Science and Freedom in Perspective
by Stephen Palmquist (stevepq@hkbu.edu.hk)
For science has a true inner value only as an organ of wisdom. As such, however, it is indispensable, so that one may well maintain that wisdom without science is the shadowy outline of a perfection that we shall never reach.
... Philosophy...closes, as it were, the scientific circle, and only through it do the sciences receive order and coherence. [Kt10:26(30)]
1. Metaphysics and the Foundations of Science
At first sight Kant's conception of the nature and epistemological foundations of science seems quite straightforward and well known. Empirical knowledge arises out of the synthesis of concepts with their corresponding intuitions; when objects are recognized to be separately existing phenomena, we can say we have obtained an item of knowledge which satisfies one of the basic criteria of all science-objectivity. According to Kant, however, objectivity on its own, though necessary, is not a sufficient condition for science. In order for an object of empirical knowledge to be not just part of what we might call 'ordinary knowledge', but part of a full-fledged science, it must be not only objective, but also part of a systematic whole [see e.g., Kt10:72 (79)]. And such a whole can arise only when our empirical judgments look forward to the realm of ideas, in search of an ultimate goal which can unify our diverse collection of otherwise unorganized items of empirical knowledge. Of the three ideas discussed in the Dialectic of Kt1, the idea of the world is the one which achieves this goal most effectively for science.
What often goes unnoticed is that the section in which Kant discusses the contradictions arising out of our idea of the world (viz., the Antinomies) corresponds directly to the metaphysical idea of freedom. There is, of course, a rather obvious connection between the ideas of freedom and the world, which Kant acknowledges by devoting the third antinomy [Kt1:472-9] to the issue as to whether or not there exists in the world, in addition to the causality of nature, a causality of freedom. But the real connection between freedom and the world goes deeper than the well-worn freedom-determinism debate; indeed, it must go deeper, since the other antinomies deal with other issues, not obviously related to the idea of freedom (viz., issues about the spatio-temporal limits of the world [454-61], the simplicity of its parts [462-71] and its dependence on a necessary being [480-9]). This deeper connection becomes apparent once we recognize that science itself develops directly out of the tension between freedom and the world. As we saw in Part Three, Kant's system of practical perspectives shows how freedom serves as the cornerstone upon which the edifice of morality is built, just as the opposing system of theoretical perspectives shows how sensibility serves the same function for science. Yet in another sense science itself depends on freedom; for without the opposition freedom provides to our idea of the world, science would never arise.
Without freedom we would have neither morality nor science, because science depends for its existence not only on the Critical foundations of knowledge (as elaborated in Chapters VI and VII), but also on the metaphysical goal towards which all knowledge aims. That goal, in part, is to comprehend 'the world'. Yet the idea of the world can arise only if we are able to assume a standpoint which is in some sense distinct from the world; and that standpoint is provided by freedom. So without freedom, we might be able to combine intuitions and concepts in order to make judgments, but we would never be able to combine our diverse judgments to construct the whole which we call 'science': the idea of such a whole would simply never occur to beings who were unable to separate themselves from all such judgments and view them, as it were, from without. That is perhaps one of the most significant differences between human beings and animals: animals are surely capable of combining their intuitions with some sort of conceptual scheme (albeit, one drawn more from the mystery of 'instinct' than from the spontaneity of their own minds); but they are unable to separate themselves completely from these judgments, so they are unable to form an idea of the whole which could then motivate them to combine their crude forms of knowledge into science as we know it.
In order to understand Kant's conception of science it is important to recognize the two distinct senses in which he uses the term 'substance(s)', especially in Kt1. On one level, substances are discretely organized empirical wholes, which provide the underlying material out of which we construct the phenomena we perceive every day. Yet on another level, substance is the basic unifying principle which underlies everything in the world, including substances themselves; and as such, it corresponds more closely to what Kant elsewhere refers to as the unknowable 'noumenon' [see VI.3 and VII.3.A]. 'Substance' is not synonymous with 'noumena', but rather functions for scienceinawayanalogoustothefunctionofthenoumenoninsystemt.When this parallelism is recognized, we can see that Kant's doctrine of substance in stage three of systemt serves as a conceptual link between freedom and nature, which in turn provides a clue as to how scientists can have a certain kind of access to that which lies fundamentally beyond the bounds of science. Several of Kant's other, more commonly acknowledged ways of synthesizing the ideas of freedom and the world will be discussed in XI.3.
2. Kant and the Copernican Revolutions of Modern Science
As we have seen, Kant regards 'science' in its strictest empirical sense as properly referring only to what can be known by the human understanding-the latter being limited by space and time (due to its necessary connection with sensibility) and by the twelve categories (due to its own internal structure). This is why he says that for any of the ordinary inquiries in the empirical sciences, the question of the existence or non-existence of the thing in itself never even arises [see e.g., Kt1:45]. But what happens if scientists themselves turn their attention away from what can be known empirically and towards the deepest roots or highest fruits of human experience? When scientists extend their interest beyond the task of merely collecting items of empirical knowledge and begin asking questions about things which by definition cannot be regarded as empirically knowable objects, is the question of the thing in itself still irrelevant to their inquiries? In other words, might the scientist ever be able to say anything of value about the thing in itself?
Kant himself acknowledges that science can extend beyond the realm of empirically knowable objects; for he says in Kt10:72(79) that 'there can be a science of that whereof our cognition is not knowledge.' Metaphysics would, of course, be his favorite example of a science which arises out of such non-empirical cognition. But since Kant's day, natural science itself has moved beyond its former empirical boundaries in a number of unprecedented ways. Two examples will suffice to show how certain scientific inquiries now impinge directly upon questions relating to the thing in itself. The first example can be taken from particle physics, where natural scientists have for some years been exploring a completely new way of looking at the sub-atomic world. What few scientists or philosophers of science seem to recognize is that the revolutionary new Perspective offered by quantum mechanics comes more or less straight from Kant. For quantum mechanics is based on the ('Copernican') assumption that scientists (or any other observers) actually influence the nature of an object in the very process of observing it.
The 'observables' of quantum mechanics are objects which, in a thoroughly
Kantian way, appear to us in space and time and are conceived by us as relating
in ways that conform to the twelve categories (especially the principle of
causality). But quantum physicists are now asking questions about what happens
to these sub-atomic particles before we observe them. What they have
discovered is that, if we wish to gain knowledge of these particles, we
must choose either to locate their position or to determine their momentum.
We cannot know both of these variables with certainty at the same time.
If we try to do so, all we can do is determine the probability of a
given particle
appearing in a given position with a given momentum. And probability is, for
Kant, a concept which belongs not to the empirical perspective of natural
science in its strictest sense (which always strives for certainty), but
to the hypothetical perspective of metaphysics. In other words, the most
the quantum physicist can do is to treat a particle as if it will appear
in a certain way.
Of course, much has been written this century about how quantum mechanics has negated our former belief in the principle of causality, and has, in the process, proved the inadequacy of Kant's table of categories, and so also of his theory of science in general. But nothing could be further from the truth! Quantum physics leaves untouched our knowledge of phenomena (i.e., of objects which can appear to us in complete empirical objectivity), admitting that causes do exist on the level of our experience of substances. What it calls into question is the applicability of the principle of causality to things in their deepest internal nature, as they are completely apart from our observation of them. In this sense alone, as quantum mechanics has taught us, is causality a meaningless principle. Far from negating Kant's view, this confirms a Kantian picture of the nature of the world and of our knowledge of objects. For the most basic starting point of Kant's whole System is, as we saw in Chapter V, a theoretical faith in the existence of an independent world of things, in which they are not bound by the conditions which limit our knowledge of them. The closest empirical scientists can get to this independent world is to acknowledge when they have hit the 'bedrock' of substance itself, and to seek to understand its implications for the world of ordinary substances. In doing just this, quantum physics should be regarded as the natural outworking of a Kantian view of science.
A second example can be taken from psychology, where social scientists have learned to investigate not only the normal types of human experience which can be understood and classified in ordinary, empirically meaningful terms, but have also attempted to understand the higher levels of experience which give meaning to human life. Jung, for example, explicitly acknowledges his profound debt to Kant in his own intellectual development [J5:89, 117-22]; and Kantian ways of thinking crop up repeatedly throughout his works-a relationship which would require a separate study in order to be fully explicated. But Jung is now not as alone as he once was [93] in his application of a Kantian framework to psychological research.
Among other psychologists who have helped give empirical confirmation to Kant's theory of science is Maslow, who devotes considerable attention to what he calls 'peak experiences'. He explains, for instance, that, whereas ordinary experiences are 'imbedded in history and in culture as well as in the shifting and relative needs of man',peak experiences are 'perceived and reacted to as if they were in themselves, "out there", as if they were perceptions of a reality independent of man and persisting beyond his life' [M5:84-5e.a.]. Maslow's description of such experiences does not break any of Kant's rules regarding the necessity that 'experience' be limited to space and time, for Kant carefully defines the word 'experience' in Kt1, by identifying it with 'empirical knowledge' [see note IV.7]; and the type of experience Maslow is describing here does not provide people with knowledge in any ordinary sense of the word, but only with a glimpse (an 'idea', as Kant would call it) of a transcendent reality which remains mysterious, yet towards which their lives can be directed when adopting a hypothetical ('as if') perspective. Whether they know it or not, psychologists such as Maslow, by examining scientifically the way people perceive their most significant immediate experiences, are confirming not only the validity of Kant's basic philosophy of science, but also the significance of what I have called Kant's 'Critical mysticism' [see X.4].
Other examples of how modern scientific revolutions have confirmed rather than contradicted the metaphysical implications of Kant's System of Perspectives could also be cited from the realms of geometry, logic and relativity physics. For the purposes of this brief overview, however, a detailed account will be unnecessary, especially since I have already argued at length in Pq14 that Kant's philosophy of science is not only compatible with modern non-Euclidean geometries, but was actually a key stimulus for the increased interest shown in them by nineteenth-century scholars, and that Kant's Copernican revolution in philosophy provided the general world view from which alone the revolution in geometry could be treated seriously. The same reasoning used in Pq14 can also be applied to several other sciences whose long-established form has been revolutionized since Kant [see note VII.1]. For example, the formal principles of Aristotelian logic were recognized for two full millennia as establishing absolute truths, yet they were transcended soon after Kant demonstrated how their truth is actually relative to a specific perspective. Likewise, the formal principles of Newtonian physics established physical absolutes which were destined to last just as long, had they not had the bad fortune to be propounded so shortly before Kant himself demonstrated their status to be relative to a distinct human perspective [see note VII.20].
Instead of demonstrating in further detail the key role played by Kant's Copernican revolution in the scientific revolutions of the past century, I will turn now to a discussion of how Kant believed science itself, properly understood, can provide the means for a satisfying resolution of the tension between freedom and causality. This preview of Pq21 will then conclude with some reflections on Kant's conception of scientific method, especially as it relates to the practise of medicine, in order to demonstrate that here too Kant anticipated and paved the way for many of our most modern conceptions of what it means to 'do science'.
3. Critical Science and the Purpose of Nature
Kant has often been interpreted as defending a mechanistic view of science. Those who think of Kant's view of science only in terms of the first half of Kt1, for example, tend to see in Kt1 the makings of a positivistic theory of science. Yet such an interpretation is completely unfounded. It is plausible only if we ignore the last half of Kt1 or treat the Dialectic as nothing but a long Appendix to Kant's 'official' views. For the antinomies demonstrate that science itself is built upon an unavoidable paradox: although we must look beyond the details of empirical knowledge in order to construct a science, we soon find that we are not equipped with the means to complete such an inquiry in a single, unequivocal way. Indeed, one of the main points of Kant's whole Critical philosophy is to demonstrate that science is properly called science only when it recognizes its own limitations-theoretical limitations rooted in the knowing subject.
When we read beyond Kt1 to Kt4, we find that this same knowing subject is itself rooted in a standpoint which transcends all empirical knowledge, the practical standpoint of freedom. A positivistic view of science is simply unable to account for the rise of the modern scientific revolutions which, as we saw in XI.2, depend so much on the acceptance of a Kantian view of the world. For these revolutions all assume, in one form or another, a freely acting human agent who transcends the bounds of science as such-an assumption most forms of positivistic science would be unable to accept. Critical science stands in contrast both to the scientific 'dogmatists' who believe science can encompass everything of value in human life and to the scientific 'skeptics' who doubt the reliability of anything science has to offer. For it recognizes a legitimate place for science as a body of theoretical truths about the world, yet demands that science be kept in perspective, as a servant of human freedom, rather than as mankind's taskmaster.
How then does Kant view the relationship between the causality of the world (natural necessity) and the causality of freedom (moral necessity)? And if both are possible, how can we determine a person's moral responsibility in a given situation? Kant scholars are so fond of discussing such questions that I dare not go into them at this point in any depth. Kant clearly does want to say both types of causality are admissible; but just how he thinks this is possible is a matter of some debate. I believe the principle of perspective provides the only means of accepting the full force of both types of causality and yet seeing them both as operable without contradiction. Accordingly, Kant's position seems to imply something like the following, which we might call a 'double aspect' theory of moral responsibility.
Human beings can interpret the events they experience in the world in two distinct ways: an event can be interpreted as one in a potentially endless chain of phenomena within the nexus of phenomena which make up our experience of the world; or it can be interpreted as a unique and original starting point for such a chain of events, freely caused by a rational agent. Some events, such as natural disasters, seem so remote from any human origin that the former (i.e., the theoretical standpoint of natural causality) is obviously the best standpoint from which they can be rationally interpreted. Other events, such as murder, seem so intimately bound up with human choices that the latter (i.e., the practical standpoint of the causality of freedom) is obviously the best standpoint from which they can be rationally interpreted.
There are, however, a large proportion of events which, being in between these two extremes, can be looked at from either standpoint (or both). In such cases, we cannot simply say the event is 'caused by nature' or 'freely chosen', for it arises out of a complex interaction between these two forms of causality. In order to determine a person's moral responsibility for such events, we must therefore compare the relative weight of both types of causality in order to see if one or the other was dominant. For example, a person who injures another person because some previous natural event caused it to happen ('I lost control of the car when the tire blew out') is less worthy of blame than a person who causes the same injuries intentionally ('I did it in order to get revenge'). The resulting scale of infinite degrees of responsibility, based on comparing the causality of nature with the causality of freedom in different situations, reveals why legal judgments are often so difficult to make. For both ways of explaining such events are legitimate, depending on which standpoint is adopted; yet it is often impossible to know which one was properly dominant in a given situation.
Although Kant believed a science of such legal judgments is possible [see Kt6 and Ch. XII], his interest in science is more commonly associated with his early writings in (what was then called) 'natural philosophy'. There is, indeed, a common belief that the young Kant was himself an aspiring scientist, and only turned his attention fully to philosophy in his middle age. The sixteen essays responsible for this reputation (viz., Kt40-Kt55) are conclusive evidence that he had a strong interest in speaking out on various issues of concern to the scientists of his day. But the traditional interpretation of this fact, as indicating that Kant once regarded himself as a budding scientist, is misleading in several respects. First, Kant did not stop writing on such issues during the period in which he was constructing the Critical philosophy: Kt53-Kt55 were all written after Kt1, and adopt an approach remarkably similar to the earlier essays. So whatever Kant had in mind, the Critical philosophy clearly did not stifle his interest in natural philosophy. But more important is the fact that in these essays Kant never claims to be doing theoretical science. Even in Kt43, which anticipates a number of significant theories about the nature and origin of the universe-theories which were later developed more fully by scientists such as Laplace-Kant clearly describes his approach as an imaginative one based on 'conjecture','hypotheses' and 'analogies', and asks the reader 'not to judge it according to the greatest mathematical rigor', as would be required in theoretical science.[1] This is but one example of the fact that Kant's interest in issues bordering on theoretical science was from the very beginning an interest in forging a new standpoint from which such issues could be treated in a more complete way by philosophers.
Kant puts forward his metaphysics of natural science, at least in part, in Kt3, where he adopts the theoretical standpoint; but he develops his own preferred way of studying nature most fully in Kt7, where he adopts a teleological version of the judicial standpoint in order to examine the sources of our experiences of natural purposes. In IX.3.A we have already considered how organisms-especially human organisims-are one of the Critical philosophy's best examples of Kant's attempt in systemj to resolve the tension between nature (systemt) and freedom (systemp): every time we regard something as a natural purpose we are glimpsing in it a revelation of freedom in nature. We can now add that his position also has clear implications for our understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge in its highest form. Critical science, as Kant portrays it in Kt7, is science which recognizes not only the need to search for the determining causes of a phenomenon (as in Kt1 and Kt3), but also the need to search for its teleological causes. Whereas the former requires nothing but the application of the categories to given intuitions in order to discover a phenomenon's past function, the latter requires the free exercise of the imagination in order to discover the future goal which makes it what it is in the present. Science without a search for purposes can never be Critical science, because it will remain unaware of the ubiquity of freedom in its own activity.
4. Critical Medicine and the Hypothetical Method in Science
A proper understanding of the teleological emphasis of Kant's Critical science puts us in a better position to understand why, as we saw in XI.2, his philosophy has played such an important role in setting the stage for the scientific revolutions of the past hundred years. Moreover, it also sets the stage for examining the extent of its influence beyond the sciences themselves to the philosophy of science. For modern conceptions of the nature and proper methods of science have undergone changes in this century just as radical as those within the sciences themselves. These changes have been far too numerous and diverse to give an adequate account at this point, so it will have to suffice merely to cite two brief examples, showing how Kant himself foreshadowed many of these developments, and how a perspectival interpretation of his System can serve as the basis for judging their relative value.
The prevailing view of the scientific method in Kant's day was based on induction: the scientist observes the things in the world, collects data and generalizes from that data to form a conclusion. Hume criticized this method as one which could never give rise to certainty, because there is no evidence that the law upon which it is based (the law of causality) is anything but a mere habit of the mind. In response to such criticisms philosophers such as Popper have suggested that, whether or not Hume was right, scientists normally do not depend primarily on such a method. Rather, they normally use a hypothetical-deductive method: after forming an hypothesis about what they believe will be the best way to explain a collection of facts under a single theory, they test the hypothesis through experiments based on deductive reasoning. As long as the hypothesis is assumed, the results of the deduction can be regarded as establishing a measure of certainty which deserves to be called 'knowledge'. But the hypothesis itself is always open to being replaced by some new hypothesis, should the latter prove to be more effective in unifying the diverse strands of empirical evidence.
Kant himself is often portrayed, quite rightly, as putting forward a rather different response to Hume's criticism of knowledge by induction. His theory of the principles in stage three of systemt [see VII.3.A] argues that causality is a necessary element in all empirical knowledge, so that Hume's worries about the objective validity of inductive knowledge are unfounded. What is rarely recognized, however, is that Kant's view of science does not end with the Analytic of Principles. As we saw in XI.1, the objective knowledge established in the Analytic cannot on its own be called 'science'; for our ordinary empirical knowledge becomes science only when it is arranged in a systematic order. Revealing and responding to the problems that arise out of reason's natural tendency to search for the systematic unity of science is the task Kant undertakes in the Dialectic. Kant there proposes his theory of ideas as regulative tools to be used in the service of the hypothetical perspective [see VII.3.B]. In spite of the common rejection of this 'as if' approach, Kant's theory, with its emphasis on the need to adopt theoretical faith in hypotheses in order to submit them for testing to practical reason, bears a striking resemblance to the basic conception of scientific method defended by Popper.
A perspectival interpretation of Kant's System enables us not only to appreciate the similarities between his Critical science and views such as Popper's, but also provides a basis for evaluating some of the diverse views being expressed in the philosophy of science these days. Polanyi can serve as a good example of a recent philosopher of science who has put forward a conception of science which is in many respects correct, yet errs as a direct result of failing to understand the implications of Kant's Critical philosophy for science. For instance, Polanyi's claim that there is a 'personal' element in all knowledge is right as such, and is indeed fully compatible with the foregoing portrayal of the tension between freedom and nature in the Critical philosophy; but he goes too far when he rejects any notion of 'objective knowledge' as unfounded. In so doing he has failed to appreciate the significance for all human thinking of the principle of perspective. Polanyi is no doubt right in his claim that there is no such thing as science without scientists whose personal choices and commitments color the decisions and conclusions they make. But he fails to appreciate that such matters concern the practical and/or judicial standpoints, whereas questions of objectivity properly relate to the theoretical standpoint. Kant's Copernican Perspective on the latter standpoint asks us to regard the subjective input from the scientist (or any other human knower) as itself constituting the transcendental elements that make possible a fully objective knowledge of phenomena. As a result, Kant is able to highlight the need to supplement our objective knowledge with hypotheses in order to construct any science, yet without denying the objectivity of real empirical knowledge.[2]
The ultimate aim of using such hypotheses in doing science is, as stated in the quotation at the beginning of this chapter, to obtain wisdom. And this can come about, according to Kant, only when people become 'enlightened'-i.e., only when they are courageous enough to release themselves from their 'self-incurred tutelage' and begin 'to use [their] own reason' [Kt38:35]. Kant's hope was that the Critical philosophy would help point the way to just this sort of enlightened way of life. Indeed, the three main metaphysical ideas correspond to three ways in which he believed human beings tend to give up their own freedom and become, as it were, 'slaves' of the 'experts': priests, doctors and lawyers are society's main threat to true enlightenment, because so many people use these three types of professionals as an excuse to avoid thinking for themselves. Just as it is much easier to let someone else determine my religious beliefs and practises than to struggle through them for myself, and just as it is much easier to allow someone else to legislate what kind of (moral and political) laws are right for me than to be self-legislating in such matters, so also it is much easier to ask another person to be responsible for my health than to take upon myself the responsibility for my own physical and psychological ailments.
Kant himself lived out this enlightened way of life to such an extreme that he is more often laughed at than respected for practising what he preached. For although he was a deeply religious man, with a profound concern for promoting what is right and for living a healthy life, he rarely made use of the services of the professionals to whom such responsibilities have traditionally been delegated. What few interpreters appreciate is that this was not simply the result of an idiosyncratic paranoia, but was a consistent application of the metaphysical implications of Critical philosophy to the philosopher's own life. Moreover, it is significant to point out that doctors, as well as priests and lawyers, numbered among Kant's closest friends. As an enlightened Critical philosopher, he related to these professionals neither as a superior nor as an inferior, but on equal terms. Wallace effectively summarizes the highly individualistic, yet respectful, character of Kant's enlightened view of these professions when he says [W5:47]: 'Every man his own doctor, every man his own lawyer, every man his own priest,-that was the ideal of Kant.'
Although Kant's biographers have given sufficient information to confirm that he took seriously his belief that maintaining health is a person's own responsibility [see e.g., W5:45-6], he wrote comparatively little about his enlightened conception of what I believe can best be called 'Critical medicine'.[3] This is not the appropriate place to attempt a detailed reconstruction of Kant's understanding of Critical medicine, nor of how it epitomizes the hypothetical and teleological emphases of Critical science in general. Instead, it will suffice merely to point out that, from what Kant did write about medicine, we can infer that he would regard psychology as the centerpiece of medical science.[4] For nearly all of his writing on disease and health focuses on the psychological roots of most of the ailments doctors are asked to treat. This psychological emphasis gives Kant's view of medicine its truly Critical character: Critical medicine rejects the speculative attempt to regard the ideas of health and sickness as fully comprehensible when viewed from the theoretical standpoint of purely materialistic or deterministic causes (i.e., those arising in systemt); instead, 'health' must be viewed also from the practical standpoint as a personal matter, and 'sickness' must be viewed from the judicial standpoint as a purposive phenomenon, both of which relate as much to the human soul as to the physical body. Once it takes on this Critical form, medicine becomes the ideal expression of the second of the three metaphysical ideas: for an enlightened view of medicine is the most valuable way in which we can see science in its proper perspective, as a thoroughgoing synthesis of nature and freedom.
[1]Kt43:221(81),235-6(92); s.a. Pq7:262-4. In the Introduction and notes to his translation of Kt43, Jaki adopts the common assumption that Kant was here attempting to write a rigorously scientific treatise [see e.g., J1:1-12,291]. He responds with a scathing assessment of 'Kant the scientist' [7] as inept and unworthy of serious consideration. I have responded in Pq7 with an equally scathing assessment of 'Jaki the interpreter', which serves not as a full-fledged interpretation of Kt43, but as a plea for more openness to methods of inquiry other than rigorous science. Only with such openness can the interpreter hope to give a fair assessment of what Kant himself was actually trying to say in works such as Kt43.
[2] Polanyi's failure to understand Kant is exemplified by his habit of referring to his own approach as 'post-critical philosophy', when in fact, many of its essential tenets are rooted in Kant's Critical philosophy. I have examined the parallels between Kant and Polanyi, and criticized some of the points at which Polanyi strays from a Kantian approach, in an article entitled 'A Kantian Critique of Polanyi's "Post-Critical" Philosophy', published in the now-defunct journal of the Polanyi Society in Great Britain (Convivium, Number 24 [March 1987], pp.1-11).
[3]See Kt51,Kt65:97-116andKt66:202-20.The last publication Kant produced without assistance, Kt65, is composed of three parts in which he supposedly explores the systematic relationships between philosophy and the other three 'faculties' (theology, law and medicine). Commentators have been quick to point out that the three parts have no clear connection with each other, but appear to be just a collection of disconnected essays written on separate occasions for different reasons. This is no doubt true. Nevertheless, it should not blind us to the significant fact that their subject-matter corresponds directly to the three disciplines we are examining here in Part Four. For this lends weighty evidence to the claim that religion, politics and science (as represented here by medicine) are the three main areas of metaphysical inquiry for the Critical philosopher.
[4]In Kt51, for example, Kant accounts for the various 'diseases of the mind' by explaining them in terms of aberrations of one or more of the three basic faculties of understanding, judgment and reason. Here, as in Kt18 and elsewhere, he also discusses the nature of dreams as a clue to understanding our psychological make-up. Although Kant left his views on such matters in a raw state, a generally Kantian approach to psychology has been developed subsequently by others. For example, as I hope to demonstrate in detail in a later study, Jung's analytical psychology was to a large extent constructed upon the foundation of Kant's Critical philosophy, and provides a full elaboration of this aspect of Critical medicine.
