CHAPTER III

ON THE GROUND OF THE DISTINCTION OF ALL OBJECTS WHATEVER INTO PHENOMENA AND NOUMENA

This chapter, as Kant himself states, can yield no new results. It will serve merely to summarise those already established in the Analytic, showing how they one and all converge upon a conclusion of supreme importance for understanding the nature and scope of human experience--the conclusion, that though the objective employment of the categories can be justified only within the realm of sense-experiences, they have a wider significance whereby they define a distinction between appearances and things in themselves. This is the conclusion which Kant now sets himself to illustrate and enforce in somewhat greater detail. It may be observed that the title of the chapter makes mention only of grounds for distinguishing between phenomena and noumena. That things in themselves really exist, Kant, as we shall find, never seriously thought of questioning.

Kant begins by recalling a main point in the preceding argument. The categories apart from the manifold of sensibility are merely logical functions without content. Though a priori, they require to be supplemented through empirical intuition.

“Apart from this relation to possible experience they have no objective validity of any sort, but are a mere play of the imagination or the understanding with their respective representations.”

As evidence of the truth of this conclusion Kant now adds a further argument, namely, the impossibility of defining the categories except in terms that involve reference to the conditions of sensibility. When these conditions are omitted, the categories are without relation to any object and consequently without meaning. They are no longer concepts of possible empirical employment, but only of “things in general.” When, for instance, the permanence of existence in time, which is the condition of the empirical application of the concept of substance, is omitted, the category reduces merely to the notion of something that is always a subject and never a predicate.

“But not only am I ignorant of all conditions under which this logical pre-eminence may belong to anything, I can neither put such a concept to any use nor draw the least inference from it. For under these conditions no object is determined for its employment, and consequently we do not at all know whether it signifies anything whatsoever.”

In abstraction from sense-data, the categories still remain as concepts or thoughts, logically possible; but that is not to be taken as signifying that they still continue to possess meaning, i.e. reference to an object. And in the absence of ascertainable meaning they cannot, of course, be defined.

In A 244 Kant states his position in somewhat different fashion. In abstraction from sense the categories have meaning, but not determinate meaning; they relate not to any specific object, but only to things in general. In this latter reference, however, they possess no objective validity, since in the absence of intuition there is no means of deciding whether or not any real existence actually corresponds to them.

But whichever mode of statement be adopted, the same conclusion follows.

“Accordingly, the transcendental Analytic has this important result, that the most the understanding can achieve a priori is to anticipate the form of a possible experience in general. And since that which is not appearance cannot be an object of experience, the understanding can never transcend those limits of sensibility within which alone objects are given to us. Its principles are merely rules for the exposition of appearances; and the proud title of an Ontology, which presumptuously claims to supply, in systematic doctrinal form, synthetic a priori knowledge of things in general (e.g. the principle of causality), must therefore give place to the modest claims of a mere Analytic of pure understanding.”

A 248-9 opens a new line of argument which starts from the results obtained in the Aesthetic. The proof that space and time are subjective forms establishes the merely phenomenal character of everything which can be apprehended in and through them, and is meaningless except on the assumption that things in themselves exist. This assumption, Kant argues, is already involved in the very word ‘appearance,’ and unless it be granted, our thinking will revolve in a perpetual circle. But, he proceeds, this conclusion may easily be misinterpreted. It might be taken as proving the objective reality of noumena, and as justifying us in maintaining a distinction between the sensible and the intelligible worlds, and therefore in asserting that whereas the former is the object of intuition, the latter is apprehended by the understanding in pure thought. We should then be arguing that though in experience things are known only as they appear, through pure understanding a nobler world than that of sense, “eine Welt im Geiste gedacht,” is opened to our view.

But any such interpretation, Kant insists, runs directly counter to the teaching of the Analytic, and is ruled out by the conclusions to which it has led. Categories yield only “rules for the exposition of appearances,” and cannot be extended beyond the field of possible experience. It is true that all our sense-representations are related by the understanding to an object that is “transcendental.” But that object, in its transcendental aspect, signifies only a something = x. It cannot be thought apart from the sense-data which are referred to it. When we attempt to isolate it, and so to conceive it in its independent nature, nothing remains through which it can be thought.

“It is not in itself an object of knowledge, but only the representation of appearances under the concept of an object in general, viewed as determinable through the manifold of those appearances.”

Kant is here again expounding his early doctrine of the transcendental object. Evidently, at the time at which this passage was written, he had not yet come to realise that such teaching is not in harmony with his Critical principles. It is, as we have seen above, a combination of subjectivism and of dogmatic rationalism. The very point which he here chiefly stresses was bound, however, when consistently followed out, to reveal the untenableness of the doctrine of the transcendental object; and in the second edition Kant so recast this chapter on phenomena and noumena as to eliminate all passages in which the transcendental object is referred to.

But to return to Kant’s own argument: the reason why the mind is “not satisfied with this substrate of sensibility,” and therefore proceeds to duplicate the phenomenal world by a second world of noumena, lies in the character of the agency whereby sensibility is limited. Sensibility is limited by the understanding; and the understanding, overestimating its powers and prerogatives, proceeds to transform the notion of the transcendental object = x into the concept of a noumenon, viewed in a manner conformable to its etymological significance, as something apprehended by reason or pure intuition, i.e. as intuited in some non-sensuous fashion. For only by postulating the possibility of a non-sensuous species of intuition, can the notion of a noumenon, thus positively conceived, be saved from self-contradiction. Otherwise we should be asserting the apprehension of an object independently of appearances, and yet at the same time denying the only means through which such apprehension is possible. Statement of the postulate suffices, however, to reveal its unsupported character. We have no such power of non-sensuous, intuitive apprehension; nor can we in any way prove that such a power is possible even in a Divine Being. Though, therefore, the concept of noumena is not self-contradictory, it involves more than we have the right to assert; the process whereby the empty notion of a transcendental object = x is transformed into the positive concept of a noumenon is easily comprehensible, but it is none the less illegitimate. We must, Kant insists, keep strict hold of the central doctrine of Critical teaching, namely, that the categories are applicable only to the data of sense. We can still employ them as pure logical functions, yielding the notion of objects in general (of the transcendental object = x). But this does not widen the sphere of known existences. It only enables us to comprehend the limited and merely phenomenal character of the world experienced.

At this point Kant’s argument takes a strange and misleading turn. The concept of object in general (the transcendental object = x) has been proved to be involved in the apprehension of appearances as appearances, and in this capacity to be a limiting concept (Grenzbegriff), which, though negative in function, is indispensably involved in the constitution of human experience. Now, however, Kant proceeds to ascribe this function to the concept of the noumenon. That concept is, he repeats, purely problematic. Even the mere possibility of its object, presupposing as it does the possibility of an understanding capable through non-sensuous intuition of apprehending it, we have no right to assert. That the concept is not self-contradictory is the most that we can say of it. None the less, it is to this concept that Kant here ascribes the indispensable limiting function.

“The concept of a noumenon is a merely limiting concept, the function of which is to curb the pretensions of sensibility; and it is therefore only of negative employment. At the same time it is no arbitrary invention, and it is bound up with the limitation of sensibility, though it cannot affirm anything positive beyond the field of sensibility.”

This confusion, between the concept of a noumenon and the less definite concept of object in general, which is probably due to the combining of manuscripts of different dates, is corrected in the second edition by means of a new distinction which Kant introduces, evidently for this very purpose. The term noumenon may, he there says, be used either positively or negatively. Taken positively, it signifies “an object of a non-sensuous intuition”; regarded negatively, it means only “a thing so far as it is not an object of our sensuous intuition.” Only in its negative employment, he states, is it required as a limiting concept; and it is then, as he recognises, indistinguishable from the notion of the unknown thing in itself.

But despite this variation in mode of expression, in the main Kant holds consistently to his fundamental teaching.

“...understanding is not limited through sensibility; on the contrary, it itself limits sensibility by applying the term noumena to things in themselves (things not regarded as appearances). But in so doing it at the same time sets limits to itself, recognising that it cannot know these noumena through any of the categories, and that it must therefore think them only under the title of an unknown something.”

Or as Kant adds in the concluding sentence of this chapter:

“...the problematic thought which leaves open a place for [intelligible objects], serves only, like an empty space, for the limitation of empirical principles, without itself containing or revealing any other object of knowledge beyond their sphere.”

A sentence in A 258 = B 314 deserves special notice.

“...we can never know whether such a transcendental or exceptional knowledge is possible under any conditions, least of all if it is to be regarded as of the sort that stands under our ordinary categories.”

This sentence clearly shows that Kant was willing to recognise that the categories may be inapplicable, not merely owing to lack of data for their specification, but because of their inherent character. They may be intrinsically inapplicable, expressing only the modi of our self-consciousness. They may be merely the instruments of our human thinking, not forms necessary to knowledge as such.

RELEVANT PASSAGES IN THE SECTION ON AMPHIBOLY

Before passing to consideration of the extensive alterations made in this chapter in the second edition, it is advisable to take account of the two passages dealing with this problem in the first edition section on Amphiboly: namely, A 277-280 = B 333-6, and A 285-9 = B 342-6. The first of these passages is of great interest in other connections; its chief importance in reference to the present problem lies in its concluding paragraph. Kant there declares that the representation of an object “as thing in general” is not only, in the absence of specific data, insufficient for the determination of an object, but is self-contradictory. For we must either abstract from all reference to an object, and so be left with a merely logical representation; or, in assuming an object, we must postulate a special form of intuition which we do not ourselves possess, and which therefore we cannot employ in forming our concept of the object. Here again Kant is substituting the concept of a noumenon for the less definite concept of the thing in itself. This is still more explicitly done in the second passage. The pure categories are, Kant there declares, incapable of yielding the concept of an object. Apart from the data of sense they have no relation to any object. As purely logical functions, they are altogether lacking in content or meaning. By objects as things in themselves we must therefore mean objects of a non-sensuous intuition. Kant still, indeed, continues to maintain that to them the categories do not apply, and that we cannot, therefore, have any knowledge of them, either intuitional or conceptual.

“Even if we assume a non-sensuous form of intuition, our functions of thought would still have no meaning in reference to it.”

But Kant now insists that the notion of noumena, viewed in the above manner, differs from the notion of “objects in general” (transcendental = x) in being a legitimate non-contradictory conception; and he also insists that though more positive in content, it is for that very reason less open to misunderstanding. Its function is not to extend our knowledge, but merely to limit it.

“For it merely says that our species of intuition does not extend to all things, but only to objects of our senses; that its objective validity is consequently limited; and that a place therefore remains open for some other species of intuition, and so for things as its objects.”

The concept of a noumenon, as thus employed to signify the objects of a non-sensuous intuition, is, Kant proceeds, merely problematic. As we have neither intuition nor (it may be) categories fitted for its apprehension, it represents something upon the possibility or impossibility of which we are quite unable to pronounce.

“...as the problematic concept of an object for a quite different intuition and a quite different understanding than ours, it is itself a problem.”

We may not therefore assert the existence of noumena, but we must none the less form to ourselves the concept of them. This concept is indispensably involved in the constitution of our empirical knowledge, and is demanded for its proper interpretation. Only when viewed as a self-sufficient representation of an absolute existence does it become dogmatic and therefore illegitimate. In its Critical aspects it stands for a problem which human reason is constrained by its very nature to propound.

“The concept of the noumenon is, therefore, not the concept of an object, but is a problem unavoidably bound up with the limitation of our sensibility--the problem, namely, as to whether there may not be objects entirely disengaged from our sensuous species of intuition. This is a question which can only be answered in an indeterminate manner, by saying that, as sense intuition does not extend to all things without distinction, a place remains open for other different objects; and consequently that these latter must not be absolutely denied, though--since we are without a determinate concept of them (inasmuch as no category can serve that purpose)--neither can they be asserted as objects for our understanding.”

The fact that these fundamental concepts have not yet been quite definitely and precisely formulated in Kant’s own mind, appears very clearly from the immediately following paragraph. For he there again introduces the concept of the transcendental object, and adds that if “we are pleased to name it noumenon for the reason that its representation is not sensuous, we are free so to do.” The characterisation given in this paragraph of the transcendental object deserves special notice, for in it Kant goes further in the sceptical expression of his position, though not indeed in the modification of it, than in any other passage.

”[The understanding in limiting sensibility] thinks for itself an object in itself, but only as transcendental object which is the cause of appearance and therefore not itself appearance, and which can be thought neither as quantity nor as reality nor as substance, etc.... We are completely ignorant whether it is to be met with in us or outside us, whether it would be at once removed with the cessation of sensibility, or whether in the absence of sensibility it would still remain.”

This sentence reveals Kant as at once holding unquestioningly to the existence of things in themselves, and yet at the same time as teaching that they must not be conceived in terms of the categories, not even of the categories of reality and existence.

ALTERATIONS IN SECOND EDITION

In the second edition certain paragraphs of the chapter on Phenomena and Noumena are omitted, and new paragraphs are inserted to take their place. Though these alterations do not give adequate expression to the Critical teaching in its maturest form, there are three important respects in which they indicate departures from the teaching of the first edition. In the first place, those paragraphs in which the doctrine of the transcendental object finds expression are entirely eliminated, and the phrase ‘transcendental object’ is no longer employed. This, as we have already noted, is in harmony with the changes similarly made in the second edition Transcendental Deduction and Paralogisms.

Secondly, Kant is even more emphatic than in the first edition, that the categories must not be employed save in reference to sense intuitions. In the first edition he still allows that their application to things in themselves is logically possible, though without objective validity. In the second edition he goes much further. Save in their empirical employment the categories “mean nothing whatsoever.”

”[In the absence of sensibility] their whole employment, and indeed all their meaning entirely ceases; for we have then no means of determining whether things in harmony with the categories are even possible....”

In the third place, Kant, as already noted, distinguishes between a negative and a positive meaning of the term noumenon. Noumenon in its negative sense is defined as being merely that which is not an object of sensuous intuition. By noumenon in the positive sense, on the other hand, is meant an object of non-sensuous intuition. Kant now claims that it is the concept of noumenon in the negative sense, as equivalent therefore simply to the thing in itself, that alone is involved, as a Grenzbegriff, in the “doctrine of sensibility.” For its determination the categories cannot be employed; that would demand a faculty of non-sensuous intuition, which we do not possess, and would amount to the illegitimate assertion of noumena in the positive sense. The limiting concept, indispensably presupposed in human experience, is therefore the bare notion of things in themselves. And accordingly, in modification of the conclusion arrived at in the first edition, viz. that “the division of objects into phenomena and noumena ... is not in any way admissible,” Kant now adds to the term noumena the qualifying phrase “in the positive sense.” In this way the assumption that things in themselves actually exist becomes quite explicit, despite Kant’s greater insistence upon the impossibility of applying any of the categories to them.

But beyond thus placing in still bolder contrast the two counter assertions, on the one hand that the categories must not be taken by us as other than merely subjective thought-functions, and on the other that a limiting concept is indispensably necessary, Kant makes no attempt in these new passages to meet the difficulties involved. With the assertion that the categories as such, and therefore by implication those of reality and existence, are inapplicable to things in themselves, he combines, without any apparent consciousness of conflict, the contention that things in themselves must none the less be postulated as actually existing.

* * * * *

The teaching of this chapter must be regarded as only semi-Critical. The fact that it is formulated in terms of the doctrine of the transcendental object, itself suffices to determine the date at which it must have been composed as comparatively early; and such changes as Kant could make in the second edition were necessarily of a minor character. More extensive alterations would have involved complete reconstruction of the entire chapter, and indeed anticipation of the central teaching of the Dialectic.

Kant is also hampered by the unfortunate location to which he has assigned this chapter. At this point in the development of his argument, namely, within the limits of the Analytic, Kant could really do no more than recapitulate the negative consequences which follow from the teaching of the transcendental deduction. For though these might justify him in asserting that it is understanding that limits sensibility, he was not in a position to explain that the term understanding, as thus employed, has a very wide meaning, and that within this faculty he is prepared to distinguish between understanding in the strict sense as the source of the categories, and a higher power to which he gives the title Reason, and which he regards as originating a unique concept, that of the unconditioned. Yet only when these distinctions, and the considerations in view of which they are drawn, have been duly reckoned with, can the problem before us be discussed in its full significance.

This placing of the chapter within the Analytic, and therefore prior to the discussions first broached in the Dialectic, has indeed the unfortunate consequence of concealing not only from the reader, but also, as it would seem, to some extent from Kant himself, the ultimate grounds upon which, from the genuinely Critical standpoint, the distinction between phenomena and noumena must be based. For neither in this chapter, nor in any other passage in the Critique, has Kant sought to indicate, in any quite explicit manner, the bearing which the important conclusions arrived at in the Dialectic may have in regard to it. Like so many of the most important and fruitful of his tenets, these consequences are suggested merely by implication; or rather remain to be discovered by the reader’s own independent efforts, in proportion as he thinks himself into the distinctions upon which, in other connections, Kant has himself insisted. They are never actually formulated in and by themselves.

In seeking, therefore, to decide upon what basis the distinction between appearance and reality ought to be regarded as resting, we are attempting to determine how the argument of this chapter would have proceeded had it been located at the close of the Dialectic. The task is by no means easy, but the difficulties are hardly as formidable as may at first sight appear. The general outlines of the argument are fairly definitely prescribed by Kant’s treatment of kindred questions, and may perhaps, with reasonable correctness, be hypothetically constructed in view of the following considerations.

Just as Kant started from the natural assumption that reference of representations to objects must be their reference to things in themselves, so he similarly adopted the current Cartesian view that it is by an inference, in terms of the category of causality, that we advance from a representation to its external ground. It was very gradually, in the process of developing his own Critical teaching, and especially his phenomenalist view of the empirical world in space, that he came to realise the very different position to which he stood committed. When the doctrine of the transcendental object is eliminated from his teaching, and when the categories, including that of causality, are pre-empted for the empirical object, and that object is regarded as directly apprehended, the function of mediating the reference of phenomenal nature to a noumenal basis falls to the Ideas of Reason. For the distinction is no longer between representations and their noumenal causes, but between the limited and relative character of the entire world in space and time, and the unconditioned reality which Reason demands for its own satisfaction. To regard the world in space as merely phenomenal, because failing to satisfy our standards of genuine reality, is to adopt an entirely different attitude from any to be found in Descartes or Locke. The position may be outlined in the following manner, in anticipation of its more adequate statement in connection with the problems of the Dialectic.

The concept, whereby Reason limits sensibility, is not properly describable as being that of the thing in itself; it is the unique concept of the unconditioned. Our awareness of the conditioned as being conditioned presupposes, over and above the categories, an antecedent awareness of Ideal standards; and to that latter more fundamental form of consciousness all our criteria of truth and reality are ultimately due. The criteria by means of which we empirically distinguish sense-appearance from sense-illusion, when rigorously applied, lead us to detect deficiencies in the empirical as such. We have then no alternative save to conceive absolute reality in terms of the rational Ideals, of which the empirical criteria are merely specialised forms.

There are thus two distinct, but none the less interdependent, elements involved in Kant’s more mature teaching, phenomenalism, and what may be called the Idealist, or absolutist, interpretation of the function of Reason. Each demands the other for its own establishment. There must be a genuinely objective world, by reflection upon which we may come to consciousness of the standards which are involved in our judgments upon it; and we must possess a faculty through which our consciousness of these standards may be accounted for. The standards of judgment cannot be acquired by means of judgments which do not already presuppose them; the processes by which they are brought to clear consciousness cannot be the processes in which they originate. They must be part of the a priori conditions of experience and combine with space, time and the categories to render experience of the kind which we possess--self-transcending and self-limiting--actually possible.

From this point of view the distinction between appearance and reality is not a contrast between experience and the non-experienced, but a distinguishing of factors, which are essential to all experience, and through which we come to consciousness of an irresolvable conflict between the Ideals which inspire us in the acquisition of experience, and the limiting conditions under which alone experience is attainable by us. In the higher field of Reason, as in the lower field of understanding, it is not through the given, but only through the given as interpreted by conditioning forms of an Ideal nature, that a meaningful reality can disclose itself to the mind. The ultimate meaning of experience lies in its significance when tested by the standards which are indispensably involved in its own possibility. That meaning is essentially metaphysical; more is implied in experience than the experienced can ever itself be found to be.

Such is the central thesis of the Critical philosophy, when the teaching of the Analytic is supplemented by that of the Dialectic. Though the Critique is, indeed, the record of the manifold ways in which Kant diverged from this position, not a systematic exposition of its implications and consequences, the above thesis represents the goal upon which his various lines of thought tend to converge. It is the guiding motive of his devious and complex argument in the three main divisions of the Dialectic. On no other interpretation can the detail of his exposition be satisfactorily explained.

There are two chief reasons why Kant failed to draw the above conclusions in any quite explicit manner. One reason has already been sufficiently emphasised, namely, that the thesis, which I have just formulated, rests upon a phenomenalist view of the natural world, whereas the Dialectic is inspired by the earlier, subjectivist doctrine of the transcendental object. Upon the other main reason I shall have frequent occasion to insist. As we shall find, Kant was unable to arrive at any quite definitive decision as to the nature of the Ideals of Reason. He alternates between the sceptical and the absolutist view of their origin and function, and in the process of seeking a comprehensive mid-way position which would do justice to all that is valid in the opposing arguments, the further question as to the bearing of his conclusions upon the problem of the distinction between appearance and reality was driven into the background. But we are anticipating matters the discussion of which must meantime be deferred.

APPENDIX

THE AMPHIBOLY OF THE CONCEPTS OF REFLECTION

In this appendix Kant gives a criticism of the Leibnizian rationalism--a criticism already partially stated in the section on the Postulates--and he does this in a manner which very clearly reveals the influence which that rationalism continued to exercise upon his own thinking. Thus Kant speaks of the “mere concept,” and in doing so evidently means to imply that it exists in its own right, with a nature determined solely by intrinsic factors of a strictly a priori character, in complete independence of the specific material of sense-experience. He denies, it is true, the objective validity of such concepts, and maintains that in their empirical employment they are completely transformed through the addition of new factors. None the less he allows to the concepts an intrinsic nature, and practically maintains that from the point of view of the pure concept, and therefore from the point of view of a logic based upon it, the Leibnizian rationalism is the one true system of metaphysics. For pure thought, Leibniz’s system is the ultimate and only possible philosophy; and were thought capable of determining the nature of things in themselves, we should be constrained to adopt it as metaphysically valid. This is the standpoint which underlies much of Kant’s argument in the Dialectic. It leads him to maintain that the self must necessarily, in virtue of an unavoidable transcendental illusion, believe in its own independent substantial reality, that the mind is constrained to conceive reality as an unconditioned unity, and that the notions of God, freedom, and immortality are Ideas necessarily involved in the very constitution of human thought.

But we must not regard Kant’s doctrine of the pure concept merely as a survival from a standpoint which the Critical teaching is destined to displace and supersede. For Kant is not led through inconsistency, or through any mere lack of thoroughness in the development of his Critical principles, to retain this rationalistic doctrine. To understand the really operative grounds of Kant’s argumentation, and so to place the contents of this section in proper focus, we must recall the fundamental antithesis, developed in my introduction, between the alternative positions, which are represented for Kant by the philosophies of Hume and Leibniz. Kant, as already observed, is profoundly convinced of the essential truth of the Leibnizian position. He holds to the Leibnizian view of reason. Human reason is essentially metaphysical; its ultimate function is to emancipate us from the limiting conditions of animal existence; it reveals its nature in those Ideas of the unconditioned, the discussion of which Kant reserves for the Dialectic.

The chief defect in Kant’s criticism of Leibniz, as developed in this section, is that the deeper issues, which determine the extent of his agreement with Leibniz, are not raised or even indicated. Consequently, his references to pure thought, and his assertion that from the point of view of pure thought Leibniz is entirely justified in his teaching, bewilder the reader, who has been made to adopt a Critical standpoint, and therefore to believe that thought can function only in connection with the data of sense-experience. Kant would seem, indeed, to have lapsed into the dogmatic standpoint of the Dissertation, distinguishing between a sensible and an intelligible world, and maintaining that pure thought is capable of determining the nature of the latter. The only difference between his teaching here and in the Dissertation consists in the admission that all knowledge is limited to sense-experience, and that we are therefore unable to determine whether this intelligible world which we must think, and think in the precise manner defined by Leibniz, does or does not exist.

This section is, indeed, like the chapter on Phenomena and Noumena, wrongly located. Giving, as it does, Kant’s criticism of the Leibnizian ontology, it discusses problems of metaphysics; and ought therefore to have found its place in the Dialectic, in natural connection with the corresponding examination of the metaphysical sciences of rational psychology, cosmology, and theology. Architectonic, that ever-present source of so many of Kant’s idiosyncrasies, has again interposed its despotic mandate. As there are only three forms of syllogism, only three main divisions can be recognised in the Dialectic; and the criticism of ontology, to its great detriment, must therefore be located, where it does not in the least belong, in the concluding section of the Analytic.

But we must follow Kant’s argument as here given. Leibniz views thought as capable of prescribing, antecedently to all experience, the fundamental conditions to which reality must conform. The possible is prior to, and independent of, the actual; and can be adequately determined by pure reason from its own inherent resources. Kant does not here question this assertion of the independence and priority of pure thought. He is content to maintain that what is valid for thought need not hold of those appearances which are the only possible objects of human knowledge, since in sense-experience conditions, unforeseen by pure thought, partly limitative and partly extensive of its concepts, intervene to modify the conclusions which from its own point of view are logically valid. Leibniz, through failure to realise the dual character of thought and sense, overlooked this all-important fact; and, in asserting that what is true for pure thought is valid of the sensuously real, fell victim to the fallacy which Kant entitles transcendental amphiboly.

Kant’s clearest statement of the fallacy is in A 280 = B 336. It reduces, formally stated, to the fallacy of denying the antecedent. In accordance with the dictum de omni et nullo, we can validly assert that what belongs to or contradicts a universal concept, belongs to or contradicts the particulars which fall under that concept. Leibniz employs the principle in a negative and invalid form. He argues that what is not contained in a universal concept is also not contained in the particulars to which it applies. “The entire intellectualist system of Leibniz is reared upon this latter principle.” And as Kant points out, the reason why so acute and powerful a thinker succumbed to this obvious fallacy is to be found in his view of sense as merely confused thought; or, to state the same point in another way, in his interpretation of appearances as being the confused representations of things in themselves. All differences between appearance and reality are, on this view, due merely to lack of clearness in our apprehension of the given. Sense, when completely clarified, reduces without remainder to pure thought; and in the concepts, which thought develops from within itself, lie the whole content alike of knowledge and of real existence. Owing to a metaphysical theory of the nature of the real, itself due to a false interpretation of the nature and function of pure thought, and ultimately traceable to an excessive preoccupation with knowledge of the strictly mathematical type, Leibniz failed to do justice to the fundamental characteristics of our human experience, and in especial to the actual given nature of space, time, and dynamical causality. His rationalistic metaphysics has its roots in the Cartesian philosophy, and is, in Kant’s view, the perfected product of philosophical thinking, when developed on dogmatic, i.e. non-Critical, lines. It is the opposite counterpart of the empirical or sceptical type of philosophy which in modern times found its first great supporter in Locke, and which, as Kant held, obtained its perfected expression in the philosophy of Hume. While Descartes and Leibniz intellectualise appearances, Locke and Hume regard the a priori concepts of understanding as merely empirical products of discursive reflection. Both commit the same fundamental error of failing to recognise that understanding and sensibility are two distinct sources of representations. Both consequently strive, in equally one-sided fashion, to reduce the complexity of experience to one alone of its constituent elements. This section of the Critique ought to have developed the Critical teaching in its opposition to both these alternative attitudes; Kant arbitrarily limits it to criticism of the Leibnizian rationalism.

Kant’s method of introducing and arranging his criticism is artificial, and need be no more than mentioned. Critical reflection upon the sources of our knowledge, which Kant, in order to distinguish it from reflection of the ordinary type, entitles transcendental reflection, is, he states, a duty imposed upon all who would profess to pass a priori judgments upon the real. It will trace the concepts employed to their corresponding faculties, intellectual and sensuous, and will reveal the independence and disparity of sensibility and understanding, and so will effectually prevent that false locating of concepts to which transcendental amphiboly is due. Such reflection, he further argues, consists in a comparison of the representations with the faculty to which they are due, and like ordinary comparison will determine the relations of (1) identity and difference, (2) agreement and opposition, (3) inner and outer, (4) determinable and determining (matter and form). In this arbitrary but ingenious fashion Kant contrives to obtain the four main headings required for his criticism of the Leibnizian ontology.

(1) Under the first heading he deals with the principle of the identity of indiscernibles. It is, Kant maintains, a typical example of the fallacy of transcendental amphiboly. Leibniz argues that if no difference is discoverable in the concept of things, there can be none in the things themselves; things which are identical in conception must be identical in all respects. But this, Kant replies, is true only so long as the concepts abstract from the sensuous conditions of existence. Thus no two cubic feet of space are alike. They are distinguishable from one another by their spatial location; and that is a difference which concerns the conditions of intuition; it is not to be discovered in the pure concept. Spaces, alike for thought, are distinguishable for sense. To take another of Kant’s illustrations: two drops of water, if indistinguishable in all their internal properties of quality or quantity, are conceptually identical. Through differences of location in space, irrelevant to their conception, they can none the less be intuited as numerically different. The principle of indiscernibles is not a law of nature, but only an analytic rule for the comparison of things through mere concepts.

(2) A second principle of the Leibnizian metaphysics is that realities can never conflict with one another. This is supposed to follow from the fact that in pure thought the only form of opposition is logical negation. Realities, being pure affirmations, must necessarily harmonise with one another. This principle ignores the altogether different conditions of sense-existence. Space, time, and the resulting possibility of dynamical causality supply the conditions for real opposition. Two existences, though equally real and positive, may annul one another. Two forces acting upon a body may neutralise one another. From the above logical principle Leibniz’s successors profess to obtain the far-reaching metaphysical conclusions, that all realities agree with one another, that evil is merely negative, consisting exclusively in limitation of existence, and that God, without detriment to the unity of his being, can be constituted of all possible realities.

(3) Viewing space and time, which condition external relation, as merely confused forms of apprehension, Leibniz further concluded that the reality of substance is purely internal. And ruling out position, shape, contact and motion, all of which involve external relations, he felt justified in endowing the monads with the sole remaining form of known existence, namely consciousness. The assertion that the monads are incapable of external relation leads to the further conclusion that they are incapable of interaction, and stand in systematic relation to one another, solely in virtue of a pre-established harmony.

(4) From the point of view of pure thought matter must precede form. The universal must precede the particular which is a specification of it. Unlimited reality is taken as being the matter of all possibility, and its limitation or form as being due to negation. Substances must antecedently exist in order that external relations may have something upon which to ground themselves. Space and time must be interpreted as confused apprehensions of purely intellectual orders, space representing a certain order in the reciprocal (pre-established) correspondence of substances, and time the dynamical sequence of their states. On the other hand, from the standpoint of sense and its intuitional forms the reverse holds. The world of appearance is conditioned by the forms of space and time; the objectively possible coincides with the actual; and the substantia phaenomenon has no independent essence, but reduces without remainder to external relations. For pure thought this world of given appearance is an utterly paradoxical form of existence; it is the direct opposite of everything that genuine reality ought to be. In this strange conclusion the problems of the Dialectic, in one of their most suggestive forms, at once loom up before us. As stated above, this entire discussion is an anticipation of questions which cannot be adequately treated within the limits of the Analytic.

The text of this section is highly composite. The entire content of the Appendix is twice reintroduced and restated at full length in the accompanying Note. These successive expositions of one and the same argument were doubtless independently written, and then later pieced together in this external fashion. A 277-8 = B 333-4, on the nature of the substantia phaenomenon, would by its references to the transcendental object seem to be of early origin. It has already been commented upon. A 285-9 = B 342-6, on the other hand, which supplements the chapter on Phenomena and Noumena, would seem to be of late origin. It is so dated by Adickes, owing to the reference to schemata in its opening sentence.

=A 289-91 = B 346-9. Table of the division of the conception of nothing.=--This curious and ingenious classification of the various meanings of the term ‘nothing’ is chiefly of interest through its first division: “empty conception without object, ens rationis.” The ens rationis can best be defined in its distinction from the fourth division: “empty object without conception, nihil negativum.” The former is a Gedankending; the latter is an Unding. The former indeed, though not contradictory, is mere fiction (bloss Erdichtung), and consequently must not be taken as falling within the field of the possible. The latter is a concept which destroys itself, and which therefore stands in direct conflict with the possible. The ens rationis includes, Kant explicitly states, the conception of noumena, “which must not be reckoned among the possibilities, although they must not for that reason be declared to be also impossible.” Kant must here be taking noumena in the positive sense. As usual Kant’s attempt to obtain parallels for the four classes of category breaks down. The so-called nihil privativum and the ens imaginarium do not properly come within the denotation of the term ‘nothing.’ This is very evident in the examples which Kant cites. Cold is as real as the opposite with which it is contrasted, while pure space and pure time are not negative even in a conventional sense.

TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC

DIVISION II

THE TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC

INTRODUCTORY COMMENT UPON THE COMPOSITE ORIGIN AND CONFLICTING TENDENCIES OF THE DIALECTIC.

We have had constant occasion to observe the composite origin and conflicting tendencies of the Analytic. The Dialectic is hardly less composite in character, and is certainly not more uniform in its fundamental teaching.

The composite nature of the text, though bewildering to the unsophisticated reader, is not, however, without its compensations. The text, as it stands, preserves the record of the manifold influences which presided over its first inception, and of the devious paths by which Kant travelled to his later conclusions. It thus enables us to determine, with considerable accuracy, the successive stages through which it has passed in the process of settling into its present form. As we shall find, the sections on the antinomies contain the original argument, out of which by varied processes of supplementation and modification the other parts have arisen.

The conflict of doctrine has also its counter-advantages. The problems are impartially discussed from opposed standpoints; the difficulties peculiar to each of the competing possible solutions are frankly recognised, and indeed insisted upon; and the internal dialectic of Kant’s own personal thinking obtains dramatic expression. We are thus the better enabled to appreciate the open-minded pertinacity with which Kant set himself to do justice to every significant aspect of his many-sided problems, and are consequently in less danger of simplifying his argument in any arbitrary manner, or of ignoring the tentative character of the solutions at which he arrives.

I shall first define the main lines of conflict, and shall then attempt to trace those conflicts to the considerations in which they have their source. The two chief lines of thought traceable throughout the Dialectic are represented by its negative and by its positive tendencies respectively. From one point of view, Reason is merely the understanding in its self-limiting, self-regulative employment, and the main purpose of the Dialectic is to guard against the delusive power of fictitious principles. From the other point of view, Reason is a faculty distinct from understanding, and its problems run parallel with those of the Analytic, forming no less important a subject of philosophical reflection, and no less fruitful a source of positive teaching. The one line of argument connects with Kant’s more sceptical tendencies, the other with his deep-rooted belief in the ultimate validity of the absolute claims of pure thought.

When we approach the Dialectic from the standpoint of the Analytic, it is the negative aspect that is naturally most prominent. In the Analytic Kant has proved that all knowledge is limited to sense-experience, and that a metaphysical interpretation of reality is altogether impossible. But as the human mind would seem to be possessed by an inborn need of metaphysical construction, this conclusion cannot obtain its due influence until the sources of the metaphysical tendency have been detected and laid bare. The Dialectic must yield a psychology of metaphysics as well as a logic of illusion.

But when, on the other hand, the problems of the Dialectic are viewed in their distinction from those of the Analytic, and their independent character is recognised, they appear in a perspective which sets them in a very different light. Reason is a faculty co-ordinate with understanding, and yields a priori concepts distinct in function, no less than in nature, from the categories. To mark this distinction Kant entitles the concepts of Reason Ideas. They demand both a metaphysical and a transcendental deduction. These requirements are fulfilled through their derivation from the three forms of syllogism, and by the proof that they exercise an indispensable function, at once limiting and directing the understanding. As limiting concepts, they condition the consciousness of those Ideal standards through which the human mind is enabled to distinguish between appearance and things in themselves. As regulative, they prescribe the problems which the understanding in its search for knowledge is called upon to solve.

These two tendencies, sceptical and constructive, are never, indeed, in complete opposition. Common to both, rendering possible the psychological explanation of the metaphysical impulse, which even the negative standpoint demands, is the doctrine of the regulative function of Ideal principles. This doctrine, which already appears in the Dissertation of 1770, was later developed into the Critical theory of transcendental illusion; and by means of that theory Kant succeeded in bringing the two standpoints into a very real and vital connection with one another. At first sight it may seem to achieve their complete reconciliation, accounting for their distinction while rendering them mutually complementary; and Kant’s teaching may perhaps be so restated as to bear out that impression. But the harmony is never completely attained by Kant. Here, as in the Analytic, there is an equipoise of tendencies that persist in opposition.

Kant’s mediating doctrine of transcendental illusion may first be stated. It rests upon a distinction between appearance and illusion. Appearance (Erscheinung) is a transcript in phenomenal terms of some independent reality; and of such appearances we can acquire what from the human point of view is genuine knowledge. On the other hand, all professed insight into the nature of the transcendent or non-empirical is sheer illusion (Schein), and purely subjective. There are three species of illusion, logical, empirical and transcendental. Logical illusion stands apart by itself. It is due merely to inattention or ignorance; and vanishes immediately the attention is aroused. Empirical and transcendental illusion, on the other hand, have a twofold point of agreement, first, in being unavoidable, and secondly, in that they originate in our practical needs. We may know that the moon at its rising is no larger than in mid-heavens, that the ocean is no higher in the distance than at the shore; this makes not the least difference in the perceptions as they continue to present themselves. That the illusions are adapted to our practical needs, and are consequently beneficial, is less often observed. Changes in the colour, form, and size of objects as they recede from us, the seeing of the parallel sides of a street as converging, enable us to achieve what would not otherwise be possible. By their means we acquire the power of compressing a wide extent of landscape into a single visual field, of determining distance, and the like. Their practical usefulness is in almost exact proportion to the freedom with which they depart from the standards of the independently real. Kant argues that, in these respects, transcendental illusion is analogous to the empirical. Just as the illusory characteristics of our perceptions are to be understood only in terms of their practical function, so the Ideas of pure Reason have always a practical bearing, and can only be explained and justified in terms of the needs which they satisfy. As theoretical enquirers, we accept all that affords us orientation in the attainment of knowledge; as moral agents, we postulate the conditions which are necessary for the realisation of the moral imperative. And as the Ideals of natural science are found (such is Kant’s contention) to be in general form akin to those of the moral consciousness, they thus acquire a twofold footing in the mental life, maintaining their place there quite independently of theoretical proof. Though illusory, they are unavoidable; and though theoretically false, they are from a practical point of view both legitimate and indispensable.

Kant, in developing this thesis, might profitably have pointed to still another respect in which the analogy holds between sense-experience and transcendental beliefs. The illusions of sense-perception come in the ordinary processes of experience to be detected as such by the mind. From the theoretical standpoint of the outside observer who compares the situation of one percipient with that of another, and so is enabled to cancel the differences which variety of situation carries with it, the useful illusions of ordinary experience are reduced to the level of mere appearance. In contradicting one another they reveal their subjective character, and also at the same time afford data for determining the objective conditions to which their subjectively necessary existence is causally due. In similar fashion the transcendental illusions result in contradictions, which compel the mind to recognise that the Ideals to which it is committed by its practical needs are of a merely subjective character, and may never be legitimately interpreted as representing the actual nature of the independently real.

The chief transcendental illusion, and ultimately the cause of all the others, consists in the belief that the Ideals of explanation which satisfy Reason must in general outline represent the nature of ultimate reality. What the individual seeks to discover he naturally believes to exist prior to the discovery. As practical beings, we regard the objects of sense-experience as absolute realities--they are the realities of practical life, and we are practical rather than theoretical beings--and the existing empirical sciences, conceived as Ideally completed, are therefore viewed as yielding an adequate representation of ultimate reality. But such a belief involves us in contradictions. The world of phenomena in space and time is endlessly relative. It can have no outer bounds or first beginning, and no smallest parts; and in the series of causal antecedents there can be no member that is not effect as well as cause. Viewed as representing a pre-existent goal, the Ideas of Reason are imaginary completions of the intrinsically and merely relative, and are in their very notion self-contradictory. All that is definite in their content conflicts with their absoluteness; and yet, as it would seem, only in their empirical reference can they hope for objective verification.

Such are the problems of the Dialectic, so far as they can be formulated in terms common to the two opposed standpoints. Their deeper significance, and the grounds of Kant’s alternating treatment of them, only appear when he raises the further questions, what those Ideals of explanation which Reason prescribes really are, and how, if they conflict with the content of experience, it is possible that they should be conceived at all. To these questions Kant propounds both a sceptical and an Idealist answer. The former, in bare outline, may be stated as follows. The so-called Ideas are based upon experience and are derived from it. The understanding removes the limitations to which its pure concepts are subject in sense-experience, and proceeds to use them in their widest possible application, i.e. to things in general. As thus employed, they are without real significance, and are indeed self-contradictory. To form the Idea of the unconditioned, we have to omit all those conditions through which alone anything can be apprehended, even as possible. To construct the concept of absolute or unconditioned necessity, we have similarly to leave aside the conditions upon which necessity, as revealed in experience, in all cases depends; in eliminating conditions, we eliminate necessity in the only forms in which it is conceivable by us. Such Ideas are, indeed, simply schematic forms, whereby we body forth to ourselves, in more or less metaphorical terms, the concept of a maximum. They are imaginary extensions, in Ideal form, of the unity and system which understanding has discovered in actual experience, and which, under the inspiration of such Ideals, it seeks to realise in ever-increasing degree. If the understanding, as thus insisting upon Ideal satisfaction, be entitled Reason, the Ideas must be taken as expressing a subjective interest, and as exhausting their legitimate employment in the regulation of the understanding. Their transcendental deduction will consist in the proof that they are necessary to the understanding for the perfecting of its experience. They do not justify us in attempting to decide, in anticipation of actual experience, how far the contingent collocations and the inexhaustible complexities of brute experience are really reducible to a completely unified system; but they quite legitimately demand that through all discouragements we persist in the endeavour towards their realisation. In any case, it is by experience that the degree of their reality has to be decided. We judge of things by the standard of that for which they exist, and not vice versa. As the sole legitimate function of the Ideas is that of inspiring the understanding in its empirical employment, they must never be interpreted as having metaphysical significance. As the Ideas exist solely for the sake of experience, it is they that must be condemned, if the two really diverge. We do not say “that a man is too long for his coat, but that the coat is too short for the man.” It is experience, not Ideas, which forms the criterion alike of truth and of reality.

Kant’s teaching, when on Idealist lines, is of a very different character. Reason is distinct from understanding, and yet is no less indispensably involved in the conditioning of experience. All consciousness is consciousness of a whole which precedes and conditions its parts. Such consciousness cannot be accounted for by assuming that we are first conscious of the conditioned, and then proceed through omission of its limitations to form to ourselves, by means of the more positive factors involved in this antecedent consciousness, an Idea of an unconditioned whole. The Idea of the unconditioned is distinct in nature from all other concepts, and cannot be derived from them. It must be a pure a priori product of what may be named the faculty of Reason. Its uniqueness is what causes its apparent meaninglessness. As it is involved in all consciousness, it conditions all other concepts; and cannot, therefore, be defined in terms of them. Its significance must not be looked for save in that Ideal, to which no experience, and no concept other than itself, can ever be adequate. That in this Ideal form it has a very real and genuine meaning is proved by our capacity to distinguish between appearance and reality. For upon it this distinction, in ultimate analysis, is found to rest. Consciousness of limitation presupposes a consciousness of what is beyond the limit; consciousness of the unconditioned is prior to, and renders possible, our consciousness of the contingently given. The Idea of the unconditioned must therefore be counted as being, like the categories, though in a somewhat different manner, a condition of the possibility of experience. With it our standards both of truth and of reality are inextricably bound up. The Ideas in which it specifies itself, so far from depending upon empirical verification, are the touchstone by which we detect the unreality of the sensible world, and by which a truer reality, such as would be adequate to the Ideal demands of pure Reason, is prefigured to the mind.

These two standpoints are extremely divergent in their consequences. Each leads to a very different interpretation of the content of the Ideas, of their function in experience, and of their objective validity. On the one view, their content is merely empirical, and sense-experience is our sole criterion of truth and reality; on the other, they have to be recognised as containing a pure a priori concept, and are themselves the standards by which even empirical truth can alone be determined. In the one case, they are Ideals projected by experience for its own empirical guidance; they are built upon contingent experience, and depend upon it alike for the content which makes them conceivable and for their validity. In the other, they are presuppositions of experience, at once conditioning its possibility and revealing its merely phenomenal character. According to the sceptical view, Reason is concerned only with itself and its own subjective demands; on the Idealist view, it is a metaphysical faculty, and outlines possibilities that may perhaps be established by practical Reason.

Such, in broad outline, are the central doctrines of the Dialectic. They constitute an extraordinarily stimulating and suggestive body of Critical teaching. In no other division of the Critique do the power and originality of Kant’s thinking gain such abundant, forceful and illuminating expression. The accumulated results of the painstaking analyses of the earlier sections contribute a solidity and fulness of meaning, which render the argument extremely impressive, even to those who are out of sympathy with Kant’s ultimate purposes. Its persistent influence, on sceptical no less than on Idealist lines, and often conveyed by very devious channels, can frequently be detected even in thinkers--Herbert Spencer is an instance--who would indignantly repudiate the charge of being indebted to such a source.

THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF KANT’S VIEWS IN REGARD TO THE PROBLEMS OF THE DIALECTIC

We may now proceed to consider the evidence in support of the early origin of the central portions of the Dialectic--the sections on the antinomies. As Benno Erdmann has very conclusively shown, preoccupation with the problem of antinomy was the chief cause of the revolution which took place in Kant’s views in 1769, and which found expression in his Dissertation of 1770. It was the existence of antinomy which led Kant to recognise the subjectivity of space and time. That is to say, it led him to develop that doctrine of transcendental idealism which reappears in the concluding sections of the Aesthetic, and which was recast and developed in the Analytic. Already in the Dissertation it supplies the key for the solution of the problems concerning infinity. The impossibility of completing the space, time, and causal series, and the consequent impossibility of satisfying the demands of the mind for totality, simplicity and unconditionedness, do not, it is there maintained, discredit reason, but only serve to establish the subjectivity of the sensuous forms to which the element of infinitude is in all cases due.

Kant’s thinking was, of course, diverted into an entirely new channel (as his letter to Herz of February 21, 1772, shows), when he came to realise that the metaphysical validity or invalidity of thought must be decided prior to any attempt to discover a positive solution of such problems as are presented by the antinomies. And when, owing to the renewed influence of Hume, at some time subsequent to the date of the letter to Herz, this new problem was recognised as being the problem of a priori synthesis, all questions regarding the nature of the absolutely real were made to take secondary rank, yielding precedence to those of logical theory. When the antinomy problems re-emerge, their discussion assumes Critical form.

In three fundamental respects Kant’s treatment of the antinomies in the Dissertation differs from that of the Critique. In the first place, the demand for totality or absoluteness is not in the Dissertation ascribed to a separate faculty. Indeed Kant’s words would seem to show that at times he had inclined to ascribe it merely to the free-ranging fancy or imagination. Secondly, as the various antinomies were traced exclusively to the influence of space and time upon pure thought, they were treated together, and no classification of them was attempted. And lastly, though Kant’s utterances are somewhat ambiguous, the illusory character of the antinomies was in the main viewed as being of a more or less logical nature. That is to say, it was regarded as entirely preventable and as “vanishing like smoke” upon adoption of a true philosophical standpoint.

A number of the Reflexionen reveal the various tentative schemes, by trial of which Kant worked his way toward a more genuinely Critical treatment of the problems of infinity. The intellectual factors receive fuller recognition, and as a consequence a definite classification results. At some time prior to the discovery of the table of categories, Kant adopted a threefold division of what he names first principles or presuppositions--principles of substance-accident, of ground-consequence, and of whole-part. Reflexion ii. 578 is typical.

“Three principia: (1) in the field of the actual there is the relation of substance to accident (inhaerentia): (2) of ground to consequence (dependentia): (3) of parts and of composition (compositio). There are three presuppositions: of the subject, of the ground, and of the parts; of insition [Kant’s own term], of subordination, and of composition; therefore also three first principia: (1) subject, which is never a predicate; (2) ground, which is never a consequence; (3) unity, which is not itself composite.”

There are numerous other Reflexionen to the same effect. The resulting conceptions are defined both as limits and as absolute totalities, and in Reflexion ii. 1252 are enumerated as follows:

“The first subject; the first ground; the first part. The subject which holds everything in itself; the ground which takes everything under itself; the whole which comprehends everything. The totalitas absoluta of reality, of series, of co-ordination.”

The introduction of the terms ‘absolute’ and ‘totality’ indicate that Kant has also come to recognise the presence of a unique notion (equivalent to the “unconditioned” of the Critique), distinct in content from any of the three enumerated principia, but common to them all. From the very first Kant would seem to have appropriated for it the title Idea. Reflexionen ii. 1243, 1244, and 124 may be quoted:

“The Idea is single (individuum), self-sufficient, and eternal. The divinity of our soul is its capacity to form the Idea. The senses give only copies or rather apparentia.” “Idea is the representation of the whole in so far as it necessarily precedes the determination of the parts. It can never be empirically represented, for the reason that in experience we proceed from the parts through successive syntheses to the whole. It is the archetype (Urbild) of things, for certain objects are only possible through an Idea. Transcendental Ideas are those in which the absolute whole determines the parts in an aggregate or as series.” “Metaphysics proper is the application of transcendental philosophy to concepts supplied by Reason and necessary to it, to which, however, no corresponding objects can be given in experience. The concepts must therefore refer to the supersensible. That, however, can be nothing but the unconditioned, for that is the sole theoretical Idea of reason. [Not italicised in the original.] Metaphysics thus relates: (1) to that of which only the whole can be represented as absolutely unconditioned: (2) to things so far as they are in themselves sensuously unconditioned. The first part is cosmology, the second rational doctrine of the soul, pneumatology and theology.”

At this stage, therefore, Kant would seem to have held that there is but one Idea strictly so called, and that the above three principia are merely specifications of it in terms of the concepts of substance-accident, ground-consequence, and whole-part. The classification thus obtained is in certain respects more satisfactory than that which is adopted in the Critique. It locates the cosmological argument with the causal category, and so would enable the conceptions of freedom or causa sui, and of Divine Existence, to be dealt with in their natural connection with one another. It also supplies, in the category of whole and part, a more fitting heading for those antinomy problems which deal with the unlimited and the limited, the divisible and the indivisible, the complex and the simple. The classification would, however, in separating the problem of the simple from that of substance, remain open to the same criticism as that of the Critique.

This classification must, as we have stated, be of a date prior to Kant’s discovery of the table of categories. That is quite clear from its ignoring the category of reciprocity, and from its combination of the other two categories of relation with the merely quantitative category of whole and part. For though the last is also entitled composition and co-ordination, it is conceived in these particular Reflexionen in exclusively quantitative terms. When Kant formulated the “metaphysical” deduction of the categories he was, of course, compelled to recast the classification, and did so in the only possible manner, consistent with his architectonic, by substituting the category of reciprocity for that of whole and part, and by taking the new heading, obtained through combination of reciprocity with the Idea of the unconditioned, as equivalent to the Idea of Divine Existence. But this could not be done without dislocating the entire scheme. The category of ground and consequence is deprived of its chief application, that expressed in the cosmological argument; and in order to provide a new content for it, Kant is compelled to force upon it the problems previously classified under the displaced category of whole and part. Even so, the problem of the causa sui cannot be eliminated, and reappears, partly as the problem of freedom, and partly as the modal problem of necessary existence.

The identification of the theological Idea with the category of reciprocity has a further consequence. It carries the problem of Divine Existence outside the sphere of the problems of infinity, and necessitates a very different treatment from that which it would naturally have received at Kant’s hands, if developed in its connection with his own Critical teaching. He is driven to expound it in the extreme rationalistic form in which it had been formulated by Leibniz and Wolff, as a doctrine of the Ens realissimum.

Prior to the rearrangement, necessitated by recognition of the category of reciprocity, Kant would seem to have expected to bring the entire body of Wolffian metaphysics within the scope of a general doctrine of antinomy. The problems of the divisible and the indivisible, of the simple and the complex, leading as they do to discussion of the presuppositions underlying the Leibnizian monadology, concern spiritual as well as material substance. Similarly, the main problems of theology would have been treated in connection with the cosmological inference to a first cause, and with the discussion of the possibility of first beginnings in space and time.

The sections in the Critique devoted to the antinomies reveal, in many ways, Kant’s original design. It is especially noticeable in his discussion of the third and fourth antinomies. The problems of freedom and of necessary existence are by no means treated in merely cosmological fashion. Indeed Kant makes no pretence of concealing their psychological and theological implications. Even the first and second antinomies have obvious bearings of a similar character. But it is in the section entitled The Interest of Reason in this Self-conflict that the broader significance of the antinomies finds its fullest expression. In its suggestive contrast of the two possible types of philosophy, Epicurean and Platonic, the argument entirely transcends the bounds prescribed to it by its cosmological setting. As we follow the comprehensive sweep of its argument, we can hardly avoid regretting that Kant failed to keep to his original plan, as here unfolded, of expounding the self-conflict of Reason in the form of a broad judicial statement of the grounds and claims of the two opposing authorities which divide the allegiance of the human spirit, namely, the intellectual and the moral, science with its cognitive demands on the one hand, the consciousness of duty with its no less imperious prescriptions on the other. The materialist philosophies would then have been presented as inevitably arising when intellectual values are made supreme; and the Idealist philosophies as equally cogent when moral values are taken as primary and are allowed to determine speculative tenets. Against this background of conflicting dogmatisms the comprehensive and satisfying character of the Critical standpoint would have stood out the more clearly; and its historical affiliations, its debt to the sceptics and materialists, no less than to the Idealists, would have been depicted in more adequate terms. As it is, in the chapters on the Paralogisms and the Ideal of Pure Reason there is almost entire failure to recognise the possibility of a naturalistic solution of the problems with which they deal, and Kant so far succumbs to the outworn influences of his day and generation--the very influences from which the Critical philosophy, consistently developed, is a final breaking away--as to maintain, almost in the manner of the English Deists, of Voltaire and Rousseau, that God, Freedom, and Immortality are conceptions which the mind must necessarily form, and in the validity of which it must spontaneously believe. Kant is here, indeed, interpreting “natural reason” in the light of his own personal history. The Christian beliefs, in which he had been nurtured from childhood, and their rationalist counterparts in the Wolffian philosophy, had become, as it were, a second nature to him; and the resistance, which in his own person they had offered to the development of Critical teaching, he not unnaturally interpreted as evidence of their being imposed by the very structure of reason. He transforms the metaphysical sciences in their Wolffian form into inevitable illusions of the human mind.

There is evidence that the theological problems were the first to be withdrawn from the sphere of the “sceptical method,” peculiar to the antinomies. Thus Reflexion ii. 125 states that “metaphysics proper consists of cosmologia rationalis and theologia naturalis”--rational psychology being, as it would seem, still included within cosmology. What the considerations were which induced Kant to claim similarly independent treatment for rational psychology, we can only conjecture. For a time, while still holding to the bipartite division, he would seem to have made the further change of also separating psychology from cosmology, classing psychology and theology together as subdivisions of the rational science of soul.

”[Metaphysics has two parts]: the first is cosmology, the second rational doctrine of soul, pneumatology and theology.”

A main factor deciding Kant in favour of a dogmatic, non-sceptical treatment of rational psychology may have been the greater opportunity which it seemed to afford him of connecting its doctrines with the teaching of the Analytic, and especially with his central doctrine of apperception. But to whatever cause the decision was due, it resulted in the impoverishment of the second antinomy, through withdrawal of the more important half of its natural content. This antinomy could no longer be made to comprehend a discussion of the logical bases of monadology, and of its professed proofs of the simplicity and immortality of the soul. Nothing is left to it save the discussion of the monadistic theory of matter (somatologia pura). This change has also, as already noted, the unfortunate effect of precluding Kant from recognition of the physical application of the category of substance. By the simple he means the substantial, and yet he may not say so; his architectonic forbids.

I may hazard the further suggestion that Kant’s interpretation of rational psychology in terms of the Critical doctrine of apperception is of earlier date than his doctrine of transcendental illusion. For the chapter on the Paralogisms seems in its first form to have contained no reference to that latter doctrine. The few passages which take account of it, all bear evidence of being later intercalations. This is the more remarkable in that the Paralogisms can easily be shown to be typical examples of transcendental illusion. Indeed, neither the antinomies nor the theological Ideal conform to its definition in the same strict fashion.

The problem as to whether the doctrine of transcendental illusion and the deduction of the Ideas from the three species of syllogism originated early or late, is largely bound up with the question as to when Kant finally adopted the terms Analytic and Dialectic as titles for the two main divisions of his Transcendental Logic. That Kant was at first very uncertain as to what the main divisions of his system ought to be, appears very clearly from the Reflexionen. To his teaching as a whole he usually applies the title Transcendental Philosophy, and in Reflexion ii. 123 he enumerates the following subdivisions within it: Aesthetic, Logic, Critique, and Architectonic. By Critique Kant must here mean what in other Reflexionen he names Discipline, and which he finally named Dialectic. As thus identified with the Discipline, the Dialectic is at times viewed as a division of a Methodology or Organon, whose other divisions are entitled Canon and Architectonic. This earlier scheme may therefore be represented as follows:

{Aesthetic. {Doctrine of Elements {Logic. Transcendental { Philosophy { {Critique = Discipline [corresponding {Doctrine of Methods {to the Dialectic { (Methodology) {of the Critique]. {Canon. {Architectonic.

The terms Analytic and Dialectic do not occur in these Reflexionen, and their adoption may therefore be inferred to synchronise with Kant’s later decision to include the treatment of the metaphysical sciences within his Logic; and that decision was probably an immediate result of his having developed meantime a doctrine of transcendental illusion. The new scheme in its final form is therefore as follows:

{ {Aesthetic. {Doctrine of { { Elements { {Analytic {of Concepts. { {Logic { {of Judgement. Transcendental { {Dialectic--of Reason. Philosophy { or Critique of { Pure Reason { {Discipline (retained but given a new {Doctrine of {and more general content). {Methods {Canon. {(Methodology) {Architectonic. {History.

In thus transferring Dialectic from the Methodology to the Doctrine of Elements, Kant stands committed to the view that it contains positive teaching of a character analogous to that of the Analytic, with which it is now co-ordinated. As we have already noted, the fundamental opposition which runs through the entire Dialectic is due to the conflict between the older view of Reason as merely understanding in its transcendent employment, and this later view of it as a distinct faculty, yielding concepts with a positive and indispensable function, different from, and yet also analogous to, that exercised by the categories of the understanding.

Adickes, to whom students of Kant are indebted for a convincing demonstration of the constant influence of Kant’s logical architectonic upon the content of the Critical teaching, would seem at this point to rely too exclusively upon that method of explanation. He contends that Kant’s deduction of the Ideas of Reason from the three species of syllogism is entirely traceable to this source, and is without real philosophical significance. That is perhaps in the main true. But it need not prevent us from appreciating the importance of the doctrines which Kant contrives to expound under guise of this logical machinery. We have already observed that prior to the discovery of this deduction Kant had recognised the connection between the concept of the unconditioned and the three Ideas through which it finds expression. As the forms of syllogism are differentiated in terms of the three categories of relation, the deduction does not interfere with Kant’s retention of this classification of Ideas; while in connecting Reason as a faculty with reasoning as a logical process, an excellent opportunity is found for explaining the grounds and significance of the demand for unconditionedness, i.e. for completeness of explanation. This demand, as he has also come to recognise, lies open to question, and therefore calls for more precise definition.

The artificial character of the metaphysical deduction lies not so much in this derivation of the three Ideas of the unconditioned--unconditioned substance, unconditioned causality, unconditioned system--from the categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive forms of syllogism respectively, as in the further equating of them with the Ideas of the Self, the World, and God. The Idea of unconditioned substance has many possible applications besides the use to which it is put in rational psychology. The Idea of an unconditioned causality may be conceived in psychological and theological as well as in cosmological terms; and as a matter of fact Kant himself frequently identifies it with the concept of freedom, as in the third and fourth antinomies, or when he enumerates the Ideas as being those of God, Freedom, and Immortality. Similarly, the Idea of system is the inspiring principle of materialism, and also finds in such philosophies as that of Spinoza much more adequate expression than in the Ens realissimum of the Wolffian School. But further comment is not, at this stage, really profitable. These are questions which can best be discussed as they emerge in the course of the argument.

Kant carried his logical architectonic one stage further. Not satisfied with connecting the three Ideas of Reason with the categories that underlie the three species of syllogism, he also attempted to organise the various particular applications of each Idea in terms of the fourfold division of the table of categories. By the use of his usual high-handed methods he succeeded in doing so in the case of the psychological and cosmological Ideas. There are four paralogisms and four antinomies. But when the attempt failed in regard to the theological Idea, he very wisely abstained from either apology or explanation. That the failure was not due to lack of desire or perseverance appears from Reflexion ii. 1573, which would seem to be the record of an unavailing attempt to obtain a satisfactory articulation of the theological Ideal. Doubtless, had he been sufficiently bent upon it, he could have worked out some sort of fourfold division; but there were limits even to Kant’s devotion to the architectonic scheme. It is difficult to see how any such arrangement could have been followed without serious perversion of the argument.

Adickes has suggested that the distinction between the faculty of understanding and the faculty of judgment is subsequent to, and suggested by, Kant’s successful tracing of the Ideas to a separate faculty of Reason. Some such distinction was demanded in order that the parallelism of transcendental and formal logic might be complete. This conjecture of Adickes is probably correct. It would seem to be supported by the internal evidence of the Analytic of Principles. As we have had occasion to note, the doctrine of schematism, in terms of which the distinction between understanding and judgment is formulated, is late in date of origin. This distinction is of the same artificial character as that between understanding and Reason; and though, like the latter distinction, it supplies Kant with a convenient framework for the arrangement of genuine Critical material, it also tends to conceal the simpler and more inward bonds of true relationship.

TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC

INTRODUCTION

I. Transcendental Illusion

=Dialectic is a Logic of Illusion.=--The meaning which Kant attaches to the term dialectic has already been considered. The passage above quoted from his Logic shows the meaning which he supposed the term historically to possess, namely, as being a sophistical art of disputation, presenting false principles in the guise of truth by means of a seeming fulfilment of the demands of strict logical proof. The incorrectness of this historical derivation hardly needs to be pointed out. Kant professes to be following his contemporaries in thus using the term as a title for the treatment of false reasoning. But even this statement must be challenged. Adickes, after examination of a large number of eighteenth-century text-books, reports that in the six passages in which alone he has found it to occur it is never so employed. In Meier it is used as a title for the theory of probable reasoning, and in Baumgarten it occurs only in adjectival form as equivalent to sophistical. This last is the nearest approach to Kant’s definition. All historical considerations may therefore be swept aside. We are concerned only with the specific meaning which Kant thought good to attach to the term. He adapts it in the freest manner to the needs of his system. In A 61 = B 85, as in his Logic, he has defined it in merely negative fashion. He is now careful to specify the more positive aspects of the problems with which it deals. Though definable as the logic of illusion, the deceptive inferences with which it concerns itself are of a quite unique and supremely significant character. They must, as above noted, be distinguished alike from logical and from empirical illusion. They have their roots in the fundamental needs of the human mind, and the recognition of their illusory character does not render unnecessary either a positive explanation of their occurrence or a Critical valuation of their practical function as regulative ideals.

=A 293 = B 349.=--Regarding the connection between illusion and error cf. B 69, and above, pp. 148-53.

=A 295 = B 352.=--Logical, empirical, and transcendental illusion. Cf. above, pp. 13, 427-9, 437.

=A 296 = B 352.=--Kant here defines the terms transcendental and transcendent in a very unusual manner. The two terms are not, he states, synonymous. The principles of pure understanding are of merely empirical validity, and consequently are not of transcendental employment beyond the limits of experience. A principle is transcendent when it not only removes these limits, but prescribes the overstepping of them.

II. Pure Reason as the Seat of Transcendental Illusion

(a) Reason in General

Reason, like understanding, is employed in two ways, formal or logical and real. The logical use of Reason consists in mediate inference, the real in the generation of concepts and principles. Reason is thus both a logical and a transcendental faculty, and we may therefore expect that its logical functions will serve as a clue to those that are transcendental. The argument which follows is extremely obscure. It is a foreshadowing in logical terms of a distinction which, as Kant himself indicates, cannot at this stage be adequately stated. The distinction may be extended and paraphrased as follows. Reason, generically taken as including both activities, is the faculty of principles, in distinction from understanding which is the faculty of rules. Principles, properly so-called, are absolutely a priori. Universals which imply the element of intuition must not, therefore, be ranked as principles in the strict sense. They are more properly to be entitled rules. A true principle is one that affords knowledge of the particulars which come under it, and which does so from its own internal resources, that is to say, through pure concepts. In other words, it yields a priori synthetic knowledge, and yet does so independently of all given experience. Now, as the Analytic has proved, knowledge obtained through understanding, whether in mathematical or in physical science, is never of this character. Its principles, even though originating in pure intuition or in the pure understanding, are valid only as conditions of possible experience, and are applicable only to such objects as can occur in the context of a sense-perception. That is to say, the understanding can never obtain synthetic knowledge through pure concepts. Though, for instance, it prescribes the principle that everything which happens must have a cause, that principle does not establish itself by means of the concepts which it contains, but only as being a presupposition necessary to the possibility of sense-experience. If, then, principles in the strict sense actually exist, they must be due to a faculty distinct from understanding, and will call for a deduction of a different character from that of the categories.

In the last paragraph but one of the section Kant indicates the doctrine which he is foreshadowing. The rules of understanding apply to appearances, prescribing the conditions under which the unity necessary to any and every experience can alone be attained. The principles of Reason do not apply directly to appearances, but only to the understanding, defining the standards to which its activities must conform, if a completely unified experience is to be achieved. Whereas the rules of understanding are the conditions of objective existence in space and time, principles in the strict sense are criteria for the attainment of such absoluteness and totality as will harmonise Reason with itself. Reason, determined by principles which issue from its own inherent nature, prescribes what the actual ought to be; understanding, proceeding from rules which express the conditions of possible experience, can yield knowledge only of what is found to exist in the course of sense-experience. The unity of Reason is Ideal; the unity of understanding is empirical. Principles are due to the self-determination of reason; the rules of understanding express the necessitated determinations of sense. The former demand a more perfect and complete unity than is ever attainable by means of the latter. Two passages from the Lose Blätter will help to define the distinction.

“There is a synthesis prototypon and a synthesis ectypon. The one ... simpliciter, a termino a priori, ... the other secundum quid, a termino a posteriori.... Reason advances from the universal to the particular, the understanding from the particular to the universal.... The first is absolute and belongs to the free or metaphysical, and also to the moral, employment of Reason.” “The principles of the synthesis of pure Reason are all metaphysical.... are principles of the subjective unity of knowledge through Reason, i.e. of the agreement of Reason with itself.”

The chief interest of this section lies in its clear indication of the dual standpoint to which Kant is committing himself by the manner in which he formulates this distinction between rules and principles. The indispensableness of the latter, upon which Kant is prepared to insist, points to the Idealist interpretation of their grounds and validity; their derivation from mere concepts, without reference to or basis in experience, must, on the other hand, in view of the teaching of the Analytic, commit Kant to a sceptical treatment of their objective validity. In the above account, suggestions of the Idealist point of view are not entirely absent; but, on the whole, it is the sceptical view that is dominant. The Ideas of Reason can be justified as necessary only for the perfecting of experience, not as conditions of experience as such. They express a subjective interest in the attainment of unity, not conditions of the possibility of objective existence.

”[Civil Laws] are only limitations imposed upon our freedom in order that such freedom may completely harmonise with itself; hence they are directed to something which is entirely our own work, and of which we ourselves, through these concepts, can be the cause. But that objects in themselves, the very nature of things, should stand under principles, and should be determined according to mere concepts, is a demand which, if not impossible, is at least quite contrary to common sense [Widersinnisches].”

(b) The Logical Use of Reason

In this subsection Kant introduces the distinction between understanding and judgment which he has sought to justify in A 130 ff. = B 169 ff. By showing that inference determines the relation between a major premiss (due to the understanding) and the condition defined in the minor premiss (due to the faculty of judgment), he professes to obtain justification for classifying the possible forms of reasoning according to the three categories of relation. The general remark is added that the purpose of Reason, in its logical employment as inference, is to obtain the highest possible unity, through subsumption of all multiplicity under the smallest possible number of universals.

(c) The Pure Use of Reason

Kant here states the alternatives between which the Dialectic has to decide. Is Reason merely formal, arranging given material according to given forms of unity, or is it a source of principles which prescribe higher forms of unity than any revealed by actual experience? Further examination of its formal and logical procedure constrains us, Kant asserts, to adopt the latter position; and at the same time indicates how those principles must be interpreted, namely, as subjective laws that apply not to objects but only to the activities of the understanding.

In the first place, a syllogism is not directly concerned with intuitions, but only with concepts and judgments. This may be taken as indicating that pure Reason relates to objects only mediately by way of understanding and its judgments. The unity which it seeks is higher than that of any possible experience; it is a unity which must be constructed and cannot be given.

Secondly, Reason in its logical use seeks the universal condition of its judgment; and when such is not found in the major premiss proceeds to its discovery through a regressive series of prosyllogisms. In so doing it is obviously determined by a principle expressive of the peculiar function of Reason in its logical employment, namely, that for the conditioned knowledge of understanding the unconditioned unity in which that knowledge may find completion must be discovered. Such a principle is synthetic, since from analysis of the conception of the conditioned we can discover its relation to a condition, but never its relation to the unconditioned. That is a notion which falls entirely outside the sphere of the understanding, and which therefore demands a separate enquiry. How is the above a priori synthetic principle to be accounted for, if it cannot be traced to understanding? Has it objective, or has it merely subjective validity? And lastly, what further synthetic principles can be based upon it? Such are the questions to which Critical Dialectic must supply an answer. This Dialectic will be composed of two main divisions, the doctrine of “the transcendent concepts of pure Reason” and the doctrine of “transcendent and dialectical inferences of Reason.”