The Paradox and the Arrow to the Infinite

By Costantino Esposito - Exploring the Genius of Immanuel Kant: How His Critique of Pure Reason Continues to Shape Our Understanding of Reality, Morality, and the Limits of Human Knowledge

To honor a genius like Kant on the three-hundredth anniversary of his birth‌ — ‌Konigsberg, 22 April, 1724‌ — ‌it's best not to succumb to the mere taste for celebration but to start with some of the unresolved issues in his thought. These issues still pose a problem for our era and represent the living aspect of his reflection precisely because they capture its ongoing problematic dimension. Indeed, great thinkers contribute to our philosophical understanding of the world by introducing fundamental problems whose implications are often broader and more lasting than their proposed doctrinal solutions.

We might call these discrepancies in the interplay of questions and answers, problems and doctrines, paradoxes, as they indicate a direction contrary to the standardized versions of a philosophical theory, thereby continually challenging it.

Therefore, I would like to touch on one of these paradoxes to celebrate the memory of a man from three centuries ago who remains present in the fundamental concepts with which we still think.

Kant isn't the author of a true "philosophy"—if by philosophy we mean a doctrine that tells us the truth about "reality," about consciousness and the world, the self‌ and God. Instead, Kant has outlined how our reason functions, what it can and can't determine, what it can know, and what it must consider.

For this reason, Kantian philosophy takes on the unique dimension of a "critique"—that is, a delineation of the various uses and fields in which human reason exercises its ability to know and think about the world strictly a priori, based on its faculty to establish universal laws independent of experience.

As "pure reason," human reason must start solely from itself and not from what might derive a posteriori from what exists outside or beyond itself. This shifts Kant's fundamental question from "What is reality?" to "What can I know about what we call reality?"

The focus is no longer on what is good and evil but rather on "what must I do" to be a virtuous person, not on whether there is something in the universe that surpasses and transcends my reason but on "what am I permitted to hope for" based on my pure rational capacity. These are the three famous questions posed in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), which later culminated in a final question in the Introduction to Logic: "What is man?"

Kant's intention was by no means to deny an objective truth about the world and oneself or to reduce it to mere subjective opinion. On the contrary, according to the grand project of Enlightenment emancipation, pure reason must demonstrate the conditions that make objectivity possible (a priori) in the realm of scientific knowledge as well as in moral, natural, historical, and cultural contexts.

Therefore, it's asserted that human reason can only go so far in understanding the world; it must confine itself to the realm of phenomena and can't transcend these boundaries. This means it has no competence or ability to grasp the very being of things (the "thing-in-itself"), which can't be known a priori nor be known at all because we can only know what we determine a priori in space and time.

However, this assertion also implies that our a-priori mental structures (intuitions, categories, principles, ideas, etc.) present the world to us. Being will always remain an enigma or an unknown that eludes reason. It would be irrational or illusory to claim to know it; it can and must only be thought of (specifically as a "noumenon"). Consequently, Kant's thought has been rightly described as a philosophy of the "limits of reason."

This image, however, is ambiguous due to the paradox we are examining. One might think that beyond these limits, another reality exists apart from that contained within reason. And thus, reason must halt at the brink of this inscrutable abyss, waiting to see if being itself might somehow come forward and communicate with it.

Yet, Kant's genius couldn't accept that reason‌ — ‌viewed still as the most potent and eloquent trace of divine creation‌ — ‌should fail to match the grandeur of its nature and potential. Reason aspires to know "everything," not just the conditioned (cause and effect) but also the unconditioned or the infinite. Yet, it doesn't succeed.

His question is like an arrow shot towards the infinite, in search of everything, which at a certain point reverses its course, and instead of proceeding towards an indeterminate future, we might imagine, it turns inward to find within itself‌ — ‌within the limits of reason‌ — ‌what it can never encounter outside itself.

What can't be known must then be thought of as what we must do, as our moral "duty." Only this pure ought-to-be guided by the universal moral law, can make the idea of an immortal soul and a judging God who will match moral virtue with happiness in another life still conceivable. This doesn't mean that these ideas have a real counterpart or exist. It simply no longer serves or interests us to make that assertion, since the limits of reason can be surpassed within reason itself. These are not so much limits of reason but limits within reason.

This metaphysical impossibility of our experience has been interpreted in two opposing ways over time: it could mean that human reason from now on irreversibly loses any direct connection with "being" itself as given, something beyond our capacities, or it could mean that the only possibility of grasping being must be given a priori, in a "transcendental" perspective somehow "constructed" by reason itself.

For a long time, proponents of the first interpretation were the exponents of classical realism who criticized Kant for reducing metaphysics to a mentalist perspective. In contrast, supporters of the second interpretation hailed Kant as the pioneer of anti-dogmatic critique. In this context, one could say, perhaps mischievously, that Kant's genius even went as far as to create his own "enemies." According to the Kantian schema, if one follows a critical reason, one can't start from the premise that reality is "given‌ — if one asserts the being of the real as a starting point, one can only be dogmatic.

Kant sought to escape this dichotomy by stating that he had to "set aside" theoretical or scientific knowledge to "make room" for moral faith. However, as mentioned, both fall within the domain of pure reason.

But things aren't exactly as they seem, nor can the problem they pose be resolved so simply. No self-limitation of reason can make it forget, so to speak, its own "nature" and its "destiny" (as we read in the Preface to the first Critique): it's troubled by "questions that it cannot avoid"—here lies the paradox: a fundamental question and an impossible answer.

Kant sought to reduce the irreducible to the a-priori capacities of reason and to make the impossible possible through the same rational laws.

Yet, within the great thinker, even within his theoretical solutions, there remains, perhaps as an unthought, possibly a repressed element, but certainly, as an unforgettable sign, that irreducibility and that impossibility. They still await further interrogation, and we must be grateful to Kant for continuing to communicate this unease‌ — ‌even when it might seem that he has resolved the problem.

However, this would be a mistaken belief, for it overlooks the paradox of Kantian reason, which is precisely why it will continue to deserve our full attention.
Unrevised translation by the author - Article from L’Osservatore Romano 04.22.2024