Heidegger's Kantian Idealism.pdf

Inquiry , 47, 321–337

Heidegger’s Kantian Idealism Revisited

William Blattner

Georgetown University

I offer a revised interpretation of Heidegger’s ‘ontological idealism’ – his thesis that

being, but not entities, depends on Dasein – as well as its relationship to Kant’s

transcendental idealism. I build from my earlier efforts on this topic by modifying

them and defending my basic line of interpretation against criticisms advanced by

Cerbone, Philipse, and Carman. In essence, my reading of Heidegger goes like this:

what it means to say that ‘being’ depends on Dasein is that the criteria and standards

that determine what it is to be, and hence whether an item (or anything at all) is, are

conceptually interwoven with, and hence conceptually dependent upon, a structure

that could not obtain without Dasein (namely, time). For this reason, to ask whether

entities (e.g., nature) would exist, even if we (Dasein) did not, is either to ask an

empirical question with an obvious negative answer (viz., According to our best

current theories, does everything depend causally upon us?), or to ask a meaningless

question with no answer (viz., If we suspend or discount the standards and criteria

that determine whether anything is, does anything exist?). In short, Heidegger is an

empirical realist, but neither a transcendental idealist nor realist.

Does nature depend upon our understanding of it? Could nature be, even if we

were not? Whereas Immanuel Kant’s predecessors in the early modern period

answered this question directly, arguing either that nature does depend on us

(Berkeley, idealism) or that it does not (Locke, realism), Kant suggested that

the question itself is ambiguous.

It is, therefore, solely from the human standpoint that we can speak of space, of

extended things, etc. If we depart from the subjective condition under which alone we

can have outer intuition, namely, liability to be affected by objects, the representation

of space stands for nothing whatsoever. This predicate can be ascribed to things only

in so far as they appear to us, that is, only to objects of sensibility. … Our exposition

therefore establishes the reality , that is, the objective validity, of space in respect of

whatever can be presented to us outwardly as object, but also at the same time the

ideality of space in respect of things when they are considered in themselves through

reason, that is, without regard to the constitution of our sensibility. 1

The question can be asked from one of two standpoints, the human , more

often called empirical , standpoint or the transcendental standpoint, and the

very meaning of the question itself depends upon which standpoint one

occupies, when one asks it. Kant characterizes the two standpoints in terms of

whether the ‘subjective constitution of the senses’ is ‘granted’ or ‘removed’. 2

If we ‘grant’ the subjective constitution of the senses, then nature is objective.

DOI 10.1080/00201740410004160

2004 Taylor & Francis

322 William Blattner

But if we ‘remove’ the subjective constitution of our senses, nature

‘vanishes’. From the empirical standpoint, which takes the subjective

constitution of the senses for granted, we can distinguish between

objectivities and illusions, and nature is the very paradigm of an objectivity. 3

From the transcendental standpoint, which ‘removes’ or thinks away the

subjective constitution of the senses, we can distinguish between ‘appear-

ances’ and ‘things in themselves’, and nature here falls into the category of

appearance. Nature is thus empirically real and transcendentally ideal.

Martin Heidegger adopts a prima facie similar position in Being and Time .

Of course, only as long as Dasein is , that is, the ontical possibility of the

understanding of being is, “is there” being. If Dasein does not exist, then

“independence” “is” not either, nor “is” the “in itself.” Such a thing is then neither

understandable nor not understandable. Then also intraworldly entities neither are

discoverable, nor can they lie in hiddenness. Then it can be said neither that entities

are, nor that they are not. Nevertheless, it can now be said – as long as the

understanding of being, and thereby the understanding of occurrentness are – that then

entities will continue to be. 4

To the question whether entities will continue to be, even if we (Dasein) cease

to exist, we may develop two different answers, depending upon whether we

are asking the question ‘now’ or ‘then’. If we ask the question ‘now’, while

we do exist, the answer is that entities will continue to exist. But if we ask the

question ‘then’, when we no longer exist, the question has no answer.

Whereas Kant distinguishes the empirical and transcendental standpoints in

terms of whether the subjective constitution of the senses is granted or

removed, Heidegger distinguishes his ‘now’ and ‘then’ in terms of whether

our understanding of being exists. In both cases the distinction between the

two standpoints is stated in terms of whether a certain set of conditions on

representation or understanding (the subjective constitution of sensibility or

the understanding of being) are granted or removed, acknowledged or

ignored. This is to say that there is a rough analogy between Kant’s two

standpoints and Heidegger’s. 5

Heidegger does not, however, adopt Kant’s transcendental idealism.

Whereas Kant argues that if the subjective constitution of the senses in

general is not granted, then nature cannot exist, Heidegger argues that nature

neither does nor does not exist , if the understanding of being is not granted.

This implies that for Heidegger nature is neither appearance nor thing in

itself, because it neither does nor does not exist in the absence of subjective

conditions. Indeed, Heidegger draws this anti-transcendental-idealist conclu-

sion explicitly in his 1928 lectures on Kant, where he asserts that the very

concept of the thing in itself is bankrupt:

The concept of the thing in itself falls along with the presupposition of an absolute

intuition that produces things in the ﬁrst place, that is, along with the presupposition of

Heidegger’s Kantian Idealism Revisited 323

the conception of being in the sense of being occurrent by having been produced,

which derives from ancient ontology. 6

That is, Heidegger attributes the concept of the thing in itself to residual

elements of pre-Critical metaphysics in Kant’s thinking, elements that should

be expunged in a puriﬁcation of Kant’s remodeling of modern philosophy.

In what follows I want to explore the relationship between Kant’s and

Heidegger’s attitudes toward idealism and realism. In doing so, I will be

restating and modifying somewhat earlier versions of my interpretation of the

relationship. 7 Along the way I will respond to criticisms of my earlier views

advanced by David Cerbone, Herman Philipse, and Taylor Carman. 8

Responding to these criticisms will allow me to clarify and reﬁne my earlier

position.

What are Kant’s two standpoints, the empirical and the transcendental? (For

technical reasons to be developed below, I will henceforth call Kant’s

transcendental standpoint the ‘transempirical’ standpoint.) In order to explain

these standpoints and how they differ, we must ﬁrst explore the notion of

transcendental conditions in terms of which they are framed. Kant’s decisive

insight in The Critique of Pure Reason is that the human power of

representation is governed by a set of a priori conditions. Kant analyzes these

conditions into two sets, conditions governing sensibility (or our capacity to

be affected by objects passively, in sensation and introspection) and

conditions governing conceptualization or the understanding. Sensibility is

governed by space and time, which is to say that we are only able to

experience objects sensibly as spatial and temporal. (Space is a condition on

our power to sense objects as distinct from us, i.e., ‘outwardly’, whereas time

is a condition on our power to sense any objects whatsoever, i.e., both

outwardly and ‘inwardly’.) Understanding is governed by the twelve

categories of the pure understanding, which together make up a conception

of objectivity. 9 Among the twelve categories, tradition has focused most

closely on those of substantiality and causality. According to Kant, any object

must be represented either as a substance (an unchanging substrate of change)

or as a property (a changing state of an unchanging substrate), and all changes

in the ﬁeld of experience must conform to universal laws of necessary change

in time (causal laws). The net result of all these conditions is a conception of

objectivity, according to which objects are causally interacting substances in

space and/or time.

Once we have identiﬁed these conditions on representability, we can ask

whether things, when conceived in accordance with these conditions, depend

on the human mind. The answer is, of course, that mostly they do not. Some

324 William Blattner

states do depend on the mind: psychological states do. But ordinary spatio-

temporal objects do not. Right now, as I look out of the window of my study, I

see a house ﬁnch at my bird feeder. Neither the feeder nor the ﬁnch depends

on me or my mind; in fact, neither depends on the existence of human beings

at all. All human beings could simultaneously cease to exist right now, and

the ﬁnch and the feeder would persist. In order to assert in this way the

independence of the ﬁnch and feeder from my mind, I have to assume a set of

causal facts about the world: although my psychological states are sustained

in existence by the operation of my mind, and therefore depend upon my

mind, neither the ﬁnch nor the feeder are thus sustained. They are causally

independent of me, indeed, of us. We thus see that if we take for granted our

basic conception of objectivity, the world is mostly independent of us.

Kant’s identiﬁcation of these a priori conditions on representability also

opens up the possibility that we can ask how things are, independently of the a

priori conditions. That is, if we do not take our conception of objectivity for

granted, how is it with the world? Kant’s transcendental idealism declares that

if we suspend the conditions on representation, the objects represented in our

ordinary and scientiﬁc understanding of the world cannot exist. That is, these

objects exist, only as long or in so far as the a priori conditions are granted. If

those conditions are ‘removed’ in some way, then the objects are too.

What exactly do we have in mind in talking about ‘suspending’ or

‘removing’ the subjective conditions on representation? We may, for the sake

of simplicity, focus our attention down to a single subjective condition, time.

According to Kant, time is a condition on sensibility that governs both the

‘outer’ intuition of objects experienced as distinct from us and the ‘inner’

intuition of our own states. 10 Time is, thus, a universal condition on

sensibility. Further, the conditions on understanding, the twelve categories,

are all couched in temporal terms: causality is necessary succession in time ,

substantiality is necessary persistence through change . We can, thus, think of

the condition of time as the ‘master’ condition, the most basic condition that

underlies all others. So, we may restate our inquiry thus: What would it mean

for time not to be granted?

Time is ‘granted’, in so far as things are considered as ordered temporally.

Time is ‘removed’, in so far as things are considered as not ordered

temporally. As an analogy, consider a baseball team. A baseball team (in the

abstract) is a system of positions, player roles, that can be occupied by a wide

range of particular people. We can consider these people in so far as they

constitute a baseball team, or we may consider them independently of their

roles on the team. If we imagine the institution of baseball to vanish, then

there would be no ﬁrst basemen, second basemen, etc. There would be no

tokens of any of the types deﬁned in terms of baseball. There would be no

double plays, no extra inning games, and so on. Similarly, since our very

conception of objectivity is spelled out in terms of temporal features of

Heidegger’s Kantian Idealism Revisited 325

objects, if we think away time, there are no temporal sequences, no instances

of endurance or change, no causal sequences, hence no objects. In the absence

of time, objects do not exist.

We have seen so far that time is a condition on the representability of

objects. Absent time, there are no objects. This does not imply, however, that

time is a subjective condition on representability. Why does Kant describe

time as a subjective condition? Kant argues in the Transcendental Aesthetic

that time is a system of relations that exists only in so far as it is represented

by us. Time cannot be ‘a determination or order inhering in things

themselves’, because such objective orders cannot ‘precede the objects as

their condition, and be known and intuited a priori by means of synthetic

propositions’. 11 Kant’s argument is notoriously difﬁcult and almost certainly

unsound. I do not want to wade into it for its own sake. For our purposes

it is sufﬁcient to note that Kant believes he has in his possession an argument

that time can only be a feature of objects that we impose upon experience,

rather than a determination or order that characterizes objects in them-

selves. We represent objects temporally, but they are not in themselves

temporal.

We can, thus, see that our non-existence would ‘suspend’ or ‘remove’ the

conditions on representation. Because time exists only as an order imposed on

objects by us, neither it, nor any determinations deﬁned in terms of it, subsist

when we do not. Therefore, our initial way of distinguishing the empirical and

transempirical standpoints – the empirical standpoint takes the conditions on

representation for granted and asks its questions in terms of those conditions,

whereas the transempirical standpoint removes these conditions – may be

reduced to a simpler formulation: the empirical standpoint takes our existence

for granted, whereas the transempirical asks how things are independently of

whether we exist.

And so we can see how, in one sense, nature does not depend upon the

human mind, while in another sense, it does. If we stipulate the subjective

conditions on representability, thereby granting time, substantiality, and

causality, we can ﬁnd no reason to assert the dependence of nature on the

human mind. Quite the opposite, in fact. But if we suspend the a priori

conditions on representability, we think away time, and therefore objects in

time as well. The result is that from this standpoint, nature does depend on the

human mind. Kant’s way of expressing his conclusion is to say that time and

objects in time are empirically real, yet transcendentally ideal.

III

Heidegger’s innovation, according to me, is to embrace some of the basic

elements of Kant’s analysis, but to reject the transcendental idealism that

Kant thinks his analysis implies. That is, Heidegger accepts the empirical

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