Kant and Early Schelling on the Contingent Duality of Logic and Nature

Abstract

Kant and Schelling offer markedly different approaches to the problem of the duality between logic and nature, and the imperative to unify them. According to Kant’s “transcendental logic,” logic and nature are reciprocally unified in a two-directional sense: (1) the concepts of the faculty of the understanding are needed if the spatiotemporal intuitions from the faculty of sensibility are to correspond to determinable objects in nature, whereas (2) the understanding would lack truth or significance if it did not synthesize those intuitions by means of its a priori concepts. In contrast, the early Schelling proposes what we call a “logic of evolution” in which both logic and nature evolve from a common original synthetic unity of subject and object (i.e., original intuition). A shared underlying logic explains the unity of logic and nature. Therefore, while for Kant there is a necessary unity of fundamentally heterogenous faculties of the human mind (Gemüt)—sensibility and understanding—for Schelling, there is a necessarily emergent duality between two realms—of nature and logic—originating from within one fundamentally homogenous evolution. This, of course, is connected to how both philosophers view the nature of logic: for Kant the intellect is fundamentally discursive, while for Schelling it is primordially intuitive.

Keywords: contingency, evolution, Kant, logic, limit, nature, reason, Schelling, self-consciousness, organism