| | Categories – Aristotle/Kant/Rand
Some Background
In her 1936 novel We the Living, Rand has a line to display the type of mind and interests of protagonist Leo, who is Kira’s beloved. “When his young friends related, in whispers, the latest French stories, Leo quoted Kant and Nietzsche.” This line is included in Robert Mayhew’s study “We the Living: ’36 and ’59” (p. 192). In the 1959 edit, Rand replaced Kant with Spinoza in this line. Dr. Mayhew naturally is struck by the clear indication that Rand did not hold her well-known antipathy to Kant in her early years. Also, later in the novel, when Leo is being arrested by Andre, the latter throws this line at the former: “A tendency for transcendental thinking is apt to obscure our perception of reality.” Rand cut this line in the 1959 edit.
I rather wonder if Rand was not very familiar with Spinoza in her early years, and had she been familiar with him, would have used him instead of Kant. And why not use Aristotle in Leo’s line? I think that is because there is a level of difficulty and sustained, rarified thought widely recognized to be found in Kant and Spinoza, but not so widely associated with Aristotle. She wanted to contrast the shallowness of surrounding people with the serious mind and inner life of Leo, an inner life far away from the crush of the Red boot on their society. Rand’s use of Kant in her original 1936 version does not necessarily signal absence of serious disagreement with Kant at that time, but it surely does indicate an intensification of her contempt for Kant’s ideas as she learned more through the years. By the time of the reissue, in revision, Rand regarded Kant’s as the antipode of her philosophy in every fundamental. Under her later assessment of Kant’s system, she would not have used him in the line about Leo, however shy of perfection she took to be the character Leo in his original, undefeated state.
It is my understanding that Rand learned what she knew of Kant’s theoretical philosophy mainly through secondary sources, rather than through sustained study of Kant’s often turgid Critique of Pure Reason, Prolegomena, and so forth. (Kant’s ethical writings are more amenable to reading by the general educated public, especially Groundwork.) But there were competent English commentaries available, such as Kant’s Metaphysics of Experience by H. J. Paton (1936). As I recall, that is the commentary on the first critique that Leonard Peikoff recommended in the Kant portion of his History of Philosophy taped lectures in the early 70’s. Naturally, one expects Rand had extensive discussions about Kant with her younger studious friends, such and Peikoff and Barbara Branden.
Here is some refresher of Rand’s views on Kant’s theoretical philosophy from the time of publishing Atlas Shrugged.
1957
“‘Things as they are’ are things as perceived by your mind; divorce them from reason and they become ‘things as perceived by your wishes’.” (1036)
1960
Kant “did not deny the validity of reason—he merely claimed that reason is ‘limited’, . . . and that we can never perceive reality or ‘things as they are’.”
Kant is the root of Pragmatism, Logical Positivism, and all “current philosophies.” (64)
Kant’s conception of reason is not in fact that faculty of human consciousness that is reason; it belongs not to humans, but to a kind of robot (64).
(Cf. 1957
The creation myth of Genesis says that man “ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge—he acquired a mind and became a rational being. . . . Whatever he was [before the apple imbroglio]—that robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, . . . he was not man.” [1026]
The Judaic-Christian-Islamic teachers have taught man “that his body and his consciousness are two enemies engaged in deadly conflict, two antagonists of opposite natures, . . . / Do you observe what human faculty that doctrine was designed to ignore? It was man’s mind that had to be negated in order to make him fall apart. . . . He was left as the passively ravaged victim of a battle between a robot and a dictaphone.” [1026])
1961
“Kant’s theory of the ‘categories’ as the source of man’s concepts was a preposterous invention.” (31)
Kant’s “phenomenal” world, “reality as perceived by man’s mind, is a distortion. The distorting mechanism is man’s conceptual faculty: man’s basic concepts (such as space, time, and existence) are not derived from experience or reality, but come from an automatic system of filters in his consciousness (labeled “categories” or “forms of perception”) which impose their own design on his perception of the external world . . . .” (31)
“The major line of philosophers rejected Kant’s ‘noumenal’ world quite speedily, but they accepted his ‘phenomenal’ world and carried it to its logical consequences: . . . the view of man’s conceptual faculty as a mechanism for producing arbitrary ‘constructs’ not derived from experience or facts . . . .” (32)
1970
Kant “is the most fertile father of the doctrine equating the means of consciousness with its content—I refer you to his notion that the machinery of consciousness produces its own (categorical) content.” (88)
1974
“Have you ever thought or said the following? . . . ‘It’s logical, but logic has nothing to do with reality’. You got it from Kant.” (4)
To the Work
Robert Keele had written on January 5th “Kant states that he borrowed those infamous concepts of the understanding from Aristotle.” I remarked that that was inaccurate and:
Kant sets out his table of judgments in A70 B95. This table is a representation of the various forms of judgments covered by logic texts of his time, as used in the logic courses he taught, and with his own modifications, which he explains in the text immediately following that table. Taking this table as a lead, he proceeds to “deduce” his table of the categories of the understanding. The entries in the former table are merely logical, the entries in the latter are transcendental.
Aristotle’s categories are ontological, Kant’s are forms of cognition. The latter is intended to stand in place of the former; but treating the latter as forms of being, as it is apart from human consciousness, is against the rules of Kant. Kant is rocking the audience to sleep when he writes: “There arise as many pure concepts of understanding applying a priori to objects of intuition as such, as in the preceding table there were logical functions involved in all possible judgments. For these functions of the understanding are completely exhaustive and survey its power entirely. Following Aristotle, we shall call these functions categories. For our aim is fundamentally [uranfänglich] the same as his, even though it greatly deviates from his in its execution”(A79 B105). (Translation of Werner Pluhar 1996).
Kant then displays his table of categories and lays out his criticisms of Aristotle’s attempt at identifying most basic categories (KrV A80–83 B106–9).
Robert replied:
I was referring to Kant's statement at A80: "These concepts we shall, with Aristotle, call categories, for our primary purpose is the same as his, although widely diverging from it in manner of execution."
"Manner of execution" I take to mean the systematization and deduction of these concepts according to a rule or principle rather than gathering them rhapsodically: "It was an enterprise worthy of an acute thinker like Aristotle to make search for these fundamental concepts. But as he did so on no principle, he merely picked them up as they came his way..." (A81)
As for the categories being ontological for Aristotle, you must be thinking of his theory of essences, or "what it is for a thing to be." That certainly says to me that Aristotle was referring to being and not concept in relation to essence, whereas a category is not being, categories belong to the topic of logic although of course they are then related to being by the thinking mind.
What Kant has done is take a logic table, as you mentioned, translating it from that topic to another, a transcendental topic. That is the step Aristotle obviously did not take. But it was only in the form of a transcendental topic that, as you also mentioned, Kant could then deduce them.
Further, Robert wrote: “I just don’t see how Aristotle’s categories could have been ontological when they are logical, although relating to being. Essences (‘what it is to be’) are ontological for Aristotle, not categories.”
Also, concerning my remark, “Kant sets out his table of judgments in A70 B95. This table is a representation of the various forms of judgments covered by logic texts of his time, as used in the logic courses he taught, and with his own modifications, which he explains in the text immediately following that table.” Robert wrote:
I'm not sure if you're saying for certain that Kant actually had a table of logic already prepared for him. But Kant makes it appear in his analysis as if he borrowed his categories from Aristotle. I'm trying to remember if Kant prepared one especially for the CPR or if he borrowed it from another book, or if he had it from one of his own lectures.
However, I do know this much: Kant's table of logical functions is flawed, and so I would not take it too seriously. Fortunately, the deduction of categories is not dependent upon the table of logic except in a general sense, and that's how I take it. But the particular details of the table itself are not up to scholastic standards.
Logic, in Kant’s conception of it, is “the science of the rules of the understanding as such” (A52 B76). From one standpoint, one abstracting from all the particular differences of the objects of thought, logic is the set of “absolutely necessary rules of thought without which the understanding cannot be used at all” (A52 B76). Logic from that standpoint, Kant calls general logic.
In Kant’s view, “thoughts without content are empty” (A51 B75). “Without sensibility no object would be given to us; and without understanding no object would be thought” (A51 B75). Only from the union of the understanding and the senses can cognition arise.
The science of general logic is that part of general logic that abstracts not only from differences among this or that object of thought, but abstracts from all empirical conditions of our psychology. Rules on how to hold to logical thought among the currents of sensory inputs, attention, imagination, memory, habit, inclination, and prejudice are based on experience (A53 B77). The science of general logic “is demonstrated doctrine, and everything in it must be certain completely a priori,” which is to say, shown and known to be certainly correct without appeal to experience (A54 B78–79). (Further)
The part of general logic that abstracts from all empirical conditions of our psychology, the science of logic itself, Kant calls pure general logic. The part of general logic that applies the pure general logic and deals with psychological impediments to its successful application, Kant calls applied general logic. I expect that you know all that, Robert.
In your quotation of A80 B105, and I see that you are using Kemp Smith’s translation. I will stay with the Pluhar translation throughout, but in the passages you quoted, there will be no great difference in meaning between the two. Text within square braces is from the translator; text within curly braces is from me. Text in regular parentheses is Kant’s own.
“Following Aristotle, we shall call these functions {of the understanding} categories. For our aim is fundamentally the same as his, even though it greatly deviates from his in its execution” (A80 B105). Kemp Smith has “manner of execution” in place of “execution.” You remarked in that you take “manner of execution” to mean the systematization and deduction of these concepts according to a rule or principle. The same can be said with simply “execution” in the translation. Either way, the interpretation you have given to Kant’s representation of what he is doing is correct. Let’s get that relevant text before us:
This division of the table of categories has been generated systematically from a common principle, viz., our ability to judge (which is equivalent to our ability to think). It has not been generated rhapsodically, by locating pure concepts haphazardly, where we can never be certain that the enumeration of the concepts is complete. For when we then infer the division only by induction, forgetting that in this way we never gain insight into why precisely these concepts, rather than others, reside in the pure understanding. Locating these basic concepts was a project worthy of an acute man like Aristotle. But having no principle, he snatched them up as he came upon them. He hunted up ten of them at first, . . . . (A81 B106–7)
In Aristotle’s efforts to arrive at basic categories, he was looking for basic categories of being, not basic pure concepts. It is true that he arrives at his categories at least partly by induction, but it is not merely enumerative induction. Rather it is his other type of induction, the one we call indifferently abstractive or intuitive induction (Posterior Analytics 1.1.71a1–9, 2.19.99b15–100b17). This is the type referred to in the title of Leonard Peikoff’s paper “Aristotle’s Intuitive Induction,”* which examines Aristotle’s bases for the principle of non-contradiction, a principle of being and of correct thought in Aristotle’s conception of it.
Rand’s basic categories of existents are three (or four): Entity, Action, and Attribute. (The fourth for her is Relationship, although that could be taken as under Action and Attribute; cf. Lowe 2006, 78) Any elaboration of the bases of how we know these categories of existents are the most basic ones, will likely not depart all that far from the ways of Aristotle, if the elaboration is in step with Rand’s thought *. At any rate, there will be elements of perception and induction in such knowledge. To wit, those elements are more salient in saying things like “there are entities, they have actions and attributes” or “all concretes fall into one or more of those categories” than in saying, with demonstration, “the sum of the angles of a triangle in the Euclidian plane equals two right angles.”
However, if I take consciousness as falling under the Randian categories listed above, there is something about consciousness that gets left out of the picture, namely, the intentionality of consciousness. That is, intentionality gets left out if I think of those categories of existence, such as Action, only in their object-mode, only from an outside, or third-person, perspective. To bring the entirety of consciousness within a comprehensive categorical scheme, we need to include the inside, or first-person, phenomena within such categories as Action. Rand laid this out as general setting of her categories by introduction of the super-categories Existence and Consciousness, subsidiary of Existence (1957, 1015–16), just before introduction of her categories of existence: Entity, Action, and Attribute (1957, 1016).
Robert mentioned that for Aristotle essence is “what each thing is said to be in virtue of itself” (Metaph. 1029b14). Yes, I do think that essence—and definition, genus, and differentia (subject-predicate relations later known as predicables)—are not only logical, but ontological, for Aristotle. As for what Aristotle called categories proper, in the Topics, he includes: What a thing is, Quantity, Quality, Relation, Place, Time, Position, State {Possesion}, Activity, Passivity {Undergoing}. “For the accident and genus and property and definition of anything will always be in one of these predications; for all the propositions found through these signify either what something is or its quality or quantity or some one of the other types of predicate” (Top. 103b22–27). Kant is correct in thinking Aristotle has no demonstration that this set of categories are complete. Aristotle, however, can challenge us to come up with questions additional to those (such as What is it? and How much?) whose answers fall within the categories he proposes.
(To be continued.)
References
Aristotle c. 348–322 B.C. The Complete Works of Aristotle. J. Barnes, editor. 1984. Princeton.
Kant, I. 1781, 1787. Critique of Pure Reason. W. S. Pluhar, translator. Hackett.
Mayhew, R. 2004. We the Living: ’36 and ’59. In Essays on Ayn Rand’s We the Living. Lexington Books.
Rand, A. 1957. Atlas Shrugged. Random House.
——. 1959. We the Living. Signet.
——. 1960. Faith and Force: Destroyers of the Modern World. In Rand 1982.
——. 1961. For the New Intellectual. Signet.
——. 1970. Kant versus Sullivan. In Rand 1982.
——. 1974. Philosophy: Who Needs It. In Rand 1982.
——. 1982. Philosophy: Who Needs It. Signet.
(Edited by Stephen Boydstun on 1/22, 10:17am)
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