Kant’s Criticism of Swedenborg: Parapsychology

and the Origin of the Copernican Hypothesis

Stephen Palmquist

Human reason was not given strong enough wings to part clouds so high above us, which withhold from our eyes the secrets of the other world.[1]

1. The Traditional Myth of Kant’s ‘Awakening’

Kant’s life is traditionally portrayed as falling into two rather distinct periods. The years prior to 1770 form the ‘pre-Critical’ period, while those from 1770 onwards form the ‘Critical’ period. The turning-point is placed in the year 1770 because this is when Kant wrote the Inaugural Dissertation for his newly gained position as Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Koenigsberg. In this work, entitled On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World,[2] he proposed for the first time that space and time should be regarded as "forms of intuition" that human subjects read into experience, rather than as self-subsisting attributes of nature that we read out from the objects we experience. The typical ‘textbook’ account of Kant’s life usually declares that the ‘pre-Critical’ Kant was a Leibnizian dogmatist, trained in the school of Wolffian rationalism, and was interested as much in natural science as in philosophy, but that sometime around 1770 Kant was suddenly "awakened" from his "dogmatic slumbers" by his reflection on David Hume’s philosophy.[3] Some commentators, such as Kuehn (1983), go so far as to say not only that "Kant and Hume aim at the very same thing", but that "all the specific doctrines of Kant’s critical enterprise are intimately bound up with Hume’s influence on Kant." (p.191)

Although it is difficult to determine the exact nature and date of this dramatic awakening, there is no doubt that Kant was familiar with Hume’s ideas by the early 1760s; indeed, so the story goes, in 1766 he published a book that adopts Hume’s empiricist standpoint almost completely.[4] This book, entitled Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, Illustrated by Dreams of Metaphysics [hereafter Dreams], is typically interpreted as a minor work of an exceedingly skeptical nature, and of relatively little importance in understanding Kant’s mature thought. This "strangest and most tortured of Kant’s writings"(Ward 1972, p.34) is, at best, a stage he passed out of as quickly as he passed into it, and at worst, an embarrassment for Kant and Kant scholars alike. The embarrassment could come not only as a result of the rather unorthodox subject-matter – what we would now call parapsychology (i.e., studying the nature of visions and various types of mystical experiences – but because of the flippant attitude Kant adopts from time to time throughout the book (see note 25, below). Indeed, regardless of how we interpret the philosophical content of this book, the psychological disposition of its author, who had recently entered his fifth decade, would appear to be that of a man in the midst of what we might nowadays call a mid-life crisis.[5]

The traditional account contains at least as much error as truth. While it is true that Kant never mentions his mature theory of the transcendental ideality of space and time before 1770, it is not true that he owes the theory to Hume (whose theory of space and time bears little resemblance to Kant’s). Nor is it legitimate to equate this doctrine (expounded in its official form in the Aesthetic of the first Critique) with the term ‘Critical’, as is implied by the dating of the Critical period from 1770. On the contrary, Kant associates his "new method of thought, namely, that we can know a priori of things only what we ourselves put into them", not with the Critical method, but with the new ‘Copernican’ insight he believes will enable him to revolutionize philosophy.[6] His description and use of Criticism as a philosophical method is quite distinct from its application to problems in metaphysics by means of the Copernican hypothesis. Thus, when Kant instructed the editor of his minor writings to ignore all those written before 1770, (see Sewall 1900, p.x) he was not defining the starting point of his application of the Critical method, but rather that of his application of the Copernican hypothesis to the task of constructing a new philosophical System. If we must divide his life into two periods at 1770, we should therefore avoid using the term ‘pre-Critical’ (as others have advised, but without giving a viable alternative [e.g., Beiser 1992, p.36; Dell’Oro 1994, p.174]) and refer instead to the ‘pre-Copernican’ and ‘Copernican’ periods. Adopting this new label will protect us from making inconsistent statements such as Gulick’s (1994), implicitly conflating these two forms of revolution: "Kant’s self-designated Copernican revolution ushered in his critical period" (p.99). Since Kant exhibited ‘Critical’ tendencies throughout his life, his mature years should be named the ‘Copernican’ period.

Before we proceed it is crucial to have a thorough understanding of Kant’s mature conception of ‘Criticism’ or ‘Critique’ (Kritik), as elaborated in CPR. In the first edition Preface, Kant describes his era as "the age of criticism", during which reason accords "sincere respect ... only to that which has been able to sustain the test of free and open examination" (CPR, Axin). But this enlightened "habit of thought" can be trusted only if it submits to its own "tribunal" of Criticism (Axi-xii). Thus "the subject-matter of our critical enquiry" (i.e., of the entire Critical philosophy) is reason itself (Axiv), and its "first task" is "to discover the sources and conditions of the possibility of such criticism" (Axxi). This means the questions addressed to reason cannot be answered by means of

…a dogmatic and visionary insistence upon knowledge ... that can be catered for only through magical devices, in which I am no adept. Such ways of answering them are, indeed, not within the intention of the natural constitution of our reason; and ... it is the duty of philosophy to counteract their deceptive influence, no matter what prized and cherished dreams may have to be disowned.(CPR, Ap.xiii, emphasis added)[7]

Instead, only by first examining "the very nature of knowledge itself" can we answer reason’s questions in such a way as to provide solutions to the problems of metaphysics (Ap.xiii-xiv).

In the second edition Preface Kant not only describes more fully the subject-matter of the particular type of Critique he plans to engage in, but also explains more clearly the nature of the Critical method. Metaphysics will be "purified by criticism and established once for all": the purification is "merely negative, warning us that we must never venture with speculative reason beyond the limits of experience"; but the establishment is positive inasmuch as it "removes an obstacle which stands in the way of the employment of practical reason" (CPR, p.xxiv-xxv). In other words, the scope of reason’s speculative (i.e., theoretical) standpoint is narrowed by tying it to sensibility, but this frees metaphysics to be established on the firmer foundation of reason’s practical standpoint — i.e., on morality (p.xv). The Critical method, therefore, is intended to establish limits, but to do so for both negative and positive purposes. The former can be seen when Kant refers to "our critical distinction between two modes of representation, the sensible and the intellectual" and immediately adds "and of the resulting limitation ..."; (CPR, p.xxviii)[8] likewise, he argues that non-contradictory doctrines of freedom and morality are "possible only in so far as criticism ... has limited all that we can theoretically know to mere appearances" (p.xxix). The positive benefit of such limitations is that they enable us to avoid "dogmatism" (defined here as "the preconception that it is possible to make headway in metaphysics without a previous criticism of pure reason"), which "is the source of all that [skeptical] unbelief ... which wars against morality" (p.xxx). Indeed, Kant goes so far as to say that "all objections to morality and religion will be for ever silenced" (p.xxxi), because his Critique will "sever the root of materialism, fatalism, atheism, free-thinking, fanaticism, and superstition ... as well as of idealism and scepticism" (p.xxxiv).

Throughout the rest of CPR Kant repeats many of these same claims about the nature of Criticism in its special, philosophical form. In most of their occurrences the words ‘critical’, ‘criticism’, and ‘critique’ are used in close connection with some mention of the limitations of knowledge.[9] The only interesting exception is that on several occasions he adds that Criticism serves as a middle way between the opposite extremes of dogmatism and skepticism (CPR 22-3, A388-9, 784-5, 789, 797). Indeed, this epitomizes Kant’s association of the Critical method with synthesis, which he claims always takes the triadic form of "(1) a condition, (2) a conditioned, (3) the concept arising from the union of the conditioned with its condition"(CJ, p.179n). And of course, the most basic example of his use of this pattern is his exposition of the Critical philosophy in the form of three Critiques.

This brief analysis of Kant’s understanding of the Critical method reveals that he never associates it directly with the Copernican hypothesis but, instead, with several key distinctions. The Critical method is, for Kant, the method of striking a middle way between two extremes ("a third step", as he calls it in CPR 789 [see also 177, 194, 196, 264, 315, 760-1, 794]). It operates by trying to locate the boundary between what can be known (and proved) and what can never be known (yet remains possible) — the boundary line being defined in terms of "the limits of all possible experience" (e.g., p.121). Thus it is closely associated with "the distinction between the transcendental and the empirical" (p.81), as well as with that between speculative (theoretical) and practical (moral) "employments of reason", or standpoints.[10] Although certain apparently skeptical claims have to be made on the way, the ultimate purpose of Criticism for Kant is positive: to provide a means of constructing the foundation for metaphysics upon solid (non-speculative, moral) grounds.

A careful reading of Kant’s works reveals that traces of this Critical way of doing philosophy are evident throughout most of his writings, from the earliest essays on metaphysics and natural philosophy to the latest essays on religion, political history, and other subjects.[11] Indeed, the fact that he uses this method to develop and expound the implications of his Copernican hypothesis is what gives lasting value to the theories that arise out of it, and not vice versa. There is no need to provide here a thoroughgoing proof of the ubiquity of the Critical method in Kant’s writings.(for this see KSP, II.2, pp.32, 39, passim). Instead I shall concentrate on Dreams because, in proportion to its importance, it is the most neglected and/or misunderstood book in the corpus of Kant’s writings. The next section sketches the contents of this book, after which I shall draw attention in §3 to its Critical character and discuss its role in Kant’s discovery of the Copernican hypothesis. Finally, I shall offer some brief suggestions in §4 as to the relation between Dreams and Kant’s mature System of Perspectives. In so doing we shall find that Kant’s assessment of Swedenborg and his unusual experiences was far from being entirely negative; on the contrary, it provides us with a level of insight into the nature and limits of parapsychology that is highly appropriate for a Festschrift honoring John Beloff, one of the most respected contemporary philosophical researchers into the mysteries of this topic that fascinated Kant so much.

2. Kant’s Criticism of Swedenborg’s Mystical Dreams

In Dreams Kant examines the nature and possibility of mystical visions, paying special attention to the claims of a Swedish writer and accomplished scientist named Emanuel Swedenborg.[12] Kant examines these visions not only to explore the limits of his own commitment to a belief in the spirit world,[13] but also (and more importantly) in order to draw attention to the dangers of speculative metaphysics by comparing it with fanatical mysticism. This analogy, present as it is in the very title of the work, will prove to be of utmost importance in understanding how Dreams relates to the later development of Kant’s System. As noted earlier, Dreams is commonly interpreted as evidence of a radically empiricist stage in Kant’s development, where he is supposedly adopting something of a Humean position. But his actual intention, as we shall see, is to encourage a Critical attitude: while he comes down hard on the misuse of reason by spirit-seers and metaphysicians when they regard their respective dreams "as a source of knowledge"(Sewall 1900, p.146), he expresses quite clearly his own dream that a properly balanced approach to both mysticism and metaphysics will someday emerge.[14] A detailed examination of Kant’s views on parapsychological phenomena as presented in Dreams can therefore provide some helpful clues as to Kant’s motivations for constructing the Critical philosophy itself.

The mystical experiences considered in Dreams are not experiences of the presence of God (i.e., "of infinite spirit which is originator and preserver of the universe" (Dreams p.321n[44n]), but experiences of lower spiritual beings, who are supposed to be able to communicate with earthly beings in visions and apparitions. Although Kant ridicules those who have such experiences at several points in Dreams, he reveals his private view of such experiences in two important letters. In a letter to Charlotte von Knoblock (dated 10 August, probably 1763) he admits he "always considered it to be most in agreement with sound reason to incline to the negative side ..., until the report concerning Swedenborg came to my notice" (Sewall 1900, p.158).[15] After recounting several impressive stories, Kant tells how Swedenborg was once able to describe in precise detail a fire that "had just broken out in Stockholm", even though he was fifty miles away in Göteborg. He says this "occurrence appears to me to have the greatest weight of proof, and to place the assertion respecting Swedenborg’s extraordinary gift beyond all possibility of doubt."(Sewall 1900, p.158) In a subsequent letter (8 April 1766) to Mendelssohn Kant explains that he clothed his thoughts with ridicule in Dreams in order to avoid being ridiculed by other philosophers for paying attention to mystical visions (hardly taken seriously by most philosophers in the Enlightenment (see Dreams 353-4[91-2])). He admits:

…the attitude of my own mind is inconsistent and, so far as these stories are concerned, I cannot help having a slight inclination for things of this kind, and indeed, as regards their reasonableness, I cannot help cherishing an opinion that there is some validity in these experiences in spite of all the absurdities involved in the stories about them ...(Sewall 1900, p.162)

Elsewhere in the same letter he draws a Critical conclusion: "Neither the possibility nor the impossibility of this kind of thing can be proved, and if someone attacked Swedenborg’s dreams as impossible, I should undertake to defend them." (Rabel 1963, p.74)[16] Clearly, Kant believed something significant is happening in such parapsychological experiences – significant enough to merit a comparison with the tasks of metaphysics, "the dream science itself", to which he admits to being hopelessly "in love"(Zweig 1967, p.55; see also KCR I.2). The problem this set for him was to describe "just what kind of a thing that is about which these people think they understand so much" (Dreams p.319[41]).

In the Preface to Dreams Kant hints at the Critical nature of his inquiry by asking two opposing questions, but offering a "third way out": he asks (1) "Shall [the philosopher] wholly deny the truth of all the apparitions [eye-witnesses] tell about?"; or (2) "Shall he, on the other hand, admit even one of these stories?"; and he answers that (3) the philosopher should "hold on to the useful" (p.317-8[38]).[17] The treatise itself consists of seven chapters, grouped in two parts: Part One contains four "dogmatic" chapters and Part Two contains three "historical" chapters. The correspondence between these two parts and the structure of the System he was soon to begin elaborating is evident by the fact that Part One ends with a chapter on "Theoretical Conclusions" and Part Two ends with a chapter on "Practical Conclusions" (Dreams pp.348[85], 368[115]), thus foreshadowing the division between the first and second Critiques.

The theoretical part begins in Chapter One, under the heading "A complicated metaphysical knot which can be untied or cut according to choice" (Dreams p.319[41]), by discussing what a spirit is or might be. Kant confesses:

I do not know if there are spirits, yea, what is more, I do not even know what the word ‘spirit’ signifies. But, as I have often used it myself, and have heard others using it, something must be understood by it, be this something mere fancy or reality. (p.320[42])

To this rather Wittgensteinian remark he adds that "the conception of spiritual nature cannot be drawn from experience", though its "hidden sense" can be drawn "out of its obscurity through a comparison of sundry cases of application" (p.320n[42-3n]). He then argues that a spirit must be conceived as a simple, immaterial being, possessing reason as an internal quality (pp.320-1[43-5]). After considering some of the difficulties associated with this concept, he adopts an entirely Critical position: "The possibility of the existence of immaterial beings can ... be supposed without fear of its being disproved, but also without hope of proving it by reason" (p.323[46-7], emphasis added). If one assumes "that the soul of man is a spirit", even though this cannot be proved, then the problem arises as to how it is connected with the body (pp.324-5[48-9]). Kant rejects the Cartesian focus on a mechanism in the brain in favor of "common experience":[18]

Nobody ... is conscious of occupying a separate place in his body, but only of that place which he occupies as a man in regard to the world around him. I would, therefore, keep to common experience, and would say, provisionally, where I sense, there I am. I am just as immediately in the tips of my fingers, as in my head. It is myself who suffers in the heel and whose heart beats in affection (Dreams pp.324-5[48-9]).[19]

The chapter concludes with the confession "that I am very much inclined to assert the existence of immaterial natures in the world, and to put my soul into that class of beings" (p.327[52]). Although he concedes that the various questions concerned with such a belief are "above my intelligence" (p.328[54]), he does suggest in Dreams that "Whatever in the world contains a principle of life, seems to be of immaterial nature. For all life rests on the inner capacity [cf. freedom in the second Critique] to determine one’s self by one’s own will power." (p.327n[52-3n])

After confirming the metaphysical possibility of (and his personal belief in) spirits, Kant presents in Chapter Two "a fragment of secret philosophy aiming to establish communion with the spirit-world" (Dreams p.329[55]). He begins by positing an "immaterial world" that is conceived "as a great whole, an immeasurable but unknown gradation of beings and active natures by which alone the dead matter of the corporeal world is endued with life." (Dreams p.330[57]).[20] As a member of both the material and the immaterial world, a human being "forms a personal unit" (p.332[60]). Kant conjectures that purely immaterial beings may "flow into the souls of men as into beings of their own nature, and ... are actually at all times in mutual intercourse with them", though the results of such intercourse cannot ordinarily "be communicated to the other purely spiritual beings", nor "be transferred into the consciousness of men" (p.333[61]). As evidence for such a communion of spirits, Kant examines the nature of morality. Using one of his favorite geometrical metaphors (that of intersecting lines), he says in Dreams (pp.334-5[63]): "The point to which the lines of direction of our impulses converge is ... not only in ourselves, but ... in the will of others outside of ourselves." The fact that our actions are motivated not only by selfishness, but also by duty and benevolence, reveals that "we are dependent upon the rule of the will of all" (p.335[64]); and "the sensation of this dependence" – i.e., our "sense of morality" – suggests that "the community of all thinking beings" is governed by "a moral unity, and a systematic constitution according to purely spiritual laws." Thus, "because the morality of an action concerns the inner state of the spirit", its effect can be fully realized not in the empirical world, but "only in the immediate communion of spirits"(p.336[65]).

In reply to the possible objection that, given this view of the spirit-world, "the scarcity of apparitions" seems "extraordinary", Kant stresses that "the conceptions of the one world are not ideas associated with those of the other world"; so even if we have a "clear and perspicuous" spiritual conception, this cannot be regarded as "an object of actual [i.e., material] sight and experience." (Dreams pp.337-8[67-9]).[21] However, he freely admits that a person, being both material and immaterial, can become

…conscious of the influences of the spirit-world even in this life. For spiritual ideas ... stir up those pictures which are related to them and awake analogous ideas of our senses. These, it is true, would not be spiritual conceptions themselves, but yet their symbols.... Thus it is not improbable that spiritual sensations can pass over into consciousness if they act upon correlated ideas of the senses. (pp.338-9[69-70])

Even "our higher concepts of reason" need to "clothe themselves" in, "as it were, a bodily garment to make themselves clear", as when "the geometrician represents time by a line" (p.339[69-70]). An actual apparition, which might "indicate a disease, because it presupposes an altered balance of the nerves", is unusual because it is based not on a simple metaphor, but on "a delusion of the imagination", in which "a true spiritual influence" is perceived in imagined "pictures ... which assume the appearance of sensations" (p.340[71]). Kant warns that in an apparition "delusion is mingled with truth", so it tends to deceive "in spite of the fact that such chimeras may be based upon a true spiritual influence" (p.340[71-2], emphasis added).

In truly Critical fashion Kant now adopts the opposite perspective in Chapter Three, presenting an "Antikabala" – that is, "a fragment of common philosophy aiming to abolish communion with the spirit-world" (Dreams p.342[74]). Here Kant first states the analogy between metaphysicians ("reason-dreamers") and visionaries ("sensation-dreamers"): in both cases the dreamer imagines a private world "which no other healthy man sees", yet "both are self-created pictures which nevertheless deceive the senses as if they were true objects" (pp.342-3[75]). In order to help such dreamers "wake up, i.e., open their eyes to such a view as does not exclude conformity with other people’s common sense" (p.342[74]), he proposes an alternative description of what is happening in an apparition. The problem is to explain how visionaries "place the phantoms of their imagination outside of themselves, and even put them in relation to their body, which they sense through their external senses" (pp.343-4 [77]). He suggests that in external sensation "our soul locates the perceived object at the point where the different lines, indicating the direction of the impression, meet", whereas in a vision this "focus imaginarius" is located not outside of the body but "inside of the brain" (pp.344-5[77-9]). The difference between the fantasy of a sane person (see p.346n[81n]) and the delusions of an insane person is that only the latter "places mere objects of his imagination outside of himself, and considers them to be real and present objects" (p.346[80]). So "the disease of the visionary concerns not so much the reason, as a deception of the senses" (p.347[82]). Kant concludes that this simpler interpretation "renders entirely superfluous the deep conjectures of the preceding chapter ... Indeed, from this perspective, there was no need of going back as far as to metaphysics" (pp.347-8[82-3]).[22]

The fourth and final chapter of Part One presents the "theoretical conclusion from the whole of the consideration of the first part" (Dreams p.348[85]). Kant begins with a penetrating description of his own method of philosophizing (i.e., the Critical method), according to which "the partiality of the scales of reason" is always checked by letting "the merchandise and the weights exchange pans" (pp.348-9[85]). He uses this metaphor to make two points. First, it suggests the importance of being willing to give up all prejudices:

I now have nothing at heart; nothing is venerable to me but what enters by the path of sincerity into a quiet mind open to all reasons ... Whenever I meet with something instructive, I appropriate it.... Formerly, I viewed common sense only from the standpoint of my own; now I put myself into the position of a foreign reason outside myself, and observe my judgments, together with their most secret causes, from the standpoint of others. (p.349[85-6])

Kant’s exposition in Dreams exemplifies this Critical (perspectival) shift by opposing the merchandise of his own prejudices concerning the spirit-world (Chapter Two) with the dead weight of a reductionist explanation (Chapter Three). The second point of the analogy is, however, the crucial one: we must recognize that "The scale of reason is not quite impartial" and so move the merchandise from the speculative pan to the pan "bearing the inscription ‘Hope of the Future’" (i.e., from the standpoint of the first Critique to that of the third[23]), where "even those light reasons ... outweigh the speculations of greater weight on the other side" (Dreams p.349[86]). Here at the threshold of his mature philosophical System, then, Kant stresses the overriding importance of what I call the ‘judicial’ standpoint (see note 23): "This is the only inaccuracy [of the scales of reason] which I cannot easily remove, and which, in fact, I never want to remove" (pp.349-50[86]).

On this basis Kant concludes that, even though "in the scale of speculation they seem to consist of nothing but air", the dreams of spirit-seers (and metaphysicians!) "have appreciable weight only in the scale of hope" (Dreams p.350[86-7]). While admitting "that I do not understand a single thing about the whole matter" of how the immaterial can interact with the material, he claims "that this study ... exhausts all philosophical knowledge about [spiritual] beings ... in the negative sense, by fixing with assurance the limits of our knowledge" (pp.349-50[88-9]). The assumed spiritual principle of life "can never be thought of in a positive way, because for this purpose no data can be found in the whole of our sensations" (pp.351-2[89]).[24] He is therefore constrained by ignorance to "deny the truth of the various ghost stories", yet he maintains "a certain faith in the whole of them taken together" (p.351[88]).[25] As I have argued elsewhere (KSP, V.1), this subordination of speculative knowledge to practical faith is the key to the justification of the Copernican Perspective itself. Thus, when Kant concludes Part One by saying "this whole matter of spirits" will "not concern me any more", because "I hope to be able to apply to better advantage my small reasoning powers upon other subjects" (p.352[90]), he may be hinting that he is already beginning to formulate a plan for constructing a System of Perspectives based on Critical reasoning.