An Explanation of Terminological Changes
by Stephen Palmquist (stevepq@hkbu.edu.hk)
The account of the perspectival framework of Kant's System given in II.4 (and followed throughout this book) differs in two important respects from the account given in some of my previous publications [e.g., Pq4-Pq6]. In this Appendix I will explain the nature of and rationale for these two changes, as well as defending my decision not to make a third terminological change which some critics have called for.
First, I now refer to the third standpoint of Kant's System (previously the 'empirical') as 'judicial' in order to avoid confusing it with the empirical perspective within each standpoint (a potential confusion Kant himself warns against in Kt7:178-9). This standpoint is 'empirical' in the sense that it does deal with specific types of human experience (e.g., the aesthetic or religious types) more directly than in reasoning based on the theoretical or practical standpoints. Thus, in Kt4:8n Kant calls the 'feeling of pleasure' (which is the faculty on which the third standpoint is based) an 'empirical' matter. And in Kt7:183-4 he clearly explains that his task in this third system is to examine the 'thoroughgoing connexion of empirical cognition in a whole of experience' [183e.a.], and that the 'principle of finality' employed therein serves to represent 'the unique mode in which we must proceed in our reflection upon the objects of nature with a view to getting a thoroughly interconnected whole of experience' [184e.a.]. Accordingly, it should come as no surprise to find that one of the section headings in Kt7i is called 'Experience as a System of Judgment' [Kt7i:208e.a.]. Indeed, Kant goes on to say that the reflective judgment under consideration in Kt7 is that which examines how principles form the basis for 'our treatment of empirical representations', or of the 'empirical concepts' which arise when we reflect 'on any given natural object' [211-2e.a.; s.a. note IX.4].
Kant's further claim that this 'reflective judgment is also called the critical faculty' [Kt7:211], together with his frequent use of courtroom metaphors, especially in Kt1, suggests that this empirical/judicial standpoint is the basis of the Critical method itself. Indeed, Kant expects us to adopt this standpoint when assessing his Critical philosophy. It is no accident that he asks his reader as early as Kt1:Axxi to have 'the patience and impartiality of a judge'. For as Paulsen points out, the word 'Critique' is itself a basically 'judicial' term [P4:128], so Kant's whole attempt to synthesize 'empiricism and rationalism' assumes a 'judicial point of view' [181]. As we saw in II.2, the Critical method always searches for a third perspective which can mediate between two opposing perspectives; and this is precisely the function of the third Critique in relation to the other two [see IX.1 and IX.4]. If 'empirical' were used as a label for this standpoint, it would be very easy to confuse this use of the term with its two other uses in the important transcendental-empirical distinction [see II.4 and IV.3]. Moreover, in light of Kt1:739 ('There is no need of a critique of reason in its empirical perspective') the label 'judicial' (i.e., relative to judgment) is obviously preferable, providing a clearer reflection of Kant's insistence on the Transcendental status of this standpoint, as well as of the fact that its scope is broader than the empirical perspective within each system.
The second change is that I now refer to the fourth (previously 'practical') perspective in each of Kant's three systems as the 'hypothetical' perspective. This avoids the potential confusion between it and the practical standpoint, as adopted in Kt4. My use of 'practical' was potentially misleading because Kant normally equates 'practical' with 'moral', whereas the fourth perspective of the theoretical and judicial standpoints is not limited to morality. The word 'hypothetical' is an appropriate replacement because it conveys the 'as if' character of all conclusions established from this perspective. This is made especially obvious in the Dialectic of Kt1. (Incidentally, 58 of the 78 occurrences of 'hypothetical' (including etymologically related words) in Kt1 appear in the Dialectic and Doctrine of Method sections [see Pq10:173].)
Here again my original choice was not so much wrong as potentially misleading. For Kant frequently refers to 'practical' matters throughout the last half of Kt1. (According to Pq10:288, 106 of the 123 occurrences of 'practical' in Kt1 occur in the Dialectic and Doctrine of Method sections.) Indeed, one of the main purposes of systemt is to demonstrate that 'speculation' (i.e., theoretical reason improperly used) must 'withdraw within the limits of ... practical principles' if it is to avoid innumerable errors [Kt1:822]. That this refers not merely to the need for systemt to give way to systemp, but also to a practical stage within systemtitself, is suggested in Kt7:171-2, where Kant stresses the importance of distinguishing between 'what is practical according to concepts of nature' (i.e., in systemt) and 'what is practical according to the concept of freedom' (i.e., in systemp). He warns that to identify the former ( ('technically-practical') principles with the latter ('morally-practical') principles is 'a gross misuse of terms'. However, Kant goes on to say that the technically-practical principles which arise in systemt should 'be reckoned only as corollaries to theoretical philosophy.'
The latter statement could be taken as evidence that 'practical' ought not to be used to signify the fourth and final perspective of systemt. Fortunately, in Kt7i:197-201 Kant discusses more fully these same issues relating to the term 'practical'. And this passage concludes by clearly associating the 'technically-practical' with the 'hypothetical', and by securing their proper place in the System. He suggests that 'the term "technic"' should be used in connection with practical principles 'where natural objects are only judged as if their possibility rested on art' [200]. As such, 'this technic ... is not part of philosophical doctrine but only of the critique of our cognitive capacities' [201]. So the 'hypothetical' and the 'technically-practical' can be regarded as two names for the same perspective (the 'hypothetical' being in systemt that perspective which determines the Transcendental conditions out of which all technically-practical principles arise). I have chosen to use 'hypothetical' simply to avoid using 'practical' in two different senses and to facilitate a clearer recognition of the parallels between the different manifestations of this perspective in the three systems.
A third change which I considered, but resisted, was to find new labels for the 'transcendental' and 'empirical' perspectives within each system, since these same terms, as we have noted in II.4 [s.a. III.4 and IV.2-3], also have a broader connotation, according to which they distinguish between the overall Transcendental Perspective of Kant's System and the common person's ordinary Perspective on the world. The best alternatives I could come up with were 'aesthetic' and 'phenomenal', respectively. There are, however, even worse problems with both of these terms.
In Kt1 all but three of the 34 occurrences of 'aesthetic' [see Pq10:11] refer directly either to the title of the Transcendental Aesthetic section of Kt1 or to the general theory developed in that section. In two of the other texts [Kt1:Axviii,81] Kant uses it to mean something like 'originating in intuition'. And in the remaining passage [35n] Kant points out that 'aesthetic' was at that time normally used in Germany (as is done today almost universally) 'to signify what others call the critique of taste.' In no case does Kant use the term 'aesthetic' in close connection with a perspectival equivalent. The fact that he himself later uses 'aesthetic' in a way quite similar to that rejected in Kt1:35n, as the name for one of the two major divisions of Kt7 [but see note IX.2], would render the use of 'aesthetic' as the technical name for one of Kant's subordinate perspectives just as equivocal as the use of 'transcendental' I have adopted. Even more serious problems would arise, however, if the word 'aesthetic' were to be used to signify the first stage in Kant's practical and judicial systems. In systemp, for instance, the aesthetic elements in systemt are replaced by explicitly non-aesthetic elements, based on the freedom of the will [see VIII.1]. Yet, as I argue in VIII.1-2.A, this first stage in systemp stands in the same formal relation to the other stages in systemp -i.e., assumes the same perspective-as does the first stage in systemt in relation to that system's other stages.
Similar problems would be created by the use of the term 'phenomenal'. Although using this term to signify the perspective assumed in the third stage of systemt would accurately reflect the fact that this stage aims at establishing the principles which determine the object of knowledge to be a phenomenon, Kant himself never uses the term 'phenomenal' for this purpose. (In fact, the word never appears in Kt1.) Furthermore, using this term could give rise to the misleading impression that this third perspective in Kant's systems is associated in some way with quite different philosophical schools such as 'phenomenalism' (which accepts something like Kant's theory of knowledge, but denies the need for a 'thing in itself') or 'phenomenology' (which focuses on our actual awareness of phenomena, in order to describe their essential nature).
Aside from being unable to find appropriate terms which Kant actually uses in conjunction with his perspectival equivalents and which are less likely to be misleading than 'transcendental' and 'empirical', my main reason for preserving my original choice of terms is because no other terms are broad enough to be applicable in each of the three systems in Kant's System. Other reasons emerge in IV.3 and throughout Chapters VI and VII.
The simplest way of distinguishing between the resulting two ways of using the transcendental-empirical distinction is to remember that the subordinate transcendental and empirical perspectives within each system always refer to the character of the object at a certain stage in a particular system, whereas the overall Transcendental and Empirical Perspectives always refer to the character of the subject in its determining relation to the object at all stages in each system.
