468 Notes to Pages 178-181
and a Scottish Kant," in Lewis White Beck, Essays on Kant and Hume (New
Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1978), pp. 1 i3f., where he discusses Kant's
development with special emphasis on the problem of causality and distinguishes
between a "pre-Humean" phase around 1755/6 and a "quasi-Humean" phase
from 1762/3 to 1770. On the other hand, Karl Ameriks, relying mainly on Kant's
theory of mind, argues, for instance, that there was a move from a more empiri¬
cist position to a more rationalist one in Kant. Thus he observes that "in his first
publications Kant can be described as (relatively speaking) an empiricist," and
that in the second period (around 1762) his philosophy is "much more oriented
towards non-empirical and rationalistic concerns." He then goes on to differen¬
tiate a "third or sceptical period," which, he thinks, is only natural "in view of
some obvious difficulties with the preceding rationalistic developments," and "a
fourth or critical period in Kant's philosophy after approximately 1768." Karl
Ameriks, Kant's Theory of Mind: An Analysis oj the Paralogisms of Pure Reason
(Oxford/New York: Clarendon Press, 1982), pp. 14t In a certain sense, Ameriks
and other Kant scholars are right, of course. There were rationalist, empiricist,
and even skeptical concerns in Kant. In different works, different concerns were
predominant.- Vleeschauwer, Development, p. 1.
- Louis E. Loeb (among others) has argued convincingly that these labels are seri¬
ously distorting even our picture of the broad outlines of early modern philosophy.
See his From Descartes to Hume: Continental Metaphysics and the Development of
Modern Philosophy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981). See also John Cotting-
ham, The Rationalist, vol. 4 of A History of Western Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1988), pp. 1-10. Cottingham quite correctly points out that ra¬
tionalism is not a seamless web, but rather a cluster of overlapping views. - Beck, Early German Philosophy, p. 267.
- This is not to say, of course, that his "critical philosophy" contains no "precriti-
cal elements" or that Kant's early life and thought are irrelevant to a discussion
of the mature position. It only means that we must be careful not to conceive the
"precritical Kant" in accordance with our idea of the "critical Kant." - Ak 10, p. 74 (not in Kant, Correspondence, tr. Zweig).
- George S. Pappas, "Some Forms of Epistemological Scepticism," in George S.
Pappas and Marshall Swain (eds.), Essays in Knowledge and Justification (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1978), pp. 3O9f. - We know that Kant believed he could trace back the failure of his predecessors,
his contemporaries, and even of himself to the method they had followed so far,
and that he hoped to achieve more by a better method. - Ak 10, p. 97.
- Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, tr. Norman Kemp Smith (New York:
St Martin's Press, 1965), pp. Aix f. (Subsequent references to this work will be
given in the body of the text and consist of an "A" and/or "B" followed by page
number.) - Kant adds in a footnote that "indifference, doubt and, in the final issue, severe
criticism, are themselves proofs of a profound habit of thought," at least until
critical philosophy has done its work.