Critique of Immanuel Kant's Transcendental Idealism

CRITIQUE OF IMMANUEL KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM
Paul Gerard Horrigan, Ph.D., 2018.
The immanentist and agnostic philosophical system of transcendental idealism as

formulated by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) in the numerous works of his critical period,
beginning with the first edition (1781) of the first of his three main critiques, the Critique of Pure
Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft), is plagued with numerous errors: blatant violations of the
principle of non-contradiction, material incoherencies of method, formal incoherencies of
content, etc. In his 1783 Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (Prolegomena zu einer jeden
künftigen Metaphysik), meant to be a short introduction to, or short explanation of, his difficult to
understand Critique of Pure Reason, Kant affirmed the existence of noumena or things-in-
themselves1 but added that it was impossible to know anything about them.2 But since he
maintains that noumena or things-in-themselves exist then his claim that we know nothing of
things-in-themselves or noumena is not true. He also claimed that the noumenal world is a
chaotic manifold.3 But how can we know that the noumenal world is a chaotic manifold since
Kant’s claim is that we can know nothing of things-in-themselves (noumena)? Again, he is
inconsistent. Kant often writes of noumenal reality in the plural, as consisting of things-in-
themselves, but how can he know this since he asserts that noumena are unknown and
unknowable? Prichard observes that “the use of the plural in the term things in themselves
implies a tendency to identify the unknowable reality beyond the mind with bodies in space. For
the implication that different sensations are due to different things in themselves originates in the
view that different sensations are due to the operation of different spatial bodies.”4 And isn’t
plurality, according to Kant’s system, an a priori category of the understanding, applicable only
to phenomena and not noumena? Giudo Berghin-Rosè also writes: “Kant incorre in una
contraddizione fondamentale. Infatti dopo aver dichiarata irraggiungibile qualsiasi cosa in sé,
spende gran parte delle sue opere a studiare e descrivere una cosa in sé, cioè la struttura dello
spirito che conosce (facoltà, forme a priori) ed il suo modo di operare. Tutta questa parte del
sistema è, quindi, per definizione, destituita di ogni valore.5”6 Kant taught that reality is in itself
unknowable, so what right had he, according to the very principles and method of his system of
transcendental idealism, to affirm the existence of a noumenal world of distinct things-in-
themselves beyond or independent of the subjective contents of the individual human conscious
state? Even with Kant’s the idea of the noumenon as a limiting concept (Grenzbegriff) in the
second “B” edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1787, the previous contradictory
affirmations and descriptions mentioned above remain intact and unchanged as in the first 1781
“A” edition. In fact, even with the Grenzbegriff modifications in the “B” edition Norman Kemp
Smith writes that “Kant now adds to the term noumena the qualifying phrase ‘in the positive
sense.’ In this way the assumption that things in themselves actually exist becomes quite explicit,
1
See also I. KANT, Critique of Pure Reason, B, 34; A, 19.
2
I. KANT, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, 13, remark 2.
3
Cf. C. BITTLE, The Whole Man, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1956, p. 311.
4
H. A. PRICHARD, Kant’s Theory of Knowledge, The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1909, p. 32.
5
«È dunque l’assurdità della pretesa di esaminare validamente la struttura dello spirito conoscitivo, dopo aver
infirmato la validità degli strumenti stessi dell’indagine »(F. AMERIO, Lineamenti di storia della filosofia, Torino,
pag. 321).
6
G. BERGHIN-ROSÈ, Elementi di filosofia, vol. 5 (Critica), Marietti, Turin, 1958, no. 64, p. 57
1
despite Kant’s greater insistence upon the impossibility of applying any of the categories to
them.”7 In his commentary on A 288, B 344 (the passage in the “B” edition simply repeats the
passage of the “A” edition unaltered) of the Critique of Pure Reason (“[The understanding in
limiting sensibility] thinks for itself an object in itself, but only as transcendental object which is
the cause of appearance and therefore not itself appearance, and which can be thought neither as
quantity nor as reality nor as substance, etc…”), Kemp Smith notes that “the sentence reveals
Kant as at once holding unquestioningly to the existence of things in themselves, and yet at the
same time as teaching that they must not be conceived in terms of the categories…”8 Therefore,
even with the introduction of modifications in Kant’s doctrine concerning the noumenon in the
second “B” edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, one cannot maintain that Kant had now
simply become an Absolute Idealist of the Fichtean sort where the thing-in-itself is simply
eliminated and where the subject creates the object in its entirety, and, therefore, he must still be
described as a transcendental idealist.
In his Il principio di coerenza (1997), Antonio Livi, commenting on a passage from

Aniceto Molinaro’s critique of Kant on the phenomenon-noumenon relationship in Metafisica:
corso sistematico (1995), shows the formal incoherence (or incoherence of content) of Kant’s
transcendental idealist notion of ‘phenomenon’ in its relation to the noumenon or thing-in-itself
(Ding an sich): “‘a) La riduzione dell’esperienza alla sola sensibilità…In termini kantiani ciò
viene espresso dicendo che solo sul piano della sensibilità si danno intuizioni, mentre non si
danno sul piano dell’intelletto e della ragione. Questa riduzione è arbitraria, ma nel tempo stesso
rivelatrice: l’esperienza è presenza immediata di qualcosa; ma perché una presenza immediata
deve essere solo sensibile…? Che cosa impedisce una presenza immediata sul piano del
pensiero…? A questa domanda Kant non può fornire una risposta: presupposto acritico.
“‘b) La presenza immediata – intuizione – sul piano della sensibilità è il fenomeno. Il

fenomeno è la sensazione, in cui si incontrano l’impressione sensibile – il dato – e la recezione
sensibile – la recettività dei sensi. Il fenomeno è un contenuto della coscienza o del pensiero in
generale. Ma esso si distingue dall’oggetto o cosa in sé, da cui proviene: è fenomeno in quanto si
differenzia dalla cosa in sé. Allora il fenomeno in quanto fenomeno viene definito dal suo
differenziarsi, cioè dal suo essere rappresentazione di e dal suo essere riferimento alla cosa in sé,
da cui proviene; ma proprio per distinguersi da essa, il fenomeno presuppone la cosa in sé, che
non è fenomeno: si dà un fenomeno in quanto fenomeno solo in quanto si dà una cosa in sé. Il
presupposto acritico mostra qui la sua incoerenza: l’ammissione del fenomeno, cioè
l’ammissione che la sensibilità termina al fenomeno, si costituisce sull’ammissione di una cosa
in sé oltre e al di fuori del fenomeno.
“‘c) Questa incoerenza diviene una contraddizione, quando ci si eleva al piano

dell’intelletto. Su questo piano Kant dichiara che la conoscenza è sintesi a priori (fenomeno e
categoria) e che è proprio l’a priori a garantire la sua universalità e necessità: poi però Kant
sostiene che la sintesi a priori non è conoscenza della cosa in sé. Questo, sia perché è limitata ai
fenomeni, sia perché è a priori anche rispetto ai fenomeni. Ma allora si deve dire che la cosa in
sé è sconosciuta e inconoscibile: in quanto la conoscenza è limitata ai fenomeni, si deve dire che
la cosa in sé non entra nell’ambito dell’esperienza; in quanto la conoscenza è a priori, si deve
7
N. KEMP SMITH, A Commentary to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Macmillan, London, 1923, p. 413.
8
N. KEMP SMITH, op. cit., p. 412.
2
dire che la cosa in sé non entra neppure nell’ambito della fondazione logica dell’universalità e
necessità della conoscenza (le categorie sono a priori in quanto sono le funzioni, le regole, le
leggi dell’intelletto). Ma allora se non è né fenomeno né categoria né la loro sintesi, la cosa in sé
non deve essere affermata, neppure come sconosciuta e inconoscibile. Qui si mostra la
contraddizione.’9 In effetti, il fenomeno in quanto tale dice riferimento a qualcosa che non è
fenomeno, ma cosa in sé; quindi come ‘apparenza’ esso è connesso con il pensiero dell’esistenza
della ‘cosa in sé.’ Qui, sul piano delle categorie a priori (sul piano cioè in cui l’intelletto pensa il
fenomeno, costituendolo nella sua forma mediante l’impressione della propria universalità e
necessità), la contraddizione esplode: infatti l’intelletto pensa l’oggetto dell’intuizione sensibile
(fenomeno), in quanto riferisce il molteplice sensibile a qualcosa che sta al di là del fenomeno e
che è la cosa in sé: Kant la chiama «oggetto trascendentale» ed è, appunto, un’incognita.10 Ma
proprio in forza in questo riferimento la regolarità dei rapporti fenomenici si trasforma in legge
costante e immodificabile, universale e necessaria; quindi, anche la sintesi a priori si costituisce
come riferimento alla cosa in sé e in connessione con il pensiero della sua esistenza. Questa è
appunto la contraddizione: il pensiero pensa la cosa in sé, intendendola come qualcosa di
assolutamente impensabile. Ciò viene a significare che l’affermazione della cosa in sé, richiesta
dall’essenza stessa della conoscenza, è dalla conoscenza dichiarata impossibile (in quanto
sarebbe inconoscibile) tanto sul piano dell’esperienza quanto sull’piano della dimostrazione
logica. Del Ding an sich Kant parla, quindi, per presupposizione incoerente. Questa
presupposizione consiste nell’affermare con il pensiero la cosa in sé come esterna, estranea, al di
fuori del pensiero. Ma, per definizione, ciò che è esterno al pensiero è ciò che non è pensato né
pensabile (in temini kantiani, ‘sconosciuto e inconoscibile’); quindi, poiché è il pensiero a porla
come esterna a se stesso, si ha che il pensiero la pensa, e la pensa come esterna, cioè come non
pensata e impensabile. La cosa in sé è, dunque, allo stesso tempo pensata e non pensata, cioè il
suo concetto è contraddittorio: «Da una parte, in quanto pensata, anche nel caso che sia pensata
come esterna, non è più esterna al pensiero, ma interna, e se è interna non è più cosa in sé;
dall’altra, in quanto è esterna, la cosa in sé non è pensata e, dunque, è cosa in sé: la cosa in sé è e
non è la cosa in sé: è, perché non è pensata; non è, perché è pensata».11 La conclusione è che,
visto che nel metodo di Kant esiste questa contraddizione fondamentale ed esistenziale, il
sistema trascendentale, per il fatto di essere contraddittorio, si autodistrugge e deve essere
rifiutato dal punto di vista aletico, cioè in rapporto alla logica epistemica o verità del discorso.”12
Such formal incoherence of Kant’s transcendental idealism regarding the relation of

phenomenon to noumenon or thing-in-itself historically led to the further error of Absolute
Idealism at the start of the nineteenth century, beginning with Fichte’s elimination of the thing-
in-itself. Fichte looked at Kant’s Ding an sich “as a superfluity, indeed as a monstrosity. In his
view the thing-in-itself had to be eliminated in the interests of idealism. In his opinion Kant was
a man who tried to have things both ways at once, and who therefore involved himself in
hopeless inconsistencies. If one had once accepted the Kantian theory of the subject’s part in the
construction of experience, one was bound, thought Fichte, to go forward to a fully idealist
philosophy…if the thing-in-itself is eliminated, it follows that the subject creates the object in its
9
A. MOLINARO, Metafisica: corso sistematico, San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo, 1995, pp. 52-53.
10
Cfr. I. KANT, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A 33, B 49.
11
A. MOLINARO, op. cit., p. 54.
12
A. LIVI, Il principio di coerenza, Armando, Rome, 1997, pp. 85-87.
3
entirety; it does not merely mould, so to speak, a given material.”13 In Absolute Idealism it is
thought that creates being, being belongs fully to thought.
Kant claimed that existing extra-mental things-in-themselves (noumena) are the causes of
the initial raw sense data that initially become molded by the two a priori forms of sensibility,
namely, space and time. The given initial raw sense data would be effects of their causes which
are noumena (external things).14 “Kant takes it for granted that the senses are acted upon by
external things; and the effect of this action upon the faculty of representation is called
‘sensation.’ The latter is thus a subjective representation; but this does not mean that it is caused
by the subject.”15 For Kant, “the external thing which affects the subject is itself unknown; but
by affecting the senses it produces a representation.”16 In the Prolegomena to Any Future
Metaphysics we find him asserting that things-in-themselves are unknowable as they are in
themselves but that “we know them through the representations which their influence on our
sensibility procures for us.”17 But this is making use of objective efficient causality and
acknowledging objective efficient causality operating in the extra-mental world. This is a plain
violation of his philosophical system that claims that efficient causality is not something of the
extra-mental real world but rather something rooted in the very structure of the human mind.18
Efficient causality is, for Kant, a subjective a priori category of the understanding which can
only be applicable, according to his transcendental idealist doctrine, to phenomena and not
things-in-themselves or noumena. R. P. Phillips observes that “Kant’s system is open to
objection at almost every stage, but as Professor Ward remarks, the thing-in-itself is the
‘Achilles’ heel’ of his theory. For it is plain that if it is unknowable we cannot know that it
exists; and, moreoever it is contradictory to assert that it does so and is the cause of sense
impressions, while denying that existence and causality, as being mental categories, can apply to
it.”19 Copleston notes that “Kant’s doctrine of the thing-in-itself was certainly not unattended by
difficulties. Apart from the fact that the nature of the thing-in-itself was declared to be
unknowable, not even its existence as cause of the material of sensation could be positively
asserted without misuse (on Kant’s premisses) of the categories of causality and existence.”20
Kant attempts to solve the skeptical consequences of Hume’s phenomenalist and sensist
nominalism wherein nothing universal can come from experience, by means of his synthetic a
priori judgments that would provide the universality and necessity needed for truly scientific
judgments, while at the same time providing an increment of knowledge. Universality and
necessity, for Kant, would come from the a priori forms and categories of the mind. But the
universal can come from experience by way of the moderate realist abstraction.21
13
F. COPLESTON, A History of Philosophy, book 2, vol. 6, Image Doubleday, New York, 1985, p. 431.
14
Cf. C. BITTLE, Reality and the Mind, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1936, p. 111-112.
15
F. COPLESTON, op. cit., p. 236.
16
17
I. KANT, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, 13, remark 2 (Italics mine).
18
Cf. F. COPLESTON, op. cit., pp. 270-271.
19
R. P. PHILLIPS, Modern Thomistic Philosophy, vol. 2 (Metaphysics), Newman, Westminster, MD, p. 95.
20
21
Joseph Thomas Barron writes: “Moderate Realism. Distinction Between the Senses and the Reason. Introspection
clearly evidences the distinction between our higher and lower cognitional powers. Through the senses we become
aware of particular things. For example, through the sense of sight I see this or that particular object, possessing a
certain size, shape, and color, existing in this place at this time. If we touch an object, the resistance we encounter is
this resistance, and if we strike it we hear this sound. Whenever we sense a reality, it is always endowed with
4
individuality – it always has specific individuating notes. But reflection tells us that we have another kind of
knowledge which differs widely from sense knowledge. It is not a knowledge of the particular and concrete, but of
the general and abstract. I can, for example, think of a book which is totally different from this book I now sense,
and which has none of its individuating characteristics. This new thought is no longer bound up with this particular
book. It is applicable, as I can see by reflection, to any number of individual books. Its object is not a particular
object but a universal object. Furthermore my senses do not tell me what things are; they do not apprehend the
essence or whatness of things. But I seemingly do know what things are; I know not only the qualities of things but I
also know what things are in themselves; I know their natures. Thus my senses alone do not tell me this is a book.
They report color, size, shape, etc., but I know it is a book, proving thereby that I have a kind of knowledge which is
not sense knowledge.
“Again, I know what is meant by such notions as justice, hope, causality, knowledge, none of which I can sense.
None of these can be perceived through a sense organ, yet I can and do know them. Moreoever, the senses have not
the power of reflection. They cannot make their data the objects of their own examination. But the power of
reflection is a fact, and this points also to a difference between sense knowledge and a higher kind of knowledge.
Then there are our judicial and ratiocinative powers. These cannot be allocated in the senses. From a comparison of
the conceptual, judicial, and ratiocinative aptitudes of the intellect with the functioning of the senses we see that
there is a radical difference between the senses and the intellect.
“But while we differentiate the one from the other, and while we see they are irreducible to each other, we must
not think that though distinct they are separate. Intellect and sense do not function separately and apart from each
other. In actual concrete experience we cannot divorce the operation of the lower faculty from that of the higher. In
our adult experience the sensuous and intellectual elements are closely interwoven. A sensation is hardly, if ever,
given without an accompanying intellection. Continuity and solidarity are always present between them. So closely
are they interwoven that it is often difficult to discriminate between the purely sensory elements in our knowledge
and those which are the result of higher factors. We must not forget that the knowledge-process is complicated, and
that sensation, perception, retention and reproduction, conception, judgment, and reasoning, all intermingle with one
another, and that all have an integral part in the process of cognition.
“The existence of rational concepts has been established. The formation of concepts depends on and begins with
sense knowledge, but it is completed by the intellect. The process whereby concepts emerge from precepts demands
an exposition.
“The Origin of Concepts. Since our concepts are not a priori (or prior to sense experience) and since
introspection shows us that in our judgments we identify these concepts with the data of sense, the intellect must
apprehend them in some way in the data of sense (we are constantly making judgments in which we identify the data
of sense with our concepts, e.g., ‘This is a book’). There is no other explanation. The intellect gets all its data or
objects in and through sense perception – and self-consciousness. This does not mean that the intellect can conceive
only what the senses perceive, i.e., only the physical or material. This is the sensistic interpretation of this principle.
The principle means that while the intellect gets its data from sense perception it nevertheless has the power of
apprehending modes of being which transcend sense perception. For example, it can form such concepts as ‘being,’
‘quality,’ ‘change,’ ‘thought,’ none of which objects can be the objects of the senses. Again, the intellect can reflect
on its own activities and form concepts such as ‘intellect,’ ‘cognition,’ which are concepts of realities unperceivable
by the senses. Our theory of moderate realism, therefore, which holds that the thought-objects of the intellect are
somehow apprehended in the data of sense is not sensistic.
“The Theory of Abstraction. Since the thought-objects of the intellect are apprehended in sense data, the obvious
question arises: How is the concept derived from the percept – or sense data? How can we bridge the gap between
sense knowledge and intellectual knowledge? The answer is: by the process of abstraction. An extramental object
produces an impression on one or more of the senses. Through this impression the mind becomes cognizant of a
concrete object. This impression evokes the activity of the intellect. In every object there are certain qualities or
attributes which may or may not belong to the object without any substantial or essential difference being made in
the nature of the object; e.g., the height, weight, and clothing of any individual may all be different from what they
are and he would still be a man. There are other attributes, however, the absence of which would destroy the
character of the object and cause it to be other than it is. If we did away with either the rationality or the animality of
a man he would no longer be a man. The functioning of the intellect at this juncture is abstractive. Abstraction is the
concentration of the intellect on these latter elements to the exclusion of the former. It is the withdrawal of the
attention of the mind from what is accidental and the fixing of it on the essential. It is the act whereby the intellect
abstracts or selects from an object that portion which is essential and neglects the rest. The result of this abstraction
is the concept which expresses in the abstract the essence of the object. The concept is not the representation of a
5
single, particular object; it is universal and abstract because, as we shall see, it is capable of being realized in an
indefinite number of objects. In a word, the intellect conceives what the senses perceive but in a different way.
“The term ‘abstraction’ as descriptive of the conception process has given rise to much misunderstanding. Some
have understood it as connoting the taking away of something from the concrete object. Such a view is a travesty on
the nature of abstraction. The essence or nature which is said to be abstracted is an attribute of the object and it never
ceases to be such. Abstraction is a purely mental process. It does not take away the physical essence of the object.
Just as the eye can see an object, so does the intellect represent to itself the object without changing in any way its
physical reality. Abstraction does not change the nature of the object but rather the nature of our awareness of the
object. In brief, abstraction simply means the representation of the essence of an object in the intellect.
“The Universality of Concepts. The fact that concepts are devoid of the individuating characteristics which are
always found in sensed objects has two implications.
“(1) The thought-object considered in itself is neither universal nor particular (cf. De Ente et Essentia, c. 4). The
concept considered in this abstract condition is said to be the direct or potential universal, and as such it is
fundamentally real, i.e., its basis is in the object independently of the work of the mind. We are warranted in
claiming objectivity for the direct or potential universal since the mind finds the content of the concept in the object.
The mind does not create the content of the universal by its own activity but it discovers the content objectively
existing.
“(2) After the direct universal has been generated the intellect sees that the thought-object is not only in this
object and predicable of it, but that it is capable of indefinite repeated realizations in an indefinite number of other
similar objects. It thus formally universalizes the concept. When by reflection a concept is seen to be universally
predicable of all the objects of a class it is said to be a formal or reflex universal. Thus at first one forms the concept
of man as a rational animal. This is a direct universal. By an act of reflection the concept ‘rational animal’ is seen to
be predicable of all men, past, present, and future – it is formally universalized (cf. Summa Theologiae, I, q. 39, a. 3
; De Anima, 2; Summa Theologiae, I, q. 85, a. 2, ad 2).
“The universalizing is the work of the intellect. Hence universals, as universal, exist in the mind alone. The
concept of the nature or essence which is universalized has its basis in the object of sense, but the universality and
abstractness which characterize the concept are the work of, and are in, the intellect. There are universal thought-
objects but no universal objects. Whatever is real, i.e., in the real or objective order, is individual. But individual
things, while they do not constitute one reality, have similar natures. Because of this the intellect can apprehend this
similarity of nature and form a concept, which it may universalize, and which is predicable of the various different
but similar individuals. This predication of the same attribute to different individuals does not imply that they are the
same reality. They are distinct and separate individuals, but because of their similarity of nature the same essence
can be predicated of them. Similarity is not a real identity – it is a mental identity.”(J. T. BARRON, Elements of
Epistemology, Macmillan, New York, 1936, pp. 86-92).
Regarding moderate realist abstraction Sanguineti writes: “1. Abstraction. The existence of ideas is a fact of
internal experience, and the capacity to produce ideas is called intelligence. For the critique of knowledge it is
important to ensure how the ideas are formed and what their meaning is. Classical rationalism considers them innate
and tends to connect them with a world of possible essences, while the existent reality would be the exclusive object
of sensible knowledge. Empiricism reduces the importance of ideas, which at best would be constructions of a very
vague, schematic imaginative knowledge, although they would be useful for orienting ourselves in the world. The
dissatisfaction awakened by these extreme solutions leads to other gnoseological theories: Kantian idealism
recognizes the value of necessity and of universality of the ideas, but believes them to be a human production which
serves to unify contingent and particular experience; absolute idealism reduces reality to idea, while sensible
knowledge becomes a mere phenomenal apparition; pragmatism, vitalism and existentialism place the ideas in
function of the activities of man, depriving them of cognitive value.
“For realistic philosophy, the idea or concept is derived from experience and corresponds to the being of things.
However, there does not exist a total conformity between the idea and the thing (as is conceived by the exaggerated
realism of Plato, or by idealism in another context), because the idea represents the thing in an abstract way, adding
to it some logical elements that belong no longer to that which is comprehended, but rather to the human mode of
comprehension. This relative unconformity can be known as such, and in some way is overcome thanks to the
connection of ideas with experience, or to the use of some conceptual techniques such as analogy.
“Let us briefly confront the problem of the formation of the initial concepts, leaving out some technical details
that are studied in psychology or that we have seen in formal logic. We refer for the moment to knowledge of
material reality, the point of departure of human thought.
6
“The intelligibility of things is not given to us in an immediate way: for the fact of seeing a thing, we do not
comprehend its essence. The things of the world are for us sensible in act, but intelligible in potency. For example,
we think of a group of persons that move, run, shake their hands, without knowing in a precise way what they are
doing. We must observe more attentively, comparing and keeping in cosideration the various movements in order to
understand their reason; only after this experimental knowledge, in which both the external and the internal senses
concur, one arrives at the point of understanding that which holds the interplay of relations together: we have
understood that this a game (or even a specific game) – that is, we have arrived at a new concept. In other words,
this intelligible reality (because only the intelligence can register it) that first potentially existed in our experience,
has now passed to an intelligibility in act.
“This passage has not taken place in base of an a priori idea of game. The concept has been stripped from
experience, and is born precisely when the experience has become sufficiently mature. However, pure experience by
itself does not suffice to make seen the essence contained in this, because experience is always a particular fact,
while the idea, such as that of game, absolutely transcends this particular game that I can observe ‘here and now.’
Therefore, it is necessary for man to have an intellectual potency which is capable of illuminating the experience in
order that the essence may shine in it, which at first is hidden from our eyes. On the other hand, this illumination
also implies a separation of the intelligible element with respect to the sensible content, a procedure called
abstraction. For Thomism, the illuminating and abstracting potency is the agent intellect, called by this name
because it acts by performing the passage from the intelligible in potency to the state of intelligibility in act. In the
Kantian theory of knowledge, the human mind introduces the forms in matter, which is furnished by sensation. In
the Aristotelian doctrine of forms are in the things themselves: the intelligence uses its light in order to that these
forms become intelligible for man.
“Once the essence has been separated from the experience, it immediately impresses itself on the human
intelligence, which in this new function is called passive intellect; thus is produced the identification in act between
the intentional essence present to the intellect and the faculty that receives this content. Now the intelligence is
informed by the intellectual species and can pass to the act of knowing the object to which the intentional species
refers.
“However, this (abstract) object does not exist as such in the external world, and not even in the initial
experience. The sensible species of the external sensation refers directly to the present external object; the
imagination, not finding a present object, must forge a representation, which is the image; on its part, the human
intelligence is not only independent from the physical presence of the object, but comprehends the essence in a
different state from the one in which it is found in the individual being. Therefore, the intellect must conceive
a…concept or mental word (expressed species). On the one hand, the production of the expressed species is an index
of the imperfection of knowledge, insofar as it implies a certain distance from the object; nevertheless, in another
sense it implies perfection, if we consider it as an internal spiritual production that belongs to the proper immanence
of life. The concept is the immanent terminus of intellectual knowledge, be it a simple notion or rather a judgment
(which for Saint Thomas is also a conceptio intellectus, in the sense just explained). The concept is an intellectual
representation in which is contemplated the essence of the thing, as an object is contemplated in a mirror.
“However, the intellectual operation does not finish with the formation of the concept, because the abstract nature
of the latter does not perfectly express the thing that is intended to be understood, which is individual and material
(when considering knowledge of the physical world). After the separation of the essence performed by the agent
intellect there must follow an operation in the inverse sense, which will connect the essence, already comprehended,
with the reality it belongs to. ‘The nature of the rock or of any other material thing cannot be completely and truly
known until one knows it as existent in particulars, which are understood by means of the senses and the
imagination. Therefore, it is necessary, in order that the intellect may comprehend in act its proper object, that it
convert itself to experience (ad phantasmata), in such a way as to contemplate the universal nature as existent in the
particular’(Summa Theologiae, I, q. 84, a. 7, c.).
“This operation is called conversio ad phantasmata, conversion of the mind to experience, where are to be found
the existent objects that are intended to be known. After the formation of the general concept of game, to continue
our example, we may return to the intuitive knowledge of these particular games, known now according to the new
essential content, and thus we do not limit ourselves to seeing colours, movements, etc., but rather we comprehend
the unity of these experiences as a game – that is, as a sensible reality in which there exists an essence known in act.
‘Our intellect abstracts the intelligible species from experiences, insofar as it considers the nature of things in a
universal way; and yet, it comprehends them in experiences, since it cannot understand the things from where it
abstracts the species, without turning to experience’(Summa Theologiae, I, q. 85, a. 1, ad 5).
7
Critique of Kant on Intuition. It is false to assert, as Kant does, that we have only sensible
intuition. We also have intellectual intuition. “To intuit is a certain direct vision or contemplation
that, together with evidence, distinguishes itself from discursive knowledge. Taking into account
the diversity of meanings of this term in philosophy, we can indicate two of these fundamental
meanings:
“a) Intuition in the sense of direct comprehension of truth, be it on the existence or on the
essence of a thing, this sense of intuition perfectly coincides with the notion of evidence. ‘The
intelligence knows by means of a simple intuition (simplici intuitu), while the reason does this by
discoursing from one part to another.’22
“b) Intuition in the sense of knowledge that does not have recourse to a representation,
because it finds its terminus in the physically present thing. A similar intuition corresponds only
to the external senses and to the intellectual knowledge of ourselves. There does not exist an
intuition of the nature of things, since the nature can only be grasped through abstraction.
“However, the term intuition can also be extended to the intellectual knowledge of the
individual existents: one intuits, in this sense, the existence of the world and of the ‘I.’ This latter
meaning coincides, as we shall see, with the notion of experience.”23
Critique of Kant’s Immanentism. What is the principle of immanence? Alejandro Llano

states that “the principle of immanence consists in the denial that being transcends
consciousness…being is constituted from within the immanence of the thinking subject…A great
part of post-Cartesian philosophy basically holds to the principle of immanence.24 In positions as
apparently opposed to idealism as empiricism, dialectical materialism and existentialism, one can
discover – in effect – that the starting point is the immanence of human consciousness and that
these positions never attain genuine transcendence.”25 Carlos Cardona notes the eventual
“The intelligence knows in a direct line only the universals, because the material individuals are the object of
empirical experience. However, in an immediate, albeit indirect way, the intelligence comprehends the individual or
physical nature precisely in virtue of the intimate union between the intellective potency and human sensibility.
Therefore, there exists an intellectual comprehension of individuals, which for Saint Thomas is the work of the
cogitative, the superior faculty of sensibility, strictly united to the intelligence, in whose force it participates.
Without this bridge between the abstract intelligence and concrete sensibility, our intellectual comprehension would
be purely ideal, and our sensitive knowledge would regard only facts: an enormous gap would be opened between
these two spheres, which is precisely the abyss opened up by the currents such as Platonism, rationalism, and
empiricism, which have not suceeded in explaining the unity of human knowledge, even if it is so very clear on the
level of ordinary experience. For realism, the thesis of intellective knowledge of the concrete is very important,
because otherwise one risks blocking thought within the universals, which are not existent, while the existential
reality would remain entrusted to an impoverished experience”(J. J. SANGUINETI, Logic and Gnoseology,
Urbaniana University Press, Rome, 1987, pp. 221-225).
22
Summa Theologiae, I, q. 59, a. 1, ad 1.
23
J. J. SANGUINETI, op. cit., p. 259.
24
See: C. FABRO, Introduzione all’ateismo moderno, 2nd edition, Studium, Rome, 1969 (English translation of 1st
edition: C. FABRO, God in Exile: An Introduction to Modern Atheism, Newman Press, Westminster, MD, 1968) ;
C. CARDONA, Metafísica del la opción intelectual, Rialp, Madrid, 1973 (Italian translation: C. CARDONA,
Metafisica dell’opzione intellettuale, EDUSC, Rome, 2003).
25
A. LLANO, Gnoseology, Sinag-Tala, Manila, 2001, p. 88, 92. Italian translation: A. LLANO, Filosofia della
conoscenza, Le Monnier, Florence, 1987, p. 92, 96 ; Spanish original: A. LLANO, Gnoseologia, EUNSA,
Pamplona, 1984, p. 96, 100.
8
agnostic (and atheistic) outcome of the immanentist “option” which endeavors “di definire
l’essere a partire dalla mia conoscenza. Quando questo atteggiamento diviene esclusivo e
dichiara la non validità dell’apprensione immediata dell’essere e pretende di costituire quello che
è stato chiamato inizio assoluto, vera origine dell’essere, posizione radicale di tutta la realtà,
siamo di fronte a un’interpretazione del cogito, storicamente data, che porta alla negazione di
Dio.”26
The root problem with the transcendental idealist system of Kant is its immanentism:
Kant, like his predecessor the sensist phenomenalist Hume, who awoke the philosopher from
Königsberg from his “dogmatic slumbers” of Wolffian rationalism, is ultimately trapped within
the phenomenal prison of his mind, unable to know things in extra-mental reality. Being unable
to know the extra-mental world of real things, of real beings endowed with their respective acts
of being (esse as actus essendi), since he is restricted to the realm of phenomena, he is unable to
demonstrate the existence of God in an a posteriori quia effect to cause manner starting from
extra-mental sensible things and applying objective, analogical, metaphysical efficient causality
to them to arrive at the Uncaused First Efficient Cause of their very being, since the external
sensible things of noumenal reality remain, for Kant, unknown and unknowable in the first place,
and since efficient causality, for him, is an a priori category of the understanding applicable only
to phenomena.
The solution to the problem of immanentism lies in a vigorous and healthy philosophical
realism open to gnoseological and ontological transcendence. But what exactly is immanentism
and what exactly do we mean by realism and transcendence? In philosophical usage, the term
immanentism is derived from the concept immanence, which means to remain within oneself,
which is opposed to transcendence, which means to go beyond oneself. In immanentism, what
man knows in the first instance is that which remains enclosed within the sphere of human
consciousness (e.g., ideas), and not the extra-mental real thing, which is either only mediately
known (Descartes’ mediate “realism,” a pseudo-realism, unsuccessful in its attempts at
reclaiming reality) or is simply unknowable (Humean and Kantian phenomenalism). Realism, on
the other hand, retains that what is known in the first instance is the extra-mental thing which
really exists (e.g., that real pine tree to the right of me, or that particular brown cat in front of
me). For the immanentist, who is incarcerated within the cell of his mind, unable to escape to a
knowledge of noumenal reality, thought is prior to being. Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I
am), that famous Cartesian dictum, is the name of the immanentist state penitentiary. Realism,
instead, maintains that being is prior to thought. The actual dog that exists in reality is prior to
the universal concept “dog” that exists in the mind in an intentional manner. Dobermans and
dachshunds are out there in reality and will continue to exist there whether we think of them or
not. What is known in the first instance is the real dog and not the idea “dog.” What is known in
the first instance is the extra-mental sensible thing itself really existing in the world. For the
immanentist, then, thought is the starting point of philosophical investigation, whereas for the
realist it is real sensible being, leading to the affirmation res sunt (things are).
In his book Methodical Realism, the great twentieth century philosopher-historian

Étienne Gilson explains that “when St. Thomas tells us that the intellect reaches objects, things,
no one can misunderstand what he means by that: ‘Could we not say that the res St. Thomas
26
C. CARDONA, Metafisica dell’opzione intellettuale, EDUSC, Rome, 2003, p. 15.
9
talks about, and which the judgment should conform to, although something objective and
independent, is nevertheless in the mind? Anyone who thought that would be thoroughly wrong.
If St. Thomas does not feel it necessary to be explicit on the subject, it is probably because he
never dreamed that anyone could misunderstand him. For him, the thing is plainly the real thing
posited as an entity existing in its own right and outside human consciousness.’27
“Exactly so, and it could not be better put. But if that is the way things are, how can one
maintain that in Thomism one can start from a something apprehended prescinding from its
reality? Whatever object I apprehend, the first thing I apprehend is its being: ens est quod
primum cadit in intellectu.28 But this being which is the first object of the intellect – ens est
proprium objectum intellectus, et sic est proprium intelligibile29 – is, in virtue of what has just
been said, something entirely different from ‘an apprehended’ without the reality; it is reality
itself, given by means of an act of apprehension no doubt, but not at all as simply apprehended.
In short, one could say that if the block which experience offers us for analysis needs to be
dissected according to its natural articulations, it is still an ‘apprehended reality’ which it
delivers us, and unless we are going to alter the structure of reality, no method authorizes us to
present it merely as a ‘reality apprehended’(italics added).
“Besides, one only has to reread the text of St. Thomas to realize that the order he follows
is not an accidental one, or something one can modify simply as a temporary expedient. The
order lies at the heart of the teaching. For an intellect like ours which is not its own essence, as
God’s would be, and whose essence is not its natural object, as with the finite pure spirits, that
object must necessarily be something extrinsic. That is why the object which the intellect
apprehends must be something extrinsic as such. The first thing it grasps is a nature inhabiting an
existence which is not its own, the ens of a material nature. That is its proper object: etideo id
quod primo cognoscitur ab intellectu humano est hujusmodi objectum.30 It is only secondarily
that it knows the actual act by which it knows the object; et secundario cognoscitur ipse actus,
quo cognoscitur objectum.31 And finally it is the act that the intellect itself is known: et per
actum cognoscitur ipse intellectus.32”33
Gilson also writes that, for St. Thomas Aquinas, “all existence is individual and singular.
As he said again and again, when we grasp the singular as such it is the work of our sense
faculty: id quod cognoscit sensus materialiter et concrete, quod est cognoscere singulare
directe; – similitudo quae est in sensu, abstrahitur a re ut ab objecto cognoscibili, et ideo res
ipsa per illam similitudinem directe cognoscitur.34 Unquestioningly the intellect does more and
better, since it grasps what is abstractly intelligible, but it has another function: universale est
27
L. NOËL, Notes d’épistémologie thomiste, p. 33.
28
Being (ens) is what first strikes the intellect.
29
Being (ens) is the proper object of the intellect, and thus it is specifically intelligible. Summa Theologiae, I, q. 5, a.
2, resp.
30
And therefore what the human intellect knows first is an object of this kind…
31
And what is known secondarily is the act itself by which the object is known…
32
And through the act, the intellect itself is known…Summa Theologiae, I, q. 87, a. 3, resp.
33
É. GILSON, Methodical Realism, Christendom Press, Front Royal, VA, 1990, pp. 74-76.
34
What the sense faculty knows materially and concretely, it knows directly as singular; – the likeness which is in
the senses is abstracted from the thing as from a knowable object, and therefore the thing itself is directly known
through that likeness.
10
dum intelligitur, singulare dum sentitur.35 But the singular is the concretely real. So one must
consign the task of solving the problem to viribus sensitivis quae circa particularia
versantur.36”37
Against immanentism, realism holds that epistemology (gnoseology) is founded upon the
metaphysics of being; being is prior to thought, and thought is dependent upon being. The act of
being (esse as actus essendi) is the radical act of a being (ens); it is, in every being (ens), the
internal principle of its reality and of its knowability, and therefore, the foundation of the act of
knowledge.
In philosophical immanentism, transcendence (first gnoseological, then ontological) is

first emarginalized, then debilitated, and in the end, eliminated. In realism, on the other hand,
both gnoseological and ontological transcendence is respected. There is a difference between
gnoseological transcendence and ontological transcendence. The former regards the possibility
of knowing realities distinct from consciousness and its representations; transcendence here is
intended as extra-subjective. Ontological transcendence, on the other hand, regards the existence
of realities that surpass the factual data of empirical experience, the most eminent of these
realities being God, the absolutely transcendent Supreme Being. The history of modern
philosophy, beginning with Cartesian rationalism, has shown that the refusal of a gnoseological
transcendence (though not always in a direct and immediate way, as was precisely the case with
the mediate “realism” of Descartes) impedes recognition of an authentic ontological
transcendence.
The starting point of philosophy is not the Cartesian “I think, therefore I am” (Cogito,
ergo sum), but rather: “things are” (res sunt). That “I think” is surely evidence, but it is not the
first evidence. It is not the point of departure for doing philosophy. That “things are,” that
“things exist,” on the other hand, is the first in the order of all evidence. This is the correct
starting point. “Realism accepts reality in toto and measures our knowledge by the rule of reality.
Nothing that is validly known would be so if its object did not first exist…The first thing offered
us is the concept of a being thought about by the intellect, and given us in a sensory intuition. If
the being, in so far as it can be conceived, is the first object of the intellect, that is because it is
directly perceived: res sunt, ergo cogito (things are, therefore, I think). We start by perceiving an
existence which is given us in itself and not first of all in relation to ourselves. Later, on
inquiring into the conditions which make such a fact possible, we realize that the birth of the
concept presupposes the fertilization of the intellect by the reality which it apprehends. Before
truth comes the thing that is true; before judgment and reality are brought into accord, there is a
living accord of the intellect with reality…”38
Gilson defended methodical realism against the immanentism underlying much of

modern philosophy in many of his works, such as Thomist Realism and the Critique of
35
The universal is grasped while things are being understood, the singular while they are being sensed.
36
…to the powers of sense which relate to particular objects. Summa Theologiae, I, q. 86, a. 1, ad 4; De Veritate, q.
2, a. 6, resp., et q. 10, a. 6, sed contra and resp.
37
É. GILSON, op. cit., pp. 78-79.
38
11
Knowledge39 and Methodical Realism.40 In Methodical Realism he points out that it was in the
thought of Descartes, and not Kant, where the “Copernican Revolution” took place for the first
time: “Critical idealism was born the day Descartes decided that the mathematical method must
henceforth be the method for metaphysics. Reversing the method of Aristotle and the medieval
tradition, Descartes decided that it is valid to infer being from knowing, to which he added that
this was indeed the only valid type of inference, so that in his philosophy, whatever can be
clearly and distinctly attributed to the idea of the thing is true of the thing itself: when we say of
anything that it is contained in the nature or concept of a particular thing, it is the same as if we
were to say it is true of that thing, or could be affirmed of it…Indeed, all idealism derives from
Descartes, or from Kant, or from both together, and whatever other distinguishing features a
system may have, it is idealist to the extent that, either in itself, or as far as we are concerned, it
makes knowing the condition of being…With Descartes the Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I
am) turns into Cogito ergo res sunt (I think, therefore, things are)”41 Once trapped within the
immanent sphere of one’s thoughts, initially doubting the extra-mental reality perceived by the
senses, and commencing from the cogito as the first certainty, we become unable to recuperate
reality itself. All we will be able to do with the immanentist method is to conjure up a thought of
reality, all the while remaining locked up within the prison of our minds. From mere mental
representations we cannot reach the thing-in-itself which is doubted at the outset by the Cartesian
universal doubt. If you have a hat stand painted on a wall, the only thing you will ever be able to
hang on it is a hat likewise painted on a wall. Neither the principle of causality nor belief or
assertion can get us out of the immanentist domain of the mind once we have initially doubted
the existence of reality, and then commence from the cogito as the primal certitude.
Gilson describes for us the futility of those pseudo-realists who make their starting point
of knowledge the cogito and then attempt a recuperation of reality by means of the principle of
causality: “He who begins as an idealist ends as an idealist; one cannot safely make a concession
or two to idealism here and there. One might have suspected as much, since history is there to
teach us on this point. Cogito ergo res sunt is pure Cartesianism; that is to say, the exact
antithesis of what is thought of as scholastic realism and the cause of its ruin. Nobody has tried
as hard as Descartes to build a bridge from thought to reality, by relying on the principle of
causality. He was also the first to make the attempt, and he did so because he was forced to by
having set the starting point for knowledge in the intuition of thought. It is, therefore, strictly true
that every scholastic who thinks himself a realist, because he accepts this way of stating the
problem, is in fact a Cartesian… If the being I grasp is only through and in my thought, how by
this means shall I ever succeed in grasping a being which is anything other than that of thought?
Descartes believed that it was possible, but even apart from a direct critique of the proof he
attempted to give, history is there to show us that his attempt ends in failure. He who begins with
Descartes, cannot avoid ending up with Berkeley or with Kant…It won’t do to stop at the man
who took the first step on the road to idealism because we shall then be forced to go the whole of
the rest of the road with his successors. The Cartesian experiment was an admirable
metaphysical enterprise bearing the stamp of sheer genius. We owe it a great deal, even if it is
39
É. GILSON, Réalisme thomiste et critique de la connaissance, Vrin, Paris, 1939. English: Thomist Realism and
the Critique of Knowledge, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1986.
40
É. GILSON, Le réalisme méthodique, Téqui, Paris, 1935. English: Methodical Realism, first published in English
in 1990 by Christendom Press and now available in the edition published by Ignatius Press of San Francisco.
41
É. GILSON, Methodical Realism, Christendom Press, Front Royal, VA, 1990, pp. 18-19.
12
only for having brilliantly proved that every undertaking of this kind is condemned in advance to
fail. However, it is the extreme of naïveté to begin it all over again in the hope of obtaining the
opposite results to those which it has always given, because it is of its nature to give them.”42
“The absolute being that the Cogito immediately delivers to me can only be my own and
no other. In consequence, whether the operation by which I apprehend the object as distinct from
myself be a process of induction and therefore mediate, or an immediate grasp, the problem
remains the same. If one’s starting point is a percipi, the only esse one will ever reach will be
that of the percipi…‘Can we, or can we not arrive at things if we make our standpoint that of the
Cogito?’ No, we can’t, and if the fate of realism depends on this question, its fate is settled; it is
impossible to extract from any kind of Cogito whatsoever a justification for the realism of St.
Thomas Aquinas.”43
The way for us to promote an authentic methodical realism in philosophy (and in doing
so be once again in a position to validly demonstrate God’s existence, departing from the things
that we see in the world, an a posteriori, quia effect to cause demonstration) is to “free ourselves
from the obsession with epistemology as the necessary pre-condition for philosophy. The
philosopher as such has only one duty: to put himself in accord with himself and other things. He
has no reason whatever to assume a priori that his thought is the condition of being, and,
consequently, he has no a priori obligation to make what he has to say about being depend on
what he knows about his own thought…I think therefore I am is a truth, but it is not a starting
point…The Cogito is manifestly disastrous as a foundation for philosophy when one considers
its terminal point. With a sure instinct as to what was the right way, the Greeks firmly entered on
the realist path and the scholastics stayed on it because it led somewhere. Descartes tried the
other path, and when he set out on it there was no obvious reason not to do so. But we realize
today that it leads nowhere, and that is why it is our duty to abandon it. So there was nothing
naïve about scholastic realism; it was the realism of the traveler with a destination in view who,
seeing that he is approaching it, feels confident he is on the right road. And the realism we are
proposing will be even less naïve since it is based on the same evidence as the old realism, and is
further justified by the study of three centuries of idealism and the balance sheet of their results.
The only alternatives I can see today are either renouncing metaphysics altogether or returning to
a pre-critical realism. This does not at all mean that we have to do without a theory of
knowledge. What is necessary is that epistemology, instead of being the pre-condition for
ontology, should grow in it and with it, being at the same time a means and an object of
explanation, helping to uphold, and itself upheld by, ontology, as the parts of any true philosophy
mutually will sustain each other.”44
More Critiques of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism45
42
43
44
45
Benignus Gerrity’s Critique of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism Part I: “Kant Failed to Prove His Central Thesis.
1. What Kant had to do in order to set in place the keystone of his whole philosophy was to prove that space, time,
and the categories are a priori (i.e., innate) forms of human cognition and are not extracognitional determinations of
real things. His method was to start by an analysis of experience, and to discover through this analysis the necessary
presuppositions or implications of both the fact and the character of human experience (Cf. L. WOOD, The
13
Transcendental Method, in The Heritage of Kant, edited by G. T. Whitney and D. F. Bowers, Princeton University
Press, Princeton, NJ, 1939, pp. 3-35).
“Kant’s analysis of experience yields three elements: (a) sense qualia, e.g., red, sweet, soft; (b) space and time;
and (c) categorical relations, e.g., substance and accident, cause and effect. The first is the matter of experience, and
the two latter are the forms of experience. It is worthy of note that Kant found in the matter of experience, namely
the sensible qualities through which anything is perceived, no implications at all as to the nature of either the
external source or the subject of experience. One would think that the primary data of all human experience ought to
have some significance relative to the source and the subject of experience; but Kant’s only inference from what he
considers the ‘pure given’ of perception is that sensation is possible only in so far as an extracognitional thing-in-
itself is its source. From the form or forms of experience he concluded that, ‘Experience is possible only on the
assumption that the formal features found in experience are a priori conditions of experience’(L. WOOD, op. cit.,
pp. 10-11).
“The argument by which he reaches this conclusion depends entirely upon the equation which he sets up between
‘universal and necessary’ and ‘a priori form of the mind.’ Whatever is universal and necessary in experience is a
priori; and whatever is a priori in experience is contributed to the object of experience by the mind – and not given
to the mind in experience. Consequently, since space and time determinations are features of every possible object
of perception, they are innate forms of the power of sensibility, not extramental forms of the reality which we
perceive. Similarly, since the understanding cognizes necessary and universal features among the objects of
experience only in so far as these are related according to the categories, the categories are a priori forms of the
understanding and are not extramental determinations or relations of the things which we understand.
“2. The Mental A Priority of the Forms is Not Proved. This equating of the necessary and universal in knowledge
with an innate form in the knowing mind is an assumption, pure and simple, and an unwarranted assumption. The
contrary assumption, namely, that the universal and necessary features of the objects of our experience are objective
determinations of all the things which we experience, is, on face value, just as likely as Kant’s assumption. Space,
time, and categorical relations would appear as universal and necessary in all the objects of our experience if they
were in fact features of those objects prior to our experiencing the objects. As a matter of fact, the initial advantage
lies with this hypothesis, because the forms in question seem to be forms of the things experienced rather than forms
of the subject experiencing. They could, of course, be universal forms of both; and that would go a long way toward
explaining why such subjects perceive only such objects. This, indeed, was St. Thomas’ theory; he believed that
men directly perceive only spatio-temporal things because they experience by means of their bodily senses; they are
themselves spatio-temporal beings living in a world with other spatio-temporal beings.
“3. Assumptions at the Base of Kant’s Argument. If the realistic view of space, time, and the categories is (at
least) as likely at the outset as Kant’s idealistic view, why did he make the assumption that his view alone could
account for the formal character of experience? The answer is that this assumption resulted from a prior assumption,
a dogma taken over from the very philosophers whose views he was combating. The pure empiricists held that there
is nothing in knowledge which is universal and necessary; and the pure rationalists held that the universal and
necessary is known innately; but both agreed that nothing universal and necessary can be derived from experience.
Kant was busy refuting the extreme views, but it does not seem to have occurred to him that the reason why each
side adopted an erroneous extreme might be because the mean which both rejected was the truth. A possible middle
road between pure empiricism and pure rationalism is the theory that the universal is derived from the empirical data
of sense perception; or, differently expressed, that form as well as matter is given in experience. Kant’s hypothesis
of the mental apriority of form is another possible middle road, but one not a whit preferable on first sight.
“Why did Kant uncritically accept the common assumption of the two schools of thought which he was trying to
refute? His belief that the universal and the necessary can never be derived from experience seems to have arisen
from assuming the subjective postulate and an exaggerated separation of the sensory and intellectual parts of the act
of experience. We have already pointed out how these errors lay at the root of Hume’s phenomenalism. If
intellection is a separate, second act following sensation, and if the data of sensation are subjective, the intellect
never can, as Hume made clear, attain to a valid universal principle or even a valid universal concept; because the
intellect could never do more than manipulate the singular and subjective data of sense – the impressions of Hume
and the manifold of sensation of Kant. In criticizing Hume, Kant did not attack either his subjectivistic assumption
or his separation of sense and understanding, and as a result he, too, accepted the ‘given’ of experience as a pure
phenomenal manifold. Hence he concluded that the forms by which it is unified in experience must be forms of the
experiencing mind, since no unifying forms are given in the manifold itself.
“4. The Thomistic View. If sense and intellect co-operate in one act in common perception or experience,
intellection is not limited to manipulating or unifying some manifold of sensuous representations, because these are
14
not what the intellect seizes upon directly at all. Our sensory impressions are not what we know, but means by
which we know. What the intellect attains directly in the perceptive act is a reality which is the subject and reason of
the sensible determinations perceived in sensation. It is by reference to this directly cognized reality that the intellect
‘unifies the manifold of sensation,’ not by reference to some innate but unknown forms of its own constitution. This
object, namely, the being, substance, and nature of the thing, is the foundation of the intellect’s universal
conceptions and judgments. The nature of the perceived thing is grasped as implicitly universal, and is immediately
universalized by the intellect, though the intellect does not dream, of course, of attributing this mode of universality
to the perceived thing itself. It does, however, see that what belongs to this particular instance of the nature, not
because it is this instance but because it is an instance of this nature, must belong to every instance of the nature.
Therefore, it is able to make universal and necessary judgments on the sole basis of the data of experience – sole
basis because such judgments do not add any elements not experienced; they simply assert what the mind
understands in the experience.
“5. Kant’s Theory Fails to Explain Some Features of Experience. a) Particular Formal Determinations. …Each
object that we percieve had its own individual spatial determinations differing from those of anything else, and its
own particular temporal and categorical determinations. The universal forms of space, time, and the categories are
given to each object in experience, but what determines the individual, concrete pattern which they take in each
case? Kant ought to have held that it is not determined by what is given in experience, since this is mere matter
without form, a pure manifold. The sense impressions given in different experiences have no spatial character at all
prior to their unification by sensibility; hence there is nothing in different matters of sensation to account for
different particular spatial patterns. Similarly, since representations bear to one another no categorical relations prior
to their subsumption under the pure conceptions of the understanding, nothing in different representations can
account for different particular categorical relations. But if particular spatio-temporal and categorical determinations
are not derivable from the matter of experience, neither are they from the form, since the a priori forms of
sensibility are mere undifferentiated sensuous continua and the a priori forms of the understanding mere universals.
“b) Differentiation of the Categories. An analogous difficulty exists for Kant in respect to the selectivity
exhibited by the understanding in subsuming phenomena under the categories. Why does the intellect relate some
phenomena as substance and attribute, and other as cause and effect? By the Kantian hypothesis there is nothing of
these relations in the representations presented by sensibility to the understanding; they arise entirely from the
synthesis effected by the understanding. The consequence would seem to be that in subsuming a set of
representations under a certain category the understanding gets no hints from the representations themselves;
nothing about them helps to determine how the categorical scheme shall be called into play. If this is so, then Nature,
as Kant conceived it, is not a rational construction, and its laws, far from having universal objective validity even in
the Kantian sense, are most precarious; not only is Nature a subjective construction, but it is an irrational and
unpredictable one.
“Of course, Kant’s account of the schematization of the categories through the work of the mediating imagination
is intended to explain why the categories are applied as they are. But the schematized category is quite as a priori as
the pure conceptions of the understanding, and unless some particular determination in the representations
themselves is given to the understanding, it still has no ground for selection in subsuming representations under the
categories. Now, this ground would seem to be, according to Kant, the particular time-determinations of particular
representations; thus, for example, we apply the category of cause and effect when the representations are presented
in a time sequence which follows a determinate rule of succession.
“At first sight, this theory seems to meet the objection which we have raised; but in truth it does not bear
analysis. To begin with, the origin of the particular time-determinations remains obscure. Second, it must be
remembered that the categories are not known objects of the understanding prior to experience, but become known
only by virtue of being applied to the data of experience, unifying it. To express Kant’s view in Thomistic terms, the
categories are potentially known forms of understanding which become actually known only by reflection upon the
operations of understanding. We do not, for example, first know cause and effect and then pigeonhole certain
phenomena under this idea; we instinctively relate certain phenomena as cause and effect, and then we get to know
both the pure conception of cause and effect and the fact that it is an a priori form of our understanding. Consider
the significance of this in relation to Kant’s account of the application of the schematized category. When we first
judge that certain phenomena are related causally, we have not previously known anything of causality; and
therefore we must actually make this judgment because sensibility presents the phenomena to us in a certain
temporal sequence. Now this is just what David Hume had maintained.
“The order of Kant’s exposition prevented him from seeing that in the end he was back where he started. Before
treating of the schemata of the imagination and the schematization of the categories, he had already made his
15
deduction of the categories, and he now treats them as known conceptions when he is explaining how we apply them
to the objects of knowledge. But, according to his explanation, we do not have them as known conceptions when we
actually apply them to the objects of experience. Kant, we may now conclude, gives no explanation of how such
conceptions as cause and substance can be validly applied to objects of experience, if they are not given to the mind
in experience. We have no right, as Hume made clear, to go, for example, from the perception of determinate
succession in time to the conception of causal relation. But that is just what Kant says that we do. He has not
succeeded in answering Hume, and he actually returns to Hume’s position without realizing that he is doing so.
“c) Valid, Universal, Synthetic Judgments. The full significance of the above is that Kant failed to account for
what it was his chief business to account for. He did not explain how we can pronounce universal and necessary
judgments which are not purely analytic. That every event must have a cause is a universal and necessary judgment.
It is clear that nothing can validate this judgment except the perception of a necessary relation of event to cause.
According to the Thomistic theory, I pronounce the judgment because I do perceive a necessary relation of real
events to causes which produce them. My judgment is not analytic in Kant’s sense; the concept of event does not
contain that of cause. But the real nature or quiddity represented by the concept event is seen to involve a reference
to a reason extrinsic to itself; if I do not see this reference in the real nature of an event, then my judgment, the
principle of causality, is simply invalid. Kant’s categorical theory will never validate it. If the concept of cause is
entirely outside the concept that which happens, and arises from the fact that, because of an a priori form of my
understanding, I understand events only as standing in relation to prior events which determine them, there is no
reason why I should ever judge that every event must have a cause, and certainly no reason for thinking the
judgment valid in case I did somehow pronounce it.
“d) Sensible Quality. Kant’s doctrine does not explain the matter of experience, that is to say, the sense qualia
with which all experience begins. Whether they be regarded as objective determinations of phenomena or as
subjective affections, as Kant and most modern philosophers regard them, they need some sort of explanation. Since
they are not forms of intuition, like space and time, the thing-in-itself is responsible for them. But a thing-in-itself
which cannot be known is hardly a satisfactory explanation for such an all-pervasive character of human experience
as sensible qualities. We might go so far as to say that Kant offers no explanation of experience itself. The thing-in-
itself and the mind are conditions of experience, but how are these two conditions related in producing experience?
A causal relation, that is to say, some action of the thing-in-itself upon the mind, would be an answer; but that
answer is ruled out by Kant’s doctrine that causal relations can be predicated only of phenomena”(BENIGNUS,
Nature, Knowledge, and God, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1947, pp. 345-351).
Benignus Gerrity’s Critique of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism Part II: “The Universe of Kant is Unintelligible.
1. Relation of Noumena and Phenomena. The phenomenal world, that is to say, the spatio-temporal and categorized
world which we live in and know and of which we as men are parts, somehow arises out of prior conditions which
themselves belong to a world of noumena, or things-in-themselves, which we do not know. This is the basic
meaning of Kant’s philosophy if that philosophy means anything at all. The most fundamental criticism that can be
made of this philosophy is that the universe which it posits is unintelligible and incredible. This charge will be made
and proved in what follows. The charge is based upon the impossibility of discovering any intelligible relation
between noumena and phenomena. In order to grasp the force of the argument supporting the charge, it is necessary
to keep three facts about Kantian philosophy constantly in mind: (1) that the real existence of noumena (or
noumenon) distinct from the world of our experience was never doubted by Kant and is essential to his whole
philosophical construction (cf. H. J. PATON, Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience: A Commentary on the First Half of
the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 2 vols, Macmillan, New York, 1936, page 61 of volume 1 and chapters 55 and 56 of
volume 2); (2) that we do not know anything about noumena as they are in themselves; and (3) that the objective
world of phenomena is the resultant or product of some sort of action or influence of the noumena upon the human
mind, the character of that phenomenal world being specifically determined by the a priori forms of sensibility and
understanding in that mind.
“There seem to be four possible interpretations of Kant’s conception of the relation of noumena and phenomena.
We shall state all four, but shall say no more than a word on those which Kant certainly did not intend.
“a) There is one noumenon, and it somehow gives rise to the phenomenal world. This doctrine amounts to an
absolutistic appearance-reality theory. We need spend no time on it, because: first, Kant certainly did not intend
such a doctrine; second, it takes all meaning from his doctrine of the function of the a priori forms of the mind in
producing the world of phenomena; and third, it explains nothing at all of either the appearance or the reality.
“b) There are a plurality of noumena, none of which are conscious selves or egos, but which nevertheless give
rise to phenomenal egos and the phenomenal world which they experience. Again, Kant did not intend this; it is the
most incredible of all possible interpretations of his philosophy; it renders purposeless his explanation of the role
16
which the a priori forms of the mind play in producing objective phenomena; and, finally, it quite destroys his
central idea of the transcendental unity of apperception as the first condition of any knowledge.
“c) There are a plurality of noumena, all of which are conscious selves or egos, and which give rise to the world
of phenomena by appearing to one another. Kant does not seem to have intended this view although he does not
reject it. We need not treat it separately from the fourth view (which follows) for two reasons: first, nothing in
Kant’s system would ever enable us (or him) to decide between the two views, since we cannot know noumena; and
second, the criticisms which we shall direct against the fourth view apply equally to the third.
“d) There are a plurality of noumena, some of which are conscious selves or egos and some of which are not; the
phenomenal world arises from the influence of noumena (of both kinds, probably) upon those noumena which are
selves or egos. This view is the least unlikely of all, and seems to be what Kant generally was thinking of when he
mentioned noumena. We shall therefore direct our criticism against this view. The difficulties which we shall point
out in it apply equally to the third view and a fortiori to the first and the second. These difficulties all hinge upon the
most characteristic feature of Kant’s philosophy, namely, his theory of the a priori forms of space, time, and the
categories.
“2. What Kant’s Doctrine Really Means. Before explaining the difficulties of this theory, we may state
summarily and bluntly its real significance. Are space, time, and the categories phenomenal or noumenal? Kant’s
insistence that we know nothing of things as they are in themselves forbids us to say that these a priori forms of the
human mind are noumenal; for if they were, they would be known characters of a noumenon, namely, a human
mind, and would give us a considerable knowledge of that noumenon as it is in itself. They must, therefore, be
considered phenomenal. But then, since (together with the noumena which are the source of the matter of
experience) they determine the world of phenomena, they are phenomena which are the prior conditions of all other
phenomena. Hence, they must be themselves phenomena resulting entirely from noumenal conditions. These
noumenal conditions are prior to and produce the human mind; and then the noumena themselves appear to the
human mind, giving rise to the world of objective phenomena. Thus Kant’s philosophy reduces itself to an
appearance-reality theory in which the human individual falls on the side of appearance. This, in historical fact, was
what some post-Kantians made of it.
“3. Absurdities in Kant’s Doctrine. Never mind the significance of the theory; let us examine its internal
structure. Can it hold together? It cannot. It falls apart at its precise center, its doctrine of the a priori forms.
According to this theory some conditions existing among things-in-themselves give rise to the phenomenal world,
the world in which phenomenal egos experience objective phenomena. The a priori forms of sensibility and
understanding, as we have seen, are, according to Kant’s intention, forms of the mind of the empirical ego. But it
must be remembered that these forms play an essential part, the all-important part, in conditioning or producing the
world of phenomenal objects. In view of this, Kant’s theory really means the following: conditions existing in the
noumenal world give rise to phenomenal egos with certain a priori forms of sensibility and understanding; and then
things-in-themselves, appearing to these phenomenal egos, give rise to the objective world of phenomena. Does that
make sense? It means that noumena interact with noumena (thus falling, by the way, under the categorical scheme)
and also with phenomena; that is, they interact with the resultants of their mutual interactions. To express the
situation in another way: noumena act upon (or, perhaps, appear to) noumenal egos, thus producing phenomenal
egos; then they appear to (or, perhaps, act upon) these phenomenal egos, thus producing objective phenomena.
Nature is the appearances of things-in-themselves to their own appearances.
“This interpretation of Kant’s teaching seems closest to his real intention, because it seems to be necessarily
implied in his distinction between the noumenal and phenomenal ego and in his assumption that noumena are in fact
a plurality. It seems quite unintelligible and impossible, since it makes the essential prior conditions of the whole
phenomenal world – space, time, and the categories – themselves phenomena. It breaks down, in other words,
because of the double distinction between the empirical ego and noumenal ego and between the empirical ego and
objective phenomena”(B. GERRITY, op. cit., pp. 351-354).
John J. Toohey gives us a gnoseological critique of Kant’s transcendental idealism and synthetic a priori
judgments in his Notes on Epistemology (1952) as follows: “The theory of Kant offers no escape from the scepticism
of subjective idealism and undermines its own foundation.
“Proof of Part I: The theory of Kant offers no escape from the scepticism of subjective idealism.
“That theory which limits all our knowledge to phenomena (appearances) in the thinking subject offers no escape
from the scepticism of subjective idealism. But the theory of Kant limits all our knowledge to phenomena in the
thinking subject.
“Therefore the theory of Kant offers no escape from the scepticism of subjective idealism.
17
Bittle’s Critique of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism. Celestine Bittle lists a number of
other problems with Kant’s transcendental idealism: “Kant’s theory is contrary to the science of
psychology. He maintains that ‘space’ and ‘time’ are subjective ‘forms’ of the mind, given prior
to all experience. The findings of psychology are definitely opposed to this claim. Sensory
experience contributes its share to our perception of ‘space’ and ‘time,’ as experimental
psychology has definitively established. We acquire our knowledge of space and time from a
perception of objects which are larger or smaller and which are at rest or in motion. Persons
suffering from a congenital cataract have no antecedent knowledge of visual space; after a
successful operation, they must acquire knowledge of space through experience and perception.
If the subjective mental form of ‘space’ were, as Kant claims, a necessary condition for
“Major: It is a matter of no consequence whether we call the objects of our knowledge ideas or phenomena, so
long as we confine our knowledge within the thinking subject; in either case we are driven into scepticism as
regards the world outside of us. Kant sought to overthrow the scepticism of Hume, but his own system is as
profoundly sceptical as that of Hume.
“The Minor is evident from the constantly reiterated assertion of Kant that we cannot go beyond the phenomena
of sense to the thing-in-itself; the thing-in-itself, is in the theory of Kant utterly unknown to us.
“Proof of Part II: The theory of Kant undermines its own foundation.
“That theory which pronounces as unknowable the principle on which it is based undermines its own foundation.
“But the theory of Kant pronounces as unknowable the principle on which it is based.
“Therefore the theory of Kant undermines its own foundation.
“The Major is evident.
“Minor: The principle on which the theory of Kant is based is the universal reception by mankind of, the
conclusions of mathematics and physics. He rejected all previous systems of metaphysics because none of them had
met with universal reception. Because of the universal reception of the truths of mathematics, and physics he
declared that the judgments of these sciences were the types to which all scientific judgments should conform. But
by his theory he is compelled to doubt the existence of mankind of all men except himself; for the only things he
can know are the phenomena within himself; everything else is unknowable. Hence the existence of mankind is
unknowable to Kant, and therefore the principle which his theory is based is unknowable, namely, the universal
reception by mankind of the conclusions of mathematics and physics.
“Note. Kant says that the judgments of mathematics and physics are certain, and that they are synthetic a priori.
But there are no judgments which are certain and also synthetic a priori in the Kantian sense, and we prove it as
follows:
“A judgment in which the mind has not adequate evidence of what it assents to is not a certain judgment.
“But the Kantian synthetic a priori judgments are judgments in which the mind has not adequate evidence of
what it assents to.
“Therefore the Kantian synthetic a priori judgments are not certain judgments.
“Minor: The synthetic a priori judgment, in the Kantian sense, is a judgment in which the synthesis or union of
the predicate with the subject is effected independently of all experience, that is, by means of a subjective form or
category; and it is only after this subjective form is applied that there is an object which the judgment can assent to.
The application of the category of Reality constitutes an object of affirmative judgment; the application of the
category of Negation constitutes an object of negative judgment (cf. 7). Since there is no object for the mind to
assent to till the category is applied, and since the category is applied independently of the mind’s perception, and
since Kant gives no reason why in any given case the category of Reality should be applied rather than the category
of Negation, it follows that in the Kantian synthetic a priori judgment the mind has not adequate evidence of what it
is going to assent to. One man would make the judgment, “Two plus three are equal to five,” because the category of
Reality had been applied; another man could just as easily and with just as much warrant make the judgment, “Two
plus three are not equal to five,” because the category of Negation had been applied.
“It is Kant’s contention that we can know nothing about the things-in-themselves, that the only objects we can
know are phenomena, and that all synthetic a priori judgments are concerned with phenomena. But we have just
shown that, on Kant’s theory, even the synthetic a priori judgments about phenomena are uncertain judgments. This
practically reduces the theory of Kant to the status of universal scepticism.”(J. J. TOOHEY, Notes on Epistemology,
Fordham University Press, New York, 1952, chapter 9, nos. 11-13).
18
perception, making the perception of phenomena possible, then there seems to be no valid reason
why the mind cannot impose the form of ‘visual space’ upon the incoming impressions, even
though a person be congenitally blind. The evidence, however, points clearly to the fact that the
knowledge of space on the part of the mind is conditioned by the perception of objects, and not
that the perception of space is conditioned by some a priori form present in the mind antecedent
to experience. But if ‘space’ is an attribute of bodies, then so is ‘time,’ because both are on a par
in this respect.”46
“Kant’s theory is contrary to the fundamental principles of the physical sciences. Kant
evolved his theory for the expressed purpose of revindicating scientific knowledge and freeing it
from the bane of Hume’s skepticism. He failed. Science treats of the physical objects of the
extra-mental world and not of mental constructions; Kant’s world, however, is a world of
phenomena, and these phenomena are mental constructions which give us no insight whatever
into the nature and reality of things as they are in themselves. According to Kant’s conclusions,
the physical, noumenal world is unknown and unknowable. Science is convinced that it contacts
and knows real things outside the mind. Science is based on the objective validity of the
principle of cause and effect operating between physical objects and physical agencies;
according to Kant, this principle is an empty a priori form merely regulating our judgments and
applying only to phenomena. The laws which science establishes are considered by scientists to
be real laws operating in physical bodies independent of our thinking; according to Kant, these
laws merely relate to phenomena within the mind and not to nature at all. Kant states: ‘It sounds
no doubt very strange and absurd that nature should have to conform to our subjective ground of
apperception, nay, be dependent on it, with respect to her laws. But if we consider that what we
call nature is nothing but a whole (‘Inbegriff’) of phenomena, not a thing by itself, we shall no
longer be surprised.’47 We are indeed surprised that Kant would accept this conclusion of this
theory rather than see therein the utter fallaciousness of the theory itself which could consistently
lead to such a ‘very strange and absurd’ conclusion. That such a conclusion destroys the validity
of science in its very foundations, must be obvious.”48
“Kant’s theory destroys the foundation of all intellectual knowledge. Ideas and
judgments are supposed to reflect and represent reality; they are supposed to tell us ‘what things
are.’ Truth and error reside in the judgment. In forming judgments we first understand the
contents of ideas and then have an intellectual insight into the relation existing between the
subject-idea and the predicate-idea. According to Kant, we do not make judgments because we
perceive the objective relation of the subject-idea and the predicate-idea, but because a blind,
subjectively necessitating law of our mental constitution draws certain sense-intuitions under
certain intellectually empty categories prior to our thinking, and we do not know why these
particular categories, rather than others, were imposed by the mind on these sense-intuitions. Our
‘knowledge’ is as blind as the law that produces it. Intellectual knowledge is thus utterly
valueless, because it gives us no insight into the nature of the reality our ideas and judgments are
supposed to represent.”49
46
C. BITTLE, The Whole Man, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1956, p. 312.
47
I. KANT, The Critique of Pure Reason, second edition, trans. by Max Muller, Macmillan, New York, 1900, p. 94.
48
C. BITTLE, op. cit., pp. 312-313.
49
C. BITTLE, op cit., p. 313.
19
Critiques of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1788)
Critiques of Kant’s Deontological Ethical Formalism of Autonomous Morality50
Austin Fagothey’s Critique of Kant’s Ethical Formalism: Though Kant’s austere duty-
centered ethics served as a buttress against the prevalent materialism and self-serving hedonism
of his time, it nevertheless is riddled with a number of serious defects that make it unacceptable
as a system of ethics, namely, defects as regards the motive of duty, the categorical imperative,
the autonomy of the will, and the source of obligation. Austin Fagothey gives us a critique of the
Kantian deontologist moral system by pointing out these defects: “1. To rest all morality on the
motive of duty is unnatural and inhuman. Kant nowhere says that an act not done from duty is
immoral, only that it is nonmoral; nor does he say that to be moral it must be done from pure
duty alone. All he says is that unless the motive of duty is present it cannot be moral, and, if it is
done from both duty and inclination, only the motive of duty can give it its morality. But even
this is overplaying the role of duty. Is it only her sense of duty and not her love for her child that
gives morality to a mother’s devotion? Is it only cold obligation and not large-hearted generosity
that makes relief of the poor a moral act? Certainly a sense of duty will be present in such cases,
but love and generosity are always esteemed as higher motives than mere duty and give the act a
greater moral worth. We fall back on duty only when other motives fail. Duty is rather the last
bulwark against wrong acting than the highest motive for right acting. How could Kant explain
heroic acts, such as giving one’s life for one’s friend? These are always thought the noblest and
best, precisely because they go beyond the call of duty. Kant is then faced with this dilemma:
either he must deny that heroic acts are moral, and thus fly in the face of all human evaluations,
so as to make his ethics useless in practice; or he must make heroic acts a strict duty, thus putting
a burden on human nature that it cannot bear and robbing these acts of the very quality that
makes them heroic.
“2. That the moral law commands us with a categorical imperative is undoubtedly true,
and Kant emphasizes it well, but his formulation of it is faulty. The moral imperative is properly:
‘Do good and avoid evil,’ plus the more definite principles derived from this, rather than Kant’s
formula: ‘So act that the maxim from which you act can be made a universal law,’ which is only
a negative rule. Evil ways of acting could never become universal laws, for they are self-
destructive; but there are also good ways of acting that can never become universal laws, such as
a life of celibacy. Hence the reason for the moral goodness of an act is not the fact that it can be
made a universal law. Kant might answer that we can will celibacy to be a universal law for a
definite type of person in definite circumstances; but this answer is no help, for if we start
making exceptions of this sort the term universal law loses all meaning. It finally narrows down
to just one single case. To use Kant’s own example, I might will that anyone in my particular
predicament could get out of it by lying, and still have the law universal for that class of people.
To determine the goodness of an act wholly from the maxim which governs it and not from the
end to which it naturally leads is to adopt a purely subjective norm of morality. All three
determinants, the nature of the act, its motive, and the circumstances, must be considered, and
not the motive alone. It is difficult to square Kant’s view here with the acceptance of intrinsic
morality.
50
For Jacques Maritain’s detailed critique of Kant’s deontological ethical formalism of autonomous morality, see
chapter 6 of his Moral Philosophy, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1964.
20
“3. Kant’s recognition of the dignity of the human person is one of the most admired
parts of his philosophy. But he carries it so far as to make a created person impossible. We must
never use each other merely as a means, but God may do with us what He pleases, short of
contradicting His own attributes. To make the human will autonomous does violence to the
rights of God the Creator. Kant is forced to this position by his rejection of the traditional proofs
of God’s existence, thus paying the price for faulty metaphysics. In Kant’s system our reason for
accepting God’s existence is ultimately that we will His existence, for we need Him to justify
morality to ourselves. As Kant says, this is a practical faith rather than a reasoned conviction.
But here is another dilemma. Really God either does or does not exist; if He does not exist, we
cannot will Him into existence simply because we feel a need of Him; if He does exist, the
human will cannot be wholly autonomous but is subject to the law God imposes on us.”51
Fagothey goes on to explain that moral obligation does not come from oneself for “one
cannot have authority over oneself and be subject to oneself in the same respect, be one’s own
superior and inferior. A lawmaker can repeal his own laws. If man made the moral law for
himself, he could never violate it, for he cannot will both its observance and its violation at once,
and his act of violation would simply be an act of repeal. Such a law could impose no
obligation.”52 So, if moral obligation does not come from oneself, then from who? Who is the
ultimate source of all moral obligation? God: “Who imposes moral obligation? The one who has
established the end and the means and their necessary connection. This objective order of things,
commanded by God’s intellect and carried out by His will, is what we have called the eternal
law, whose created counterpart is the natural law, faintly and imperfectly reflected in human law.
Thus God, the Eternal Lawgiver, is the ultimate source of all moral obligation…Only he who
determines the necessary connection between the observance of the moral law and man’s last
end, and makes the attainment of the last end absolutely mandatory, can be the ultimate source of
moral obligation. But only God determines the necessary connection between the observance of
the moral law and man’s last end and makes the attainment of the last end absolutely mandatory.
Therefore only God can be the ultimate source of moral obligation…Moral obligation must come
from God, who alone determines by the eternal law the necessary connection between the
observance of the moral law and man’s last end, and makes the attainment of the last end
absolutely mandatory. This determination of His intellect and will He manifests to us through the
natural law, which is the proximate source of all moral obligation; from it alone positive laws
derive their binding force.”53
J. Ming’s Critique of Kant’s Categorical Imperative: “The theist philosopher and the
Christian theologian must needs take another view. Man is not an end in himself, but is
essentially subordinate to God as his ultimate end and supreme good; nor is he autonomous, but
is necessarily subject to God as his supreme Lord and lawgiver. Man, conceived as a law unto
himself and an end in himself, is emancipated from God as his master and separated from Him as
his supreme good; conceived, moreover, as autonomous and independent of any higher authority,
he is deified. This is not building up true and lofty morality, but is its complete overthrow; for
the basis of morality is God as the ultimate end, highest good, and supreme lawgiver. Kant
utterly ignores the nature of both intellect and will. Human reason does not enact the moral law,
51
A. FAGOTHEY, Right and Reason, C.V. Mosby Company, St. Louis, 1959, pp. 195-196.
52
A. FAGOTHEY, op. cit., p. 197.
53
A. FAGOTHEY, op. cit., pp. 200-201, 206.
21
but only voices and proclaims it as the enactment of a higher power above man, and it is not
from the proclaiming voice that the law derives its binding force, but from the majesty above that
intimates it to us through our consciences.
“Nor do the universality and necessity of a law determine the will. What really attracts
the will, and stirs it as a motive to action, is the goodness of the object presented by the intellect;
for the rational appetite is by its nature an inclination to good. Hence it is that the desire of
perfect happiness necessarily results from rational nature, and that the supreme good, clearly
apprehended by the mind, cannot but be desired and embraced by the will. Hence, too, a law is
not presented as obligatory, unless its observance is known to be necessarily connected with the
attainment of the supreme good. It is, therefore, wrong to denounce the pursuit of happiness as
immoral or repugnant to human nature. On the contrary, a paralysis of all human energy and
utter despair would result from bidding man to act only from the motive of stern necessity
inherent in law, or forbidding him ever to have his own good in view or to hope for blessedness.
“The theory of the categorical imperative is, moreover, inconsistent. According to it the
human will is the highest lawgiving authority, and yet subject to precepts enjoined on it; it is
absolutely commanding what is objectively right, and at the same time reluctant to observe the
right order. Again, the categorical imperative, as also the autonomy of reason and the freedom of
the will, belongs to the intelligible world, and is, therefore, according to the Critique of Pure
Reason, absolutely unknowable and contradicted by all laws of experience; nevertheless in
Kantian ethics it is characterized as commanding with unmistakable precision and demanding
obedience with absolute authority. Such a contradiction between Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
and his ‘Ethics,’ between theoretical and practical reason, induces in morals a necessity which
resembles fatalism.”54
D. Mercier’s Critique of Kant’s Categorical Imperative: “The Categorical imperative is

no moral standard by which good and evil may be distinguished, nor is it a true moral law.
Moreover the principles on which Kant bases his argument are false. Proof of the first part: By
its definition a moral rule is a practical judgment, and therefore a judgment concerning the
relation of an act with its end. But the Kantian theory of a moral act does away with the idea of
any real end. Consequently it makes any relation of an act to an end impossible and therefore
rules out any true norm of morality.
“Proof of the second part: Obligation, which is the essential note of a law, is a certain
necessity, put upon the will, of freely acting in a determined way. But it is inconceivable that the
will should be drawn to act except by a final cause, that is, by the representation of a good to be
willed. Hence the categorical imperative which claims to exclude all real final causes from the
sphere of the moral will cannot produce any real obligation and consequently it is not a law in
the proper sense.
54
J. MING, Categorical Imperative, in The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 3, Robert Appleton Co., New York, 1908.
22
“Proof of the third part. It is not true that the notes of universality and necessity that are
characteristic of the moral law cannot derive their origin from the data of experience when these
are put to the service of the spiritual faculties of man’s soul.55
“It is not true that human nature is or can be its own end, and that in consequence the
perfection of the practical reason consists or can consist in an absolute autonomy.
“Finally, it is not true that reason forbids us to follow the natural attraction we experience
towards the enjoyment of our happiness; it is only necessary that the desire of this enjoyment
should be rightly directed, in order to make it compatible with the highest standard of morality of
which human nature is capable. Our love when perfectly ordered seeks God, our objective end,
primarily and above all things, and secondarily that subjective happiness which results from the
possession of God.”56
Celestine Bittle’s Critique of Kant’s Ethical Formalism: “Kant’s endeavor to free

morality from the bane of English empiricism was laudable; but his own teachings suffer from a
number of serious defects and errors.
“First. Kant builds his system of morality upon the principle of the ‘good will’ and claims
that the will is only then ‘good in itself’ when it performs actions, not merely ‘in accordance
with’ duty, but exclusively ‘because of’ duty, from ‘pure reverence for the moral law.’ To
perform an action out of personal inclination or from a motive of self-interest, Kant asserts,
makes this action ‘legally good,’ but not ‘morally good,’ even though the action be in conformity
to the moral law. This is an unheard-of doctrine. Do we really judge that only those actions are
‘morally good’ which proceed exclusively from a pure sense of duty, and that personal
inclination and self-interest destroy the morality of an act? Not at all. We consider almsgiving
from a motive of compassion, neighborly assistance from a motive of friendliness, conjugal
affection of spouses for each other and parental affection toward children and filial affection
toward parents from a motive of love, to be morally good acts, even though they are not
performed from a motive of pure and strict duty. According to Kant, the motive of charity would
have no moral value at all, and acts performed out of charity would not be morally good.
Everybody acknowledges that many heroic acts in time of peace and war go far ‘beyond the call
of duty,’ because duty does not demand such supreme sacrifices under the circumstances. Yet
such acts are considered to be of the highest moral character, because ‘greater love hath no man
than that he lay down his life for his friends.’ What a distortion of moral values and principles to
consider such acts of supreme devotion and loyalty toward one’s country and fellow men only
‘legally’ but not ‘morally’ good! Kant’s principle is definitely at variance with the common
conviction of mankind, because mankind always judges acts performed out of love and charity to
be of greater moral value than those done merely from a sense of duty.
“Again. The will or practical reason, Kant claims, must be autonomous, i.e., not subject
to any law but to a law of its own making; otherwise there would be no freedom but compulsion.
55
Cf. D. MERCIER, A Manual of Modern Scholastic Philosophy, vol. 1 (Psychology 89-92), Kegan Paul, Trench,
Trubner and Co., London, 1921, pp. 240-247.
56
MERCIER, A Manual of Modern Scholastic Philosophy, vol. 2 (Ethics 56), Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co.,
London, 1921, p. 249.
23
Man is his own supreme end and the sole maker of laws for his moral conduct. On the other
hand, Kant postulates the existence of God as the Creator of all things, including man. Yet God
can make no laws for man’s moral conduct, and man is not subject to such laws, because that
would be ‘heteronomy’; to perform an act out of obedience to God’s command would not be a
morally good act! Such a doctrine means a complete deification of man and a subversion of the
whole moral order. The final supreme end of man, as we have shown, is the glorification of God,
and the realization of this supreme end can only be achieved if man leads a life in conformity
with God’s attributes.
“If man’s will is ‘autonomous’ and makes its own moral laws, then morality is
completely individualistic, dependent solely on the individual’s own will. Morality should then
differ from individual to individual. As a matter of fact, why should the individual will burden
itself with any laws of morality at all? We are conscious that we are subject to the moral law as
something independent of our wishes and desires, and we are in no way conscious that we
ourselves are the authors of the moral law which binds our will.
“Finally. According to Kant, the norm of morality consists in the categorical imperative
of the autonomous practical reason (will). The categorical imperative, in its final formulation, is
expressed as follows: ‘Act on maxims which can at the same time have for their objects
themselves as universal laws of nature.’57 Hence: ‘Morality then the relation of actions to the
autonomy of the will, that is, to the potential universal legislation by its maxims.’58 Such a norm,
however, is useless for practical purposes. How is the ordinary man to know whether his maxims
of conduct are fit to become universal laws? The norm of morality must be accessible to the
generality of persons, because all persons without exception are bound by the law of morality in
their daily conduct. Most persons, however, are not capable of judging whether their maxims of
conduct ‘can at the same time have for their objects themselves as universal laws of nature.’
Even the learned will find it difficult to apply Kant’s expression of the categorical imperative to
human conduct. In order to know whether our maxims are capable of universal legislation, we
must have a norm over and above these universal laws. That norm, as we have shown, is the
rational nature of the whole man as an individual, as a social being, and as a creature subject to
God.”59
Thomas Higgins’s Critique of Kant’s Ethical Formalism: “1. No one can deny that duty
done for duty’s sake is noble and praiseworthy, but we cannot admit that only such acts are good.
A man who follows his conscience out of a desire for eternal beatitude, or out of fear of losing it,
acts well, though not perfectly. Not every self-regarding motive is reprehensible.
“Kant appears unable to distinguish good that we must do from good that we are
counseled to do. We are seldom obliged to do the heroic, but whoever, over and above the call of
duty, does the heroic through self-sacrifice or the pure love of God, assuredly does what is
eminently good. An act of this kind is, in fact, better than one done for duty’s sake. Certainly no
57
I. KANT, Critique of Practical Reason, Abbott translation, fourth ed., rev., Longmans, Green, London, 1889, p.
56.
58
I. KANT, op. cit., p. 58.
59
C. BITTLE, Man and Morals: Ethics, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1953, pp. 159-161.
24
one would claim that a girl is obliged to surrender all her earthly goods and prospects to devote
herself to the service of the aged and poor, but all mankind would call such an act good.
“2. What is the exact meaning of his ultimate imperative, namely, act only on that maxim
whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law? From his
examples of deceitful promises, suicide, neglect of talents, etc., we gather that each moral law
must be thoroughly self-consistent, that it may not contradict and destroy itself, that it must be
applicable universally to human nature as such, and hence that reasonableness is the soul of law.
To this one can agree. But Kant’s over-all principle has universal application only if all good is
obligatory. When we apply it to supererogatory works it becomes absurd. A man could will to
quit society for the sake of divine contemplation, but he could never will that all men do the
same. An individual may virtuously choose to be a celibate, but a universal law of nature
enjoining celibacy would be evil. Simeon Stylites sitting on his pillar was an object of awe and
veneration, but it would be impossible for the entire human race to imitate him. These courses of
action are morally good, but only on condition that they do not become universal laws.
“3. Have the Kantian dictates of autonomous reason objective validity? Inasmuch as they
are proffered as embodiments of reasonableness, and as reasonableness to be such must be valid
for all rational beings, they would appear to be objective. Kant indeed says they are valid for all
men.60 He deduces them ultimately from the autonomy of the will, and freedom, he says, is the
key which explains the will’s autonomy.61 But what objective reality has the freedom of the will
for Kant? The freedom of the will, the immorality of the soul, and the existence of God are
postulates of Kant’s practical reason, assumed but unprovable. We carefully note that what Kant
calls practical reason is the will62 demanding obedience to moral law: what we call intellect, he
calls the speculative or pure reason. But are these postulates known by the intellect? Kant says
no: ‘the above three ideas of speculative reason are still in themselves not cognitions.’63 If there
be any reality behind them we do not know and we cannot know. Kant plainly says: ‘The
question then: How a categorical imperative is possible can be answered to this extent that we
can assign the only possible hypothesis on which it is possible, namely, the idea of freedom; and
we can also discern the necessity of this hypothesis, and this is sufficient for the exercise of
reason, that is, for the conviction of the validity of this imperative, and hence of the moral law;
but how this hypothesis itself is possible can never be discerned by any human reason.’64 Again,
‘Reason would overstep all bounds if it undertook to explain how pure reason can be practical,
which would be exactly the same thing as to explain how freedom can be possible.’65
“If, then, the dictates of the practical reason are deduced from the freedom of the will,
and if the intellect cannot validate the freedom of the will, how can these dictates be validated? If
the basis on which they rest are unprovable assumptions, why are not also they?
60
I. KANT, Critique of Practical Reason, Abbott translation, fourth ed., rev., Longmans, Green, London, 1889, p.
105.
61
62
63
64
I. KANT, op. cit., pp. 81-82.
65
25
“The root of the difficulty is Kant’s epistemology, according to which the intellect can
know only the appearances of things, the phenomena, but it can never penetrate to the thing as
such, the noumena.66 As a consequence, Kant has handed on to modern life a God-idea which is
only a hollow shell, the content of which is whatever anyone chooses to make of it. He has done
the same for moral principles; the words and the formulae remain but their content and meaning
are the sport of individual whim.”67
Kenneth Dougherty’s Critique of Kant’s Ethical Formalism: “It is conceded that duty is a
legitimate motive for obeying law but denied that duty is the source of moral obligation. Duty is
dependent on right. Duty is never self-explanatory. Man has a duty to live morally because man
is destined to God, his Ultimate End. God has the supreme right over His creature who must
dutifully abide by the moral law in pursuit of his destiny, the Supreme Good. God alone is the
source of man’s moral obligation as the Ultimate End of man.
“The human will is itself a blind faculty. It can only pursue duty because the intellect
informs it of duty. The will follows the intellect. The identification of moral obligation with duty
established primarily in the will can only lead to sentimentalism, a purely subjective norm of
morality. A person of good will has objective moral significance only because his will
illuminated by the intellect seeks what is objectively good. The formal idealism of Kant,
however, prohibited him from mastering a truly objective ethics. God, free will, the immortal
soul, good and evil are not merely good subjective notions. They have real significance as the
realistic philosophy of Thomism demonstrates in Metaphysics and Rational Psychology.
“The moral obligation of Kant’s autonomous will is only an obligation in name. The
categorical imperative that a person live so that his actions reveal a universal law of action that
holds for everyone, cannot morally bind us, if it is merely the product of our own good will. The
human will cannot bind itself. It cannot be at the same time superior and inferior, the judge and
the judged. St. Thomas asserts: ‘No one by his own actions imposes a law.’68 ‘No one properly is
coerced by himself.’69 The moral law has moral obligation only from a Supreme Lawgiver or it
is a farce.”70
Charles C. Miltner’s Critique of Kant’s Ethical Formalism: “Our first objection to this
view is drawn from speculative philosophy. In his analysis of judgment, Kant maintains that, in
addition to analytic and synthetic judgments, there is also a synthetic a priori judgment, and that
the ‘categorical imperative’ is of this nature. But it is shown in Logic that such a judgment is a
gratuitous assumption, that every judgment can be classified as either a priori or a posteriori, as
analytic or synthetic. The ‘categorical imperative’ is therefore without foundation.
“But even though it be conceded as possible, it does not provide any norm for
distinguishing good from evil action; for one has no way of knowing whether his action may
serve as a principle of universal legislation or not. The fact that there are certain instances in
66
67
T. HIGGINS, Man as Man: The Science and Art of Ethics, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1949, pp. 57-59.
68
Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 93, a. 5.
69
Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 96, a. 5.
70
K. DOUGHERTY, General Ethics, Graymoor Press, Peekskill, NY, 1959, pp. 146-147.
26
which one might be sure that one’s action could be taken as a universal model is due to the fact
that one recognizes an order of things that is, and which imposes itself upon him as a necessary
one. It is not due to any act of autonomous reason.
“Next, Kant fails to show whence this dictate of reason, this so-called ‘categorical
imperative,’ derives its character of unconditional or absolute necessity. One may rightly ask:
‘Why must I do what this judgment demands? I do not feel myself necessitated by it. Quite the
contrary, I feel altogether able to ignore it.’ Merely to assert that one must is not to prove it.
“His assumption that one’s will is good whenever it chooses what the law prescribes, and
only because the law prescribes it, as a universally accepted notion, is unwarranted. ‘For so far is
it from being true that this can be supposed to be common doctrine, that quite the contrary seems
to be the fact. For men often call actions upright which are not commanded by any law, e.g., if
one gives his services spontaneously to the poor and the sick, or serves his country gratis. Much
less are men persuaded that these actions are then only good or praiseworthy when they are done
solely on account of legal precept; for by common opinion one may most honestly act from a
motive or mercy or love of neighbor.’71
“Finally, the theory involves the contradiction that man is an end in himself. But man, we
have shown, is by nature a dependent being, and so ordained to an end outside of and higher than
himself.”72
Joseph F. Sullivan’s Critique of Kant’s Ethical Formalism: “Kant’s moral rationalism

must be rejected: 1) The whole Ethical system of Kant is based on an entirely false assumption.
For the fundamental assumption in Kant’s system is the principle that that will alone is morally
good which obeys the law solely out of respect for its authority, i.e., which acts conformably to
law from the pure sense of duty. In proof of this strange assertion, Kant appeals to common
psychological experience. But is this principle really a common psychological experience? Do
men really judge that the will performs a moral action only when moved and determined by the
pure sense of duty? Do men really think that any other motive but the sense of duty destroys the
morality of an action? This is surely not the case. For many actions are regarded by all as
morally right and good, even though they do not proceed from the pure sense of duty. Thus the
woman who is moved by her mother’s love to attend to her sick child, the philanthropist who
helps his fellow men out of sympathy and pity, the men and women who, though not in duty
bound, devote themselves to the service of the sick – these and many others, in the opinion of all
right-thinking men perform morally good and praiseworthy actions. So far, indeed, are men from
regarding the sense of duty as the only source of morality, that they are wont to attach the highest
moral worth to heroic acts of charity, of patriotism, of benevolence, etc., precisely because they
are performed without being enjoined by strict duty. It is clear, then, that in the opinion of men
the sense of duty is not the only source of morality.
“2) Kant’s categorical imperative – “Act so that the maxim of the will may be capable of
becoming a universal law” – is not the ultimate norm of good and evil in human conduct. For
there are many morally good acts that could not possibly become a law for all. A healthy man
71
V. CATHREIN, Philosophia Moralis, B. Herder, Freiburg, 1940, p. 100.
72
C. C. MILTNER, The Elements of Ethics, Macmillan, New York, 1949, pp. 103-104.
27
has duties that could not bind a sick man. Our duties depend often on circumstances of person,
time and place. For these Kant makes no allowance. Moreover, some courses that are morally
good and lawful are good only as long as they do not become a universal law. It is lawful, for
instance, for a man to remain a bachelor. But all could not do so.
“3) Kant’s theory of the Autonomy of Reason supposes that every distinction of good and
evil in human conduct is merely subjective. For if human reason is the only norm of morality,
and there is no ulterior norm by which to judge the morality of our actions, human conduct will
be good or bad morally according as reason judges it to be good or bad; human reason will not
judge actions to be good or bad because they are so in themselves. But this is obviously the same
as saying that moral goodness and evil depend on human reason, and that the distinction between
good and evil in human conduct is merely subjective; because if the distinction between good
and evil is objective, there must likewise be an objective norm according to which reason judges.
“4) Kant’s Autonomy of Reason is contradicted by inner experience. Our consciousness

testifies that reason is not a law unto itself, that it does not create and generate obligation, but
simply points out to us the law and makes duty and obligation known to us. While reason
manifests what is right and what is wrong, what is obligatory and what is optional, it does not
make it so. It shows in what way we should act, but does not create an obligation. We have here
something similar to what takes place in the knowledge of truth; Reason is not free to declare
certain things true or false, but it must conform to evidence. It perceives truths that exist
independently of itself. In the same way, the moral good is not made, but only perceived, by
reason. Hence, in neither case can reason be called autonomous, since it must conform to the
nature of things.”73
Coffey’s Critique of Kant’s Deontological Formalism. Peter Coffey critiques Kant’s

deontological ethical formalism in the second volume of his Epistemology as follows: “If we can
show that Kant’s method of vindicating the reality of a moral obligation superior to all self-
interest is a failure; that such obligation cannot be grounded on any need or dictate of our nature
so long as the speculative reason is debarred from seeking or finding objective grounds for it;
that he cannot validly or consistently derive from such a dictate of duty the three conclusions
proposed for our belief concerning God, freedom and immortality; and finally, that his two
Critiques are, in fact if not in intention, mutually inconsistent and contradictory, that the conflict
between them is inevitable, essential, fundamental, it will be sufficiently clear that so far from
achieving what he wished and intended, his effort to defend human certitude only leads once
more to the wilderness of scepticism.
“I. The deduction of the categorical imperative as pure universal form or law of moral
conduct fails to establish a real and effective moral obligation. Kant’s deontological ethical
formalism is avowedly concerned with existing realities, with the moral conduct of actual men:
its aim is to establish an effective moral obligation. Its method precludes its doing so. And for
this reason: from abstract judgments of the ideal order it is impossible to deduce an affirmation
concerning an existence. But the categorical imperative is an abstract formula of the ideal order.
73
J. F. SULLIVAN, General Ethics, Holy Cross College Press, Worcester, MA, 1931, pp. 85-87.
28
Therefore the actual existence of an effective moral obligation (and of its three ontological
conditions) cannot be deduced from the categorical imperative.74
“What Kant expresses in such a variety of formulae as the moral law is not an object of
actual experience, but an abstraction. Examine the formulae given above. They are all abstract
and universal. Kant has confused the abstract formulation of certain conditions of morality with
proof or vindication of the fact of moral obligation. We need not examine those conditions on
their merits. The stoic rigorism of some of them is not above criticism. But such as they are,
where are they to be found? Disinterestedness, for example, as a condition of moral conduct,
where is it realized? Where, if not in the concrete acts of men’s individual wills? And so of the
other veritable conditions of morality. But the acts of the will are elicited in view of an end:
without an end in view there would be no ‘motive’ of action, and consequently no action. If the
end is in conformity with man’s rational nature the act is morally good ; otherwise it is not. From
such concrete data, embodied in concrete moral acts, reason abstracts the conditions essential for
a morally good act, and then erects them into a universal norm or standard or criterion of moral
acts. But the abstract formulation of such a standard or rule is not the proof of a real and
effective moral obligation. The conditions or circumstances by the presence of which the
existence of a duty or obligation are revealed to us do not constitute the real and effective
obligation. To be morally obliged or bound in duty and to act accordingly, implies this: that we
wish an end absolutely, that we see a definite act to be necessary for the realization of this end,
and that we freely will or elicit to perform the act as a means to the end. But, then, the question at
once arises: Is there any end which imposes itself absolutely on the will? And if so, what is it? It
is for man’s intelligence, for his reason, to find out. And so we pass from the domain of action to
that of speculation, from the dictate of duty by the practical reason to the analysis of this dictate
by the specu lative reason. And, contrary to Kant’s contention, the primacy inevitably passes
from the former to the latter.
“Nor does Kant’s actual procedure fail to betray an unconscious indication of this
inevitable denouement. ‘So act that human nature be never a means, but always an end.’ In other
words: ‘Subordinate your personal interest to the good of humanity, and will this always as
supreme end.’ But why should I? Is the good of humanity the supreme end of life, the supreme
determinant of my conduct? A question which it is obviously the task of the speculative reason
or intellect to answer by rational reflection and investigation.
“Again, look at Kant’s account of the categorical imperative. Man’s moral conscience, it
is alleged, reveals an absolute or categorical imperative which must be interpreted as the dictate
of an autonomous will. But the dictate of duty de facto revealed by introspection is not revealed,
and cannot be interpreted, as imposed autonomously by the will or practical reason. An
‘autonomous’ will is one that should necessarily will its own perfection, finding in itself the
adequate object of its volition, wholly uninfluenced by any end or object or motive outside or
extrinsic to itself. But only the Will that is Divine, Infinite, All-Perfect, can will in this way. The
will of the human individual is not thus self-moved or self-sufficient. Nor can it will in vacuo, as
it were. It must will this or that or the other concrete end presented to it by the intellect as a good:
only by such good, as ‘motive,’ can it be solicited or ‘moved’ from its state of indetermination to
74
The attempt to make such an inference is compared by Taine to an attempt to hang one’s hat on the painted image
of a nail in the wall. Cf. Mercier, Critériologie Générale, Louvain, 1911, §86, pp. 191-192.
29
elicit any definite, specific act of volition. And such is the law of every will that is contingent
and finite. Only the Will that is Imperfectible, All-Perfect, Infinite, ‘Actus Purus,’ can elicit a
self-originated volition, an absolute beginning of activity. Thus Kant’s doctrine of the human
will as autonomous really deifies the human will.
“II. Kant’s postulates of the Practical Reason cannot be validly or consistently deduced
from the categorical imperative or dictate of moral duty.
“A. And first as to his doctrine of freedom. How can he speak of free acts of man after
concluding in the Critique of Pure Reason that whatever happens in space and time is ruled by
the absolute determinism of phenomenal antecedents according to the law of physical causation?
How can determinism prevail universally in the world of space and time if a free principle,
residing in the noumenal domain of the real human will, can intervene in the flow of physical
events and break their physically determined continuity? Either there is no real relation between
the two domains, the noumenal domain of free volitional action and the phenomenal domain of
physical determinism, or there is such relation. If there is none such, if free volition is confined
to the noumenal world, how can it serve to explain the actual moral conduct of men in the actual
world of space and time? When Kant argues, and rightly, that ‘you must’ implies ‘you can,’ it is
because he sees in any such definite, concrete human act as e.g. telling the truth at one’s own
expense, an exercise of moral conduct, and infers as a necessary implication of this act the
freedom of the man to tell the truth rather than lie. But this is bringing down freedom from the
noumenal domain and admitting its real relation, its real contact, with man’s actions in the
physical domain of space and time. And what now becomes of the universal determinism? Kant,
as we have seen already, tried to face this difficulty.75 But how? By taking the soul in two senses,
as the noumenal Ego and as the phenomenal Ego, as a noumenal reality for belief and as a
phenomenal object for knowledge. By recognition of this distinction, he says, ‘we can without
any contradiction think of the same will when phenomenal (in visible actions) as necessarily
conforming to the law of nature, and so far, not free, and yet, on the other hand, when belonging
to a thing by itself, as not subject to that law of nature, and therefore free.’76 But how ‘without
any contradiction’? Is the contradiction not palpable? Kant denies that there is any contradiction;
and his reason for the denial is that while the speculative reason can know the will only as
phenomenal (and not free), it can think the will as noumenal (and free), and therefore cannot
deny the possibility of free will as noumenal, while the practical reason demands free will as a
noumenon and justifies our belief in it as really free: to which he would add the further plea that
contradiction can be only between conflicting ‘knowledges,’ or conflicting ‘beliefs,’ but is
unintelligible and impossible as between any ‘knowledge’ and any ‘belief,’ inasmuch as these
are wholly separate and mutually exclusive domains of human experience. But all this is of no
avail. For firstly, on his own theory he ought to judge human free will to be an impossibility. The
human will, on his own admission, is the will that conditions the moral acts of men, acts that are
performed in the physical world of space and time. He might, indeed, judge to be possible a
world of unknown and unknowable beings endowed with free will, beings wholly apart from the
world of human experience. But how can he, without inevitable contradiction, judge free will to
be possible and operative in the actual moral conduct of human beings existing and acting in this
world of human experience, if he holds all the events in this world, including the moral acts of
75
Cf. vol. I, §54, p. 193.
76
Critique (Pref. to 2nd edition), p. 699 – quoted vol. 1, ibid.
30
men, to be rigidly and adequately determined by their physical or phenomenal antecedents? And
secondly, is there in man only one Ego, one will, considered under two different aspects?77 If so,
the contradiction is there: such Ego or will cannot be both free and not free: nor will it remove
the contradiction, or satisfy us as rational beings, to be told that we only know the will as not
free, but can transcend this knowledge by believing the will to be free, and console ourselves
with the thought that it is belief, not knowledge, that attains to the reality of things.78 Or is it that
there are two real and really distinct domains of reality, the one including the noumenal Ego or
will, and the other including the visible universe of men and things? If this were so, and if the
former had no influence on or in the latter, then it is not about the former that reasonable men
will trouble themselves, but about the actual men and things of human experience.79 While if the
noumenal (free) will has a real influence on the flow of events in the phenomenal universe the
contradiction of maintaining this universe to be ruled by rigid determinism remains inevitable.
“B. Kant’s attempt to infer the immortality of the soul from the dictate of moral duty is
inconsistent with his own principles. His argument comes to this, that although morally right
conduct is essentially disinterested, and can never be in view of happiness, nevertheless
reflection on the notions of virtue and happiness shows that there is an evident incompatibility in
conceiving virtue to be for ever divorced from happiness; and since they are often divorced in the
present life, where the lot of the just man is so allied with suffering, there must be a future life
where virtue will have its reward.
“But if it were analytically evident, from mere consideration of the notions, that virtue
and unhappiness are incompatible, as Kant contends, then such analysis should enable us to see
that virtue and happiness are essentially inseparable. But they are not, as indeed Kant himself
admits and experience of life abundantly proves. If, therefore, the one does involve the other, the
connexion must be proved or made clear synthetically. But it cannot according to Kant’s own
principles, for the Critique of Pure Reason teaches that synthetic judgments are valid only within
the limits of sense experience, while the soul and a future life fall beyond these limits.
“As a matter of fact the belief that virtuous conduct will have its reward, or ought to have
its reward, is not a belief the validity of which is self-evidently valid. That it will have its reward
requires to be proved. And that it ought to have its reward, well, perhaps, the persuasion is no
more than an illusion, prompted by the wish that is father to the thought? These difficulties can,
of course, be solved, and the general argument from duty to immortality defended as valid. But
Kant’s doctrine concerning the scope and validity of the judgments that must enter into such an
argument precludes Kant himself from all right to use it. His claim that the practical reason,
being above the laws that govern the speculative reason, can use the argument legitimately to
ground belief in immortality, we shall examine below.
“C. In inferring the existence of God from the categorical imperative Kant employs the
principle of causality inconsistently with his own teaching as to the limits of the valid application
77
Cf. §129, supra, for Kant on phenomena as ‘secondary’ realities.
78
In other words the speculative reason of man will inevitably assert, and rightly assert, its claim to primacy, to
explore all the motives and grounds, whether subjective or objective, of all human beliefs or assents, and to evaluate
these accordingly.
79
Cf. MAHER, Psychology, chap. xxii., pp. 474-475.
31
of this principle. The union of righteousness and happiness in a perfect and consummated good
must, he argues, ultimately take place. But it can take place only if brought about by a Supreme
Being, a Sovereign Legislator of the moral order, Who wills to realize the bonum consummatum.
Therefore such Supreme Being exists.
“But what can such inference avail, if the principle of causality is not objectively valid or
applicable beyond the domain of phenomena?
“Before considering Kant’s claim to the lawfulness of such reasoning in support of our
belief in the postulates of the practical reason, – a point which belongs to the relation between
the two Critiques, – we may note here a few other obvious defects in his procedure. From his
stoic conception of moral duty he totally excludes the motive of happiness. Man’s desire for
happiness is natural. Moreover the virtuous man deserves, merits happiness, as the reward of
well-doing: even on Kant’s admission. Nay, more, a man is bound to be virtuous, and so to
render himself worthy of happiness. And yet Kant would have it that if a man desires the
happiness which he ought by his conduct to deserve, such desire of his cannot be a morally good
act inasmuch as it is wanting in the essential element of disinterestedness! The truth of course is
that while disinterestedness is a perfection of the moral act, the full measure of disinterestedness
which would exclude all consideration of self and all thought of individual well-being is not
essential to morally righteous conduct.
“Again, the unquenchable aspirations of man towards an ideal of moral goodness, beauty,
righteousness, above and beyond the satisfactions of individual interests; his inborn reverence,
respect, admiration for this ideal, are boldly emphasized in Kant’s theory. ‘Two things,’ he
exclaims, ‘fill the soul with admiration and respect, the starry heaven above us and the moral law
within us.’ This is undeniably so. But then both of them alike raise problems for the human
mind. What is the import or significance of such feelings? It is all very well to say: ‘I wish, I
desire, that the moral order be respected; I experience an imperative need to respect it; my nature
impels me to respect it; the moral dignity of man, the good of humanity, etc., demand it.’ All that
only raises a problem (and not quite accurately, thus expressed), but does not solve it. What right
have I to assume a priori that such needs, impulses, aspirations are not illusory? How do I know
that the subordination of my personal satisfactions to a dictate of duty or a moral law is right or
reasonable, and not a mere self-deception? Therefore I must seek and find, by rational
investigation of my own nature and the universe and what they imply, a rational basis for, and
justification of, those moral dictates in obedience to which I am expected to shape my conduct
and direct my life. And so we find ourselves once more led to the thesis of intellectualism, that
man can attain to a reasoned certitude regarding his spontaneous assents, whether these be
speculative or moral or religious, if, and only if, he can find for such assents a ground or motive
that will be objectively valid under the scrutiny of reflecting reason. Natural promptings of the
will, aspirations of the heart, impulses of feeling and sentiment, may serve as immediate motives
of spontaneous assents, and as provisional practical guides of conduct; but the ultimate ground of
human certitude must be approved by reflecting reason, and with reflecting reason the last word
on certitude must ever rest.
“The Two Critiques Compared. Inconsistencies of Kant’s System as a Whole. – The

student of Kant will be struck by the fact that both of Kant’s Critiques are reasoned, that both are
32
works of the same individual human intellect, exploring, interpreting, arguing, reasoning,
apparently in the same way and according to the same general laws which guide and govern
rational processes. When examining the first Critique we had occasion more than once to notice
certain inconsistencies and certain peculiar problems it suggested concerning its own scope and
significance.80 We have now briefly to compare the two Critiques with a view to seeing whether
their conclusions conform at least to the negative test of consistency (156) in considering their
claim to acceptance as forming a satisfactory philosophy of human experience as a whole.
“For a time it was thought by many that it was only when he realized the destructive
bearings of the first Critique upon the fundamental moral and religious beliefs of mankind that
Kant tried to avert the impending disastrous consequences by seeking a new basis for those
beliefs in his second Critique; that he had not conceived and intended from the beginning the
destruction of the ‘ancient metaphysics’ as a necessary preparation for the transference of the
basis of those beliefs from the scientific domain to the domain of the will, or regarded this
transference itself as the only sure way of defending religion and morality against the sceptical
attacks of reason. But from Kant’s correspondence it appears that he had before him
throughout,81 the whole general outline of the system embodied in the two Critiques, and that
therefore he always regarded their respective conclusions not only as mutually compatible, but as
mutually complementary and as forming together one logical and perfectly consistent whole.
That his intention was the very reverse of sceptical or destructive of moral and religious certitude
is beyond all question. And that he could have regarded the two Critiques as mutually
complementary is also intelligible. For the conflict between them is de facto not quite explicit
and obvious.
“When Kant set himself to the task of meeting the scepticism of Hume he was probably
impressed by the formula with which Leibniz had countered the empiricism of Locke: ‘Nihil est
in intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensu, nisi intellectus ipse’ (71). While sense experience is
of objects allied to material conditions of time-and-space phenomena, reflection on our
intellectual activity reveals this as determining the necessary, a priori judgments of science, and
as thereby disclosing an intelligible world which is beyond the control of positive science
altogether. When, therefore, the dictate of moral duty reveals itself in man’s conscience as
absolute, it cannot on the one hand ground itself on principles of the speculative reason which
are concerned only with the scientific knowledge of the objects of sense experience, but neither
on the other hand has it anything to fear from them since it is wholly beyond the range of their
proper sphere of application. The conflict, therefore, between the two Critiques is not direct or
apparent.
“But is the conflict between their directive principles nevertheless really there? It
certainly is ; and by an inevitable logical necessity.
“What, for instance, can be the significance of the distinction between the speculative
reason and the practical reason?82 Are they two distinct faculties? There appears to be no
80
Cf. especially vol. 1, §59; also §§46, 54, 56, 58.
81
Cf. MERCIER, op. cit., §109, pp. 247-250.
82
Kant sometimes seems to identify what he calls the practical reason with the will, or again, at times, with man’s
moral conscience. But the will, considered in itself, is not a cognitive faculty at all, not a faculty which apprehends
33
ground whatever for thinking so. They are rather two aspects or domains of the activity of the
human intelligence (or intellect, understanding, reason). They are simply one and the same
human intelligence, conceiving, judging, reasoning, in the domain of speculative reality (or
‘things’), and of practical reality (or ‘acts’), respectively. The theoretical or speculative reason,
then, would be intellect employed in the investigation of that which is; and the practical reason
would be the same intellect employed in the investigation of that which ought to be – or, human
conduct in its ethical aspect.
“But if so, this single faculty must in all its functions be subject to the same general laws.
If, as theoretical or speculative, it can attain only to sense phenomena, it should as practical have
the same confines. On the other hand, if, as practical, it can attain to the realities of the domain
of moral duty, so should it, as speculative, be able to attain to the realities of the domain of
sense. Concerned as we are with only a single faculty, man’s intelligence or reason, there can be
only two alternative answers to the inevitable question: Can it attain to reality or can it not? We
must choose one: we cannot choose both.
“If it can, inasmuch as moral duty both transcends phenomenal conditions and is an
object of certitude, why cannot substances and causes be also ‘noumena’ or metaphysical
realities likewise transcending phenomenal conditions, and be therefore objects of certitude on
the same title as the realities of the moral order?
“If it cannot, for the reason that, owing to the absence of phenomenal or sensible matter
whereby alone reality could ‘be given’ or ‘appear,’ the spontaneity of the intellect endeavouring
to apprehend it would be without an ‘object,’ why should the reality called the ‘categorical
imperative,’ or the realities supposed to be implied by it, be capable of certain attainment, seeing
that they too are not presented in ‘sensible matter’ as ‘objects’?
“Kant, however, made the fatal mistake of endeavouring to show that the intellect cannot
attain to certitude about substances and causes, that the supposed metaphysical knowledge of
these is an illusion, whereas the knowledge embodied in physics and mathematics is genuine;
and his only way of making this negation plausible was by contending that genuine scientific
certitude is confined to phenomena that fall within the limits of sense experience, – to the sense
appearances which are the objects of physics and mathematics. But having taken up this position
he could escape the sensism and scepticism of Hume only by maintaining the reality of a world
beyond the scope of sense, a purely intelligible domain, and the possibility of attaining to
certitude concerning it. The question, however, then was: How can such certain attainment be
or judges or assents or reasons: hence it has been described as of itself a ‘blind’ faculty: its function is to will,
desire, ‘intend’ ends, to ‘choose’ means, etc., under the enlightening influence of the higher cognitive faculty, the
intellect, manifesting objects as ‘good.’ Hence Kant must rather have meant by the practical reason the faculty
which discerns, judges, dictates, reasons, and delivers verdicts, concerning objects of the practical or moral order,
human acts and human conduct, i.e. concerning matters in which the exercise of free will is directly involved. The
question is, then, is such faculty distinct from the intellect or reason which judges speculative matters? And the same
question applies to man’s moral conscience. Conscience, as a faculty, is universally regarded by scholastics, and
indeed by philosophers generally, as the intellect itself dictating a judgment concerning the lawfulness or
unlawfulness of a definite act to be there and then performed or avoided by the person judging. While the special
aptitude of the intellect to discern the truth of first principles of the moral order has been described by scholastics
and others as synderesis (15). Cf. supra, p. 243 n.
34
possible. After he had declared that the human intellect cannot attain to certitude about any
reality, that all its necessary and universal judgments reveal merely mental phenomena or sense
appearances moulded by the forms of its own activity,83 how was he to get it into certain contact
with the purely intelligible, real or noumenal domain of being?
“He tried to do so by seizing on one single fact of his own consciousness, assuming a
similar fact to be present in every other person’s consciousness, and by analysing rationally its
implications. This fact was the concept or notion, which he found within his mind, of moral duty,
moral obligation, moral law. This content of his consciousness he interpreted, not very
accurately, as we saw above, but no matter, as a ‘categorical imperative,’ i.e. an absolute dictate
binding necessarily and universally. But, granting all that, the reader will surely ask what
possible use could Kant make of it for grounding certitude about reality, seeing that he had just
declared all necessary and universal judgments, all notions or concepts, to be capable of
manifesting either (1) merely mental products of subjective, a priori forms with sensuously
given materials, where there are such materials, or else (2) mere empty mental forms themselves,
mere regulative modes of the mind’s activity, where there are no such sensuous materials, modes
which it would be an illusion (according to his own teaching) to mistake for realities. Either
those moral notions and dictates are revealed to us, and apprehended by us (as de facto they are),
in the concrete, individual data of our conscious experience, – in our individual moral feelings,
sentiments, impulses, choices, decisions, etc., as these arise in our direct consciousness: but if so,
they can (on Kant’s theory) reveal just mere mental phenomena, pure and simple, like our other
concepts and judgments; and the objective reality of the noumenon which they suggest to us
remains exactly as doubtful and unattainable as that of any other noumenon of experience. Or
else those moral notions and dictates are devoid of all empirical content, independent of anything
revealed in the consciousness of our actual moral life, objects of pure intellectual intuition. But
then, if it is alleged that because they are such they manifest realities to us, and that we thus
attain to certitude about reality, (1) why can we not have, a pari, a similar intellectual certitude
of suprasensible realities through the (speculative) concepts and judgments we form regarding
83
First it was represented as attaining to certitude as to how the reality which directly affects us in external and
internal sensation (the ‘noumenon of experience’: the real external world and the real Ego: what the ‘ancient
metaphysics’ called material substances or subjects, and material causes or agencies) appears; then as attaining to
certitude only about mental phenomena or appearances, which were thus, as secondary entities (129), distinguished
and isolated from their corresponding ‘noumena of experience’: so that these latter were thus made just as remote
from the intellect as the ‘metaphysical noumena,’ God, the soul, freedom, immortality, the moral order, the realities
to which the three ideas of the pure speculative reason point. Nevertheless, Kant in places distinguishes and
contrasts those two sets of noumena, as to their certain attainability by the human intellect. Cf. MERCIER, op. cit.,
§144, p. 397: ‘Kant often contrasts knowledge of the noumena of experience with knowledge of metaphysical
reality. Why? Can I know the empirical noumenon, or can I not? If I cannot, where is the use of contrasting my
ignorance of it with my ignorance of metaphysical reality. If on the other hand the empirical real, or noumenon of
experience, does lie within the scope of my knowledge, why can I not pass from certitude regarding such empirical
realities to certitude concerning metaphysical realities, seeing especially that ex hypothesi the latter are a necessary
condition of the existence of the former.’
The reader will recognize, in what are here referred to as ‘noumena of experience’ and ‘metaphysical realities’
respectively, the intelligible realities of the domain of sense (sensibilia per accidens: material substances and
causes), of which we have proper concepts, and intelligible realities transcending the domain of sense (spiritual
substances and causes; the human soul as free, spiritual and immortal; pure spirits; God), of which our concepts are
only analogical (supra, §114, p. 76, n. 1; pp. 80-81; §125, pp. 143-144). And in the rational inferribility of the latter
from the former he will see the fundamental reason of the possibility of a speculative metaphysics, and the
condemnation of Kant’s metaphysical agnosticism.
35
substance, cause, soul, spirit, God? And secondly, (2) is it not inconsistent of Kant to claim the
power of attaining to certitude about reality for the very faculty of intellect to which he had
already repeatedly denied all such power? Why should not such reputed attainment of
suprasensible reality be still an illusion? Why should it not still be de facto only the thought or
idea of a mere empty mental form? And finally, (3) even supposing it to be a certain attainment
to reality, the insuperable difficulty would still remain of either leaving one of the noumenal
realities, which is human freedom, up in the clouds of a Platonic mundus intelligibilis, or else
bringing it down to the concrete world of actual human experience, to the inevitable destruction
of the universal determinism which on Kant’s own theory prevails there.84
“It is sometimes urged, and this will be our last point, that while the certitude attainable
by the speculative exercise of reason is conditioned by external experience, the certitude
attainable by its practical exercise is conditioned only by internal experience. Or, to put it in
another way, ‘human experience, taken in its totality…has two distinct starting-points: sense
data, the subject-matter of scientific knowledge; and the categorical imperative of conscience,
the basis of moral and religious beliefs.’85 And this being so, may not analysis of each of these
domains show us that though certitude concerning reality is unattainable by reason proceeding
from the former starting-point by way of external (speculative) experience, it is attainable by
reason proceeding from the second by way of internal (practical, moral) experience? May not
such analysis lead us to the conclusion that the sense data of consciousness which reveal to
reason the physical domain, and the suprasensible data of conscience which reveal the moral and
religious domains, are totally heterogeneous and mutually isolated for reason? If, then, it be
shown that reason can ground the certitude of its moral and religious beliefs in reality on the
latter set of data, and that through the former set it can attain to knowledge, but only of
phenomena, not of reality, is not moral and religious certitude thereby made absolutely proof
against the sceptical inroads of science?
“In this plea for Kantism we have a plausible mixture of good intentions and bad
philosophy. But its plausibility is destroyed even by Kant’s own teachings. The only point we
need notice in it is the insinuation that, from the point of view of human certitude about reality,
different values attach to the two sources of experience. But what are the two sources referred
to? Not internal and external experience, in the sense of consciousness of the Ego and awareness
of an external universe. For we have seen86 that Kant holds all our consciousness of what goes on
in the Ego to be conditioned by our awareness of an external, spatial universe; and that,
moreover, both the spatial or external and the temporal or internal data can, according to his
theory, reveal only mental phenomena, and not realities. The distinction, therefore, which he
seeks to establish between two sources of our experience, must be the distinction between
conscious data of the physical order and conscious data of the moral order. But neither can this
effectively serve his purpose; and for two reasons.
“Firstly, because the moral data from which he derives the categorical imperative and its
implications, being data of conscious experience,87 should on his own theory reveal only mental
84
Cf. supra, pp. 332-334.
85
Vol. 1, §46, p. 172.
86
Vol. 1, §61, p. 214, n. 1; supra, §97, p. 7, n. 4; §100, p. 15; §134, pp. 202-205.
87
Cf. Vol. 1, §56, pp. 199-200.
36
phenomena, only an ‘empirical’ Ego, and not any reality. For after all the individual man has
only one mind, one consciousness, the processes and data of which must therefore conform to
the same law so far as their value for certitude or insight into reality is concerned.
“And secondly, the heterogeneity of the two domains of conscious data is not absolute;
nor can they be rightly or reasonably held to form two totally isolated and separate domains of
mental life. Moral concepts and judgments are of course different from our concepts and
interpretations of physical or sense data. They are not derived or derivable from the immediate
data of any of the senses: just as concepts of the domain of one sense cannot be derived from the
data of another sense: the concept of colour, for instance, cannot be derived from the auditory
data of consciousness. But moral concepts and principles are nevertheless derived from other
concrete, individual data revealed in our conscious experience. Conscious impulses, aspirations,
sentiments, affective and volitional tendencies, choices, decisions, feelings of responsibility,
duty, obligation, of regret, remorse, shame, or of the approval of conscience for our conduct,
these are all concrete individual facts or data of direct consciousness or intuition, not of sense
consciousness, of course, but of intellectual consciousness (95), consciousness of the higher or
intellectual and volitional departments of our mental life. It is from such concrete, individual,
conscious data, directly revealed to each of us in his own mental life, externated in his own
moral conduct, and inferred to be also in his fellowmen from similar externations apprehended in
their moral conduct, it is from such data that we derive the concepts of duty, responsibility,
moral obligation, moral sanctions, etc., which enter into all moral principles, dictates and
judgments. The ‘ought’ of moral conduct is, of course, not a datum of sense. It is, however, a
datum of intellect. Nor is it given to intellect, or apprehended by intellect, in the data of sense,
any more than God, or the free, spiritual, and immortal soul, or the intellect itself, or the will, are
given in sense data. It is, however, given to intellect in our immediate intellectual awareness of
the conscious, suprasensible, or spiritual activities, yearnings, aspirations, impulses, of our own
intellect and will, as a specific characteristic of these data. Our intellectual apprehension of it as a
thought-object, and of other thought-objects of the same suprasensible order, we have already
asserted to be mediated by sense, inasmuch as we consider all our suprasensible mental activities
to be conditioned by the prior operation of sense perception and sense consciousness. This we
believe to be the proper interpretation of Locke’s aphorism as qualified by Leibniz (71, 74, l00,
105, 114). But even if the conscious data to which the concept of the ‘ought’ with all its
implications applies, could be attained by an intellectual intuition that would be in no way
conditioned by sense, and even if the ‘ought’ as a concept were a pure a priori form applied by
the mind to such data, consistency would demand that its function and application obey the same
laws, and be subject to the same limitations, as the other a priori forms of the mind (for those
moral data are data of human consciousness, and the concept of the ‘ought’ is a concept of the
human intellect): but then the concept and its implications could enable us to attain merely to
phenomena, and not to reality.
“As a matter of fact the concept of moral obligation, and all other moral concepts, are
formed by the human intellect through the same procedure, and in obedience to the same laws, as
are revealed in its formation of speculative concepts. The notion of moral obligation is a complex
notion. On analysis it reveals a necessary relation as obtaining between a free act and an end
which imposes itself absolutely on the will. Analyse in turn the judgment which asserts this
relation and you will find in it the categories of relation, final cause, action, efficient causality.
37
And there we are back into the domain of the ‘speculative reason.’ Nor can the postulates of the
practical reason be established if the principle of causality be denied objective and real validity.
“The attempt, therefore, to vindicate consistency for Kant’s thought as expressed in the
two Critiques is found to break down hopelessly. The splitting up of the human intellect into two
separate faculties, and of the whole domain of human experience into two water-tight
compartments of ‘knowledge’ and ‘belief,’ will not and cannot satisfy human reason reflecting
on the grounds of its spontaneous assents. For ‘belief,’ no less than ‘knowledge,’ is an assent. If,
therefore, it has no grounds that reason can see and pronounce to be objectively valid, it is not a
‘reasonable belief,’ an obsequium rationabile. Religious belief must then cease to be intellectual,
doctrinal, dogmatic,88 and degenerate into a mere sentimental pietism. It will be the non-
dogmatic religion which eschews all ‘creed’ and identifies itself with moral righteousness. But
moral conduct, in turn, being based on a subjective dictate of duty, a dictate that is alleged to
emanate from the ‘autonomous’ will of the individual, i.e. from an authority for which the
individual’s reason can find no objectively valid credentials, – must inevitably tend to lose its
character as duty and to become a matter of individual feeling or caprice. For the binding force of
an obligation is incompatible with its being self-imposed, and equally incompatible with its
having no credentials that reason can recognize and accept as adequate.
“Kant’s deontological ethical formalism was to foster men’s moral and religious beliefs
by justly limiting the scope of knowledge; by destroying the ancient pretensions of the human
mind to knowledge of the metaphysical, moral and religious domains; by grounding those
beliefs, among the ruins of the speculative reason, on a foundation that was to have nothing to
fear from the impotent attacks of its castigated knowledge. But transcendental idealist
deontological ethical formalism was all the while itself an effort of that same human mind or
reason, playing itself a suicidal trick which really involved those beliefs in the same abyss of
agnosticism in which it sought to bury knowledge. The history of religion and morals during the
last century under the influence of a widely prevalent anti-intellectualism bears out only too well
the justice of our strictures on such a philosophical attitude towards human certitude.”89
Zacchi’s Critique of Kant’s ‘Critique of Practical Reason.’ Angelo Zacchi, O.P. critiques
Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason in the fifth edition of his Dio as follows: “Il primo
rimprovero, che si può fare a Kant, è quello di essere riuscito a mettere pienamente d’accordo le
sue due «Critiche», e di avere sostenuto nella «Critica della ragione pratica» delle tesi, che mal si
reggono, quando si accetti la dottrina della «Critica della ragion pura». Malgrado tutti i suoi
sforzi, Kant non è riuscito, appellando alla ragione pratica, a salvare seriamente quei veri, che
aveva dichiarato inaccessibili alla ragione speculativa.
“Anche mantenendosi sulle generali, è evidente che non si può ammettere l’esistenza di
Dio e dell’anima immortale, quando si è precedentemente affermato che gli argomenti addotti
per dimostrarla, oltre che insufficienti, sono anche falsi, e si risolvino tutti in antinomie e
paralogismi. Come accettare le tesi, che sono state dichiarate indimostrabili? Non si tratta di tesi
di per se stesse evidenti, ma di tesi, che hanno bisogno di essere dimostrate. E neppure ci
88
Cf. supra, §141, p. 231, (f), where it was pointed out that Kant’s theory necessarily reduces Christianity (and
indeed all positive religion) to a mere symbolism.
89
P. COFFEY, Epistemology, vol. 2, Peter Smith, Gloucester, MA, 1958, pp. 330-344.
38
troviamo dinanzi a facoltà di diverso ordine, in modo che quello che è fuori della sfera di una,
possa essere dentro la sfera dell’altra; quello che è irraggiungibile per una, possa essere
raggiungibile per l’altra. No, la ragione teorica, nella sua potenzialità, non differisce
essenzialmente dalla ragione pratica. Ragione teorica e ragione pratica non sono che due forme
d’attività di uno stesso principio intellettivo. Esse obbediscono alle stesse leggi fondamentali, e
hanno la medesima potenzialità. Se una è condannata ad operare esclusivamente dentro la sfera
dei fenomeni, non si capisce come l’altra possa oltrepassare questa sfera, e raggiungere il mondo
dei noumeni.
“La finzione, a cui Kant si appiglia per tradurre in postulati della ragione pratica le tesi
indimostrabili di Dio e dell’anima, ripugna tanto all’etica quanto alla logica. «Egli propone cioè
che la ragione praticamente supponga essere vero ciò che teoricamente sa essere falso: …per
usare il linguaggio kantiano, la ragione sa che l’anima, il mondo e Dio non sono enti reali, cose
in sè, ma semplici idee, a cui non corrisponde nessuna realtà oggettiva (l’anima è l’idea
psicologica, il mondo l’idea cosmologica, Dio l’idea teologica); eppure nei suoi pensamenti e
nelle sue deliberazioni deve comportarsi come se (als ob) quelle idee, che non rappresentano
alcun oggetto reale, avessero la massima realtà oggettiva: cioè deve supporre, deve fingere, che
esistono realmente gli oggetti di quelle idee i cui oggetti non possono avere se non una esistenza
immaginaria.90 Ed in cose dichiarate così crudamente immaginarie, illusorie, chi mai potrebbe
ancora aver fede? O che fede potrebbe mai essere quella di chi le credesse? O non dovrebbe
essere così finta la fede, come è finto il suo oggetto?».91
“Se, uscendo dalle generali scendiamo ad esaminare in particolare la «Critica della

ragione pratica», allora il suo contrasto con la «Critica della ragion pura» si fa anche più
manifesto.
“La legge morale del dovere è la base sulla quale Kant pretende ricostruire il mondo
metafisico della libertà, dell’anima e di Dio; mai può ritenersi questa base davvero stabile e
sicura, se si accettano i principi da lui professati nella «Critica della ragione pura»? È più che
lecito dubitarne.
“Come mai egli, dopo aver rifiutato ogni valore oggettivo alle nozioni ed ai principî della
metafisica, può illudersi di proporre quale verità indiscutibile l’esistenza del dovere, che,
analizzato anche nella sua più semplice espressione, suppone evidentemente le nozioni
metafisiche di relazione di causa e di fine?92 Come mai, dopo aver rinnegato la ragione
speculativa, può parlare dell’esistenza del dovere, che nel modo formulato da esso suppone
evidentemente l’appoggio di una lunga dimostrazione, e quindi di nozioni e di principî, che solo
la ragione speculativa può somministrare?
90
«Lo stesso Kant ragguaglia il valore delle sue idee a quello di un focus imaginarius, cioè di un punto fittizio, da
cui per un’illusione necessaria c’immaginiamo che partono certe linee, le quali hanno tutt’altra sorgente: illusione
simile a quella che ci fa vedere gli oggetti dietro lo specchio: «So wie die Objecte hinter der Spiegelfläche gesehen
werden».(Appendice alla Dialettica Trascendentale). Ed ecco tutta la realtà che il criticismo s’è degnato di lasciare,
bontà sua, all’anima, al mondo e a Dio!».
91
A. FRANCHI, Ultima Critica, seconda ed., vol. 1, p. 68.
92
Il dovere anche nella sua espressione più semplice importa una relazione tra l’atto libero e il bene al quale si deve
tendere come ad un fine.
39
“Kant parla della legge del dovere come di un fatto di evidenza immediata; ma non è
facile che tutti la pensino così. Anche prescindendo dai caratteri di assoluta indipendenza e di
assoluta autonomia, ch’egli pretende riscontrare in questa legge, si possono fare contro
l’esistenza stessa della legge molte obiezioni, alle quali è pur necessario rispondere, se si vuole
che sia al disopra di ogni dubbio e fuori di ogni contestazione.
“Per esempio, supposta l’esistenza del dovere, egli ne deduce logicamente la libertà, non
essendo comprensibile il dovere senza la capacità di adempierlo; ma si potrebbero invertire le
parti, e passare dalla negazione della libertà alla negazione del dovere, che senza la prima non
può sussistere.93 Si potrebbe dire: nel mondo dei fenomeni, nel quale operiamo, tutto è sottoposto
al determinismo più rigoroso; ma senza libertà non concepibile il dovere; dunque, non esistendo
la libertà, non esiste nepurre il dovere, e quello che indichiamo con un tale nome, è una pura
illusione.
“Parimente, anche supposta la voce della coscienza, che commanda di fare il bene, a
costo di qualunque sacrifizio, chi ci assicura che questa voce non c’inganna? Chi ci assicura che
l’istinto morale è davvero il più alto è il più nobile, e deve avere il passo sopra tutti gli altri istinti
non meno di esso forti e profondi? Senza l’aiuto della metafisica l’ottimo Kant non potrà mai
dare una risposta sufficiente a questi dubbi.
“Nè vale dire: siamo sicuri dell’esistenza della legge del dovere, perchè tutti gli uomini
sono irresistibilmente portati ad ammetterla. Anche il valore ontologico dei primi principii viene
ammesso da tutti gli uomini, con irresistibile impulso, e nondimeno Kant si crede autorizzato a
dubitarne. Se è lecito dire, per esempio: siamo irresistibilmente portati ad ammettere che ogni
effetto ha una causa, ma non siamo sicuri che così sia, sarà pure lecito dire: siamo
irresistibilmente portati a ritenerci obbligati a fare il bene, ma non siamo sicuri che questo
obbligo esista realmente.
“Se nella costruzione kantiana la base stessa è così poco solida, ognuno può imaginare
cosa sarà del resto.
“Già i caratteri attribuiti da Kant alla legge del dovere costituiscono due pregiudiziali
contrarie allo scopo della sua dimostrazione. Infatti si comprende benissimo come dall’esistenza
di una legge che è in noi, ma non è da noi, si possa risalire fino ad un legislatore supremo; non si
capisce però come ciò sia possibile quando, con Kant, si è dichiarato che la legge morale è
autonoma, e che la volontà nostra è legge a se stessa. Si comprende pure benissimo come sia
permesso ammettere la esistenza di una vita sopraterrena, in base ad una legge, la quale esige una
sanzione, che non può aversi su questa terra; ma non si comprende come ciò sia permesso
quando con Kant si è detto che la legge esclude ogni motivo di operare estraneo ad essa, che si
deve fare il bene per il bene, e non per il desiderio di una ricompensa.
“Ma anche prescindendo da queste due pregiudiziali sfavorevoli, è certo che

l’argomentazione kantiana non sembra troppo efficace. Nella parte che riguarda l’esistenza di
Dio – la sola che ora c’interessi – essa può essere così sintetizzata. L’armonia tra la virtù e la
93
Per essere un soggetto morale l’uomo ha da esser libero. Se non lo presupponiamo libero non potremo mai
ritenerlo capace di moralità.
40
felicità deve realizzarsi; perchè vi è evidente incompatibilità tra la virtù e la infelicità. Ma
l’armonia finale della virtù colla felicità non può essere realizzata, senza supporre l’esistenza di
un essere supremo; dunque l’essere supremo esiste.
“Ora una tale argomentazione, oltre al contenere un complesso di affermazioni, che nella
loro inevidenza esigono di essere chiarite, e che non possono esserlo senza l’aiuto della ragione
speculativa, non concorda neppure coi principî professati dallo stesso Kant.
“Questi infatti parla dell’obbligo di renderci degni del premio della felicità, quando ha già
dichiarato che bisogna fare sempre il bene per il bene, e che è immortale operare per l’interesse
individuale, e in vista della felicità. Dichiara evidente l’incompatibilità della virtù colla infelicità,
quando ha già riconosciuto che la felicità non sempre tiene dietro alla virtù, e che l’uomo spesso
non può essere giusto che a prezzo della sua felicità.
“L’argomentazione inoltre si appoggia chiaramente sul principio di causalità. Vi si parla

di un effetto – la futura armonia della virtù e della felicità – che suppone una causa adeguata:
Dio. Eppure Kant ha precedentemente sostenuto che questo principio manca di ogni valore
oggettivo, e in ogni caso è applicabile solo al mondo fenomenico! Se si vuole che il
ragionamento conchiuda, si deve dargli un’altra forma più larga, più chiara, più solida; si deve
sopratutto rinunziare ai pregiudizi antimetafisici. Ma finchè esso resta così imperfetto e privo
dell’appoggio indispensabile delle nozioni e dei principî di ordine ideale, non riuscirà a
convincere nessuno.
“Kant ha creduto di poter fare a meno della metafisica, ma ha fabbricato sull’arena.
“Si è illuso di poter sostituire il credere al sapere, la ragione pratica alla teorica; ma in
questa sostituzione ha finito col travolgere tutto nella rovina, colpendo a morte, insieme al
sapere, anche il credere, insieme alla ragione teorica, anche la ragione pratica. Egli ha detto: non
posso conoscere se il mondo metafisico esiste, ma le esigenze morali m’impongono di supporre
che esiste, e devo volere che esista, devo vivere come se realmente esistesse. Ha dimenticato
però che, oltre alle esigenze morali, ci sono anche le esigenze razionali. Ha dimenticato che, in
forza di queste ultime, ci ripugna di supporre e volere come esistente quello di cui non si può
provare l’esistenza. Per supporre e volere qualche cosa è necessario esser certi che possiamo
supporla e volerla; e per essere certi che possiamo supporla e volerla, occorrono dei motivi di
ordine speculativo. La certezza è ferma adesione dell’intelletto, e implica motivi capaci di
convincere e conquistare l’intelletto medesimo; implica motivi razionali. Altra cosa è la
propensione, che ci porta a cercare la certezza della verità morali e religiose, altra cosa
l’adesione ferma e stabile, che costituisce la certezza stessa. La prima è di carattere sentimentale
istintivo; ma la seconda è propria dell’intelletto. La prima può preparare la via alla seconda e
anche confermarla; ma non può sostituirla. La certezza vera è una sola: quella di ordine
speculativo, e poggia su motivi intellettivi. Il giorno che vengono a mancare questi motivi, il
giorno che col criticismo si viene a togliere ad essi ogni valore reale, non si può parlare di vera
certezza, neppure di quella, che si può avere in un atto di credenza puramente razionale. Il
relativismo soggettivo col quale il criticismo mina la certezza della conoscenza teorica, inquina
così anche la certezza che si appoggia alle esigenze di ordine pratico. Perciò vale contro Kant il
dilemma: o la fede per cui ammettiamo i postulati della ragione pratica è vera conoscenza, che ci
41
permette di vedere i nessi necessari di questi postulati con l’ordine morale, e allora valgono
contro di essa tutte le critiche mosse da Kant alla ragione teorica; o è fede cieca, istintiva, e allora
si potrà parlare di certezza soggettiva, mai di certezza oggettiva fondata cioè sulla realtà e verità
delle cose ammesse.
“Concludendo, l’insuccesso del tentativo kantiano di fondare l’ordine metafisico sulla

morale, è evidente. Senza l’aiuto della ragione speculativa, la ragione pratica non può costruire
nulla di sicuro e di stabile. Senza supporre il valore ontologico delle nozioni e dei principî
d’ordine ideale, tutto l’edificio elevato da Kant nella «Critica della ragione pratica» va in rovina.
Nè la esistenza e la natura della legge morale, che ne costituisce la base, nè i nessi della legge
morale con i tre postulati della libertà, dell’immortalità dell’anima e di Dio, possono essere
accertati, quando si rifiuti di ammettere il predetto valore ontologico. Non vi è dunque via di
messo: o tornare al dommatismo metafisico, rinnegando la «Critica della ragione pura», o cadere
nello scetticismo morale e religioso, rinnegando la «Critica della ragione pratica». Una
conciliazione tra le due Critiche non sembra possibile.
“Quanto si è detto del criticismo deve ripetersi del neocriticismo, che alla scienza
vorrebbe sostituirla in ogni caso la credenza; all’adesione, che si basa sulle ragioni dell’intelletto,
quella che viene imposta dalla libera volontà.
“La pretesa di escludere dalla certezza i motivi intelletuali, come si è già dimostrato, è
semplicemente assurda. O che la mente si porti con l’adesione certa su di una verità che di per sè
stessa le s’impone, o che si porti, dietro l’impulso della volontà, su di una verità che le rimane in
sè stessa oscura, suppone sempre una evidenza, una luce, una visione. Nell’adesione certa che
costituisce la scienza, suppone la evidenza della verità, cioè la entità o intelligibilità della cosa
che le s’impone e le si manifesta. Nell’adesione certa che costituisce la fede, suppone l’evidenza
della credibilità, cioè l’evidenza della testimonianza e della autorità del testificante. Senza una
qualche luce, che brilli alla nostra intelligenza, questa non uscirà mai dallo stato di incertezza,
non ostante tutti gli stimoli e tutti i commandi della volontà.
“La volontà è impotente a troncare tutti i dubbi e tutte le incertezze, e ad imporre

l’adesione ferma e stabile ad una dottrina, nè intrinsecamente, nè estrinsecamente evidente; ma
quando anche lo fosse, potremmo ulteriormente chiedere: qual’è la causa che determina questo
impero della volontà? È forse un giudizio riflesso per cui si dichiara fondata la certezza imposta?
No, perchè torneremmo alla tesi intellettualista, che assegna come ragione ultima dell’adesione
certa, un motivo di ordine intellettuale. È forse un impulso cieco, istintivo, sentimentale? Ma
allora sacrificheremmo senza pietà tutte le esigenze razionali dell’uomo, il quale, passando dal
momento spontaneo al momento riflesso è solito domandarsi sempre il perchè di tutte le sue
azioni. Allora non ci differenziamo affatto dagli scettici, chè anch’essi, pur negando la certezza
che poggia su motivi riflessi, non contestano la certezza spontanea e istintiva, che è capace di
giustificarsi. Allora si riuscirà ad evitare la scetticismo momentaneamente, finchè cioè, sotto
l’azione provvisoria dei motivi istintivi, sentimentali, utilitari, ecc., si chiuderanno gli occhi
dell’intelligenza. Ma lo scetticismo diventerà inevitabile, appena la forza dei motivi predetti
verrà a mancare, e, ripiegati su noi stessi, cercheremo, senza riuscure a trovarlo, il perchè della
nostra fede istintiva, il perchè della nostra cieca adesione.
42
“Anche per il neo-criticismo dunque vale il dilemma opposto al criticismo: O accettare la
metafisca, o rinnegare anche la morale e la religione. O accettare il valore ontologico e
trascendente dei concetti e dei principii razionali, o rassegnarsi a cadere inevitabilmente nello
scetticismo.
“I fatti purtroppo stanno a confermare la verità del dilemma. Dell’opera di Kant e di

Renouvier, non ostante le loro rette intenzioni, non resta oggi che la parte negativa. Essi hanno
fatto degli increduli, ma non sono riusciti a fare dei credenti. E coloro i quali, senza rinunziare ai
pregiudizi antintellettualistici, non hanno avuto il coraggio di gettarsi nelle braccia dello
scetticismo, stanno cercando per le loro credenze morali e religiose una base più solida e più
sicura di quella del criticismo vecchio e nuovo. Superare Kant, ecco il sogno di quanti hanno
scelto per loro Vangelo la «Critica della ragione pura»!”94
Bittle’s Critique of Kant’s Doctrine of Autonomous Morality and Concept of Moral

Obligation. Bittle critiques Kant’s doctrine of autonomous morality and concept of moral
obligation as follows: “Immanuel Kant divorced morality from religion and God. He was the
great protagonist of modern independent autonomous morality.
“Kant admits the existence of a natural law and of the unconditional obligation of
obeying the natural law. His entire moral philosophy is based on the unconditional character of
moral obligation. He denies, however, that God is the source of the law and its obligation.
“According to Kant, man’s practical reason or will (for Kant both are identical) is
nomothetical and autonomous: that is to say, man’s practical reason or will is the sole author of
all moral law, and it is independent of any and all external authority. An action is morally good
only then, when it is performed out of pure respect for the law and not merely in conformity with
the law.
“To maintain that God is the source of natural law and its obligation, would be
‘heteronomy.’ To obey the law out of love of God or out of obedience to His will would destroy
the ‘autonomy’ of man’s practical reason and make him subject to external authority; and that,
Kant contends, is contrary to the very essence of true morality. The life and death of Christ,
motivated as it was by love of man and obedience to God, would not, according to Kantian
principles, be ‘morally good’ in any true sense of the word.
“Since obligation or duty belongs to the very essence of the law, Kant was forced to place
the origin of obligation or duty in the practical reason of man, because practical reason is the
sole lawmaker for human conduct. Obligation finds its expression in the categorical imperative.
“Evaluation. Kant’s theory, that duty or obligation derives its origin from man’s
autonomous practical reason, is indefensible.
“For one thing. The practical reason or will, says Kant, is nomothetic, meaning that the
human will is the maker of its own laws. Obligation, Kant admits, flows from law. If follows,
then, that the human will imposes obligations upon itself by making its own laws. Such a
94
A. ZACCHI, Dio, fifth ed., Ed. F. Ferrari, Rome, 1952, pp. 160-166.
43
doctrine destroys the very concept of the moral order. Morality, then, is not objective but purely
subjective. If the practical reason can make a law, it can also abrogate it; and if the law is
abrogated, there is no obligation. Then why should man restrict his freedom of action by making
any laws at all? Or, if he was foolish enough to make laws, why does he not abolish them when
they turn out to be contrary to his convenience and pleasure? It is plain matter of fact that we are
not conscious of having made the laws of our moral conduct through the free decision of our
own will; on the contrary, we feel subject to the law as something beyond our control. We may
desire to be free from laws and obligations, but we are incapable of escaping their binding force;
and this fact would be inexplicable, if Kant’s doctrine were true. On the other hand, if it were
claimed that man’s will is not free to make and unmake its own laws, man’s will would be
determined by an inner necessity to make its laws and abide by them. Whence this necessity?
Certainly not from the free will of man, because where there is freedom there is no necessity, and
where there is necessity there is no freedom. Hence, this necessity could only originate through
some outside agency. This agency would have to be a rational being, because moral law and
moral obligation belong to the rational order. Only God, the Creator of rational beings, could
impose such a necessity upon the wills of all men. In that case, however, law and obligation
derive their origin, not from the will of man, but from God. According to Kant’s teaching of the
nomothetic will, obligation is eliminated.
“Moreover, if Kant’s theory of the origin of law and duty were true, the foundations of
the social order would be destroyed. Society is the union of a number of individual persons
forming an organized group for the purpose of pursuing common interests and ends. It is
characteristic of human society that it consist of a governing body which has the authority to rule
and impose obligations and also consist of subjects which are ruled and have the duty to obey the
laws laid down by the governing body. Some, therefore, have the authority to rule and others the
duty or obligation to obey. But whence this authority? Kant’s theory of personal autonomy
cannot account for social authority, and as a consequence it cannot account for social obligation.
The mere fact that a majority has the power to impose its will on others does not constitute
legitimate authority; otherwise a mob of bandits would have the legitimate authority to rob and
plunder. Might is not necessarily right. According to Kant, each person’s will is autonomous and
nomothetic and each person’s will is its own end; an action is not morally good if directed
toward an end outside the person’s individual will, because the laws which each one must obey
originate in his own will. Each individual is supreme in his own right and each is autonomous.
No individual, therefore, can make laws for another and demand obedience from him; obedience
to another would serve an outside interest and end that would be immoral. That such a doctrine
undermines the foundation of the entire social order is clear, because it destroys the authority of
society to make laws and demand obedience. Just as a series of zeros, no matter how many they
may be, will never result in a positive number, so the mere summation of mutually autonomous
wills can never give rise to authority in society where the will of the majority would have not
only the might but the right to impose laws on the rest. The social order rests precisely on this,
that the individual feels bound in conscience to obey the superior will of society because society
has the inherent right to demand obedience to its legitimate authority. Such authority can
originate in natural law, and natural law can have its authority from God as the author of the
natural law, but Kant does not admit that natural law or any law derives its binding force from
God. Under the conditions set forth by Kant, no rational account can be given of ‘social
44
obligation,’ because the autonomy of the individual wills is not the adequate source of social
rights and duties.”95
Collins’s Critique of Kant’s Doctrine of Autonomous Morality. James D. Collins critiques

Kant’s doctrine of autonomous morality as follows: “The transcendental method leads Kant to
trace the universality and necessity of the moral law to the pure practical reason or pure will
itself, since these traits must have a nonempirical but practical source. Hence the categorical
imperative also entails the autonomy of the will. ‘Autonomy of the will is that property of it by
which it is a law to itself independently of any property of objects of volition. Hence the
principle of autonomy is: Never choose except in such a way that the maxims of the choice are
comprehended in the same volition as a universal law.’96 If the will regulates its choice by any
other consideration than the fitness of its own maxims to serve as principles of universal law,
then it is leaving its own pure autonomy and must discover a ground for its choice in some other
object. But to do so, is to submit the will to the condition of heteronomy or determination by
something else. Instead of giving a law to itself, the heteronomous will receives its law from an
alien source, resident in the objects of will. Whether these objects be empirical considerations
(such as happiness) or rational motives (such as perfection or the will of God), they provide only
conditional reasons for choice and hence only hypothetical, nonmoral imperatives. Furthermore,
Kant maintains that the heteronomous will loses its freedom, since it submits to a determining
principle outside of itself. The will is free, negatively, when it escapes determination from
without; positively, it is free when it legislates universally for itself. Only the will that is a law
unto itself is also a free will. Yet moral freedom escapes anarchy, since ‘a free will and a will
under [self-imposed] moral laws are identical.’97
“The strength and appeal of Kant’s doctrine on moral autonomy lie in the defense of free
self-determination and personal responsibility for one’s plan of life. But in adjusting these sound
convictions to his systematic requirements, he is led to set up an artificial antithesis between
moral freedom and a theistic foundation of morality. In his previous, epistemological discussion
of the antinomy between freedom and necessity, Kant had described freedom, negatively, as the
absence of determination by a phenomenal series of causes. Now, in a moral context, he regards
freedom as being the absence of decisive, moral influence by objects outside the will itself. He
has a consistent reason for not accepting sensuous needs and inclinations as the ultimate
determinants of morality, due to their subordinate position in respect to the entire man. But there
is no similar reason for rejecting the reference of human actions to the eternal law of God, as the
ultimate moral standard. Since the law of God is not phenomenal, submission to it does not
involve a deordination in man. Nor does it lead to a submission of the human will to a series of
phenomenally necessitated causes…
“As for the positive meaning of freedom – the giving of universal law to oneself – there
are various ways in which this can be done. Here, Kant might have used his distinction between
the infinite will and the finite will, not only to establish the relation of obligation for the latter,
95
C. BITTLE, op. cit., pp. 222-225.
96
I. KANT, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, II (Beck, 97); cf. I. KANT, Critique of Practical Reason, I,
I, no. 8 (Beck, 144-145). For a discussion on this principle, consult A. E. GLEASON, A Critique of Kantian
Autonomy, “The New Scholasticism,” 8 (1934), pp. 223-239.
97
I. KANT, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, III (Beck, 102).
45
but also to determine the precise sense in which the finite will can be a law unto itself. There is a
marked difference between a pure-and-finite will and a pure-and-infinite will, so that Kant’s
appeal to the requirements of pure will is not sufficiently determinate to support the burden of his
doctrine on moral autonomy. Within his perspective, the will of the finite, rational agent is pure
and unconditioned, insofar as it is not determined in its choices by some anterior event in the
series of phenomenal causes. But it is not ontologically unconditioned in its own nature, since it
remains the will of a finite, created nature.
“Within the order of ‘pure wills,’ the will of man is not an all-holy will but a will under
obligation. It is in the light of this capital Kantian distinction that the problem of autonomy must
be posed, rather than in terms of the noumenon-phenomenon dichotomy. It is no derogation from
the integrity of a pure-and-finite will, that its moral goodness should be a measured one, one that
derives from its free conformity with the goodness and law of the pure-and-infinite will of God.
The moral ideal for man is to manifest not simply ‘the good will’ in general, but precisely that
uprightness of will which is appropriate to the human condition of being.98 The human will can
give universal law to itself, but only in the way befitting a derived and finite being, not in the
absolute manner of the underived and infinite being. What the finite person can do is to
appropriate the divine law as his own, interiorize it, and reaffirm it as the animating principle of
his moral life. He can take upon himself the responsibility for working out the more particular
precepts and applications of the divine law, for cultivating the moral virtues, and for making the
prudential judgments and actual elections of concrete moral life. These are inalienable and free
acts, resting upon the integrity and inviolability of human freedom, and yet they are incompatible
with any claim to absolute self-legislation and unconditioned autonomy.
“The finite person gives himself the moral law in a rational, free and creaturely way,
when he recognizes the ordination of his nature and will toward an infinite good, existing
concretely in God. The bond of finite beings to the Infinite Being, who is their creator and goal,
is an unconditioned one and establishes a strict, moral obligation, rather than a hypothetical one.
The relation of conformity with the law of God is not contingent upon our choosing to will a
certain end: it is consequent upon our being rational creatures, with a natural ordination to the
good. Similarly, actual union with the infinitely good God realizes our own perfection, without
reducing God to the status of a means to that perfection, since the perfective union with God is
achieved through a liberating love of Him for His own sake. A theistic ethics is an ethics of love
as well as duty, since it respects the natural tendency in man to relate himself in a properly
creaturely way to his Creator. To seek the foundation of morality in this relationship of the finite
will to God, is to undercut that Kantian alternative between autonomy and heteronomy.
98
See M. DE CORTE, Le concept de bonne volonté dans la morale kantienne, “Revue de Philosophie,” N.S., 2
(1931), pp. 190-221. Because Kant correlated his distinction between nature and freedom with his underlying
dualism between the sensible and intelligible orders, he was unable to integrate in a single doctrine the consideration
of the will precisely as a natural tendency and as free. Since the phenomenon-noumenon dichotomy placed nature
and freedom in opposition, he was led to treat moral freedom as an absolute autonomy of lawmaking reason,
unregulated by whether or not the freedom was rooted in a will, whose natural tendency is toward an infinite good
other than itself. When he did attempt to think nature and freedom together, Kant was unable to defend freedom
coherently, in respect to will concidered as nature. The problem of the Kantian opposition between freedom and
nature is treated at length by J. MARITAIN, Freedom in the Modern World, Scribner, New York, 1936, pp. 3-46.
46
“It still remains to be determined more specifically, however, why Kant felt dissatisfied
with the theistic foundation of morality, as he viewed it. His answer is given in a significant
passage, where he holds that even the empty, rationalistic notion of the greatest possible
perfection ‘is better than the theological concept, which derives morality from a most perfect
divine will. It is better not merely because we cannot intuit its perfection [that of the divine will],
having rather to derive it only from our own concepts of which morality is foremost, but also
because if we do not so derive it (and to do so would involve a most flagrant circle in
explanation), the only remaining concept of the divine will is made up of the attributes of desire
for glory and dominion combined with the awful conceptions of might and vengeance, and any
system of ethics based on them would be directly opposed to morality.’99
“These remarks reveal the twofold ground of Kant’s opposition to a theistic ethics: a
more proximate, ethical reason, and a more basic, epistemological reason. In direct, ethical
terms, he thinks that a theistic ethics must identify the divine perfection exclusively with God’s
will, considered apart from His infinite wisdom and goodness. This would lead to an
irresponsible, theological voluntarism, in which man’s lust for domination would be exalted into
the command of God’s holy will. Although it is prudent to oppose such a theological
voluntarism, Kant does not consider whether every doctrine of the eternal law rests upon an
exclusive foundation in the divine will. His argument from the dire ethical consequences fails to
reckon with the non-voluntaristic doctrines on the eternal law and the will of God. Behind this
immediate ethical appraisal, however, stands Kant’s fundamental epistemological objection.
According to his theory of knowledge, the human mind can have neither intuitive nor
demonstrative knowledge of God and His infinite perfections. The only way to give real content
to the concept of a perfect divine will, then, is to transfer it to the practical order of moral faith.
But, at once, a vicious circle develops. For, the attempt is being made to secure the foundations
of morality upon one’s own moral notions (the content of moral faith), which themselves are said
to stand in need of a foundation. Insensibly, the theistic ethician injects the drives of human
power into the concept of the divine will, leading inevitably to an amoral, theological
imperialism.
“Manifestly, Kant’s major difficulty with a theistic foundation of morality was

epistemological: the inability of a nonintuitive intellect to gain strict knowledge of God’s
supersensuous perfection. Because he made no provision for a speculative demonstration of
God’s existence, Kant had no metaphysical basis for determining anything about His nature and
perfections of intellect and will. Hence he could only regard the doctrine on the divine
perfection, goodness, and will as employing empty concepts, which had to be filled either by
begging the question of their determinate content or by extrapolating into the divine will an all-
too-human content. His objections told against an ethics based on the speculatively empty
concept of a perfect, divine will; they did not bear upon an ethics that secures a metaphysical
basis in the speculative demonstration of God’s existence and infinite, existential perfection of
nature. Epistemological considerations were also decisive in rendering ineffective and irrelevant
for the question of moral autonomy, Kant’s private convictions about the infinite and the finite
modes of being, the self-sufficient and the dependent intellects, the underived and the derived
wills. Since these convictions were lacking in any metaphysical groundwork, they could not be
99
I. KANT, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, II (Beck, 99). Both Kant and Hume advance humanistic
reasons for their attempt to de-theize ethics.
47
employed significantly by Kant in determining the central issue of the relation of the human will
to the moral law.”100
100
J. D. COLLINS, A History of Modern European Philosophy, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1954, pp. 526-530.
48

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CRITIQUE OF IMMANUEL KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM

Paul Gerard Horrigan, Ph.D., 2018.

The immanentist and agnostic philosophical system of transcendental idealism as

In his Il principio di coerenza (1997), Antonio Livi, commenting on a passage from

“‘b) La presenza immediata – intuizione – sul piano della sensibilità è il fenomeno. Il

“‘c) Questa incoerenza diviene una contraddizione, quando ci si eleva al piano

Such formal incoherence of Kant’s transcendental idealism regarding the relation of

Critique of Kant’s Immanentism. What is the principle of immanence? Alejandro Llano

In his book Methodical Realism, the great twentieth century philosopher-historian

In philosophical immanentism, transcendence (first gnoseological, then ontological) is

Gilson defended methodical realism against the immanentism underlying much of

More Critiques of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism45

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D. Mercier’s Critique of Kant’s Categorical Imperative: “The Categorical imperative is

Celestine Bittle’s Critique of Kant’s Ethical Formalism: “Kant’s endeavor to free

Joseph F. Sullivan’s Critique of Kant’s Ethical Formalism: “Kant’s moral rationalism

“4) Kant’s Autonomy of Reason is contradicted by inner experience. Our consciousness

Coffey’s Critique of Kant’s Deontological Formalism. Peter Coffey critiques Kant’s

“The Two Critiques Compared. Inconsistencies of Kant’s System as a Whole. – The

“Se, uscendo dalle generali scendiamo ad esaminare in particolare la «Critica della

“Ma anche prescindendo da queste due pregiudiziali sfavorevoli, è certo che

“L’argomentazione inoltre si appoggia chiaramente sul principio di causalità. Vi si parla

“Kant ha creduto di poter fare a meno della metafisica, ma ha fabbricato sull’arena.

“Concludendo, l’insuccesso del tentativo kantiano di fondare l’ordine metafisico sulla

“La volontà è impotente a troncare tutti i dubbi e tutte le incertezze, e ad imporre

“I fatti purtroppo stanno a confermare la verità del dilemma. Dell’opera di Kant e di

Bittle’s Critique of Kant’s Doctrine of Autonomous Morality and Concept of Moral

Collins’s Critique of Kant’s Doctrine of Autonomous Morality. James D. Collins critiques

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