In an exchange published in Kantian Review in 2018 dedicated to my recent book Kant’s Radical Subjectivism in which 4 critics took part and I myself wrote a reply, Robert Howell, as one of the critics, makes, in his commentary, an allegation of professional misconduct on my part in the way that I did not quote or reference his work in my own first two books on the Deduction (Kant’s Deduction and Apperception [2012] and Kant’s Radical Subjectivism [2017], only the latter of which was the designated subject of critique in said symposium).
This happens all the time of course with all those authors outside the Anglo-American comfort zone, even those that do write in English, such as many authors working in Latin-America, Spain, Italy, France, Eastern Europe, Asia, etc. that don’t get a hearing with Anglo-Americans. Not only is there a failure to mention these authors (even authors within the Anglo-American comfort zone), ideas are often also appropriated from authors who then don’t get recognition for those ideas from those appropriating them. All this comes with the nasty politics of climbing the greasy pole of academic philosophy. I don’t condone of it, of course. But it seems somewhat fatuous to mention one’s peeve in a serious debate about arguments in the pages of a journal such as Kantian Review.
I did not want to waste precious space on replying to this in my official, published response piece. Hence, I say something about it here. (Howell and I discussed this matter in email exchanges when I invited him for the symposium, so I was surprised, to say the least, to read the comment in his piece when he sent it to me.)
But more importantly (and preposterously), Howell seems to be charging me, if ever so slightly, of passing off his work as my own, in particular concerning the famous Leitfaden passage at A79/B104–5. Here is the passage at issue (it’s in footnote 14 of his essay, on p. 120 of the published version, which has been edited from an earlier version)[*]:
It puzzles me that Schulting, who cites Pereboom’s positive review (2001) of KTD in both his volumes—and even uses Pereboom’s title as a chapter title in his first book—never mentions KTD. Schulting may be impatient with formal approaches to Kant, but they are clarifying. KTD contains detailed, plain-prose discussions of many topics Schulting examines—the categories and logical functions, synthesis, apperception, the B-Deduction §17 gap and more. KTD sometimes anticipates Schulting’s interpretations (e.g., of the famous A79/B104-5 sentence). Although it may seem like a purely personal reaction, I, as a reviewer, am dismayed by this lapse in Schulting’s scholarly attention. (my underlining)
Now I don’t know for a fact if there might not be any coincidental similarity between his interpretation of the A79 passage, or any other of his interpretations of the Deduction, and my own interpretation of that passage, or any other of my interpretations of the Deduction, because I have never read his book (which he abbreviates as KTD) (though I know of its existence, and have been able recently to look briefly at it, after the fact, that is after I had completed my own two books—Howell’s book is extremely expensive and I couldn’t access it otherwise before, until I received a free e-copy courtesy of Springer only very recently).
However, by saying that my interpretations track his (‘KTD sometimes anticipates Schulting’s interpretations’; in the original manuscript he sent to me the language was clearer in its allegation of plagiarism) Howell suggests that I passed off parts of his work as my own (in particular concerning the Leitfaden passage) and did not properly reference them. But such a claim is de facto false. My reading of the Leitfaden passage is very much inspired by the work of the eminent late Kant scholar Klaus Reich, who first published his work Die Vollständigkeit der kantischen Urteilstafel in 1932, and wrote extensively about theLeitfaden in that book. Would Howell also suggest that his work (i.e. KTD) also ‘sometimes anticipates’ Klaus Reich’s findings of 60 years earlier—whose important book, I should note, is cited exactly zero (0) times in his own book?
Howell is of course peeved that I did not reference his (neglected) work and has found my ignorance of his work—to which I plead guilty—to be a useful pretext for ever so slightly and underhandedly accusing me of plagiarism. However, apart from the fact that I believe his beef is rather silly, which it behoves a professional philosopher to refrain from in an academic debate in print (for, as I said, whose work is not to a greater or lesser extent ignored in the literature?), I don’t believe that anything of what Howell may have argued in his own book is identical or even close to my interpretation of the Leitfadenpassage in particular (see also my account here) or indeed of any of the Deduction topics he mentions such that his interpretation ‘anticipates’ my interpretation, given that in the exchange I have with him in the book symposium he’s rather severe in his criticisms of central claims of my interpretation of Kant’s Deduction—his views are for the most part diametrically opposed to mine. He also says, in the closing paragraphs of his essay, that my ‘work is sometimes difficult to follow’, implying that he doesn’t understand what might be central parts of my interpretation, and a lot of what he says in his critique of my work indeed suggests to me that he really hasn’t captured central aspects of my interpretation of the Deduction, including the Leitfaden. As I hint in my reply in the book symposium, in his commentary Howell seems often confused about my reading (while he also makes his own points confusingly), where I think I am pretty clear (what I think is the case is that he espouses a different, more regimented, notion of what philosophical clarity means, so that everything that falls outside that regiment is considered vague by definition). The least he could and should do is point out where he thinks my interpretation is anticipated by his, at least for the parts he was able to follow; I think he will have a hard time finding such passages.
[*] the original version of the underlined passage was clearer in its charge. I asked the editor of Kantian Review that this be changed, but it was quite difficult to get the result I wanted. Probably seniority played a key role here, a systematic problem plaguing professional philosophy.
Comments