Abstract
At what is arguably the most significant turning point in the Critique of Pure Reason, where Immanuel Kant has just completed his exploration of the safe ground of possible experience and is about to embark on the Transcendental Dialectic’s exploration of the stormy sea of metaphysics, he introduces one of the greatest curiosities in the Kantian corpus: a “table … of the concept of nothing” (A290/B346-A292/B349). The brief passage, which is tacked on to the end of a “Remark” that supplements an Appendix to a weighty chapter exploring “the Ground of the Distinction of all Objects [Gegenstände] in General into Phenomena and Noumena” (A235/B294), appears as an afterthought to an afterthought to an afterthought and is thus easily overlooked by interpreters. Indeed, the passage may seem to be little more than an amusing distraction, perhaps intended as light entertainment before Kant undertakes the real work of demolishing traditional metaphysics; or at best, it might be one of those annoying sections whose only reason for existing is to fill a perceived (but artificial) gap in the completeness of Kant’s systematic conception of reason’s architectonic unity. This chapter takes the argument seriously, notwithstanding its widespread neglect, by unpacking the specific purpose served by each perspective on “nothing” that appears in Kant’s table. Closer analysis shows how the table clarifies Kant’s notion of “something in general” by contrasting it with four distinct opposites. The passage thereby orients us to appreciate how the Critique secures the status of metaphysics as queen of the sciences.
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Notes
- 1.
Bohemian Rhapsody, written by Freddie Mercury, was first released on Queen’s album, “Night at the Opera.” After being released as a single, it spent 9 weeks at number one on the British charts, then another 5 weeks at number one in 1991, shortly after its composer’s untimely death from AIDS. With over six million copies sold, it is widely regarded as one of the greatest rock and roll songs of all time.
- 2.
See Palmquist (1989) and Palmquist (2000b/2019), especially Chapter I. The title of Palmquist (1989) was recommended by a blind reviewer of that article and was required by the editor as a condition for publishing the piece; “Immanuel Kant: A Christian Philosopher?” misleadingly suggests that the article asks whether Kant himself was a Christian—a claim I have never defended but has sometimes been attributed to me. The paper’s original title was: “Can A Christian Be A Kantian?” The application of my “affirmative approach” (see note 3, below) to Kant’s philosophy of religion requires an affirmative answer to the question posed in the latter (original) title, but implies no answer whatsoever to the question posed in the former (published) title.
- 3.
As explained in Palmquist (2012a), I began using this term to describe my approach to interpreting Kant while working on my doctoral dissertation in the mid-1980s. It was first introduced as a technical term, however, in Firestone and Palmquist (2006), where we contrasted it with various “traditional” (reductionist and typically dismissive) approaches to interpreting Kant’s philosophy of religion. See Palmquist (2012a) for a detailed account of what I do and do not intend by using the term “affirmative.”
- 4.
Kant (1998), A291-A292/B348. Kant uses the “stormy ocean” of metaphysics metaphor at A235/B294-A236/B295. With the exception of the first Critique, references cite the marginal pagination of the Academy Edition of Kant’s writings.
- 5.
A268/B324. The Remark’s concluding subsection, on the table of nothing, is set off from the rest of the Remark by three asterisks.
- 6.
A235/B294.
- 7.
In Scholastic philosophy, of course, theology was most commonly regarded as the queen of the sciences. But for Aristotle, that honor would go to metaphysics, as he makes clear in Metaphysics Book I, Chapter II, paragraph 2 (see M’Mahon 1857, xiii). Kant’s view challenges but (arguably) attempts to secure both positions, given that God (the idea that gives rise to the discipline of rational theology) is the third and highest of the three ideas of reason, which together constitute the whole subject-matter of metaphysics.
- 8.
For an explanation and defense of the role played by the table of categories in Kant’s account of his philosophy’s architectonic unity, see Palmquist (1993), especially Chapter III.
- 9.
Kant uses this term five times in passages unique to the first edition (A104, A106, A251, A355, and A400, once in a passage unique to the second edition (B307), and four times in passages found in both editions (A285/B341, A289/B345, A347/B406, A677/B705; cf. A600/B628).
- 10.
Hegel’s criticism of Kant focuses mainly on the coherence of his notion of the thing in itself and on the status of the categories. For a thoroughgoing analysis of the Kant–Hegel debate on the relevant issues, see Chapter IV of Güngör (2017). Responding primarily to Heidegger’s philosophy of nothing, Carnap (1931) is a typical example of the tendency to ridicule philosophers who treat nothing as if it were something. A rare example of a Kant scholar who does not ridicule or neglect Kant’s table of nothing is Longuenesse (1998, 303–305, 309, and 337–338). Sgarbi (2015, 30) mentions the table briefly, opining that it “seems modeled on [Abraham] Calov’s ideas.” But his attempt to correlate the two is brief and inconclusive, as it does not consider the whole table.
- 11.
Fortunately, this neglect has recently been addressed by Güngör (2017), who deals in full with the role of “nothing” in Kant’s philosophy, focusing mainly on his crucial table of nothing.
- 12.
Among Queen’s various sexually empowered songs that could be cited here, a few of the most explicit are “Body Language,” “Don’t Stop Me Now,” “Fat Bottomed Girls,” “Get Down, Make Love,” “Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy,” and “You Take My Breath Away.”
- 13.
Kant (2002, 325).
- 14.
A290/B346.
- 15.
A290/B346.
- 16.
- 17.
Kant uses the phrase “something in general = X” at A104, “object = X” at A105, “transcendental object = X” at A109, “a something = X” (in direct reference to the transcendental object) at A250, and “a transcendental subject of thoughts = X” at A346/B404; see also B13 and A109.
- 18.
See A70/B95.
- 19.
Güngör (2017, 7).
- 20.
Güngör (2017, 11–12 and passim), argues that the first category of nothing corresponds to Kant’s concept of the thing in itself. If and insofar as “thing in itself” and “noumenon” are synonyms (cf. 9), I agree with this claim. While Kant does sometimes treat the two as synonyms, I have argued in Palmquist (1986) (see note 16, above), however, that they are quite distinct and that Kant makes the distinction nowhere more explicitly than in the Phenomena and Noumena chapter. As such, I would caution against identifying the ens rationis type of nothing too closely with the thing in itself. For in its non-noumenal sense, the latter is not a thing of reason, so much as the thing or (non-conceptual, non-intuitive) material that must be presupposed as the prior context against which reason’s “I” of apperception creates the world of appearance out of the pre-existing something that would otherwise remain unknown.
- 21.
A464/B492; see also A743/B771.
- 22.
A756/B784.
- 23.
This point that Kant makes in the Schematism chapter is echoed in the second edition’s version of the Anticipations of Perception (B208): “Now from the empirical consciousness to the pure consciousness a gradual transition is possible, where the real in the former entirely disappears, and a merely formal (a priori) consciousness of the manifold in space and time remains; thus there is also possible a synthesis of the generation of the magnitude of a sensation from its beginning, the pure intuition = 0, to any arbitrary magnitude.” Two paragraphs later he repeats virtually the same point in both editions (A168/B210): “Now that in the empirical intuition which corresponds to sensation is reality (realitas phenomenon); that which corresponds to its absence is negation = 0.” Such “approximation to negation = 0” (but without actually reaching zero) is what Kant means by “intensive magnitude” (A168/B210), his second perspective on something, which therefore corresponds to his second perspective on nothing. Kant also refers to “negation = 0” at A175/B217 and makes other, similar “= 0” remarks at A208/B253, A264-265/B320-321, A273/B329, and A282/B338.
- 24.
A143/B182-183.
- 25.
Longuenesse (1998, 309) aptly describes this aspect of Kant’s theory as follows: “For our sensible cognition, nothing is prior to something: space and time, which in themselves are mere entia imaginaria, are the condition for representing any reality at all.” Yet so also, “negation cannot be represented prior to the reality it is the negation of, and similarly space and time, as entia imaginaria or nothing, cannot be represented unless substance has been represented.” In other words, the forms of space and time are logically (or, at least, transcendentally) “prior” to any given representation of space and time, even though in our actual experience, the two arise simultaneously.
- 26.
- 27.
Indeed, Kant dismisses analytic aposteriority in a single sentence (B11): “For it would be absurd to ground an analytic judgment on experience, since I do not need to go beyond my concept at all in order to formulate the judgment, and therefore need no testimony from experience for that.” But as I argued in Palmquist (1987a) (revised and reprinted as Chapter IV of Palmquist 1993), this neglect of the analytic a posteriori is one of Kant’s most significant oversights. Palmquist (1987b) further argues that the common phenomenon of naming is but one of many examples of judgments that are analytic and yet require an appeal to experience. For a discussion of various other examples, see Palmquist (2012b). Significantly, Kant’s Lectures on Logic depict him as toying with a possible role for analytic aposteriority at various points, though without ever actually using the term explicitly; see especially the Jäsche Logic (§101 and §104 in Kant 1992, 141–142) and the Donna-Wundlacken Logic (in ibid., 756–757).
- 28.
For a concise summary of the principles of the geometry of logic, see Chapter V of Palmquist (2000a); see also Palmquist (2017). I have explored parallels between Kant and Chinese philosophy in several previous publications, including Palmquist (2013) and a series of six articles on Kant and the Yijing (the Chinese Book of Changes). Of the latter, the most comprehensive is Palmquist (2015), which offers an account of how I relate this logical structure to the Yijing, with its 64 hexagrams, explicitly correlating Kant’s fourfold table of nothing to four hexagrams in the Yijing that have symbolic representations of nothing (i.e., two yin-yin lines) at their core (147–151). Using the geometry of logic to map Kant’s categorial (fourfold) divisions is helpful in numerous ways, not the least of which is to show how one can group each set of four into pairs in different (but equally valid) ways. For example, Güngör (2017, 13–14) groups Kant’s first and fourth classifications (nihil negativum and ens rationis) and his second and third classifications (nihil privativum and ens imaginarium) together in pairs, on the grounds that the first pair is conceptual while the second pair is not. Güngör devotes one chapter to each pair. A better way of justifying such a grouping would be to say that the former pair brings together the two types of negation that are more abstract (as represented by the corresponding symbols, −− and ++) while the latter pair brings together the two types of negation that are more concrete (as represented by +− and −+). Another obvious way of arranging the four categories of nothing is to group the two “ens” terms (−− and −+) and the two “nihil” terms (+− and ++); this is depicted in Table 4.1 as the distinction between the horizontal and vertical axes on the cross diagram. I call these two ways of grouping the four terms on a 2LAR map “contradictory opposition” and “polar opposition,” respectively. A third type of grouping appeals to a secondary form of polar opposition, whereby the components are grouped according to the second of their two defining terms: in this case, ens rationis (−−) and nihil privitum (+−) would be one pair, while ens imaginarium (−+) and nihil negativum (++) would be the other pair.
- 29.
See e.g., Chapter 1 of Grant (1981).
- 30.
A291/B348.
- 31.
On synthetic logic, see Palmquist (2000a), Lecture 12, and Palmquist (2017). On Chinese philosophy, see note 28, above. The most obvious examples of Kant’s open acknowledgement of the important role played by conceptual contradiction in philosophy are his focus on the antinomy of pure reason in the first Critique (see A405/B432ff) and his discussion of various other antinomies in subsequent works. However, that Kant himself shied away from fully embracing the potential meaningfulness of paradox is best exemplified by the ease with which he dismisses analytic aposteriority as a legitimate classification of knowledge. On the gravity of this oversight on Kant’s part, see note 27, above.
- 32.
Thanks to Benjamin Lam for suggesting this idea to me after hearing a presentation based on an earlier version of this chapter.
- 33.
See Palmquist (2019) for a detailed account of the ambivalent relationship between Kant’s metaphysics and mystical experience. Kant’s tendency to ridicule Swedenborg and mysticism generally while simultaneously taking up some of their key insights into his philosophical system directly parallels his tendency to portray himself as a disciple of Reason while simultaneously demonstrating that paradox arises at virtually every twist and turn along the metaphysical journey.
- 34.
I would like to thank Benjamin Lam, Joseph Li, Diana Lim, and other participants in the October 2018 meeting of the Hong Kong Philosophy Café’s Fringe Branch, for their feedback on a talk I gave to kick off that event. I am also thankful for feedback from Daniel Smith, Dennis Vanden Auweele, and other participants in the February 2018 international conference on “Negative philosophy—Philosophy of Negation: The Concept of the Negative in Classical German Philosophy,” held at Chinese University of Hong Kong.
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Palmquist, S.R. (2023). Nothing Really Matters: Can Kant’s Table of Nothing Secure Metaphysics as Queen of the Sciences?. In: Moss, G.S. (eds) The Being of Negation in Post-Kantian Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13862-1_4
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