In the Transcendental Deduction in the Critique of Pure Reason Kant attempts to show that 12 'pure concepts of the understanding' or categories must characterise any possible object of experience.
His essential argument goes something like this: (1) In order to combine a manifold of representations into an experience of an object I must first be able to think of all of those representations as mine, as belonging to one and the same 'I'. (2) Therefore the concepts that I use to combine a manifold of representations into an experience of an object must somehow be intrinsic to the act in which I think of all my representations as mine. (3) But the concepts I use to combine a manifold of representations into an experience of an object must be the same as the concepts that are implicit in the 12 'forms of judgment' that I use to combine several concepts into a judgement (or proposition), since I use the same faculty, namely the understanding, for both kinds of combination. (4) So these 12 concepts must be intrinsic to the act in which I think of all my representations as mine. (5) So I must use these same 12 concepts to combine any manifold of representations into an experience of an object.
The point of the Deduction seems to be not so much to show that the 12 concepts that Kant finds implicit in the forms of judgment (namely substance, cause etc.) must characterise any possible object of experience of a being that uses these 12 forms of judgment, but to show that both these concepts and these forms of judgement are grounded in the very act through which any subject thinks of its representations as all belonging to it.
Furthermore this act is for Kant the only way in which I ever become self-conscious. My self is not an object of which I can become conscious like other objects. I can only become conscious of it as 'that which has all these representations'. Kant adds that I can only think of a number of representations as belonging to the same self in this way through being conscious of an act in which I synthesise (or combine) these representations with each other.
To introduce Kant's own terminology: to apperceive a representation is roughly to see it as mine, or to say to myself of it 'I am having this representation' or 'I am thinking this' (thus Kant refers to the act of apperception as 'the I think'). The analytic unity of apperception is the unity or united character that a number of my representations have through my seeing them as all belonging to one and the same I. The synthetic unity of apperception (or original-synthetic unity of apperception) is the unity that they have through my being conscious of an act of synthesising or combining them with each other, which is a necessary condition of the analytic unity of apperception. Kant uses the phrase transcendental unity of apperception, to indicate that the unity in question is a condition of the possibility of the experience of objects, following his own definition of 'transcendental', but when he uses the phrase it is not always clear whether he has the analytic or the synthetic unity of apperception in mind, so I will try to avoid this phrase. (All this is in §16 of the Transcendental Deduction, in the Critique of Pure Reason k152-4, g246-7, B131-4)
So for Kant the pure concepts of the understanding (of which all our everyday concepts are specifications or combinations) are grounded in self-consciousness, which in turn is grounded in an original act of synthesis. Here is how he summarises his view:
"[A]n object, however, is that in the concept of which the manifold of a given intuition is united. Now, however, all unification of representations demands unity of consciousness in the synthesis of them. Consequently the unity of consciousness is that which alone constitutes the relation of representations to an object, thus their objective validity and consequently is that which makes them into cognitions and on which therefore even the possibility of the understanding rests." (g249, k156)
"Object aber ist das, in dessen Begriff das Mannigfaltige einer gegebenen Anschauung vereinigt ist. Nun erfordert aber alle Vereinigung der Vorstellungen Einheit des Bewußtseins in der Synthesis derselben. Folglich ist die Einheit des Bewußtseins dasjenige, was allein die Beziehung der Vorstellungen auf einen Gegenstand, mithin ihre objective Gültigkeit, folglich daß sie Erkenntnisse werden, ausmacht, und worauf folglich selbst die Möglichkeit des Verstandes beruht." (B137)
In the Science of Logic Hegel homes in on this deep connection between concepts and self-consciousness in Kant, quoting the above passage. He says:
"It is one of the profoundest and truest insights to be found in the Critique of Pure Reason that the unity which constitutes the essence of the concept is cognized as the original-synthetic unity of apperception, as the unity of the 'I think', or of self-consciousness." (SL 584, §1293)*
"Es gehört zu den tiefsten und richtigsten Einsichten, die sich in der Kritik der Vernunft finden, daß die Einheit, die das Wesen des Begriffs ausmacht, als die ursprünglich-synthetische Einheit der Apperzeption, als Einheit des 'Ich denke' oder des Selbstbewußtseins erkannt wird." (WL 253)
A little earlier he says a bit more about what he thinks Kant has seen: namely that 'I is the pure concept itself':
"The concept, when it has blossomed into such an existence that is itself free, is none other than I or pure self-consciousness. True, I have concepts, that is to say, determinate concepts; but I is the pure concept itself which, as concept, has come into existence." (SL 583, §1291)
"Der Begriff, insofern er zu einer solchen Existenz gediehen ist, welche selbst frei ist, ist nichts anderes als Ich oder das reine Selbstbewußtsein. Ich habe wohl Begriffe, d. h. bestimmte Begriffe; aber Ich ist der reine Begriff selbst, der als Begriff zum Dasein gekommen ist." (WL 252)
However, it seems doubtful whether when Hegel says 'I is the pure concept itself' he means the same thing as Kant might have meant if he had used the same phrase. In this blog I want to explore what Hegel takes up and what he rejects in Kant's account of the self. Specifically, is something akin to the 'original-synthetic unity of apperception' at the heart of Hegel's notion of spirit in the Phenomenology of Spirit? If so how does this fit with Hegel's account of spirit as constituted by mutual recognition between free individuals?
In the next posts I will start by working my way through the B-version of the Transcendental Deduction so as to get a proper grip on Kant's idea of the original-synthetic unity of apperception.
-----* Underlining indicates that I have modified the translation. In this case Miller says ;the nature of the Notion', but 'essence' is the correct translation of Wesen and Begriff in Kant is standardly translated as 'concept' so it makes sense to keep to the same translation.
(Edited: 8 July 2008)
It strikes me that the idea of blossoming freely into existence captures te Kantian notion of spontaneity but by the same token appears to exclude the notion that the I may be dependnet in any antecedent structure (e.g. recognition). K.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this.
ReplyDeleteHegel speaks of the concept blossoming into "such an existence that is itself free", which is certainly reminiscent of Kantian spontaneity. But Hegel has a notoriously obscure conception of freedom so we can't be sure.
As for dependence on an antecedent structure, it looks as if Hegel is saying that the I is dependent on the concept, just as every individual self is a mode of substance in Spinoza. How that is compatible with the I depending on mutual recognition is a good question.
Ok, I can see that it would be missing the point to try to pick holes in Kant’s Transcendental Deduction (it has enough of them as it is), but one thing here seems really important:
ReplyDeleteIt seems that Kant claims the order of processes in the understanding is: apperception then application of concepts, rather than having both simultaneously, or application of concepts prior to apperception. I’m guessing there is a set reason for this, but I’m unclear as to what it is. Three possibilities I have come up with are:
1.) The process of perceiving the representations as mine first unifies the representations in an appropriate way, making them ready to have the concepts applied to them?
2.) It is only valid for the subject(‘s understanding) to apply concepts to representations once it is aware of these representations as belonging to itself?
3.) The 12 concepts themselves (whilst stemming from the 12 forms of judgement) can only exist within the framework of an apperceiving self, i.e. the act of apperception is a necessary condition for the existence of the concepts?
Could any of these be the case?
I hope to get to this question in the next post but one, but I'm inclined to think that (1) is closest. It looks like the reason that Kant gives in §§15-16, when he introduces the unity of apperception.
ReplyDeleteThere is a longer comment on my post here.
ReplyDeleteIn the Transcendental Deduction in the Critique of Pure Reason Kant attempts to show that 12 'pure concepts of the understanding' or categories must characterise any possible object of experience.
ReplyDeleteOf course, this is not what is essential for Hegel in Kant:
[Hegel]
“Taking into account Hume’s criticism …viz. that sensation does not explicitly apprehend more than an individual or more than a mere even, it insists at the same time on the fact that universality and necessity are seen to perform a function equally essential in constituting what is called experience. This element, not being derived from the empirical facts as such, must belong to the spontaneity of thought; in other words, it is a priori. The Categories or Notions of the Understanding constitute the objectivity of experiential cognitions. In every case they involve a connective reference, and hence through their means are formed synthetic judgements a priori, that is, primary and underivative connections of opposites.” (Hegel, EL, trans. Wallace p. 65 para. 40)
So from here we can say that Hegel takes from Kant:
1. “Universality and Necessity” belong to the “spontaneity of thought”
2. The Categories or Notions of the Understanding constitute the “objectivity” or experiential cognition.
3. These Categories involve synthetic judgements a priori (underivative connection of opposites).
[Hegel]
“The specific ground of the categories is declared by the Critical system to lie in the primary identity of the ‘I’ in thought—what Kant calls the ‘transcendental unity of self-consciousness’. The impressions from feeling and perception are, if we look to their contents , a multiplicity or miscellany of elements: and the multiplicity is equally conspicuous in their form. For sense is marked by a mutual exclusion of members; and that under two aspects, namely space and time, which , being the forms, that is to say, the universal type of perception, are themselves perception, must however be reduced to an identity or primary synthesis. To accomplish this the ‘I’ brings it in relation to itself and unites it there in one consciousness which Kant calls ‘pure apperception’. The specific modes in which the Ego refers to itself the multiplicity of sense are the pure concepts of the understanding, the Categories.
Kant, it is well known, did not put himself to much trouble in discovering the categories. ‘I’, the unity of self-consciousness, being quite abstract and completely indeterminate, the question arises, how are we to get at the specialized forms of the ‘I’, the categories? Fortunately, the common logic offers to our hand an empirical classification of the kinds of judgements. Now, to judge is the same as to think of a determinate object. Hence the various modes of judgement, as enumerated to our hand, provide us with the several categories of thought. To the philosophy of Fichte belongs the great merit of having called attention to the need of exhibiting the necessity of these categories and giving genuine deduction of them.” (Hegel, EL trans. Wallace p. 68-69 para. 42)
So here clear as a bell we have:
1. The ground of the categories is the primary identity of the ‘I’ (i.e. “Pure apperception), which is nothing other than a pure self-relation.
2. Hegel feels that Kant did not trouble himself with discovering the categories, and so he doesn’t find Kant’s categories useful.
3. However, Hegel would like go from the “indeterminacy” of the “unity of self-consciousness” to exhibiting the determinacy of the categories.
But Hegel felt that Kant resorted to an illegitimate empirical method to discover the categories.
His essential argument goes something like this: (1) In order to combine a manifold of representations into an experience of an object I must first be able to think of all of those representations as mine, as belonging to one and the same 'I'.
Yes Hegel agrees. This is directly related to the fact all representations are necessarily a result of a logical self-relation of the ‘I’. The ‘I’ is necessarily in a logical self-relation to the rules in which it applies to the multiplicity or miscellany of sensory elements in which it unifies this multiplicity into a representation.
(2) Therefore the concepts that I use to combine a manifold of representations into an experience of an object must somehow be intrinsic to the act in which I think of all my representations as mine.
Yes Hegel agrees. For the same reason.
(3) But the concepts I use to combine a manifold of representations into an experience of an object must be the same as the concepts that are implicit in the 12 'forms of judgment' that I use to combine several concepts into a judgement (or proposition), since I use the same faculty, namely the understanding, for both kinds of combination.
No. Hegel rejects Kant’s 12 forms of judgement. But we do know that Hegel thinks that the categories provide the “objective determinations”:
[Hegel]
“An object, says Kant, is that in the notion of which the manifold of a given intuition is unified. But all unifying of representations demands a unity of consciousness which alone constitutes the connection of the representations with the object and therewith their objective validity and on which rests even the possibility of the understanding….the principles of the objective determination of the notions are, he says, to be derived solely from the principle of the transcendental unity of apperception. Through the categories which are these objective determinations, the manifold of given representations is so determined as to be brought into the unity of consciousness. According to this exposition, the unity of the notion is that whereby something is not a mere mode of feeling, an intuition, or even a mere representation, but is an object, and this objective unity is the unity of the ego with itself.” (Hegel, SL, trans. Miller 584)
1.Hegel here calls this form of the self-relation here the “notion”, and then repeats the necessity of a “unity of consciousness” and then he calls this unity of consciousness “the transcendental unity of apperception”.
2.This pure “unity of consciousness” in-itself is nothing but a pure universality, Hegel says that the categories are the objective determinations
(4) So these 12 concepts must be intrinsic to the act in which I think of all my representations as mine. (5) So I must use these same 12 concepts to combine any manifold of representations into an experience of an object.
This is not important to Hegel. He wants to deduce the categories from the indeterminacy of the pure self-relation.
The point of the Deduction seems to be not so much to show that the 12 concepts that Kant finds implicit in the forms of judgment (namely substance, cause etc.) must characterise any possible object of experience of a being that uses these 12 forms of judgment, but to show that both these concepts and these forms of judgement are grounded in the very act through which any subject thinks of its representations as all belonging to it.
Yes this is correct. At least for Hegel.
Furthermore this act is for Kant the only way in which I ever become self-conscious. My self is not an object of which I can become conscious like other objects.
Or this act is pure self-consciousness. Hegel confirms the bit about the “self” not being a regular old object in which I can become conscious like other objects here:
[Hegel]
“When one speaks in the ordinary way of the understanding possessed by the ‘I’ , one understands thereby a faculty or property which stands in the same relation to the ‘I’ as the property of a thing does to the thing itself, that is, to an indeterminate substrate that is not the genuine ground and the determinate of its property. According to this conception I possess notions and the Notion, just as I possess a coat, complexion, and other external properties. Now Kant went beyond this external relation of the understanding, as the faculty of notions and of the Notion itself, to the I. It is one of the profoundest and truest insights to be found in the Critique of Pure Reason that the unity which constitutes the nature of the Notion is recognized as the original synthetic unity of apperception, as the unity of the ‘I think’, or of self-consciousness.” (Hegel, SL, trans. Miller p. 584)
I can only become conscious of it as 'that which has all these representations'. Kant adds that I can only think of a number of representations as belonging to the same self in this way through being conscious of an act in which I synthesise (or combine) these representations with each other.
I am not so sure how useful the above terminology is, but I will just add that by self-consciousness, Kant is talking about a logical self-relation (i.e. a self-consciousness that is a necessary condition of experience. But in terms of “representations belonging to the same self” Hegel offers:
[Hegel]
“In an awkward expression which Kant used, he said that I accompany all my conceptions—sensations, too, desires, actions, etc. ‘I’ is in essence and act the universal: and such partnership is a form, though an external form, of universality. All other men have it in common with me to be ‘I’; just as it is common to all my sensations to be mine. But ‘I’ , in the abstract, as such, is the mere act of self-concentration or self-relation, in which we make abstraction from all conception and feeling, from every state of mind and every peculiarity of nature, talent, and experience. To this extent, ‘I’ is the existence of a wholly abstract universality, a principle of abstract freedom.” (Hegel, EL trans. Wallace p. 31 para. 20)
To introduce Kant's own terminology: to apperceive a representation is roughly to see it as mine, or to say to myself of it 'I am having this representation' or 'I am thinking this' (thus Kant refers to the act of apperception as 'the I think').
More than this “to apperceive “ is a transcendentally prior act. It is prior, because it is a necessary condition of representations. And the most original act is a “pure self-relation”
The analytic unity of apperception is the unity or united character that a number of my representations have through my seeing them as all belonging to one and the same I. The synthetic unity of apperception (or original-synthetic unity of apperception) is the unity that they have through my being conscious of an act of synthesising or combining them with each other, which is a necessary condition of the analytic unity of apperception.
No. It is not possible to understand “synthesis” in this way. You need to re-think the difference between analytic and synthetic. I can provide you with an explanation . But not now.
Kant uses the phrase transcendental unity of apperception, to indicate that the unity in question is a condition of the possibility of the experience of objects, following his own definition of 'transcendental', but when he uses the phrase it is not always clear whether he has the analytic or the synthetic unity of apperception in mind, so I will try to avoid this phrase. (All this is in §16 of the Transcendental Deduction, in the Critique of Pure Reason k152-4, g246-7, B131-4)
It is an original synthetic act. I can also demonstrate this.
So for Kant the pure concepts of the understanding (of which all our everyday concepts are specifications or combinations) are grounded in self-consciousness, which in turn is grounded in an original act of synthesis.
The original act of synthesis is a pure self-consciousness (or a logical self-relation).
In the Science of Logic Hegel homes in on this deep connection between concepts and self-consciousness in Kant, quoting the above passage. He says:
[Hegel]
"It is one of the profoundest and truest insights to be found in the Critique of Pure Reason that the unity which constitutes the essence of the concept is cognized as the original-synthetic unity of apperception, as the unity of the 'I think', or of self-consciousness." (SL 584, §1293)*
This is right.
A little earlier he says a bit more about what he thinks Kant has seen: namely that the 'I’ is the pure concept itself':
"The concept, when it has blossomed into such an existence that is itself free, is none other than I or pure self-consciousness. True, I have concepts, that is to say, determinate concepts; but I is the pure concept itself which, as concept, has come into existence." (SL 583, §1291)
I don’t like your translation. You use “The concept” instead “The Notion” . The Notion is already a very specialized terminology for Hegel. For example in the Introduction to the SL Hegel writes:
[Hegel]
“the Notion, simply as thought, as a universal, is the immeasurable abbreviation of the multitudes of particular things which are vaguely present to intuition and pictorial thought; but also a Notion is, first in its own self the Notion, and this is only one and is the substantial foundation; secondly, a Notion is determinate and it is this determinateness of the Notion is a specific form of this substantial oneness, a moment of the form as totality, of that same Notion which is the foundation of the specific Notions. This Notion is not sensuously intuited or represented; it is solely an object of thought, a product and content of thinking, and is the absolute self-subsistent object, the logos, the reason of that which is, the truth of what we call things;” (Hegel, SL, trans. Miller p. 39)
So let’s go back to the original translation here:
[Hegel]
“THE NOTION, when it has developed into a concrete existence that is itself free, IS NONE OTHER THAN THE ‘I’ OR PURE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. True, I have notions, that is to say, determinate notions; but the ‘I’ is the pure Notion itself which, as Notion, has come into existence. When, therefore, reference is to the fundamental determinations which constitute the nature of ‘I’, we may presuppose that the reference is to something familiar, that is, a commonplace of our ordinary thinking. But THE ‘I’ IS, FIRST, THIS PURE SELF-RELATED UNITY, and it is so not immediately but only as making abstraction form all determinateness and content and withdrawing into the freedom of unrestricted equality with itself. AS SUCH IT IS UNIVERSALITY; a unity that is unity with itself only through its negative attitude, which appears as a process of abstraction, and that consequently contains all determinedness dissolved in it. SECONDLY, THE ‘I’ AS SELF-RELATED NEGATIVITY IS NO LESS IMMEDIATELY INDIVIDUALITY or is absolutely determined, opposing itself to all that is other and excluding it--individual personality. THIS ABSOLUTE UNIVERSALITY WHICH IS ALSO IMMEDIATELY AN ABSOLUTE INDIVIDUALIZATION, and an absolutely determined being, which is a pure positedness and is this absolutely determined being only through it unity with the positedness, this constitutes the nature of the ‘I’ as well as of the Notion..” (Hegel, SL trans. Miller p. 583)
The ‘I’ is the bridge to “the Notion”. When we enter into the original self-relation that constitutes the ‘I’, we have essentially entered into the Notion (i.e. the pure indeterminacy of a logical self-relation).
This pure self-relation of the ‘I’ is nothing other than an empty universal that must conceive its determinacy from within itself.
However, it seems doubtful whether when Hegel says 'I is the pure concept itself' he means the same thing as Kant might have meant if he had used the same phrase.
He means the same thing, but Hegel simply finishes the idea.
In this blog I want to explore what Hegel takes up and what he rejects in Kant's account of the self.
This is fine.
Specifically, is something akin to the 'original-synthetic unity of apperception' at the heart of Hegel's notion of spirit in the Phenomenology of Spirit?
Yes.
If so how does this fit with Hegel's account of spirit as constituted by mutual recognition between free individuals?
Well, you have to look before. The answer is in the Introduction in Hegel’s discussion of “the criteria”.
(See Hegel, PhG, trans. Miller p. 53, para. 83)
Hi Andy, working backwards!
ReplyDeleteI don't get your reconstruction of Kant's argument.
- Kant keeps saying that it must be possible for the 'I think' to accompany my representations, not that it actually does. Your agreement with Rob's #1 suggests that you think apperception must always occur for cognition to take place.
- the order is the wrong way round: Kant is not arguing (at least in §16) in that in order to experience objects I must apperceive my representations, but that in order to be able to think of my representations as mine they must be synthesized, e.g. as 'an intuition', and such synthesis is objective (B137).
'Therefore it is only because I can combine a manifold of given representations in one consciousness that it is possible for me to represent the identity of the consciousness in these representations itself, i.e., the analytic unity of apperception is only possible under the presupposition of some synthetic one' (B133 / g247) The one synthetic consciousness is not some special act whereby I think of my representations as mine, for that is the analytic unity referred to in the second phrase; rather, it is objective consciousness (cf. B137-138 on drawing a line).