By Ryan Smith
“[I] will assure to reason its lawful claims, and dismiss all groundless pretensions, not by despotic decrees, but in accordance with its own eternal and unalterable laws. This tribunal is no other than the critique of pure reason. … [I will critique] the faculty of reason in general … its extent, and its limits – all in accordance with principles.” – Kant: Critique of Pure Reason, Preface to the First Edition
Immanuel Kant instituted a revolution in philosophy, which moved the object of inquiry away from outer objects in themselves and on to the thought-forms that human beings invariably impose upon such objects. According to Kant, time and space, cause and effect, quality and quantity, and all such things are thought-forms that are present in the mind, rather than in the objects themselves.
To give an approximated example, this is like saying that all humans are born wearing blue-tinted glasses, which they can never remove. Anything a human sees therefore appears blue-hued to it, but no one can ever remove those blue-tinted glasses and therefore no one can ever know what reality looks like “in itself”, without the blue-tinted glasses on.
To give some terminology, reality without the blue glasses on is commonly called “reality in itself”, the “thing-in-itself”, “absolute”, or noumenon. According to Kant, humans can never know the true nature of this mode of perception, as no matter what we do, the brain breaks reality down into time, space, cause, effect and so on.
Conversely, reality with the blue glasses on is commonly called “reality-as-it-appears-to-me”, the “thing-as-it-appears-to-me”, phenomenon, or empirical reality. As soon as we want to engage with the world, we have automatically looked out through the blue-tinted glasses and we are completely at the mercy of the way that objects appear to us when viewed through these glasses.
Kant vs. Hegel, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Jung
The purpose of Kant’s dialectic is to demonstrate that the categories of thought depend upon the mind rather than on outer objects. If this claim is true, this means that concepts such as time, space, quantity, and quality are only valid with regards to the way in which reality appears to us. If Kant is correct, this means that ultimate reality stands entirely apart from human thoughts about it. Human perception is thus incompetent when it comes to having ultimate access to the real. All we ever see is an imprecise distortion, appropriated to our own simplistic understanding.
If Kant is right, then the absolute and objective truth will forever be unattainable, and we are stuck with a sort of subjective, approximated truth. Ni types who succeeded Kant in philosophy (such as Hegel, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Jung, and Ayn Rand) have always hated this distinction, and all have claimed to have bridged this gap and attained objective truth themselves. Jung himself said that Ni is what bridges the gap.[1]
Psychologically, the difference between Kant and the Ni types may also be seen in their methods and starting points: Ni types tend to start with the real, i.e. the fact or observation which they have made, and then proceed to elaborate on what meaning it holds – its significance and essence. Kant, on the other hand, approaches the real only indirectly: He starts by examining consciousness itself and the principles by which it operates. As such, Kant’s system is really a “philosophy of philosophy” or meta-philosophy – an analysis of the nuts and bolts that are inherent to sensibility, experience, and reason, and which invariably drive philosophical reflection.
Sensibility and Experience
The starting point of Kant’s dialectic is therefore to call attention to the transcendental illusion, that is, our tendency to apply empirical categories to absolute reality (i.e. to take the world-as-it-appears-to-me to be synonymous with the world-as-it-really-is). “What is your justification for doing so?” asks Kant. “What principle or rule has empowered you thus?”
Kant agrees that to think that the world really is the way it appears to us humans is a natural disposition in humans, and that is why I call his dialectic a dialectic of restraint. He calls our attention to the fact that we really have no way to prove that our mode of thinking applies to reality “in itself”, admonishing us to be more modest and restrained in our claims.
By Kant’s analysis, before we observe or experience something, our sensibilities have already been at work, distorting the bedrock of what is observed (what Kant calls the Transcendental Aesthetic). Similarly, before something has registered in consciousness, our understanding has been at work, processing and warping the raw experience as it appears to the senses (what Kant calls the Transcendental Analytic).
In the same way, following Hume, Kant argues that in order to lay claim to absolute knowledge, we must logically possess universal experience (so that we are able to rule out the existence of contradictions to our claims). A position that lays claim to being absolutely true must also be universally true, but human experience can never be complete and therefore cannot be universal. Neither observations nor experiences can therefore be used to arrive at objective truth.[2]
The Antinomies of Reason
According to Kant, neither our observations nor our experiences can thus be used to say anything about the world that is true in an absolute sense. But what about reason, then? Can reason help us fare any better?
Kant denies that this is so. In order to argue how even pure reason is inadequate for arriving at absolute knowledge, Kant posits a series of antinomies, which he analyzes in order to demonstrate the limitations of reason. For example, does the universe have a beginning in time or not? By applying reason to the question, we are faced with two possibilities:
- If the universe does have a beginning in time, then there must have been a period of non-time that went before it. However, since this period was entirely without time, the universe could not have progressed from this pre-temporal period into the period where time began. So by analysis via reason the universe must therefore not have had a beginning in time.
- But if the universe does not have a beginning in time, then an infinity of time must have elapsed until the present moment. This is a contradiction, because an infinity cannot “run out”, and so we would never reach the present moment. So by analysis via reason we arrive at the conclusion that the universe did have a beginning in time.
The antinomies then continue, applying themselves to questions of free will, God, and so on, and they keep showing the same contradiction: By analysis via reason alone, both positions are equally true, and neither conclusion is tenable. In Kant’s view, these antinomies prove how the concepts of the human mind are inapplicable to questions of absolute truth. As Kant would have it, the powerlessness of reason to resolve the antinomies constitutes indirect proof that the faculties of reason are suited only for use with the empirical world and never for saying anything about the absolute.
Kant and Hegel Compared
A major difference between Kant’s and Hegel’s dialectics is thus that Kant presumes the superiority of the cautious and guarding intellect (Ti), which constantly urges restraint, self-doubt, and modesty. With Kant, knowledge reigns itself in and demonstrates to men how little they can really know about the matters that they think they can understand.
While Kant had trusted in intellect, Hegel takes imagination as his impetus and leaps ahead in the pursuit of what his psyche has seen, following the inspiration wherever it leads in pursuit of a grand and complete understanding (Ni). Unlike the extroverted imagination of Hume or Machiavelli (Ne), he is not impaired by the practical confines of what things appear to be or what they are in this now, but alleges that he can see their ultimate nature and essence.
Conclusion
In these articles I have used the philosophical systems of Kant and Hegel as my starting point. But in doing so I have demonstrated a difference in epistemological stance which applies not just to Kant and Hegel, but to INTPs and INTJs by default. Certainly, there are individuals who rise above their default, but in the main, the distinction holds true.[3]
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to Professor T.R.V. Murti for his discussions of the Kantian critique.
NOTES
[1] Jung: Psychological Types §659. Though oddly, Jung did not think he was an Ni type.
[2] However, as Hegel has pointed out, Kant’s argument suffers from a problem here: Why can the thought-forms that the mind imposes on reality not be seen as parts of the absolutely real themselves? Kant and the Kantians answer that we cannot account for the apparent universality of the categories of thought (time, space, cause, effect, etc.) except if they were inherent to human consciousness. However, this argument can be rendered invalid if one assumes, as Hegel did, that ideas are the primary constituents of reality (i.e. by adopting idealism). Another (less cogent) way to challenge Kant’s argument is to adopt the opposite position and deny that the mind manipulates and interprets experience to make it appear qualitatively different from the nature of reality-in-itself. This latter position is experiencing a resurgence with modern science writers like Steven Pinker and Neil deGrasse Tyson. But the underlying philosophical issues that mar this position have not been resolved.
[3] Ironically, Jung thought that Kant and Hegel, as well as Schopenhauer and himself, were thinking dominant types, i.e. Kant ITP (Psychological Types §632), Hegel ENTJ or INTP (Psychological Types §540), Schopenhauer INTP (Psychological Types §322; 540) and Jung himself ISTP or INTP. And of course Schiller is also an INTP (Psychological Types §104) as is Nietzsche himself (Psychological Types §632). This array of claims, I believe, is enough to cast serious doubt on Jung’s method of determining who is and is not a Ti type. It seems that any philosopher that Jung liked was ITP in his view.
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Image of Kant in the article commissioned from artist Francesca Elettra.