Naturalism and Criticism
The present work is the product of several years study of the various aspects of Kanfs Critical Philosophy and Hume's naturalism. During that time many individuals have helped with this work and it is hardly possible to set down the names of aH of them. O
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To Renate and Gita
NATURALISM AND CRITICISM
by
R. A. MALL
•
SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V
ISBN 978-90-247-1739-2 ISBN 978-94-010-1347-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-010-1347-5
©I975 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands in 1975 All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form
CONTENTS
Preface
VII
I. Introduction: Hume and Kant and the History of Ideas
I
H. Sense, Reason and Imagination
9
IH. Hume's "Principles" and Kanfs "Categories"
22
IV. Naturalism and Criticism
43
V. Hume and Kant on the Philosophy of Religion
63
VI. Towards a Theory of" Anthropocentrism" with regard to Naturalism and Criticism
87
Bibliographical References
99
PREFACE
The present work is the product of several years study of the various aspects of Kanfs Critical Philosophy and Hume's naturalism. During that time many individuals have helped with this work and it is hardly possible to set down the names of aH of them. One name does des erve special mention - Prof. Dr. H. Heimsoeth with whom the author has discussed some of the very knotty problems of Kantian Philosophy. Although Hume has been - as Kant freely admits in the Preface to his "Prolegomena" - one of the most decisive influences and turning points in the philosophical development of Kant, the author does not thematize in this work the age-old problem of whether Kant reaHy read, understood and refuted Hume. That it has been, ever since Hume wrote, a favorite pursuit among philosophers to answer hirn, to refute hirn, and to refute Kanfs attempt at refutation of hirn, irrespective of its being convincing or not, must be mentioned with special respect. The "criticism" of Kant, ever since he developed it, has attracted more attention and received more sympathetic interpretations than the "naturalism" of Hume which has been neglected for quite a very long period. The present work hopes partly to do justice to this neglected aspect; it thematizes Kants criticism as weH as Hume's naturalism as twoindependent and original "hypotheses" towards the solution of the ancient and very tangled problem of the relation between experience and reason, a problem which appears in many guises - rationalism, empiricism, dogmatism, scepticism, the apriori and the a posteriori. The work is based on a particular understanding of criticism and of naturalism which is amiddie path between dogmatic rationalism and dogmatic empiricism. This go-between character of criticism as weH as naturalism leads us to our thesis that there is a programmatic and archetectonic similarity between Critical Philosophy (Kant) and
VIII
PREFACE
naturalism (Hume). In order to substantiate this thesis the author undertakes a critical and comparative study of the principles of human nature (Hume) and the categories of understanding (Kant). The author's very sympathetic but not uncritical or orthodox interpretation of Kant's and Hume's philosophy shows that there is a fou
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