Writing Sample

Infinitesimals and Differentials in

Salomon Maimons Essay on Transcendental
Philosophy
B Tyson Gofton
University of Toronto
Abstract
It has become standard in the literature on the reception of Kants Critique of
Pure Reason to interpret Salomon Maimon as proposing a Leibnizian representational monism (i.e., thought all the way down) in his Essay on Transcendental Philosophy (Maimon 2010) in order to remedy perceived limitations in the representational
dualism implied by Kants Transcendental Deduction. (See, for example, (Bergman
1967), (Beiser 1993) and (Thielke 2003).) This now-standard reading, however, is
incorrect. The misreading is based in a failure to appreciate Maimons distinction between infinitesimals as a term designating the actual least magnitudes that are the
real components of sensibility and differentials (or ideas of the understanding, Verstandesideen) as a term designating the intelligible or symbolic posits that are thought
to be the fundamental components of purely intelligible representations of real determinations of the subject. Accordingly, Maimon does not propose a representational
monism, but rather a intelligible dualism (concepts and ideas) that serves an epistemological dualism: one that distinguishes between empirical cognition (and the skepticism
that it gives rise to) and purely ideal or symbolic knowledge (and the dogmatism that
it gives rise to). A more accurate interpretation of Maimons Essay on Transcendental
Idealism will help us to better understand the reception of Kants Critique of Pure
Reason by the German Idealists. However, it also points to an important limitation in
Kants epistemology and proposes a solution that is worth considering in its own right.

Maimonian Monism

Salomon Maimons Essay on Transcendental Philosophy (Maimon 1790) (Maimon 2010) is

one of the most important works in the early reception of Kants Critique of Pure Reason.1
1

For a general introduction to Salomon Maimons life and work, see Frederick Beisers The Fate of Reason
(Beiser 1993, Chapter 10). For a contrasting interpretation of the orientation and significance of Maimons
work one closer in spirit to my own view see Paul Franks All or Nothing (Franks 2005).

1 MAIMONIAN MONISM

Although by no means a well-known work in its own right, it had a significant (and by
now well-documented) impact on the major figures in post-Kantian systematic philosophy
in Germany, especially Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. Moreover, Maimons skepticism and
especially his doubts about the success of the Transcendental Deduction even if we concede
Kants premises raised lasting doubts about the integrity of Kants proposal. Nevertheless,
its not entirely clear what Maimon actually proposed. For, the Essay on Transcendental Philosophy is surely not the most perspicuously composed works of commentary ever written.2
One of the most problematic aspects of interpreting Salomon Maimons Essay is making
sense of his doctrine of the differential, since interpreting the doctrine of the differential
is essential to interpreting the Spinozist, Humean, Leibnizian and Kantian dimensions that
Maimon explicily avows. Only through a correct interpretation of the differential can we precisely define the failure of transcendental philosophy and correctly identify the idealization
of sensibility that it proposes.
Maimon introduces the differential a metaphysical and mathematical concept in
three distinct ways. The differential:
(a) originates in sensibility as the object of our ultimate claims to knowledge; (Maimon
2010, MW II:32)
(b) is a pure product of the understanding, or a Verstandesidee; (Maimon 2010, MW II:75)
(c) is declared to be a limit concept (Granzebegriff ) between sensibility and thought.
(Maimon 2010, MW II:192)
It is because of the difference between (a) and (b) that, Maimon claims, Kants attempt
to resolve the quaestio quid juris fails. However, it is because of (c) that an answer is
thinkable, if merely ideally. However, it is also claims such as (c) that give the impression
that differentials just are the components of sensibility. Unfortunately, apart from the Essay
2

The Essay contains at least four different layers of commentary: the initial (short) commentary; the
extensive notes and comments added to the same; the Short Summary that is nearly as long as the
commentary itself; and the Appendix on Symbolic Thought.

1 MAIMONIAN MONISM

Maimon nowhere makes explicit the claims and commitments of his interpretation of the
differential and its relation to metaphysics, epistemology or mathematics. Instead, we are
left with a handful of suggestive remarks, some unhelpful allusions to Leibniz, and a scathing
criticism of the Kantian position.
The general consensus is that Maimons proposal renders him a kind of monist;3 For
example, Bergman claims, that the doctrine of the differentials is a doctrine designed to
reduce sensibility to silence or, at least, to diminish its excessive claims (Bergman 1967,
59). Indeed, differentials, Bergman thinks, turn out to be nothing more than laws of
the understanding (which would seem to be categories!), since the affinity between the
understanding and matter can be understood only after matter has been converted into the
laws of the understanding. These laws Maimon calls differentials (Bergman 1967, 59). A
similar interpretation is defended by some contemporary interpreters, for example, by Peter
Thielke:

Differentials of perception are to be understood as, in some sense, the products

of the understanding itself, (Thielke 2003, 117, my emphasis)
since,

what to the quotidian consciousness appears as merely given is, from a philosophical perspective, a product of the rule-governed but not rule-understood
differentials of the productive understanding. (Thielke 2003, 118, my emphasis)
Maimon, then, is a Leibnizian, who claims that there is merely a conceptual distinction
between the activity of intuiting forms and the activity of understanding them; that is, that
the differential is the origin of both intuition and the understanding.
Its not hard to see what motivates this reading of the Essay, for, especially in the Short
Overview of the Whole Work, Maimon makes a number of claims that suggest just such an
3

The interpretation has become standard since Samuel Bergmans The Philosophy of Solomon Maimon
(Bergman 1967) and has been embraced by most commentators since then, including Samuel Atlas, Peter
Thielke and Fred Beiser.