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DOI: 10.1177/0191453708089195
2008 34: 487 Philosophy Social Criticism
Horst Pfeiffle
On the psychogenesis of the a priori: Jean Piaget's critique of Kant

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Horst Pfeife
On the psychogenesis of the
a priori
Jean Piagets critique of Kant
Abstract The seal of the a priori is imprinted on the reception of Kants
philosophy. Piagets epistemological argumentation seems to ascribe knowl-
edge a more fruitful constructiveness than Kant, seeing the a priori as rooted
in unvarying reason. Yet, it seems, he failed to recognize the complexity of
Kants theory, which does not always follow a quid iuris line. Moments of
experience, analysis and self-observation played more than a marginal role
in his discovery of the a priori. Indeed, Kant himself raises the question of
ontogenetic category assimilation in a review which pre-empts Piaget,
borrowing the category of original acquisition from the doctrine of the
laws of natural right. And although Kant should not be elevated to the
harbinger of the knowledge on development issues delivered thus far by
the history of science and experiments, he did recognize the temporal
reference of their categories in principle without resolving their validity in
psychogenetic terms.
Key words a priori categories genetic epistemology Geneva School
neo-Kantianism original acquisition Jean Piaget psychogenesis
self-observation
Under the seal of the a priori
The seal of the a priori is imprinted on the reception and inuence of
Immanuel Kants philosophy. For as long as thought has been associ-
ated with the transcendental question, any interpretations have by force
been often no more than mere approximations. This can be said, for
example, of the somewhat non-unied image drawn by Klaus Christian
Khnke in his instructive study on the rise of neo-Kantianism.
1
Here,
Khnke refers explicitly to the inuence of Herbartian psychology on
PSC
PHILOSOPHY & SOCIAL CRITICISM

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pp. 487498
Copyright 2008 SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore)
and David Rasmussen
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the development of the theory of apperception in connection with learning
theory: on Vlkerpsychologie which stressed its phylogenetic signi-
cance, on pedagogy which stressed its ontogenetic signicance.
2
Konrad
Lorenz, who saw a priori forms of thought and intuition as being only
a posteriori phylogenetic and a result of the struggle between organism
and environment, was thus not the rst to refer to the a priori as an
approximation with limited validity.
3
The intricate reception and inuence of the a priori in German
Idealism
4
can only be alluded to here. Similarly, no attempt is made to
address the relationship of the a priori to the a posteriori. Instead, this
article focuses on tracing the Geneva Schools strange epistemological
line of argumentation, in itself a critique truly in keeping with its target:
despite his very strong afnity for Kantian philosophy, Jean Piaget
5
views
Kant from a perspective that seems to ascribe the subject of knowledge
a more fruitful constructiveness than the latter: as rich as Kants charac-
teristic construction of knowledge might be, it is still lacking, since it is
assumed from the outset to be something nished.
6
Piaget assumes a place in the reception of Kantian philosophy which
takes the standpoint that the a priori is rooted in unvarying reason and
thus cannot have developed over the course of time. With premises of
this kind, it is important not to overlook the fact that the justication
is being pitted against the genesis of ideas. Genesis, of course if its
argument is not to be caught up in a vicious circle
7
does not replace
validity: In the order of time, therefore, we have no knowledge ante-
cedent to experience, and with experience all our knowledge begins. But
though all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow
that it all arises out of experience.
8
Kants reections on a priori fall under the sign of the transcenden-
tal,
9
i.e. formal principles of knowledge are also seen as constitutive in
terms of content for human experience. Kant began referring to such
thoughts as transcendental in 1781. The necessity of the given object,
expressed logically in judgments, is not dependent on contingent experi-
ence. Since experience must take account of a priori moments, it is not
enough simply to analyze the object in itself. Transcendental analysis is
geared to the subject, insofar as it is conscious of the object in question.
The a priori becomes a condition endowed on the subject and which
denes the necessary structure of the object-oriented acts of conscious-
ness according to their objectively intended content.
It is thus understandable that, through neo-Kantianism, the selection
process of Kants reception has often resulted in this strange, rationalisti-
cally dogmatic understanding of the existence of pure reason as an inven-
tory of a priori forms and categories in which the concepts of operative,
intellectual acts in Kants theory of experience have been overlooked or
hastily ltered out.
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Unity of intuition and concept as notion? Genetic and
intentional differentiation
The decisive question now is whether this a priori and its differentiation
into categories and forms of intuition can be considered only in terms
of logic and not also in terms of developmental history or psychology.
Much to the dismay of those who argue in strictly logical terms against
the so-called psychological prejudice, Kant does not always follow an
exclusively quid iuris line. We know that moments of experience, analysis
and reective self-observation played more than just a marginal role in
his discovery of the a priori. It would, however, be too rash to render the
transcendental motif vulnerable simply to condense it without resistance
in psycho-historical terms. What might at rst glance appear to be the
most obvious contradiction between logical validity and the acquisition
of categories dimension is not resolved in Kant in a disjunctive sense:
Kant raised the question of ontogenetic category assimilation in a largely
unnoticed review which clearly pre-empts the Geneva epistemologists
program.
The controversy which prompted the writing of Kants ironic On a
Discovery According to which Any New Critique of Pure Reason Has
Been Made Superuous by an Earlier One
10
is now obsolete, and Johann
August Eberhards philosophical reections with which Kant took issue
have paled into insignicance. Yet this essay nonetheless remains relevant
for two reasons. First, Kant uses the even then widespread, ingrained
prejudice (also, as we have seen, harbored by Piaget) to straighten out
the prejudice that the cognitive endowment of the knowledge subject
should be seen from the outset as something given. Second, it shows how
Kant himself proposes a solution to the structuregenesis dichotomy,
which seeks to do justice to the process of individual acquisition of ideas
and categories without relinquishing the transcendental motif. In short,
Kant sought to nd a category (in the widest sense) that was both descrip-
tive and explicative enough to reveal the mechanism of spontaneous
knowledge and world interpretation. In response to this genetic pattern
of enquiry, Kant borrowed the category of original acquisition from the
doctrine of the laws of natural right.
The Critique admits absolutely no divinely implanted (anerschaffene) or
innate (angeborene) representations. It regards them all, whether they belong
to intuition or to concepts of the understanding, as acquired. There is,
however, an original acquisition (as the teachers of natural right formulate
it), consequently also of that which previously did not exist, and therefore
did not pertain to anything before the act. Such is, as the Critique shows,
rst of all, the form of things in space and time, secondly, the synthetic
unity of the manifold in concepts; for neither of these is derived by our
faculty of knowledge from the objects given to it as they are in themselves,
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but rather it brings them out of itself a priori. There must, however, be a
ground in the subject which makes it possible for these representations to
originate in this and no other manner, and which enables them to be related
to objects which are not yet given. This ground at least is innate.
11
Original acquisition
According to Kant, the principles a priori are not derived by the self
from experience, but instead only applied to it. These principles are
neither created by the self nor are they there simply by virtue of its being.
Accepting this would mean rejecting and not justifying Kants claim of
the universal validity and necessity of the principles a priori. In a certain
sense, this demands that the principles a priori exist independent of
experience and, at the same time, also independent of all the activities
and the existence of the self itself. Nowadays the pre-empting of this
structuralist aspect in Kant seems astonishing. However, he does not
stop at a faded or epistemic self.
12
Of course, this independence of these principles is based on their
being accessible to the self and applicable to possible contents of experi-
ence. The self acquires a content of experience when the opportunity
arises through the application of the principles in the service of cogni-
tion. This overcomes the position of immanence of the objectively given.
So much by way of illustration of the often misunderstood transcenden-
tal character of the principles a priori, which cannot be ascribed either
to immanence or transcendence if it is to ensure the objectivity of our
knowledge. Experiences are made through observations (intentional
perceptions) and by considering (reecting on) their merging into one
concept.
13
The perceived object is not a transcendental thing as such,
even if it is merely the object for us; its objectivity is ensured by the tran-
scendentality of the applied principles. Reverting back to Piagets struc-
ture concept allows us to perceive similar reections in the constitution
of the so-called epistemic intellect. Piaget himself failed to recognize the
complexity of Kants a priori theory, although it clearly encompasses
the intentions of his own thinking. Hereby, a certain autonomy of the
principles (categories) from the self is necessary to grasp the objectivity
of our object knowledge and self-knowledge without seemingly auto-
matically restricting the autonomy of the constructing self.
Thus, categories neither reside preformed in the self nor emerge from
its potential to develop.
14
This calls for a brief digression into Kants often
misinterpreted theory of faculties.
Johann Georg Hamann reports that Kant kept a copy of Johannes
Nikolaus Tetens Philosophical Experiments on Human Nature and its
Development
15
on his desk while working on the Critique of Pure Reason.
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Tetens goal of reconciling metaphysics and empirical self-observation
remains an unfullled desideratum felt to this day. By setting himself
the task of using comparison and observations to trace the changes and
effects on the soul to a few basic faculties, Tetens remains rmly under
the sign of faculty psychology; he does, however, also exceed its grasp
with his willingness to challenge classications using more precise obser-
vation. He adopts a fairly pragmatic stance even to his so crucial distinc-
tion between feeling (receptivity), reason (thinking) and force of activity
(will), describing it as amenable to his work. Psychological acts as
manifestations of force and intent are compared and only then used to
assume a corresponding faculty of the soul. The category of faculties of
the soul thus begins to shed the presumed explicatory character inherent
in the qualitates occultae and assume a structural function in psycho-
logical phenomena. This is an important step towards characterizing the
acts of the self and related research methods, whose manifold nature,
however, in Kants case refers to the presumed synthesis of the self.
Admittedly, Kants reference to the cognitive faculties and his Critique
opened, and continue to open, the door to misunderstandings. These
have, however, in turn had a productive effect on the development of
thinking. The criticism of the so-called Organon Model
16
of cognition
popular in pro-Habermas literature still interprets Kants ambitious
attempt at the critical self-limitation of human cognition along faculty
psychology lines. This failure to appreciate the transcendental motif
affects not just the innermost core of the philosophical debate, it also has
consequences for human science concepts, which unfortunately cannot
be pursued further here.
As Kant himself says, he borrows the concept of the original acqui-
sition of principles a priori (acquisitio originaria) from the laws of natural
right.
17
This concept lends itself to mediating between the dogmatic,
obdurate positions of empiricism (= only processual acquisition of knowl-
edge from experience is scientically knowable) and a dogmatic theory
of preformation (be it in the guise of philosophy in variants of rational-
ism or a biological theory of innateness). At the same time, the concept
of original acquisition helps to establish a relationship between genesis
and structure, without neglecting one dimension in favor of another.
Further clarication is found in Kants argumentation against the empiri-
cal position (represented by John Locke): namely, that experience does
not explain the possibility of categories and forms of intuition, it only
provides occasional cause. By the same token, a preformation system of
pure reason (Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz as seen from Kants perspective)
cannot incorporate the necessity and universal validity of categories.
By distancing these polar views, Kant reaches the conclusion that we
originally acquire the principles a priori and that these are not disposi-
tions of thought implanted in us. Kants argument against the principle
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of self-development of categories from quasi-preformed germ cells is
perspicacious:
I would not then be able to say that the effect is connected with the cause
in the object, that is to say, necessarily, but only that I am so constituted
that I cannot think this representation otherwise than as thus connected.
18
Thus, the principles a priori do not reside in the subject, only the
reason that allows them to be acquired is, in fact, innate. Kant is not
endorsing some hypostasized claim to power over knowledge on the part
of the faculty of original acquisition, as this only becomes real through
an original activity.
Were they to take a closer look at the schema of original acquisition,
some of the popular modern constructivists might well feel inclined to
admit their own triviality. The thoughts on a priori can now be related
to the context of the genuine pedagogical and didactic matter of the
formable self. Identity formation is seen as self-formation on the part
of the subject, which acquires the world originally on the basis of its
spontaneous activity. Of course, a view which assumes a basic original
acquisition axiom will always face the contention that this category of
categories explains everything and nothing. This reproach does not recog-
nize their legitimate critically destructive and action-ensuring function.
All theories that use well-designed mechanics no matter how tempting
to befall a defenseless self and perceive it merely as a function of endoge-
nous and/or exogenous forces will eventually be criticized and destroyed.
Original acquisition only ensures action insofar as possible develop-
ments are not predened by a predetermined scheme.
To be able to understand that the self can perceive, observe and teach
itself, Kant introduces time as a form of inner meaning. Inner meaning
enables the perception of the self. The self does not only enter a relation-
ship with the object world, it also enters a relationship with itself. But it
does not exhaust itself with these introspective acts or become absorbed
in the dynamics of its own immanence. Both Kant and Piaget allocate the
object relationship priority over the relationship to the you: they are not
equiprimordial, since the identity of the perceptual world (= something
persistent outside of us, regardless of the other persons practical category)
must rst be constructed.
19
Empirical self-observation assuming no objection is made to such a
derived empiricism, even if it does make the monopoly claim of an exter-
nally dened empirical sense criterion contentious cannot be equated
to the dening, constructing self, since empirical self-observation can
only be seen in correlation with knowledge based on experience. In his
Gymnasialreden, Hegel once noted that thinking gets to know itself
through grammar. This dialectic manner of speech imposes itself liter-
ally in talk of the self getting to know itself. The determining self thus
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does not rise above as a pure, isolated apperception in the transcendence
of contents of experience, it is not xed as a non-experiential relation-
ship of the I think (not without reason did Kant designate this sentence
as empirical) to what it encounters. I cannot say: I have this or that
experience, rather I create them and this system of perception applies
to everyone.
20
The primacy of the genetic in Piaget
Piaget was obviously not familiar with the said category of original acqui-
sition, otherwise he would hardly (despite his repeatedly claimed afnity)
have accepted Kant aside from the widespread clich of philosophical
historiography as a mediator between empiricism and rationalism.
According to Piaget, Kant assumes the constitution of the a priori.
One must rst recall that the following alternative existed prior to Kant: on
the one hand, a still very static preformationism associated with the hypoth-
esis of the innateness of ideas, and on the other, a waveringly emerging and
still incomplete constructivism which had put forth the hypothesis that
ideas are acquired on the basis of experience. Kant established a natural
synthesis between these two positions, when he adhered to the concept of
constitution in the guise of the hypothesis of synthetic judgments and to
the innateness of ideas under the guise of the primacy of experience.
21
Here as elaborated above Piagets interpretation falls short of
Kants differentiated view. He correctly recognizes the importance of
synthetic judgments a posteriori (and not just synthetic judgments a
priori), which do not reduce intelligence to a tabula rasa function. It is
thus not surprising that Piaget tries to use this syncretic reception to prove
that Kants claims of validity for his experience theory were excessive:
Kant developed too rich a concept which did not just contain the features
of generality and necessity, as required, . . . but also the primacy of experi-
ence: logical primacy as necessary condition, but also partial temporal
primacy (the a priori can only manifest itself in the course of experience,
not beforehand and in no case afterwards) and above all primacy with
regard to the fact that the subject that exposes itself to experience already
has a basic structure informing its activities.
22
Piaget thus sees the decisive difference to Kants view of the a priori
as lying in its detachability from temporal primacy and primacy with
regard to the intellectual level. Thus, in Piaget, a priori becomes a terminus
ad quem and ceases to be that terminus a quo that is still too rooted in
the pre-established harmony.
23
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Misinterpretation of the logic of preformation
The misinterpretation of Kants a priori as nished from the outset
24
discussed in the introduction should now be claried in light of what
has been said on original acquisition. This is an elegant solution that not
only does justice to the structure and genesis claims, but also does not
fall into the trap of the famous vicious circle of evolutionary epistemol-
ogists. For this is more than just an attempt to grasp the activities of
the subject
25
(which evade empirical models) using a natural-science-
based empirical approach. The subsequent steps of consciousness cannot
be explained by references to a biological preformation logic. Piaget also
describes behavior (in its constitutive function) as the motor of evolu-
tion. However, the extent to which this can be reconciled with various
biological dogmas and hypotheses cannot be answered here. According
to Piaget, the orthodox doctrine endorsed by most biologists whereby
everything can be explained by random mutation and subsequent selec-
tion instills less and less condence. A central problem in evolution is
the question of the adaptation of the organism to its environment. This
is why Piaget attaches himself to areas of research which assume the
selection mechanism to be linked to a choice (the organism selects its
environment and is, in turn, dependent on that environment).
26
Pragmatic or biological ontogenesis
The interest here lies more in the question of ontogenesis on which
Piagets actual productive contribution to research is based. Observa-
tions and experiments show that structures of logic, for instance, require
a good dozen years to fully emerge, yet they neither mature nor are
they simply acquired through external indoctrination. They are (in
simple terms) constructed through intellectual operations in response to
necessity. Their a priori does not exist from the outset, nor does it come
into being or emerge in the end. Instead, it is linked to the activity of
the subject which originally acquires its validity. Kant should not be
elevated here to the harbinger of the knowledge on development issues
delivered thus far by the history of science and experiments; he did,
however, recognize the temporal reference of their categories in prin-
ciple without resolving their validity in psychogenetic terms. With the
schema of original acquisition, Kant conforms here to Piagets position,
since Kants formula already permits the differentiation of experience
according to two of Piagets aspects: experience made by the observer
(psychologist) and . . . experience made by the subject constructing its
insights.
27
Of course, this as paradoxical as it may seem calls into
question Piagets hidden teleonomy of the history of science.
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The sciences do not know the ideal of nal and complete knowl-
edge afforded by contemplation or mystic initiation. The approach to
an eras new content or the operating on a certain ontogenetic level is
new if a relationship to the prior abrogated structure is established
which can only be knowable as originally acquired through this in its
consciousness-constituting function. [I]t is at the end of knowledge and
not at its beginning that the mind becomes aware of laws that are
immanent to the former.
28
The question of the origin of categories remains a rope over
the torrential ow of words (Plato, Laws X)
The above reections by no means profess to offer an exhaustive dis-
cussion of Kants table of categories and their connection to Piagets
categories, availed of here only in a very general sense under the aspect
of the a priori. However, justice would not be done to Kant and Piaget
by assuming a philosophy of science position that demonstrates from a
quasi-observer role that more than one theoretical construction can
always be placed upon a given collection of data. As in manufacture so
in science retooling is an extravagance to be reserved for the occasion
that demands it.
29
Vienna Institute of Economics and Business Administration
Notes
1 K. C. Khnke, The Rise of Neo-Kantianism. German Academic Philosophy
Between Idealism and Positivism (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1981) (in particular the section on early neo-Kantian theory development
between apriorism and developmental thought, pp. 34566).
2 ibid., p. 356.
3 See K. Lorenz, Kants Lehre vom Apriorischen im Lichte gegenwrtiger
Biologie, Bltter fr deutsche Philosophie 15 (1941): 99124. Cf. Piagets
comments on Lorenz: The famous ethologist K. Lorenz has generalized
the theory of the innateness of structures of knowledge in a way that he
himself describes as Kantian. The categories of the mind are biologically
preformed, creating the basic conditions for all experience, just as the hooves
of a horse or the ns of a sh have developed according to an inherited
plan, already in their embryogenesis, that is, long before the individual (or
the phenotype) could make use of them. Since, however, inheritance can
vary from one species to another, it goes without saying that these a priori
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conditions even if they are pregiven conditions in the Kantian sense
cannot explain the essence, i.e., the inner necessity of these structures, their
unity. Lorenz expressly admitted this, when he declared this to be an
innate working hypothesis. However, there still seems to be a difference
between his interpretation and ours, since in our opinion the structures of
knowledge only assume their inner necessity at the end of their development
without having originally had this and without following a given program.
In: J. Piaget, Abriss der genetischen Epistemologie [dpistmologie gn-
tique], trans. F. Kubli (Olten/Freiburg in Breisgau: Walter, 1974), pp. 88f.
4 As an illustration, according to the young F. W. J. Schelling: What is strange
about transcendental idealism in light of this theory is that it could also prove
the so-called a priori concepts on the basis of their origins. This, of course,
is only possible by virtue of its moving itself into a region beyond ordinary
consciousness, instead of leaving these concepts quasi lying around for a
philosophy limited to the latter, whereby they become implicated in the
irresolvable difculties that have faced the advocates of these concepts
since time immemorial. In: Schellings Werke, anniversary edn, vol. III, ed.
M. Schrter (Munich: Beck, 1958), p. 528. Insofar as the self produces
everything from within, everything, and not just one or the other concept
or even form of thinking, but the entire one and indivisible knowledge, is
a priori. But insofar as we are not conscious of such production, nothing
in us is a priori, it is all a posteriori (ibid., p. 528f.). Given, however, that
original identity of acting and being which we think in the concept of the
self, it becomes quite impossible to entertain, not merely the idea of innate
concepts, whose abandonment had already long been necessitated by the
discovery that in all concepts there is something active, but also the claim
still commonly made, that these concepts are present as original dispositions,
for the latter rests solely upon the notion of the self as a special substrate,
distinct from its acts (ibid., p. 529). Hegel interprets this differently: Kants
notion of synthetic a priori judgments the notion of something differen-
tiated which equally is inseparable, of an identity which is in its own self
an inseparable difference, belongs to what is great and imperishable in his
philosophy. G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik [Science of Logic], ed.
G. Lasson, Part 1 (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 19679[1934]), p. 204.
5 W. V. Fabricius offers a very clear and general description of the parallels
and divergences between Kant and Piaget in Piagets Theory of Knowledge:
Its Philosophical Context, Human Development 26 (Basle) (1983): 32534.
6 J. Piaget, Insights and Illusions of Philosophy [Sagesse et illusions de la
philosophie], trans. W. Mays (New York and Cleveland, OH: World
Publishing, 1971).
7 See A. Locker, Selbstentstehung von Leben und Vernunft ein Trugschlu
(Die Unhaltbarkeit von Genesemodellen), in berlieferung und Aufgabe,
Festschrift f. E. Heintel zum 70. Geburtstag, vol. 2 (Vienna: Braumller,
1982), pp. 3369.
8 I. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason], in Kants Werke,
vol. II, ed. Kniglich Preuische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: 1968).
9 I entitle transcendental all knowledge which is occupied not so much with
objects as with the mode of our knowledge of objects in so far as this mode
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of knowledge is to be possible a priori (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason,
A 11) or with our way of knowledge of objects, as long as this knowledge
is to be a priori possible (ibid., B 25). The distinction between the tran-
scendental and the empirical belongs therefore only to the critique of
knowledge; it does not concern the relation of that knowledge to its objects
(ibid., A 56, B 80). Transcendental knowledge a priori is only that by which
we know that and how certain representations (intuitions or concepts)
can be employed or are possibly purely a priori (ibid., A 56, B 80).
10 I. Kant, ber eine Entdeckung, nach der alle neue Kritik der reinen Vernunft
durch eine ltere entbehrlich gemacht werden soll [On a Discovery According
to which Any New Critique of Pure Reason Has Been Made Superuous by
an Earlier One], in Kants Werke, vol. VIII, pp. 185252.
11 ibid.
12 See P. Brger: Das Verschwinden des Subjekts. Eine Geschichte der Subjek-
tivitt von Montaigne bis Barthes (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1998).
For a discussion of the epistemic subject see A. Karmiloff-Smith, Beyond
Piagets Epistemic Subject: Inhelders Microgenetic Study of the Psycho-
logical Subject, Archives de Psychologie 61 (1993): 24752; T. Bond,
Epistemic Subject versus Quotidien Subject: the Adolescent Research of
Inhelder & Piaget, Individual Papers, Educational Section Review 18(1)
(1994): 914; H. E. Gruber, From Epistemic Subject to Unique Creative
Person at Work, Archives de Psychologie 53 (1985): 16785; M. Niaz,
Role of the Epistemic Subject in Piagets Genetic Epistemology and its
Importance for Science Education, Journal of Research in Science Teaching
28(7) (1991): 56980.
13 I. Kant, Anthropologie, Ergnzung aus der Handschrift, in Kants Werke,
vol. VII, p. 398.
14 Piaget is often misunderstood or criticized as a development theorist. See
J. H. Flavell: The Development Psychology of Jean Piaget (Princeton, NJ:
Van Nostrand, 1963); H. G. Furth: Piaget and Knowledge (Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 1981); 2nd edn B. Kaplan, Meditation on
genesis, Human Development 10 (1967): 65ss.
15 J. N. Tetens, Philosophische Versuche ber die menschliche Natur und ihre
Entwicklung (Leipzig: Weidmanns Erben und Reich, 1777).
16 Cf. also Kants remark on the delineation of human reason: The greatest
and perhaps the sole use of all philosophy of pure reason is therefore only
negative, since it serves not as an organon for the extension but as a disci-
pline for the limitation of pure reason, and, instead of discovering truth,
has only the modest merit of guarding against error. Kant: Critique of
Pure Reason, A 795. Also Hegel: What is demanded is thus the following:
we should know the cognitive faculty before we know. It is like wanting
to swim before going in the water. G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen ber die
Geschichte der Philosophie, in Werke, vol. XIX (Stuttgart: Frommann,
18336), pp. 555f. In his 1968 work Knowledge and Human Interests
[Erkenntnis und Interesse], trans. J. Shapiro (Boston, MA: Beacon Press,
1972[1968]) Jrgen Habermas refers in particular to related passages in
Hegels Phenomenology of the Spirit, noting that examining the cognitive
faculty or its suitability prior to the cognizing is a vicious undertaking.
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Since then, it has been almost impossible to squash the reproach that Kant
was launching a full-scale attack on the truth. R. Kroners inuential Von
Kant bis Hegel [From Kant to Hegel], 2nd edn (Tbingen: Mohr, 1961)
has also contributed to distorting the modern image of Kant. However, in
my opinion, there is no substance to the reproach that Kant speaks of the
working of the mind in a manner analogous to the object world.
17 Even the concept of deduction originates in legal theory. Jurists, when
speaking of rights and claims, distinguish in a legal action between the
question of right (quid juris) from the question of fact (quid facti) and they
demand that both be proved. Proof of the former, which has to state the
right or the claim, they entitle the deduction. . . . The explanation of the
manner in which concepts can thus relate a priori to objects I entitle their
transcendental deduction; and from it I distinguish empirical deduction
which shows the manner in which a concept is acquired through experi-
ence and through reection upon experience, and which therefore concerns
not its legitimacy, but only its de facto mode of origination. Kant: Critique
of Pure Reason, p. 120f.
18 ibid., p. 175f.
19 J. G. Fichte gives the you (albeit in a gurative practical turnaround)
an equiprimordial constructive role in the formation of self-consciousness.
20 Altpreussiche Monatsschrift. Ein ungedrucktes Werk von Kant aus seinen
letzten Lebensjahren. Edited by R. Reicke and E. Wiechert, Vol. 19, 1882,
pp. 569629. (Old Prussian Monthly. An unprinted work by Kant from
his last writings).
21 Piaget, Insights and Illusions in Philosophy.
22 ibid., p. 78.
23 ibid.
24 ibid.
25 Even Hans Aebli adopts a simpler approach to Kant: Piagets idea of assimi-
lation corresponds to Kants claim that the best depiction of experience does
not exist in the human mind. Every insight is bound to subjective presup-
positions, or to be more concrete: to the fact that man brings something
to the cognitive situation. I have generally referred to this something as his
intellectual repertory. In H. Aebli: Denken, Das Ordnen des Tuns, vol. 2,
Denkprozesse (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1981), p. 391.
26 See J. Piaget, Le Comportement, moteur de levolution (Paris: Gallimard,
1976).
27 Piaget, Insights and Illusions in Philosophy, p. 74.
28 J. Piaget, Le jugement moral chez lenfant (Paris: Alcan, 1932); German-
language edn, Das moralische Urteil beim Kinde, trans. L. Goldman (Zurich:
Rascher, 1954), p. 470; English-language edn, The Moral Judgment of the
Child, trans. M. Gabain (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968).
29 T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientic Revolutions (Chicago, IL: 1962),
p. 76.
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