Immanuel Kant

German philosopher (1724-1804), author of the three Critiques. In Merleau-Ponty's philosophy, Kant represents both the paradigm of transcendental thinking and its fundamental limitation: Kant grasps the necessity of the transcendental turn but misexecutes it by postulating "world-transcending subjective a priori structures" that contradict our perceptually attested immersion in the world.

Key Points

  • Merleau-Ponty grants the "soundness of the basic movement of reflection" leading to Kantian idealism but rejects Kant's postulation of extra-mundane yet world-determining grounds within the subject (PP, pp. lxxii-lxxvi; V&I, pp. 29-37)
  • Kant's error according to Merleau-Ponty: mis-specifying the transcendental problem by (1) detaching the possibility of a world from its actuality, and (2) conflating the possibility of a world with the thinking of a world, endowing it with the character of a hypothesis (V&I, p. 34)
  • The cost of absorbing the Transcendental Aesthetic into the Analytic "would be to turn man into God" — sensibility must not be collapsed into understanding (PP, pp. 228, 317-318)

Details

The Third Critique as Pivot

Gardner argues that the Critique of the Power of Judgement (CPJ, 1790) is the crucial text for understanding Merleau-Ponty's relationship to Kant. In the PP Preface, Merleau-Ponty identifies three key discoveries in the CPJ:

  1. A unity of imagination and understanding prior to the object
  2. A unity of subjects prior to the object (in the experience of beauty)
  3. A "hidden art of the imagination" that conditions categorial activity — "it is no longer merely aesthetic judgment that rests upon this hidden art, but also knowledge" (PP, p. lxxxi)

If the subject has a "nature" — if it discovers itself "as a nature spontaneously conforming to the law of the understanding" — then the hidden art of imagination must ground not only aesthetic judgement but all knowledge. This commits Kant to a pre-conceptual order that Merleau-Ponty claims as his own starting point.

Reflective vs. Determinative Judgement

The CPJ distinguishes reflective judgement (which seeks a universal for a given particular) from determinative judgement (which subsumes a particular under a given universal). Reflective judgement is "absolutely indispensable for empirical knowledge as such" (Gardner, §2). Its exercise is correlated with the assumption that nature is "purposive for our cognition." What Merleau-Ponty calls crystallization — the lateral becoming of objects within the perceptual field — takes the place of this Kantian purposivity.

The Pre-Critical Beweisgrund (1763)

Gardner (Thought's Indebtedness) argues that Kant's Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseins Gottes contains a proto-transcendental insight: thought is anchored in being through the ineliminability of possibility. Thinking manifests the reality of possibility immediately — not through inference or the PSR but through a recognition that "we cannot think away the situation of thinking's being possible." This pre-predicative necessity anticipates the Critical concept of transcendental proof; the impossibility of thinking away the material conditions for thought parallels the irremovability of space and time in the Transcendental Aesthetic. Schelling will later identify exactly this structure as unvordenklich being.

Crucially, the Beweisgrund's insight does not come to light when read through Spinoza's eyes (contra Boehm). Kant works along a new dimension distinct from both the PSR and PNC: "compatibility with and grounding of the possibility of anything being thought at all." At fn. 15 of Gardner's paper, Kant is quoted as unifying formal and material possibility around the same root: "through the cancellation [Aufhebung] of the law of contradiction, the ultimate logical ground of all that can be thought, all possibility vanishes, and there is nothing left to think [nichts dabei mehr zu denken sei]" (Beweisgrund 2:82). What makes a thought thinkable is that there is something zu Denken — and this is what the thinking-away test locates.

Kant also distinguishes in the Beweisgrund two ways possibility can be grounded: as Bestimmungen (determinations, direct inherence in the Necessary Being) or as Folgen (consequences, indirect supervenience). The distinction provides Kant's anti-Spinozist resource — it permits "slack" between the Necessary Being and the Realitäten supervening on it. Real oppositions (opposing forces, pain), negations, and defects must be Folgen rather than Bestimmungen, since predicating them of the Necessary Being directly would yield contradictory predicates or defectiveness. Kant: "all reality is, in one way or another, embraced by the ultimate real ground" (2:87) — but not as determinations of it.

The "absolute position" ambiguity (fn. 16)

Gardner identifies a crucial unresolved ambiguity in Kant's proto-technical term for existence, "absolute position/positing" (absolute Setzung). Kant is "poised between" two readings:

  • (a) Strong metaphysical: existence consists in nothing but occupation of absolute position. This ties existence logically to thought — "position" denotes a role within the content of thought, "positing" implies an act of thinking.
  • (b) Weak: absolute position is merely the marker or criterion of satisfaction of the concept of existence.

Kant does not recognize this ambiguity. On Gardner's reading, Schelling's Quelle is the resolution of it, in favour of (b). The Daß of God (pure thatness, actus purus — see dass-was-distinction) occupies the conceptual space (b) but which Kant left underdetermined: existence as what is not reducible to occupation of a role within the content of thought.

This makes the Kant-Schelling arc run not only through the proof's method but through a specific unresolved tension in Kant's own concept of existence that the Quelle (1850) resolves.

Schelling's late philosophy returns to and expands the Beweisgrund's insight. Schelling's verdict: "with his concept of the Ideal of Pure Reason, Kant did arrive at (and even mastered) the standpoint which Schelling has set forth; on the other hand, he did so 'just barely', and 'did not progress beyond it'" (SW XI: 585).

As Read by Merleau-Ponty (Nature Lectures, 1956-57)

In 1956-57, Merleau-Ponty returns to the CPJ, which he now suggests "blurs the correlation of subject and object" and "at least recognizes the possibility that organic form provides an epistemological alternative to object-construction" (Gardner, §3, fn. 30). This Schellingian reading of Kant aligns with Merleau-Ponty's broader trajectory from the transcendentalism of PP toward the ontology of V&I.

As Engaged by Hegel in the Wissenschaft der Logik (Added 2026-05-21 — WdL three-volume ingest)

Kant is, after Aristotle, the single most-engaged interlocutor in Hegel's Wissenschaft der Logik. The 2026-05-21 GW 21 + GW 11 + GW 12 ingest establishes five major engagement-sites:

1. Transcendental apperception as the Concept misrecognized (GW 12 pp. 17–28): Hegel's "Vom Begriff im allgemeinen" engages the B-Deduction (Kant KrV B137) sustained over 11 pages, naming Kant's transcendental unity of apperception as the deepest insight of the Critique of Pure Reason — the recognition that the unity that makes an object an object is the unity of the "I think," i.e. the Concept itself. But Kant fatally retreated: he declared concepts without intuitions empty, treated the categories as finite reflection-determinations because they "come from self-consciousness," and reduced reason's ideas to merely regulative hypotheses. Per claims#begriff-not-equatable-with-kantian-or-fregean (live claim, 2026-05-21): Hegel's Begriff is not equatable with Kant's transcendental concept — even though Kant had grasped its truth.

2. Antinomies as productive contradiction misrecognized (GW 21 Quantum-section raw ~3400 + GW 11 raw 1001): Hegel reads Kant's antinomies as real contradictions inscribed in being itself — exactly what Kant treats as merely Schein that reflection should dissolve. The Zeno paradoxes are vindicated as correct at GW 11 raw 4885ff. ("the Zeno paradoxes are correct and the conclusion is that motion is contradiction"). Hegel's Widerspruch-doctrine is constructed precisely against Kant's antinomy-resolution.

3. The ontological proof / 100-Thaler example (GW 21 raw 1392 + GW 11 raw 1262): Hegel treats Kant's famous "100 Thaler" criticism of the ontological proof as a category-error — Kant takes existence as a category at the level of Sein, not of Begriff, and so misses that the Concept itself is its own existence. The point is not to defend the ontological proof in Anselm's form but to reorient existence as Begriff-level rather than Sein-level.

4. Teleology against the regulative restriction (GW 12 pp. 162–166): the Teleologie section of the Begriff-volume restores teleology as a constitutive category against Kant's restriction to regulative judgments-of-reflective-purposiveness. Hegel preserves Kant's recognition (in the CPJ) that inner-purposiveness is the form of organic life but refuses Kant's restriction of it to merely subjective use.

5. Mathematics as qualitative, not arithmetical (GW 12 p. 213): Hegel's Anmerkung on Kant's account of arithmetic ("7 + 5 = 12") contests Kant's synthetic-a-priori treatment — arithmetic is qualitative-categorial, not the synthetic-intuitive operation Kant takes it to be. Cf. the Calculus-Anmerkung in GW 21 (raw 3537), which articulates true mathematical infinity as the qualitative-ratio-at-the-limit, not the asymptotic approach. See claims#hegel-on-calculus-as-qualitative-not-arithmetical (live claim, 2026-05-21).

Stakes for the Kant entity page: the existing engagement with Kant via Gardner reads the third Critique as the pivot and via the Beweisgrund as the anticipation of Schelling. The Hegel-WdL engagement is a third register: Kant's deepest insight (transcendental apperception, antinomies as productive, organic purposiveness as constitutive) is preserved but Kant fatally retreated from each of them by re-subordinating the recognition to subjective-psychological structures. Hegel's WdL is therefore the positive completion of what the Beweisgrund + CPJ-pivot articulate in proto-form. See transcendental-apperception for the dedicated concept page.

As Read by Derrida in The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume II (Derrida 2002–2003, added 2026-05-27)

BS-II's final session (S10, 26 March 2003) gives Kant the seminar's longest sustained reading after Heidegger. The Kant invoked is not the standard ethics-of-Kant figure but the philosophical-anthropological-cum-Schmittian-avant-la-lettre Kant of (a) the als ob of the regulative idea and (b) the "Conjectures on the Beginnings of Human History" (1786).

(1) The als ob of the regulative idea. Derrida traces Kant's "als ob" through Critique of Pure Reason B644 ("als ob this cause [...] were the cause of everything"), B651 ("als ob this cause, as supreme intelligence, were the cause of everything, according to the wisest intention"), and B660 ("als ob systematic and purposive unity [...] ad infinitum"). Then through the Groundwork B438: "Act als ob your maxim were to serve at the same time as a universal law." The world of rational beings, the mundus intelligibilis as sovereign reign of ends (Reich der Zwecke), is "possible" only by analogy with a Reich der Natur "als Maschine" — and depends twice on an als ob. The world is regulative idea of reason; the world hangs by a mere als ob. (derrida-2002-bete-souverain-ii S10 pp. 269-71.)

Derrida proposes a "serious debate" between this Kantian als ob (which he nicknames Alsobstruktur) and Heidegger's als-Struktur (the "as such" structure that supposedly distinguishes Dasein from the animal — see walten). The convergence: both are forms of human sovereignty over animality; both work by Walten of the als. This is a structural-isomorphism reading uniting Kant and Heidegger under one humanist gesture.

(2) "Conjectures on the Beginnings of Human History" (1786) — three discontents. Kant's short treatise Muthmaßlicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte (1786) opens with the question of literary fiction (Kant says one cannot fill historical lacunae with fiction "nicht viel besser, als den Entwurf zu einem Roman zu machen"). The Schluß-Anmerkung names three discontents of human life:

  • War as indispensable to cultural perfectibility. "In the stage of culture that the human species has achieved, war is still an indispensable means [ein unentbehrliches Mittel] of perfecting it." Without virtual war's pressure, states, cultures, freedoms would suffer. "Only when culture has reached its full development — and only God knows when that will be — will perpetual peace become possible." Derrida: a Schmittian thesis attributed to Kant before Schmitt — war as the constant horizon that constitutes the state, the social, even freedom.
  • Longevity as morally toxic — the 800-year-old man. Kant wonders what would happen if humans lived to be 800+ years (Noah at 600 + two centuries for safety). His thesis: at 800+, "the father would no longer feel safe from his son, the brother from his brother, the friend from a friend"; vice would accumulate; better the Überschwemmung (universal deluge) than gerontocratic vice. The flood of Genesis is Kant's response. Derrida glosses: "It would be better to destroy the human race and swallow it up." The Oedipal-fratricidal violence accumulates with age; "you have to begin with orphanhood, pre-orphanhood and pre-fratricide." (derrida-2002-bete-souverain-ii S10 pp. 273-74.)
  • Empty nostalgia — the Robinsonade as fundamental tonality of philosophy. Kant's third discontent is "empty nostalgia" (leere Sehnsucht) for the golden age — and this nostalgia "makes Robinsons and voyages to the South Seas so seductive." Derrida: "It is always the question of nostalgia as fundamental tonality of philosophy that has been occupying us from the beginning of this seminar, both in Heidegger and in Robinson" (S10 p. 275). The convergence: Kant's Sehnsucht-for-the-golden-age = Heidegger's Heimweh of Grundbegriffe (1929-30) = Robinson's homesickness on his island. The three converge as the philosophical Grundstimmung.

(3) Kant on perpetual peace and international law. Background context: Kant is "without any doubt the principal, or one of the principal thinkers of the modern institutions of international law" — League of Nations, UN, Security Council are Kantian institutions. The Iraq War's 2003 crisis is "the placing in crisis of a certain Kantian spirit, if not a Kantian doctrine." (derrida-2002-bete-souverain-ii S10 p. 272.)

(4) Kantian Als-ob vs. Heideggerian Als-Struktur — the structural homology. This is BS-II's deepest Kant-move: the als ob of the regulative idea (Kantian) and the als-Struktur (Heideggerian) converge as the form of human (vs. animal) rational relation to a world. Both work by Walten of the als. Both exclude the animal from "world" by reserving the als / als ob to the human. The convergence shows a deeper humanist structure that Derrida's BS-II reads cross-author. See claims#walten-exceeds-onto-theological-sovereignty (live) for the broader stakes.

Stakes for the Kant entity page: BS-II adds a fourth register beyond Gardner (third-Critique pivot), Schelling (Beweisgrund anticipation), and Hegel-WdL (transcendental-apperception preserved-and-misrecognized): the als ob and the philosophical-anthropological-cum-Schmittian-avant-la-lettre Kant. The Iraq War as 2003 placing-in-crisis of Kantian international-law institutions. The convergence of Kant + Heidegger + Robinson under one "nostalgia as Grundstimmung" framework.

Connections

  • is criticized by maurice-merleau-ponty — Kant misexecutes the transcendental turn by imposing world-transcending structures
  • but validates pre-objectivity via the Third Critique — Kant's "hidden art of the imagination" commits him to what Merleau-Ponty asserts
  • is surpassed by friedrich-schelling's Real-Idealismus — Schelling converts Kant's "merely subjective" assumptions into a fully realistic metaphysics of nature
  • anticipates Schelling's positive philosophy via the Beweisgrund — the proto-transcendental insight that possibility presupposes actuality is expanded in Schelling's Quelle into the thesis that thought is indebted to being (unvordenklich)
  • bequeaths an unresolved ambiguity to Schelling's Daß/Was distinction — fn. 16 of Gardner's paper: Kant's "absolute position/positing" is poised between strong-metaphysical and weak readings; Schelling's Daß (pure thatness, actus purus) occupies the weak-reading space
  • is radicalized by Merleau-Ponty's chiasm — chiasmic form does for V&I what reflective judgement does for the CPJ, but without Kant's subjective restriction
  • contrasts with edmund-husserl's transcendentalism — Husserl takes up the CPJ "when he speaks of a teleology of consciousness" (PP, p. lxxxi)
  • is read at length by edmund-husserl in the *Crisis* — as the inaugurator of transcendental philosophy "in the general sense" who nonetheless lacks radical grounding: his "merely regressive method" yields "mythical constructions" because it lacks an intuitive method (§§25, 30); he leaves the pregiven life-world an "unexpressed presupposition" (§28); "Hume as understood by Kant is not the real Hume" (§25); and his transcendental-apperception is demoted to a "constructive concept which resists in principle an ultimate clarification" (§57). Husserl's own guiding concept of "the transcendental" (§26) is won by reading Kant teleologically.
  • is engaged in five major sites in Hegel's *Wissenschaft der Logik* — transcendental apperception (GW 12 pp. 17–28), antinomies (GW 21 + GW 11), ontological-proof / 100-Thaler (GW 21 raw 1392), teleology (GW 12 pp. 162–166), arithmetic (GW 12 p. 213). Hegel reads Kant as the deepest insight of post-Wolffian metaphysics misrecognized as subjective-psychological. Added 2026-05-21 via WdL three-volume ingest.
  • is read by derrida-2002-bete-souverain-ii S10 — the als ob of regulative idea + "Conjectures on the Beginnings of Human History" (1786). The Alsobstruktur / als-Struktur structural-isomorphism with Heidegger (see walten); the perfectibility-via-war thesis; the 800-year-old-man / Genesis-flood; Robinson + nostalgia as Grundstimmung.
  • anticipates carl-schmitt — the "war as indispensable means" thesis from "Conjectures on the Beginnings of Human History" is a Schmittian thesis avant la lettre.
  • engages robinson-crusoe — Robinson and South Sea voyages as figures of empty nostalgia for the golden age; the philosophical Sehnsucht-as-Grundstimmung.

Open Questions

  • Does Gardner's transcendental reading of PP do justice to the role of embodiment, which seems to exceed any transcendental framework?
  • What would a fuller account of Merleau-Ponty's engagement with the Opus postumum look like (Gardner notes comparison with flesh as "ether" — V&I pp. 140, 147)?

Sources

  • husserl-1954-crisis — Husserl's reading of Kant (added 2026-06-07): §§25–27 (Kant's transcendental philosophy; the misread Hume; the task of a critical position); §26 (Husserl's own guiding concept of "the transcendental"); §§28–32 (Kant's unexpressed presupposition of the life-world; the "mythical constructions" from the lack of an intuitive method; the antagonism of "life of the plane" vs "life of depth"); §57 (transcendental apperception as "constructive concept").
  • gardner-2016-kant-third-critique-schelling — the primary source for Kant's role in Merleau-Ponty's philosophy; §§1-2 on PP's transcendentalism, §3 on the passage to Schelling via the CPJ
  • gardner-2018-thoughts-indebtedness-to-being — §1: the pre-Critical Beweisgrund as containing a proto-transcendental insight; the arc from Beweisgrund to Schelling's Quelle