Revisiting Kant’s Legacy in Continental Philosophy
Zachary Vereb*
University of Mississippi, USA
Review of: Sorin Baiasu and Alberto Vanzo (eds.), Kant
and the Continental Tradition: Sensibility, Nature and Religion. Milton,
Routledge, 2020, 255 pp. 978-1138503748.
It is well known
that Kant had an immense influence on the history and development of continental
philosophy. At the same time, there is a curious lack of work today putting Kant
in dialogue with the continentals. This is precisely the task of Kant and
the Continental Tradition, where Kantian themes in the continental tradition,
including their continuities, tensions, transformations, and ruptures, are
addressed by eleven authors. This exciting collection is important for a
variety of reasons. Perhaps most significantly, its focus is not just on how continental
philosophers such as Heidegger, Derrida, Irigaray, and Arendt saw Kant. That
would be too easy. The true value of this work lies with its ability to show us
what those interpretations can still teach us today about Kant’s legacy.
Besides filling
out literature gaps, Kant and the Continental Tradition offers a variety
of perspectives, avoiding the usual tunnel vision of specialist debates.[1] In this sense, this work—with its polished
writing, rigorous analysis, and historical contextualization—is unique. It
touches on contentious topics relevant to Kant scholars, but will also interest
scholars and critics of continental philosophy. It may even interest students
of both. Kant and the Continental Tradition is geared to continentals
and literary critics through its comparative engagement with the continental
appropriation of Kant. We receive a clue, for instance, why Heidegger favored
the A-Deduction and Schematism in the Critique, or how Lyotard, like
Hegel, saw its key value in the Antinomies. This work will, of course, be a
welcome addition for Kant scholars; in addition to its consideration of
contemporary debates in Kant scholarship, such as the unity of Kant’s critical
philosophy, this collection touches on, in one way or another, nearly all flavors
of Kant’s works. This includes elements from the three Critiques, the
political works, the pre-critical works, and even a lesser known work on
religion.
Kant and the Continental
Tradition is comprised of eight
original essays, plus an introduction and postscript that function as
conceptual bookends. The collection is unified thematically around three familiar
Kantian themes: sensibility, nature, and religion, with their corresponding obverses
of reason, freedom, and philosophy. Some essays highlight interpretative issues
in Kant relevant to the continentals, while others put post-Kantian ideas in
dialogue with the critical philosophy, viewed through a self-reflective, contextual
lens. Regardless of appproach, all essays in this collection are oriented with
an eye to the legacy of Kant and the philosophical appropriation of his
philosophy. A main lesson this collection succeeds in teaching, we should note,
is the import of this Kantian legacy. Indeed, Kant’s legacy informed (and
continues to inform)—whether reactively or creatively, dismissively or
critically—the bulk of the continental philosophical trajectory, from Nietzsche
to Deleuze.
Structurally, the collection
is interesting in that each essay sets the stage for the next. For instance, Dermot
Moran’s essay tracing Kantian intuition from Leibniz and Kant to Eberhard and
Husserl clears ground for Roxana Baiasu’s essay on Heidegger’s schematism (Baiasu
and Vanzo 2020, p. 5). We not only have a collection of distinct essays on Kant
and the continentals, but one that is thematically and structurally unified
despite its diversity of content. In short, each essay flows to the next in a
way that makes sense. This is not typical for a multi-authored collection
covering figures as dissimilar as Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Derrida, Lyotard, and
Irigaray. Finally, each essay critically engages with the work of pioneer Gary Banham,
for whom the volume is dedicated.
The following
paragraphs outline Kant and the Continental Tradition’s essays to
highlight this structural coherence. The reader should by no means infer that
less words on an essay mean less content: quite the contrary. Space is limited
and so is time—especially in a review. Heidegger would agree. Highlighting essay
themes can at the very least showcase this collection’s variety of content and
coherence.
To begin, Moran disentangles
the various meanings of intuition for Kant, and to do so traces early modern views
at the basis of his historical achievement. What we get here, then, is a
careful overview of Kantian intuition, meant to re-orient our reading of Kant
in contemporary debates. Moran’s analysis reveals the “complexities, ambiguities
and fissures” in Kant’s account of intuition (Moran 2020, p. 24), and this
estrangement from the rationalist tradition allow us to prefigure how continental
philosophers—from the phenomenologists to the post-structuralists—have
interpreted him in their philosophies of difference. Moran’s critical discussion
of the many, seemingly incompatible roles intuition takes for Kant—conceptual,
psychological, intentional—anticipate the subsequent essay on Heidegger, especially
with its passing remarks about Husserl’s provocation. This essay also provides
excellent material for students of Kant who wish to appreciate the complexity
of his epistemological starting-point, and how it could have tempted the early
phenomenologists in their later investigations.
Roxana Baiasu’s continues
this intuitive thread by considering Heidegger’s reading of Kantian schematism.
She views Heidegger’s admittedly “violent” interpretation of this obscure part
of the Critique as “the climax of a turning point in the history of
philosophy,” and indeed as one that conditions Heidegger’s own phenomenological
development (Baiasu 2020, p. 61). Though often unappreciated outside Heidegger
circles, Heidegger lectured extensively on Kant during the year of Being and
Time’s publication, and his own mentor Rickert was a prominent neo-Kantian.
In many ways, Heidegger appropriated several Kantian insights for his
fundamental ontology, all the while remaining critical of Kant’s emphasis on
time as the form of inner sense, and its superficiality with regard to lived
human experience (Baiasu 2020, p. 71). This essay is a welcome and succinct
contribution for hearing what is unspoken in Kant, and it will help us connect
the dots with the broader continental tradition following in Heidegger’s
footsteps.
In the collection’s
final essay on sensibility, Andrea Rehberg analyzes the third Critique’s
sensus communis. Surprising to those who view Kant as the arch-rationalist par
excellence, Rehberg argues that if we view the sensus communis as a
key pivot point of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, we find in Kant an important
precursor to the well-known continental emphasis on affectivity and lived
experience. Accordingly, this essay can be useful for tracing the anti-Platonic
movement from Nietzsche to Heidegger, Arendt, and Lyotard.
Just as Moran’s
reading on Kantian intuition prefigures the essays on sensibility, Christian Onof’s
essay provides one interpretative framework for two essays on the (dis)unity of
nature in post-Kantian continental philosophy. On its own, this nuanced look into
constitutive and regulative principles will likely not be of interest to
continental scholars and students. Yet in the broader context of this
collection, Onof’s essay marks an important conceptual bridge between essays
and is therefore quite helpful.
Keith Crome’s comparative
essay on Kant and Lyotard is another valuable addition. It stresses the
latter’s entanglement with the first Critique, rather than the typical
attention to sublimity received in the literature. Here, Lyotard’s work The
Differend is appreciated alongside Kant’s “critical enterprise—as a
tribunal in which philosophical reason calls itself to count. It is, in this
sense, a repetition of the Kantian project” (Crome 2020, p. 132). Crome
showcases Lyotard’s rejection of the Kantian view vis-à-vis the concept of
nature and his break with the canonical tradition despite maintaining Kant’s
“combative, critical spirit” from the antinomies (Crome 2020, p. 134). This essay
is valuable because it shows how new insights can be sourced from the wellspring
of Kant’s thought. Such a wellspring can even shed light on our understanding
of Kant today, and so has a pedagogical value.
Rachel Jones’s essay
is exceptional in that it not only integrates a discussion of Kant with Hegel, but
does so through the lens of continental philosopher Luce Irigaray. The result
is another “violent” yet productive interpretation, this time on Hegel’s attempt
to mediate teleology with mechanism (Jones 2020 p. 166). This bold essay covers
a lot of ground. It explores the gendered dualisms that Hegel inherits from
Kant; the former cannot accomodate a certain feminine remainder, and Jones suggests
that Irigaray is better poised to help us here. This refreshing addition moves
beyond the phenomenological and postmodern continental approaches of prior
essays to more linguistic, feminist, and psychoanalytic ones, with the famous
student of Lacan, Irigaray.
Nicola J. Grayson builds
the last exegetical bridge-essay in Kant and the Continental Tradition using
the blueprint of hypotyposis in Kant; this bridge leads us to our collection’s
final terrain: Kantian influences on continental takes on religion. Here, we
understand the Religion’s “schematism of analogy” with the figure of
Christ as that elusive practical link between humanity and divinity. This essay
on Kant leads naturally to Dennis Schulting’s penultimate essay on religious
tropes in Kant and Derrida, though it might as easily take us back to Plato,
showing us how the essays in this collection have a bidirectional historical worth.
Schulting
addresses the deadlocks of religion and philosophy, faith and reason. Surprisingly,
he teases out these tensions not by looking into Kant’s Religion, but through
consideration of a separate and oft neglected Kantian work: Of a Recently
Adopted Exalted Tone in Philosophy (1796). Derrida himself offered a
commentary on this work in 1983, and Schulting puts them in dialogue. By analyzing
and criticizing Derrida’s “hyper-Kantian” critique of Kant as “fanatical” yet
self-consistent, Schulting presents a masterful essay fitting for this
collection (Schulting 2020, pp. 209-10). And, in making oblique connections to
other philosophers in Kant and the Continental Tradition, including
Heidegger and Hegel, Schulting’s essay will surely be of interest to both Kant
scholars and continental thinkers, Derridean or not.
Our final essay
is actually a postscript, and it functions as a coda for harmonizing the
preceding. In each essay, our authors engage with the late Gary Banham. Joanna Hodge
concludes with reflections on several continental themes—genealogy of the
Nietzschean strain, critique that follows Kant through Husserl, Heidegger,
Marx, and Derrida, and more—set in the context of Banham’s work. As a tribute, Kant
and the Continental Tradition’s coda sounds a nostalgic tone, one that represents
nicely the tonal trajectory from Kant to continental philosophy; many of these
reflections are as it were detuned and transformed, as in Derrida, and yet
others echo the boundaries of new worlds, as in Heidegger. We would do well to
listen.
Before concluding,
it is worth mentioning potential concerns for the present collection. Editors Sorin
Baiasu and Alberto Vanzo spend much space in the introduction defending the
structural and thematic unity of these essays. This may present to some an initial
suspicion about the unity of the book, and for the merits of a return to Kant
vis-à-vis the continental tradition. If the essays are unified, why should we
need an elaborate explanation of this? Why not let the essays speak for
themselves? Luckily, the essays and their interconnections indeed do speak
well by themselves and so justify their inclusion, rendering this concern a superficial
one. More importantly, our editors illuminate the philosophical convergence between
Kant and continental philosophy; many canonical continental philosophers in
this volume try to distance themselves from Kant by emphasizing becoming over
substance, lived experience over abstraction, and so on. Yet, all the while, as
our editors show us and as the essays speak, they cannot escape the orbit of Kant’s
immense philosophical legacy.
Though space does
not permit critical engagement with each essay, there are at least two elements
of the volume that invite criticism since these also reflect the motivations of
the text as a whole. These include a certain boldness of scope in some
essays—unsurprising given the continental spirit—and a possible lack of balance
between the essays themselves. For the former, we might point to Jones’s essay
on Kant, Hegel, and Irigaray as one instance. For many casual readers, Jones’s
essay may seem unsuccessful given that the scope of its aim is too large. Adequate
treatment of these topics and philosophers would require, it seems, something
on the order of a monograph. At the same time, we receive a philosophically
exciting paper that brings something refreshing to the collection as a whole.
In an odd way, the boldness of some of the essays in this collection reflects
the spirit of the continental reaction to Kant’s legacy.
The last concern
of this volume is a potential lack of balance. We all know that an unbalanced
blade cannot fulfil its purpose properly. Accordingly, we may worry that the
present volume weighs, at times, too heavily on Kant. Indeed, a handful of
essays concern conceptual problems in Kant scholarship, such as the status of
intuition or regulative judgment. Though no problem for those of the Kantian
inclination, this choice may turn off continental readers who would otherwise find
an enticing collection of essays on one of their key philosophical forefathers.
This questionable footing can, at times, undermine our expectations for a genuine
dialogue (or dance, if we wish to put on our theatrical Nietzschean hats)
between Kant and the continentals advertised by the book’s title.
This proportional
imbalance is nonetheless counterbalanced through the collection’s narrative.
The Kantian choreography, as mentioned, sets the stage for later, more
elaborate continental dances. For instance, Moran alludes to Husserl, reluctant
to draw deeper connections, yet these allusions nicely foreshadow Baiasu on Heidegger.
Still, the collection could have benefited from additional discussions on
Arendt and Kantian aesthetics vis-à-vis politics, or on Husserl and Kantian
anticipations of phenomenology. Just as Rehberg begins an exciting critical
reading of Arendt’s lectures on Kant (the only Arendt in the collection), it is
cut short. Despite this, the structural balance of the collection offsets the
bulk of this proportionality concern.
One final limitation
of this collection, following this remark, is a curious absence of other prominent
figures in the continental tradition. These include Gadamer (whose doctoral
adviser Natorp was also a neo-Kantian), Deleuze (who wrote his own creative
commentary on the unity of Kant’s philosophy), or even Badiou (who fuses
continental and analytic approaches, not unlike Kant’s prefiguration of both
schools). Surprisingly, Nietzsche is only considered in the postscript of the
book. These omissions are understandable, however, since critical engagement
with them would require space exceeding the limits of any reasonable volume. We
should find little reason to complain, since we instead get illuminating studies
on less appreciated figures such as Luce Irigaray.
At the end of the day,
Kant and the Continental Tradition will be a welcome addition for any
scholar or student of Kant, continental philosophy, or even the history of philosophy.
It not only adds to the rather slim collection of comparative works of this
sort, especially with its focus on the topics sensibility, nature, and religion.
No, even more than that, it interacts with multiple schools of thought in a
careful and thoughtful way. The holistic, untamed topical excesses unique to
continental philosophy are masterfully tempered by the analytical methods we
come to expect of Kant scholarship. This makes for a work on continental
philosophy accessible for Kant scholars (and even those more analytically-oriented),
yet broad enough to appeal to postmodern thinkers, cultural critics, and continental
commentators. And, by returning to perennial topics of philosophy, such as the
unity of nature or the coherency of religion, Kant and the Continental
Tradition shows us how a canonical thinker of the past—like Kant—can still
have something to teach us today. In this way, the collection succeeds. It
therefore merits our attention.
References
Baiasu, R. (2020), “Heidegger’s Interpretation of Kant’s
Transcendental Schematism”, in S. Baiasu and A. Vanzo (eds.), Kant and the
Continental Tradition: Sensibility, Nature and Religion. Milton, Routledge,
pp. 61-78.
Baiasu, S. and Vanzo, A. (2020), “Kant and the
Continental Tradition”, in S. Baiasu and A. Vanzo (eds.), Kant and the
Continental Tradition: Sensibility, Nature and Religion. Milton, Routledge,
pp. 3-20.
Crome, K. (2020), “Disputing Critique: Lyotard’s
Kantian Differend”, in S. Baiasu and A. Vanzo (eds.), Kant and the
Continental Tradition: Sensibility, Nature and Religion. Milton, Routledge,
pp. 131-145.
Cutrofello, A. (1994), Discipline and Critqiue:
Kant, Poststructuralism, and the Problem of Resistance. Albany: New York, State
University of New York Press.
Hengehold, L. (2007), The Body Problematic:
Political Imagination in Kant and Foucault. Pennsylvania Park, Pennsylvania
State University Press.
Jones, R. (2020), “Kant, Hegel and Irigaray: From ‘Chemism’
to the Elemental”, in S. Baiasu and A. Vanzo (eds.), Kant and the
Continental Tradition: Sensibility, Nature and Religion. Milton, Routledge,
pp. 146-170.
Moran, D. (2020), “Kant on Intuition”, in S. Baiasu and
A. Vanzo (eds.), Kant and the Continental Tradition: Sensibility, Nature and
Religion. Milton, Routledge, pp. 23-60.
Schrift, A. D. (ed.), (2020), Kant, Kantianism, and
Idealism: The Origins of Continental Philosophy (8 vols.). Chicago, University
of Chicago Press.
Schulting, D. (2020), “The ‘Proper’ Tone of Critical
Philosophy: Kant and Derrida on Metaphilosophy and the Use of Religious Tropes”,
in S. Baiasu and A. Vanzo (eds.), Kant and the Continental Tradition: Sensibility,
Nature and Religion. Milton, Routledge, pp. 194-221.
