Edward Feser: Kant’s claustrophobic metaphysics (Updated)

Wednesday, December 17, 2025

Kant’s claustrophobic metaphysics (Updated)

My review of Marcus Willaschek’s Kant: A Revolution in Thinking appears in the latest issue of the Claremont Review of Books.

UPDATE 12/20: The review is no longer behind a paywall.

28 comments:

Vini TadeoDecember 17, 2025 at 12:25 PM
Oh my goodness! Just reading this tittle is driving me crazy to read! I hope that the paywall drops soon.
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AnonymousDecember 17, 2025 at 7:18 PM
Kant was the greatest of all philosophers. He foresaw quantum mechanics.
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AnonymousDecember 18, 2025 at 2:10 AM

One of the best observations on Kant (curtesy of Edmund Husserl) was that he failed to see how metal events and entities would also need their own ontology (it doesn’t matter if some of the mind is inaccessible) and to complain this was merely conditioned by subjective necessity was self-defeat by kicking the problem up a stage. As such trying to separate Epistemology from Metaphysics was like trying to outmanoeuvre one’s reflection.
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thefederalistDecember 18, 2025 at 7:26 AM
I don't have a Claremont account so I only read the first couple of lines. What has struck me over the last many years, though, is that the rough difference between conservatives and liberals - at least in America - is the distinction you describe between taking external reality as the given and starting with our own internal dispositions.
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AnonymousDecember 18, 2025 at 10:58 AM
You don't need to read Ed's review (although I would like to) to know that he (like all Thomistic philosophers) takes a dim view of Kant. For a favorable review of this book, read this article that has no paywall:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/11/03/kant-a-revolution-in-thinking-marcus-willaschek-book-review
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AnonymousDecember 18, 2025 at 11:04 AM
Prof. Marcus Willaschek is a brilliant philosopher in his own right. This is a review of his book explaining Kant's views on metaphysics:
https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/kant-on-the-sources-of-metaphysics-the-dialectic-of-pure-reason/
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PCollinsDecember 19, 2025 at 3:29 PM
I've dropped the paywall.
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AnonymousDecember 20, 2025 at 10:24 AM
The article is now unlocked.
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AnonymousDecember 20, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Great article explaining Kant, Prof. Feser! Thank you.

I have two points: 1.

Because Descartes took the self’s knowledge to begin with what can be established by reason alone apart from sensory experience...

I assume someone has noticed that Descartes (and his progeny) pretty much assume adults who have come to sit before Lady Philosophy to be enlightened. Has he (or the others) ever considered the newborn baby? They DON'T "think" in any sense worthy of the name.

The experiments with sensory deprivation (on adults, of course) are interesting. I hope nobody has ever attempted this, but suppose we extrapolate the experiment to a newborn baby (actually, I would prefer it to extend even to the baby in the womb), where they deprive the baby of all sensory experience: all senses (somehow) shuttered from input. It is highly doubtful that this person will ever come to think.

2. Kant holds that no knowledge would be possible unless certain notions were built into the very structure of the human mind prior to sensory experience. These include time and space, along with what Kant calls the “categories”—unity, plurality, substance and accident, cause and effect, and eight others. Apart from these, what enters the mind by way of sensory experience would be an unintelligible jumble,

Is Kant's proposal here completely immune to a pair of objections? The first is simpler, Objector A says: "maybe YOUR mind is built that way, but my mind is different." On what basis could he prove this is impossible? I assume he can't use empirical evidence, and even if he claims he can, it seems unlikely he can prove the case.

For the second, Objector B says "you have prepared a large list of categories, in several groups, to constitute a class of a priori conceptual filters for experience. This is complex. There can be no fact this complex but by being caused by some cause pre-arranging this, and (because the effect is mental) by an intelligent agent who MADE this situation. It is absurd and self-defeating to imagine that mind is subject to the same pre-conditions of thought. Hence it is not the MERE FACT of being "mind" that makes our minds to be cast in the formulation you posit. Indeed, that a mind must think in terms of space and time is obviously contingent, since space and time are contingent. So, even if our human minds are (to a large degree) all alike in structure, this cannot be taken to prove that ALL mind must also be alike."

Which, of course, leads to considering whether aspects of our minds are given by our physical context, and sensory input, and that what he thinks is "built-in" to mind really isn't.
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AnonymousDecember 21, 2025 at 5:14 AM
This is just the Gottingen Review all over again. It's a very common reading but it ignores what Kant says about the thing in itself in chapter 3 of the analytic - it's not really any sort of thing at all but a limiting concept. It also fails to account for the difference between empirical realism and transcendental idealism, reading Kant's deductions as a sort of dogmatic mechanism. Admittedly Kant is a bad writer, he was not clear on his own insights which is why there are so many apparent inconsistencies and absurdities. But this reading of Kant as a radical, skeptical dualist is misguided.
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Raffaele AquiloneDecember 21, 2025 at 11:31 AM
Thanks, Dr. Feser. In one of the previous open threads I asked about a possible thomistic critique of Kant. This piece is a review for a book about Kant written by another author, so of course it has a completely different intention, but I find the summary of the background to Kant as well as Kant's own philosophy to be very instructive for me.

I received some interesting comments in the previous open thread, as for instance a pointer to Kant's critique by Rob Koons, but this review has renewed my curiosity and I wonder if Dr. Feser, or other users, have anything else to say about how a thomist philosopher would reply to Kant's system.
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The Great Thurible of DarknessDecember 23, 2025 at 8:57 AM
"Edward Feser has a definite gift for making fairly abstruse philosophical material accessible to readers from outside the academic world, without compromising the rigor of the arguments or omitting challenging details." David Bentley Hart is proven right once again!

(Sorry, I know this was a somewhat backhanded compliment, but I couldn't help msyelf. Great review!)
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Drew MillerDecember 28, 2025 at 4:43 AM
An alternative to get around Kant, or indeed all the post-Lockean problems, is to deny the blank slate "tabula rasa" view of the mind. The idea that there is nothing in the mind that isn't first in the senses, cannot itself be derived from the senses. And with innate ideas and/or divine illumination, the whole thrust of Post-Lockean epistemology becomes besides the point.
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David McPikeDecember 31, 2025 at 6:01 PM
On Kant's 'legacy' -- which would have horrified Kant -- the argument in a nutshell seems to be: "Look what happened: a horrifying betrayal of your thought; but still, this is *your* fault." Seems a sterile polemic. Of course it's originally Descartes's fault. And his 'cogito' is derived from Augustine's 'fallor' so the blame really is on the (in)famous bishop of Hippo. Then trace back further, there's Jesus and Plato and ancient Hindu thought and -- why not? -- all the way back to Adam, creating reality for himself by naming things. But then that was the capacity God gave him, wasn't it? First principles of reason, categories of understanding, the human mind: makes reality (human reality) -- does it not?? -- but certainly not "rather than the divine mind," since the divine mind is what made the human mind, in its own (creative) image and likeness.
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DannyFebruary 10, 2026 at 5:23 AM
I can manage a good deal of comment here, though a Kantian's remarks probably tend to seem irrelevant, as there is not 'enough common ground' across metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. Debates work better when people mostly agree about the big things, and quibble about few little things.

'For thinkers like Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, what we know first and most fundamentally is the world outside the mind—sun and clouds, rocks and trees, tables and chairs, dogs and cats and people.'

This seems to be about basing knowledge on sensory experience of an objective reality. Not usually a very controversial idea, as far as it goes.

'Reflection on this knowledge leads us to inquire into the mental acts and powers by which we acquire such knowledge, and then in turn into the nature of the mind itself. But the objective, natural order is primary.'

The view that the objective, natural order is primary in our knowledge could be called something Kant fundamentally disagrees with..? If you say here that 'the mind is merely a passive receiver of an external, ordered world', then *most everybody* would disagree. But sure, Kant would disagree. If we all 'know' of the mental framework of the knower, then I guess I'm not sure about what is 'primary'. Surely, with our without input from Kant, the problem of how we can know the existence and nature of the world external to our mind is one of the oldest and most difficult in philosophy.

"Kant begins with the primacy of the subjective point of view of human thought and consciousness, rather than objective physical reality.'

I'm not actually sure even, how you could do that. In any case, there is a famous Kant quote that says different -- 'All knowledge begins with experience'. Though of course, it really goes like this:

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DannyFebruary 10, 2026 at 5:23 AM
'Though all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it all arises out of experience.."

I do gather that Kant is on board with the notion that sensory experience triggers knowledge.

'If all we had was raw sensory input (“intuitions,” in Kant’s jargon)..'

Raw sensory input is subjective. 'Intuitions', in Kant's jargon, are objective. Unorganized "matter" of experience is not the same thing as intuitions organize that data through the mind's inherent forms (space/time) to represent objects. The mind’s internal, chaotic reaction to external stimul is not yet 'objective'. Maybe the whole 'we do not perceive the world directly' idea is more specifically 'Kantian' than I took it to be..? To me, it seems pretty much a trivially obviously true idea..? We don't have direct access to the world as it is, or else, Kant is definitely wrong about something. We have direct perception of objects as they appear, but those objects are constructed by our minds. Not that Kant is always right, I'm doing Kant exegesis of course.

' If all we had was raw sensory input (“intuitions,” in Kant’s jargon) then we would indeed never be able to get beyond it to knowledge of a world of mind-independent and causally related physical objects.'

--mind-independent, in what sense? ;)

Physical objects are mind-dependent, they are 'representations'. Note how obvious it is that an item of empirical knowledge, at least, is a 'representation'. You might suppose an empirical object to be 'out there'. But what if you see something 'out there', only to decide that it doesn't actually exist? Like the man in the moon, is an empirical object. Quite obviously a 'representation'. I guess Kantians especially, gas about how physical objects are mind-dependent "appearances". How objects appear to us, which are mind-dependent, is a question that draws us into considering how space and time are not features of things-in-themselves. We do not perceive the world as it is independently of our cognition.

'The rational foundations of common sense and science alike would disintegrate.'

I guess that's true, but in any case, sure, it is firmly established that the brain actively constructs, organizes, and interprets sensory data rather than passively recording it. Say it with me? The brain filters, integrates, and interprets raw signals from sensory organs. The question whether this is true isn't a particularly difficult question, is it? Kant isn't even required for this, you can say this on your own authority, and correct Aquinas if he disagrees w/you about it.

'At the same time, Kant, like Hume, nevertheless wants to clip the wings of ambitious metaphysical speculation.'

Maybe not 'metaphysical speculation' per se, like the speculation that angels dance on the head of a pin, speculate away. I might say that some of us recognize that a speculation is a speculation. Some of us. And what is justified and verified is etc.

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DannyFebruary 10, 2026 at 5:24 AM
'..what we can know about the objective physical realm on Kant’s account is much less than meets the eye.'

Well, not literally 'much less than meets the eye', wrong figure of speech!?

'Time, space, substance, causality, and so on have, as it turns out, nothing to do with the way the world outside us really is in itself.'

True, but also, time and space and substance and causality do not meet 'the eye', per se. Space is a vacuum and transparent, etc..?

'.. on one natural reading of Kant, the way the objective world as it is in itself relates to the subjective appearances through which it is represented to us, is by causing those appearances.'

I want to go along with this, maybe I'll tarry with it for a moment. Can we say that every 'event' has a cause, an explanation? We might not know the ultimate explanation, especially if there are 'invisible' causes'. Naturally, the idea of an 'appearance' logically implies that something is appearing. I'm not sure that's *proof*, but it seems natural to say that for there to be an appearance, something is there to cause the appearance. I guess you could be hallucinating, though of course, one check if others see or hear the same thing. The idea of sensory experiences (visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory) that are not shared by people around you is one of those tricky points that not only Kantians have to deal with, I guess? I guess I'm wondering where we are headed with this line of reasoning..

'Yet causality is supposed to be a category that, in Kant’s view, does not apply to the external world as it is in itself.'

Sure it does. Isn't Kant obviously a believer in God and free will, for example? Famously so? Now, it's rue that causality is a 'category', but what are we implying, here, 'don't act as if categories are real'? Buddy, 'reality' is also a 'category'. Sure, there is this whole line of thinking about 'categories' -- they are used to structure experience and make sense of the world. The rumor that categories only apply to some limited sort of thinking but not to *all* thinking is not my understanding of Kant. Simply *all* thinking employs categories, and this can be obvious. Plurality, is a category. What sort of thinking can avoid the idea of 'plurality'? I suppose, the idea of a collection of separate parts can be avoided by emphasizing a single, cohesive entity, but oops, 'unity' is also a category.

'In that case, it is not correct to think of that world as causing our subjective experiences of it.'

I can follow, but obviously it *is* correct to think of that world as causing our subjective experiences of it. If it clears anything up, I might offer that all phenomena that we perceive by our senses are subjective, but what happened is completely independent of our subjective experience, it happened objectively.

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DannyFebruary 10, 2026 at 5:24 AM
'Kant’s position seems, after all is said and done, to lead us back to skepticism, or at best to another variation on the idealist position that the physical world exists only relative to the mind’s awareness of it. '

You mean, the strawman position that causality is only a category and, thus, causes are only subjective whims or something. How could it have ever seemed plausible to attribute this view to *any* philosopher, I can't say. That's not philosophy, it's psychosis.

'As Willaschek notes, there are alternative ways of interpreting Kant.'

Um.

'But it is very difficult to make any of them work,..'

Stipulated that it is very difficult to make any of them work, no problems have actually been listed here, with 'any of them'.

'it is no surprise that Western philosophy in the century after Kant went precisely in an idealist direction.'

I'm not sure what direction is that, I'm also not sure how this point follows. I guess you don't mean 'Thomist' philosophy? If you don't mean 'Thomist' philosophy, or, more generally, Aristotelian philosophy, nor are we cleaving towards Kant here, I find myself unable to guess at the meaning of this simple generalization about 'an idealist direction'. You're thinking of Marx? But how could it be? Here I can emphasize that there is actually, in so many words, 'materialism'. But I picture John Stuart Mill having focused on empiricism. He's elided from your historical overview? But why? I don't even know who you might be *including*, as exemplifying 'an idealist direction'. In any case, Your Kant seems to be a strawman who couldn't figure out that there are really causes.

'This is well-trodden ground to those familiar with Kant,..'

I am forced to speculate on *how* familiar people are with Kant, if they are not familiar with his 'refutation of idealism', which argues that inner experience is only possible through the presupposition of a permanent, external world, and is found in his most famous book, the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant goes so far as to reverses the traditional view that inner experience (thinking, feeling) is more certain than outer experience (the physical world).

*This*, is well-trodden ground to those familiar with Kant.

'All the same, Kant’s philosophy has a distinctly claustrophobic feel, trapping us as it does in our own minds.'

I am tempted to joke about how it might depend on the mind, but seriously, I cannot perceive that this is even a common interpretation of his Transcendental Idealism, let alone being the last word. For Kant, the mind is not a passive receiver of information. Who can disagree? Kant distinguishes between appearances and things-in-themselves. This is not the same as saying the human mind is the ultimate creator of reality, I would mock anyone saying that. Of course, Kant specifically sought to refute solipsism (the idea that only my mind exists) or Berkeley’s idealism (that only ideas exist). I also don't feel trapped when Kant goes about ensuring that things like freedom, God, and the soul (things in themselves) cannot be disproven. The idea of a necessary limitation of human reason might be possible to construe as a mental prison, but I don't prefer the alternative of pretending to know more than we do.
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