Abstract
This essay is a response to John Milbank’s comparison of Kant and Aquinas’ theories of analogy in ‘A Critique of the Theology of Right’. A critique of Milbank’s essay forms the point of departure for my reconstruction of Kant’s actual theory of analogy. I show that the usual focus on the Prolegomena for this end is insufficient; in fact, the full extent of Kant’s theory of analogy only becomes clear in the Critique of Judgment. I also consider the significance of the Analogies of Experience in the Critique of Pure Reason. In conclusion, I draw on the work of Michel Guérin to designate Kantian analogy, ‘post-established harmony’.
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Notes
This is Kant’s notation, as we shall see.
This metaphysical account has epistemological consequences. Mind and world are distinct, yet harmoniously ordered, owing to their respective participation in the divine (2001 15-8).
All citations to Kant’s works are to English translations. However, volume and page references are to the German Akademie edition, except in the case of the Critique of Pure Reason where they are to the A and B editions.
Jüngel also notes that on reading the Prolegomena ‘one is involuntarily reminded of the corresponding expositions of Thomas Aquinas’ (1983 266). One justification for this position is that both Kant and Aquinas here rely on the same, common source – Aristotle’s Topics 108a.
Of course, this is also a polemic against those, like Burrell, who interpret analogy semantically in the twentieth century.
There are, I am implying, many other (more sophisticated) ways of reconstructing a Kantian ontology (the references to Heidegger and Lord above provide two such examples). Indeed, as an anonymous reviewer of this paper suggested, the relation between analogy and ontology in Aristotle may well prove a key starting point for any such reconstruction. Callanan (2008 761) insists on the need for future investigation into the Greek origins of Kant’s doctrine of analogy generally.
For more examples and discussion of analogy as inference in early modernity, see Callanan 2008 749-50.
On the relation of Kant’s theory of analogy to induction and to the early modern account of analogy as induction, see Callanan 2008 753. As Callanan points out through a study of the development of Kant’s employment of ‘analogy’ from the pre-critical lectures to the Critique of Pure Reason, it is Kant’s distinction between a mathematical use of analogy (premised on a univocal ontology) and a philosophical use (analogia proportionalitatis) that differentiates him from this this early modern tradition (753).
Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone is a book-long exercise in this analogic metaphysics (1998 6:65).
Thus Kant is able to accomplish a difficult balancing act: to bring the conceptual and the intuitive into communication, while at the same time maintaining their distinctiveness (a key tenet of the critical project as such).
Such, I suggest, is a useful way to conceive of reflective judgment.
One important consequence of this is that the sublime (despite its superficial differences from the beautiful) also operates by means of analogy (as well as Nuzzo 2005, see Zammito 1992 264, 275-9). Here alone one might refute Milbank’s characterisation of Kant, for the sublime does not do away with analogy, but is a surreptitious form of it.
If it is this that Milbank objects to, then the problem is not one of the ontological grounding of analogy, but of the very idea of not being a realist.
Latour has coined the same phrase in (as far as I can tell) a completely unconnected context (see, for example, 1988 164).
Whether the Analogies are ‘aptly named’ is a moot point in the critical literature. Bennett, most polemically, speaks of the various labels for principles of the understanding as ‘arbitrary, undescriptive, proper names’ (1966 165). And, indeed, much ink has been spilt on how the analogies of experience operate analogically (for example, Guyer 1998 67-70, Callanan 2008). My brief concluding comments on the role of analogy in the Analogies of Experience are by no means intended to replace such commentary (especially Callanan's rigorous and fruitful reading).
See footnote 15 above.
Central to such a claim is Kant’s distinction between a connected and a composite community (1929 B201-2). The parts of a composite community are not connected together in a necessary way; their aggregation is a more contingent, mediated affair. This is precisely the type of community the third analogy is intended to establish – ‘mediated commerce’ (Guérin 1974 542).
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank George Pattison, especially for providing the reference to The Christian Virtuoso. I would also like to thank Pamela Sue Anderson, Jordan Bell, Jenny Bunker, Nick Bunnin, Clare Carlisle, James Carter and A.W. Moore for their comments on sections of an earlier draft.
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Whistler, D. Post-Established Harmony: Kant and Analogy Reconsidered. SOPHIA 52, 235–258 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-012-0327-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-012-0327-z