Kant: A Biography

326 Kant: A Biography

Idealism or Realism: No Object "External to

Us in a Transcendental Sense"?

Kant's star continued to rise outside of Königsberg. Reinhold's "Letters
on the Kantian Philosophy" in the Teutscher Merkur in 1786—87 did a great
deal to popularize his critical philosophy. The after-pains of the pantheism
dispute moved his philosophy into the very center of the philosophical
discussion. Jacobi had published in 1787 a book entitled David Hume on
Belief, or Idealism and Realism to respond to criticisms that he was an ob¬
scurantist faith mongerer. In the book, he tried to show that he had used the
word ^Glaube,'''' which can mean both faith and belief, not in the sense of
"faith" but in the same sense in which Hume had used the word "belief"
(which was indeed translated into German as "Glaube").
More importantly, the book had an Appendix entitled "On the Tran¬
scendental Idealism." In it, Jacobi criticized Kant severely. In some sense,
the critique constituted nothing but the further development of Hamann's
ruminations and observations on Kant's "critical idealism." In another
sense, it was a further development of Reid's critique of Hume. Like Reid,
Jacobi concentrated on the issue of the reality of external objects.^235 For,
Jacobi noted,

what we realists call real objects, or objects independent from our representations, the

transcendental idealism regards only as internal beings. These internal beings do not

represent anything at all of an object that could be external to us, or to which the appearance

could be related. They are completely devoid of all real objectivity and are merely subjective

determinations of the soul

Moreover, according to Kant,

we even introduce ourselves the order and regularity in the appearances, which we call

nature, and we could not have found it, if we had not, or if the nature of our mind had

not originally introduced it.

Therefore, r

the Kantian philosopher leaves the spirit of his system completely behind, when he

says that the objects make impressions upon the senses, occasion sensations in this way,

and give rise to representations. For according to the Kantian doctrine, the empirical

object, which can only be an appearance, cannot be external to us and thus be at the

same time something other than a representation... The understanding adds the

object to the appearance.^236 :