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Cinzia Ferrini

(University of Trieste)

Illusions of Imagination and Adventures of Reason in Kant’s first Critique*

It has been observed how Kant’s “stunningly seminal and almost paradoxical notion” of

Einbildungskraft associates contrasting properties, and, Kant’s use of a restricted terminology

notwithstanding, that the term is polysemic and is employed in a number of sometimes elusive or

apparently contradictory, even aporetic ways1. Here I attempt to trace a route through these

questions and puzzles noticed by scholars, by highlighting the role played by ‘Einbildungskraft’ in

the first Critique, and especially the limits of its power in relation to the understanding’s application

to experience and to reason’s interests and ends. In particular, I shall examine Kant’s imagination

within the context of his theory of transcendental illusion by retracing the source and origin of his

metaphors. I shall contend that Kant’s use of maritime similies in the first Critique is not intended

to use imagery as a conceptual proxy in the absence of clear conceptual rules of judgment. I argue

that by drawing his metaphors neither from Francis Bacon, nor from his own broad geographical

interests, but from specific contemporaneous scientific maritime expeditions, Kant drew an

analogy: 1) between what he took as seasoned judgment and rigorous empirical control of the

working scientists and explorers in securing knowledge and credible witnesses to otherwise

doubtful appearances, removing all possibility of deception in disorienting situations of physical

and climate difficulties; and 2) the self-discipline of reason, training the mind to govern potentiallly

misleading reifications of our imagination, thus helping reason to secure its rightful metaphysical

claims while dismissing all its groundless pretensions. In this way I show that imagination has both

theoretical, epistemological and pragmatic, factual roles in advancing our knowledge: in the

schematism of the understanding and in the schematism of ideas, it is as much part of empirical

sciences as of metaphysical systematizing and orienteering. To appreciate these points requires first

setting out their proper conceptual framework. The central issue concerns the roles of imagination,

as a psychological faculty, in structuring experience and in both determining and reflective

judgments according to Kant. Accordingly, I first consider imagination as function of sensibility,

and then examine its role in serving the understanding, before analysing its involuntary play which

generates fantasy, daydreams and illusion, and which poses the problem of controling our power of

* Manfred Baum kindly hosted me during my first Humboldt Fellowship at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal in 1994-95. I am grateful to the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung for having supported my research stay also in the Philosophisches Seminar of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen in May 2013, hosted by Bernd Ludwig, which enabled me to complete my research on this paper, dedicated to Manfred Baum. I also wish to thank George di Giovanni, Bernd Ludwig and Ken Westphal for their thoughtful comments and stylistic advice. 1 See Ferrarin 2009. Banham 2005, 161-2 discusses Caygill’s claim that the doctrine of schematism conceals an aporia (cf. Caygill 1989, 5).

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imagination. Understanding this problem requires considering the interplay between imagination

and ideas of reason, highlighting both the illusory and the regulative sides of their relationship.

With these roles in view, we can appreciate the immanent role played by imagination in any

“adventure” of reason.

1- Imagination as active function of sensibility

In the Third Section of the Deduction of the pure concepts of understanding (1781), the power of

imagination is introduced as an ingredient of perception itself, as an active, fundamental faculty of

the human soul (KdrV, A124), which is able to unify the manifold of different perceptions

contained in each appearance into a Bild, an image2. Its empirical and synthetic use in recognition,

reproduction, association and apprehension of the manifold of sensory appearances is necessary,

otherwise different perceptions would remain dispersed and separate in the mind, for Kant holds

that the combination of different impressions is not given in the senses (KdrV, A120). In itself,

however, this synthesis, though always sensible (for it combines the manifold only as it appears in

intuition), is exercised a priori: that is, by means of “pure imagination” we bring into combination

“the manifold of intuition on the one side and the condition of the necessary unity of apperception

on the other” (KdrV, A124).

In the second edition (1787) Kant specifies that the power of imagination (Einbildungskraft) is the

capacity (Vermögen) to represent an object even without its presence in intuition (KdrV, B151)3.

Likewise, in the 1798 Anthropology, the Einbildungskraft (facultas imaginandi) is defined as “a

capacity (Vermögen) of intuition even without the presence of the object” (Anth., §28:167), as the

second of the two components of “sensibility (Sinnlichkeit) in the cognitive faculty”, the first of

which is our outer and inner sense-intuition in the presence of either a physical or a mental object.

Regarding intuitive representions, to clarify the apparent paradox of an intuition without anything

present to intuit, Kant warns the reader that even when the power of imagination is taken in its

inventive or productive (dichtend/productiv) meaning, it must not be confused with a properly

“creative” power, for it is not capable (nicht vermögend) of producing a sensory representation “that

was not given earlier to our faculty of sense” (Anth. §28: 167-8, see also §32: 178). Kant stresses

2 Compare with Parow’s transcription of Kant’s lectures on anthropology about the role of the “formative faculty”, AA XXV:269.3-9: “For every sensibility there is at the same time an act of direct image formation, in which we gather the images of the impressions that occur to our senses and represent them to ourselves at once” (cf. Wunsch 2011, 77). 3 Ferrarin neatly summarizes the host of complex issues involved in Kant’s theory of imagination: “The very definition of imagination as the capacity to represent an object in intuition even in its absence – a definition which Kant inherits directly from Baumgarten and Wolff – implies through the notion of a vicarious intuition a systematic unity of several, but all equally important, functions and aspects: self-affection, a priori synthesis, the relation between presence and absence, temporal determination, the mutual reference and, indeed, conflict of intuition and meaning, and the negation of the given or its transformation into an object of spontaneous activity or production, all of which in turn require the ability to revoke the currently given” (Ferrarin 2008, 99).

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that, instead, one can always show that the “material” (Stoff) comes from the senses (Anth. § 28:

168). The point returns in the first Critique, together with the analogy between imagined intuitions

and real perceptions which can make it impossible to distinguish between them, when Kant states

that every intuitive representation of outer things does not necessarily include at the same time their

existence, “for that may well be the mere effect of the imagination” through the reproduction of

previous outer perceptions (KdrV, B278), in dreams as well as in (hallucinatory) madness4.

The minimal definition of Einbildungskraft as an active function of sensibility (KdrV, A121; see

also Anth. §31: 174), has puzzled interpreters5, who have regarded this aspect as problematic,

because “sensibility for Kant is passive (not active) and prediscursive”, and because “of Kant’s anti-

Leibnizian thesis and the opposition of passivity and activity” (Ferrarin, 2009: 8)6. However,

instead of speaking of the “passivity” of Sinnlichkeit it would be more appropriate to refere to the

passive element in sensibility, looking at what is implied in the more complex natural disposition of

receptivity in view of our capacity for representations.7 In § 7 of the Anthropology Kant considers

the mind’s (Gemüt) activity and passivity in relation to the state (Zustand) of its representations,

claiming that the mind8 can be either active, indicating a facultas (capacity in the sense of

4 On the distinction between hallucinations and illusions in Kant’s Anthropology see Stephenson 2011. 5 This is the starting point of Wunsch 2011 (67-8). He remarks how it can seem “paradoxical” to speak of the ‘activity of sensibility’ in Kant. However, Wunsch stresses that to regard sensibility (sensualitas) as passive is to describe only one aspect of it: the “origin” of sensible representation, and that this aspect is to be distinguished from that of their “content”, which is not due to our receptivity alone, but also to the “acts” of coordinating the sensible. Wunsch follows the development of this conception from the 1770 inaugural Dissertation to the lectures on the anthropology showing how Kant attributes these acts to the so-called “formative faculty” (conceived as part of sensibility). In this way Kant unifies Baumgarten’s ‘lower cognitive faculty’ under the aspect of the formation of sensible representations, though against the background of a theory of representations which does no longer classify them as obscure, confused or distinct. Looking at their “origin”, Kant “is led to a theory that assumes a pure sensibility and laws founded on this pure sensibility” (75). “The concept of the imagination supplants that of the formative faculty” only in the late 1770s as the foundation of Kant’s conception of an active sensibility. In short, Wunsch claims that, historically, Kant’s formative faculty is the precursor to the later conception of productive and reproductive imagination. The path through Baumgarten to Kant’s anthropological and psychological version of the Einbildungskraft up to the first and third Critique had been explored by Schmidt 1924/5. For a detailed account of the empirical synthesis of imagination, productive and reproductive, see Natterer 2003, 171-180. 6 In the Anthropology, Kant regards as a great error of the Leibniz-Wolff school to ascribe to sensibility merely the indistinctness of representations and by contrast to posit intellectuality in the distincteness of representations to the intellect, “whereas in fact sensibility is something very positive and an indispensable addition to the intellectual representation (Verstandvorstellung), in order to bring forth a cognition” (Anth. §7: 141). Wunsch 2011, 68 remarks that in Kant’s view such “logical classifications absolutely fail to capture the difference between sensible and intellectual objects, which depends instead on the difference in origin between the various representations”. 7 It is worth noting that when Kant considers the domain of sensibility in the faculty of cognition, speaking of how a cognition may relate to objects, he adopts his distinctive idealistic approach. According to Kant’s approach, rather than inferring from the estabilished existence of human cognitions a priori (for instance those of geometry, as did Plato) to an intellectual capacity of intuition, he affirms that the senses (Sinne), too, might intuit a priori (Prol., 375-6). In any human cognitive subject, sensations (Empfindungen) are ordered in time and placed in space; because these coordinated relations are not themselves sensed, this is only possible because the form of these appearances “must lie ready in my mind a priori”. For the historical development of this position see Wunsch 2011, 76-7; in particular see his references to Refl. 680 (1769/70), AA XV:302; Refl. 650 (1769/70), AA XV:287; Refl. 287 (1773/5?), AA XV:107f. 8 The German Gemüth renders both animus and mens. See Anth. §74: 252 for Kant’s use of Gemüth as animus. See also Kant’s exchange with Sömmering in AA XII: 32, Anm.1: “By Gemüth one means only the capacity (animus) of combining given representations and effecting the unity of empirical apperception, not yet the substance (anima)

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capability) or passive, consisting in receptivitas (Empfänglichkeit), and that any cognition

(Erkenntnis) in itself contains both joined together. Moreover, “representations in regards to which

the mind relates passively, and by means of which the subject is also affected […] belong to the

sensible (zum sinnlichen)” (Anth. §7: 140). As Matthias Wunsch puts it, “The anthropology

prepares the way for Kant’s renowned thesis from the Critique of Pure Reason that ‘imagination is

a necessary ingredient of perception itself’ by ascribing the active moment of formation to the

Abbildungsvermögen, the faculty of direct image formation. This faculty ‘is active’, since it ‘goes

through the acts of making images from impressions’; its product, the ‘direct image’ is a sensible

representation put together into an intuitive whole from impressions” (Wunsch 2011, 77)9.

The receptivity of sensations refers to the subject’s selective ways of being “affected” by objects

(KdrV, A19/B33); therefore it is consistent and in agreement with both empirical intuitions of

sensed objects - sensation is the effect (a posteriori) of an object on the capacity for representation

insofar as we are affected by it - and the a priori mental forms of the appearances, which allow us

to intuit the manifold of appearances as occupying different positions in space and time (KdrV,

A20/B34) 10 . In addition, right at the outset of the Transcendental Aesthetic, sensibility

(Sinnlichkeit) is defined as the natural disposition (Fähigkeit: in the sense of a capacitas to be

modified) to acquire representations through our way of being affected by objects (KdrV,

A19/B33). Put otherwise, sensibility is a subject’s (active) capacity of representation, in so far as

the subject is receptive, responsive rather than spontaneous. Against any philosophical approach

that calls the representation of a sensed color the ‘idea’ of it, as Locke did11, Kant clarifies the

different degrees of passivity and activity involved in each species of representations and in the

distinction between perceptions, sensations and intuitions immediately related to the object12.

All these activities carried out by intuiting and acquiring representations, that is, by sensibility in according to its nature as entirely distinct from matter, from which is abstracted here”(CT revised). For Gemüth as mens cf. Ch. Wolff, Widerlegung der Sittenlehre Baruch von Sinoza (1744) and A.G. Baumgarten, Ethica Philosophica (1763): see Aso 1989, 353. 9 See Wunsch’s reference to passages from Kant’s lectures on anthropology transcribed by Parow (AA XXV:269.3-6 and 303.26). 10 Cf. Stephenson 2011, 3-4. 11 See Locke (1690): II.I.3, 105: “First, Our Senses, conversant about particular sensible Objects, do convey into the Mind, several distinct Perceptions of things, according to those various ways, wherein those Objects do affect them: And thus we come by those Ideas, we have of Yellow, White […]”. 12 He orders their progression starting with the genus of “representation” (Vorstellung/repraesentatio), then placing under this genus the “representation with consciousness” or “perception”: indeed for Kant perception is nothing but the empirical consciousness of an appearance, made possible by the reproductive imagination’s synthesis of the apprehension, which compose the manifold in an empirical intuition (KdrV, B160). Anglophone readers should take care not to confuse Kantian perception with Kantian apperception: perceptions cause a series of states of consciousness and lack of any synthetic principle of unity. Perception divides into a perception that is sensation (Empfindung), because it is related to the passivity of the subject as a modification of its state, and an objective perception, related to the spontaneity of the subject, that is cognition (Erkenntnis). The diaresis continues on the side of cognition, which is either an immediate and singular intuition, or a mediated and universal concept (Begriff or conceptus), and eventually leads to the definition of an idea of reason from notions which have their origin solely in the understanding (aus Notionen), thus transcending experience (KdrV, B376-7).

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the faculty of cognition, bear upon the meaning of the power of imagination, in two basic regards.

First, Kant defines the power of imagination as a faculty of intuition and affirms that pure intuitions

of space and time belong to the productive faculty of imagination. Indeed space as “form” of

intuition merely gives and orders the manifold, but when space is represented as object, as in

geometry, it contains more than a “form” of intuition, it involves collecting the manifold in accord

with the “form” of sensibility in an “intuitive unitary representation”, thus presupposing the

imagination’s synthesis (KdrV, B160 Anm.).13 Second, he states that to associate perceptions and to

produce images of objects requires a function of the synthesis of the impressions which is more than

their mere receptivity (KdrV, A120) and belongs to reproductive imagination14. Both points clearly

indicate that the power of imagination provides informed and integrated sensuous material for the

application of the understanding, thus providing content for our cognition, that is, for a priori

concepts which, though by definition not containing anything empirical, for they precede

experience, must nevertheless “be strictly a priori conditions for a possible experience”15. In

cognition and from its standpoint, concepts cannot be logical forms which a priori lack the

possibility of being connected to the field of the objects that can be given to us (KdrV, A 95).

Conversely, “intuition by no means requires the function of thinking” (KdrV, A 91).

2- Imagination and Understanding

In the first Critique (as well as in the Anthropology) Kant distinguishes between productive

(spontaneous) and reproductive (merely recollective) imagination. The latter subjectively rules, on

empirical grounds, the distinctive reproduction of representations by selecting the way in which

they combine together. Reproductive imagination typically functions as the active faculty of the

synthesis of the various perceptions contained in every phenomenon or appearance which brings the

manifold of intuition into an image, without which we would have merely unruly heaps of

representations (KdrV, A121). In a footnote to the A edition, Kant remarks that imagination is a

necessary ingredient of perception itself, stressing the novelty of his approach in contrast to the

standard psychological view, according to which our senses put impressions together to produce

images of objects (KdrV, A120). Likewise, in the Anthropology, the facultas imaginandi is said to

13 See also Anth. §28: 167, where Kant writes that pure intuitions of space and time belong to the productive imagination (facultas imaginandi: Einbildungskraft) as the faculty of the original exhibition of the object which thus precedes experience, whereas all other intuitions presuppose empirical intuition. 14 On the distinction between productive and reproductive imagination, and how it emerges in the historical development of Kant’s thought (at first in the surviving transcripts from his anthropology lectures in 1781/2), see Wunsch 2011, 86-8. 15 See Longuenesse 1998, 206-8 on how imagination is “appropriated” by what she calls “the effort toward judgment of the understanding”, conditioning all representation of objects.

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be “reproductive” when it functons as a faculty of “the derivative presentation of the object

(exhibitio derivativa), which brings back to the mind an empirical intuition that it had previously”

(Anth. §28: 167). Accordingly, in the A edition of the first Critique, Kant underlines how mere

receptivity fails to account for the formation of a unitary image of appearances (association of

perceptions and production of images of objects), and how only the imagination is responsible for

synthesis, and thus can account for appearances as data for a possible experience, for their unified

apprehension in an empirical consciousness16. The understanding is nothing but the unity of

apperception in relation to the synthesis of the imagination; the pure understanding is the unity of

apperception in relation to the transcendental synthesis of imagination; and, the categories are

nothing but pure a priori cognitions that contain the necessary unity of the pure synthesis of the

imagination in regard to all possible appearances (KdrV, A119). In sum, the synthesis of

imagination directly grounds the necessary relation between all the objects of sense intuition and

the understanding.

As stated in the A edition, the understanding contains categories, pure a priori intellectual concepts,

which in turn contain the necessary unity of the pure transcendental synthesis of the imagination in

regard to all possible appearances. Though there are problems with this line of argument (Guyer

2010:132 ff.) in the B Transcendendal Deduction Kant aims to prove that the empirical synthesis of

apprehension must necessarily agree with the transcendental, intellectual synthesis of apperception,

insofar as both empirical and transcendental synthesis are grounded in one and the same mental

processing: the spontaneity of thought (KdrV, B162)17. Kant uses the example of drawing the figure

of a house. The house stands before me as a manifold given empirically in space. My sensible

intuition becomes perception through reproductive imagination which selects the way in which the

representations combine together, bringing the manifold into an image which I can ouline (KdrV,

B162). This is the case of an image that I can exhibit in concreto (derivativa). At the basis of the 16 Indeed, if I were not conscious of these representations, they would not exist for me. All empirical consciousness, however, in order to constitute a collective unity of states of consciousness, must have a necessary relation to an act of the understanding by the determining subject, that is, to the intellectual consciousness of myself. For Kant, the simple, yet integrating I is the first and synthetic principle of our thinking in general, whereas sensibility does not think or judge, and therefore also does not deceive (see Anth. §11: 146). Kant designates the representation ‘I’ as ‘transcendental consciousness’ or ‘original apperception’ in so far as it precedes all particular experience. 17 Ferrarin remarks that in the A edition imagination “is a separate faculty mediating between understanding and sensibility”, whereas in the B Transcendendal Deduction imagination “hardly seems to play an independent role at all and is subordinated to the activity of the understanding. Yet, the chapter on schematism, whose function is to provide the account of productive imagination’s mediating role between understanding is left entirely unaltered in the second edition” (Ferrarin 2009, 7). However, Westphal (2004, 88-99, 102-106) argues that the B deduction involves three-fold perceptual synthesis by transcendental imagination. According to Düsing 1991, 300 in B imagination is no longer an autonomous Erkenntnisvermögen, a third source of knowing together with sense intuition and understanding, rather it (unconsciously) grounds the interdependence of their effects in the self-conscious knowing subject: “[Kants] neue Theorie zeigt zugleich, wie sinnliche Anschauung und Verstand nicht je autark und unabhängig voneinander wirken, sondern nur in Selbstaffektion jeweils zu der Ausübung gelangen, die Erkenntnis ermöglicht; und sie zeigt in subjektivitätstheoretischer Hinsicht, daß das Mannigfaltige des inneren Sinns nur durch Selbstaffektion tematischer Inhalt des Selbstbewußtseins werden kann und sonst gänzlich unbewußt bliebe”.

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synthesis of apprehension accompanied by the “I”, however, there is the structure of the house, that

is, a form, or the empirical general concept of the house, and at the basis of our sensible intuition of

the manifold as the different elements of a house, there must be a rule to determine our sensible

intuition in accord with that empirical concept18. This is a rule of the synthesis of the imagination

with regard to pure, not empirical, shapes in space, which is not restricted to any image that

experience presents to me (KdrV, A141/B180). Here our figurative power of imagination is

productive, not reproductive; it is trascendental, not empirical (exhibitio originaria)19. The power of

imagination no longer produces images for individual intuition through the empirical synthesis of

apprehension, but instead produces schemas for certain general concepts of the understanding

which are not restricted to any single empirical or sensible shape (to specify, e.g., the shape-in-

general of a four-footed animal for the empirical concept of a dog, and the same holds for the pure

sensible concept of a triangle)20. On the one hand no single image of any individual dog can ever

“reach” the empirical concept of a dog (KdrV, A140-1/B179-80), in so far as empirical concepts

have their origin in a pure image of sensibility, in the mere form of the appearances, on the other

hand the general procedure of imagination makes it possible to exemplify the concept of “dog” by

an individual dog (and the same holds for the concept of triangle, which can be represented by a

right-angled), though imagination cannot bring any pure concept of the understanding into any

image. Indeed Kant distinguishes between the schema of sensible and empirical concepts and the

schema of pure concepts of the understanding (e.g. cause or substance). The former is a product, as

it were “a monogram of pure a priori imagination”, it is the condition of possibility of the images

and what alone connects the images (which in themselves are never fully congruent to the

corresponding concept) with the concept. The latter is introduced “by contrast” (dagegen) as a

transcendental product of the imagination “which concerns the determination of the inner sense in

general, in accordance with condition of its form (time) in regard to all representations, insofar as

these are to be connected together a priori in one concept in accord with the unity of apperception”

(KdrV, A142/B181). Later, in §59 of the third Critique Kant will call “examples” (Beispiele) the

intuitions connected to the empirical concepts to demonstrate their objective reality, whereas the

18 According to Longuenesse, this example does not illustrate a pure figurative synthesis, but a “synthesis of apprehension, by means of which an empirical given is taken up into figurative synthesis” or synthesis speciosa (Longuenesse 1998, 229; cf. also 226 ff.). 19 At the transcendental level only productive imagination can play a role and explain the possibility of an a priori human cognition of experience (KdrV, B152) because, as determining and not merely reproducing and associating representations, it can determine the form of sense a priori, in accord with the categories of the pure understanding. The unity of the intellectual synthesis of imagination thus depends upon the understanding, while the manifoldness of its apprehension depends upon sensibility (KdrV, B164). Ken Westphal pointed out to me that Kant may be mistaken to surrender the reproductive and associative activities of imagination to any ‘merely empirical’ level, which becomes apparent within his account of the transcendental affinity of the sensory manifold, and by strictly internal critique of Hume’s attempted empiricist account of general or abstract ideas; see Westphal 2013. 20 See on the point the detailed analysis of Banham 2005 in the chapter “Schematism and Imagination”, 154-162.

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intuitions required by the pure concepts of the understanding for their reality are called “schemata”

(Schemate). No wonder that by comparing the First to the Third Critique one interpreter has spoken

of some “tensions”21 in Kant’s thought. However, it is perhaps possible to overcome this apparent

difficulty. Note that in KdrV, B151 Kant had distinguished between synthesis intellectualis (a

merely intellectual combination) and speciosa (figurative), calling the latter “the transcendental

synthesis of the imagination”; as rooted in our capacity for representation (sensibility) and as the

faculty for representing objects even without their presence in intuition, it can indeed only present

“examples” (Beispiele) and not images of empirical or sensible concepts: as noted above, no image

can ever be adequate to the concepts ‘dog’ or ‘triangle’, though we may describe or represent them.

As Banham puts it: “Kant […] states that in fact the possession of images is dependent on “the

universal procedure of imagination” (KdrV, A140/B180) of describing concepts such that they are

capable of being represented by images” (Banham 2005, 160; his italics)22.

From these quotations we appreciate how the power of imagination serves as the means through

which the understanding at first unifies the manifold of sense intuition and how the understanding

functions as a “rule giver” for the synthesis of imagination (Longuenesse 1998, 63). Some scholars

have taken this as a subordination, others, since Kant writes that the Einbildungskraft is an effect of

the understanding on sensibility, speaks of imagination as an ‘unconscious’ understanding operating

on sensibility23. In my view no subordination is fixed: even in the second edition of the first

Critique, care is taken to assign to the universal procedure of imagination a distinctive place, to

assure its margin of operative autonomy in respect to the understanding, as a different and

multifaced aspect of the same spontaneity of mind.

3 – Imagination; empirical and transcendental illusion

The employment of imagination and the production of images is not limited to its work on behalf of

21 As Ferrarin puts it: “while in the Schematism chapter Kant spoke of schemata of empirical concepts (the dog) – which was already in itself problematic after Kant’s stress on the key point that only categories can be schematized and that schematization goes from pure concepts to intuitions, not vice versa – here (KU §59) he opposes schemata (of pure concepts) to examples (of empirical concepts) as alternative possibilities. Besides, a schema is called a direct presentation or exhibition of the pure concept an exhibition which the First Critique had declared impossible” (Ferrarin 2008, 109). On the free schematism of imagination that in the third Critique (for the reflective faculty of judgment) takes the place of the schematism of the understanding in the first Critique (for the determining judgment), see Nuzzo 2005, 318-326. 22 In general, the synthesis speciosa provides the categories, as a priori intellectual forms, with the possibility of corresponding sensible intuitions and therefore with content and significance within the limits of our possible experience. It “is an effect (Wirkung) of the understanding on sensibility and its first application (Anwendung) […] to objects of the intuition that is possible for us.” See Longuenesse 1998, ch. 8-10, 211-323 on the role of the synthesis speciosa (together with a new development of Kant’s theory of inner sense only briefly sketched in A) for the completion of the transcendental deduction of the categories and especially from the standpoint of the generation of the schemas for the logical forms of quantity and quality in judgments. 23 See Schmidt 1924/5, 26. Schmidt (note 1) quotes Hölder and Vaihiniger.

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the a priori aspects of empirical knowledge, in service to the understanding: engaging its power

both empirically, associating representations and bringing them into images, and transcendentally,

for the “understanding (of perceptions)” (KdrV, A311/B367). Another feature of imagination,

clearly stated in both editions of the first Critique, is that for itself it has no proper guiding principle

of unity, it is a “blind” function of the Gemüth (KdrV, A78/B103). Therefore, when a synthesis

occurs, which draws material from the senses, this operation does not necessarily require that we

think about it: in Kant’s terms, imagination, not as merely reproductive, but as responsible for the

synthesis of sensations, empirical intuitions and sensory images (KdrV, A120-1), without which we

would have no cognition at all, is a function “of which we are seldom even conscious” (der wir uns

[…] selten nur einmal bewusst sind; KdrV, A78/B103). In the Anthropology, against Locke24, Kant

even claimed that we can be indirectly conscious of having a representation even if we are not

directly conscious of it, distinguishing between obscure and clear or even distinct representations,

whether of thought or intuition. In relation to obscure representations, Kant writes that: “the power

of imagination enjoys walking in the dark”, supporting our pleasure or displeasure, either

concealing or embellishing. As Kant puts it: “we often play with obscure representations and have

an interest in casting loved or unloved objects (Gegenständen) in shadows before the power of

imagination” (Anth. §5: 136)25.

Evidently, by stressing that the production of images or schemas is “an art hidden in the depths of

the human soul (Seele)” (KdrV, A141/B180), something we shall hardly ever reveal and lay open to

our inspection, Kant claims that although the synthetic power of imagination is involved

fundamentally in all our basic mental activities, we lack of any clear principle to regulate our own

productions; by imagining we cannot see how to direct and hold our often strategic and

manipulative operations within the limits of our experience. As hidden within our depths,

imagination is unable to set its own limits, operating as it does at the shifting border between reality

and semblance, experience and appearance, consciousness and unawareness. Even in the empirical

use of otherwhise correct rules of the understanding, where at least we have a touchstone for the

validation of appearances, the faculty of judgment can be misled through the “influence” (Einflus)

of the Einbildung. Kant’s acknowledgment of the misleading influence of imagination on judgment 24 See the long discussion in Locke (1690): II.I.9-19, 108-116. See in particular II.I.9, 108: “To ask, at what time a Man has first any Ideas [scil: representations or Vorstellungen in Kant’s account], is to ask, when he begins to perceive; having Ideas, and Perceptions being the same thing”; II.I.19, 115: “To suppose the Soul to think, and the Man not to perceive it, is […] to make two Persons in one Man. Can the Soul think and not the Man? Or a Man think, and not be conscious of it? […] Consciousness is the perception of what passes in a Man’s own mind”. Cf. also Descartes (1644): I.IX, 5: “Cogitationis nomine, intelligo illa omnia, quae nobis consciis in nobis siunt, quatenùs eorum in nobis conscientia est”. 25 See on the point Ferrarin’s open question: “If apprehension is the perception or conscious representation of a given appearance, of what I am not conscious when Kant says that we are only rarely aware of imagination? If imagination seems clearly involuntary in Kant’s understanding, to what degree can we say that it is operative non-thematically, tacitly or unbeknownst to us?” (Ferrarin 2009, 9).

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is worthy of note. This is the case of empirical semblances, that is, perceptual errors such as optical

illusions (KdrV, A295/B352). In §11 of the Anthropology Kant makes the point that the senses do

not deceive. Rather, the human being often mistakes what is subjective in his manner of

representing for something objective. Classical examples are the square tower that at distance seems

to be round, or “the sea, whose distant part strikes his eyes through higher light rays, seems to be

higher than the shore”. In either event one takes semblance for experience, “thereby falling into

error, but it is an error of the understanding, not of the senses” (Anth. §11: 146). For Kant truth and

semblance, though are not in the intuited objects but in the judgment about them, must involve the

congruence between subjective and objective modes of representations, that is, the co-operation of

sensibility and understanding, which includes imagination.26 The point is made explicit in the

Prolegomena: The difference between truth and dream, however, is not decided through the quality (Beschaffenheit) of the representations that are referred to objects, for they are the same in both, but through their connection according to the rules that determine the combination of representations in the concept of an object, and how far they can or cannot stand together in one experience. And then it is not the fault of the appearances at all, if our cognition takes semblance (Schein) for truth, i.e., if intuition, through which an object is given to us, is taken for the concept of the object, or even for its existence, which only the understanding can think. [...] Since, however, if the understanding has not taken good care to prevent this subjective mode of representation from being taken for objective, a false judgment can easily arise […] but the semblance (Schein) is not ascribed to the senses, but to the understanding, whose lot alone it is to render an objective judgment from the appearance (Prol. §13:290-1)27.

Sinnenschein (species, apparentia), i.e. not optical illusions, but phenomena of atmospheric

optics wich invert and displace real images (like the mirage ‘fata morgana’ on the Messina

channel cited by Kant in his lectures on geography) can serve only to “excuse” the understanding

(Anth. §11, 7:146)28.

The same motive to take the subjective for the objective in a context of empirical semblances and

false judgments returns in the first Critique in respect to that sort of unavoidable illusion (Illusion)

that even after we uncover all its optical peculiarities will not cease to propel our vision into 26 Stephenson 2011, 14-15 distinguishes between “full blown judgment”, which constitutively involves only concepts, and the judgemental counterpart to experience which constitutively involves concepts and intuitions. Experience and its judgmental counterpart justify or provide rational grounds for “full blown” judgments. Stephenson’s account aims to make room for cases in which the subject is aware that his/her experience is non-veridical, such as the astronomer who cannot prevent the rising moon from appearing larger to him but is not deceived by this Blendwerk (B354). 27 With this acknowledgment of the impossibility to distinguish between dreams and truth on the basis of the characteristics of the representations, Kant seems to share Tiedemann’s 1778 objection to Tetens’s 1777 assessment (following Hobbes, Leviathan, Ch. 2) of the difference in strenght and vivacity between intuitive representations due to actual outer perceptions and due to imaginative reproduction of previous outer perceptions, despite their thorough similarity. Compare Tetens 1777, I, 157: “Die wiedererweckten Einbildungen sind den Empfindungsvorstellungen in allem ähnlich, und nur Lebhaftigkeit und Stärke von ihnen unterschieden”; with Tiedemann 1778, 3: “sie [the imagined sensations] oft auch so lebhaft ist als die wirkliche. Träume, hitzige Fieber und manche andere Verfälle beweisen es”. Note that, according to Kant, “An involuntary play of one’s images in sleep (a state of health) is called dreaming” (Anth. §28: 167). 28 In this passage Kant contrasts Rechtfertigung to Entschuldigung.

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momentary bewilderment (in augenblickliche Verirrungen) that always need to be removed; indeed,

we cannot avoid that “the sea appears higher in the middle than at the shores, since we see the

former through higher rays of light than the latter” (KdrV A297/B354). The same example used in

the Anthropology here serves to draw an analogy between the Blendwerk of an observer and the

transcendental illusion of our reason, which does not cease though uncovered by transcendental

criticism. “The cause of this is that in our reason (considered subjectively as a human faculty of

cognition) there lie fundamental rules and maxims for its use, which look entirely like (gänzlich das

Ansehen […] haben) objective principles” (KdrV, A297/B353). Kant clearly draws an analogy

between the putative objects misleading reason, that is, transcendental illusion, and the empirical

illusions disorienting understanding, where the faculty of judgment is misled through the influence

of imagination.29 In the Prolegomena ‘free flights’ of imagination, Schwärmerei, is taken as a

venial sin: “the imagination may perhaps be excused […] if it does not cautiously hold itself inside

the limits of experience” (Prol. § 35: 317), for “it will always be easier to moderate its boldness

than to remedy its languour.” By contrast, if what is supposed to think and not to imagine, that is,

the understanding, daydreams (schwärmt), this cannot be “justified”. Kant details the way in which

inventions, which experience could neither confirm nor confute, may take the place of the objective

content of a priori concepts applied in experience. For present purposes, three points in this passage

are important. First, Kant states that the understanding alone must set bounds, where needed, to the

Schwärmerei of the imagination, which lacks any inherent capacity for self-reflection, self-

consciousness or self-criticism30. Second, the a priori concepts of the understanding do not contain

anything empirical; the understanding takes its logical forms and principles freely, unconstrained,

from within itself, whereas true empirical cognition requires that they must be conditions for a

possible experience, applied in experience, thus requiring the understanding’s restriction to the

conditions at issue. The understanding falls into the illusions of dogmatism whenever it removes

these constraints and “what is to hinder it from doing so,” asks Kant, given its inherent autonomy

and spontaneity? Therefore, third, scientific and critical self-knowledge of reason alone must set the

limits for the understanding, to distinguish the sphere of the legitimate use of the a priori elementary

cognitions from that of their empty and fruitless use, as is the case with dogmatic metaphysics

29 Rohlf 2010, 193-4 acknowledges the analogy, but then prefers to focus on the differences between the two kinds of illusion, remarking that empirical illusion concerns objects of experience (such as the sea or the moon) while transcendental illusion concerns objects that transcend experience (such as the soul); moreover, Rohlf stresses that in transcendental illusion we do not actually know whether there are objects corresponding to our idea of the soul (the world-whole or God). In this way, the misleading and unnoticed influence of imagination on judgment (which can play both at the empirical and transcendental level), remains unexplained. Focusing on the reason why the subjective principles of reason “look like” objective principles, I shall contend that imagination is responsible for forging the deceptive ‘aspect’ (Ansehen) of the metaphysical object, serving the interests of reason. 30 On the disciplining power of reason and on the relation between discipline through critique and metaphysics see Tonelli 1994: §§39-40: 98-100 and §53: 116-118.

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(Prol. § 35: 317).

4 – Imagination and Ideas of Reason: the illusory side

As is well known, Kant introduces pure reason as the highest unity of thinking and the supreme

faculty of cognition, concerned with syllogistic totality in the synthesis of conditions for any

conditioned knowledge given through the work of the understanding, since it does not deal with

intuitions but with concepts and judgments. On one hand, the unity of the understanding, which is

the unity of a possible experience, is independent from the unity of reason. Kant asserts “That

everything which happens must have a cause is not a principle cognized and prescribed through

reason at all. It makes the unity of experience possible and borrows nothing from reason, which

could not have imposed any such synthetic unity from mere concepts without this reference to

possible experience” (KdrV, A307/B363-4). It is clear that for Kant ‘some’ knowledge of the world

we can experience is obtained and secured without the intervention of reason, and that we do have

‘some’ empirical knowledge of our world prior to the introduction of the idea of systematic unity

and its tasks.31 On the other hand, however, without reason, the unity of the understanding will be

not completed. The issue at stake is the difference between a contingent aggregate of tokens of

empirical knowledge and a system interconnected according to necessary laws (KdrV, A645/B673).

Cognitions of the understanding constitute a rhapsody if taken independently of pure reason’s

demand for complete explanations, based on a logical maxim (to find the unconditioned for the

conditioned cognitions), which becomes a principle when we assume that if the conditioned is

given, the unconditioned is also given (KdrV, A307-8/B364)32. Therefore, reason’s demand does

not seem “in contrast”, as Geiger holds, with the assertion that some empirical knowledge exist

independently of the regulative idea of a systematic whole of knowledge, for the empirical use of

the understanding can occur only in a distributive unity of experience, whereas, at the same time, its

unity should properly hold of all and any objects given to our senses. Kant’s claim that reason

“completes” the unity of the understanding, amounts to saying that the idea of a systematic whole of

empirical concepts is a necessary condition of the collective unity of empirical experience and

knowledge. Since this rational requirement ‘comprehends’ the entire domain of the application of

31 This is what Geiger 2003, 278-9 calls the “minimal or heuristic interpretation” of the ‘Appendix to the transcendental dialectic’, asserting that reason sets only an ideal end of intelligibility for the understanding’s empirical knowledge, while not all knowledge is dependent on it. 32 On this basis Grier has shown how Kant justifies the idea of an ens realissimum as a necessary transcendental hypothesis, subjectively necessary, which is at once an unavoidable demand proper of the very nature of reason, an illusion to criticize, and the core of traditional rationalist metaphysics: “The problem is that the “unconditioned” is never actually given, and the assumption that it is instantiates the transcendental illusion that motvates transcendent metaphysics” (Grier 2010, 271).

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the understanding in accord with a priori principles (by determining magnitude and limits), it

integrates the independence of “some” empirical knowledge of the understanding from reason, to

speak singulatim33. Indeed, Kant distinguishes reason (transcendent in respect to all appearances:

KdrV, A308/B365) from the understanding as faculty of bringing intuitions under rules with its

categories, calling reason the faculty of the unity of the rules of understanding under principles

(KdrV, A 302/B 359). These principles are laws that ought to govern also our theoretical research

through ideas, which originate in pure reason and arise in the course of thinking the totality of what

is known as given in experience (see Wood 2005, 76-78) 34.

At the same time, however, Kant defines the rational domain as the seat of transcendental

semblance (Schein; Guyer & Wood trans.: ‘illusion’ KdrV, A 298/B355). Indeed, Kant contends,

what is only a logical prescription to bring the highest possible unity of reason into our conditioned

cognitions of the understanding to approach completeness in them, has been mistaken for a

transcendental principle of reason which postulates that the whole series of conditions is also given

in the object itself and its connections, as it becomes apparent in the transcendental dialectic, the

logic of illusion (see KdrV, A308-9/B365-6). In § 44 of the Prolegomena Kant makes clear that

“the ideas of reason are not, like the categories, helpful to us in some way in using the

understanding with respect to experience, but are completely dispensable with respect to such use”

(Prol. §44: 331). A case in point is the idea of soul as simple being which by definition cannot be

applied in experience. As one interpreter puts it, such idea arises “from attempts to think a series of

categorical syllogisms back to their unconditioned presupposition – namely, the concept of

something that can never be a predicate of anything else but only a subject – and this is the ‘I’ or

self in which all thoughts must inhere, and whose necessity as their subject provides all experience

with its ultimate unity” (Wood 2005: 78-9). Kant writes that “we are unable through any possible

experience to make the concept of a simple being sensorily intelligible, hence intelligible in

concreto; and this concept is therefore completely empty with respect to all hoped-for insight into

the cause of the appearances, and cannot serve as a principle of explanation of that which supplies

inner or outer experience.” (Prol. §44: 331).

According to the standard reading, reason is led to postulate certain objects, e.g. as the soul, by its

own formal demands and by the correlative assumption that the unconditioned is given35. In my

33 According to Geiger 2003, the standard heuristic interpretation of Kant’s discussion in the ‘Appendix’ misses the point of a necessary condition of all empirical knowledge, for it holds that there Kant presents a condition only of scientific or of fully systematic knowledge. 34 Kant claims that only if the manifold of cognition is united under an idea, can our knowledge “support and advance the essential ends of reason, in its theoretical and practical aspects” (KdrV, A832/B860). 35 See Grier’s standard reconstruction of the issue at stake (Grier 2011, 70ff.). She develops her analysis of how Kant make sense of reason’s postulations of the soul, the world, God, in terms of the generations of these three main ideas of

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view, this assessment tells only part of the story, totally overlooking the ‘hidden’ role of

imagination. It leaves unexplained the forging of the pseudo-object. Reason could not “take” the

unconditioned as a given if the unconditioned did not have the aspect (Ansehen) of an object given

in intuition for the application of our categories, and only our rarely conscious imagination, because

it is potentially independent of any empirical constraint, can provide both representations of

pseudo-objects without their presence in intuition, and schemas for connecting pure ideas to the

knowledge of the understanding. When the understanding uncritically follows its internal freedom

and does not hold the power of imagination within the limits of the possible experience, as in the

case of rational psychology, then imagination is also free to forge representations of objects as if

they were intuited which conform and match reason’s transcendent, unconstrained claims to elevate

itself entirely above all learning from experience. I contend that as the synthesis of imagination was

directly grounding the necessary relation between all the objects of sense intuition and the

understanding, in order to obtain significance for our categories, now it indirectly grounds the

necessary (illusory) relation between pseudo-objects and reason, in order to obtain significance for

our cognitive demands of totality and pursuit of happiness. To see how the Einbildungskraft may

function for reason without the control of the understanding, take for instance the First Chapter of

the Second Book of the Transcendental Dialectic on the paralogisms of pure reason, where Kant

deals with examples of falsity and dogmatic semblances which have their ground in the nature of

human reason and involve an unavoidable, although not insoluble, illusion (Illusion: KdrV,

A341/B399). Speaking of the dispute about the doctrine of the soul, about the nature of our thinking

being and its conjunction with the corporeal world, Kant makes the point that any true assertion

about it would properly be grounded on principles and universal concepts of thinking nature in

general, though instead it turns out to be the ill-grounded extension of one single, individual

representation, ‘I am’, beyond the reach of any possible experience (KdrV, A405); this extension

requires imagination, which can extend a representation beyond the limits of experience, insofar as

it is our capacity to represent an object even without its presence in intuition, thus giving an

apparent sensible content to our categories. I claim that in the case of the soul as an intance, the

critique of pure reason, when reason confronts itself, shows that the power of imagination has only

apparently represented the concept of a simple being. The issue at stake in rational psychology is to

cognize the thinking self as noumenon; according to Kant, the impossibility of this attempt rests

upon determining the kind of existence of the “I think”, insofar as existence involves inner sense

and receptivity of intuition: the Critique has shown that inner empirical intuition is always sensible

and cannot make available noumena but only data of appearance (KdrV, B430). Consider the reason by syllogistc inferences from the categorical, hypothetical, disjunctive relations among judgments to the unconditioned.

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crucial passage in B421-2, where Kant clarifies the nature of the “misunderstanding” at the origin

of rational psychology, which is no merely logical fallacy: “The unity of consciousness, which

grounds the categories, is here taken for an intuition of the subject as an object, and the category of

substance is applied to it” (my italics); this cannot take place without imagination, which is the only

capacity we have to invent apparent sensory intuitions. Kant’s statement clearly indicates that we

are mislead because we have forged an object of intuition which appears no different than a real

perception, inducing the misapplication of the categories. To my view, this means that there is a

rationale in reason’s assumption that an unconditioned is given: its correlation with the free

exhibiting and schematizing power of the facultas imaginandi. If we acknowledge the hidden role

played here by the Einbildungskraft we can make more sense of Kant’s theory of rational illusion,

why it is a real ‘semblance’, so naturally misleading and difficult to detect. The Einbildungskraft

can inadvertently serve and support Vernunft this way, as well as the ideas of reason can excite

imagination, because the drive to transcend appearances can both function unconstrained by

experience and is hidden in our depths. Compare what Kant writes about his inquiry into

transcendental dialectic, claiming to develop it “from its sources hidden deep in human reason” (aus

ihren Quellen, die tief in der menschichlen Vernunft verborgen sind) with his account of the

products of imagination noted above: the schematism of our understanding with regard to

appearances and their mere form, that is, the realization of our concepts by means of sensibility, is

eine verborgene Kunst in den Tiefen der menschlichen Seele.

Against the background of the paralogisms of reason, consider an interesting and often neglected

passage of the 1781 edition, in which Kant more explicitly refers to products of imagination which

enter the realm of fictions and give rise to rational psycholgy as a pseudo-doctrine, an “imagined”

(eingebildete) science, through reification and hypostatization: Thus every dispute about the nature of our thinking being and its conjunction with the corporeal world is merely a consequence of the fact that one fills the gaps regarding what one does not know with paralogism of reason, making thoughts into things (Sachen) and hypostatizing them; from this arises an imagined science (eingebildete Wissenschaft), both in regard to affirmative and negative assertions, in that everyone either presumes to know something about objects about which no human being has any concept, or else makes his own representations into objects (seine eigene Vorstellung zu Gegenstanden macht), and thus goes round and round in an eternal circle of ambiguities and contradictions (KdrV, A395). He then presents dogmatic semblances (dogmatischen Blendwerke) correlated to “imagined”

happiness (eingebildete Glückseligkeit), which only a severe criticism can keep under control, by

mapping and delimiting the speculative cognition of reason: Nothing but the sobriety of a strict but just criticism can liberate us from these dogmatic semblances […] and limit all our speculative claims merely to the field of possible experience, not by stale mockery at attempts that have so often failed, or by pious sighing over the limits of our reason, but by means of a complete determination of reason’s boundaries according to secure principles, which with the greatest reliability fastens its nihil ulterius on those Pillars of Hercules that nature has erected, so that the voyage of our reason

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may proceed only as far as the continuous coastline of experiences reaches, a coastline that we cannot leave without venturing out into a shoreless ocean, which, among constantly deceptive prospects, forces us in the end to abandon as hopeless all our troublesome and tedious efforts (KdrV, A395-6). Accordingly only through rigorous criticism can the power of imagination loose its deceptive

speculative effect as the trap into which theoretical reason necessarily falls, “making us think that

we are capable of knowing beyond the limits of possible experience” (Lord 2011: 46). Kant’s

instances of transcendental subreption and deceptive prospects (trüglichen Aussichten) involve

reference to a (mistaken) reified use of the power of imagination to produce representations of

objects beyond real nature, thus being able even to replace empirical references, resting on the

analogy between its inventions and material drawn from senses and real perceptions. Though

omitted in the second edition of 1787, there is no reason to regard this omission as any change in

Kant’s view on the relation between discipline through critique and metaphysics36.

Note that Kant employs a maritime metaphor to visualize his quest for a rigorous criticism to free us

from the captivating illusions of ungrounded metaphysical doctrines and how the ocean lures us on

by deceitful promises and is the proper seat of illusions for the voyagers of reason because it is

shoreless. Here Kant states that without remaining in sight of the coastline, which represents

instruction from experience, our thought remains without any reliable orientation, gets lost and is

forced to renounce its journey, since it is deceived about the right way to go. It is interesting to

note that in the Preface of his 1763 Beweisgrund Kant had already illustrated the venturing

into the “bottomless (bodenlosen) abyss” of metaphysics in terms of navigating a shoreless

dark ocean without lighthouses. In these circumstances, the art of navigation cannot suffice

for providing a reliable orientation, since underwater lies an additional deceiving factor:

unnoticed currents may always confuse the mariner’s course, despite his care.37 Finally, note

that in 1781 Kant does not appeal to the external supreme authority of God’s illumination and 36 The actual change is in the doctrine of the paralogism of the soul. On the difference between the 1781 version (consistent with the 1785 Grundlegung) and the 1787 revision (in light of Pistorious’ criticism), see Ludwig 2012. 37 Kant, AA II: 66. Note that in 1775 Tetens used the same maritime metaphor: in physics, the understanding navigates in sight of the coastline of experience and with a lighthouse and never get lost. By contrast, mataphysics is “eine Reise um die Welt” in a shoreless ocean. Contrary to Kant, however, the mariner can avoid shipwrecking for the tempests of passion and the rocks of prejudices in so far as he is well technically equipped and trained (Tetens 1775: 20-21). A similar metaphor returns in 1777, when Tetens raises the issue about which kind of being is this soul (in a psychological sense) which constitutes our I, as this active being which processes sensations and representations. He asks whether the representations in this soul are characteristics of its substance or merely have their seat in the brain, as that part of our organized body which constitutes the inner vehicle of the soul and the corporeal part of our animated being. He remarks that such questions mark the limit of the consideration (die Betrachtung), for one can ask whether we are still in a region in which experience can guide us, given that in this regard we can only rely on some few observations. Tetens does not use the image of a shoreless and disorienting ocean, but compares the few observations to a few islands scattered in a huge ocean, greatly dispersed from each other, some of which are mapped on the charts of recent philosophers. These dots, however, are no true land, but only “fogbanks; fantasies of our imagination, not observation (Tetens 1777, 151). Compare Teten’s use of the term “fantasy” to Kant’s assessment: “The power of imagination, insofar as it also produces images (Einbildungen) involuntarily, is called fantasy (Phantasie). He who is accustomed to regarding these images as (inner and outer) experiences is a visionary (Phantast)” (Anth. §28: 167).

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providence to help us in a shoreless ocean: the voyage of exploration on the high (boundless) seas

turns out in the end to be a hopeless effort. Moreover, his reference to the Pillars of Hercules, here

invoked as boundaries imposed by blind natural necessity, carries no collective invitation to

transgress them to increase our knowledge.

By contrast, such bold forging ahead was the spirit of Bacon’s 1620 Instauratio Magna, where just

below the ship in the foreground passing through the pillars of Hercules there is the motto: multi

pertransibunt at augebitur scientia (many will pass through and knowledge will be augmented).

Kant does not seem to encourage ignoring the ancient warning nec plus ultra, and go further

beyond.38 As remarked earlier, as the highest faculty of cognition, with its ideas, pure reason

demands completeness (Vollkommenheit) of principles in the use of the understanding in the

connection of experience (Prol. §44: 332). But then, if without the idea of a systematic whole of

empirical concepts we would have neither any coherent and systematic employment of the

understanding, nor a necessary condition of all empirical experience and knowledge, how does

reason’s demand for comprehendere (Begreifen) rather than intelligere (Verstehen) actually

function in the understanding’s scientific empirical knowledge? After having highlighted the

negative, misleading, reifying role of imagination in making its own representations out to be

objects for speculative claims which in fact transgress the limits of possible experience, we cannot

answer this question without clarifying how the productive power of imagination positively serves

the theoretical goals of reason.

5 – Imagination and Ideas of Reason: the regulative side

The link between the doctrine of transcendental illusion and the unifying connection of instances of

knowledge has been carefully examined by Michelle Grier: embedded within Kant’s aim to

undermine the attempt to use pure reason as a source of a priori knowledge about objects and yet

also to establish its necessary subjective functions, she sees the suggestion that what ultimately

‘counts’ as knowledge is what conforms to the interests and goals posited by reason. Within this

frame, the doctrine of illusion is designed to curb the theoretical pretensions of reason, while at the

same securing the functions of reason to give systematic unity and completion to the knowledge

provided by the understanding (Grier 2001, 304-5). Kant identifies a number of ways in which ideas

38 As is well known, Kant added to the frontespiece of the second edition a motto drawn from the Preface of Bacon’s Instauratio Magna. He quotes from Bacon the following lines: “each may well hope from our instauration that it claims nothing infinite, and nothing beyond what is mortal; for in truth it prescribes only the end of infinite errors, and this is a legitimate end”. My conjecture is that in 1787 Kant omitted the 1781 reference to the Pillars of Hercules to avoid any apparent contrast with his anti-Baconian endorsment of the nec plus ultra and his Baconian endorsement to put an end to the cognitive errors of a speculation which ventures beyond the finite.

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of reason properly think the unconditioned and function to guide and regulate our empirical

enquiries. She writes: “The essential point is that reason can be justified in the sense that its

function (even under the guidance of the illusory assumption that the unconditioned is given) can be

shown to play a positive, albeit merely regulative, role in our theoretical activities” (Grier 2011, 70,

italics original). What Grier’s account leaves unexplained is how ideas of reason such as “pure

earth”, “pure air”, do function: how can reason be “justified” if such ideas, which postulate purely

conceptual objects-of-sense39, are guided by the illusory “assumption” that the unconditioned is

given, as Grier simply states? Michael Rohlf asks himself why the ideas of the soul, the world-

whole and God produce transcendental illusion, while the ideas of pure earth, pure water and pure

air do not, suggesting that Kant holds that what makes only the former three transcendental ideas

unavoidably seem objective is that reason only associates these with the categorical, hypothetical,

disjunctive forms of syllogism and thus to the category of relation. Interestingly enough, in

proposing his reading, Rohlf recalls the analogy with optical illusion40; note however, that, as

remarked above, in that context Kant had mentioned the misleading influence of imagination on

judgment and that only an act of judgment applying the concept to some content extends beyond

experience or remains (immanently) within it41.

In the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic Kant speaks of schemata (i.e. products of

imagination) of the ideas of reason to connect the manifold of the understanding’s knowledge, just

as the understanding was connecting the manifold of appearances through concepts by using

products of imaginations such as the schemata of sensibility, bringing appearances under empirical

laws (KdrV, A664/B692). Kant proposes a true analogue42 of a schema of sensibility, that is, a

schematism of reason for the thoroughgoing systematic unity of the manifold of the affinity of

cognitions of the understanding43. Just as in the Trascendental Deduction Kant needed the synthesis

of imagination to connect categories to spatio-temporal intuitions, and through the application

(Anwendung) of the categories to their sensible schemata we reached an objective cognition of the

39 It is worth noting that with regard to chemical matters like Oxygen, in “Observing Reason” Hegel speaks of “non sensuous thing of sense” and “incorporeal and yet objective being” (Hegel (1807): 144,30-31). See on the point Ferrini 2007. 40 See Rohlf 2010, 206: “what makes the moon seem larger and closer than it actually is when near the horizon is that this interpretation of our perceptual data is forced by rules that normally enable us to perceive objects accurately. Analogously, the forms of syllogisms normally enable us to reason correctly. So perhaps Kant holds that associating ideas of the soul, the world-whole, and God with the forms of syllogisms unavoidably causes it to seem as if there must be some inferential route or other – a sound argument – leading from non-controversial premises about experience to conclusions about transcendent objects corresponding to these ideas”. Compare to note 35 above. 41 See on the point Rauscher 2010, 292. 42 As is well known, in the Prolegomena Kant states that “cognition according to analogy” does not signify, as the word is usually taken, “an imperfect similarity between two things, but rather a perfect similarity between two relations in wholly dissimilar things” (Prol. §58: 357). 43 In the Anthropology, Kant defines affinity as “the unity of the manifold in virtue of its derivation from one ground” (Anth. §31: 177).

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phenomenon itself, so, too, for their “execution” (zur Ausführung), the ideas need schemata, derived

from the chief a priori ends or goals of reason: its interest in multiplicity, according to the principle

of specification and the idea of the maximum of division, and its interest in the unification of the

understanding’s cognitions, according to the principle of aggregation. The schematism of ideas,

however, is nothing but a rule or a maxim that outlines an essential manifoldness and order of the

parts from the principle of end, which grounds an articulated, organic unity (KdrV, A 833/B861).44

It can only be a completeness of principles, such as the principles of similarity, variety, continuity,

but not of intuitions and objects (Gegenstände). To overcome the undetermination of the unity of

reason with regard to the conditions under which, and the degree to which, the understanding

should combine its concepts systematically (KdrV, A665/B693), Kant clarifies that:

in order to represent these principles determinately (um sich jene bestimmt vorzustellen), reason conceives of them as the cognition of an object (Object), cognition of which is completely determined (bestimmt) with respect to these rules –though the object is only an idea – so as to bring cognition through the understanding (Verstandeserkenntnis) as close as possible to the completeness that this idea signifies (bezeichnet) (Prol. §44: 332, my italics). Against the background of this “complex interplay” between the interests of reason and the needs of

the understanding, we confront no longer the forging of pseudo (illusory and merely imagined)

objects and sciences, but the forging of objectified ideas, objects of cognition which “represent”

essential, purely conceptual unity into our theoretical knowledge of sensible appearances45. Kant

writes: “Admittedly, it is hard to find pure earth, pure water, pure air, etc. Nevertheless, concepts of

them are required (though as far as their complete purity is concerned, have their origin only in

reason) in order appropriately to determine the share that each of these natural causes has in

appearance” (KdrV, A646/B674; cf. Bxiv). This cannot take place without the mediating role of

imagination between sensibility and understanding. When reason represents its ideas as objects, it

does not play a merely logical function, for the representation is for the sake of the completeness of

our understanding’s inquiries and therefore does not involve only complete purity of rational origin,

but must involve reference to the receptivity of intuition, data of appearances, productive and

transcendental imagination. The point is that in this case we have to deal with pure conceptual

representations of objects of cognition (not to be found in experience) of empirical knowledge.

Frederick Rauscher notes that: “it is not contradictory to call a product of reason ‘empirical’ when”

44 “The whole is […] not heaped together (coacervatio); it can, to be sure, grow internally (per intus susceptionem) but not externally (per appositionem), like an animal body, whose growth does not add a limb but rather makes each limb stronger and fitter for its end” (KdrV, A833/B861). 45 Focusing on causal laws and the Second Analogy, James O’Shea 1997, 217-8 examines the sense in which the regulative maxims of reason are objectively valid, although subjective and regulative: “while the interest of reason in completeness indeed issues in a regulative ideal of systematicity that transcends the limits of experience (and hence in that respect has no objective validity), nonetheless reason’s maxims are necessary for the possibility of satisfying the empirical needs of understanding”. He contends that the latter are consequently the source of the a priori ‘objective but indeterminate validity’ that is possessed by those regulative principles (A663/B691).

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as is in the case of these “mundane” ideas “it is not a product of pure reason but only of

reason applied to a set of concepts provided by the understanding”46. In my view, this is the reason

why this time reason cannot fall into any ill-grounded dogmatic assumption: in regard to objective

judgments based on the correct use of the understanding on behalf of experience, imagination

always works in connection with principles of mechanical explanations, and within a frame in

which care is taken to prevent subjective modes of representation from being taken as objective.

Whenever the understanding is justified and properly holds itself within the limits of our possible

experience it is also able to set proper bounds to the inventive power of the imagination (Prol.

§35:317), insofar as the unity of the intellectual synthesis of the imagination depends upon it. Thus,

Einbildungskraft can indirectly serve reason by presenting cases of pure (rationally originated) but

sensible-like objects (pure earth, pure air, pure water) in accord with natural causality, without

producing the illusion of an unconditioned as if it were given. Rather, through these imagined

representations, the schematism of the ideas of reason produces the awareness of approximating

unity and completeness into empirical cognitions.

It seems to me that this collaboration of reason and judgment also occurs regarding the teleological

power of judgement in the third Critique in relation to organized natural beings, for which sound

thinking understanding does not offer any sufficient (mechanical) explanation47. Regarding all those

scientific enterprises which seek for the meaning of particular contingent beings within the

organization of nature as a whole, requiring heuristic hypotheses and analogies, Angelica Nuzzo

remarks: “The procedures of classification, comparison, and organization of particular natural forms

and cases; the tasks of detecting kinship and similarities among different individuals or species, of

recognizing patterns, and of explaining change and mutation across species […] require the

intervention of the reflective faculty of judgment and its capacity of explaining the particular in

terms of an ‘analogy of forms’ and of the unity of final causes”48. An analogue of the schemas

which realize concepts by means of sensibility through the faculty of exhibition (imagination) in the

first Critique is at work also for the teleological judgment49, in so far as we have a determinate

representation of the knowledge of an ‘object’, which is in conformity with rational principles and

contains no absurdity, and therefore is transcendentally possible, according to what the first

46 Rauscher 2010, 296. Rauscher refers to the “empirical” concepts of reason (pure earth, pure air and pure water) in terms of “mundane” concepts or ideas, “in contrast to pure concepts or ideas of reason, which are the product of pure reason alone”. In this way he distances himself from Thomas Wartenberg’s expression, “theoretical ideas”, claiming “that the understanding may appropriate mundane ideas through empirical confirmation, thus transforming them inro empirical concepts with empirical instantiation” (ivi, note 5: 297). 47 See on the point Ferrini 2000. 48 Nuzzo 2005, 356. 49 For the symbolic hypotyposis in the aesthetic judgment see Nuzzo 2005, 318-326.

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Critique has established about the constitution of our understanding, though now the concept of

purposiveness is acribed to to judgment rather than to reason.

As possible examples of this consider reason’s favorable disposition towards Blumenbach’s

“inscrutable principle of an original organization”, the hypothesis of a Bildungstrieb, to represent

things initially as possible only in accord with the causality of ends (KdU §81: 424); or the unifying

theory of the origin of all the racial diversity of mankind, not from the authoritative assertion of the

empirical “fact” of one original couple, but from the idea of one original Menschenstamm50, in view

of the full development of all our potentialities as a species51. Already in the Bestimmung des

Begriffs einer Menschenrasse (1785) Kant had contrasted the inward rational necessity of

hypotheses about natural reproduction which unify teleology and mechanism to the hypothesis of

the archaeologist of nature, inspired by comparative anatomy, to account for a coherent kinship of

all organic beings as natural ends in terms of the earth’s production of organic beings. In that

context Kant had declared his fundamental principle: to deny the validity of any such corrupting

influence of the power of imagnation on [any valid account of] the reproductive work of Nature52,

critizing on this basis both Herder’s and Forster’s idea of the generation of organic beings from the

womb of one single, universal Mother. In a footnote to §80 of the third Critique, famous for its

lasting influence upon Goethe53, Kant regards the unifying hypothesis of the Urmutter as a risky,

“daring adventure” (gewagtes Abenteuer) of reason.

The risk in this adventure of reason rests on the freedom of the researcher (the archaeologist of

nature) to attribute to Earth an inner principle of organization purposively aimed at all natural

creatures, which involves using imagination to meddle with the reproductive work of Nature54.

Indeed, conceptually speaking, to regard the Earth as Urmutter is nothing but to forge, through

50 See Kant’s response to George Forster’s controversy with him on the existence of well-defined races in Über den Gebrauch teleologischer Principien in der Philosophie (1788), AA VIII: 178, Anm.: “Wenn nun der erste Menschenstamm aus noch so viel Personen (beiderlei Geschlechts), die aber alle gleichartig waren, bestand, so kann ich eben so gut die jetzigen Menschen von einem einzigen Paare, als von vielen derselben ableiten. Hr. F. hält mich im Verdacht, daß ich das letztere als ein Factum und zwar zufolge einer Autorität behaupten wolle; allein es ist nur die Idee, die ganz natürlich aus der Theorie folgt” (my italics). 51 See Hunemann 2011, p. 113: “Le statut de la souche primitive chez Kant […] est en quelche sorte une Idée de la raison, dont l’existence empirique n’est pas attestée, mais qu’il faut placer à l’origine des races existantes”. According to Eze 1995, 227 for Kant “race” is an idea, “transcendentally hypostatized”, but also a “substan(ce)tified natural (color) reality”, that is, something “biologically essentialized”. 52 AA VIII, 97: “Dieser Erwägung gemäß nehme ich es mir zum Grundsätze: gar keinem in das Zeugungsgeschäft der Natur pfuschenden Einfluß der Einbildungskraft gelten zu lassen” (my italics). 53 See Hunemann 2006. 54 See on this point Catherine Wilson 2006, 392: “In his 1785 review of the Ideen, Kant says that the idea of a relationship between species ‘such that one species should originate from another and all from one original species, or that all should spring from the teeming womb of a universal Mother’, would lead to ‘ideas so monstrous that the reason shrinks from before them with a shudder’. A 1788 review of Georg Forster’s account of his voyages refers in a similarly unappetizing vein to the earth’s production of ‘animal and plants from her pregnant womb, fertilized by the sea slime.’Kant repeats his formulation from his review of Herder; such ideas cause the investigator to ‘shrink back from before them with a shudder of horror.’”

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imagination, an ideal object of cognition which apparently conforms to the rational standards of

architectonic completeness and organic relation between whole and parts55. For Kant, this ideal

object executes reason’s demand for completeness of principles to systematize and to unify

empirical knowledge, but only in terms of a subjective kind of judgment. Moreover, this theory

cannot unify teleology and the mechanical production of the multifarious species and the

archaeologist cannot pretend to have made the production of the animal and plant kingdoms

independent of the condition of final causes.

It is also worth noting that the counterpart to this daring use of our power for figurative synthesis on

behalf of reason’s theoretical interests is the free flight of imagination, which is perfectly

appropriate only in aesthetic judgments, serving aesthetic ideas, in so far as they neither pretend nor

demand to be of any real cognitive use. By an aesthetic idea Kant means “that representation of

imagination that occasions much thinking though without it being possible for any determinate

thought, i.e. concept, to be adequate to it […] One readily sees that it is the counterpart (pendant) of

an idea of reason, which is, conversely, a concept to which no intuition (representation of the

imagination) can be adequate” (KdU §49: 314). In the aesthetic domain, an unbridled imagination

may work constructively nourishing poetic and artistic production with ideas which do not claim

empirical existence. Moreover, it can be excited to its utmost without misleading us with deceptive

cognitive prospects (as does dogmatic metaphysics). This occurs when our power of imagination

confronts natural objects which exceed any sensible standard (e.g. earthquakes, vulcanic eruptions).

Among them is the sea in its unlimited vastness and tremendous power: “the dark and ranging sea”

(KdU §26: 256), “the boundless ocean set into a rage” (KdU §28: 261). These representations of the

sea, exceeding any sensible standard of measure, lead the concept of nature to a supersensible

substratum and lead us to recognize our physical powerlessness, while also revealing to us our

capacity for judging ourselves to be independent of and superior to nature, insofar as we find in our

own faculty of reason another nonsensible – spiritual – standard (KdU §28: 261-2). Kant writes:

“Thus nature is here called sublime merely because it raises the imagination to the point of

presenting those cases in which the mind can make palpable to itself the sublimity of its own

vocation even over nature” (KdU §28: 262).

How do these complementary positive roles of imagination in aesthetic and teleological judgment

combine with determining judgment of the first Critique, where inevitable illusions are endemic to

a reason which dialectically generates ill-grounded assumptions and metaphysical errors? Can we

55 This ideal object executes reason’s demand for completeness of principles to systematize and to unify empirical knowledge, but only in terms of a subjective kind of judgment. Moreover, this theory cannot unify teleology and the mechanical production of the multifarious species and the archaeologist cannot pretend to have made the production of the animal and plant kingdoms independent of the condition of final causes.

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assume that the revelry of an imagination uncontrolled by an understanding which, according to §35

of the Prolegomena, innocently slides to the ill-grounded assumption that the unconditioned is a

given object, play a role in affecting speculative reason? Does imagination support the inevitable

temptation of metaphysical cognitions which strive to attain the unconditioned completeness of the

ideas of reason independently of and beyond all experience (see Lord 2011: 46 ff.)? More

importantly, how can the self-knowledge and criticism of reason hinder and prevent this sort of

abuse

6- Illusions of Imaginations and Adventures of Reason

The Prolegomena offer an interesting text in this connection: Hence, just as the understanding needed the categories for experience, reason contains in itself the basis for ideas, by which I mean necessary concepts whose object nevertheless cannot be given in any experience. The latter are just as intrinsic to the nature of reason as are the former to that of the understanding; and if the ideas carry with them an illusion that can easily mislead, this illusion is unavoidable, although it can very well be prevented “from leading us astray.” Since all illusion consists in taking the subjective basis for a judgment to be objective, pure reason’s knowledge of itself in its transcendent (overreaching) use will be the only prevention against the errors into which reason falls if it misconstrues its vocation and, in transcendent fashion, refers to the object in itself that which concerns only its own subject and the guidance of that subject in every use that is immanent. (Prol. §40: 328). Put otherwise: reason is burdened by a dialectic or logic of illusion or semblance, mistaking the

necessity with which it forms an idea as a focus imaginarius (sic) for a real object. The theoretical

illusions of reason according to the wish of metaphysics to reach beyond the boundaries of all

possible experience are thus supported by an uncontrolled use of the power of imagination. This

happens because in the case of metaphysics, the understanding has removed the constraints of the

application of its a priori concepts to experience; therefore it inevitably fails to hold imagination

within the limits of possible experience. If so, how can Kant hold that this semblance need not

deceive us;56 how can it be prevented from leading us astray and we may succeed in avoiding its

pitfalls?

Without referring to the role played by Einbildungskraft, Michelle Grier has recently offered an

answer to this question by pointing out the method and strategy of the dynamical antinomies (Grier

2011). Here I would like to explore another possible solution to the same question, recalling the

pragmatic task Kant ascribed to his lectures on Physical Geography, which he regularly offered for

56 In KdrV A 298/B355, Kant uses the term Blendwerk, in A654/B673 we have Täuschung. In §13 of the Anthropology Das Blendwerk (in English: delusion) is a general term for what is produced in the understanding by means of sense representation and can be distinguished into Täuschung (Latin: illusio) and Betrug (Latin: fraus, English: deception). See Anth. § 13: 149-50).

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40 years, from 1756 to 1796. Informing students about the advantages of following his course, he

explained:

It is not to be taken as a small advantage, that the gullible admiration of the caretakers of unending extravagant lucubrations (unendlicher Hirngespinste) has made way for a cautious examination, through which we are in a position to acquire sure knowledge from credible witnesses, without the danger of erring in a world of fables (AA II: 3). In §33 of the Anthropology, among the vitia of the power of imagination, Kant distinguishes

between merely unbridled and entirely ruleless (i.e., unruly) inventions:

the latter fault is the worst kind. The former inventions could still find their place in a possible world (the world of fable); but ruleless inventions have no place in any world at all, because they are self-contradictory […] ruleless fantasy approaches madness, where fantasy plays completely with the human being and the unfortunate victim has no control at all over the course of his representations” (Anth. §33: 181). As one commentator recently wrote, if it contains a careful, reliable, scientifically tested and

controlled account of natural causality, physical geography “can teach students to exercise their

judgment and critically distinguish between a true account of the world and fairy tales, not only

those brought forth by religion, but also by thouse brought forth through ungrounded

metaphysics”57. If, as Tonelli put it, the Critique of pure Reason is primarily a work on the

“methodology of metaphysics”58, the role played by the lectures on Physical Geography cannot be

underestimated.

Kant never left Koenigsberg physically, but mentally he certainly was a great traveller. We have

studies (Adickes, Stark) on his command of the relevant contemporary geographical literature and

on his keeping himself up to date with the most recent publications. We know he read all his main

sources in German translation (Stark 2011: note 5, 98), including a host of accounts of voyages

around the world: e.g. Hawkesworth (German trans. 1774), de Bougainville (German trans. 1772),

Forster (German trans. 1778-80), likely Phipps (German trans. 1777), etc. With this in mind, let’s

return to the first Critique. Preceding the passage on the pillars of Hercules within the context of the

discussion of the metaphysical doctrine of the soul quoted above, we have a longer text, which also

mentions unalterable natural boundaries – this time the coastline of an island – and a vast and

stormy ocean as the proper seat of illusions, which ensnares the voyager of reason in a hopeless,

vain venturing. It is placed in Ch. III of the transcendental doctrine of the power of judgment, in the

opening section “On the ground of the distinction of all objects in general into phenomena and

noumena”. This passage remained unaltered in the second edition and, with a striking reference to

the adventures of reason later mentioned later in the footnote to §80 of the third Critique, reads:

57 Wilson 2011: 165. 58 Tonelli 1994, 4.

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Wir haben jetzt das Land des reinen Verstandes nicht allein durchreiset und jeden Theil davon sorgfältig in Augenschein genommen, sondern es auch durchmessen und jedem Dinge auf demselben seine Stelle bestimmt. Dieses Land aber ist eine Insel und durch die Natur selbst in unveränderliche Grenzen eingeschlossen. Es ist das Land der Wahrheit (ein reizender Name), umgeben von einem weiten und stürmischen Oceane, dem eigentlichen Sitze des Scheins, wo manche Nebelbank und manches bald wegschmelzende Eis neue Länder lügt und, indem es den auf Entdeckungen herumschwärmenden Seefahrer unaufhörlich mit leeren Hoffnungen täuscht, ihn in Abenteuer verflechtet, von denen er niemals ablassen und sie doch auch niemals zu Ende bringen kann. (KdrV, A236/B295)

We have now not only traveled through the land of pure understanding, and carefully inspected each part of it, but we have also surveyed it, and determined the place for each thing in it. This land, however, is an island, and enclosed in unalterable boundaries by nature itself. It is the land of truth (a seductive name), surrounded by a broad and stormy ocean, the proper seat of semblance, where many a fog bank and rapidly melting iceberg misrepresents new lands and, ceaselessly deceiving with empty hopes the voyager looking around for new discoveries, entwine him in adventures from which he can never escape and yet also never bring to an end (CT).

Please note that Schein, semblance, is referred to the shapes of fog banks and broken icebergs

which are misleading for their merely apparent similarity to coastlines and mountains and the use of

the verbs lügen (to misrepresent, to dissemble) and täuschen (to deceive). Note also that Kant

characterizes his voyager as an explorer (Seefahrer) involved in a kind of search which suggests a

ship deviating in many directions as signs of land and circumstances arise, as it is conveyed by the

use of the adjective herumschwärmenden. Moreover, the whole picture is not presented as a matter

of optical illusion or mirage, nor of distinguishing, among phenomena, between veridical

experience and empirical semblances. Rather, as is conveyed by the verb lügen, the issue at stake is

the distinction between assumptions and facts: to take such appearances for what they represent in

the voyager’s eye; it is a matter of reliability in knowing the external world, which involves

accomplished judgment and standard scientific practices59.

In a footnote, the editors of the Cambridge Edition of Kant’s Works present this passage as an

example of Kant’s “geographical imagery”,60 pointing to a parallel note written by Kant a decade

before the publication of the first Critique. Already in 1772, to express his critical approach to

Metaphysics, Kant had used an iconographic similie and the geographical vocabulary of exploring,

mapping and locating a maritime landscape: the “unknown land” of metaphysics was situated in the

“hemisphere” of pure reason. Kant claimed to have been able to outline the “island of Knowledge”

and to locate where it was connected by bridges to the country of Experience or where it was

59 This passage has been variously interpreted. For a survey see Garelli 1995, 104-6. Garelli offers a ‘close reading’ of the theoretical significance of this metaphor against the background of the vast reportoire of nautical and sea images one can retrace in Kant’s works since his pre-critical period. It is interesting to see how Kant’s metaphor of the stormy and vast ocean with icebergs and fog banks looking like land has always been taken as figuring the Northern Sea, where Arctic explorers where not looking for designating new lands, but attempting to find a north-eastern passage to India (Kant likely read the account of the 1773 Phipps’s Arctic expedition towards Spitsbergen: see below note 74). 60 KdrV, CT: note 9, 732.

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separated from it by a profound sea61. It appears to me that this iconographic parallelism to the later

text is rather loose, primarily because there metaphysics counts as an unknown land and the sea

counts as an unbridgeable gulf, not as a seat of illusion. What is more, Kant’s Reflexion contrasts

dogmatic metaphysicians, who purport to dwell on that land, and skeptics who deny it is habitable.

Finally, Kant’s geographic imagery does not account for what looks quite distinctive here: the

description of a maritime scene of semblance in terms of “fog banks and rapidly melting icebergs”

which misrepresent new lands and deceive the explorer who eagerly seeks new discoveries.

A more thorough attempt, exegesis and strong claim was made in 1980 by a French scholar,

Michèle Le Dœuff. Her book, Recherches sur l’imaginaire philosophique, was translated into

English in 1989 with the title The philosophical imaginary and reprinted in 2002. Her view is that

the metaphor elaborated by Kant in the first Critique is copied (soit copiée) from Francis Bacon’s In

Temporis Partus Maximus. This reading has been endorsed, publicized and made current by

Eduardo Mendieta’s contribution on Kant’s geography, in 2011.

However, a closer examination of this alleged source (originally indicated by Le Dœuff’s in French

translation) reveals that Bacon’s image appears in a work entitled The Masculine Birth of Time

(Temporis Partus Masculus, ca. 1603) and that the Latin original significantly differs from the free

rendering of the text upon which Le Dœuff ‘s claim rests.

Le Doeuff (1980, 19) states: En fait, si des conditions et des projets politiques n’avaient pas mis un terme à ces voyages mentaux, bien d’autres rivages de l’erreur auraient été visités par ces marins. Car l’île de la vérité est entourée par un puissant océan dans lequel bien des intelligences iront encore faire naufrage dans le tempête de l’illusion (my italics). This passage has been rendered in English (Le Doeuff 2002, 9) thus:

Indeed, if political conditions and projects had not put an end to these mental trips, these mariners would have touched on many another shore of error. For the island of truth is surrounded by a mighty ocean in which many an intelligence will drown in storms of illusion (my italics). Now compare B. Farrington’s standard translation of this passage: In fact, had not political conditions and prospects put an end to these mental voyages, many another coast of error would have been visited by those mariners. For the island of truth is lapped by a mighty ocean in which many intellects will still be wrecked by the gales of illusion62 (my italics). In the original Latin works of Francis Bacon: 61 AA XVII, Refl. 4458: 559; CT, 136: “In metaphysics, like an unknown land of which we intend to take possession, we have first assiduously investigated its situation and access to it. (It lies in the (region) hemisphere of pure reason;) we have even drawn the outline of where this island of cognition is connected by bridges to the land of experience, and where it is separated by a deep sea; we have even drawn its outline and are as it were acquainted with its geography (ichnography), but we do not know what might be found in this land, which is maintained to be uninhabitable by some people and to be their real domicile by others. We will take the general history of this land of reason into account in accordance with this general geography”. 62 Bacon 1964, 69.

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Ac nisi temporum politiae et provisus ejusmodi ingeniorum peregrinationibus adversiores extitissent, multae etiam aliae errorum orae fuissent peragratae. Immensum enim pelagus veritatis insulam circumluit; et supersunt adhuc novae ventorum idolorum injuriae et disjectiones63(my italics). Rendered more exactly in English, Bacon states: And if political governance and the views of the future would not have been so adverse to the wanderings of the minds, then many other shores of error would have been visited. Indeed an immense sea encircles the island of truth; and even now new injuries and disruptions occur by the blustering of the idols (my italics). In particular, the passage contains no image of the ocean as a seat of illusion and of the pure

understanding as an island of truth. Bacon’s program is to emend and purify human understanding

from native and inherent superstitions, deceiving fictions, social and cultural prejudices also due to

traditional authorities (idols), which alter and twist the sound relation between mind and things of

the senses. Bacon makes people aware of the persistence, despite the outlook of his modern age, of

mental “errors”. He presents them as obstacles, damage or injuries to the progressive advancement

of learning. He renders this metaphorically, with the image of truth as an island lapped by an

immense sea. Its shores are still showing wrecks due to the persistent ‘blustering’ of idols (the Latin

word for ‘wind’ also means ‘fable’ as is retained in the Italian ‘fola’, and at one more remove in the

English ‘folly’).

I do hope I have now properly paved the way for a convincing alternative, which draws from the

maritime culture of the XVIII century, and in particular to the account of these polar expeditions

seeking to discover new lands, e.g. to map the terra firma of an alleged Antarctic continent. In

modern times, the theory that there existed an undiscovered continental mass in the South Pacific

was at first outlined by the speculative reasoning of the geographer to the French King, Philippe

Buache (1700-1773)64. As Debarbieux reports: “although knowledge of the Antarctic was still

extremely tenuous at the time, he formulated a theory on the configuration of this continent from

63 Bacon (c. 1603), 27. 64 Kant refers to Buache’s notion of “Platteform” (plateau: expounded in his 1753 Essai de geographie physique) in Von der verschiedenen Racen der Menschen in Ankündigung der Vorlesungen der Physischen Geographie im Sommerhalbenjahre 1775 (AA II: 442). On Buache’s theory regarding the position of all oceans, mountains, islands and rivers on a global scale (with islands, reefs or shoals as peaks of underwater marine mountain ranges as extensions of the terrestrial mountain ranges), which treated mountains analogically “as a kind of framework” see Buache (1772), 141-143 and Debarbieux 2008. Debarbieux also points out how, by contrast, in his 1749 Histoire et théorie de la terre, Buffon reported that upon a first inspection one can see no regularity, no order to what Earth displays on its surface. Buache’s systematic method and speculative hypotheses were criticized by Baron C. A. Walkenaer (1771-1852), author of the 1812 entry “Buache” in the Biographie Universelle: “Ce systême, ingénieux, et vrai en partie, fut beaucoup trop généralisé par Buache, et exerce encore une influence funeste pour la géographie sur nos dessinateurs de cartes les plus connus, qui, au moyen de cette théorie, substituent l’art à la science, et le travail du pinceau à celui de l’étude et de la critique” (Biographie, 188b). By contrast in the 1810 revised 9th edition of the Dictionnaire universel, we read that Buache’s system: “a servi à plus d’un faiseur de systèmes, et peut être utile dans l’étude de la géographie naturelle” (Dictionnaire, 388).

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observation of the size of blocks of drifting ice […] reported by sailors”65. Buache’s systematic

theory was not an isolated instance. In the British Empire, Alexander Dalrymple, fellow of the

Royal Society since 1765, was the proponent of the existence of the Terra Australis Incognita in his

1767 Account of the discoveries made in The South Pacific Ocean, directly prompting James

Cook’s second journey66.

As mentioned, maritime culture was familiar to Kant as material for his lectures on physical

geography. I wish to draw attention to a page from Georg Forster’s Voyage towards the South Pole

and Round the World in the years 1772-75 with Captain James Cook. Forster originally published

the text in English (1777) and then translated it into his native German in 1778-1780, with some

variants, after that his father, the famous naturalist Johann Reinhold Forster was prevented to do so

by a contract with the British Admiralty. If the first volume of the English edition was received in

Germany with criticism in comparison to Cook’s 1777 official account of his second voyage 67, in

1778 the first volume of the German translation was very much appreciated by Wieland in the

Teutsche Merkur, who announced it to the public regarding it as one of the most remarkable book

of the time (eines der merkwürdigsten Bücher unserer Zeit)68. At the beginning of his elated review,

Wieland presents the young Foster as a brave and skilful assistant of his father along the entire

journey and praises the “philosophical description” offered by him, in such a way that the reader

should not wish a different author 69, appreciates his being both a philosopher and a man of feeling

(ein Mann von Gefühl)70, contrasts Cook’s compilation of facts based on logbook or diary entries

with Forster’s narrative for a global audience71.

65 Debarbieux 2009, 96. See Buache (1772), 139: “La découverte du cap de la Circoncision, faite en 1739, par M. de Losier-Bouvet, l’engagea à donner une Carte particulière de cette découverte, sur laquelle M. Buache, n’eut garde d’omettre les glaces flottantes […] elles étoient pour lui un indice de grandes rivières, & par conséquent de terres considérables dans le voisinage, cette considération l’engagea même à marquer dans sa Carte, les terres de Gonneville & des Perroquets, quoique regardées comme très-incertaines, persuadé qu’en les cherchant on pourroit découvrir celles qu’il soupçonnoit. L’expédition de M. de Kerguelen, vient de justifier cette conjecture”. 66 See Fry 1979. 67 See the review of the first volume of Forster’s Voyage written by Meiers and Gmelin from the two standpoints of human and natural history (Menschgeschichte and Naturgeschichte) in GAvGS 1778, 150: “F.[orster] macht freylich Betrachtungen, die man in C. [ook]. vergebens sucht; allein diesen bestehen grösstentheils in Ergiessungen von Empfindsamkeit” (Christoph Meiners); ibidem, 154: “An Gegenständen hingegen […] verschwendet er zu viele Worte, und, wie es dem Rec. dünkt, oft auch zu viel Phantasie, um sie recht künstlich auszumahlen” (Johann Friedrich Gmelin). On the German response to ‘the new world of the Pacific’ in the late XVIII century regarding the discovery of new categories of specimens from the natural kingdom and of human behaviour, also in respect to the Forsters’s travelogues, Blumenbach’s approach to defining species, and George Forster’s controversy with Kant on monogenesis and the notion of human races, see Gascoigne 2007. 68 Wieland 1778a, 295. 69 Wieland 1778b, 61. 70 Ibidem, 62. 71 Ibidem, 62: “Außerm befindet sich noch der wesentliche Unterschied zwischen ihren beiden Beschreibungen, daß Cook mehr für Seefahrer und Forster mehr für die ganze übrige Welt geschrieben”. In particular Wieland appreciates the narrative of George Foster insofar as it is able to involve and move the reader’s heart: “alles wodurch der Epische und Dramatische Dichter die Seele faßt und in alle Arten sympathetischer Leidenschaften setzt” (ibidem, 63). By contrast, this aspect of Forster’s prose is in Gmelin’s view a serious fault: “aber Hr. F. spielt zu sehr, und oft ganz am

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Being himself a naturalist, the young George could well provide that kind of expertise and training

in objective verification of empirical data which meets the requirement of sure knowledge based on

reliable testimony, advocated by Kant for the content of his lectures on Physical Geography72.

Georg Foster was also commisioned by the astronomer of the expedition, William Wales, to have

published under his name the scientific work of his father “in language and sentiment”, to avoid any

contrast with the Admiralty73. In any event, Forster appears to be thoroughly methodologically

alert, to approach nature scientifically, that is, with a previously designed plan, a Leitfaden in

Kant’s sense, or a “thread of Ariadne” through the “labyrinth of human knowledge”. In his Lectures

on Geography Kant cautioned that “there is more to knowledge of the world than just seeing the

world” (AA IX: 157) and that “through travel one can broaden one’s knowledge of the external

world, but this is of little use if one has not already received a certain preliminary exercise through

instruction” (ib., 158).

In a similar vein, in the Preface to his book, Forster criticizes the contradictions in the accounts of

different travelers, he criticizes the presentation of a simple collection or a confused heap of

disjointed, accidental facts from all parts of the world “which no art could reunite into a whole”,

and which do not increase knowledge (Forster 1777: 9). Finally, he points to the regulative use of

general consequences deduced from the combination of different facts, in order to orient oneself in

observation and in research74.

Can Forster also provide the pragmatic tools for venturing out onto the shoreless, deceptive sea of

theoretical reason, able to distinguish semblances from truth, and thus becoming certain whether

there is anything in it for which to hope?

If our reconstruction of Kant’s theory of imagination as responsible for both the illusory and the

regulative aspects of reason is correct, we should find in Forster, as the model of a skilled naturalist

and a reliable empirical scientist75, what we need to curb the misleading and reifyng role of

imagination and to make it work for a sound, thinking understanding that properly holds itself

within the limits of our possible experience, thus setting bounds to any imaginary free flight.

unrechten Orte den empfindsamen Juengling, ziert sich zu sehr mit seiner Belesenheit in den Dichtern und andern schoenen Schriften aller nationen, streuet hin und wieder solche Raisonnements ein, die nich zur Sache gehoeren” (AdB 1778, 589). 72 On Forster 1778 as source for Kant’s reference to Irving’s method of desalination of sea water in his Lectures on Geography, see Adickes 1911, 99. On the first reception in Germany of Forster 1777 (critical reviews by Gmelin, Meiners et al.) see Fischer 2006, 171-2. 73 Weller 2011, 245. 74 See Forster 1777: 9; 1778-80: 9-10. 75 Wieland 1778b, 63 portrays Georg Forster as a man of outstanding capabilities, a man of knowledge, which put him in a position to see things better, more perspicacious in comparisons and correct in conclusions than a common voyager: “[…] ein Mann von vorzüglichen Fähigkeiten […] von Kenntnißen die ihn in den Stand setzen besser zu sehn, scharfsinniger zu vergleichen, richtiger zu schliessen als gemeine Seefahrer”.

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Consider in this regard the following page pertaining to the quest to certify the discovery of Cape

Circumcision. In his second voyage, Cook had been instructed to travel to the unexplored part of

the Southern hemisphere to determine whether it was merely an immense expanse of water or

contained another continent (and, if so, to take possession of it for the maritime power of Britain).

Years before, on January 1st, 1739, Bouvet de Lozier had spotted a land mass South of the 44th

parallel and called it Cape Circumcision. He was unable to land due to dense fog, but he believed it

was a promontory of the Terrae Australis. As remarked above, Buache had used Bouvet’s

discovery to promote his own speculative theory of continental balance to posit the existence of a

Southern Continent as massive as the Asiatic continent76. However, the comission by the Royal

Society to search for the Southern Continent was championed by Alexander Dalrymple: Cook was

to find the Cape again and determine whether it was part of the presumed new land. Here is

Forster’s account of a page of history of deceptive hopes and endless efforts to rediscover Bouvet’s

land:

76 See Buache’s 1757 map: http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visual_materials/maps/websites/pacific/cook2/map-southern%20hemisphere-1757.jpg. Against the background of the Kantian either misleading or productive relations between the synthetic art of imagination and the systematicity of reason, it is interesting to see how Buache’s speculatives hypothesis was received by the French Royal Academy and how it was later presented in Buache’s commemorative praise: see Buache (1772), 144-5: “on l’est encore plus [étonné] en voyant […] avec combien d’intelligence il faisit quelques observations répandues dans les relations des Voyageurs, pour former à l’aide de son système physique, un projet de Carte de toute le partie australe de notre Globe & de la Mer glaciale qu’il y suppose, & pour donner à ce projet toute le vraisemblance dont il est susceptible. En lisant le Mèmoire, on se sent porté à croire, qu’un grand nombre des conjectures qu’il contient, seronnt un jour confirmées par les découvertes qu’on fera dans cette partie du monde: l’art de combiner poussé à un certain point, devient une espèce de divination”. At the end of 1777, just before his death, Haller reviewed the 1776 volume of the Histoire et memoires of the French Royal Academy mentioning also this 1772 laudatio in memoriam. Haller is disparaging: he stresses Buache’s infatuation for the “fabelhaften Seefahrten” of the Admiral De Fonte and uses the adjective widersinnig to qualify Buache’s sketch of the configuration of the earth at the south pole, where “there is no land” (GAvGS: Stück 3, 17 Januar 1778, p. 38). By contrast, the German extract of Cook 1777 (see below note 75) accounts for Cook’s straightforward view on the issue, after he returned to the alleged spot of Cape Circumcision in February 1775, in terms of natural obstacles impossible for any man ever to surmount. Cook himself did not assume he had to have disproved the existence of a Southern Continent: “Die Gefahr, sagt Cook, welcher man bey Untersuchung der Küsten, in diesen unbekannten eisvollen Meeren sich aussetzt, ist so sehr groß, daß ich kühnlich sagen kann, Niemand wird weiter vordringen, als ich gethan habe, und die Länder, welche unter dem Südpol liegen mögen, werden niemals entdeckt werden” (HM 1778, 1356), my italics.

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Forster 1777, 102-3: The latitude we were now in, was that in which Captain Lozier Bouvet had place his pretended discovery of Cape Circumcision, and our longitude was only a few degrees to the eastward of it: the general expectation of seeing land, was therefore very great […] every one was eager to be the first to announce the land. We had already had several false alarms from the fallacious conformation of fog banks, or that of islands of ice half hid in snow storms, and our consort, the Adventure, had repeatedly made the signals for seeing land, deceived by such appearances; but now, the imagination warmed with the idea of M. Bouvet’s discovery, one of our lieutenants […] acquainted the captain that he plainly saw the land […] We saw an immense field of flat ice before us, broken into small pieces on the edges, a vast number of islands of ice of all shapes and sizes rose beyond it as far as the eye could reach, and some of the most distant considerably raised by the hazy vapours which lay on the horizon, had indeed some appearance of mountains. Several of our officers persisted in the opinion that they had seen land, till Capt. Cook, about two years and two months afterwards (in February 1775) […] sailed over the same spot and found neither land nor even ice there at that time […] We passed through quantities of broken ice in the afternoon, and saw another extensive ice-field, beyond which several of our people still persisted in seeing land, taking fog-banks for land (my italics).

Forster 1778, 97-8: Wir waren jetzt gerade unter eben der Polhöhe, in welcher der Capitain Lozier Bouvet das Cap Circoncision gefunden haben will, und der Meereslänge nach befanden wir uns nur um wenige Grade davon, weiter gegen Osten. Jedermann erwartete daher mit grosser Ungeduld Land zu erblicken […] jedweder wollte gern der erste sein, Land! auszurufen. Die trügliche Gestalt der Nebelbänke, oder der in Schneegestöber gehüllten Eisinseln hatte schon manchen falschen Lärm veranlasst, und die Adventure, unser Reisgefährte, ward durch solche Täuschungen oft erleitet uns Signale zu geben, dass sie Land sähe. Unter andern hatte die Idee von Bouvets Entdeckung die Einbildungskraft eines unsrer Lieutenants dergestalt erhitzt […] er sehe ganz deutlich Land. Diese Neuigkeit brachte uns alle aufs Verdeck. Wir sahen aber nichts weiter alse in ungeheures flaches Eisfeld vor uns, das am Rande in viele kleinere Stücke gebrochen war; und eine grosse Menge von Eisinseln aller Gestalt und Grösse stiegen, so weit das Auge nur reichen konnte, hinter demselben empor. Einige der entferntern schienen, vermittelst der Strahlenbrechung in den Dünsten des Horizonts, weit höher als sie in der That waren, und sahen wirklichen Bergen ähnlich. Dieser Anblick war so täuschend, dass viele unsrer Officiere dabei blieben, sie hätten hier Land gesehen, bis endlich Capitain Cook zwei Jahre und zwei Monate nachher (nemlich im Februar 1775) […] gerade über denselbigen Fleck wegsegelte, wo es hätte liegen müssen, wo aber damals weder Land noch Eis mehr zu sehen war. Am Nachmittage kamen wir durch viel gebrochnes Eis und sahen ein zweites grosses Eisfeld, jenseit dessen verschiedne unsrer Leute noch immer Land zu sehen behaupteten, ungeachtet auch dies, so wie das vorige im Grundeaus nichts als Nebelbänkenbestand.

In Forster’s own German rendering of this passage, note the expression trügliche Gestalt for the

“fallacious conformation” of fog banks and icebergs, the reference to stormy weather, the use of the

substantive Täuschungen (illusions or deceptions, for “appearances” in the English version) and the

verb täuschen (to deceive), for describing the Antartic Ocean (though the same would hold for the

Artic, as in the case of Marten’s or Phipp’s description of the Spitzbergen)77 as nothing but a seat of

77 See Phipps 1774 and Phipps 1777: “It was not long before we saw something on the bow, part black and part covered with snow, which from the appearance we took to be islands (1777: Wir hielten, es dem Ansehen nach für Inseln) and

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illusion, and the use of the terms Einbildungskraft and Idee associated to the verb erhitzten to

convey the same excited searching around for land of Kant’s herumschwärmenden Seefahrer

(KdrV, A236/B295).

Note also the different attitude of Forster, a more detached observer because he was not

professionally involved in Cook’s mission, in contrast to the eagerness of the crew to announce

land. Forster records how deceptive may be the appearances of fog-banks and icebergs, though his

skilled and informed judgment does not take those appearances to represent coastline or mountains.

Moreover, he is aware of the overwhelming power of imagination upon the senses when fired by

eager mental presumptions.

I contend that this primary source of maritime culture is the proper source of Kant’s metaphor of the

sea in the first Critique, which is neither the invention of his own geographical imagination, nor a

copy from Bacon, nor a repetition of his own earlier similie, as scholarship as held hitherto.

Moreover, to draw upon the maritime culture of his age had the essential significance of training the

mind of one who judges critically. Critical training means learning to check one’s own aspiration

against the test bench of sensed and shared experience, to achieve sure and empirically confirmed

knowledge; it means fostering self-knowledge, studying the nature (laws, extension, and limits) of

our reason, “by which reason may secure its rightful claims while dismissing all its groundless

pretensions” (KdrV, Axi); ultimately, it means to learn prudence to orient ourselves in thought

pragmatically. If I am right, if the attitude of the officer of the ‘Adventure’ (the tender of the

flagship ‘Resolution’) casts light on Kant’s metaphor of the ocean as seat of illusion for speculative

reason and dogmatic metaphysics, then we must consider how having one’s own imagination

excited by an idea (of Bouvet’s discovery), and falling into the trap of presuming to see what one

hopes, deceived by a natural scene fantastically arranged by nature’s free play of shapes, fog and

colors, how all of this functions as a warning and a lesson within the economy of the first Critique

itself. I conclude with the following observations:

1) Kant does not renounce all “adventures” of reason, i.e., all speculative hypothesis. To renounce

these would mean just to censure, rather than to criticize reason on the basis of demonstrated

principles. In this regard, the passage from phenomena and noumena about the island of the

understanding surrounded by an oceanic seat of semblances (KdrV, A 236/B295), warns against

any “daring” adventure of reason but also prepares to face these risks. 2) Just as sublime nature

raises the imagination to the point of presenting those cases in which the mind can make almost

thought that we had not stood far enough out; I hauled up immediately to the NNW and was soon undeceived, finding it to be ice (1777: wurde aber bald meinen Irrthum gewahr, indem es sich fand, dass es Eis war) m which we could not clear upon that tack”.

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‘palpable’ to itself the sublimity of its own vocation, so theoretical reason’s claims excite and fire

imagination to the point of presenting those cases in which speculative reason can make objective to

itself, as if it were a given, the illusion of finding an adequate, corresponding sensible intuition. 3)

Only isolated speculative adventures of reason are hopeless and hazardous; to secure metaphysics it

is necessary to check and to control rational claims through instruction by experience, using ideas in

a regulative and regulated way, making the understanding think rather than daydream by testing

hypotheses pragmatically, in space and time, as Cook did in respect to his officer’s claim. In

discussing phenomena and noumena Kant reminds us that “Even the categories as forms of thinking

only tell us something about objects if we use them in the schematized form – that is, if we treat

them as concepts to determine something in time and space”78. Admittedly, rational statements that

venture beyond the limits of possible experience cannot be tested by experimenting with their

objects, but we have a criterion for deciding and for bringing metaphysics to the secure course of a

science: to limit all our speculative claims merely to the field of possible experience. In this regard,

the cosmological approach to nature of Buache’s general perspective on the structure of the globe

was truly an ‘adventure’ of reason or an hypothesis that likely Kant considered disproved at the

earliest in 177679, and at the latest in 1778, when in Germany it was widely reported that Cook and

others, such as his associate Captain Furneaux, searched for Cape Circumcision extensively without

success and that the imagined continent was not empirically found80. In his review of Forster’s

book, Wieland had stressed Cook’s hopeless quest for the Cape and the fifth austral part of the 78Emundts 2010, 187. 79 A first, unauthorized account of Cook’s second voyage appeared anonymously in 1776 (Dublin: printed for Jenkin and Bettey), by a “midshipman” (John Marra) and was immediately translated into German. The first half of the title reads: Journal of the Resolution’s voyage in 1772, 1773, 1774 and 1775 on discovery to the southern hemisphere, by which the non-existence of an undiscovered continent between the equator and the 50th degree of southern latitude, is demonstratively proved. It was rendered into German as follows: Tagebuch von Kapitän Cooks neuester Reise um die Welt und in die südliche Hämisphäre in den Jahren 1772, 1773, 1774 und 1775: worinn das nichdaseyn eines vermutheten festen Landes zwischen der Linie und dem Südpolzirkel unwidersprechlich erwiesen wird. The German edition (Leipzig: Weygand 1776) includes also C.D. Ebeling’s Geschichte der Entdeckungen in der Südsee und Geographie des fünften Welttheils. From October to December 1777 an extract from Cook 1777 and Forster 1777 was published in the Hannoverisches Magazin by the editor of the journal, A. C. v. Wüllen; the Auszug begins with this sentence: “Die Absicht der beyden Reisen, die Capitain Cook […] war eigentlich die Entscheidung der für die meisten europäischen Seemächte so wichtiger Frage: Ob der bisher noch unerforschte Welttheil gegen den Südpol bloß wasser oder auch festes Land in sich faßte?”(HM 1778, 1281). 80 Kant owned the Weltgeschichte in ihrem ganzen Umfange by Johann Christoph Gatterer (Warda 1922, 25). On the frontespiece of Gattererer’s Abriß der Geographie the year 1775 appears as its date of publication, though the volume opens with a Vorerinnerung mit Verbesserungen und Zusätzen dated 28 April, 1778. There the author explains that in Summer 1775 half of the book was already printed; the second half was printed at the end of 1777 (see p. VII). This delay allowed him to emend the first part because, in the interim, “a variety of truths fell into the realm of current untruths” (verschiedne damalige Wahrheiten in das Reich der jezigen Unwahrheiten hinüber gefallen). Among these revisions, the description of the Southern Emisphere now reads: “Die südliche Halbkugel begreift: I) in der Obern Halbkugel 1) das südliche Drittheil von Afrika, nebst dem Cap de la Circoncision, welches vielleicht das Vorland eines neuen Erdstriches ist, und die Insel Madagaskar” (p. 30; my italics). The reference to Buache’s hypothesis is evident. However, as we know from Forster’s account, Cook sailed over the same spot, where his official declared having in February 1775 seen Cape Circumcision, and found no land there. In 1778 Gatterer revised his text, replacing “welches vielleicht das Vorland” with: “welches, wie Cook’s lezte Weltumseglung gewiesen hat, nicht das Vorland” (p. I).

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world, though regarding Buache’s speculation as a “very likely presupposition” and the Southern

Continent as a terra firma “in hypothesi” (Wieland 1778b, 71). Moreover, from the standpoint of

the quest for a metaphysics as scientific knowledge within the limits of our proper rational claims,

pitting it against its dogmatic pretension, it is worth noting that already in his 1766 Dreams of a

Spirit-Seer Kant had developed through imagination the notion of Erdichtung as Vermutung, which

added to its mere logical conceivability the features of a sound intellectual supposition, i.e.

persuasion, plausible invention, heuristic fiction, contrasting this to Erdichtung as angebliche

Erfahrung: a kind of fiction that, although logically self-consistent (therefore impossible to disprove

once for all), has no real plausibility81. Ironically enough, in 1791 it was Kant’s turn, though

indirectly, to claim confirmation by empirical observation (Herschel’s discovery of Uranus) for one

of his speculative adventures or “simple hypotheses” in the 1755 Theory of the Heavens82.

Kant could not know (he died in 1804) that in 1775 Cook only apparently disproved the false claim

of his officer. It turned out that Bouvet had incorrectly charted the land (placing it about 23 degrees

too far east, as it appears in the 1741 map of the South Pole by Covens and Mortier). Only in 1808

was the land found once again, though the rediscovery made clear that Cape Circumcision was not

attached to a greater Southern mainland but was an island83. This motivated severe criticism of

Buache’s methodology, also in France84. As a matter of fact, Cook came within about 75 miles

81 See Ferrini 2000. 82 See Ferrini 2004, 277-8: “On May 2, 1791 the associate pastor and assistant librarian of Königsberg, S. M. Sommer, signed the “Translator’s Foreword” to the German edition of W. Herschel, Über den Bau des Himmels, to which he appended “an authentic excerpt” from Kant’s 1755 Allgemeiner Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels, abridged for the occasion by the school inspector J. F. Gensichen on Kant’s personal request and under his supervision. This Appendix, which was said to contain the “very gist” (das Wesentlichste) of the 1755 work, was followed by four remarks added by Gensichen. He warns the reader that, on Kant’s view, their content was a matter of “very simple hypotheses” about what, right now, thirty-six years later, he could still find thoroughly right [...] On the basis of Gensichen’s declared continuity and fidelity to Kant’s original cosmogony, Sommer could claim in his Foreword that Kant had previously demonstrated on theoretical grounds (aus theretischen Gründen) what Herschel had drawn from facts (Tatsachen) only many years later. In this way, the attached Appendix would suggest to the reader the prospect of mutually comparing the structure of the Heavens that was conceptually thought through reason (durch Vernunft begreiflich […] gedacht ), and the one that was comprehended and exposed on the basis of observations (nach Maßgabe der Beobachtungen […] aufgefaßt und dargestellt)”. 83 The island was named for Bouvet in 1822. See Simpson-Housley 1992, 69-75, who recounts the complex case of the subsequent rediscoveries of Bouvet Island, in terms of “A local habitation and a name or an airy nothing?”. 84 In 1812 Walkenaer (later appointed conservator for the Department of Maps at the Royal Library in Paris in 1838) recognizes Buache’s achievements and success in concluding that Asia and America were joined (in this regards Walkenaer draws from the appreciation in Buache 1772): “Malgré l’abus que l’on fait du systême de Buache, abus que lui- même a poussé jusqu’à l’estrême, nous devons observer qu’en le combinant avec la découverte de Béring, il est parvenu à deviner la liaison qui se trouve entre l’Amérique et l’Asie, par le moyen de la presqu’île d’Alashka; qu’il a tracé passablement sur ses cartes cette presqu’île, avant qu’on en eût constaté l’existence” (Biographie, 188b). However, his account of Buache’s theory of the Southern Continent is in terms of a sarcastic critic: “Depuis quelques progrès de la navigation et les voyages de découvertes ont jeté une vive lumière sur l’etat du globe vers le pôle sud, les hypothèses les plus importantes des Buache ont été trouvées fausses. On ne peut s’empêcher de sourire aujourd’hui en voyant sur les cartes de cet auteur quelques petites portions de la Nouvelle-Zélande, dont on n’avait pas encore fait le tour, et quelques autres terres moins considérables et dont l’existence est même douteuse [likely a reference to Cape Circumcision], converties en deux immenses continents, tout-à-fait distincts de la Nouvelle-Hollande, et même de la terre de Diémen. Buache en dessine les rivages, et nous assure gravement que le plus grand de ces nouveaux mondes doit avoir, le long et près des côtes, une chaîne de montagnes comme les Cordillères d’Amérique, et des fluves aussi

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(121 km) of the Antarctic coast before retreating. The first confirmed sighting and landing on

mainland Antarctica were reported in 1820-21. Nevertheless, the story of the alleged discovery of a

vast Antarctic continent continued, in a surprisingly analogical manner. This time Buache’s and

Dalrymple’s theory was replaced by Symmes’s speculative ‘Hollow Earth Theory’ (first proposed

by Halley in 1692)85, Capt. Cook’s officers by Wilkes, and Cook’s pragmatically testing hypotheses

by Ross’s procedure86. In 1840 the Antarctic explorer Charles Wilkes, though aware of all that

could beset the sight of land, cautious about atmospheric conditions and illusory appearances in

high latitudes, but anxious to find the land Captain Cook had failed to sight, and racing against the

French explorer Jules Dumont d’Urville (championed by Jules Verne), eventually confirmed

sighting the terra firma of an Antarctic continent, once the appearances he believed at the time to be

land (Wilkes Land) were visible from all the vessels of his U.S. Exploring Expedition. The ice

barrier prevented confirmation by landing. Capt. James Ross in 1841, doubting the claim, sailed

over the mapped position of Wilkes Land and found none. Accused of having proclaimed land on

the “assumption” of land rather than on “facticity”, in 1842 Wilkes stood trial by court martial on

the charge of “immoral” (deliberately false) mapping. Later defenders of Wilkes explained his

cartographic failure by recourse not to optical illusions but to a polar mirage, i.e. a real phenomenon

of an image’s displacement, or an altered perception specific to a place87.

Once again, the only possibility of not being deceived in empirical knowledge requires Kant’s

assessment: to extend our scientific understanding and mechanical explanations of real phenomena

such as optical peculiarities, the properties of Antarctic light and the curvature of the Earth, and to

keep imagination under control through empirical testing. However, since it was the speculative

geography of the Hollow Earth Theory, which captured popular imagination and was narrated in

Poe’s Gordon Pym, which prompted Wilkies’s expedition of discovery, once again it was a sort of

Kantian adventure of reason, fired by immagination, the driving force to expand, direct and

complete empirical knowledge. ‘After’ Kant, imagination, when serving speculative claims limited

to the field of possible experience, proves to be as much part of empirical sciences as of (critical)

metaphysical systematizing and orienteering.

considerables que ceux de la Sibérie. Cette idée d’un grand continent austral a été empruntée aux anciens. Manilius en fait mention dans son poëme sur l’astronomie, et Pomponius Méla y place la grande nation des Antichtones” (ibid., 189a). By contrast, in this regard the Dictionnaire 388a reads: “Les découvertes de Cook, Banks, Solander, n’ont pas ajouté beaucoup de lumières a celles qu’on y trouve sur cette partie de l’hémisphere”. 85 See Yusoff 2009, 233, notes 45 and 47. On the origins of Wilkes’s expedition she writes that it “stemmed from John Symmes’ petition for a US-led expedition to substantiate his Hollow Earth theory. Symmes’ theory proposed that the earth was a semi-hollow sphere of concentric spheres that had their entrance at the poles. In his theory of this internal world, Symmes argued that the strange atmospheric refractions, luminous auroras and the variation of compasses indicated gases escaping from the ‘hole at the poles’. Although Symmes’concentric concept had received extensive scientific criticism, no one had yet gone far enough to the poles to dispel his speculative theory empirically” (59). 86 For details see Yusoff 2009. 87 On the ‘enigma of Wilkes Land’ see Simpson-Housley 1992, 61-68.