Kant as Nihilist

Isaac Green 2011

Jacobis Objection

A contemporary of Kant, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, coined the term nihilism in response to Kant's transcendental idealism
According to Jacobi, Kant faces a dilemma: on the one hand, he has to claim that we cannot know anything about the thing in itself, on the other hand he has to acknowledge that we know at least something about the thing itself as it is the source of affection." - Horstmann, Companion to the Critique of Pure Reason, p.332

Is Jacobi properly interpreting Kant?

Is Jacobi's interpretation of Kant's philosophy as setting up both a thing in itself that we can have no knowledge of and the thing in itself as basis for sense perception correct?
What defense can be constructed in response to this problem?
Do Kant's conclusions refute Jacobi's conjecture that "there is no I without a thou"?
If so, how and furthermore, why is his philosophy referred to as transcendental idealism? Is it nihilism?

The Prolegomena's aim and consequences

Metaphysics is synthetic a priori
By denition a priori because it's sources are dened as outside of experience or "physics
Synthetic in that it requires us to make representation, an image [Anschauung] to comprehend it
Pure intuition makes synthetic a priori judgements possible
Pure intuition subscribes to the forms of sensibility (space and time) which are innate.
Jacobi's criticism that knowledge of the thing in itself is both necessary and empirically unattainable is undone because Kant sets up the forms of sensibility as innate, sense perception, the connection to the thing in itself, is innate.
"If our intuition [i.e., our sense-experience] were perforce of such a nature as to represent things as they are in themselves, there would not be any intuition a priori, but intuition would be always empirical It is indeed even then incomprehensible how the visualizing [Anschauung] of a present thing should make me know this thing as it is in itself, as its properties cannot migrate into my faculty of representation. But even granting this possibility, a visualizing of that sort would not take place a priori" Prolegomena S.9
Kant recognizes denies the possibility of a full empirically perceivable thing in itself because it would be impossible to make a valid representation a priori

The Prolegomenas Aim and Consequences Cont.

Three deductions
Pure intuition of space => A priori certainty of geometry
Thing in itself or numena does exist
Appearances do not deceive, references can be wrong but the appearance are not responsible
Sensibility, the form of which is the basis of geometry, is that upon which the possibility of external appearance depends." Prolegomena, Remark I
So, in accordance with Jacobi's understanding of Kant, Kant does hold the idealist belief that sense perception is responsible for appearance but Kant's "appearance" and Jacobi's "appearance" are different. Jacobi's as a positivist believes, based on faith, that appearance is all that there is.
"though these my principles make appearances of the representations of the senses, they are so far from turning the truth of experience into mere illusion appearance, as long as it is employed in experience, produces truth, but the moment it transgresses the bounds of experience, and consequently becomes transcendent, produces nothing but illusion." Prolegomena, Remark III
Kant's appearance

The Prolegomenas Aim and Consequences Cont.

"Idealism consists in the assertion, that there are none but thinking beings Whereas I say, that things as objects of our senses existing outside us are given, but we know nothing of what they may be in themselves" Prolegomena, Remark II
Kant distinguishes himself from idealists
My doctrine of the ideality of space and of time, therefore, far from reducing the whole sensible world to mere illusion, is the only means of securing the application of one of the most important cognitions (that which mathematics propounds a priori) to actual objects, and of preventing its being regarded as mere illusion. For without this observation it would be quite impossible to make out whether the intuitions of space and time, which we borrow from no experience, and which yet lie in our representation a priori" Prolegomena, Remark III
Vehemently and intentionally anti-"nihilist", Kant is saying that rather than negate a necessary part of existence, he is making deductively valid the only qualier for the application of a priori synthetic thought

Conclusion

"Having adduced the clearest arguments, it would be absurd for us to hope that we can know more of any object, than belongs to the possible experience of it for how could we determine anything in this way, since time, space, and the categories, and still more all the concepts formed by empirical experience or perception in the sensible world [Anschauung], have and can have no other use, than to make experience possible. And if this condition is omitted from the pure concepts of the understanding, they do not determine any object, and have no meaning whatever. " Prolegomena, Conclusion
But it would be on the other hand a still greater absurdity if we conceded no things in themselves, or set up our experience for the only possible mode of knowing things, our way of beholding [Anschauung] them in space and in time for the only possible way" Prolegomena, Conclusion
Reason by all its a priori principles never teaches us anything more than objects of possible experience, and even of these nothing more than can be known in experience. But this limitation does not prevent reason leading us to the objective boundary of experience, viz., to the reference to something which is not itself an object of experience, but is the ground of all experience." Prolegomena, Conclusion
Kant simply wants to say that reason can and in fact should bring us to the edge of experience and allow us to posit the existence of things beyond that edge, these things he calls "the things in themselves".

Questions Answered

Is Jacobi's interpretation of Kant's philosophy as setting up both a thing in itself that we can have no knowledge of and the thing in itself as basis for sense perception correct?
No, pure intuition is the basis for perception. Pure intuition is innate.
Do Kant's conclusions refute Jacobi's famous conjecture that "there is no I without a thou"?
"Thou" is derived from experience. Just because we can create and distinguish between an I and a thou, doesn't mean that there can't be aspects of that "thou" or object which are unbenounced to us. These unknowns are called things in themselves by Kant and we can acknowledge their existence because of pure intuition.
Why is his philosophy referred to as transcendental idealism?
Transcendental in the sense that in grounding sense perception in innate pure intuition, Kant allows for the existence of a priori synthetic knowledge, or things that transcend reason
Is it transcendental or nihilist?
Be denition it is nihilist but, in modern terms, Kant certainly doesn't not strip meaning from life but rather intends to contextualize a certain type of judgment by justifying the possibility of the existence of of the unknown. Certainly transcendent in intention and debatably objectively transcendent.