true, is a dictate from the gods and in that sense higher in value than the demands of the State. In the Apology of Socrates Plato argues for this "life of reflection" as surpassing the State and all the comforts of social life. So far so good. Plato however also has Socrates argue in the Kritoon against any scheme for his escape by constructing - like a good sophist - the State's argument: you are escaping Socrates and thereby you say to everyone that the Laws of the State should not be upheld and so by your escape from judgment you do exactly what we accused you of, i.e. destroying the very foundations of the allegiance to the State. What would happen if everyone flees from the administration of the Laws like that? Laws would have no authority. And how can you even think of this, because the State has nurtured you, educated you, provided you with the conditions to live etc. Is this not contradictory in the same way as Kant's refusal to break with political tradition and authority while demanding the courage to use one's own reason? On the one hand we find Plato arguing for the divine right to question everything in a free state, even against the state, and on the other we find him arguing for some type of political patriotism that would not allow you to go against the decisions of the State. The answer of course lies precisely in the distinction between the application of political power (let's call it government) and the State as such, but that is not here yet, not even very clearly in Hegel, but that's a distinction we would need to make in order to clarify this tension between these seemingly separate and conflicting loyalties. Now, to Kant this "Enlightenment" as a transformation of thought was only a prelude to what he calls "the Enlightened Age". When everybody would be able to use his own reason, we would see an age in which rational, autonomous thought pervades the whole of society. "If it is now asked, 'Do we presently live in an enlightened age?' the answer is, 'No, but we do live in an age of enlightenment.'" So what is the main obstacle for this complete liberation? Is it the State, including the benign rule of Frederick the Great? "As matters now stand," he continues, "a great deal is still lacking in order for men as a whole to be, or even to put themselves into a position to be able without external guidance to apply understanding confidently to religious issues." (See p. 19 of the text I've uploaded on WIZIQ) So we can deduce from that passage that essentially the opposition to be dealt with in the process of coming to this Enlightened Age is organized religion. However, Kant is far from telling us that we need to break the shackles of organized religion, or of political bondage for that matter. It's for that reason that a commentator like Susan Neiman has argued that we should read the entire text as an address to King Frederick. Which seems obvious when you think about Kant's rather flattering statement that the age of Enlightenment is the Age of Frederick, or when he states that an enlightened ruler would say: argue as much as you will, but obey. Political dominance stays in place. It is interesting to compare this to the position of Karl Marx, who also positioned his thinking by tracing its origin in the Enlightenment. Here we find a connection between the Enlightenment and the end to political domination that is completely missing in the Kantian version of the Enlightenment, but might have been a part of what Kant called the Enlightened Age. Alex Callinicos stated the relationship like this: "As at once heir and critic of the Enlightenment, Marx sought to expose the social limits of its aspiration to universal emancipation through the power of reason by tracing the material roots of its ideals to what he called the “hidden abode” of production. At the same time, he radicalized these ideals into the ethical and political drive to rid the world of all forms of exploitation and oppression—what as a young man he proclaimed to be “the categorical imperative to overthrow all conditions in which man is a debased, enslaved, neglected and contemptible being.” So Callinicos is telling us here that according to Marx the Enlightenment had inner limitations precisely in the area of social and political structures. The material basis of society was forgotten in the notion of liberation through the free use of reason. Precisely this forgetfulness however also limited the aspirations of the Enlightenment to liberation. Social and economic oppression was not seen as a problem. One of the fundamental paradoxes however of the Enlightenment was this production of new rational ways of producing goods, that actually strengthened this oppression. The great danger to social freedom actually was the realized Enlightenment in the area of economic production, underneath the banner of total liberty. He cleverly introduces a distinction between two ways of using reason in order to avoid the conclusion that the Enlightenment can be identified with political or religious revolution. So how does this Kantian distinction work and how does it avoid revolution? In the preliminary stage of the Enlightenment, Kant tells us, one must make a distinction between the private and the public use of reason. Clergy e.g. have to obey their Churches that hired them and teach in accordance with dogma and established doctrine. The same goes especially for public officials. There the motto really is: "Argue all you want, but obey!" The private use of reason is restricted by the necessities of public life. A soldier cannot question his orders any more than a cleric or an appointed official. However, all of these restrictions come to bear in the area of the private use of reason. As scholars, as participants in the learned community, these same clergy should have the right to examine and criticize the established doctrine without hindrance. That means that Kant does not advocate the idea of the public debate that we have identified as the hallmark of a free society. The public use of reason does not imply any kind of public space where all arguments are heard, it's not the general public that is debating the issues, but the learned, the scholars among themselves. It is not about what we would call the "public debate." Yet Kant calls this use of reason public, not just because its results are published and accessible to everyone, but particularly in the sense that it is for the good of the public, of the whole of society that such a free debate takes place. Still, there is a political function for this debate which Kant hints at. When we must struggle against "the external obstacles of governments that misunderstand their own function" (p. 22-23) there is even greater need for freedom of expression. One might think here of a public debate among scholars - professors of law, religion and philosophy - that would lead to changes in government policy. All of that would define the public use of reason, which is a scholarly debate among equals and not a confrontation of opinions and ideas by the general public. So, in conclusion, we find that to Kant the Enlightenment is a period of liberation, of the acquisition of a new freedom of thought and expression, that would be the preparation for a truly Enlightened Age. Especially it is an age in which people learn to question the imposed traditions of institutional religion, the dogma's and moral teachings of the Church. What is needed is an atmosphere in which the public uses of reason is encouraged and permitted by the State. Kant's critical philosophy can now be seen as the execution of the program of this self-liberation. The three main works of Kant both presuppose and ground the notion of Enlightenment. Though paradoxically at first sight, it is only through a process of critique, i.e. by establishing the limits of reason, that reason can be free. The Critique of Pure Reason (1781) is an examination of the limitations of human reason in order to establish the kind of science and metaphysics that is still possible. The Critique of Practical Reason (1784) is an examination of the formal structure and presuppositions of everyday moral judgments, as they are determined by the consistency of reason with itself. And finally in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (1790) the harmony between our sensuous faculties and reason is examined as it expresses itself in judgments about beauty and finality. In all three Critiques the unity and coherence of Reason with itself seems to be the goal of the exploration of human knowledge - in short, the autonomy of human reason is expressed in all three areas of human knowledge. So we turn first to the general ideas of the Critique of Pure Reason. A fair and balanced account of what human reason is capable of, Kant argues, must avoid the unfounded optimism of the kind of rationalism that was in vogue in Germany (the system of Leibniz and Christian Wolff). Rationalism did not accept that our conceptual understanding of the world has no true referent, because it simply consists of so-called analytic propositions. An analytic proposition however only clarifies our knowledge, but does not enhance it. Human knowledge always has to start with experience. Nevertheless, the emphasis on experience alone is overly pessimistic about human knowledge, as Kant found particularly in the philosophy of David Hume. Although it is true that all our knowledge must start with experience of some sort, it does not follow that knowledge only comes from experience. Experience is a necessary condition of knowledge, but not the sufficient condition. It needs the concept as well. So the question must be posed how human reason combines concepts and experience to arrive at knowledge. Kant deduces this necessity primarily from the phenomenon of the so-called synthetic judgments a priori. What does he mean by that? Synthetic means that we have real knowledge expressed in these statements, e.g. the statement "lead balls are heavy." There is nothing in the predicate "heavy" that is already contained in the concept of a lead ball. That means that the statement is not analytical. We need experience to know that lead balls are heavy. The judgment then follows the experience and is therefore "after the fact" or in Latin: a posteriori. All analytical judgments on the contrary are a priori in this approach, e.g. the statement that a circle is round. But that does not contain knowledge: it is merely an inference from the concept of a circle. If the predicate is contained in the subject we call the judgment a priori and analytical, if it is not, we call it a posteriori (according to its genesis) and synthetic (according to its structure). However, there seems to be a class of (universal and necessary) judgments that is both a priori in the sense that they do not presuppose experience and synthetic in the sense they do seem to presuppose (or at least are valid for) experience. Such synthetic judgments a priori are e.g. "everything that happens has a cause." Kant argues that the concept of a cause is not part of the concept of an event. Experience alone would not be able to legitimize this statement. No matter how many events we observe, it would never ground the general statement that "everything must have a cause". Experience cannot ground universality or necessity. For that reason David Hume concluded that the judgment of causality was merely probabilistic, based on a generalization of previous experiences and represented a psychological habit. Nevertheless, a statement like this seems to be important for any kind of scientific explanation. The Critique of Pure reason must then be the examination of judgments like this in order to find the mysterious X that provides the solid foundation for reason to make this kind of judgment. On what basis can cause and effect be combined in this universal and necessary connection? We will discuss in some detail the various steps in which Kant searches for this X in later lectures. (Lectures 4 - 7) For now we have to make just one remark. By finding the limit of the use of reason - which can be condensed into this statement: reason is limited by the general conditions of all possible experience - the road is open for a new field of understanding. The Critique of Pure Reason is in a way the necessary preparation for the real metaphysics, which is the speculative knowledge of that what is possible by real freedom. The real motivation of reason is not to arrive at a theoretical understanding of the major metaphysical ideas of God, immortality and freedom, but to approach them as objects of faith. I.e. to understand them as necessary conditions of moral living. The Critique of Pure Reason merely clarifies what had been confused before. In traditional metaphysics, reason went beyond its inner limits by moving into a realm beyond any experience. By accepting the limits of theoretical understanding of the world, we can now see more clearly how it is practical reason that shapes human morality and politics. As long as we tried to establish the precepts of morality on the basis of theoretical reason, they could never be secure. Theoretical reason is bound by the limits and conditions of possible experience. Freedom however is the potential to establish something in reality that was never there before. Freedom belongs to the realm of the purely intelligible, not the world of experience. Only because we limit theoretical reason therefore are we able to establish practical reason. We will talk about Practical Reason in detail in lectures 8 -12. What concerns me now for the moment is the connection there is between the Critique of Practical Reason and the Critique of Pure Reason. One of the major concepts of the Enlightenment is the idea of the autonomy of human reason. The immaturity that mankind has to escape from is defined as the lack of courage or the laziness that prompts us not to use our own mind, but to rely on the authority or tradition of others. Now, we have seen that reason as theoretical reason is autonomous in the sense that the major rule of its proper application is given by the self-imposed limitation to accept the conditions of possible experience. Theoretical reason is autonomous in so far as it accepts this limit but within it, it can achieve an adequate theoretical understanding of the world. Only when it reaches beyond these conditions of possible experience, will it run into inconsistencies and unfounded claims. Whenever we consider what should be done, i.e. when we engage in moral reasoning, we exercise the faculty of what Kant calls "transcendental freedom". Now this seems to lead to a paradox: if we exercise freedom, how is it possible that we have to deal with moral rules and restraints? Kant's argument here is analogous to the argument that he gave in the Critique of Pure Reason. If the exercise of theoretical reason is itself bound by certain structures, summarized as the "conditions of possible experience" then this might also be the case when discuss practical or moral reason. The human will or volition is determined by certain principles that function like imperatives. There are demands imposed upon our will. Again Kant tries to establish that these principles cannot be given by authority but only by the exercise of our human reason. If moral reasoning itself is only possible because of these principles, then it is established that their application must lead to the determination of what is good. Now in order to show that Kant introduces a distinction between two kinds of imperatives. On the one hand we have hypothetical imperatives that express a condition that needs to be met whenever we try to effect a change in the world. If we want to achieve certain goals, we need to act in a definite manner. For example, when we want to construct a bridge, we would need beams of a certain length and we would need to know how to put them together in a certain way. From the way our moral reasoning normally operates, Kant deduces that the imperatives of morality do not function in the same manner. We normally would not say that we need to fulfill our promises in order to achieve a certain goal. We would be more likely to say that we fulfill our promises because a promise always needs to be fulfilled. We would maybe speak of our duty to stick to our given word. That leads us then to a second class of imperatives, that Kant calls "categorical". There are no "ifs" in a categorical imperative, since we are supposed to obey them under whatever circumstances. The idea that keeping a promise e.g. would be conditioned by some goal we set ourselves, would lead us into a contradiction. The meaning if a promise certainly is inherently unconditional. The act that I promised can however be in contradiction with a given goal that I set myself. Would that change anything? Kant argues that it does not. Reason would be self-contradictory if we on the one hand accept a promise as an unconditional, categorical statement, and on the other would think that we should only act accordingly if that is a condition of our achieving certain goals. If we accept this contradiction, all promises would become meaningless. The reasonable principle that grounds all my moral decisions would therefore have to be something like the respect for the law. Only a being endowed with reason would be able to feel such a respect. Duty is actually defined as the necessity of an act based on respect for the (moral) law. The major principle and criterion of all moral reasoning that leads to moral action should therefore be, that the subjective principle of my individual actions (which Kant calls a maxime) should be able to function as a law. That is the first of three ways of formulating the principle. (1) The personal guideline for my actions should be such that a reasonable person can think of it as a general law. One might think of this general rule - the categorical imperative - as the practical counterpart of the rule that all exercise of theoretical reason stands under the condition of the possibility of experience. When I consider breaking a promise, I might reflect on this possibility of making the personal guideline or maxim of that action a universal law. What if all people would break their promises? Well, then of course, promising would be a meaningless act. My reason would be in contradiction with itself. It would lead to an assessment of the need to break a promise and it would lead to the evaluation that promises should be kept under all circumstances. It does not follow from this necessarily that I would not be able to break my promise, but I would never be able to do that without a bad conscience. Here and there Kant suggests that if we know how to behave, we will be able to do so as well - a modern version of what is called Socratic determinism. Understanding a moral rule implies obeying it. But he gives no further argument for that statement. There are other versions of this categorical imperative to be found, such as (2) the principle that one should act in such a way that other reasonable persons are treated as goals and not as means to an end. Or (3) the idea that the reasonable will of every person is legislative, i.e. that the free will of humans is expressed in the universality of moral law, and never in the contingent space of desires and the aspiration for happiness. Whenever we act on the basis of our egotistical interests, our will is not free and autonomous, because it is determined by our bodily cravings. The reasonable will then serve just the purpose of achieving satisfaction of various kinds. In all three versions of the basic moral law - categorical imperative, respect for persons, free will as autonomy - the identity of practical reason, its coherence with itself, seems to provide the basic structure of the argument. We come now to the third Critique, after this all too brief exposition of Kant's basic argument in the Critique of Practical Reason. We will discuss Kant's aesthetics in more detail in lectures 13 and 14 in this series. We have moved on now from the domain of theoretical propositions through the domain of moral reasoning to a third dimension of human life. We can refer to that domain in short hand by saying that we will now be dealing with feelings or judgments of taste. We are talking about, of course, the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (Urteils-kraft). In the first part of this work Kant deals with aesthetic judgments in a proper sense, judgments about beauty in nature and art. Purely sensuous enjoyment of objects of nature and works of art are a matter of taste and predilection alone. In that sense we cannot argue about matters of taste. But our judgments about beauty are not simply like that. In principle they are objective or at least in some sense they claim to be. When I say that I find something beautiful I do not simply mean that I happen to like it, as if it were a completely contingent and inexplicable statement of fact. Most often I will say that something "is" beautiful as if beauty was some objective reality that I can treat like facts. Kant then raises the question how such objective statements about beauty are possible. What Kant had to defend is the thesis that an act of aesthetic appreciation does not have the kind of validity as a judgment in theoretical reason, but nevertheless still is a judgment. We cannot say like we do in theoretical reasoning that the concepts we use to determine beauty stand under the general condition of experience. If that was the cases, the concept of beauty would be analogous to, say, the concept of causality or substance. There seems to be a gap however between the feelings of the enjoyment of beauty on the one hand and the concepts with which I express those feelings in a judgment. There is no congruity between sensuous experience and concepts here, because the concepts do not express the universal conditions of experience, like they do in theoretical reason. On the other hand, when we drop the concepts altogether, we are simply left with these feelings as they occur and we have no aesthetic judgment - just an expression of personal taste. Again, Kant answers the question by analysis of the autonomous way by which human reason comes to form aesthetic judgments. What goes on when we pass an aesthetic judgment? Here Kant introduces the concept of disinterestedness. The object of such a judgment is taken as something particular and seen as just by itself, under abstraction of all other interests the observer might have. This in itself gives rise to certain regularities in my judgment that other people can relate to. Without the intrusion of some private interest, I can relate to the way a particular object is seen. Some ,kind of universal faculty of appreciation comes into play. Other people may never share the experience of the thing as such, but they can understand how I see a particular thing. The faculty of producing images - which was also apart of theoretical reason, but severely limited in that context - is now supposed to be free. In theoretical reason I want to state that something is this or that: it's about facts. But in aesthetics, I take something to be (like) this or that. In an aesthetic judgment I express a particular relationship between a particular object and my feelings or sensuous experience. I express the object as something that is coherent with my feelings of enjoyment. Kant expresses very much the same idea with reference to the finality of a thing. We can see that some things are called beautiful or pleasing because of the relationship they have with their goal. So we can say that a particular building is beautiful - we might rather call it efficient or well-constructed - because it is suited to its goal or use. The same goes for objects in nature, when we consider the construction of a bird's wing for example. Apart from beauty in this sense, which is connected to purpose, there is something called "free beauty." Kant mentions the beauty of flowers as such a free beauty, because the colors of flowers according to Kant serve no purpose - which of course may be true in a human context but certainly not if seen from an evolutionary standpoint. Kant however accepted that such "free" beauty is only possible - and meaningful - to beings such as we are, that can ascribe such purpose without goal to things in experience. Ultimately, the ground for aesthetic judgments lies in the inner harmony between human reason and its sensuous faculties. To call something a thing of beauty presupposes finality without goals, and expresses this harmony of reason with other faculties. With this third Critique the principle of the Critique of Reason - the self-critique of Reason - comes to an end so it seems. The project of the Enlightenment is the attempt to transform human life by expressing the autonomy of human reason in knowledge, moral praxis and aesthetic appreciation. Science, morality and art must be freed from the restraints of authoritarian metaphysics, revealed morality as well as the pure subjectivism of taste. It is the end of the dogmatism in religion as well as metaphysics. It changes radically our perspective of how we know anything about the world around us. Only by limiting ourselves to what humans can know within the context of experience, can we know with certainty. The ultimate and most discussed expression of this self-limitation is undoubtedly Kant's distinction between reality as it appears to a human being (appearance; Erscheinung) and the Thing-in-itself or noumenal world, that is the aim of metaphysics. Kant limits theoretical reason to an understanding of appearances, but understands a human being to be also an inhabitant of the noumenal world. Despite the many problems that this Kantian solution raises, and despite the major criticism directed at it by later thinkers, it is still a wonderfully constructed philosophical edifice. We must come to some sort of conclusion at this moment and I will try do so by stressing just this one point. Only through a careful examination of the limits of reason, can reason be free. Reason ought to be expressed as autonomous, as freedom itself. This longing for autonomy is a defining trait of German Idealism. It was taken up by Fichte and his doctrine of the Infinite Ego, by Schelling in his work on the life of the Absolute and by Hegel in his entire work, when he identified Spirit with Freedom. Next time we will see how Hegel saw the new era and after that we will plunge into the major works of Kant. R.A. Veen © 2010 http://www.istendency.net/pdf/CallinicosHolocaust.pdf The Philosophy of German Idealism 1/26 - Robbert A. Veen 1