An Interview with Beatrice Longuenesse - Stanford University ...

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68 AN INTERVIEWJohanna Wolff :What do you take to be the most relevant aspect of Kant’s theoreticalphilosophy for contemporary debates?Longuenesse:Many aspects of Kant’s theoretical philosophy are relevant tocontemporary debates. One prominent example is Kant’s discussionof the nature of space and time and its relevance to Newtonian science,which has not been sufficiently explored in relation to contemporarydiscussions of substantivalism versus relationalism about space andtime. I have learnt a great deal about this issue from the work of myformer student Anja Jauernig, now an assistant professor at Notre-Dame. As far as my own current interests are concerned, the mostrelevant aspect of Kant’s theoretical philosophy for contemporarydebates is the philosophy of mind he develops as the backbone of histranscendental philosophy (namely his investigation into the possibilityof objective knowledge). By Kant’s philosophy of mind I mean, forinstance, Kant’s analysis of the relation between self-consciousness andconsciousness of objects, his analysis of intentionality (his account ofthe directedness or “aboutness” of conscious states), the role he assignsto imagination and to concepts in sensory perception, his analysis ofconcept formation and of the relation between conceptualizing andjudging, and of course his account of the ways in which we come upwith the logical and epistemic norms for our cognitive activities. Onemay wonder whether these questions are not now more properlythe domain of empirical psychology and cognitive science than ofphilosophy. But I think relating questions about the workings of ourminds (which certainly have and should have empirical answers) toquestions about the scope and validity of our claims to knowledge of theworld outside us, is still the proper domain of philosophy. Kant’s styleof investigation, in this regard, is more relevant than ever.Katherine Dunlop:Your work has shown that Kant tends to use important terms, e.g.reflection, matter and form, and determination, in very different ways indifferent contexts. In your own work, what principles do you use to determinehow one of these terms is used in a particular context?Longuenesse:I have no fail-proof recipe to offer that would help decide whichuse of a concept is in place in any given instance. There is, howeverone general principle one should always keep in mind, the principleof charity: if an argument seems to make no sense at all under one
BÉATRICE LONGUENESSE 69interpretation of a given term, try to see if there is not another plausibleinterpretation that would allow the argument to make sense.You cite two examples (“reflection,” “matter/form”) thatraise different problems. “Reflection” is a term Kant inherits fromthe empiricist tradition (Locke and Hume on the distinction betweensensation and reflection), where it means the perception by the mind ofits own operations. But in the context of his Logic, and then again in thethird Critique, Kant uses the term in a different sense (which he explicitlydefines): reflecting is looking for a universal rule, or a universal concept,under which a particular instance might fall. Finally, in the first Critiquehe coins the term “transcendental reflection” to describe the investigationinto the nature and origin of a representation (whether intuition orconcept, sensible or intellectual). Which of these senses is relevant will ineach case have to be determined by the context.The case of “matter/form” is different. There I think there isjust one meaning for the pair, which Kant explicitly gives (and whichis classic since Aristotle): matter means “determinable,” form means“determination.” However, these are relational terms: the determinableis always the determinable for a specific determination, and conversely thedetermination determines a specific determinable. The difficulty here is toestablish which determinable we are talking about, which determinationwe are talking about, and this again will depend on the context and onthe particular argument under consideration.Allen Wood:Your work on Kant’s table of categories is distinguished by the wayin which it treats sympathetically the Wolffian tradition in logic and Kant’sinterpretation of it. For a long time, philosophers reading Kant, and evenscholars of Kant’s theoretical philosophy, have refused to take this path becausethey regard that entire way of thinking about logic as hopelessly outdated andjust plain wrong. What would you say in response to someone who objected toKant, and to your sympathetic interpretation of his theoretical philosophy, onthose grounds?Longuenesse:This is a very important question. All too often, trying tofree a philosopher from the past of what seems to us most obviouslyoutdated in his way of setting up his problems ends up loading himwith even worse presuppositions or arguments. The reading of Kant’smetaphysical deduction of the categories that prevailed for a goodpart of the twentieth century is a case in point. In trying to understandKant’s table of judgments in the terms of contemporary logic, one notonly found it hopelessly flawed, but also found Kant’s whole argument
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