IN Part Five, we discussed how Kant confines knowledge of the world to the conceptualisation of external objects and that such objects cannot be regarded as “things-in-themselves” because they lie beyond the limited range of human understanding. Kant also states that the world is divided into the twofold realms of the phenomenal and the noumenal, the latter of which – being unknowable – soon invited accusations of “mysticism”.

Steiner, as readers will recall, was opposed to Kant’s “Critical Idealism” on the basis that experience relies on mere representations and not things as they reveal themselves to us. Despite this, he agrees with Johannes Volkelt (1848-1930) that earlier traces of the same philosophical tendency can be found amongst both the Ancient Greeks and the Englishman John Locke (1632-1704). Nonetheless, it was Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason which finally brought these older strands of thought together beneath a single banner.

The previous part in this series revealed how Steiner was determined to maintain a working relationship between truth and science, and he goes on to explain that Kant was well aware that it important to demonstrate for the sake of metaphysics that “synthetic” judgements – i.e. knowledge which is obtained independently of experience – can be presented as something a priori. Kant nonetheless relies on a presupposition in that he takes a predicate and adds to it the content of the subject, a process that results in what Steiner would regard as a rather spurious connection. In more analytical judgements, of course, there is no need for tenuous associations of this kind because the predicate merely reinforces what was already implicit in the subject. The fact that Kant makes a judgement in lieu of experience leads Steiner to state the following:

At the start of the Theory of Knowledge we must hold entirely open the question, whether we arrive at any judgments otherwise than by experience, or only by experience. Indeed, to unprejudiced reflection the alleged independence of experience seems from the first to be impossible. For, let the object of our knowledge be what it may—it must, surely, always present itself to us at some time in an immediate and unique way; in short, it must become for us an experience. Mathematical judgments, too, are known by us in no other way than by our experiencing them in particular concrete cases. (p.137)

This contention rests on the notion that a proposition can only become a form of knowledge once it has been experienced through consciousness.

A second objection to Kant’s theory lies in Steiner’s claim that one “has no right” to suggest that knowledge lies outside the realms of experience and that experience itself surely guarantees all knowledge which, at root, is empirical in nature. Whilst the Austrian seeks to establish truth by way of science, the German is said to adopt a decidedly non-verifiable means of investigation in pursuit of the same thing:

Thus, Kant’s formulation of the problem implies two presuppositions. The first is that we need, over and above experience, another source of cognitions. The second is that all knowledge from experience has only conditional validity. Kant entirely fails to realise that these two propositions are open to doubt, that they stand in need of critical examination. He takes them over as unquestioned assumptions from the dogmatic philosophy of his predecessors and makes them the basis of his own critical inquiries. The dogmatic thinkers assume the validity of these two propositions and simply apply them in order to get from each the kind of knowledge which it guarantees. Kant assumed their validity and only asks, What are the conditions of their validity? But, what if they are not valid at all? In that case, the edifice of Kantian doctrine lacks all foundation whatever. (pp.137-8)

Indeed, Kant made no attempt to disguise his firm belief that if one wishes to discover that which lies beyond one’s comprehension then one must embrace metaphysics as an effective means of transcending the mere physicality of experience. Similarly, in contrast to Steiner’s claims about mathematics Kant was adamant that such formulae are a priori and thus not dependant on empiricism.

The present writer would agree with Kant to the extent that practical discoveries in this field – as well as their subsequent application – are simply a belated form of unveiling that which was already apparent. Kant adopted the same a priori approach towards the natural sciences, but Steiner takes him to task:

The fact that Mathematics and Pure Natural Science are a priori sciences implies that the “form” of all experience has its ground in the subject. Hence, all that is given by experience is the “matter” of sensations. This matter is synthesised by the forms, inherent in the mind, into the system of empirical science. It is only as principles of order for the matter of sense that the formal principles of the a priori theories have function and significance. They make empirical science possible, but they cannot transcend it. These formal principles are nothing but the synthetic judgments a priori, which therefore extend, as conditions of all possible empirical knowledge, as far as that knowledge but no further. Thus, the Critique of Pure Reason, so far from proving the a priori character of Mathematics and Pure Natural Science, does but delimit the sphere of their applicability on the assumption that their principles must become known independently of experience. (pp.138-9)

Once again, Steiner has recourse to Volkelt and his 1879 work, Immanuel Kant’s Erkenntnistheorie, which makes the claim that the German fails to question his foundational supposition that a pre-existing knowledge “is universal and necessary”. Kant is therefore accused of making assumptions and it is these which form the very basis of his theory of knowledge.

Steiner cites various other critics of Kant’s “dogmatic” a priori methodology, but apart from repeating the mantra that one cannot obtain knowledge without access to experience his case remains unconvincing. That said, Steiner is at least consistent in that his wholesale dismissal of presuppositional foundations of knowledge may be related to earlier remarks about the free spirit having the ability to interpret without relying on preconceived structures of morality.