The "Critical Turn": Kant and Herz from 1770 to 1772

Eric Watkins, San Diego

In his letter to Marcus Herz from 1772, which is often singled out as being of particular importance in explaining the "critical turn", Kant raises a question about intellectual representations that might appear to be crucial to explaining the transition from On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World (in 1770), commonly known as the Inaugural Dissertation, to the Critique of Pure Reason (in 1781). In his Inaugural Dissertation (hereafter simply ID) Kant attempts to establish principles of the form of the sensible and intelligible worlds. Kant first argues that space and time are the two principles of the sensible world, where space and time are not 'objective and real' but rather 'subjective and ideal' just as they are in the first Critique's Transcendental Aesthetic. Moreover, many of Kant's arguments in the ID regarding space and time appear in the first Critique as well. Kant's account of the principle of the form of the intelligible world, by contrast, undergoes considerable change. In the ID Kant thinks that the intellect can attain what he calls "symbolic cognition" of things in themselves, which stand in mutual interaction as made possible by God's creation and conservation. In the first Critique, by contrast, Kant notoriously denies that we can have knowledge of things in themselves in order to make room for faith.1 Perhaps more importantly, in the ID Kant thinks that the understanding's role for sensible objects is very limited - it is restricted to what he calls its logical use, the subordination of one appearance to another after comparison according to the principle of contradiction - whereas in the first Critique it plays an essential role insofar as the categories must be applied to sensible objects and thereby imply a real use of the understanding.

Seen in this light, the crucial difference between the ID and the first Critique lies in how Kant understands the relationship between intellectual representations and their objects. In order to understand how and why Kant comes to change his mind on this important point, scholars have focused on an important letter that Kant wrote to Marcus Herz on February 21,1772 in which he notes that in working out his position in the ID he has discovered a serious problem:

The precise difference between the ID's account of "symbolic cognition" and the first Cri-tique's doctrine of "thinking things in themselves" is an important, and insufficiently ex-plored question.

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7 0 Eric Watkins

Auf welchem Grund beruhet die Beziehung desjenigen, was man in uns Vorstellung nennt, auf den Gegenstand? Enthält die Vorstellung nur die Art, wie das subject von dem Gegenstande afficiert wird, so ists leicht einzusehen, wie er diesem als eine Wirkung seiner Ursache gemäß sey und wie diese Bestimmung unsres Gemiiths etwas vorstellen d. i. einen Gegenstand haben könne . . . . Eben so: wenn das, was in uns Vorstellung heißt, in Ansehung des objects activ wäre, d. i. wenn dadurch selbst der Gegenstand hervorgebracht würde, wie man sich die Göttliche Erkentnisse als die Urbilder der Sachen vorstellet, so würde auch die Conformitaet derselben mit den objecten verstanden werden können (X , 130) .

Though Kant's letter to Herz has been interpreted in many different ways, these interpretations typically fall into three main types. The first type, rep-resented by Wolfgang Carl,2 suggests that Kant has seen for the first time the problem of showing that the categories (intellectual representations) apply to appearances (objects of sense), a problem that is addressed by the first Cri-tique's Transcendental Deduction. The second type, represented by Lewis White Beck,3 suggests that the problem is not how intellectual representations can apply to appearances (objects of sense), but rather of how they can apply to things in themselves (noumena or objects of thought). Thus, the problem is "solved" not by the Transcendental Deduction, but rather by the Transcen-dental Dialectic. In other words, by means of the problem Kant articulates in the letter to Herz he comes to realize that one cannot apply the categories to things in themselves, and thus Kant's task in the first Critique is to show why this is the case in a detailed way. The third option, represented by Predrag Cicovacki,4 is that Kant is concerned with how intellectual representations can apply to any objects at all (whether things in themselves or appearances), since Kant rejects any sort of divine guarantee of correspondence (different accounts of which Plato, Malebranche, and Crusius are alleged to have devel-oped). Kant indicates that the problem can be solved, not in its details, but in its essentials, as follows: "[Ich] suchte die transcendental-philosophie, nemlich alle Begriffe der gäntzlich reinen Vernunft, in eine gewisse Zahl von categorien zu bringen, aber nicht wie Aristoteles, der sie so, wie er sie fand, in seinen 10 praedicamenten aufs bloße Ungefehr neben einander setzte; sondern so wie sie sich selbst durch einige wenige Grundgesetze des Verstandes von selbst in classen eintheilen" (X 132). That is, on this third type of reading of the letter to Herz Kant seems to have discovered the problem of what he will call the Metaphysical Deduction in the second edition of the first Cri-tique.

Without attempting to decide among these various interpretations, one might still be able to shed some light on the issue by considering Marcus Herz in a bit more detail, since Kant addressed the letter in question to Herz and

2 Wolfgang Carl, "Kant's First Draft of the Deduction of the Categories", in Kant's Transcen-dental Deductions, ed. by E. Förster, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989, 3-20.

3 Lewis White Beck, "Two Ways of Reading Kant's Letter to Herz: Comments on Carl", in Kant's Transcendental Deductions, pp. 21-26.

4 Predrag Cicovacki, "An Aporia of A Priori Knowledge", Kant-Studien 82 (1991), pp. 349-360.

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The "Critical Turn": Kant and Herz from 1770 to 1772 71

Herz is in as good a position as any to understand exactly what Kant might mean by this question. For Herz was one of Kant's students and was thus presumably familiar with Kant's position as presented in his lectures. Further, for the public defense of his ID Kant selected Herz as a respondent to answer the objections of Georg Wilhelm Schreiber, Johann August Stein, and Georg Daniel Schröter. Finally, and what is most relevant to the current issue, after the defense of the ID (on August 21, 1770) Herz remained in contact with Kant (despite leaving Königsberg for Berlin) and wrote Betrachtungen aus der Spekulativen Weltweisheit (1771). As Herz himself notes, his Betrachtungen is more or less an explanation, paraphrase, or sympathetic commentary on Kant's ID. Only here and there and on minor points does Herz think that he might be developing Kant's position in independent ways. What's more, we know that Kant received Herz's Betrachtungen around July 9, 1771, since on that date Herz writes Kant: "in der fahrende Post empfangen Sie meine Schrift, in welchem Sie allem Vermuthen nach, wenig finden werden, das in Ihrem unter den Händen habenden Werke einige Verändrungen verursachen sollte. Niemanden habe ich es weniger nöthig zu sagen als Ihnen theuerster Herr Professor wie klein mein ganz Verdienst in dieser Schrift ist. Ich habe bloß Ihre Schrift vor Augen gehabt, den Faden Ihrer Gedanken gefolgt, und nur hie und da einige Digreßionen gemacht" (X 125). The next letter in the Kant-Herz correspondence is Kant's letter to Herz of February 21, 1772, in which Kant raises the question quoted above.

In this letter, Kant immediately apologizes for not having responded sooner, but then explains that he has been preoccupied with problems stemming from the ID. While one might suspect that Kant is especially worried about Mendelssohn's and Lambert's objections, the difficulties Kant raises do not seem to be related in any natural way to their objections, given that their primary objections concern the ideality of time rather than the relationship between intellectual representations and their objects. I would suggest, in-stead, that they are more closely related to comments Herz makes in his Betrachtungen. Thus, it may be helpful to consider a few passages from Herz's Betrachtungen that might shed light on how precisely to understand the problem Kant is trying to express in his letter to Herz.

In the beginning of Abteilung II of Herz's Betrachtungen (which discusses issues from Section V of Kant's ID) Herz distinguishes between aesthetics and mathematics, on the one hand, and metaphysics, on the other hand, by claiming that the former "bloß unsere Erkenntnis von den Dingen und nicht die Dinge selbst zum Gegenstand haben" (p. 46).5 With respect to metaphys-ics, however, "demjenigen würden wir nur halb danken, der uns z. B. das Dasein Gottes oder die Unsterblichkeit der Seele auf keine andere Art dartut, als es den Grundgesetzen unserer Erkenntnis gemäß ist, solange diese Grundgesetze nicht von der Beschaffenheit sind, daß sich die äußeren Dinge

5 Markus Herz, Betrachtungen aus der spekulativen Wehweisheit, Hamburg: Felex Meiner, 1990.

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72 Eric Watkins

unabhängig von aller Vorstellung gleichfalls nach ihnen richten müssen. Wir wollen überzeugt sein, daß ein Gott notwendig existieren muß, nicht daß er uns zu denken notwendig sei; daß unsere Seele ihrer Natur nach der Sterblichkeit unfähig sei, nicht daß sie uns so scheine" (p. 47). In this passage, Herz is expressing concern about the possibility that our intellectual represen-tations (of God and the immortality of our soul) might not necessarily agree with their objects. This is clearly Herz's own point, since the relevant section of Kant's ID (§ 23) does not raise this skeptical possibility at all. At the same time, it seems clear that this point (at least expressed at this level of generality) is strikingly similar to the question Kant raises in the letter to Herz in ques-tion. Thus, it seems likely that Herz's Betrachtungen provides us with an important clue as to how Kant discovered that the relationship between our intellectual representations and their objects might be more problematic than he had supposed.

Having established the general importance of Herz's Betrachtungen for Kant's letter to Herz, however, the crucial issue becomes one of whether Kant is indebted to Herz for more than just having pointed out a significant difficulty with Kant's own position in the ID. In other words, does Herz's Betrachtungen shed any light on what motivates Kant to formulate the prob-lem the way he does or on how Kant thinks he can solve it? Consider a passage later on in Abteilung II of Herz's Betrachtungen, where he returns to the general problem of correspondence between our intellectual representations and their objects and explains it in more detail:

Herr Kant bemüht sich vornehmlich, den Unterschied der sinnlichen und der reinen Vernunfterkenntnisse auseinanderzusetzen. Es war ihm also genug zu zeigen, daß jene nur etwas Subjektives und diese das Objektive der Gegenstände zum Vorwurf haben, und die Grundsätze anzugeben, welche einer jeden ihrer verschiedenen Natur nach besonders eigen sind. Allein ich glaube mit vieler Wahrscheinlichkeit zu behaupten, daß selbst zwischen dem objektiven Verhalten der Dinge, insofern es nach den Gesetzen der reinen Vernunft von uns bestimmt wird, und demjenigen, welches in ihnen unabhängig von unserer Erkenntnis stattfindet, noch ein allzu großer Abstand ist, als daß man in allen Fällen von jenem auf dieses mit Zuversicht sollte schließen können. Ich gründe meine Mutmaßung ... auf die Natur unserer Erkenntnis überhaupt. Locke zeigt deutlich, daß diese sich nie weiter erstreckt als auf die Eigenschaften, die den Dingen zukommen. Ein jeder Teil unserer Erkenntnis ist ein Urteil, in welchem wir einem Ding als einem Subjekt irgendeine Bestimmung zum Prädikat beilegen. Dasjenige aber, welches die Unterlage ausmacht, auf wel-cher alle Bestimmungen ruhen, d. i. dasjenige, welchem alles dieses zukommt, was wir von ihm erkennen, kann an und für sich nicht wiederum eine Bestimmung sein, weil es sonst wiederum ein Subjekt voraussetzen müßte, an welchem es haftet, sondern es muß von der Beschaffenheit sein, daß es nur anschauend und nie durch ein Urteil erkannt werden kann. Wenn wir aber von einem Vorwurf seine Eigen-schaften festsetzen wollen, so nehmen wir diejenigen, welche ihm notwendig zu-kommen müssen und aus denen alle übrigen am füglichsten hergeleitet werden können, für dessen Wesen, und beurteilen diese danach, inwiefern sie in demselben gegründet sind oder ihm widersprechen. Die Resultate tragen wir alsdann mit der größten Gewißheit auf das Ding selbst über, in welchem unser angenommenes Wesen selbst nur Prädikat ist. Der Unterschied zwischen dem wahren Wesen eines Dinges und demjenigen, welches von uns nur dafür angenommen wird, wird Ihnen

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The "Critical Turn": Kant and Herz from 1770 to 1772 73

nunmehr ... in die Augen fallen.... Damit wir sie ... nicht miteinander verwechseln, so werde ich jenes das reelle und dieses das logische Wesen nennen. In der Sprache der Crusianer wäre das erste ein subjectum quod und das letzte ein subjectum quo (63-65).

As above, we see Herz distinguishing between our intellectual representa-tions and their objects (considered independently of how we represent them). Yet here Herz justifies his objection through recourse to a Lockean conception of knowledge that distinguishes between different kinds of essences. Locke's distinction in the Essay concerning Human Understanding between nominal and real essences (Book III, Chapter IV, §§ 2-11) is well known; a nominal essence is a collection of sensible properties that follow from the real, but unknown essence or constitution of a thing. Yet Herz is not interested in nominal essences, since they could be represented by our sensible representa-tions. Herz's problem is with how we can be sure that our intellectual repre-sentations represent the real essences of objects. Yet Herz's problem is not quite Locke's problem that we cannot know the real essences of things, since our knowledge of things is exhausted in the collection of sensible qualities found in the nominal essences of things and no meaningful content remains for their real essences. Herz agrees with Kant's position in the ID that we have intellectual concepts that give content to the real essences of objects.

Herz's problem stems rather from the very nature of discursive knowledge. According to Herz all knowledge takes the form of judgments, but judgments can extend only to the properties of a thing, never to the thing itself. Thus, we cannot know a thing itself by means of judgment, but only its properties. Herz's justification for this line of reasoning is as follows. In a (simple cat-egorical) judgment we claim that a property inheres in an object by asserting a predicate of a subject. However, since properties require something to inhere in, the ultimate basis of properties cannot itself be a property. (Herz seems to assume without any argument that properties could not inhere in lower-level properties ad infinitum.) This ultimate basis, that is, the object itself, cannot therefore be known through judgments, but can be known only intuitively. However, we can have no intuitive knowledge of the objects of metaphysics (such as God and the soul). Thus, there is a gap, Herz wants to suggest, between how we represent objects intellectually, according to the understand-ing, and how they are independently of our intellectual representations (that is, independently of their properties).

Herz develops this skeptical line in more detail by distinguishing between the real and the logical essence of a thing. The real essence of a thing is that which is a necessary part of the thing (the thing independently of its proper-ties). The logical essence, by contrast, is the set of properties that must necessarily be attributed to the object and from which other properties can be derived most easily. In the process of determining an object's logical essence (that is, while we are ascertaining which properties belong to an object necessarily and which do not) we are tempted to view the logical essence as a real essence (by attributing the properties constituting the logical essence to the thing itself), but this is mistaken. For the object is distinct from its

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74 Eric Watkins

properties, even from its necessary properties. In light of this distinction, Herz then states that the real essence of an object both determines its logical essence and extends beyond it, determining those aspects of a thing that the logical essence does not. In this way, Herz can claim that an intuitive understanding, which can see the real essence of a thing, can know everything about an object immediately (e. g., without having to compare the properties of one object with those of any other) whether the object is actual or merely possible.

Now that we understand in greater detail how Herz justifies his objection to maintaining a correspondence between our intellectual representations and their objects, we can return to the question of whether Herz's Betrachtungen influenced Kant not only on the general issue of the correspondence of intel-lectual representations with their objects but on these further issues as well. It is now clear that Herz's and Kant's concerns take on very different forms. Herz worries exclusively about the correspondence between our intellectual representations and the real essences of objects. He seems to accept that we can have knowledge of the logical essences of things. Kant's concerns are at a more general level, since the dilemma he formulates would seem to hold for both the logical and real essences of objects. In other words, the question for Kant is how can we know anything about things in themselves (both these objects and their properties).

Further, since Kant is worried about the problem of correspondence for real and logical essences, the reason for his worries must be different from Herz's, for whom the problem stems from the discursive character of the understanding. Kant raises systematic, causal concerns about explaining the correspondence between intellectual representations and things in themselves. If the thing caused a representation in us, then the correspondence would be possible, but such a representation would not be an intellectual representation of a thing in itself (but a representation of a sensible object). If our intellectual representations caused the object, then our intellectual representations could represent the real essence of the object, but the human understanding does not create its object (at least not in non-mathematical and non-practical cases). But if neither of these two possibilities holds, Kant asks, then how can we be certain of the correspondence?

After explaining in this way the problem of correspondence for intellectual (as opposed to sensible) representations, noting how the problem is solved for mathematics' quantitative objects, but how this solution will not work for the understanding's qualities (i. e., qualitative features of objects), Kant continues the letter to Herz as follows:

Plato nahm ein geistiges ehemaliges Anschauen der Gottheit zum Urquell der reinen Verstandesbegriffe und Grundsätze an. Malebranche ein noch daurendes immerwährendes Anschauen dieses Urwesens. Verschiedene Moralisten eben die-ses in Ansehung der ersten moralischen Gesetze Crusius gewisse eingepflantzte Regeln zu urtheilen und Begriffe, die Gott schon so wie sie seyn müssen, um mit den Dingen zu harmonieren, in die Menschliche Seelen pflantzte, von welchen systemen man die erstere den influxum hyperphysicum das letzte aber die harmoniam praestabilitam intellectualem nennen könte. Allein der Deus ex Machina

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The "Critical Turn" : Kant and Herz from 1770 to 1772 75

ist in der Bestimmung des Ursprungs und der Gültigkeit unsrer Erkenntnisse das ungereimteste was man nur wählen kan und hat außer dem betriiglichen Zirkel in der Schlusreihe unsrer Erkenntnisse noch das nachtheilige daß er jeder Grille oder andächtigem oder grüblerischem Hirngespinst Vorschub giebt (X 131).

While it might be tempting to see Kant as drawing on Herz's views about the possibility of intuiting but not discursively knowing things in themselves when he criticizes Plato's and Malebranche's intuitionist positions, the fact that Kant places "various moralists" and Crusius, both of whom presumably do not attribute any essential role to intuition, in the same class as Plato and Malebranche is decisive against this temptation. Kant's objections to these various views are two-fold. First, it would be circular to invoke God in order to explain how our intellectual representations correspond to their objects, since the knowledge of God required in order to explain the correspondence between our intellectual representations and their objects assumes the very correspondence it is supposed to establish. Second, these views open the door to highly subjective, arbitrary claims. In the case of Plato and Malebranche, any particular person's claim that he or she has had an intuition of God or God's ideas might appear difficult to refute, while in the case of Crusius any correspondence either with things or between individuals is completely con-tingent or arbitrary. Accordingly, not only must Kant's own solution to the question not require knowledge of God, but it must also exclude contingency or arbitrariness.

So how does Kant think that he can solve the problem of correspondence expressed in the letter to Herz? Kant continues the passage quoted above as follows:

Indem ich ... die Quellen der Intellectualen Erkentnis suchte, ohne die man die Natur u. Grentzen der metaphysic nicht bestimmen kan, brachte ich diese Wissen-schaft in wesentlich unterschiedene Abtheilungen und suchte die transcendental-philosophie, nemlich alle Begriffe der gäntzlich reinen Vernunft, in eine gewisse Zahl von categorien zu bringen, aber nicht wie Aristoteles ... sondern so wie sie sich selbst durch einige wenige Grundgesetze des Verstandes von selbst in classen eintheilen (X 131-2).

At first glance it might seem that Kant's solution is no solution at all. For Kant's solution seems to amount to the bald assertion that, unlike Aristotle's categories, his own intellectual representations are not arbitrary with respect to either their source or their classification. Moreover, it would seem to be a bald assertion that, even if granted, does not solve the original problem of explaining the correspondence between intellectual representations and their objects. I would suggest that Herz's discussion in the Betrachtungen can shed some light on how Kant might think that what he has said here helps with the problem at hand. Recall Herz's distinction between real and logical essences. The real essence is what constitutes a thing, whereas the logical essence contains its necessary and most fundamental properties from which other properties can be derived. Herz focused on the mistake of thinking that the logical essence was the real essence. The reason that one would be tempted

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76 Eric Watkins

into thinking that the logical essence is a real essence is that it consists of necessary properties that are primitive or fundamental to an object. Accord-ingly, Herz focuses on an activity whereby one distinguishes properties into classes: necessary vs. contingent and fundamental vs. derivative. Insofar as the understanding, as an epistemic faculty, is concerned, all properties are on a par with each other. Thus the distinctions between properties must derive from ontological considerations pertaining to the kinds of properties they are, considerations which the understanding simply picks up on. Kant's focus is on essences, which are not created by our understanding but exist independently of it.

If Kant, by reading Herz's discussion of logical and real essences, is stimu-lated into thinking about what properties constitute essences, that is, which are necessary and primitive as opposed to contingent and derivative, he may be in a position to develop an account that solves his problem. First, the correspondence problem is solved because the understanding does not create the essences; it simply understands or grasps them as they exist independently of it. To explain it in terms of Kant's own dilemma, understood in terms of independent essences that the understanding grasps, the correspondence de-pends neither on the object causing the representation nor on the representa-tion causing the object (nor on God assuring us that we have correspondence). Textual evidence for an ontological understanding of essences can be seen in Kant saying that "the categories divide themselves up" "by themselves" ("so wie sie sich selbst durch einige wenige Grundgesetze des Verstandes von selbst in classen eintheilen" emphasis added, E.W.). It is not the understanding that does the division or classification, but rather the categories themselves in virtue of the properties that they represent. To put the point a different way, Kant's position in the ID is that it is not the understanding that makes something a substance or a cause; that's what that thing is independently of the understanding, though the understanding comes to see that these proper-ties are more fundamental than others.

Second, this reading of Kant's solution explains why Kant would think that his solution is not subject to the criticisms he raises for Plato, Malebranche, "various moralists", and Crusius. It is clear that Kant does not invoke God; thus the charge of circularity would be groundless. Second, because the properties divide themselves up, the principle of classification is not arbitrary. Granted, if the understanding were fully responsible for determining which properties are fundamental, it is difficult to see why that would not be in some sense arbitrary (insofar as the division would be based on the understanding's purposes and goals). However, according to the current interpretation, the principle of classification is ontological and thus stands on its own so that no charge of arbitrariness can be raised.

If this interpretation of Kant's solution to the problem he raises in his letter to Herz is correct, what implications does it have for our understanding of Kant's transition from the pre-Critical to the Critical period? According to this interpretation it seems that there is no evidence that Kant has discovered the problem that he will attempt to solve in the Transcendental Deduction.

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The "Critical Turn": Kant and Herz from 1770 to 1772 7 7

For Kant does not yet seem to see the necessity of applying intellectual representations to sensible objects (beyond the merely logical use of the understanding, which does not employ concepts independent of experience). Further, it would also seem that Kant has not yet noticed the problem of the Transcendental Dialectic, namely that one must prove that we cannot know things in themselves. For the problem of correspondence that Kant is raising in the letter to Herz is one that he believes himself to have solved, whereas the Transcendental Dialectic presupposes that no solution is possible. That is, in the letter to Herz Kant believes that correspondence can be achieved, whereas Kant's position in the Transcendental Dialectic is the reverse, namely that one cannot establish correspondence between intellectual representations and things in themselves. Nor is the problem solved by the Metaphysical Deduc-tion. For the essential feature of intellectual representations in the letter to Herz is that they represent ontologically independent natures (true and immu-table natures, to use Cartesian terms), whereas Kant's account of the catego-ries in the first Critique emphasizes their dependence on logical forms of judgment and the kinds of unity that they can bring about in our represen-tations.

In conclusion, Kant may have raised and then solved an important prob-lem in his letter to Herz, but this problem does not map neatly onto any particular doctrine or section within the first Critique, nor can it be identified as the problem which brought about the "critical turn." That Kant's hope of publishing "eine Critik der reinen Vernunft... binnen etwa 3 Monathen" goes unfulfilled and that it takes nine years instead suggests that rather than a single issue or question, a wide range of complex and detailed factors, which could allow for significant continuities among the various breaks, are likely to have been responsible for the "critical turn".

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