Theological Origins of Modernity

260 chapter eight
Kant’s philosophical enterprise aimed at resolving the problem posed
by the antinomies. 14 Th e antinomies, as Kant sees them, are only apparent
and not real contradictions. Th ey arise as the consequence of an attempt
by the understanding (which deals only with fi nite things) to grasp the infi
nite. In struggling to understand what it cannot understand, it inevitably
falls into perplexity. Kant believes we can solve the problem of the antinomies
by recognizing and accepting the limits of our rational capacities.
We must, in other words, confi ne the understanding to its native realm, to
what Kant calls “the island of truth,” and resist the lure of a fatal voyage in
search of the infi nite on the foggy, iceberg-infested seas that surround this
island. Th e critique of reason that establishes these limits is thus an eff ort
to know oneself and hence an integral moment of enlightenment. What
Kant believes he can show through such a critique is that reason “knows”
in two diff erent ways: fi rst, through the understanding (pure reason),
which gives us a scientifi c (and causal) account of existence, and second,
through a moral sense (practical reason) rooted in our transcendental freedom,
which tells us what is right and wrong. Th e apparent contradiction
of reason with itself is thus the consequence not of the contradictory character
of existence or the inadequacy of reason but of the misuse of reason.
Th e correct use of reason, Kant believes, will make possible the mastery of
nature and attainment of human freedom, which will produce prosperity
and morality and consequently political liberty and perpetual peace. Kant
thus believed that transcendental idealism could save the modern project
by providing the philosophical ground for the reconciliation of freedom
and science, and that it would thus make possible the continued growth in
enlightenment and human progress.
Th is “solution,” however, was not universally accepted, largely because
Kant did not, and perhaps could not, explain how the two faculties of
knowing, pure and practical reason, could be conjoined in consciousness.
15 Kant recognized that this was a problem and argued that these two
capacities were unifi ed in the transcendental unity of apperception (or
self-consciousness), but he did not explain how such a unity was possible.
Rather he simply asserted that without such a unity experience would be
impossible. Since we do have experience, he concluded that such a unity
must exist. However, to many of his immediate successors it seemed as if
Kant had not solved the problem of the antinomies but displaced it, saving
science and morality only by making self-consciousness itself unintelligible.
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century continental thought is in large
measure a series of attempts to come to terms with the question that Kant
posed in the antinomies, that he himself failed to adequately answer, and
that was driven home by the French Revolution.