The Faculty of Ideas. Kant’s Concept of Reason in the Narrower Sense

3.1.1 (1) Faculty

Rn is only one of several faculties of mind. The concept “faculty” is a ground of cognition of several mental abilities, such as reason, understanding, imagination, judgment, and sensation. As such, it is contained within these concepts as their common mark. They, however, are contained under it as its varieties (a genus–species relation).^[32] The concept of a mental faculty (German: Vermögen, from ver-mögen, being capable of doing something) has a long philosophical history, starting with Aristotle’s concept of force (dynamis, potentia) and culminating in modern philosophy (e.g., in Descartes, Port-Royal Logic, Spinoza, Locke, Wolff, Meier, Kant, Fichte, and Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit). Any philosophical research program that uses the notion of mental faculties as a terminus technicus within its heuristics, analyzes their possibility, division, functions, and products, and draws wide consequences from this analysis can be characterized as “ability” or “faculty psychology.”^[33] Although this – and the closely related notion of disposition – has attracted several critics from the nineteenth-century philosophy onward, its benefits and heuristic function remain widely unquestioned in Kant.^[34] The concept of mental faculties belongs to the fundamental conceptual apparatus of transcendental philosophy. Reason, as its basic object and as the enabler both of its own critique and critical metaphysics, is itself a faculty among other faculties. Kant uses (as compared to, e.g., Wolff) the notion of faculty interchangeably with the notion of force: “reason (considered subjectively as a human faculty of cognition)”^[35] is “the supreme force of cognition.”^[36] Both concepts must therefore, when applied to mind (Gemüt), have the same logical sphere. Force is one of the praedicabilia (along with action and passion) that can be derived from the category of causality.^[37] Indeed, the concept of a faculty, such as the understanding or reason, must analytically contain any notion of causality and action within it, otherwise it would be empty. A Vermögen that would not ver-mögen is a contradiction. The mental faculties are therefore per expositionem causal, and they act. As such, they have specific unexchangeable functions (Lat. fungor = to perform): receptivity or spontaneity.^[38] Kant does, just a few pages later, narrow down the concept of function to stress the active side of all higher rational faculties:

By a function, however, I understand the unity of the action of ordering different representations under a common one. Concepts are therefore grounded on the spontaneity of thinking, as sensible intuitions are grounded on the receptivity of impressions.^[39]

The concept of a mental faculty does not only analytically contain the concept of causality (and with it such derivable notions as force, action, effect, function, receptivity, and spontaneity), but also necessarily any concept of mental content as their medium upon which they have power. One cannot think of causal mental faculties without a medium of their operations. In the first Critique, following the paradigm of modern European philosophy,^[40] Kant calls this medium “representation,” which designates mental content that is articulated within the faculties. Striving for a concrete and specified theory of mental faculties, he suggests a “transcendental reflection, through which … every representation is assigned its place in the faculty of cognition.”^[41] At the beginning of the Transcendental Dialectic, Kant gives a progression of the concept of representation:

The genus is representation in general (repraesentatio). Under it stands the representation with consciousness (perceptio). A perception that refers to the subject as a modification of its state is a sensation (sensatio); an objective perception is a cognition (cognitio). The latter is either an intuition or a concept (intuitus vel conceptus). The former is immediately related to the object and is singular; the latter is mediate, by means of a mark, which can be common to several things. A concept is either an empirical or a pure concept, and the pure concept, insofar as it has its origin solely in the understanding (not in a pure image of sensibility), is called notio. A concept made up of notions, which goes beyond the possibility of experience, is an idea or a concept of reason.^[42]

The notions of causality and medium (e.g., representation) are not the only ones that are analytically contained within the concept of mental faculty. Faculties must also fulfill concrete operations, have certain purposes according to their inner constitutions, and contain certain formal rules and principles of their execution.

3.1.2 (2) Rational (Rb in contrast to the empirical)

The concept of rational faculties narrows down the logical sphere of the concept of faculty, which is subdivided into the two stems of cognitive powers: rational and sensible.^[43] It is the common mark of “higher” intellectual abilities – of reason in the broader sense, consisting of the understanding, judgment, and Rn – and is contained within them. For Kant, “all rational cognition is either cognition from concepts or cognition from the construction of concepts.”^[44] The latter is mathematical and based on reason’s ability to construct concepts (e.g., a triangle) with the help of pure intuition – synthetically a priori made concepts which can be defined. The former is discursive work with concepts via such logical acts as comparison, abstraction, reflection, analysis, synthesis, explication, exposition, declaration, definition, specification, homogenization, continuation, judgments, and inferences.

The notion of concept is therefore analytically and necessarily contained within the logical sphere of the concept of rational faculties and, at the same time, is crucial for demarcation of rational from sensible cognition. While sensations and intuitions are singular and immediate representations, concepts are “mediate, by means of a mark, which can be common to several things.”^[45] The concepts are per expositionem reflected representations, unities of a multitude of representations. Any mental operations that lead to concepts or work with concepts are carried out by rational faculties.

3.1.3 (3) The narrower sense (Rn in contrast to other higher faculties of cognition)

Rn, in contrast to the understanding and judgment, is contained under the concept of Rb and can be called a narrower concept following the corresponding distinction in the Jaesche Logic.^[46] “Reason in the narrower sense,” if it were to be authorized by Kant himself, could be the name for the faculty he introduced in the Transcendental Dialectic in contrast to the understanding. There is no reason in an even narrower sense than Rn. And there is also no reason in a higher sense:

All our cognition starts from the senses, goes from there to the understanding, and ends with reason, beyond which there is nothing higher to be found in us to work on the matter of intuition and bring it under the highest unity of thinking.^[47]

(3) Reason in contrast to the understanding is therefore the endpoint of the subdivision of (1) mental faculties in general and (2) mental rational faculties, “the entire higher faculty of cognition.”^[48] (1) and (2) are at the same time contained in the concept of Rn as marks, just as in the concepts of the understanding and judgment. What then distinguishes Rn from other rational faculties? And why is there, in the concept of Rb, a part that is higher than others?

Rational cognition is cognition from concepts or from construction of concepts. But there are different kinds of concepts: some of them are given, others are made, some are a priori, others a posteriori, some of them contain less multitude of representational content, others more, some of them are purer than the others. Common to all concepts is that they are functions, unities of acts based on the spontaneity (Lat. sponte = free)^[49] of thinking, performed by Rb. But the thinking can be more or less spontaneous depending on the multitude of representations that may require more or less effort for its processing and unification. The thinking can ver-mögen more or less. The concept of a change of physical condition (e.g., ice–water–steam) is easier to grasp and requires some acts of comparison, abstraction, and reflection. The pure concept of causality contains far more concepts under itself. It can be the common mark of such concepts as faculty, power, action, effort, passion, disposition, and energy and is harder to articulate. The concept of absolute determinacy by the laws of nature from the third antinomy, however, as a maximum and a totality of causal interrelations, overstrains the power of imagination and leaves the sensibility without any object in experience. The thinking is in the state of the highest performance here: it is the highest rationalization, conceptualization, and – independent from particular sensible data – most spontaneously acting. Its products are the purest (regarding the independence from the experience) and highest (regarding the unity of representations) concepts. According to the above-mentioned “transcendental reflection,”^[50] Kant calls this type of concepts “ideas” and distinguishes the corresponding faculty, Rn, from other higher faculties of cognition. I will not go into detailed analysis of different criteria (such as the degrees of purity and spontaneity, judgments/inferences, understanding/comprehension) that help distinguish Rn from other rational faculties here, although I will treat some of them in the following sections of the article. Instead, I will give a quote that summarizes several points that I have brought up:

Now, a human being really finds in himself a capacity by which he distinguishes himself from all other things, even from himself insofar as he is affected by objects, and that is reason. This, as pure self-activity, is raised even above the understanding by this: that though the latter is also self-activity and does not, like sense, contain merely representations that arise when we are affected by things (and are thus passive), yet it can produce from its activity no other concepts than those which serve merely to bring sensible representations under rules and thereby to unite them in one consciousness, without which use of sensibility it would think nothing at all; but reason, on the contrary, shows in what we call “ideas” a spontaneity so pure that it thereby goes far beyond anything that sensibility can ever afford it, and proves its highest occupation in distinguishing the world of sense and the world of understanding from each other and thereby marking out limits for the understanding itself.^[51]

One should draw the following conclusions at this point: (i) Any confusion of the types of concepts and corresponding higher faculties or absence of differentiation within Rb is against Kant’s intentions and the progress he made in distinguishing the faculties and their functions. (ii) The use of concepts of rationality or reason in Kant scholarship without any relation to their common mark of “faculty” leads to their underdetermination. (iii) The use of concepts of rationality or reason in Kant scholarship without any differentiation blurs the difference between the concepts of Rb and Rn and their distinct functions.^[52]

3.2.1 (4) Draws intermediate inferences

Kant argues that the logical function of Rn has for a long time been understood

by the logicians as that of drawing inferences mediately (as distinct from immediate inferences, consequentis immediatis); but from this we get no insight into the second faculty, which itself generates concepts.^[56]

Rn is not just a faculty of intermediate inferences: this mark alone does not lead to the concept of Rn. It is so not only because it must be completed by the concept of the real use (Kant follows here the same division as in case of the understanding, which has a logical use and – as the origin of concepts – a real one). There is a much more pertinent reason: inferences can lead to different kinds of concepts, and not all concepts are pure concepts of reason. Inferences of reason (syllogisms) – subdivided, as in the logic handbooks, into categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive – have the following form:

1. a universal rule, which is called the major proposition (propositio major),

2. the proposition which subsumes a cognition under the condition of the universal rule, and which is called the minor proposition (propositio minor), and finally

3. the proposition which affirms or denies the rule’s predicate of the subsumed cognition: the conclusion (conclusio). ^[57]

The categorical syllogism^[58]

1. Major: All humans are mortal,

2. Minor: Caius is a human,

3. Conclusio: Caius is mortal

does not contain any pure concepts of Rn (ideas). The concepts of Caius being mortal as well as of humans and of the mortality of all humans are empirical concepts (regular concepts of the understanding). The latter is more universal and contains a mark that is common to all humans. The drawing of intermediate inferences alone does not qualify Rn for being the highest, most spontaneous faculty that creates the highest unities in the purest form of representation.

3.2.2 (5) Source of ideas (seven kinds of ideas)

The concept of Rn must therefore contain other crucial marks, such as the unconditioned, purity, maximum, and perfection. It must also have a “pure use.”^[59] The inferences must lead to concepts beyond which there are no higher, purer, and universal ones. Kant calls such concepts – “to which no congruent object can be given in the senses”^[60] – “ideas.” All concepts require the logical acts of comparison, abstraction, and reflection. Ideas of reason are not an exception: “All ideas of pure reason are ideas of reflection (discursivae and not intuitus, as Plato maintained).”^[61] They are, however, “not merely reflected concepts but inferred concepts.”^[62] Reflection is needed to cognize what many things (when being compared) have in common.^[63] The representations of a spruce, a pine, and a cedar have a common mark, the concept of needles. I reflect on the singular representations and recognize what is common to them. The concept of total determinacy by the laws of nature, however, cannot be a result of a mere reflection. I can recognize that things that happen have causes and put forward a synthetic proposition a priori (the law of causality: all that happens must have a cause), but I cannot, by means of the reflection alone, come to the concept of absolute determinacy. I would need to reflect on an indefinite number of cases to claim that. Reason, to shorten this way, spontaneously leaps to a conclusion, claiming that absolute determinacy is a common feature of all objects in the world:

1. If something happens, it does so because of a cause (the rule of the understanding),

2. A, b, c et ad indefinitum have concrete causes (judgments),

3. Therefore, anything in the world is absolutely determined and freedom is impossible (conclusion of reason).^[64]

Reason, via intermediate inferences, produces pure concepts that are not given by the senses. This interplay between the logical and the real pure use of reason must be – if they are necessary marks of the concept of Rn – a general source of ideas of reason. Kant claimed that explicitly in the context of the transcendental ideas of soul, world, and God. But are all the following ideas of reason that he analyzes throughout his works inferred concepts?^[65]

The marks common to the concept of idea are the unconditioned, purity (independence from sensual content), maximum, and perfection.^[66] No reflection on multiple objects can result in concepts with such marks. An inference is necessary to spontaneously leap over the gap between the experience and the idealized presuppositions. There may be many examples of wise persons, but witness, as the archetype that one strives toward or that one judges others by, is not given in concreto.^[67] There may be many philosophers and philosophies, but the one and true philosophy as the archetype of all philosophizing cannot be merely a result of a comparison, abstraction, and reflection – it must necessarily involve an inference. The inference could look as follows: (1) philosophy is a system of philosophical cognitions; (2) there are many different philosophical systems; (3) but there is only one human reason responsible for cognitions; (4) ergo: there must be only one true philosophy – all the different systems are merely imperfect ectypes, attempts to grasp the archetype of philosophy.^[68] One sees from these examples that Kant’s theory of an interplay between logical, real, and pure uses of Rn that results in ideas must also hold at least for the major part of other different kinds of ideas. It can be deduced and further developed from his arguments and can become an object of an extended study.^[69]

3.2.3 (6) Source of principles

Why do we infer (logical use) and create (real use) not only general, but even (pure use) pure concepts, such as the infinity of the universe, virtue, duty, international law, and jurisprudence? Kant believes that we have – via the faculty of Rn – a natural predisposition for it, which can be examined in the domain of anthropology.^[70] Transcendental philosophy can only extrapolate its inner principle. The supreme principle and “demand of reason”^[71] is “to find the unconditioned for conditioned cognitions of the understanding, with which its unity will be completed.”^[72] This principle is synthetic as it represents the unity of unequal concepts: the unconditioned becomes related to the manifold of the conditioned, which does not analytically contain it. The idea of philosophy is an unconditioned unity of diverse ectypes of philosophy, wise persons partially represent the idea of witness, but do not embody or condition it, and the idea of the absolute determinacy is the highest inferred unity of natural causal chains – neither a singular cause nor a chain of causes and effects leads to this idea. From this angle, “a pure concept of reason in general can be explained through the concept of the unconditioned, insofar as it contains a ground of synthesis for what is conditioned.”^[73] The unconditioned is “the common title of all concepts of reason.”^[74] Rn strives for the unconditioned – this explains why it does not end with intermediate inferences that render empirically verifiable concepts (like the mortality of humans), but seeks, per prosyllogismos (on the side of the conditions) or per episyllogismos (on the side of the conditioned),^[75] the highest possible unity.

Rn also contains other theoretical and practical principles, such as the logical principles of homogeneity, specification, and continuity, and the categorical imperative.^[76] The supreme principle builds upon the concept of the unconditioned. Similarly, the logical principles require the idea of logical perfection of cognition, and the categorical imperative requires the concepts of freedom (Rn qua pure will), duty, and universal law. What was first, the ideas or the principles? What is the relation between the ideas and principles? And what is a principle?

That the formula “the faculty of principles”^[77] as the universal concept of Rn is misguiding can be concluded simply from the fact that for Kant, the pure understanding, just as Rn, is a source of principles. Pure understanding

is not only the faculty of rules in regard to that which happens, but is rather itself the source of the principles in accordance with which everything (that can even come before us as an object) necessarily stands under rules, since, without such rules, appearances could never amount to cognition of an object corresponding to them.^[78]

In the first Critique, the analysis of reason is construed in analogy with the analysis of the understanding. This includes the expounding of supreme principles (analytic and synthetic) of the pure understanding, followed by the system of all synthetic principles as rules for the objective use of the categories. The principles are derived from the pure concepts of the understanding. For example, the second analogy of experience – “[a]ll alterations occur in accordance with the law of the connection of cause and effect”^[79] – is built upon the relational category of causality and dependence (cause and effect).^[80] A principle is a proposition based on a concept as the foundation of all further cognition. As in the German word for principium, Grundsatz, principles presuppose both a Grund (ground) and a Satz (proposition), “they contain in themselves the grounds of other judgments.”^[81] But what are the grounds? The grounds, in rational cognition from concepts, are the concepts.^[82] The concept of causality and dependence is the ground for a principle of pure understanding (second analogy). The same applies to the level of Rn: “objective grounds, which are themselves ideas,”^[83] determine this faculty, “a connection that is expressed by ought.”^[84] Of course, the “grounds of reason provide the rule for actions universally, from principles”^[85] – one does not act from a concept alone, but from the principle that is derived from this concept. The supreme principle of pure Rn is itself based on “the concept of the unconditioned, insofar as it contains a ground of synthesis for what is conditioned.”^[86] To find the unconditioned is a demand based on “the necessary rational idea of the unconditioned[...]”^[87] What he actually means is that the idea of God is a ground leading to the principle “to regard all combination in the world as if it arose from an all-sufficient necessary cause.”^[88] Just as the transcendental ideas of reason formulate regulative principles, all other kinds of ideas have certain functions. They are tasks of reason and lead to principles in different domains of reason.

Either Kant should have disambiguated the concept of principle or he should hold to the short formula for Rn in the Reflexionen and the third Critique: “We can call reason the faculty of ideas.”^[89] The concept of ideas as the highest representations or concepts (in the gradation of representations) is a more central mark of Rn – the logical, real, and pure uses of Rn are directed at pure concepts as grounds for principles due to the supreme principle of Rn, which is itself based on a pure concept, the idea of the unconditioned.^[90]

3.3.1 (7) Has uses

“Faculty” and “use” are sometimes used interchangeably in Kant. Rn, as a faculty, has a logical faculty and a real faculty. Rn is also a theoretical and a practical faculty. It has a pure, hypothetic, regulative, problematic, architectonic, etc. use. The concept of highest rational faculty therefore contains a manifold under itself. It includes several “subfaculties” that make up Rn. A complete exposition of the concept of Rn must lead to an analysis of each of these faculties (which will not be offered here).^[91] It is important to note that they all circle around the concept of ideas. It is their common mark that makes it possible to attribute different functions to one multifaceted faculty. The logical and real uses lead to ideas, the regulative use (transcendental ideas) enables transcendental heuristics, the transcendent use results in hypostases and other exuberant dogmatic assumptions. While it sounds plausible at the first glance that there are different functions in relation to ideas, it seems to overstrain and overload the concept of Rn. Can one faculty have as many functions as Rn? Does this theory really hold?

3.3.2 (8) Has interests and gives ends

The problem of the unity and coherence of the multitude of conceptual content attributed to Rn gets even more weight if one considers that Rn should also be the source of interests and ends.

To every faculty of the mind one can attribute an interest, that is, a principle that contains the condition under which alone its exercise is promoted. Reason, as the faculty of principles, determines the interest of all the powers of the mind but itself determines its own. The interest of its speculative use consists in the cognition of the object up to the highest a priori principles; that of its practical use consists in the determination of the will with respect to the final and complete end.^[92]

If one takes the statement “every faculty” seriously, each faculty (and corresponding use) of Rn must have an interest (logical faculty, real faculty, regulative faculty, theoretical and practical Rn, etc.). Furthermore, to have an interest means to have a principle that contains the condition for the use of a faculty. As explained above, at the level of Rn, the grounds of principles, the unconditioned conditions, are the ideas. Ideas have a certain causality in relation to Rn, they are tasks of Rn.

What I am suggesting can be called an ideas-first account of Kant’s principles of Rn, uses, interests, and ends, not in the sense that ideas are their origin, but in the sense that they are the main signifiers that determine the content and form of principles, uses, interests, and ends. In analogy to the formation of principles, each interest and end of Rn is determined by an idea. An interest, to be a specific interest, must have an object, i.e., an end. A necessary mark of the concept of interest in Kant is “dependence of a contingently determinable will on principles of reason.”^[93] Unlike in the case of inclinations and needs, an interest arises when reason provides ends. An end can be something achieved via an act or the act itself.^[94] Each end requires necessary means and anyone who wills an end must also will – “insofar as reason has decisive influence on his actions”^[95] – the corresponding means. The ends can be either empirical (richness, health, etc.) or pure (morality, wisdom, complete system of knowledge, etc.). The latter make up the system of ends and corresponding interests of Rn – and are nothing other than the ideas as grounds.

Rn has a theoretical interest in systematic completeness of cognitions: “to grasp the whole chain of conditions fully a priori and comprehend the derivation of the conditioned, starting with the unconditioned.”^[96] Such completeness is of course never given in concreto. It is a mere focus imaginarius, an imagined unity point.^[97] Rn seeks

the systematic in cognition, i.e., its interconnection based on one principle. This unity of reason always presupposes an idea, namely that of the form of a whole of cognition, which precedes the determinate cognition of the parts and contains the conditions for determining a priori the place of each part and its relation to the others. Accordingly, this idea postulates complete unity of the understanding’s cognition, through which this cognition comes to be not merely a contingent aggregate but a system interconnected in accordance with necessary laws.^[98]

The theoretical interest of Rn is governed by the idea of the systematic whole of cognition (which is split into three unities: soul, world, and God). It is its highest end in theoretical perspective. The means to this end are the logical principles of homogeneity, specificity, and continuity. The theoretical interest entails an “architectonic interest,”^[99] which can be realized in terms of architectonic as “the art of systems” or “the doctrine of that which is scientific in our cognition in general.”^[100] The science, the sciences, and their parts require an idea of the whole of cognition.^[101] It takes concrete shapes in the form of the ideas of the whole of human knowledge, philosophy, jurisprudence, transcendental philosophy, etc.^[102]

Accordingly, Rn has ends that constitute the cornerstones of morality and religion and therefore the practical interest of reason. In the practical perspective, the highest end of Rn is morality and the corresponding degree of happiness, which is the idea of the highest good.^[103] This idea, as a necessary condition of the postulates of immortality of the soul and God, governs the prevalent interest of Rn. It is also a necessary condition of philosophy, as it determines in which direction the search for wisdom should go.^[104]

3.3.3 (9) Is unified

Although the searched concept X that I referred to using “Rn” as pars pro toto seems to be overloaded by multiple marks, the manifold that is contained in and under it seems to agree in several respects. First, it is a faculty, and the elements (2)–(8) do not contradict this mark. They constitute the conceptual framework of philosophy of mind within the modern paradigm since Descartes, which Kant adjusts and diversifies.

Second, all the elements are elements of a rational faculty. This also appertains to Kant’s concept of interests, which seem to naturally adhere to Rn. Interests, unlike inclinations and needs, are based on rational cognition from concepts^[105] – the concepts (such as wisdom, virtue, highest good, etc.) serve as ends and condition Rn’s activities.

Third, the marks (4)–(8) expound and specify the conceptual content of (3), the rational faculty in the narrower sense. Their tertium comparationis and necessary copula is the concept of ideas. The narrow and highest sense of rationality implies a higher universality and purity of concepts and a higher degree of spontaneity needed to operate with them. Both are guaranteed by the combination of the logical, real, and pure uses that result in ideas. The concept of idea contains multiple marks, such as the unconditioned, purity, maximum, and perfection, which are common to various examples of representations that can be bundled into different kinds of ideas. The ideas are the medium of Rn and have multiple functions.

Kant did not directly ask the question about the unity of marks of the concept of Rn. He nevertheless claimed that there is only one reason that has several different appearances, the theoretical and practical Rn and its uses, principles, and interests.^[106] As I have shown, the claim that there is only one Rn makes sense if there is something common to all the appearances, and this is the medium: ideas.^[107]