The final part of the first edition of World as Will and Representation is an appendix, in which Schopenhauer recounts his opinions on different aspects of Kantian philosophy. His attitude is mostly critical, although he admits that Kant was a philosophical genius. Yet, what counts as genius in Kant’s philosophy in Schopenhauer’s eyes, is only a small part of what can be found Kant’s writings. Still, it is one of the core ideas - the differentiation between appearance and thing in itself. Of course, we have already seen that what Schopenhauer means by this distinction is not quite what Kant was up to with it. Schopenhauer’s reading of Kant’s distinction could be called Platonist, because he essentially equates distinction with Platonist distinction between sense world and reality behind it - or Hinduist, because he equates Kantian appearance with the notion of maya and thinks that Kant was trying to emphasise the illusionary nature of the world of experience.
Although Schopenhauer thus appreciates Kant’s philosophy and says that Kant managed to finally end the era of scholasticism, which Descartes didn’t really do, he also admits that Kant led to a crisis in philosophy, by which Schopenhauer apparently meant the later German idealists. This crisis was, according to Schopenhauer, at least partly due to Kant’s style. On the whole, Schopenhauer describes Kant’s style as glorious dryness, similar to Aristotle’s, that is, full of accurate distinctions. The problem is, according to Schopenhauer, that the topic of Kant’s philosophy is so difficult that he cannot really explain it well. In Schopenhauer’s opinion, this lack of clarity inspired other philosophers use even more obscure style in their writings.
Yet, the biggest problem Schopenhauer sees in Kant’s philosophy is his search for symmetry that doesn’t always exist. A particular point of criticism was Kantian table of categories, which reappears in the most perplexing places, as the supposed key for the system of human cognition. This search for symmetry, Schopenhauer states, makes Kant ignore such important questions as what a concept in general is and to give completely wrong explanations of e.g. the nature of reason. What Schopenhauer would have liked to see in Kant is a clear demarcation of everything conceptual to reason, leaving to understanding nothing but the task of connecting individual perceptions through causality.
It is then no wonder that Schopenhauer appreciated the first edition of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason more than its second edition, mainly because it fit better with his Berkeleyan-Hinduistic reading. Indeed, Schopenhauer was convinced that in the second edition Kant just tried to distance his own philosophy from Berkeley’s, which ended up just with a muddle. The major fault Schopenhauer sees even in the first edition is the unclear role of thing-in-itself, which is explained as a cause of experience: a notorious failing in Kant’s system. Furthermore, Schopenhauer is not fond of Kant placing, as it were, between thing-in-itself and concrete representations something called the object in general. Schopenhauer is here making another clear strike against conceptualisation of understanding, since Kant was convinced that the faculty of understanding attached this abstract notion of object to perceptions.
The core of Critique of Pure Reason, according to Schopenhauer, is clearly the transcendental aesthetic, and all the problems appears only at the level of transcendental logic. For Kant, transcendental logic and especially transcendental analytic dealt with understanding. Yet, Schopenhauer notes, understanding is not logical or conceptual in the sense that it does not deal with universalities - instead, it just combines individual phenomena through chains of causality into individual processes. In fact, Schopenhauer wants to make a clear demarcation between the perceptual and conceptual levels of human cognition.
Thus, he at once dismisses the Kantian notion that through sensibility objects are given to us and through understanding they are thought. Firstly, Schopenhauer insists that senses do not give us objects. Indeed, he makes fun of the idea that objects would just magically appear in our heads. Instead, senses give us mere sensations and only the combined use of the spatio-temporal form of intuition and the causality introducing activity of understanding brings about objects (in materialistic terms that Schopenhauer sometimes uses, our brains mold sensations into experiences). Schopenhauer notes that even Kant appears to accept this at times, when he says that e.g. understanding makes nature possible.
Furthermore, Schopenhauer says, understanding does not think, that is, it does not use any concepts in the Schopenhauerian sense, which always involves movement to a level of abstract universalities. Instead, this conceptual task Schopenhauer leaves for reason - thinking is second-order cognition, based on universalising individual phenomena. We have already seen that Schopenhauer coldly dismisses the primary logical task of understanding - that of connecting perceptions to an object in general, which could be only something thought. As an ally against this notion of object in general Schopenhauer mentions Berkeley, who had already dismissed the distinction between representation and its object - ironically, the notion of object in general was probably introduced by Kant to distinguish his philosophy from Berkeley’s. With this object in itself Schopenhauer dismisses also twelve categories, which were supposed to be concepts for thinking this very object in itself, leaving only the causality besides space and time as a priori elements of cognition. With categories goes also the need for the schematism of categories, which Schopenhauer suggests was nothing but a misguided attempt to create an analogy with the use of empirical concepts.
Although Schopenhauer discards Kantian categories, he admits that the other side of the equation - the forms of judgement - do form a possible topic of philosophy. Contrary to Kant, Schopenhauer doesn’t try to make statements about human cognition on basis of these forms, but instead, he derives these forms from the characteristics of human cognition. That is, some forms of judgement, he says, have their basis on the conceptual side of human cognition, other on the understanding or the experiential side, while finally some can be derived from the interplay of these two elements. Thus, universal and particular judgements, Schopenhauer insists, are just two different manners, in which reason connects abstract concepts while a so-called singular judgement (e.g. “this swan is white”) connects intuitive cognition with abstract concepts. The difference between affirmative and negative judgements is one of reason, since experience really has no negations; and infinite judgement is an unimportant addition, Schopenhauer adds.
Kantian divisions of judgements according to relation have very different sources, according to Schopenhauer. Hypothetical judgement Schopenhauer takes to be a general form of the principle of sufficient reason, which is mostly based on intuitive side of cognition. Categorical judgement is just a general form of judgement, Schopenhauer says, while disjunctive judgement expresses a logical relation between concepts excluding one another, with no connection to the notion of reciprocal causation, which Schopenhauer also dismisses as an absurdity, because causality in his eyes is always a process with one direction.
This leaves only the Kantian modalities, which Schopenhauer considers to have a mixed origin. The basis of the modalities, in Schopenhauer’s opinion, is necessity, which he takes to be a synonym for something having a cause and thus based on intuitive side of cognition. Other modalities originate then from the interaction of concepts with intuitions. Contingency is a meaningful concept only in relation to some context - while A is necessary, assuming certain conditions, some other thing B would be contingent under the same conditions. Nothing absolute contingent would exist, because all things do have some ground. Actuality, according to Schopenhauer, means just something being a necessary consequence of some cause, at the moment, when it is called actual. Possibility, then, is something which is actual at some moment, and impossible is something that is never actual.
We’ve already noticed that Schopenhauer isn’t convinced about the derivation of twelve categories from the supposed table of forms of judgement. Even less convinced he is of Kant’s attempts to use the symmetry of categories as a method for systematising various parts of philosophy. He explicitly notes that quality is just an arbitrary title for affirmation and negation and their connection with intensive quantities is even more contentious. Furthermore, he notes that Kant uses categories in two contradictory manners: both as preconditions of experience, which contains an intuitive component, and as forms of pure, non-intuitive thinking.
Schopenhauer has a low opinion also about Kant’s transcendental dialectic. Although Schopenhauer agrees with Kant that pre-Kantian metaphysics deserved criticism, he is far from accepting that the supposed search for unconditioned leading to such metaphysics would be inevitable part of human reason. In fact, Schopenhauer says, it’s just a sophism to conclude from the need of grounding individual events a need to give a complete chain of grounds to an event. Indeed, he points out, we can complete a chain of grounds only, when we are speaking of grounds of cognition, which end with concrete perceptions, but not when we are speaking of causes. Thus, there is no need to assume that all humans would form concepts like soul or God.
Schopenhauer points out many mistakes with Kant’s attempts to derive basic concepts in particular parts of dialectics. For instance, Kant assumes the notion of soul as final substance behind accidental properties, although the concept of matter would fit the bill much better. Furthermore, Schopenhauer finds it again absurd that Kant tries to derive the four antinomies from his titles for divisions of categories. For instance, while space and time have some connection with quantities, the relationship between wholes and parts has only a slight relation to qualities and their negations. Particularly ridiculous Schopenhauer considers Kant’s linking causality with freedom, when the concept of the creator in the fourth antinomy would have been a more natural choice.
In general, Schopenhauer doesn’t think that Kantian antinomies are real antinomies, because only the antitheses, holding the possible infinity of experience, are a credible option, while the proofs of theses are based on a mere personal inability to understand what infinity is like. Thus, Schopenhauer thinks that no absolute beginning for events can be thought, although one might think that events of the world end at some point. Against Kant’s proof of the thesis of second antinomy Schopenhauer points out that we need not assume that matter would consist of pre-existing parts, if we want to say that it is divisible into further parts - indeed, this was pointed out already by Hegel, and even Kant noted later that infinite divisibility of matter followed from infinite divisibility of space. Kant’s proof for the third and fourth antinomies, Schopenhauer says, again assume that we must have a complete series of causes with an absolute beginning to explain an event.
Finally, Schopenhauer notes that Kant’s general solution for antinomies actually assumes the truth of the antitheses. Schopenhauer is here clearly interpreting the infinity involved in the antitheses as what could be called potential infinities - that is, when an infinity of series is expressed, what is meant is an incapacity to give any absolute, finite series containing all antecedents. What Schopenhauer does agree with Kant - although he appears to not understand this himself - is that just because of this potential infinity of the world we experience, we must conclude that it is not the world in itself, but dependent on human representation.
A sort of exception in Schopenhauers eyes is Kant’s solution to the third antinomy, which Schopenhauer thinks has significant similarities with his own philosophy. Indeed, Kant’s suggestion that freedom might be possible with things in themselves does bear some resemblance with Schopenhauer’s suggestion that completely free volition lies behind the world of representation. Yet, Kant never suggests that we could ever just feel this freedom, and Schopenhauer is not very thrilled of Kant’s transcendental-style proofs that freedom must exist to make categorical imperative possible. Furthermore, Schopenhauer still thinks that Kant’s solution fails as a solution to the antinomy, because the antinomy is expressly about the world of experience, not about things in themselves. Within the world of experience, Schopenhauer confirms, no freedom exists.
The final part of Kant’s transcendental dialectics, his criticism of natural theology, receives a complete condemnation from Schopenhauer. He does admit that Kant was right in rejecting the traditional proofs of God’s existence, but firstly, he thinks that this rejection is historically quite unimportant, because the proofs themselves are just an uninteresting part of scholastic philosophy, and secondly, he is convinced that David Hume did even that better than Kant. But what Schopenhauer really dislikes in Kant’s account is his suggestion that the idea of God as the most real entity would be somehow necessary for human cognition, when many ancient and non-European cultures never had such an concept.
Schopenhauer puts most of his energy toward Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, primarily because he thought that the meat of his philosophy was to be found in that book. Then again, the primary idea of Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason that reason could be the basis of morality, Schopenhauer finds wanting, because reason can at most, he says, tell how to achieve predetermined long-term objectives, like happiness in life. Furthermore, Schopenhauer is quite convinced that no absolute ought-tos or categorical imperatives, but only ought-tos in relation to certain consequences, like punishments: for instance, a child ought to behave, if she wants her allowance. Still, Schopenhauer does admit that true virtue is done for its own sake, even if he doesn’t want to use the term “ought-to” in this context. In fact, he thinks that Kant couldn’t uphold that ideal, mixing it with happiness in the idea of greatest good. In addition, Schopenhauer insists that this pure virtue is not as formal as Kant thought, but more generalisation of egoistic well-being over all living beings.
The other works of Kant get an even shorter shrift from Schopenhauer. For instance, he notes that Kant’s theory of right is simply wrong, because it tries to distance right from both ethics and from state, finding a third root for a priori judgements. Similarly dismissive Schopenhauer is of Critique of Judgment.
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