Book Review by Stephen Palmquist (stevepq@hkbu.edu.hk)
Immanuel Kant: Theoretical Philosophy 1755-1770. Translated and edited by David Walford in collaboration with Ralf Meerbote. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. lxxxi + 543 pages.
As the first of fourteen projected volumes of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, this book is a milestone in English-speaking Kant scholarship. It marks the beginning of a new era, when scholars will have the long-overdue opportunity to access all Kant's published writings (and much of his unpublished work) in a uniform set of high-quality, reliable translations. Previously, readers of Kant-in-English had to choose between multiple translations of Kant's principle works, search for rare, out-of-print editions of translations for the less known works, and do without several writings that had never before been translated.
The only collection of English translations of Kant's writings that comes close to matching even the first volume of this new project in its breadth and thoroughness was actually one of the first translations of Kant ever made: John Richardson's two-volume book, Essays and Treatises on Moral, Political and Various Philosophical Subjects (London: 1798-9), translates nineteen (mostly minor) books and essays ranging throughout Kant's career. Unfortunately, most readers of Kant have no opportunity to consult this collection's (now outdated) English, since only a few copies are extant. Three of the essays Richardson translates are newly translated by Walford. Four others had not been retranslated until very recently (see Four Neglected Essays by Immanuel Kant [Hong Kong: Philopsychy Press, 1995])—though they will no doubt appear in subsequent volumes of the Cambridge collection.
One of the only editorial oversights in this first volume, prepared so meticulously by Walford (with Meerbote's assistance) that it almost totally lacks typographical errors, is the attribution of Richardson's (anonymously translated) Essays and Treatises to J.S. Beck. This blunder is repeated several times as a result of the book's system of abbreviations, which cites Richardson's work as "Beck (1798)" (see pp.xxx, 469-72). The error arose because the title page of Richardson's collection identifies the translator with "the Translator of The Principles of the Critical Philosophy"; the latter book was written by J.S. Beck,but translated by John Richardson. (For more details on Richardson's identity and his connection with both Kant and Beck, see Four Neglected Essays, pp.76-84.)
Such a minor glitch is far outweighed by Walford's masterly work, not only in preparing mostly new translations for Kant's eleven early theoretical writings, but also in providing extensive editorial notes and other helpful background information. After tracing the main events in the first half of Kant's life, the General Introduction examines seven main philosophical concerns that occupy Kant's attention in these eleven essays: problems relating to science and religion, optimism in the face of natural disasters, proving God's existence, causal relations, mind and nature, the nature of space, and the possibility of metaphysics (see p.xix). This Introduction is followed by a section that introduces each work individually, supplying helpful philosophical, biographical, and bibliographical background information. Some of this material also appears in the General Introduction (sometimes verbatim), though more details are supplied the second time around. A brief synopsis of each work also appears in a section immediately before the translations, with separate bibliographies, linguistic notes, and factual notes for each essay appearing afterwards. A concise Glossary (with nearly 200 entries), a complete set of Biographical-Bibliographical Sketches of Persons Mentioned by Kant (including useful details such as which of their books Kant himself owned), and a thorough Index put a great deal of additional information at the reader's fingertips. Indeed, this impressive editorial material is so extensive (amounting to roughly one-third of the book) that an eight-page Preface is needed just to introduce it all to the reader!
Occupying the central two-thirds of the book are the translations themselves: A new elucidation of the first principles of metaphysical cognition (1755); The employment in natural philosophy of metaphysics combined with geometry, of which sample I contains the physical monadology (1756); An attempt at some reflections on optimism (1759); The false subtlety of the four syllogistic figures (1762); The only possible argument in support of a demonstration of the existence of God (1763); Attempt to introduce the concept of negative magnitudes into philosophy (1763); Inquiry concerning the distinctness of the principles of natural theology and morality (1764); M. Immanuel Kant's announcement of the programme of his lectures for the winter semester 1765-1766 (1765); Dreams of a spirit-seer elucidated by dreams of metaphysics (1766); Concerning the ultimate ground of the differentiation of directions in space (1768); On the form and principles of the sensible and the intelligible world [Inaugural dissertation] (1770). Relevant supplementary material is appended to two of these eleven essays: three Reflections on optimism are translated in an Appendix (pp.77-83) after the Optimism essay; and a 1764 abridgment of Moses Mendelssohn's winning prize essay is translated in an Appendix (pp.276-286) after Kant's Inquiry.
Most of the above-named works, having been available in other English translations for some time, are sufficiently well-known to render superfluous any description of their content in a brief review such as this. Even the beginning student of Kant quickly learns of the significance of the Inaugural Dissertation; and works such as The Only Possible Argument, Dreams, and Inquiry are more and more coming to be recognized as significant precursors of Kant's mature philosophy. Instead of offering just a few brief comments about each work, I shall therefore concentrate on the three that either had never before been translated into English (excluding the short extracts of all Kant's publications contained in Gabriele Rabel's Kant [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963]) or else were translated so long ago that they are long since out of print and virtually inaccessible: the essays on Optimism (including the three appended Reflections), Negative Magnitudes, and Kant's Announcement. I shall discuss these three essays here in the reverse order of their significance for understanding Kant's philosophical development.
That the entirety of Kant's 1765 Announcement and 1759 Optimism essays had never been published in English translation until 1992, though unfortunate, is no great tragedy. Both belong to a small group of short works written as vehicles for notifying prospective students of Kant's upcoming lectures. In addition to Rabel's extracts, an incomplete translation of the former had been published in an appendix to E.F. Buchner's The Educational Theory of Immanuel Kant (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1904)—though this translation was overlooked in Walford's otherwise exhaustive listing of past translations. The main theme of the Announcement is that pedagogy ought to be grounded in epistemology: "The natural progress of human knowledge" begins when "the understanding" uses "experience" to form first "intuitive judgments", then "concepts"; "reason" relates these concepts to their "ground"; and "science" (or "learning") regards them "as parts of a well-ordered whole" (p.291). Kant relates this precursor of his mature epistemology to teaching methods by stressing that teachers should lead (not carry) their students to think, rather than presenting them with a "complete" philosophy: "to learn philosophy ... is impossible"; instead students must "learn to philosophise" (pp.292-293). He proceeds to explain how he intends to implement his pedagogical theory in each of his upcoming lectures (pp.294-300): metaphysics (stressing the relevance of his recently published Inquiry), logic (distinguishing between two levels of study), ethics (regarded as "the study of man"), and physical geography (regarded as "the real foundation of all history").
The Optimism essay is somewhat more weighty than the Announcement. It attempts to defend a single aspect of Leibniz's view that this is "the best of all possible worlds" against one possible objection (p.72): Kant claims "it is false to assert that no world can be thought, beyond which a still better world cannot be thought." More interesting than Kant's defense of this claim, expressed in both a "scholarly" and "a much easier" form (p.75), is the "new" theory he introduces in support of his argument. He argues (pp.72-73) that "perfection" must be understood to refer to a thing's "degree of reality", in terms of its "magnitude", not its "quality", so that differences between real things arise only from "the negations ... attaching to one of them", not from mutually incompatible "positive" marks. He thus rejects as illegitimate the analogy between a "perfect reality" and a "highest number"; the former, unlike the latter, is thinkable because it refers to "something which is completely determinate" (p.74).
The limited extent of Kant's approval of Leibniz is revealed by the three Reflections (numbers 3703-3705) translated in the Appendix. These Reflections, probably dating from 1753-1754, shed significant light on some of the wider issues relating to Kant's assessment of Leibnizian optimism. Reflection 3703 argues that the virtuous person, though not as likely to indulge in the happiness that stems from self-love, enjoys an "inner peace of soul" that the vicious person cannot know. After defining optimism, Reflection 3704 describes Leibniz's theory that particular evils can be tolerated when interpreted in terms of the whole world and compares it with Pope's more cautious optimism. Kant sides with the latter on the grounds that Leibniz requires us to assume "the metaphysical proofs" for God's existence, downplaying the teleological, whereas Pope acknowledges "that contemplating the world reveals traces of God"; only the latter properly understands how the principle of self-love "is the origin of that beautiful harmony" that "links the whole together" and "ensures that individual advantages always relate to the advantage of other things" (p.80). And Reflection 3705 points out two errors in Leibniz's theodicy: "He regards exceptions as necessary defects"; and "evils ... are only excused on the assumption that God exists" (pp.81-82). As a result, he ends up undermining "[t]he most reliable and the easiest proof", based on "the universal agreement of the arrangements of the world".
The virtual inaccessibility of the only previous English translation of Kant's 1763 Negative Magnitudes essay (reported by Walford to be included in Irvine's The Metaphysical Rudiments of Liberalism [London: 1911], pp.117-156) makes Walford's translation of this important, but much-neglected, work the highlight of the book (at least, from the historical perspective of past translations). This three-part essay expounds a distinction, foreshadowed in the Optimism essay and later applied at crucial stages in the first Critique, between "logical" and "real" opposition. Section 1 establishes that, although logically opposite characteristics, such as "dark" and "not dark", cannot both be applied to a real existing thing, real oppositions often do. Real opposing characteristics both describe essentially positive qualities that end up canceling each other out when applied to the same object, such as "credit" and "debit" or "moving westward" and "moving eastward". A "negative magnitude", therefore, is always negative only in relation to an opposing magnitude—a relation corresponding to the mathematical function of subtraction. Kant adduces in Section 2 numerous philosophical applications for the mathematical concept of negative magnitude: in metaphysics, "impenetrability is a negative attraction", called "repulsion"; in psychology, displeasure is not always merely a negation, but can be a "very positive" deprivation (i.e., a "negative pleasure"); in moral philosophy, "vice" can likewise be construed as "a negative virtue"; and in natural science, "coldness ... can be called a negative warmth" (pp.218-224). Section 3 sets out some tentative principles for applying the concept of negative magnitude to philosophical objects. After establishing that "every passing-away is a negative coming-to-be" (p.228), Kant distinguishes between "actual opposition" and "potential opposition", as when two things move "away from each other in opposite directions" (p.231). He then sets out two "propositions" that prefigure the First Analogy, portraying "natural changes" as neither increasing nor decreasing the total of positive reality, which always balances out to zero. Kant concludes by relating these propositions to natural and moral philosophy and to theology.
Walford used the standard Akademie edition of Kants gesammelte Schriften as the original text for these (and all eleven) essays, though he regularly consulted other editions, including both German/Latin originals and all available English, French, Italian, and Spanish translations. The Akademie pagination is specified in the margins, allowing readers readily to consult the original text, as needed. (Unfortunately, marginal numbers are not given for Kant's footnotes; the reader is left to guess at times where the page break occurs.) The translations themselves maintain a high standard of accuracy, preserving even Kant's paragraphing and use of emphasis—a principle that has been ignored, at times with disastrous results, by some previous translators. The consistency and choice of terminology can often be directly verified by comparing the numerous linguistic notes that appear at the bottom of nearly every page and/or by consulting the Glossary (though some significant terms, such as "knowledge", do not appear therein). Terms that are loosely translated to fit the context (such as rendering Erscheinung as "apparition" in Dreams) can thereby be easily identified.
In short, Walford (with Meerbote's assistance) has achieved a near perfect balance between what might be called the "scientific" and "artistic" standards of translation. Only those who have had the opportunity to read John Richardson's courageous first-attempt at translating a collection of Kant's essays, with its frequent gropings for appropriate English expressions, will be able fully to appreciate the magnitude of their accomplishment. For this new volume is truly a testimony to just how far Kant-translation has progressed in the past two centuries.
Stephen Palmquist, Hong Kong
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