The New Anti-Kant

309 Pages·2014·2.49 MB·English

by  Franz Prihonsky (František Příhonský)

History of Analytic Philosophy
Series Editor: Michael Beaney, University of York, UK
Titles include:
Stewart Candlish
THE RUSSELL/BRADLEY DISPUTE AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE FOR TWENTIETH-
CENTURY PHILOSOPHY
Siobhan Chapman
SUSAN STEBBING AND THE LANGUAGE OF COMMON SENSE
Annalisa Coliva
MOORE AND WITTGENSTEIN
Scepticism, Certainty and Common Sense
Giuseppina D’Oro and Constantine Sandis ( editors )
REASONS AND CAUSES
Causalism and Non-Causalism in the Philosophy of Action
George Duke
DUMMETT ON ABSTRACT OBJECTS
Mauro Engelmann
WITTGENSTEIN’S PHILOSOPHICAL DEVELOPMENT
Phenomenology, Grammar, Method, and the Anthropological View
Sébastien Gandon
RUSSELL’S UNKNOWN LOGICISM
A Study in the History and Philosophy of Mathematics
Jolen Gallagher
RUSSELL’S PHILOSOPHY OF LOGICAL ANALYSIS: 1898–1905
Anssi Korhonen
LOGIC AS UNIVERSAL SCIENCE
Russell’s Early Logicism and its Philosophical Context
Gregory Landini
FREGE’S NOTATIONS
What They Are and What They Mean
Sandra Lapointe
BOLZANO’S THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY
An Introduction
Sandra Lapointe and Clinton Tolley (e ditors and translators )
NEW ANTI-KANT
Omar W. Nasim
BERTRAND RUSSELL AND THE EDWARDIAN PHILOSOPHERS
Constructing the World
Ulrich Pardey
FREGE ON ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE TRUTH
Douglas Patterson
ALFRED TARSKI
Philosophy of Language and Logic
Erich Reck ( editor )
THE HISTORIC TURN IN ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY
Graham Stevens
THE THEORY OF DESCRIPTIONS
Mark Textor ( editor )
JUDGEMENT AND TRUTH IN EARLY ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY AND
PHENOMENOLOGY
Maria van der Schaar
G.F. STOUT AND THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ORIGINS OF ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY
Nuno Venturinha ( editor )
WITTGENSTEIN AFTER HIS NACHLASS
Pierre Wagner (e ditor )
CARNAP’S LOGICAL SYNTAX OF LANGUAGE
Pierre Wagner (e ditor )
CARNAP’S IDEAL OF EXPLICATION AND NATURALISM
Forthcoming:
Andrew Arana and Carlos Alvarez (e ditors )
ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF MATHEMATICS
Rosalind Carey
RUSSELL ON MEANING
The Emergence of Scientific Philosophy from the 1920s to the 1940s
Steven Methven
FRANK RAMSEY AND THE REALISTIC SPIRIT
Consuelo Preti
THE METAPHYSICAL BASIS OF ETHICS
The Early Philosophical Development of G.E. Moore
Charlotte Vrijen
THE PHILOSOPHICAL DEVELOPMENT OF GILBERT RYLE
History of Analytic Philosophy
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New Anti-Kant
Edited and translated by
Sandra Lapointe
McMaster University, Canada
and
Clinton Tolley
University of California San Diego, USA
Editorial matter and selection © Sandra Lapointe and Clinton Tolley 2014
Translation © Sandra Lapointe and Clinton Tolley 2014
Chapters © Individual authors 2014
Foreword © Michael Beaney 2014
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
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First published 2014 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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ISBN: 978–0–230–29111–9
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Prihonský, F. (František), 1788–1859.
[Neuer Anti-Kant, oder Prüfung der Kritik der reinen Vernunft nach den in
Bolzano’s Wissenschaftslehre niedergelegten Begriffenpez. English]
The new anti-Kant / [edited and translated by] Sandra Lapointe, McMaster
University, Canada, [and] Clinton Tolley, University of California, San Diego,
USA.
pages cm.—(History of analytic philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–230–29111–9
1. Kant, Immanuel, 1724–1804. Kritik der reinen Vernunft. 2. Bolzano,
Bernard, 1781–1848. I. Lapointe, Sandra, editor. II. Title.
B2779.P74813 2014
121—dc23 2014024397
Contents
Series Editor’s Foreword vi
Michael Beaney
Acknowledgements i x
Notes on Contributors x
Part I
1 Introduction 3
Sandra Lapointe and Clinton Tolley
2 Translators’ Note 15
3 New Anti-Kant, Or Examination of the C ritique of Pure
Reason According to the Concepts Laid Down in
Bolzano’s Theory of Science 18
František Příhonský (Translated by Sandra Lapointe and
Clinton Tolley)
Part II
4 Bolzano and Kant on Space and Outer Intuition 1 57
Clinton Tolley
5 Kant, Bolzano, and the Formality of Logic 1 92
Nicholas F. Stang
6 Kant, Bolzano, and Moore on the Value of Good Willing 2 35
Timothy Rosenkoetter
7 Bolzano, Kant, and Leibniz 2 72
Sandra Lapointe and Chloe Armstrong
Index 2 91
v
Series Editor’s Foreword
During the first half of the twentieth century, analytic philosophy
gradually established itself as the dominant tradition in the English-
speaking world, and over the last few decades it has taken firm root in
many other parts of the world. There has been increasing debate over
just what ‘analytic philosophy’ means, as the movement has ramified
into the complex tradition that we know today, but the influence of the
concerns, ideas, and methods of early analytic philosophy on contem-
porary thought is indisputable. All this has led to greater self-conscious-
ness among analytic philosophers about the nature and origins of their
tradition, and scholarly interest in its historical development and phil-
osophical foundations has blossomed in recent years, with the result
that history of analytic philosophy is now recognized as a major field of
philosophy in its own right.
The main aim of the series in which the present book appears, the first
series of its kind, is to create a venue for work on the history of analytic
philosophy, consolidating the area as a major field of philosophy and
promoting further research and debate. The ‘history of analytic philos-
ophy’ is understood broadly, as covering the period from the last three
decades of the nineteenth century to the start of the twenty-first century,
beginning with the work of Frege, Russell, Moore, and Wittgenstein,
who are generally regarded as its main founders, and the influences
upon them, and going right up to the most recent developments. In
allowing the ‘history’ to extend to the present, the aim is to encourage
engagement with contemporary debates in philosophy, for example, in
showing how the concerns of early analytic philosophy relate to current
concerns. In focusing on analytic philosophy, the aim is not to exclude
comparisons with other – earlier or contemporary – traditions, or consid-
eration of figures or themes that some might regard as marginal to the
analytic tradition but which also throw light on analytic philosophy.
Indeed, a further aim of the series is to deepen our understanding of the
broader context in which analytic philosophy developed, by looking,
for example, at the roots of analytic philosophy in neo-Kantianism or
British idealism, or the connections between analytic philosophy and
phenomenology, or discussing the work of philosophers who were
important in the development of analytic philosophy but who are now
often forgotten.
vi
Series Editor’s Foreword vii
One of the undoubted common sources of both the analytic and
phenomenological traditions is the work of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804).
His Critique of Pure Reason, published in 1781, is arguably the most impor-
tant philosophical text of the modern period. Distinguishing between
analytic and synthetic, a priori and a posteriori, necessary and contin-
gent propositions, Kant argued that while logical truths are analytic,
a priori and necessary, mathematical truths are synthetic, a priori and
necessary. Frege and Russell were to criticize this view, arguing instead
that arithmetical truths could be derived from pure logic – implying
that they could therefore be regarded as analytic. (Frege agreed with
Kant about geometrical truths; Russell thought that these, too, could
be reduced to logic.) Moore was also to criticize Kant’s views, especially
his idealism. As the main founder of the phenomenological tradition,
Edmund Husserl, too, was influenced by Kant. Like Frege and Russell,
Husserl was trained as a mathematician and came to philosophy through
concern with the foundations of mathematics. In his later work, like
Moore, he engaged deeply with Kant’s idealism.
Between Kant and the generally acknowledged founders of the
analytic and phenomenological traditions, however, lived one philoso-
pher whose work bridges the historical gap more than any other single
figure – Bernard Bolzano (1781–1848). Indeed, Bolzano was born in the
year that the C ritique of Pure Reason was published and died in the year
that Frege was born. Bolzano read Kant’s first C ritique when he was just
18 years old, and his work can be seen in many ways as a profound
critical response to Kant’s ideas. In particular, he subjected Kant’s
distinctions between analytic and synthetic, a priori and a posteriori,
and concept and intuition, to sustained critique. Like Frege, Russell and
Husserl, he also had a deep knowledge of mathematics, and it was his
sense of the inadequacy of Kant’s treatment of mathematics that fuelled
his philosophy.
Bolzano’s engagement with Kant’s philosophy informs his m agnum
opus , the Wissenschaftslehre . But there is also a work that crystallizes his
critique of Kant that has remained untranslated into English until now.
This is a work written not by Bolzano himself but by František Příhonský
(1788–1859), one of Bolzano’s collaborator. He wrote it, however, with
the support of Bolzano and it was approved shortly before Bolzano
died. Its full title is ‘New Anti-Kant, Or Examination of the Critique of
Pure Reason According to the Concepts Laid Down in Bolzano’s Theory of
Science’. It is this book that now appears for the first time in English
translation in the present volume. Sandra Lapointe published a French
translation of the Neuer Anti-Kant in 2006, and also wrote an excellent
viii Series Editor’s Foreword
book on Bolzano’s theoretical philosophy, which appeared in this series
on the history of analytic philosophy in 2011. So I am delighted that
she teamed up with Clinton Tolley, a Kant scholar, to produce this long-
overdue English translation.
As well as an introduction to the text written by the translators, this
volume also contains four essays that help both contextualize Bolzano’s
contribution to philosophy and demonstrate its relevance to analytic
philosophy today. Tolley examines Bolzano’s critique of Kant’s concep-
tion of space, focusing on the role of ‘outer intuitions’. Nicholas F.
Stang explores Kant’s and Bolzano’s views on the formality of logic, and
Timothy Rosenkoetter discusses Kant’s and Bolzano’s moral theories.
Lapointe and Chloe Armstrong locate Bolzano’s logic and philosophy
of mathematics in the broader tradition of work on logic in Germany in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Bolzano may not have directly influenced Frege, Russell, or Moore,
but there are many points of similarity and connection in their criti-
cisms of Kant. If anything, Bolzano’s critique is far more powerful and
penetrating than the criticisms made by the early analytic philosophers,
and there is increasing recognition today of just how relevant Bolzano’s
ideas are to contemporary philosophy. In the 1930s the analytic tradi-
tion was regarded as having originated in Russell’s and Moore’s rebellion
against British idealism. In the 1970s the analytic tradition was back-
dated to include Frege as one of its founders. Another forty years on
there are grounds for backdating it further to include Bolzano as well.
Certainly, the bigger story of analytic philosophy requires recognition of
Bolzano’s work, and this volume will both contribute to this bigger story
and provide an essential resource in understanding Bolzano.
Michael Beaney
May 2014
Acknowledgements
Sandra Lapointe: When I translated the Anti-Kant into French almost a
decade ago, my career as a ‘Bolzanistin’ was in its very first stages and I
was lucky to benefit from the intellectual support of Jan Sebestik, Edgar
Morscher, and Kevin Mulligan. I am still thankful today and the present
book would not have come into existence without their initial encour-
agements. The project is also the outcome of a series of workshops on
Bolzano and Kant I have organized since 2008 in various locations and
in which Clinton Tolley, Nick Stang, and Timothy Rosenkoetter have
continued to take part. I have gained much from interacting with them
intellectually, especially with Clinton, who co-signs this translation as
well as the Introduction. Katharina von Radziewsky was a godsend as
an assistant, collaborator, and (at times) task-master – Clinton and I are
extremely thankful to her.
Clinton Tolley: My first thanks must go to Sandra, whose t ireless
efforts and strength of vision kept this project from remaining a mere
shadow behind far-distant clouds. And Katharina: see above! At the
University of California, San Diego, David Brink, Don Rutherford,
Craig Callender (Department Chairs), and Seth Lerer (Dean, Arts and
Humanities) secured financial/logistical support for research and travel.
For intellectual support, encouragement, collaborative research, and
helpful feedback, very warm thanks to Jocelyn Benoist, Tim Jankowiak,
James Messina, Waldemar Rohloff, Timothy Rosenkoetter, Jan Sebestik,
Ben Sheredos, Nick Stang, and Eric Watkins. Particularly deep debts
to Samantha Matherne for patient, constructive criticism and count-
less rich, insightful conversations. Thanks, finally, to: Jason Diller and
Karolina Hübner for such friendly company around marathon transla-
tion sessions; these cafes for housing/caffeinating our work: Mulberry
St., Ezra’s Pound, Gene, Subterranean, and Royal; and Erin Glass for
helping me find Bolzano’s house.
The present translation was realized under the auspices of the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Grant #
435– 2013 – 1265).
ix