modernity

Competing Determinisms: Boethius, Kant, and Schelling on the Relation between Fate and Providence

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Reading through Kant’s excellent 1795 political essay “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch” last night, I happened across and interesting passage regarding the relation between Fate and Providence. Since this is a topic I became interested in through Schelling’s discussion of it in his 1802 Philosophy of Art, it captured my attention with exceptional force. It runs as follows:

The mechanical process of nature visibly exhibits the purposive plan of producing concord among men, even against their will and indeed by means of their very discord. This design, if we regard it as a compelling cause whose laws of operation are unknown to us, is called fate. But if we consider its purposive function within the world’s development, whereby it appears as the underlying wisdom of a higher cause, showing the way towards the objective goal of the human race and predetermining the world’s evolution, we call it providence.[1]

The italicized words are his own, so let it not be thought that I am reading any undue emphasis into his meaning. And, while its mention must be regarded as transitional, a remark made in passim, so to speak, it nonetheless reveals an interesting philosophical tradition underlying the distinction between the two forms of determinism. According to this tradition, Fate operates efficiently/ætiologically (as a causa efficiens), while Providence functions purposively/teleologically (as a causa finalis). This difference was first introduced to discursive prominence by the sixth-century philosopher Boethius, who in his masterpiece The Consolation of Philosophy writes that

[t]he generation of all things, and the whole course of mutable natures and of whatever is in any way subject to change, take their causes, order, and forms from the unchanging mind of God. This divine mind established the manifold rules by which all things are governed while it remained in the secure castle of its own simplicity. When this government is regarded as belonging to the purity of the divine mind, it is called Providence; but when it is considered with reference to the things which it moves and governs, it has from very early times been called Fate.[2]

In other words, viewing the determination of objects and persons, from the standpoint of Fate, their sequence seems wholly natural, impersonal. Conversely, its interpretation as an effect of Providence would have the succession proceed in a spiritual, personal manner.

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Note Concerning the Metaphysical Structure of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason

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In reading Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason today (I’m attempting my first reading of it in toto, from cover to cover), I had a revelation as to the structure of the “Transcendental Logic” section of the book’s greater “Doctrine of Elements.” It came to me that the subdivision of the “Transcendental Logic” into “Transcendental Analytic” and “Transcendental Dialectic” corresponds respectively to the classic philosophical distinction between general metaphysics (metaphysica generalis) and special metaphysics (metaphysica specialis). There is no doubt in my mind that others have reached this insight before me. Nevertheless, its truth struck me with such force that I feel compelled to publicly elaborate on it, to speak out loud. In all honesty, it dawned upon me in a manner akin to what Kant would have derided as an “intellectual intuition” (though his Idealist successors would not discourage me from this claim).

The pure categories of the understanding, which Kant deduces in the “Transcendental Analytic,” fall under what is traditionally described as general metaphysics. There are twelve categories, which fall under the broader classifications of Quantity (Unity, Multiplicity, Totality), Quality (Reality, Negation, Limit), Relation (Substance/Accidence, Causality, Community), and Modality (Possibility/Impossibility, Existence/Non-existence, Necessity/Contingency). If my memory is correct, these are the categories. Some of the wording might be slightly off. In any case, however, Kant argues that these pure concepts, transcendentally deduced, may be validly applied to objects given to us by the manifold of intuition (via the Transcendental Æsthetic). Determinations which rely upon their proper conceptual application are held to be mathematically (in terms of Quantity and Quality) constitutive and dynamically (in terms of Relation and Modality) regulative, though in the latter case these dynamics are nonetheless empirically constitutive. These, Kant argues, metaphysically ground the legal (i.e., lawful) possibility of any future science.

Conversely, the ideas of reason, which are the subject of the “Transcendental Dialectic,” relate to the three venerable sciences of special metaphysics: 1) psychology/pneumatology, 2) cosmology, and 3) theology. In the second book of the Dialectic, entitled “Dialectical Inferences,” each of the three chapters respectively matches up with these disciplines. The “paralogisms” deal with transcendental psychology, the celebrated “antinomies” deal with transcendental cosmology, and the “ideal” deals with transcendental theology. Since Kant believes that these “sophistic” sciences of speculation transgress the bounds of possible experience (taking them beyond the limits of space and time), he declares that their so-called insights amount to nothing more than illusion. Nevertheless, he reminds us that human reason naturally elicits speculation on these matters, almost ineluctably, and that a rigorously critical attitude must be adopted in order to guard against its seductions.