Intuition
One philosophic home of spiritual mystics is idealism. Other homes are Platonism, Neo-Platonism, Aristotle-adapted-to-Islam-or-Christianity, rationalism, skepticism, and empiricism tied to either idealism or skepticism. In his Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff classes Plato, Plotinus, and Augustine as idealists (1991, 30). That is not without scholarly precedent (including that of Kant 1783, 4:375). I hew to the historically stricter sense of idealism. The import is that I class those three figures simply as spiritualists, who predated idealism. I take idealism to have a predisposition towards spiritualism, but not to be simply a narrower class within spiritualism.
The erroneous alternatives spiritualism and materialism are each rooted in the error of taking consciousness to be fundamentally prior to existence, taking any putative knowledge of mind-independent existence to be dubious and to be settled by a consciousness that knows something of itself (Rand 1957, 1027, 1036–37, 1042, 1063; cf. 1961a, 14–20; Peikoff 1991, 20–21, 30–36). Tracking Kant, our focus will be on staging for mysticism provided by Platonic and idealist priority of consciousness, staging for denial of the reality of material existence. Such a progression is a slide from philosophy to mysticism.
In “For the New Intellectual,” Rand described people of faith as mystics and as attempting to avoid “the necessity, the risk and the responsibility of rational cognition” (1961a, 15; also 1966–67, 79). A mystic desires immediate, involuntary, and infallible knowledge; he retreats from rational cognition to his emotions and visions of a supernatural realm (1961a, 14–15, 17). Rand notes that Plato’s philosophy as taken up by Plotinus and Augustine served well as handmaiden of theology in the Dark Ages (22; cf. 1957, 1051). That is commonly understood. More novel is Rand’s picture that the Scholastic debate between nominalists and realists degenerated into the early modern schools of rationalism and empiricism. She sees the rationalists as abandoning reality by not deriving knowledge from physical facts (1961a, 30). Descartes gave modern philosophy a wrong starting point in presupposing the existence of the external world not self-evident (28; also 1957, 1058). Rand saw rationalists such as Descartes as confederates of the mystics of spirit (1961a, 30).
Berkeley was an empiricist and idealist. He had maintained that knowledge derives from the senses, though not by abstraction, and that there is no such thing as matter independent of perception. Berkeley was an empirical idealist. Kant called Berkeley’s idealism mystical. Rand passed the same verdict on Hegel’s absolute idealism (1961a, 33).
In the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Kant had criticized a general argument to the ideality of outer relations: Outer appearances cannot be perceived directly, but must be inferred as the cause of given perceptions. Inference to the existence of a cause is merely doubtful existence. Therefore existence of all objects of outer senses is doubtful (A366–67).
Kant countered that objects of outer sense are given to us just as directly as objects of inner sense. If we will but accept matter as not more than matter as something in the realm of appearance, there is no need to trip down the Berkeley lane of idealism in which the reality of matter is denied. The existence of objects of outer senses need not be inferred from effects on inner sense. Inner objects are referred to inner sense. Outer objects are referred dually to inner and outer sense; one’s outer presentations exist, and they are presentations had by oneself, which also exists with each outer presentation (A369–72).
In Kant’s critical perspective, spiritualism (pneumatism), materialism, and dualism are each falsely based positions if their affirmations are of things as they are outside appearance. Dualism is sensible and correct where we mean by it only that both matter and the thinking subject are given in sense, outer and inner (A379; see also B420, A406 B433, A690 B718).
Kant’s idealism is not empirical, but transcendental. Kant’s transcendentalism is not realist, but idealist. The form of inner sense is time. The additional form of outer sense is space. Perception is of outer actualities in time and space. Those forms are not preexisting in the outer world, but come from us. So empirical realism is true, provided it does not exceed the rational limits of cognition by ascribing space and time (which are fixed subjective conditions of experience) to a putative physical world itself. On the other hand, empirical idealism is false. Transcendental idealism does not deny or doubt, rather it affirms, the actuality of the empirical world (A373–80).
An anonymous review of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason appeared in 1782. The review was written by the German empiricists Johann Feder and Christian Garve. The opening paragraph is a snide caricature of transcendental idealism, which it refers to as a “higher idealism.” In the second paragraph, the reviewers report that Kant’s system
rests on roughly the following main propositions. All our cognition springs from certain modifications of ourselves, which we call sensations. We have no idea where they occur or what causes them. . . . That is actual for us which we represent to ourselves in some place and at some time. Space and time themselves . . . . are subjective laws of our representative capacity {capacity for presentations}, forms of sensation, and subjective conditions of sensible intuition. One basic pillar of the Kantian system rests on these concepts of sensations as mere modifications of ourselves (on which Berkeley, too, principally builds his idealism), and of space and time. (1782, 53–54)
(Text between curly braces { } in quotations is from me; text between square brackets is from the translator; text in parentheses ( ) is from the author.)
Berkeley had been a figure much ridiculed in German philosophical circles. Kant was incensed at the review, and he replied to elements of the review he found offensive. This he did in an appendix to his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783, 4:372–80). Kant points out, as one would expect, that his ideality of space and time does not transform the world into sheer illusion, which is precisely, Kant alleges, what Berkeley and all previous idealists had done (4:290, 374). Kant would now rather call his system formal or critical idealism (4:375). Transcendental misleads one to expect a visionary idealism. Kant’s system cuts down, he thinks, such idealism and in particular the “mystical and visionary idealism of Berkeley” (4:293). (See further, Emundts 2008. For the proper way to refute Kant’s idealism, see Pistorious 1786, 1789.)
In the final and brief chapter of Critique of Pure Reason, Kant sketches different conceptions of metaphysics through the history of that discipline. Concerning the legitimate object of metaphysical thought, Kant contrasts the purely sensualist philosophers, such as Epicurus, with the purely intellectualist philosophers, such as Plato.
The philosophers of the sensualist school assert that actuality is to be found only in the objects of the senses, and that everything else is imagination. Those of the intellectualist school, by contrast said that in the senses there is nothing but illusion, and that only the understanding cognizes what is true. Yet the sensualists did not by any means therefore deny reality to the concepts of understanding; but this reality was for them only logical, whereas for the intellectualists it was mystical. (A853–54 B881–82; see also A471–72 B499–500)
Kant is saying that Plato’s realm of the intellect was mystical. As concerns the origin of our concepts, Kant poses Aristotle as the head of the tradition holding that concepts are derived from experience, Plato as the head of the tradition holding that concepts have an origin that is independent of experience. Kant goes on to say that “Locke has followed Aristotle, and Leibniz has followed Plato (although keeping sufficient distance from Plato’s mystical system)” (A854 B882; cf. Leibniz 1704, 47).
Kant regards Berkeley’s system as mystical, but he does not regard the system of Leibniz as mystical. Why not? I think one reason is that Leibniz did not deny the reality of matter. Further, although Kant understood Leibniz as having “intellectualized the appearances” (A270 B326; also 1790a, 8:218–21, 148–49), which includes the material world, Kant would not have seen Leibniz as mystifying appearances as had been done for example by Malebranche (Kant 1770, 2:410). (On Kant’s understanding of Leibniz, see Garber 2008.)
Kant would have seen Leibniz’ conception of human intuitive knowledge as simply adequate immediate apprehension (Leibniz 1704, 366–67, 434, 490), and his conception of human reason as adequate for truth without Platonic recollections of knowledge from a life earlier than our earthly one. Intuitive knowledge in Leibniz’ system is not visionary. Furthermore, Kant would applaud Leibniz’ emphasis on the coherence of our perceptual experience as a way of distinguishing it from a dream. Leibniz writes:
The truth about sensible things consists only in the linking together of phenomena, this linking (for which there must be a reason) being what distinguishes sensible things from dreams . . . . The truth about our existence and about the cause of phenomena is of a different order, since it establishes [the existence of] substances. . . . . The linking of phenomena which warrants the truths of fact about sensible things outside us is itself verified by means of truths of reason, just as optical appearances are explained by geometry. (1704, 374–75)
Kant maintains that by his purely intellectual organization of sensory experience Leibniz cannot in fact “bring the propositions of experience into necessary agreement with . . . a priori mathematical assertions” (A40–41 B57). What is needed in addition to general logic in our cognitive repertoire for experience are Kant’s pure forms of sensory intuition (space and time) and his categories and principles of the understanding. Content supplied by the senses into this formal organization yields empirical knowledge universal and necessary (A57–60 B82–85).
“Since truth rests upon universal and necessary laws as its criteria, for Berkeley, experience could have no criteria of truth, because its appearances (according to him) had nothing underlying them a priori; from which it then followed that experience is nothing but sheer illusion, whereas for us space and time (in combination with the pure concepts of the understanding) prescribe a priori their law to all possible experience, which law at the same time provides the sure criterion for distinguishing truth from illusion in experience.” (1783, 4:375)
Kant pleads that his own idealism confines intuition to that of the senses and is oriented to “grasping the possibility of our a priori cognition of the objects of experience” (ibid.). Visionary idealism, by contrast, steps from a priori cognitions, such as in geometry, to non-sensory, intellectual intuitions, which are gateway to visionary, mystical realms (ibid.)
Kant speaks of visionary idealists “from the Eleatic School up to Bishop Berkeley” (1783, 4:375). Kant’s understanding of Plato and Berkeley and of their alleged likeness in metaphysics and epistemology was congruent with contemporary German scholarship in the history of philosophy (Winkler 2008, 161–64).
In what way does he think of Plato’s system as mystical? “From the way in which Plato employed the expression idea we can readily see that he meant by it something that not only is never borrowed from the senses, but that far surpasses even the concepts of understanding . . . inasmuch as nothing congruent with it is ever found in experience” (A313 B370; Republic 510d–e).
Pure mathematics is a splendid achievement of intellectual reflection.
Captivated by such a proof of reason’s might, our urge to expand [our cognitions] sees no boundaries. When the light dove parts the air in free flight and feels the air’s resistance, it might come to think that it would do much better still in space devoid of air. In the same way, Plato left the world of sense because it sets such narrow limits to our understanding; on the wings of ideas, he ventured beyond that world and into the empty space of pure understanding. He did not notice that with all his efforts he made no headway. (A4–5 B8–9)
For Plato ideas are archetypes of things themselves and not merely keys to possible experiences . . . . Ideas, in his opinion, flowed from highest reason, from where they have been imparted to human reason; now, however, human reason is no longer in its original state but must laboriously recall the ancient ideas. (A313 B370)
The mystical bent imputed to Plato so far is this much: Plato holds there is a realm of original and most important truth that is accessible only by turning from the world of sense to a world of ideas not observed by sense, a world of ideas not obscured by sense, a world of intellectual understanding not restrained by sense. That much would place Plato at least at the door of mysticism. (Consider Phaedo 65b–67b, 74b–75d, 78d–79d, 99d–101e; Republic 507–17c, 525d–29, 596–97d, 602c–3a; Timaeus 28b–29b, 43c–44c, 45d–47c; Sophist 248a, 252e–54a.) Under my first dictionary definition of mysticism, Plato is thus far not entirely through the door of mysticism because although the Forms are beyond perceptual apprehension, they are not entirely beyond intellectual apprehension. Similarly, under part of Rand’s definition, Plato is thus far not fully through the door because although Plato is claiming a knowledge that is non-sensory, he is claiming a knowledge that is rational and definable.
Then too, Plato does not hold that man’s mind is impotent. We can say, nevertheless, that Plato is walking right through the door of mysticism. Looking to Rand’s full definition, and to my second dictionary definition, we notice that Plato’s posit of the Forms is not groundless, and the posit is supported with arguments. But the ground is loose and the arguments shaky. Consider Plato’s doctrine that the Good (an intelligible form not adequately knowable) is most fundamental, that all being, truth, and susceptibility to being known are its derivatives (Republic 508d–509b). Under Rand’s conception of reason, an existential posit that is really contrary the senses is really contrary to reason. Plato’s posit of self-subsisting archetypical Forms, or Ideas, “distorts reality into a mystical construct” (Rand 1966–67, 53–54). Dr. Peikoff maintains, furthermore, that at least some of Plato’s intellectual apprehension of Forms is intuition, another mark of mysticism contra reason (1967, 95–96).
William Tait argues powerful well against the view that Plato’s texts uphold intellectual apprehension of Forms as knowledge by acquaintance, thence by intuition (2005, 166–67, 180–81, 190–92). One of Rand’s definitions of mysticism was worded this way: “Mysticism is the claim to some non-sensory, non-rational, non-definable, non-identifiable means of knowledge, such as ‘instinct’, ‘revelation’, or any form of ‘just knowing’ (1960, 62–63). Insofar as Plato has the Forms knowable to humans in their earthly life, they are not known by reason in Rand’s sense. They are not known with support of senses and by logical identification and integration of perceptual material. They are not known by this sayable positive way or that, set out in positive, literal relations to sense and reason (Republic 508d–509a). Intellectual apprehension of the Forms is left by Plato as “just knowing” (and partly as something beyond knowing, something not definable), notwithstanding his intimations that knowledge of the forms is supramathematical (see further, Mueller 1992, 183–95; Sedley 2007, 268–71; Denyer 2004; Miller 2007).
As part of our conception of mysticism in opposition to reason, we want to include that second dictionary definition I quoted: “confused and groundless speculation; superstitious self-delusion.” Kant would think mystical in this sense Plato’s speculations that Ideas are divine and that at birth our minds have been thrust into a body that obscures those ideas. Kant would depart from Plato “in his mystical deduction of these ideas” and “in the exaggerations whereby he hypostatized them” (B371n110). Kant is likely correct to denominate these speculations of Plato mystical in the present sense, rather than to take Plato to be posing them as myth. Mystical in the sense of confused or groundless speculation would be: the existence of the soul prior to birth in this world, the different access the mind has to Ideas before and after birth, and the delimitation and organization of the Ideas (Meno 81; Phaedo 64c, 66b–e, 72e–77a, 81a, 91e–95a; Republic 517b–c; Phaedrus 249c–50c; Philebus 15a–18d, 20b–30d, 59c–67a).
Kant would count Plato as mystical under not only my second, but my first dictionary definition of mysticism: “belief in the existence of realities beyond perceptual or intellectual apprehension but central to being and directly accessible by intuition.” Kant writes that “the sensualists {such as Epicurus} granted intellectual concepts, but assumed only sensible objects. The intellectualists {such as Plato} required the true objects to be merely intelligible and asserted that there is an intuition through a pure understanding unaccompanied by any senses” (A854 B882).
Kant is evidently incorrect in ascribing to Plato the idea that we have a power of intellectual intuition. Certain it is, however, that mystical intellectuals of Neo-Pythagorean, Middle Platonist, Neo-Platonist, or Christian stripe sometimes extended or remolded Plato to support human apprehension of divinity, apprehension visionary, intellectual, and intuitive.
Kant denies that we possess any purely intellectual intuitions. He divides cognitions into “either intuition or concept . . . . An intuition refers directly to the object and is singular; a concept refers to the object indirectly, by means of a characteristic that may be common to several things” (A320 B377). Concepts are unities we actively contrive among diverse things according to their common characteristics. Intuitions are given to us, given as single things whose diversity is contained within them only as parts we apprehend by limitation of the single whole (A25 B39).
We have some concepts that are not empirical; rather, they have their origin solely in the understanding. Kant reserves the name idea for a concept framed from wholly non-empirical concepts and “surpassing the possibility of experience” (A320 B377; see also A568–69 B596–97).
Let us take as “Platonic” the entire tradition of spiritualist metaphysics from Plato to Plotinus. Under this broad rubric, we speak of Platonic elements in Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, Alfarbi, Algazel, Avicebron, Bonaventure, or Malebranche, and we speak of Platonic revivals such as occurred within the Italian Renaissance, at Cambridge in the time of Newton, and in some German idealist circles in the 1790’s and early 1800’s. (On the last, see Beiser 2002, 364–65. On Platonist elements in Leibniz and his mentors at Leipzig, see Mercer 2001. On the opposition between Neo-Platonic interpretation of Plato and Christian appropriation and redefinition of Plato’s concepts, see Siniossoglou 2008.)
Kant is correct to fault Platonic Ideas as objects given by the direct and productive intuition belonging to divine understanding. And Kant is correct to fault Platonic “intuiting of these divine Ideas” here and now by us as in a shadow land (1796 8:391). This is an error of mysticism.
Kant rejected the realist views of universals, Platonic, Aristotelian, or Leibnizian. We have no intuitions of things as they are in themselves, only of things as they appear in our forms of sensory intuition. Our concepts are concepts of those forms (space and time), or our concepts are of objects as they are in those forms, which forms are from the side of the subject (B160–62). We have no concepts of things as they are in themselves. We have no concepts of forms imputable to things as they are in themselves (A266–89 B322–46).
On the other hand, Kant does not accept the nominalist strain in Locke, who writes: “General and universal belong not to the real existence of things; but are inventions and creations of the understanding, made by it for its own use, and concern only signs, whether words or ideas” (1690, 3.3.11). Neither does Kant accept the Berkeley-Hume critique of general and universal ideas and their abstraction. A concept is a universal representation; it is not a singular image, as Berkeley and Hume would have it. Locke errs not in thinking we have general ideas, but in thinking that any of them are gotten from perception of particulars unconditioned by fundamental and profound subjective forms (space and time) or that they are gotten from empirical experience unconditioned by pure concepts (the categories) of the understanding (A271 B327, A89–94 B121–27, A78–79 B104–5, B127–29, A124–28, B146–48; see also Guyer 2008, 79–85; Longuenesse 1998, 125–26; Pippin 1882, 90–116).
Kant rests concepts on the spontaneity of thought, specifically on “the unity of the act of arranging various presentations under one presentation” (A68 B93). Concepts serve as rules, general because endlessly repeatable in application, under which particulars can be grouped by characteristic marks. The unity among diversity on which concepts as generals rests is not in the world, but must be in the numerical identity of the conceiving subject (A106–12, B129–36).
Kant’s theory of concepts, like Rand’s, does not fit on either side of the traditional realist-nominalist division. Rand’s theory of concepts is accurately classified as neither nominalism (including conceptualism) nor realism. It can be rightly classed as mensural objectivism. Kant’s theory can be rightly classed as synthetic formalism.
Concepts are determinate thoughts in Kant’s view. Our conceptual power of understanding is through sensory intuitions; our understanding does not itself intuit. Ours is not “an understanding wherein through self-consciousness alone everything manifold would at the same time be given” (B135).
By our conceptual understanding, we have no commerce with the supersensible. Reason lays claim to the supersensible not through understanding, but in use of the inexplicable fact of freedom. Our Ideas of practical reason, such as God and immortality, must not be transported into the realm of possible theoretical understanding, “because if so they turn theology into theosophy, moral teleology into mysticism, and psychology into a pneumatics” (Kant 1793, 20:310; also 1788, 5:120–21).
Wisdom is not infused into a person from above by inspiration. Wisdom is a “height to be scaled from below through the inner power of his practical reason” (Kant 1800, 8:441). We have no passive means of cognition, no possibility of supersensible experience. Philosophy is the opposite of mysticism (ibid.).
(Continued)