Kant’s Idealism as Radicalization of Empiricism

This paper extends John McDowell’s interpretative approach in “Hegel’s Idealism as Radicalization of Kant” to Kant’s relationship to Locke and Hume. Kant claims that the Critique of Pure Reason’s Transcendental Deduction is a more resolute execution of Hume’s more resolute execution of Locke’s epistemological project. I argue that Kant’s radicalization concerns the problem that, with the resources of empiricism, we cannot entitle ourselves to the concepts of an object in general, required to vindicate our mind as a capacity to empirically know mind-independent objects. I trace this problem in Locke, where I argue that it remains largely implicit. I contend that Hume radicalizes Locke’s account by making the problem explicit as skepticism about our ability to know mind-independent objects. I argue that Kant radicalizes Hume’s epistemic skepticism, seeing that, with the resources of empiricism, we cannot understand our consciousness as even seeming to present objects, so that Kant’s Deduction seeks to provide an alternative hylomorphic explanation of our entitlement to the concepts of an object. This shows, contrary to skeptical readings of Kant, that the Deduction does not merely relabel Hume’s skepticism as ‘transcendental idealism’, on which we are able to know objects merely as they appear to our mind, but instead concerns the deeper issue of our ability to enjoy consciousness of objects. I sketch how the B-Deduction addresses this issue and explain how this simultaneously vindicates our mind as a capacity to know empirically and answers the question how a priori knowledge is possible. Moreover, I explicate the difference between the skeptical readers’ and Hegel’s respective charges that Kant’s transcendental idealism is a mere psychological idealism. Overall, I thus show how the progressive radicalization of the problem regarding our entitlement to the concepts of an object constitutes the animating issue of epistemology from Locke to Hegel.