Salomon Maimon's Critique of Kant's Theory of Consciousness

Author(s): Charlotte Katzoff

Source: Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, Bd. 35, H. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1981), pp. 185-
195
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 SALOMON MAIMON'S CRITIQUE OF KANT'S THEORY
OF CONSCIOUSNESS

von Charlotte K a t z off, Ramat-Gan (Israel)

Salomon Maimon is viewed by many as a pivotal figure in the history of

Kant-interpretation. While his post-Kantian predecessors such as Rein
hold, Jacobi and Schulze interpret Kant in the light of his "pre-critical" or
"dogmatic" teachings1, Maimon is regarded as formulating a philosophical
system which seeks as its model the critical and innovative strains of Kant's
teaching. Windelband, for example, credits Maimon with being the first to
realize that the thing in itself as a reality outside of consciousness is an
impossible conception2. Atlas believes that Maimon understands Kant's
Critique as essentially restricting knowledge to the realm of appearances3.
This interpretation led him, according to Atlas, to found a new school of
Kantian teaching, including Fichte and the Neo-Kantian school of Mar
burg, which strived to purge Kantian doctrine of the uncritical assumption
that things in themselves are the grounds of our knowledge of
appearances4. Atlas, however, points to inconsistencies in Maimon's theory
of consciousness which, he admits, leave the theory open to a realistic
interpretation5. Rosenthal advances such an interpretation - while
granting that Maimon does not posit the grounds of knowledge outside the
subject as do the realists, he objects that Maimon does not thereby dispose
of the thing in itself as the cause of knowledge - he merely relocates it6.
The analysis of Maimon's thought presented in this paper starts out from
the assumption that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, the work upon which
Maimon is commenting7, contains several separate and largely independ

1 See Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi's David Hume ?ber den Glauben; oder Idealismus und Rea
lismus, Breslau 1787; Karl Leonhard Reinhold's Versuch einer neuen Theorie des
menschlichen Vorstellungsverm?gens, Jena 1787; and Gottlob Ernst Schulze's Aeneside
mus; oder ?ber die Fundamente der Elementarphilosophie, Helmstedt 1792.
2 W. Windelband, A History of Philosophy, New York 1919, 570. See also, Kuno Fischer,
Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, VI, Heidelberg 1914, 47 ff.
3 Samuel Adas, From Critical to Speculative Idealism: The Philosophy of Solomon Maim?n,
The Hague 1964, 50.
4 Ibid., 15.
5 Ibid., 171.
6 L. Rosenthal, Salomon Maimons Versuch ?ber die Transzendentalphilosophie und sein
Verh?ltnis zu Kants tranzendentaler Aesthetik und Analytik, in: Zeitschrift fur Philoso
phie 102: 233-302.
7 Maim?n styled his first major work, Versuch ?ber die Transzendentalphilosophie, as a
commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.

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 186 CHARLOTTE KATZOFF

ent lines of argument8. In order to interpret Maimon, then, I attempt to

sort out the various versions of Kant's theory to which Maimon is respon
ding. How does Maimon treat the realistic strain of Kant's thought, where
in Kant describes the thing in itself as an independently real substratum of
appearances?9 To what extent is Maimon's view of the operations of cons
ciousness compatible with the Kantian assertion in the chapter on Pheno
mena and Noumena, that the categories of understanding have problema
tic application to objects in general, "without regard to the special mode
(the sensibility) in which they may be given?" 10 And finally, what is the re
lationship between Maimon's theory of consciousness and what is generally
viewed as the most innovative and critical teaching of Kant's Critique,
wherein knowledge is grounded in the necessary conditions of conscious
ness? I suggest that Maimon tends to conflate various lines of thought and
that in general he is not sensitive to the multiplicity of doctrine in Kant's
Critique11. I argue in this work that although Maimon ostensibly rejects the
dogmatic formulation of the thing in itself, his criticisms of Kant reflect his
failure to comprehend the innovative features of Kant's critical theory of
consciousness. Indeed, the essential features of Maimon's own theory of
consciousness show a decisive affinity to Kant's pre-critical thinking.

I. Maimon 's Redefinition of The given

In the Critique Kant refers to the matter of intuition as "the given".
Maimon argues that Kant could not mean by "the given" that which has its
cause outside the faculty of cognition. Since we cannot perceive the causes
of our cognitions, claims about them are based on inference from their ef
fects, inference which is dismissed by Maimon as precarious12. Maimon also
puts forth the argument that it is self-contradictory to claim to be conscious
of something outside consciousness13.
The spatial imagery in which these claims are cast is characteristic of Mai
mon's unquestioning adoption of the idealist principle that we have direct
knowledge only of that which resides within consciousness - namely, our
sensations. Consciousness is a sealed container whose walls are opaque and

8 For an exposition of this view of the Critique, see R. P. Wolff, Kant's Theory of Mental Ac
tivity: A Commentary on the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason,
Massachusetts 1963.
9 See E. Adickes, Kant und das Ding an sich, Berlin 1924, ch. 1.
10 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 309
11 See my Solomon Maimon's Interpretation of Kant's Copernican Revolution, in: Kant
Studien 66, 342-356.
12 S. Maim?n, Versuch ?ber die Tranzendentalphilosophie, mit einem Anhang ?ber die
symbolische Erkenntnis und Anmerkungen, Berlin 1790; repr. Hildesheim 1965, 203.
13 Ibid., 29.

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 SALOMON MAIMON'S CRITIQUE OF KANT'S THEORY 187

impenetrable, closing off any access to the outside. The use of this model
leads to an implicit definition of what it means to be conscious of an object
- to have that object "within" ones consciousness. Whatever remains
"outside" consciousness remains unknowable - a thing in itself. In these
terms, to claim to have something that is outside ones consciousness within
it is indeed self-contradictory.
In assuming that Kant is forced to the above conclusion, Maimon is over
looking Kant's criticism of the idealist position, as well as the distance be
tween that position and the major lines of Kantian thought. Although tra
ces of idealist doctrine may be found in some of Kant's arguments, the
overriding assumption of the Critique is of a given independent of the kno
wer, which "enters consciousness" - is represented by consciousness and
becomes an object of knowledge14. How this is possible is indeed the central
problem of the Critique, a problem which perhaps is never completely
resolved15.However, be its source in a noumenal realm or be it an aspect of
the object of appearance, for Kant the matter of intuition is independent of
thought16 and, it may even be argued, possesses an order and inter
connectedness of its own17. Within this framework, of course, Maimon's
critique of the notion of an object of knowledge independent of conscious
ness is not only not applicable, but fundamentally mistaken.
The metaphysical system proposed by Maimon to support his epistemo
logy is the theory of the differentials of consciousness18. Consciousness is de
fined as the most general and indeterminate function of the faculty of
cognition19. The general form of consciousness is subject to modifications
expressible in terms of differentials - laws or sets of functional relation
ships according to which, or out of which, - the choice of the correct
preposition being problematic - the object of knowledge is generated20.
These functions are determined by abstracting from all the intuited quali

14 See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Preface to Second Edition, XXVII.

15 For a discussion of the problematic nature of Kant's conception of empirical reality see,
Wolff, 164-174.
16 See for example, Kant B 67.
17 See P. Krausser, Kant's Theory of the Structure of Empirical Scientific Inquiry and Two
Implied Postulates Regarding Things in Themselves, Kant's Theory of Knowledge, ed.
by L. W. Beck, Dordrecht-Holland 1974, 159-165.
18 This theory, also called the theory of infinitesmals of sensation, is found for the most part
in Maim?n's early works, particularly in his Transcendentalphilosophy. Its absence in Mai
m?n's later works is due, I suggest, not to a different perspective on knowledge, but to a
growing skepticism as to the reality of knowledge.
19 S. Maim?n, Versuch einer neuen Logik oder Theorie des Denkens, Berlin 1794; repr.
Neudrucke seltener philosophischer Werke, Kantgesellschaft, Berlin 1912; repr. Hildes
heim 1970, 15.
20 Maim?n sometimes speaks of the differentials as the laws in accordance with which objects
are generated, and at other times as the elements out of which the objects are constituted.

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 188 CHARLOlTE KATZOFF

ties of an object of consciousness21. Thus, presumably, we discover the func

tion out of which emerges a particular red rubber ball by draining the ball
of its redness, roundness, weight, texture, size, and whatever other quali
ties we perceive it to have. What is left then is a formula, the law which
generates the concrete material ball22. If consciousness is the general form of
the faculty of cognition, the differentials are the particular modifications of
consciousness which provide or constitute objects of cognition.
Maimon subjects Kant's formulation of the given - that which derives
from a source independent of the faculty of cognition - to Kant's own cri
tique: "How can understanding subject something which is not in its po
wer (the given object) to its power (the rules)?"23 Maimon points out that
within the Kantian system, since sensibility and understanding are entirely
independent sources of knowledge, the question cannot be answered. Mai
mon finds the solution in the Leibniz-Wolff doctrine that there is only one
source of knowledge, grounded in understanding. Thus he teaches that un
derstanding is able to subject the object of intuition to its power, that is, to
order it according to its rules, because the object of intuition is generated in
its entirety by the differentials of consciousness.
Maimon characterizes the given as that within the faculty of cognition
whose mode of origin within us is unknown24. The representation of a given
object of intuition within consciousness is a partial presentation of the ob
ject whereby only some of its characteristics are revealed25. Imagination, to
complete the presentation, conjures up an external object to which to relate
it26. What happens, for example, when I see a tree? Since I cannot account
for myperception on the basis of the characteristics of the tree and their re
lations to the rules of understanding, I interpret my perception to be of a
tree "out there", distinct from myself. However, the tree is in fact gener
ated within my consciousness and its quality of givenness an illusion27.
Since for Maimon the differentials generate the particular objects of in
tuition, in addition to expressing their formal structures, the differentials
also govern the material qualities of each object. But since the laws are ab
stractions from all that is given in the matter of intuition, it would seem
that the differentials are relations of nothing. Maimon meets these conflic
ting demands by adopting Kant's strategy from the Anticipations of

21 Maim?n, Transcendentalphilosophy, 28n.

22 Ibid., 27.
23 Ibid., 63.
24 Ibid., 415.
25 Maim?n, Logik, 241.
26 Ibid., 319.
27 Maim?n, Transcendentalphilosophy, 202.

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 SALOMON MAIMON'S CRITIQUE OF KANT'S THEORY 189

Perception28. The differentials are relations of quantities which are not quan
tities, namely infinitesimals. They govern the matter of intuition, sensa
tion, because the latter, for Maimon, as for Kant in the Anticipations, has
intensive magnitude and thus may be represented within consciousness as
an indeterminate infinitesimal29. A sensation may assume any one of an infi
nite number of finite degrees of intensity down to the total absence of the
latter without changing its identity as a particular function of consciousness
and as corresponding to a particular sensed quality. The specific degree of
intensity with which the sensation is represented in any one instance of
consciousness has no bearing upon the real nature of the sensed object. Yet
the extensive magnitudes we perceive, or the material characteristics we at
tribute to sensed objects, are not adventitious phenomena; they are finite
expressions of the intensive magnitudes by which, according to Maimon,
reality is measured. The extensive magnitudes we intuit, including their
material qualities, are the integrals of the infinitesimals of sensation and
are thus capable of being completely known30.
For Kant, too, sensation corresponds to the real in appearances, but the
real has no qualitative dimension31. The particular sensed qualities of an ob
ject do not play a part in our knowledge of the object. In answer to the ques
tion of how understanding can know an object given it from a source apart
from it, Kant answers that it indeed does not, that matter has no cognitive
validity32. Only the formal qualities of the object are knowable, qualities
which it shares with all objects qua objects, and this because the forms are
the subjective conditions of human knowledge, immanent, as it were, to
the subject. The particularity of the object, that which derives from the ma
terial content with which the forms are invested, eludes the knower's grasp.

28 Kant in this section is describing the characteristics of perception for subjective awareness
alone rather than qua representations of objects, as he does in the main sections of the Cri
tique.
29 S. Maim?n, Kritische Untersuchungen ?ber den menschlichen Geist, Leipzig 1797; repr.
Hildesheim, 1976, 214. See also, Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 211. F. Kuntze, in his
Die Philosophie Salomon Maimons, Heidelberg 1912, 334, observes that if we consider
the infinitely many individual values which the degree of sensation, according to Kant
may assume, as not only having value for the series of intensities, but as at the same time
representing a quality we have Maim?n's Theory of Differentials.
30 Maim?n, Transcendentalphilosophy, 394.
31 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 218.
32 Note that in the critical doctrine of the Critique, the consideration of matter apart from
form is problematic.

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 190 CHARLOTTE KATZOFF

Kant teaches that the form of appearances tells us nothing about that
which appears33. But the fact that the matter which fills the formal struc
tures of experience is not a function of necessary laws, the fact that intuition
does not reveal the inner nature of its objects, does not count for Kant
against the possibility of knowledge. Within the critical strain of Kant's
philosophy, knowledge is not of the inner nature of things, but of the ex
ternal relations of things to one another and to the subject; knowledge is
grounded precisely in the relations which are revealed in intuition. Al
though this solution is available in the Citique, Maimon does not adopt it.
For Maimon knowledge must grasp its object to its core, must embrace all
the relationships by which it is characterized in their fullest particularity34.
These relationships, moreover, cannot be grounded in the material quali
ties of the object, inasmuch as, like Kant, Maimon teaches that they are
unknowable. Thus, Maimon fashions the object of knowledge out of rela
tions of consciousness. Objects do not precede their relationships - they
are generated through the relationships in which they are thought35. In
stead of, as with Kant, the object of intuition exhibiting a formal order
into which material content is introduced, the object for Maimon is
nothing but its form.
The notion that the object of intuition is a set of empty relations bears a
certain affinity to the Kantian notion of pure intuition. The latter is found,
for example, in connection with what Adickes calls Kant's "Theory of Dou
ble Affection", a doctrine which has been characterized as incompatible
with the critical strains of the Critique36. The notion also figures impor
tantly in the version of Kant's theory of mathematics found in the begin
ning of the Transcendental Doctrine of Method, according to which the
mathematical method gives rise to a priori propositions because its subjects
matter is pure non-empirical intuition, independent of experience37. Hin
tikka explains that notion of intuition, that of a particular idea as dis
tinguished from a general concept, characterizes Kant's early thinking
about intuition. In the Transcendental Aesthetic Kant offers proof that in
the case of human beings intuition is bound up with sensibility38. Thus,

33 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 67. According to Kant, for example, the category of cau
sality necessitates that given the empirical objects of our experience, objects stand in causal
relationships to one another. Kant is quite clear in his denial that we can derive from the
general law which particular objects stand in which relations to others.
34 See Maim?n, Kritische Untersuchungen, 36, where he rejects the distinction between es
sential and accidental attributes.
35 Maim?n, Transcendentalphilosophy, 190.
36 On this point see Wolff, Kant's Theory of Mental Activity, 222 f.
37 See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 741.
38 J. Hintikka, Kant on the Mathematical Method, in: Kant Studies Today, ?d. L. W. Beck,
Illinois 1969, 117-141.

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 SALOMON MAIMON'S CRITIQUE OF KANT'S THEORY 191

argues Hintikka, the doctrine of mathematics found in the beginning of

the Transcendental Doctrine of Method is systematically prior to that of the
Transcendental Aesthetic; in Kant's mature thinking knowledge of particu
lars can be gained only through sense-perception39. Indeed, when Maimon
compares Kant's notion of sensibility with his own he writes that Kant un
derstands by sensibility, "the ability of the mind to be affected by some
thing outside itself'. However, Maimon rejects this view and puts forth
instead what Hintikka identifies as Kant's pre-critical view, that sensibility
is, "the ability to recognize the individual and accidental in an object"40.
According to Maimon's Theory of Differentials, since the object of intui
tion emerges out of a differential which is a modification of the general
form of consciousness, all objects of instuition are interrelated on the basis of
the necessary relationships among the differentials. Thus complete know
ledge of any one is its comprehension within a system which provides com
plete knowledge of all41. In place of the contingency which characterizes re
lations in the phenomenal realm according to Kant, and in which empirical
knowledge is grounded, real knowledge for Maimon is grounded in a sys
tem suggestive of Kant's noumenal realm, the intelligible and necessarily
inter-connected substratum of appearances, which Kant in his critical phi
losophy teaches, has nothing to do with knowledge.

II. Time and Space

Maimon adopts Kant's definition of time and space as the forms in
which appearances are given, the necessary conditions of sensibility42. Whi
le the object is generated outside the spatio-temporal order, space and time
are the forms of its sensible perception. This is so because the object as gi
ven is made up of a manifold of discrete characteristics which cannot be
thought simultaneously. In order to unify this manifold within conscious
ness, to make it an object for thought, it must therefore be spatio
temporally ordered. However, since sensibility is merely a modification of
the faculty of cognition, its conditions are grounded in the more general
form of thought, understanding43. Maimon teaches that the representation

39 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 145.

40 Maim?n, Kritische Untersuchungen, 83. I find no evidence that Maim?n identifies his
own position with any part of Kantian teaching.
41 Solomon Maim?n, Streifereien im Gebiete der Philosophie, Berlin 1793; repr. Hildesheim
1970, 42.
42 Maim?n, Transcendentalphilosophy, 15 f. At Logik, 138, Maim?n disagrees with Kant
that space and time are forms of sensibility in general and declares them to be merely the
conditions of difference among objects. This parallels Maimon's divergence from Kant on
the nature of sensibility.
43 See S. Maim?n, Philosophisches W?rterbuch, Berlin, 1791; repr. Hildesheim 1970, 15.
There Maim?n characterizes space and time as pictures of the rules of the understanding.

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 192 CHARLOTTE KATZOFF

of temporal sequence is necessary for the recognition of differences between

intuited objects. However, the necessary condition of temporal sequence is
the objective difference between the two objects, that difference which
flows from the internal relations of the objects, out of which the objects are
generated. Maimon writes, "If red were not in itself different from green
we could not perceive them successively in time, but if we did not have
temporal succession, we could not know their difference"44. Maimon takes
Kant to task for not perceiving this inter-dependency.
Not all thought takes place in time. For example, a line is drawn out in
time, but the relationship of the form of a triangle to its lines is thought
instantaneously45. A judgment of understanding, identified by Maimon as
an analytic judgment, does not require temporal sequence because its pre
dicate is understood to be part of its subject. Only in synthetic judgments,
where no internal relationship is perceived between the predicate and the
subject, are the two treated as discrete and must they be unified in time.
And, since in reality the object is made up of mutually determining rela
tionships, the synthetic judgment, which grasps the object in terms of a
subject characterized by predicates, is only approximate. Hence, the spatio
temporal framework in which synthetic judgments are set signifies the in
completeness of the knowledge which such judgments provide; it is a medi
um which distorts the objects it represents.
Space and time are necessary conditions, not only of our knowledge of an
object, but of our very awareness of it.
"Consciousness arises through the activity of the faculty of thought. In receiving
the individual sensory representation, however, this faculty relates merely
passively... Consciousness first arises when imagination brings together several ho
mogeneous sensory representations, orders them according to its forms (succession
in time and space), and forms out of them a single intuition"46.
Awareness, what Maimon must mean here by, "consciousness", is at
tained through the act of spation-temporal ordering - those contens of the
faculty of cognition which are not spatio-temporally ordered reamin passive
and the subject is unaware of them. For Kant, by contrast, insofar as a pas
sive mode of relating to an object can be treated separately from an active
mode, time and space are forms of the former - when the given manifold
of sensibility enters the mind it is already spatio-temporally ordered47.

44 Maim?n, Streifereien, 262.

45 Maim?n, Logik, 121 f. At W?rterbuch, 63 f., Maim?n asserts that the higher faculties, un
derstanding and reason, operate outside of time since their objects, such as geometrical
forms, are indivisible unities. Sensation and imagination, on the other hand, operate
within time, and space and time are the forms of the faculty of imagination.
46 Maim?n, Transcendentalphilosophy, 29.
47 See for example, Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 89-91 and A 93-94. This view of the re
lation of the categories to the form of sensibility and to consciousness does not prevail in

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 SALOMON MAIMON'S CRITIQUE OF KANT'S THEORY 193

The notion that there are elements within consciousness of which the
subject is not aware is part of Maimon's doctrine of the ultimate expansion
of knowledge to incorporate these elements. The latter are not like Kant's
things in themselves, independent of consciousness and hence essentially
unknowable. The reason the subject is unaware of them is simply that they
are not spatio-temporally ordered and this lack is not one of their essential
features but corresponds to the partial passivity of subjective consciousness
which fails to achieve total self-knowledge. To a consciousness which is to
tally activated, which comprehends all the relations within itself and under
stands all the laws which govern its operation, there is no given; all its ob
jects are thoroughly known, reducible to sets of mutually determining rela
tionships. All judgments are analytic, distinctions between subject and pre
dicate dissolved48. For such a consciousness the spatio-temporal framework
would, as it were, evaporate.
In Kant's critical theory, on the other hand, time is the form of inner
sense and temporal order is an essential feature of consciousness, expressed
both as subjective awareness and as objective knowledge. Kant's critical ac
count of objectivity distinguishes between the subjective order of our per
ceptions considered simply qua contents of consciousness and their objec
tive order considered as representations of an empirical reality. The
re-ordering of perceptions in accordance with the categories of the under
standing, in which knowledge is grounded, is a temporal re-ordering. Time
is thus an essential feature of empirical reality which knowledge cannot
transcend49.

III. The Unity of Consciousness

For Maimon as for Kant, knowledge involves the tying together of a ma
nifold in a necessary unity of consciousness50, and, following Kant, Maimon
seeks the a priori rules for the synthesis of an object of knowledge. Kant is
criticized for failing to provide a priori criteria for the recognition of those
combinations of concepts which characterize real objects5". To this end,
Maimon proposes his Principle of Determinability to serve synthetic judg
ments as the principle of contradiction serves analytic. The Principle divides
into two, one for the subject of a synthesis, the other for its predicate. The

the Critique. It is relevant here for purposes of comparison because Maim?n does sharply
distinguish between the active and passive roles of the mind.
48 At Transcendentalphilosophy, 174 f., Maim?n claims that only analytic knowledge can be
a priori.
49 See the Analogies of Experience, particularly the Second Analogy, in Kant's Critique of
Pure Reason.
50 Maim?n, Logik, 128.
51 Maim?n, Kritische Untersuchungen, 139

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 194 CHARLOTTE KATZOFF

former is, "Every subject must be, not only as a subject, but also in itself, a
possible object of consciousness"52. The principle for the predicate is, "Eve
ry predicate must be a possible sbject of consciousness, not in itself, but as
a predicate (in connection with a subject)"53. Any synthesis of subject and
predicate which does not conform to this principle does not determine a re
al object. Thus, "Blackness and a circle cannot be thought in an objective
synthesis (black circle) for each can be thought in itself"54. Synthetic judg
ments, then, which define real objects, do so because they are in fact
analytic55. Note, however, that the necessary connection within such a judg
ment is only one-sided - on the side of the predicate. The subject is capa
ble of being thought in itself. Indeed, if neither of the two can be thought
independently, the synthesis does not determine an object, but merely de
fines a relational concept such as cause and effect56.
The Principle of Determinability, although placing synthetic knowledge
on an analytic ground, is however, for Maimon, only an interim measure.
The Principle applies to one-directional relationships whereas Maimon tea
ches that understanding grounds its objects in relationships which are mu
tually determining. And indeed Maimon teaches that the Principle of De
terminability applies only to an object incompletely known. According to
the Principle, the relational synthesis fails to determine a real object, but
for an infinite understanding whose knowledge of all objects is complete, it
is the relational synthesis which determines the real object, the latter there
by becoming "fully determinate in itself' .
Maimon claims that Kant must consider synthetic propositions to be real
only with respect to a limited understanding. And indeed, the dogmatic
doctrine of the Critique grounds knowledge in a noumenal realm of neces
sarily inter-related objects. A key insight of Kant's critical teaching, howe
ver, is that empirical knowledge is grounded in synthetic judgments which
are nevertheless a prioii because they express the necessary conditions of ex
perience.
Wolff distinguishes two senses of the term, "objective"58. One sense of
the term is, "having to do with objects". In the other sense, the term

52 Maim?n, Logik, 20.

53 Ibid.
54 Maim?n, Transcendentalphilosophy, 124.
55 At Logik 121 Maim?n criticizes Kant for restricting the term "analytic" to trivial knowled
ge. He would want to extend the term to judgments about the particular qualities of an
object as well.
56 Maim?n, Transcendentalphilosophy, 85.
57 Ibid., 86.
58 Wolff, 166. Wolff stipulates that although the different strains in Kant can be shown to
incorporate the different senses of the word, Kant himself never makes the distinction ex
plicit.

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 SALOMON MAIMON'S CRITIQUE OF KANT'S THEORY 195

connotes, "the characteristics of our knowledge", for Kant, necessity and

universality. In the critical strain of Kant's teachings, Wolff asserts, Kant
no longer seeks to ground necessity and universality in the combinations of
qualities which characterize the object, but rather in the unity of conscious
ness which flows from the necessary conditions of sense experience.
Maimon like Kant seeks to ground knowledge in necessary relations. But
Maimon does not adopt Kant's strategy of deducing these necessary rela
tions from the conditions of consciousness. Instead he proceeds to reduce
the object of intuition to an immaterial function, a set of logicalPrelation
ships expressible in analytic judgments, the only terms in which he con
ceives necessity. In thus reverting back to this pre-critical view of know
ledge, whereby knowledge is antithetical to sense experience, Maimon
leaves himself open to a skepticism against which Kant has made sig
nificant advances59.

59 See for example, Logik, 195, and Streifereien, 191.

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