A Commentary to Kant's 'critique of Pure Reason'

Chapter Iv. the History of Pure Reason 582

APPENDIX B.

A more detailed Statement of Kant's Relations to his Philosophical Predecessors 583

INDEX 607

NOTE

In all references to the Kritik der Reinen Vernunft I have given the original pagings of both the first and second editions. References to Kant’s other works are, whenever possible, to the volumes thus far issued in the new Berlin edition. As the Reflexionen Kants zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft had not been published in this edition at the time when the Commentary was completed, the numbering given is that of B. Erdmann’s edition of 1884.

ABBREVIATIONS

Berlin edition of Kant’s works W

Pagings in the first edition of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft A

Pagings in the second edition B

Adickes’ edition of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1889) K

INTRODUCTION

I. TEXTUAL

KANT’S METHOD OF COMPOSING THE ‘CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON’

Seldom, in the history of literature, has a work been more conscientiously and deliberately thought out, or more hastily thrown together, than the Critique of Pure Reason. The following is the account which Kant in a letter to Moses Mendelssohn (August 16, 1783) has given of its composition:

”[Though the Critique is] the outcome of reflection which had occupied me for a period of at least twelve years, I brought it to completion in the greatest haste within some four to five months, giving the closest attention to the content, but with little thought of the exposition or of rendering it easy of comprehension by the reader--a decision which I have never regretted, since otherwise, had I any longer delayed, and sought to give it a more popular form, the work would probably never have been completed at all. This defect can, however, be gradually removed, now that the work exists in a rough form.”

These statements must be allowed the greater weight as Kant, in another letter (to Garve, August 7, 1783), has given them in almost the same words:

“I freely admit that I have not expected that my book should meet with an immediate favourable reception. The exposition of the materials which for more than twelve successive years I had been carefully maturing, was not composed in a sufficiently suitable manner for general comprehension. For the perfecting of its exposition several years would have been required, whereas I brought it to completion in some four to five months, in the fear that, on longer delay, so prolonged a labour might finally become burdensome, and that my increasing years (I am already in my sixtieth year) would perhaps incapacitate me, while I am still the sole possessor of my complete system.”

The twelve years here referred to are 1769-1780; the phrase “at least twelve years” indicates Kant’s appreciation of the continuity of his mental development. Hume’s first influence upon Kant is probably to be dated prior to 1760. The choice, however, of the year 1769 is not arbitrary; it is the year of Kant’s adoption of the semi-Critical position recorded in the Inaugural Dissertation (1770). The “four to five months” may be dated in the latter half of 1780. The printing of the Critique was probably commenced in December or January 1780-1781.

But the Critique is not merely defective in clearness or popularity of exposition. That is a common failing of metaphysical treatises, especially when they are in the German language, and might pass without special remark. What is much more serious, is that Kant flatly contradicts himself in almost every chapter; and that there is hardly a technical term which is not employed by him in a variety of different and conflicting senses. As a writer, he is the least exact of all the great thinkers.

So obvious are these inconsistencies that every commentator has felt constrained to offer some explanation of their occurrence. Thus Caird has asserted that Kant opens his exposition from the non-Critical standpoint of ordinary consciousness, and that he discloses the final position, towards which he has all along been working, only through repeated modifications of his preliminary statements. Such a view, however, cannot account either for the specific manner of occurrence or for the actual character of the contradictions of which the Critique affords so many examples. These are by no means limited to the opening sections of its main divisions; and careful examination of the text shows that they have no such merely expository origin. The publication of Kant’s Reflexionen and Lose Blätter, and the devoted labours of Benno Erdmann, Vaihinger, Adickes, Reicke and others, have, indeed, placed the issue upon an entirely new plane. It can now be proved that the Critique is not a unitary work, and that in the five months in which, as Kant tells us, it was “brought to completion” (zu Stande gebracht), it was not actually written, but was pieced together by the combining of manuscripts written at various dates throughout the period 1772-1780.

Kant’s correspondence in these years contains the repeated assertion that he expected to be able to complete the work within some three or six months. This implies that it was already, at least as early as 1777, in great part committed to writing. In 1780 Kant must therefore have had a large body of manuscript at his disposal. The recently published Lose Blätter are, indeed, part of it. And as we shall have constant occasion to observe, the Critique affords ample evidence of having been more or less mechanically constructed through the piecing together of older manuscript, supplemented, no doubt, by the insertion of connecting links, and modified by occasional alterations to suit the new context. Kant, it would almost seem, objected to nothing so much as the sacrifice of an argument once consecrated by committal to paper. If it could be inserted, no matter at what cost of repetition, or even confusion, he insisted upon its insertion. Thus the Subjective and Objective Deductions of the first edition can, as we shall find, be broken up into at least four distinct layers, which, like geological strata, remain to the bewilderment of the reader who naturally expects a unified system, but to the enlightenment of the student, once the clues that serve to identify and to date them have been detected. To cite another example: in the Second Analogy, as given in the first edition, the main thesis is demonstrated in no less than five distinct proofs, some of which are repetitions; and when Kant restated the argument in the second edition, he allowed the five proofs to remain, but superimposed still another upon them. Kant does, indeed, in the second edition omit some few passages from various parts of the Critique; but this is in the main owing to his desire to protect himself against serious misunderstanding to which, as he found, he had very unguardedly laid himself open. The alterations of the second edition are chiefly of the nature of additions.

Adickes’ theory that Kant in the “four to five months” composed a brief outline of his entire argument, and that it was upon the framework of this outline that the Critique was elaborated out of the older manuscript, may possibly be correct. It has certainly enabled Adickes to cast much light upon many textual problems. But his own supplementary hypothesis in regard to the section on the Antinomies, namely, that it formed an older and separate treatise, may very profitably be further extended. Surely it is unlikely that with the expectation, continued over many years, of completion within a few months, Kant did not possess, at least for the Aesthetic, Dialectic, and Methodology, a general outline, that dated further back than 1780. And doubtless this outline was itself altered, patched, and recast, in proportion as insight into the problems of the Analytic, the problems, that is to say, which caused publication to be so long deferred, deepened and took final form.

The composite character of the Critique is largely concealed by the highly elaborate, and extremely artificial, arrangement of its parts. To the general plan, based upon professedly logical principles, Kant has himself given the title, architectonic; and he carries it out with a thoroughness to which all other considerations, and even at times those of sound reasoning, are made to give way. Indeed, he clings to it with the unreasoning affection which not infrequently attaches to a favourite hobby. He lovingly elaborates even its minor detail, and is rewarded by a framework so extremely complicated that the most heterogeneous contents can be tidily arranged, side by side, in its many compartments. By its uniformity and rigour it gives the appearance of systematic order even when such order is wholly absent.

But we have still to consider the chief reason for the contradictory character of the contents of the Critique. It is inseparably bound up with what may perhaps be regarded as Kant’s supreme merit as a philosophical thinker, especially as shown in the first Critique,--namely, his open-minded recognition of the complexity of his problems, and of the many difficulties which lie in the way of any solution which he is himself able to propound. Kant’s method of working seems to have consisted in alternating between the various possible solutions, developing each in turn, in the hope that some midway position, which would share in the merits of all, might finally disclose itself. When, as frequently happened, such a midway solution could not be found, he developed his thought along the parallel lines of the alternative views.

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