New Elucidation

New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Cognition (Principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio) is the second of Kant s academic dissertations. New Elucidation (1:385-416 [1755]/CETP70:1-45) was submitted to Albertina University at Königsberg after On Fire (RF, 1:369-384 [1755]/CENS:309- , which is a Master s thesis Magisterarbeit), and before Physical Monadology (PM 1:473-487 [1756]/CETP70:46-66), which is a professorial dissertation (Habilitationsschrift). Kant completed New Elucidation (NE) in summer 1755 and defended it in September. It earned him the doctoral degree and the right to teach (venia legendi) as a university instructor (Privatdozent). In the same year NE was published with Hartung in Königsberg. It was not reprinted during Kant s lifetime. NE is concerned with ontology, although its title suggests a focus on epistemology. Kant states that the purpose of his undertaking is to throw some light on the first principles of our cognition principles of all truths prop. , . / CETP70:5). These principles he also calls the . / CETP70:7). However, NE proceeds neither from a modern analytic reduction of principles of truth to logical laws of thought, nor from the Copernican Turn of Kant s own later transcendental idealism cf. CPR B xvi-xvii 3:11-12 [1787]/CECPR 110). Unlike the pure concepts of the understanding in CPR, the principles of truth in NE do not play constitutive epistemic roles. Rather, they are heuristic devices for revealing properties of and relations among substances (1:416/CETP70:1-45). In NE, Kant proceeds from the assumption of naive realism or ontological realism. The principles of metaphysical cognition function as epistemic mirrors of mind-independent objects and disclose the objective structure of reality, making them tantamount to principles of being. Traditional metaphysics (the ontologies proposed by members of the LeibnizWolffian School) assumes a small set of such principles and, despite some variations, agrees on privileging two of them: the principle of contradiction as the first ontological axiom, and the principle of sufficient reason as the second axiom (e.g. C. Wolff, German Metaphysics [1719]; G. B. Bilfinger, Dilucidationes philosophicae [1725]; A. Baumgarten, Metaphysica [1729]; C. Wolff, Ontologia [1730]; J. C. Gottsched, Weltweisheit [1733-34], J. P. Reusch, Systema metaphysicum [1735]; F. C. Baumeister, Philosophia definitiva [1738]; G. Canz, Philosophia fundamentalis [1744]; A. Böhm, Metaphysica [1755]). Kant takes issue with the Leibniz-Wolffian consensus. In section I of NE, he argues that, there is no unique, absolutely first, universal principle prop. 1:388/CETP70:6), for if a proposition were simple, it would have to be either affirmative or negative. Yet neither an affirmative nor a negative proposition can be subsumed under the other (ibid.). Thus there must be two principles instead, positive identity whatever is, is and negative identity whatever is not, is not prop. 2; 1:389.3-6/CETP70:7). Reality is structured by two first axioms principia absolute prima, bina sunt . , and their propositional umbrella is contradiction. In this sense—and only in this sense—is contradiction the absolutely supreme principle (prop. 3; 1:390.33/CETP70:9). Although Kant defers to the consensus that puts contradiction first, he does so with the caveat of there really being no first . Reality is complex, and its first cognitive principle is a derivative synthesis of affirmation and negation. In section II, Kant examines the second ontological axiom, the law of causation. Christian August Crusius (1715-1775) had criticized Wolff in De usu et limitibus principii rationis determinantis, vulgo sufficientis [1750] on having failed to separate metaphysical (ontological) and cognitive (logical or epistemic) aspects of causation. Kant follows Crusius in differentiating the ground of being from the ground of knowing. The former is the determining ground of why something comes into existence, and the latter is the reason for understanding why an event occurs (prop. 4, 1:392/CETP70:11). Proceeding from the Pietistic critique of the School Philosophy, Kant discards the label of sufficient reason and calls the law of causation the principle of determining reason. Determining reason governs natural processes in the guise of efficient causation. Anything that exists is caused by something else, and nothing that exists has the ground of being in itself (prop 6, 1:394/CETP70:14). This also applies to God. Contradicting Wolff s claim that God is above the causal structure of reality by having the ground of existence in Himself (cf. Philosophia prima sive Ontologia [1730] §309), Kant suggests that God should rather be defined as the ”eing, the existence of which is prior to the very possibility both of itself and of all things prop. , 1:395/CETP70:15). God is the absolutely necessary principle of all possibility and also the only being in which existence is prior to, or ... identical with possibility (1:395-396/CETP70:16-17). Traditionally (cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics 9.1-3), possibility is thought to precede existence and necessity. But in his ontological argument in prop. 7, Kant reverses this sequence and claims that necessity is prior to existence, and existence prior to possibility, an argument he will develop at length in OPA [1763] (2:79-83/CETP70:124-128). Since the principle of determining reason implies that nothing that exists can be without a ground which determines its existence antecedently prop. . - 9/CETP70:17), this raises the question of freedom. Freedom has the structure of spontaneous causation: a free action is the effect of a single, complete cause, and this cause is not caused by something else. So the intention or inclination of the will, which grounds free action, must be unconstrained. Instead of being determined by an open-ended chain of antecedent causes, the spontaneity of free action issues from an inner principle, the inclination (prop. 9, 1:402.12/CETP70:25). But how can freedom, governed by spontaneous causation, occur in a world determined by chains of efficient causation? Efficient causation has the structure that each cause is the effect of a prior cause. Nothing comes out of nowhere; anything that exists is merely the most recent link of a chain. Kant addresses this difficulty in a dialogue (1:401.19-405.11/CETP70:24-30) between a proponent of determinism, Caius, and a defender of freedom, Titius. Kant/Titius suggests that the chain of efficient causes supplies motives (motiva) for intentions (1:403.14/CETP70:27), but the will is not compelled to act on them, for we are eminently able to either focus our attention on them, or to suspend our attention, or to turn it in another direction (1:403.14-15/ibid.). There is a gap between the last link in the efficient chain, the motive, and the first link of spontaneous causation, the inclination. This allows the will to pivot. The will can turn to motives of its choice. This power rests on the inner principle of spontaneity. It lets the will incline to motives that are weaker than others (1:403.19-24/CETP70:27). Free action results from such pivots (1:402.3-13/CETP70:25). By differentiating externally caused motives from spontaneously arising inclinations, Kant seeks to integrate lawful processes in the world with free actions of the mind. Arguably, his compatibilist proposal only shifts the problem to a mind-internal gap between deterministic and free causes, which raises further questions. In CPrR [1788], Kant would dismiss this notion of freedom as no better than that of a turnspit, which when once wound up also carries out its motions of itself (5:97/CEPP:218). Yet despite this later dismissal, the compatibilism of NE represents a metaphysical explanation. The problem of free will may not have a logical solution but can still be elucidated in dynamic terms. Minds exist in the world as monads that are wellsprings of power in interactive networks. Free are those minds that prevail over exterior impacts. Whether a mind is free is a matter of its relative strength in the network. Autonomy is the result of resistance produced by the spontaneous power of self-determination semet ipsa sponte determinandi potestate; 1:404.8/CETP70:28). In section , Kant proposes two further principles, which are derivative of determining reason (1:410.15/CETP70:37) and permit deeper metaphysical cognition (1:416.5-6/CETP70:45). The first of these principles is the principle of succession. It states that no change can happen to substances except in so far as they are connected with other substances prop. . -19/CETP70:37). This axiom of interconnectedness is the schema of physical processes. It accounts for change and time, and serves as the ontological platform for Newton s law of motions. The principle of succession in NE foreshadows Kant s later project in MNS [ 786]. The second of these derivative causal laws is the principle of coexistence. It states that finite substances do not, in virtue of their existence alone, stand in a relationship with each other, nor are they linked together by any interaction at all, except in so far as the common principle of their existence, namely the divine understanding, maintains them in a state of harmony in their reciprocal relations (prop. 13; 1:412.36-413.2/CETP70:40). Coexistence complements succession. Interaction, while essential for change, is not essential for the existence of substances. The result is an integrative proposal. With the binary basis of contradiction developed in section 1, and the compatibilist proposal in section 2, NE supplies the ontological framework to the evolutionary philosophy of nature developed in TE [1749] and UNH [1755]. In TE (§1-10), Kant contends that nature stems from an energetic state whose forces are twofold, and in UNH (II.2 and II.7), he suggests that the interplay of attractive and repulsive forces creates a world of matter and minds. With the derivative principles of succession and coexistence formulated in section 3, Kant hopes to arrive at a conciliatory conclusion that combines aspects of the theory of physical influx—advocated by early modern Neo-Aristotelians and more recently by Leonard Euler (1707-1783) in Gedanken von den Elementen der Körper [1746] to account for action at a distance in Newtonian mechanics—with aspects of the theory of pre-established harmony advocated by Leibniz and his students. (1500 words) Martin Schönfeld