PART II. The Transcendental Logic

THE TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC

INTRODUCTION

=I. Concerning Logic in General.=--This Introduction which falls into four divisions, is extremely diffuse, and contributes little that is of more than merely architectonic value. It is a repetition of the last section of the general Introduction, and of the introductory paragraphs of the Aesthetic, but takes no account of the definitions given in either of those two places. It does not, therefore, seem likely that it could have been written in immediate sequence upon the Aesthetic. It is probably later than the main body of the Analytic. In any case it is externally tacked on to it; as Adickes has noted, it is completely ignored in the opening section of the Analytic.

In treating of intuition in the first sentence, Kant seems to have in view only empirical intuition. Yet he at once proceeds to state that intuition may be pure as well as empirical. Also, in asserting that “pure intuition contains only the form under which something is intuited,” Kant would seem to be adopting the view that it does not yield its own manifold, a conclusion which he does not, however, himself draw.

In defining sensibility, Kant again ignores pure intuition. Sensuous intuition, it is stated, is the mode in which we are affected by objects. Understanding, in turn, is defined only in its opposition to sensibility, in the ordinary meaning of that term. Understanding is the faculty which yields thought of the object to which sense-affection is due. It is “the power of thinking the object of sensuous intuition”; and acts, it is implied, in and through pure concepts which it supplies out of itself.

“Without sensibility objects would not be given to us [i.e. the impressions, in themselves merely subjective contents, through which alone independent objects can be revealed to us, would be wanting]; without understanding they would not be thought by us [i.e. they would be apprehended only in the form in which they are given, viz. as subjective modes of our sensibility].”

Kant has not yet developed the thesis which the central argument of the Analytic is directed to prove, namely, that save through the combination of intuition and conception no consciousness whatsoever is possible. In these paragraphs he still implies that though concepts without intuition are empty they are not meaningless, and that though intuitions without concepts are blind they are not empty. Their union is necessary for genuine knowledge, but not for the existence of consciousness as such.

“It is just as necessary to make our concepts sensuous, i.e. to add to them their object in intuition, as to make our intuitions intelligible, i.e. to bring them under concepts.”

Kant’s final Critical teaching is very different from this. Concepts are not first given in their purity, nor is “their object” added in intuition. Only through concepts is apprehension of an object possible, and only in and through such apprehension do concepts come to consciousness. Nor are intuitions “made intelligible” by being “brought under concepts.” Only as thus conceptually interpreted can they exist for consciousness. The co-operation of concept and intuition is necessary for consciousness in any and every form, even the simplest and most indefinite. Consciousness of the subjective is possible only in and through consciousness of the objective, and vice versa. The dualistic separation of sensibility from understanding persists, however, even in Kant’s later utterances; and, as above stated, to this sharp opposition are due both the strength and the weakness of Kant’s teaching. Intuition and conception must, he here insists, be carefully distinguished. Aesthetic is the “science of the rules of sensibility in general.” Logic is the “science of the rules of understanding in general.”

Kant’s classification of the various kinds of logic may be exhibited as follows:

{ pure { general { applied Logic { special { transcendental

Adickes criticises Kant’s classification as defective, owing to the omission of the intermediate concept ‘ordinary.’ Adickes therefore gives the following table:

Logic =========================================== || | ||transcendental | ordinary || |________________________ || | | || | special | general || | |______________ || | | | || | | pure | applied || | | |

General logic is a logic of elements, i.e. of the absolutely necessary laws of thought, in abstraction from all differences in the objects dealt with, i.e. from all content, whether empirical or transcendental. It is a canon of the understanding in its general discursive or analytic employment. When it is pure, it takes no account of the empirical psychological conditions under which the understanding has to act. When it is developed as an applied logic, it proceeds to formulate rules for the employment of understanding under these subjective conditions. It is then neither canon, nor organon, but simply a catharticon of the ordinary understanding. Special logic is the organon of this or that science, i.e. of the rules governing correct thinking in regard to a certain class of objects. Only pure general logic is a pure doctrine of reason. It alone is absolutely independent of sensibility, of everything empirical, and therefore of psychology. Such pure logic is a body of demonstrative teaching, completely a priori. It stands to applied logic in the same relation as pure to applied ethics.

“Some logicians, indeed, affirm that logic presupposes psychological principles. But it is just as inappropriate to bring principles of this kind into logic as to derive the science of morals from life. If we were to take the principles from psychology, that is, from observations on our understanding, we should merely see how thought takes place, and how it is affected by the manifold subjective hindrances and conditions; so that this would lead only to the knowledge of contingent laws. But in logic the question is not of contingent, but of necessary laws; not how we do think, but how we ought to think. The rules of logic, then, must not be derived from the contingent, but from the necessary use of the understanding which without any psychology a man finds in himself. In logic we do not want to know how the understanding is and thinks, and how it has hitherto proceeded in thinking, but how it ought to proceed in thinking. Its business is to teach us the correct use of reason, that is, the use which is consistent with itself.”

By a canon Kant means a system of a priori principles for the correct employment of a certain faculty of knowledge. By an organon Kant means instruction as to how knowledge may be extended, how new knowledge may be acquired. A canon formulates positive principles through the application of which a faculty can be directed and disciplined. A canon is therefore a discipline based on positive principles of correct use. The term discipline is, however, reserved by Kant to signify a purely negative teaching, which seeks only to prevent error and to check the tendency to deviate from rules. When a faculty has no correct use (as, for instance, pure speculative reason), it is subject only to a discipline, not to a canon. A discipline is thus “a separate, negative code,” “a system of caution and self-examination.” It is further distinguished from a canon by its taking account of other than purely a priori conditions. It is related to a pure canon much as applied is related to general logic. As a canon supplies principles for the directing of a faculty, its distinction from an organon obviously cannot be made hard and fast. But here as elsewhere Kant, though rigorous and almost pedantic in the drawing of distinctions, is correspondingly careless in their application. He describes special logic as the organon of this or that science. We should expect from the definition given in the preceding sentence that it would rather be viewed as a canon. In A 46 = B 63 Kant speaks of the Aesthetic as an organon.

=II. Concerning Transcendental Logic.=--It is with the distinction between general and transcendental logic that Kant is chiefly concerned. It is a distinction which he has himself invented, and which is of fundamental importance for the purposes of the Critique. Transcendental logic is the new science which he seeks to expound in this second main division of the Doctrine of Elements. The distinction, from which all the differences between the two sciences follow, is that while general logic abstracts from all differences in the objects known, transcendental logic abstracts only from empirical content. On the supposition, not yet proved by Kant, but asserted in anticipation, that there exist pure a priori concepts which are valid of objects, there will exist a science distinct in nature and different in purpose from general logic. The two logics will agree in being a priori, but otherwise they will differ in all essential respects.

The reference in A 55 = B 79 to the forms of intuition is somewhat ambiguous. Kant might be taken as meaning that in transcendental logic abstraction is made not only from everything empirical but also from all intuition. That is not, however, Kant’s real view, or at least not his final view. In sections A 76-7 = B 102, A 130-1 = B 170, and A 135-6 = B 174-5, which are probably all of later origin, he states his position in the clearest terms. Transcendental logic, he there declares, differs from general logic in that it is not called upon to abstract from the pure a priori manifolds of intuition. This involves, it may be noted, the recognition, so much more pronounced in the later developments of Kant’s Critical teaching, of space and time as not merely forms for the apprehension of sensuous manifolds but as themselves presenting to the mind independent manifolds of a priori nature.

As the term transcendental indicates, the new logic will have as its central problems the origin, scope, conditions and possibility of valid a priori knowledge of objects. None of these problems are treated in general logic, which deals only with the understanding itself. The question which it raises is, as Kant says in his Logic, How can the understanding know itself? The question dealt with by transcendental logic we may formulate in a corresponding way: How can the understanding possess pure a priori knowledge of objects? It is a canon of pure understanding in so far as that faculty is capable of synthetic, objective knowledge a priori. General logic involves, it is true, the idea of reference to objects, but the possibility of such reference is not itself investigated. In general logic the understanding deals only with itself. It assumes indeed that all objects must conform to its laws, but this assumption plays no part in the science itself.

A further point, not here dwelt upon by Kant, calls for notice, namely, that the activities of understanding dealt with by general logic are its merely discursive activities,--those of discrimination and comparison; whereas those dealt with by transcendental logic are the originative activities through which it produces a priori concepts from within itself, and through which it attains, independently of experience, to an a priori determination of objects. Otherwise stated, general logic deals only with analytic thinking, transcendental logic with the synthetic activities that are involved in the generation of the complex contents which form the subject matter of the analytic procedure.

=III. Concerning the Division of General Logic into Analytic and Dialectic.=--The following passage from Kant’s Logic forms an excellent and sufficient comment upon the first four paragraphs of this section:

“An important perfection of knowledge, nay, the essential and inseparable condition of all its perfection, is truth. Truth is said to consist in the agreement of knowledge with the object. According to this merely verbal definition, then, my knowledge, in order to be true, must agree with the object. Now I can only compare the object with my knowledge by this means, namely by having knowledge of it. My knowledge, then, is to be verified by itself, which is far from being sufficient for truth. For as the object is external to me, I can only judge whether my knowledge of the object agrees with my knowledge of the object. Such a circle in explanation was called by the ancients Diallelos. And, indeed, the logicians were accused of this fallacy by the sceptics, who remarked that this account of truth was as if a man before a judicial tribunal should make a statement, and appeal in support of it to a witness whom no one knows, but who defends his own credibility by saying that the man who had called him as a witness is an honourable man. The charge was certainly well-founded. The solution of the problem referred to is, however, absolutely impossible for any man.

“The question is in fact this: whether and how far there is a certain, universal, and practically applicable criterion of truth. For this is the meaning of the question, What is truth?...

“A universal material criterion of truth is not possible; the phrase is indeed self-contradictory. For being universal it would necessarily abstract from all distinction of objects, and yet being a material criterion, it must be concerned with just this distinction in order to be able to determine whether a cognition agrees with the very object to which it refers, and not merely with some object or other, by which nothing would be said. But material truth must consist in this agreement of a cognition with the definite object to which it refers. For a cognition which is true in reference to one object may be false in reference to other objects. It is therefore absurd to demand a universal material criterion of truth, which is at once to abstract and not to abstract from all distinction of objects.

“But if we ask for a universal formal criterion of truth, it is very easy to decide that there may be such a criterion. For formal truth consists simply in the agreement of the cognition with itself when we abstract from all objects whatever, and from every distinction of objects. And hence the universal formal criteria of truth are nothing but universal logical marks of agreement of cognitions with themselves, or, what is the same thing, with the general laws of the understanding and the Reason. These formal universal criteria are certainly not sufficient for objective truth, but yet they are to be viewed as its conditio sine qua non. For before the question, whether the cognition agrees with the object, must come the question, whether it agrees with itself (as to form). And this is the business of logic.”

The remaining paragraphs of Section III. may similarly be compared with the following passage from an earlier section of Kant’s Logic:

“Analytic discovers, by means of analysis, all the activities of reason which we exercise in thought. It is therefore an analytic of the form of understanding and of Reason, and is justly called the logic of truth, since it contains the necessary rules of all (formal) truth, without which truth our knowledge is untrue in itself, even apart from its objects. It is therefore nothing more than a canon for deciding on the formal correctness of our knowledge.

“Should we desire to use this merely theoretical and general doctrine as a practical art, that is, as an organon, it would become a dialectic, i.e. a logic of semblance (ars sophistica disputatoria), arising out of an abuse of the analytic, inasmuch as by the mere logical form there is contrived the semblance of true knowledge, the characters of which must, on the contrary, be derived from agreement with objects, and therefore from the content.

“In former times dialectic was studied with great diligence. This art presented false principles in the semblance of truth, and sought, in accordance with these, to maintain things in semblance. Amongst the Greeks the dialecticians were advocates and rhetoricians who could lead the populace wherever they chose, because the populace lets itself be deluded with semblance. Dialectic was therefore at that time the art of semblance. In logic, also, it was for a long time treated under the name of the art of disputation, and during that period all logic and philosophy was the cultivation by certain chatterboxes of the art of semblance. But nothing can be more unworthy of a philosopher than the cultivation of such an art. Dialectic in this form, therefore, must be altogether suppressed, and instead of it there must be introduced into logic a critical examination of this semblance.

“We should then have two parts of logic: the analytic, which will treat of the formal criteria of truth, and the dialectic, which will contain the marks and rules by which we can know that something does not agree with the formal criteria of truth, although it seems to agree with them. Dialectic in this form would have its use as a cathartic of the understanding.”

Dialectic is thus interpreted in a merely negative sense. It is, Kant says, a catharticon. So far from being an organon, it is not even a canon. It is merely a discipline. By this manner of defining dialectic Kant causes some confusion. It does not do justice to the scope and purpose of that section of the Critique to which it gives its name.

=IV. Concerning the Division of Transcendental Logic into Transcendental Analytic and Dialectic.=--The term object is used throughout this section in two quite distinct senses. In the second and third sentences it is employed in its wider meaning as equivalent to content or matter. In the fourth sentence it is used in the narrower and stricter sense, more proper to the term, namely, as meaning ‘thing.’ Again, in the fifth sentence content (Inhalt) would seem to be identified with object in the narrower sense, while in the sixth sentence matter (Materie, a synonym for content) appears to be identified with object in the wider sense. Transcendental Dialectic, in accordance with the above account of its logical correlate, is defined in a manner which does justice only to the negative side of its teaching. Its function is viewed as merely that of protecting the pure understanding against sophistical illusions.

THE TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC

DIVISION I

THE TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC

The chief point of this section lies in its insistence that, as the Analytic is concerned only with the pure understanding, the a priori concepts with which it deals must form a unity or system. Understanding is viewed as a separate faculty, and virtually hypostatised. As a separate faculty, it must, it is implied, be an independent unity, self-containing and complete. Its concepts are determined in number, constitution, and interrelation, by its inherent character. They originate independently of all differences in the material which they are employed to organise.